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The Cows in the Dark Night

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

H. S. Harris
H. S. Harris
Affiliation:
Glendon College, York University
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Extract

In the far-off days before the first World War, the British journal Mind was full of articles by writers who thought of themselves as “Neoidealists”. So when the enfant terrible of the groves of Academic Oxford in that generation—a “pragmatic Humanist” by the name of Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller—played his most notorious practical joke upon his colleagues by publishing a mock-issue of the journal (under the title Mind!) he offered as a frontispiece “A portrait of the Absolute in the pink of condition”. Beneath a pale-pink semi-transparent tissue (which, except for its colour, was quite normal for the photographic plates in Victorian memoirs) one found a printed frame that embraced a perfectly blank white sheet of paper.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , Winter 1987 , pp. 627 - 644
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1987

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References

1 Paul, Jean, Vorschule der Aesthetik, Abteilung 3 (Hamburg: 1804), 691–692nGoogle Scholar; Horn of Oberon, trans. Hale, Margaret (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1973), 87, n. 1.Google Scholar

2 Steffens, Henryk, Was ich erlebte (Breslau: 1841), 4, 312Google Scholar; compare Hegel, G. W., Gesammelte Werke (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1968ff.), 9, 485Google Scholar (referred to hereafter as GW).

3 Werke (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1857ff.), 4, 258–259Google Scholar; trans. M. Vater (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1985), 158–159.

4 Ibid., 403–405.

5 GW 9, 485Google Scholar (note on 17, 19–29).

6 Goethe, , Faust Part I (Tübingen: Cotta, 1808)Google Scholar, lines 4367–4370. Both Sanssouci and the word Heer point to Frederick the Great and the “despotic” version of the Enlightenment. Goethe does not mean the new idealists. Their representative speaks earlier: “The imagination in my sense/ is this time far too lordly/ Forsooth, if I am really all of this/ then I am quite a fool today” (4347–4350). The general theme is German culture, so I do not find the prevailing interpretation of “Die Gewandten”, “Die Unbehiilflichen”, “Sternschnuppe” and “Die Massiven” in French Revolutionary terms persuasive. (The presence of the “Irrlichter”—who belong to Walpurgis Night itself, and not just to the “Dream”—in the middle of this group, also tells against any non-German cultural interpretation.)

7 GW 9, 23, 9–21Google Scholar; Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A. V. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), §26.Google Scholar

8 Notice that after this first round, the enemy becomes “schematizing formalism” when Hegel returns to it. This is a crucially important sign that Hegel's target is one that moves. (But it is obvious from the opening of [Miller] § 15 that he is primarily concerned with the “reborn formalism”.)

9 It is important to realize that Hegel accepts the criterion of “obviousness to the enlightened mind”. “Scientific cognition” (the topic of the Preface) belongs by right to us all; and the way, though it is long and hard, and sometimes steep—as, for instance, when we must pass from craniology to the real “thinghood of Reason”—must be made as straight and plain as the prophetic voice in the wilderness commanded.

10 GW 9, 16, 6–10Google Scholar; Miller, , Phenomenology, §14.Google Scholar

11 GW 9, 16, 31Google Scholar to 17, 2 and 17, 9–11; Miller, , Phenomenology, §15.Google Scholar

12 GW 9, 17, 12–33Google Scholar; Miller, , Phenomenology, §16.Google Scholar

13 GW 9, 38, 1–2Google Scholar; Miller, , PhenomenologyGoogle Scholar, §51. (It is clear to me now that this inference—which is originally stated quite categorically—was always very shaky; and that it is, in face, almost certainly mistaken. The explanation of Hegel's reference to Fichte here that seems most plausible to me in the light of Michael Vater's criticism is given in the Postscript.)

14 GW 9, 36, 17–23Google Scholar; Miller, , Phenomenology, §50Google Scholar. The parenthetical note here is an addition prompted by Vater's criticism and discussed in the Postscript.

15 Originally I wrote: “This is definitely Fichte's idealism”. But see now note 13 above (and the Postscript). Note 16 following explains why I was at first so confident (in spite of my consciousness that the foundations of the identification were sandy).

16 Originally I wrote simply “since Fichte is the bichromatic formalist of phase 6”. But that is an error (see the Postscript). So if anyone thinks that this step in my “proof” has slightly sandy foundations in Hegel's text, because Hegel makes only a glancing reference to Fichte in connection with the reborn “schematizing formalism” (which is certainly not his) I will grant the point. But the evidence that Hegel regarded Fichte as the true begetter of “formalism” in the new speculative philosophy is overwhelming both inside the Phenomenology (see especially the introductory discussion for chapter five—GW 9, 133, 6 to 137, 17; Miller, Phenomenology, §§233–239) and in Hegel's earlier essays, both published and (in 1807) unpublished.

