Being, Presence, and Implication in Heidegger's Critique of Hegel

Abstract

For Heidegger, Hegel understands being, ‘the highest actuality’, as the categories which pervade and thereby form all objects and events. Since, Heidegger argues, the categories are, in Hegel, present-at-hand, Hegel conceives of being as presence-at-hand. This is a problem, for Heidegger, because it entails the full transparency and knowability of being, whereas, in his view, being is partially hidden and unknowable. I consider the objection to this Heideggerian critique of Hegel that Hegelian logic understands being not only as the list of categories but also as their derivation and movement from pure being to the absolute idea, which (derivation and movement) establish being not only as presence but also as implication. Since being-as-implication is (a) not presence-at-hand and (b) necessary to being, it cannot be said that Hegel's account of being turns it into full transparency and knowability. Heidegger's critique should, therefore, be rejected. I argue that this objection is unsuccessful because there is strong evidence in the Logic that Hegel ‘subordinates’ being-as-implication to presence-at-hand. Implication's way of being is, in Hegel, only a collapse into presence-at-hand and hence ‘merely a modification of presence’. Consequently, Heidegger's critique of Hegel should not be rejected based on the objection. I conclude the article with a remark on the relation between language and being-as-implication. I argue that Hegel's account of being-as-implication in language disrespects the autonomy of being-as-implication therein and that Haas's argument for such an autonomy based on the phenomenon of the syntactic ellipsis of ‘is’ fails to undermine Hegel's account.

I. Introduction

Heidegger reads Hegel as a philosopher of being and as belonging to that metaphysical tradition which understands being as thinking, reason, and knowledge. For Hegel, Heidegger believes, being is essentially the concept or the idea, whose basic constituents are the categories, which pervade and thereby form all objects and events. Since, Heidegger argues, the categories are, in Hegel, present-at-hand, Hegel conceives of being as presence-at-hand. This is a problem, for Heidegger, because (a) such a characterization of being entails that being is fully transparent, namely that the categories, and hence all objects and events as well, are fully knowable, and (b) he thinks that being is not fully transparent, to wit, that alongside the dimension of being as presence-at-hand (aletheia) there is its dimension as hiddenness (lethe), which entails its unknowability (in some degree or other).

This Heideggerian critique of Hegel might be challenged by the objection that (a) being, in Hegel, is not only the list of categories but also their immanent derivation and movement from pure being to the absolute idea and (b) this derivation and movement establishes being-as-implication, which is neither presence nor absence but rather something in-between, namely hiddenness. Being-as-implication (a) occurs at every moment of being's movement, where one category and all preceding ones are present-at-hand but the remaining categories are merely implied (rather than shown), and (b) attains its pinnacle at the movement's beginning, at the category of pure being, where all other categories are neither present-at-hand nor absent, but are rather implied. Since being-as-implication is (a) not presence-at-hand and (b) necessary to being (for the latter is derivation and movement), it cannot be alleged that Hegel's account of being turns it into full transparency. Being has a dimension in which the categories and thereby objects and events are not known. In this way, the objector stresses, Hegel, pace Heidegger, demonstrates respect for hiddenness and unknowability. Therefore, Heidegger's critique of Hegel must be rejected.

I attempt to show that this objection is unsuccessful and hence that Heidegger's critique of Hegel should not be rejected due to it. I argue that although being-as-implication must be recognized, as Andrew Haas has rightly noted, as a third dimension of being, besides presence and absence, there is strong textual evidence that Hegel ‘subordinates’ this dimension (implication, hiddenness) to the dimension of presence. Indeed, for Hegel, while the categories are implied in pure being, they ought to be fully disclosed. Given that being's movement is entirely immanent, this ‘ought’ is inherent to being and a structural feature of it. It is, in fact, the ‘motor’ behind being's movement. While being, then, truly is implication or hiddenness, it has, in Hegel, a ‘drive’ or an ‘impulse’ towards disclosure or presence-at-hand. Accordingly, the reality of being-as-implication in Hegel does not, ultimately, undermine Heidegger's claim that Hegel disrespects hiddenness. Hiddenness's way of being is, in Hegel, only a collapse into presence-at-hand and hence ‘merely a modification of presence’ (Haas 2017: 167–68, n.14). Consequently, Heidegger's critique of Hegel should not be rejected based on the objection.

