TRANSITION TO HEGEL.
The great want of Schelling’s philosophizing, was its inability to
furnish a suitable form for the philosophic content. Schelling went
through the list of all methods, and at last abandoned all. But this
absence of method into which he ultimately sank, contradicted the very
principle of his philosophizing. If thought and being are identical, yet
form and content cannot be indifferent in respect to each other. On the
standpoint of absolute knowledge, there must be found for the absolute
content an absolute form, which shall be identical with the content.
This is the position assumed by _Hegel_. Hegel has fused the content of
Schelling’s philosophy by means of the _absolute method_. Hegel sprang
as truly from Fichte as from Schelling; the origin of his system is
found in both. His method is essentially that of Fichte, but his general
philosophical standpoint is Schelling’s. He has combined both Fichte and
Schelling.
Hegel has himself, in his “_Phenomenology_,” the first work in which he
appeared as a philosopher on his own hook, having previously been
considered as an adherent of Schelling—clearly expressed his difference
from Schelling, which he comprehensively affirms in the following three
hits (_Schlagworte_):—In Schelling’s philosophy, the absolute is, as it
were, shot out of a pistol; it is only the night in which every cow
looks black; when it is widened to a system, it is like the course of a
painter, who has on his palette but two colors, red and green, and who
would cover a surface with the former when a historical piece was
demanded, and with the latter when a landscape was required. The first
of these charges refers to the mode of attaining the idea of the
absolute, viz., immediately, through intellectual intuition; this leap
Hegel changes, in his _Phenomenology_, to a regular transit, proceeding
step by step. The second charge relates to the way in which the absolute
thus gained is conceived and expressed, viz., simply as the absence of
all finite distinctions, and not as the immanent positing of a system of
distinctions within itself. Hegel declares that every thing depends upon
apprehending and expressing the true not as substance (_i. e._ as
negation of determinateness), but as subject (as a positing and
producing of finite distinction). The third charge has to do with
Schelling’s manner of carrying out his principle through the concrete
content of the facts given in the natural and intellectual worlds, viz.,
by the application of a ready-made schema (the opposition of the ideal
and the real) to the objects, instead of suffering them to unfold and
separate themselves from themselves. The school of Schelling was
especially given to this schematizing formalism, and that which Hegel
remarks, in the introduction to his _Phenomenology_, may very well be
applied to it: “If the formalism of a philosophy of nature should happen
to teach that the understanding is electricity, or that the animate is
nitrogen, the inexperienced might look upon such instructions with deep
amazement, and perhaps revere them as displaying the marks of profound
genius. But the trick of such a wisdom is as readily learned as it is
easily practised; its repetition is as insufferable as the repetition of
a discovered feat of legerdemain. This method of affixing to every thing
heavenly and earthly, to all natural and intellectual forms, the two
determinations of the universal scheme, makes the universe like a
grocer’s shop, in which a row of closed jars stand with their labels
pasted on them.”
The point, therefore, of greatest difference between Schelling and Hegel
is their philosophical method, and this at the same time forms the bond
of close connection which unites Hegel with Fichte. Thesis, antithesis,
synthesis—this was the method by which Fichte had sought to deduce all
being from the Ego, and in precisely the same way Hegel deduces all
being—the intellectual and natural universe—from the thought, only with
this difference, that with him that which was idealistically deduced had
at the same time an objective reality. While the practical idealism of
Fichte stood related to the objective world as a producer, and the
ordinary empiricism as a beholder, yet with Hegel the speculative
(conceiving) reason is at the same time productive and beholding. I
produce (for myself) that which is (in itself) without my producing. The
result of philosophy, says Hegel, is the thought which is by itself, and
which comprehends in itself the universe, and changes it into an
intelligent world. To raise all being to being in the consciousness, to
knowledge, is the problem and the goal of philozophizing, and this goal
is reached when the mind has become able to beget the whole objective
world from itself.
In his first great work, the “_Phenomenology of the Mind_,” Hegel sought
to establish the standpoint of absolute knowledge or absolute idealism.
He furnishes in this work a history of the phenomenal consciousness
(whence its title), a development of the formative epochs of the
consciousness in its progress to philosophical knowledge. The inner
development of consciousness consists in this, viz., that the peculiar
condition in which it finds itself becomes objectified (or conscious),
and through this knowledge of its own being the consciousness rises ever
a new step to a higher condition. The “_Phenomenology_” seeks to show
how, and out of what necessity the consciousness advances from step to
step, from reality to being _per se_ (_vom Ansich zum Fürsich_), from
being to knowledge. The author begins with the immediate consciousness
as the lowest step. He entitled this section: “_The Sensuous Certainty,
or the This and the Mine_.” At this stage the question is asked the Ego:
what is _this_, or what is _here_? and it answers, _e. g._ the tree; and
to the question, what is _now_? it answers now is the night. But if we
turn ourselves around, _here_ is not a tree but a house; and if we write
down the second answer, and look at it again after a little time, we
find that _now_ is no longer night but mid-day. The _this_ becomes,
therefore, a not-this, _i. e._ a universal. And very naturally; for if I
say: this piece of paper, yet each and every paper is a this piece of
paper, and I have only said the universal. By such inner dialectics the
whole field of the immediate certainty of the sense in perception is
gone over. In this way—since every formative step (every form) of the
consciousness of the philosophizing subject is involved in
contradictions, and is carried by this immanent dialectics to a higher
form of consciousness—this process of development goes on till the
contradiction is destroyed, _i. e._ till all strangeness between subject
and object disappears, and the mind rises to a perfect self-knowledge
and self-certainty. To characterize briefly the different steps of this
process, we might say that the consciousness is first found as a
certainty of the sense, or as the _this_ and the _mine_; next as
perception, which apprehends the objective as a thing with its
properties; and then as understanding, _i. e._ apprehending the objects
as being reflected in itself, or distinguishing between power and
expression, being and manifestation, outer and inner. From this point
the consciousness, which has only recognized itself, its own pure being
in its objects and their determinations, and for which therefore every
other thing than itself has, as such, no significance, becomes the
self-like Ego, and rises to the truth and certainty of itself to
self-consciousness. The self-consciousness become universal, or as
reason, now traverses also a series of development-steps, until it
manifests itself as spirit, as the reason which, in accord with all
rationality, and satisfied with the rational world without, extends
itself over the natural and intellectual universe as _its_ kingdom, in
which it finds itself at home. Mind now passes through its stages of
unconstrained morality, culture and refinement, ethics and the ethical
view of the world to religion; and religion itself in its perfection, as
revealed religion becomes absolute knowledge. At this last stage being
and thought are no more separate, being is no longer an object for the
thought, but the thought itself is the object of the thought. Science is
nothing other than the true knowledge of the mind concerning itself. In
the conclusion of the “_Phenomenology_,” Hegel casts the following
retrospect on the course which he has laid down: “The goal which is to
be reached, viz., absolute knowledge, or the mind knowing itself as
mind, requires us to take notice of minds as they are in themselves, and
the organization of their kingdom. These elements are preserved, and
furnished to us either by history, where we look at the side of the
mind’s free existence as it accidentally appears, or by the science of
phenomenal knowledge, where we look at the side of the mind’s ideal
organization. These two sources taken together, as the ideal history,
give us the real history and the true being of the absolute spirit, the
actuality, truth, and certainty of his throne, without which he were
lifeless and alone; only ‘from the cup of this kingdom of minds does
there stream forth for him his infinity.’”