17 See GW 4, 362–363, 384–386Google Scholar; Difference between Fichte and Schelling, trans. Cerf, W. and Harris, H. S. (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1977), 118–119, 148–152Google Scholar. Jacobi himself felt that he was being called bad names by Hegel, and was quite amused by it (see Hegel in Berichten seiner Zeitgenossen, ed. Nicolin, G. [Hamburg: Meiner, 1970]Google Scholar, report 65). Schleiermacher was distressed on Jacobi's account, but seems not to have minded much on his own (Nicolin, report 68). What Herder thought can be surmised by considering the absolute opposition between his view of Spinoza and Jacobi's.

18 GW 4, 87, 8–10Google Scholar. The formula is quoted directly from Reinhold—cf. Harris and Cerf, Difference, 186Google Scholar; it recurs several times in Hegel's discussion of Reinhold, and he uses it always as a sort of recognition signal. It is meant to serve in that function in the Phenomenology.

19 Thus Hegel says that the formula is “only externally applied [angewendet] to the diverse material [Material]” (GW 9, 17, 1Google Scholar; Miller, , Phenomenology, §15Google Scholar). The second of the Absoluta in the Difference essay is the Anwendung des Denkens; and the third is die Materie (Materiatur is also used sometimes, but not Material). Finally Hegel identifies the terms Vorstellung and Stoff as the terms for Anwendung and Materie in the earlier form of the theory (before Reinhold relearned his own view from Bardili). I mention this because Bonsiepen and Heede take the word Stoff in the Phenomenology (GW 9, 17, 10) as a pointer towards the natural philosophy of Gorres and Wagner. I believe the first “monochromatic formalism” is plainly logical, and not naturephilosophical at all. Görres and Wagner belong to the “newly self-begotten formalism”.

20 The fact that the opposition between the parties of Verstand and Vernunft is first made at the end of the Difference essay (GW 4, 91, 19 to 92, 36Google Scholar; Harris, and Cerf, , Difference, 192–195Google Scholar) and that the terminology of the Identity Theory is used for this, is another nail in the coffin of the view that “Schelling's System” could be identified with either pole in the Phenomenology (or with their “false midpoint”). It is in the Difference essay that the “reduction of philosophy to logic” is first presented as the best reconciliation of the polar opposition that “popular and formula-philosophy” can offer. (Anyone who thinks that my interpretation of the present passage is too paradoxical to be true should study this earlier version of the very same argument.)

21 To see the Gestalten as an expression of the Potenz theory, we must realize that in each full stage of the argument there are three phases. The initial Gestalt (first Potenz) is transformed by “experience” into its own opposite (second Potenz) and then the opposition is resolved in the “result” (third Potenz). Stoicism, Scepticism and Unhappy Consciousness are a nice clear case; another is the Heart's Law, Self-Conceit and The Way of the World. Hegel's pattern evolves out of the equilibration of Potenzen in the System of Ethical Life; and even someone who is not convinced by my thesis about the Gestalten of the Phenomenology ought to concede that Hegel's success in embodying the Potenz theory in the System of Ethical Life would make it impossible for him to call Schelling's Absolute Identity gestaltlos. Compare also, finally, the concluding page of the Natural Law essay. (Schelling's own comment was framed in the terminology of the System of Ethical Life, not that of the Phenomenology into which I have here translated it—see Letter 107, Briefe, ed. Hoffmeister, J. [Hamburg: Meiner, 1961], 1, 194Google Scholar; Hegel's Letters, trans. Butler, C. and Seiler, C. [Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1984], 80.)Google Scholar

22 The identity of this first shade that Dante recognizes in Hell (Inferno III, 59–60) is still controversial. In this instance I am a strong supporter of the oldest and firmest tradition. I have no doubt that the saintly simpleton, Pietro da Morrone (Pope Celestine V) is meant. I suppose that Dante's verdict was written before he was canonized as St. Peter Celestine (by Clement V in 1313). But Dante probably knew that the canonization was impending; and I am certain that it pleased him to overturn in his first judgment the authoritative pronouncement of a Pope whom St. Peter himself eventually declares to be a mere usurper (Paradiso XXVII, 22–27).Google Scholar

23 GW 9, 17, 32–33Google Scholar; Miller, , Phenomenology, §16.Google Scholar

24 He would have had to be very obtuse indeed, one might add, to be worried about that, if he had already joined Friedrich Schlegel in calling Schelling's Identity Theory by the rudest name possible!