Hegel's account of being-as-implication is mirrored in his account of the relation between language and being-as-implication. Whilst the categories are hidden in language, logic, being itself a form of language, cannot tolerate their hiddenness and forces them to disclosure. That is, for Hegel, language itself demands the collapse of being-as-implication into presence-at-hand. Hegel's account of being-as-implication in language, therefore, ‘subordinates’ implication to presence-at-hand and hence disrespects the autonomy of being-as-implication in language.

Haas takes issue with this Hegelian understanding of the relation between language and being-as-implication, contending that the syntactic ellipsis of the ‘is’ is a sign of the autonomy of being-as-implication in language. I argue that Haas's view is problematic because syntactic analysis demands the disclosure or exposition of the elliptical ‘is’. The elliptical ‘is’, in other words, necessarily collapses into presence-at-hand and, therefore, cannot be considered as a sign of the autonomy of being-as-implication in language. I additionally suggest that other ways to secure this autonomy, such as the hiddenness of meaning, of an adjective, or of an infinity of propositions, fail as well.

The forthcoming discussion substantiates all the above.

II. Heidegger on Hegel's understanding of being

Heidegger claims that ‘the first and last problem of philosophy’ (HPS: 13/18; see also HPS: 75/106),¹ ‘the question of the being of beings’ (die Frage nach dem Sein des Seienden) (HPS: 3/4)—in short, ‘the question of being’—is central not only to ‘Western philosophy’ in general (HPS: 12/17) but also to Hegel's philosophy in particular, to wit, that the latter is a philosophy of being (Heidegger 1969: 43).² Heidegger notes that being (Sein), in Hegel, is supposed to be distinct from—but also present in—the appearing beings (das Seiende). It is ‘the ens realissimum, the highest actuality as such’ (HPS: 3/4). What is being as ‘the highest actuality’?

Heidegger contends that the answer Hegel gives to this ‘guiding’ question places him firmly in a Western metaphysical tradition beginning from Plato and extending all the way to Hegel himself. Hegel's position is ‘the final development of that approach which Western philosophy already adopted in antiquity as its guiding question’ (HPS: 12/17) and is ‘the clearest and greatest example of the unity’ of such a tradition (Heidegger 1989: 76, my translation). The mentioned ‘approach’, which ‘was brought to completion in a radical way by Hegel’ (HPS: 12/17), is, according to Heidegger, the one answering the guiding question in terms of ‘λόγος, νοῦς, ratio, thinking, reason, and knowledge’ (HPS: 12/17; see also HPS: 30/42).³ This is to say not only that we understand being by means of thinking, reason and knowledge, but also that being's essential structure, its essential nature, is thinking, reason and knowledge: being, as Heidegger succinctly puts it, ‘is grasped from the λόγος and as [the] λόγος’ (HPS: 12/17)—or, again, ‘the question of being […] relates to λόγος not only in terms of means (Mittel) but also in terms of content’ (HPS: 13/18, translation modified).

Heidegger points out that, for Hegel, being as λόγος is ‘the idea, or the concept’ (HPS: 12/17) or ‘the spirit’ (HPS: 30, 41/41, 59) or ‘absolute knowledge’ (HPS: 75/106). But the basic constituents of the idea or the concept or the spirit or absolute knowledge, that is, the basic constituents of reason and knowledge, are, in Hegel, the categories or thought's pure forms. These pervade all beings and thereby form them, turning them into objects of knowledge (see de Jong 2020). Yet, Heidegger maintains, the categories, in Hegel, are defined by their being present-at-hand (vorhanden) and, therefore, being and beings—which are both constituted by the categories—are essentially presence-at-hand (Vorhandenheit) (Haas 2017: 151). In this way, the ‘ontological difference’ between being and beings collapses into an identity: presence-at-hand.⁴

Indeed, Hegel writes that in the Science of Logic (hereafter ‘the Logic’), which thematizes being's categorial structure, ‘we simply […] take up what is present-at-hand (vorhanden)’ (SL: 47/I.68, my translation), and that the simple immediacy with which we begin, and which pervades and to a degree determines everything that follows (SL: 49/I.71), is ‘present-at-hand’ (vorhanden) and ‘exposed’ (dargestellt) (SL: 47/I.68, my translation). He also writes that ‘at the beginning [of logic] […] the subject-matter itself (die Sache selbst) is not yet present-at-hand (vorhanden)’ (SL: 50/72, my translation, my emphasis), meaning that the whole—or the full content—of being will become present-at-hand only at the end of the Logic. This surely shows that, for Hegel, being, in some degree or other, is always present-at-hand: it is present-at-hand both in its purity and in its full determinacy and in its ‘life’ in-between the beginning and the end.⁵

Moreover, not only in the Logic but also in the Phenomenology of Spirit (hereafter ‘the Phenomenology’), which thematizes being as consciousness, Hegel, in Heidegger's view, emphasizes the presence-at-hand of the forms of consciousness. This relates to Hegel's account of the categories as present-at-hand, for the forms of consciousness developed in the Phenomenology are pervaded—like all beings—by the categories expounded in the Logic (HPS: 30/42; Heinrichs 1974). Hegel, Heidegger observes, informs us that regarding the ‘journey’ of consciousness ‘we should only “look on”’ (HPS: 53/75), that ‘the disposition should explicitly be created in which we are disposed to the openness of the gaze, which should subsequently look on’ (HPS: 53/75), that sense-certainty, consciousness's very first form (which, in a way, essentially determines all forms of consciousness following it), ‘states the presence-at-hand of what is present-at-hand, or [in other words] it states being (Sein)’ (HPS: 56/78, my translation), that in the whole Phenomenology ‘our absolvent gaze is enlightened—with reference to what appears—in order to see’ (HPS: 60/85),⁶ that ‘being is […] what is unaffected by […] disappearance’ (HPS: 63/90), and that being as the true is being as the ‘manifest’ (Offenbare) (HPS: 65/91). Not only in the Logic, then, but also in the Phenomenology, Heidegger insists, Hegel understands being as presence-at-hand.⁷

What is, to Heidegger's mind, the significance of this characterization of being by Hegel? By understanding being as essentially presence-at-hand, Heidegger claims, Hegel is committed to being's full transparency. Being is fully transparent in the sense that no category and hence no object or event (considered in its essence) can remain hidden from the subject of knowledge (which, for Hegel, Heidegger notes, is, in one form or another, the spirit). The following excerpt from Hegel's inaugural lecture at Heidelberg University, delivered on 28 October 1816, is, according to Heidegger, ‘characteristic of Hegel's basic position’ (HPS: 5/6), and illuminates the idea of the full transparency of being or ‘the absolute’:

Man because he is spirit [Geist], may and should deem himself worthy of the highest, he cannot think too highly of the greatness and the power of his spirit; and with this faith, nothing will be so difficult and hard that it will not reveal itself to him [wird nichts so spröde und hart sein, das sich ihm nicht eröffnete]. The essence of the universe [Wesen des Universums], at first hidden and concealed, has no power to offer resistance [Widerstand] to the courageous search for knowledge [Erkennen]; it must open itself up before the seeker [of knowledge], set its riches and its depths before his eyes to give him pleasure [es muß sich vor ihm auftun, und seinen Reichtum und seine Tiefen ihm vor Augen legen und zum Genusse geben]. (VGP: 5; cited in HPS: 5/6–7)

This passage exhibits Hegel's understanding of being as an element that eventually comes to full disclosure. Nothing remains hidden from the spirit, including the categories (namely, spirit itself). This full disclosure derives from the fact that all categories are present-at-hand. Heidegger understands Hegel to be saying that the categories will eventually come to light in their entirety⁸ and hence that the objects of knowledge being formed by them will eventually be fully disclosed.⁹ Nothing, absolutely nothing, could remain hidden from the spirit; as Hegel himself puts it, ‘nothing will be so difficult and hard that it will not reveal itself’ to the spirit.