25 Letter 95 (May 1, 1807), Briefe (ed. Hoffmeister) I, 162Google Scholar; Butler, , Letters, 80Google Scholar. I have capitalized You and Your to indicate the use of Du and Dein.

26 Letter 107 (Nov. 2, 1807), Briefe (ed. Hoffmeister) I, 194; Butler, , Letters, 80.Google Scholar

27 Leben Hegels (Berlin, 1844)Google Scholar; reprint, Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 181–185; translated in (Hegel) System of Ethical Life and First Philosophy of Spirit, trans. Harris, H. S. and Knox, T. M. (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1980), 256–259Google Scholar. Compare also the passages which Vater quotes (in his note 7) from the History of Philosophy Lectures. He is mistaken in thinking that “these texts help not at all in deducing who paragraph 51's formalist of natural philosophy is”. For the second passage—Hegel, History of Philosophy, trans. Haldane, E. S. and Simson, F. H. (London: Routledge, 1955), III, 543–544Google Scholar —can only come from the Jena course of 1805/6. It is inconceivable that Hegel would have distinguished between Schelling's philosophy and an “unspiritual imitation” of it at Heidelberg or Berlin. The first passage (ibid., III, 542) is more typical of Hegel's view of Schelling in those later years. So the flat contradiction between these passages enables us to “deduce” from the second one that Schelling was not one of the “formalists” of paragraph 51 when Hegel wrote it, although he had probably become one of them for Hegel himself as a reader of the text ten years later. (Yet even in the lectures of 1825/6—Vorlesungen Band 9 [Hamburg: Meiner, 1986] 186–187—we can recognize the implicit distinction between Schelling's Naturphilosophie and “schematizing formalism”.)

28 Again we should notice that the new project of the Phenomenology was itself tied to Schelling's “Idea” as “die Wissenschaft, die erst beginnt”; and from the so-called Wastebook we can securely identify Gorres and Wagner as two of the “formalists” whom Hegel had in mind in 1804. He calls their philosophy of nature “the crudest empiricism with a formalism of stuffs and poles, trimmed with reasonless analogies and dead-drunk flashes of inspiration” (Rosenkranz, 539).

29 Hegel says at the start: “This formalism of which we spoke, in general, above …”. But the “bichromatic” formalism intervenes between the two monochromatic forms. The important overlap between the two discussions (aside from the general reference to the rebirth of formalism which justifies my distinction between the logical and the natural-philosophical form) is the reference to the ability of the divinely inspired party to deal with Sonderbarkeiten und Curiositäten (GW 9, 16, 25Google Scholar; Miller, , Phenomenology, §15Google Scholar). This clearly refers to the “geniuses” Wagner and Görres and not to Reinhold and Bardili. Hegel's object in section 15 is to demonstrate the identity between the newborn “schematizing formalism” and the non-speculative formalism of Reinhold and Bardili. This identity of the two outwardly opposed species is the main theme of his first discussion of “formalism in general”.

30 GW 9, 37, 1–2Google Scholar; Miller, §50.

31 Schelling, , Werke 4, 207.Google Scholar

32 See GW 9, 162, 33Google Scholar; Miller, §290.

33 Schelling, , Werke 3, 452Google Scholar; System of Transcendental Idealism, trans. Heath, P. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1978), 91.Google Scholar

34 See GW 9, 93, 7 to 98, 26Google Scholar; Miller, , PhenomenologyGoogle Scholar, §§152–161.

35 Schelling, , Werke 3, 452–453Google Scholar; Heath, , Transcendental Idealism, 91–92Google Scholar.

36 The identification is mistaken—see notes 13, 15, 16 above, together with the Postscript.

37 GW 6, 126, 5–18Google Scholar. Compare Harris, H. S., Hegel's Development II: Night Thoughts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 274Google Scholar, n. 2. This note was marred by my ignorance, at the time of writing, of the fact that the distinction between “noble” and “base” metals is a valid chemical one, and not just—as 1 assumed there—a relic of alchemy. for Bonsiepen's and Heede's note see GW 9, 491Google Scholar (ad 37, 13–15).

38 For instance, J. J. Wagner—compare the quotation given in GW 9, 490Google Scholar (note to 36, 17–23).

39 GW 9, 160, 28 to 163, 2Google Scholar; Miller, , PhenomenologyGoogle Scholar, §§288–290.