Heidegger tells us explicitly that, for him, the phrase ‘the essence of the universe’ means ‘the essence of the absolute’ (Heidegger 1993a: 72; Heidegger 2015a: 56), which, for him, is equivalent—in Hegel—to ‘the essence of being’, as ‘being’ and ‘the absolute’ denote ‘the ens realissimum, the highest actuality as such’ (HPS: 3/4). Thus, when Hegel writes that ‘the essence of the universe […] has no power to offer resistance to […] knowledge’ and that ‘it must open itself up before the seeker [of knowledge], set its riches and its depths before his eyes’, Heidegger understands this to mean that being itself offers no resistance to knowledge, that being itself must fully open itself to those who seek knowledge. In fact, as Heidegger repeatedly asserts, the ‘unfolding’ (Entfaltung), ‘exposition’ (Darstellung), ‘disclosure’ (Erschlossenheit), or ‘openness’ (Öffnung, Öffenheit) of ‘absolute knowledge’—that is, of being, as conceived in Western metaphysics—is, for Hegel, a necessary condition of this knowledge (HPS: 10–11, 17, 25, 27, 36, 37, 41/14–16, 24, 35, 38, 53, 54, 59). Hegel, Heidegger notes, asks for trust in the spirit precisely because the spirit's character is to bring everything to light, including the categories.¹⁰ Hegel identifies truth with the system (PS: 3/14), but the latter is nothing but the unfolding or exposition or disclosure or openness of absolute knowledge, that is, of being (HPS: 11, 25/16, 36; E: §14, 43/59–60). Whatever is hidden, whatever falls outside of the exposed system, lacks truth. Yet, to be in the light, to be open, to be before the seeker of knowledge means exactly, for Heidegger, to be present-at-hand. Therefore, Heidegger concludes, all being is (eventually), in Hegel's philosophy, present-at-hand.

It is exactly at this point where Heidegger's critique of Hegel is located. Heidegger thinks that Hegel is wrong in regarding being as presence-at-hand, i.e. as full disclosure or exposition, as full transparency and knowability. This means: Hegel is wrong to believe that the categories, and hence all objects and events, are (eventually) disclosed in their entirety or fullness. It is a grave philosophical mistake, Heidegger contends, and one that has catastrophic consequences for philosophy, in particular, and human life, in general, to think that ‘the essence of the universe, at first hidden and concealed, has no power to offer resistance to the courageous search for knowledge’. For Heidegger, the opening, the disclosure, of a part of ‘the essence of the universe’ is accompanied always by the hiddenness, the lethe, and hence the unknowability, of another part of that essence.¹¹ Philosophy has to recognize non-philosophy (or ‘non-science’), the eternal darkness, mystery, and resistance of ‘the absolute’, of being itself (HPS: 12–13/18–19). Darkness, mystery, and resistance—in short, hiddenness—are ‘structural’ or ‘ontological’ features of being (Heidegger 1993a: 76; Heidegger 2015a: 60; Heidegger 1969: 64-68), and so can never be removed from it. This point's acceptance entails the rejection of the ‘modern’ ‘metaphysics of presence’, in which, Heidegger argues, Hegel's metaphysics must be placed.

Before proceeding, it should here be emphasized that this particular criticism Heidegger raises against Hegel is not avoided by pointing out some difference in the meaning of such terms as ‘presence-at-hand’, ‘exposition’, ‘manifestation’, ‘openness’, and even ‘appearance’, between the two thinkers. Heidegger's critique is not resolved by maintaining that the two thinkers talk past each other.¹² The force of this critique lies precisely in the fact that (a) all these terms refer simply to the emergence of the categories in the domain of the system (which is an undeniable fact) and (b) that, as the excerpt from the Heidelberg lecture showcases, Hegel takes this emergence to be (in one way or another) the realization of complete knowledge and of essential or true being. There is indeed tension between the categories and between clusters of categories within the system and there are subtle differences between notions of manifestation and presence therein, yet all these elements occur in the dimension of complete knowledge, truth, and essential being (that is, ‘essential being’ in the sense of the Heidelberg passage, not in the technical sense in which this term is used in the Logic).¹³ This is exactly what Heidegger criticizes: nothing essential is allowed to fall outside of the system—the system swallows all knowledge, essence and truth of being. That Hegel, for example, distinguishes between the pure presence of the absolute idea in the logical sphere and its exteriorization in the sphere of nature does not undermine Heidegger's critique, precisely because both these spheres are components of complete knowledge and of the essence and truth of being. That there is such a distinction (or any other architectonic differentiation), in other words, does not change the fact that the hiddenness and unknowability of essential being is ignored by Hegel—so Heidegger argues. It may, nevertheless, be objected that the emergence of the categories in the system or the dynamic manifestation of the absolute idea or the spirit therein—or, if you prefer, that the movement of the categories can be thought only sequentially and not simultaneously—does not match precisely a situation of absolute self-transparency. Maybe, that is to say, the emergence of the categories generates the conditions for the affirmation of hiddenness and unknowability within the system. This is a valid objection and it constitutes the exact topic of the reflections that follow. It is no longer, though, a matter of ambiguity regarding the same terms used by the two thinkers; it is no longer an issue of their talking past each other. It is rather a real philosophical problem that requires a solution.

III. Is Hegel's philosophy about being?

One may object to Heidegger's reading of Hegel as a philosopher of being. Certainly, the Logic begins with the determination or category of ‘being’, yet this beginning is shown to be so ‘poor’ (arm) (SL: 739/II.554) that it collapses into the determination or category of ‘nothing’. Hegel writes that being ‘is without distinctions and as thus distinctionless it ceases to be knowledge’ (SL: 47/I.68), that ‘what is present-at-hand [at the beginning] is only simple immediacy’ (SL: 47/I.68, translation modified), that being ‘is without further determination and filling’ (SL: 47/I.68), that it is ‘empty of content’ (SL: 49/I.71), ‘pure indeterminacy’ (SL: 50/I.72), ‘unfilled immediacy’ and ‘complete emptiness’ (SL: 52/I.75). Additionally, the determination of being, with which the Logic begins, is succeeded by a multitude of other, much ‘richer’ (reicher) determinations (SL: 52, 750/I.74, II.569), such as existence, essence, actuality, concept, mechanism, life and absolute idea. It may be argued, then, that being is only a stage or a ‘moment’ of Hegel's philosophy, and, in fact, a relatively insignificant one, and that this philosophy is, at least, as much about existence, essence, and so on, as it is about being. So, it would be incorrect to claim that Hegel's philosophy is a philosophy of being or that the question of being is this philosophy's ‘guiding’ or central question.

This line of argument, however, is undermined by Hegel's insistence that the element with which the Logic begins, namely being, is not overcome with the transition to the other determinations but rather remains as the ‘underlying ground’ in all subsequent determinations. Hegel writes that being ‘remain[s] immanent’ (SL: 47/I.68) from the beginning to the end of the Logic and thereby covers all logical determinacy. The following passage is decisive for this interpretation:

[T]he advance from that which constitutes the beginning [i.e. being] is to be considered only as one more determination of the same [i.e. of the beginning, of being], so that this beginning [i.e. being] remains as the underlying ground [zugrunde liegen] of all that follows without vanishing from it. The advance does not consist in the derivation [abgeleitet] of an other, or in the transition to a truly other: inasmuch as there is a transition [Übergehen], it is equally sublated again. Thus the beginning of philosophy [i.e. being] is the ever present and self-preserving foundation of all subsequent developments, remaining everywhere immanent in its further determinations [das seinen weiteren Bestimmungen durchaus immanent Bleibende]. (SL: 49/I.71, translation modified, my emphasis, Hegel's emphasis has been removed)

Each and every determination following being is a determination of being. Being is that which any other determination is a determination of (SL: 56/I.80). Despite the fact, then, that being initially has no content, the subsequent determinations provide it with its full logical content. In Hegel's words, ‘[i]n this advance the beginning thus loses the one-sidedness that it has when determined simply as something immediate and abstract’ (SL: 49/I.71). From a fully ‘undeveloped’ element (das noch Unentwickelte), being becomes ‘fully developed’, a ‘completed cognition’, and ‘replete with content’ (SL: 49/I.71).

Moreover, Hegel explicitly states that the absolute idea, which is the richest determination, a determination incorporating all preceding ones, is ‘a modality of being’ (Modalität des Seins) (SL: 736/II.551). Of course, Hegel does say also that the absolute idea is ‘the ground, […] the origin and the truth on which that with which the beginning was made, and from which it is in fact produced, depends’ (SL: 49/I.70). This, however, means neither that the absolute idea is not being nor that being is not the ‘underlying ground’ of all determinations. It only means that the absolute idea and being prove to be one and the same, or that being proves to be the absolute idea.¹⁴ In Hegel's words, ‘the absolute idea alone is being’ (SL: 735/II.549; see also SL: 752/ΙΙ.572).¹⁵ The absolute idea is the truth of being and being ‘is as much the ground’ of all determinations (SL: 49, 735/I.70, II.549) as the absolute idea. So, being remains the ‘unity’ of all determinations (SL: 50/I.72).¹⁶

Heidegger, then, does not misinterpret Hegel when he claims that the question of being is the central question of Hegel's philosophy or, at least, there is a sense in which his interpretation can be supported. If this is accepted, we can now return to his critique of Hegel as a philosopher of being, to wit, that Hegel emphasizes being's presence-at-hand and disregards its hiddenness.

IV. Being-as-implication: Why Heidegger's critique of Hegel might be false.

We have seen that Hegel's answer to the question of being is that being, ‘the highest actuality’, is essentially the categories, thought's pure forms. Since, Heidegger claims, the categories are, in Hegel's philosophy, present-at-hand, being, for Hegel, is essentially presence-at-hand. By being fully presence-at-hand, being (considered essentially,¹⁷ as ‘the highest actuality’) is fully transparent, namely fully knowable. This is what Heidegger criticizes in Hegel, as for him being is not fully transparent, includes hiddenness or lethe in its very essence, and hence is not fully knowable; it is always partially unknowable (Heidegger 1989: 460).

One may, nevertheless, as already noted above, object that fundamental being, for Hegel, is not only the categories but also the progression or movement generating them in the logical domain (SL: 49, 55/I.70, 78).¹⁸ Being cannot be identified only with the categories because in this case it would collapse into a list or an aggregate of categories, which is something Hegel explicitly rejects (SL: 30–31, 34, 36, 56, 543, 738/I.45, 50, 53, 80, II.292, 553; PS: 1, 2, 166/11, 13, 210–11). The true is the whole (PS: 11/24), but the term ‘whole’ here refers not only to all the categories but also to their generation from one another and, ultimately, from pure being (or the absolute idea). As Hegel notes, ‘[b]eing […] is internally self-determining’ and ‘its determinations must first arise from the movement of being itself’ (SL: 56/I.79; see also SL: 737/II.551). He also writes that ‘only in its consummation is it [i.e. being] the absolute’ (SL: 740/II.556). It is only this generating of the categories that turns the whole of the categories, being itself, the absolute idea, into a system (SL: 748/II.567).

If this holds, can it still be said that, for Hegel, being is nothing else than presence-at-hand? The categories are present-at-hand, yet since they are derived from being or the absolute idea, each is also a ‘derivative’ (ein Abgeleitetes) (SL: 49/I.70–71). Indeed, Hegel explicitly says that ‘the movement makes its start from the first and by correct inferences [durch richtige Folgerungen] arrives at the last’ (SL: 49/I.71; see also SL: 748/II.567). But since (a) the categories are ‘derivatives’ and results of ‘inference’ and (b) the ‘derivation’ or ‘inference’ begins from being, then surely all categories are implied by and are implicit in being or ‘the absolute’. In Hegel's own words, ‘every beginning must be made with the absolute, just as every advance is only the exposition of it, in so far as the implicit (das Ansichseiende) [in it] is the concept’ (SL: 740/II.555, translation modified). He also tells us that the relation of being to all other determinations is ‘analytic’ (SL: 741/II.557), which entails that all determinations are contained in being and thereby are implied by it. Houlgate refers to ‘Hegel's account of what is implicit in the initial category of being (and the subsequent categories)’ (Houlgate 2006: 41, my emphasis). What does it mean to say, though, that being implies? What is being as implication or ‘implicitness’?

Haas has recently characterized being-as-implication as an element that is ‘neither simply present, nor merely absent’ (Haas 2017: 162). It is a third dimension of being, besides and in-between presence and absence. In his own words,

what is implied […] is neither an event nor a non-event, neither something nor nothing, neither a ground nor an abyss, neither here nor there, now nor then, never nor always—at least insofar as it is implied. Rather, implication suspends presence and absence […]. (Haas 2017: 162)

I agree with Haas on this characterization of being-as-implication.¹⁹ It is, indeed, neither presence nor absence: it is, rather, an in-between. Yet, that which is in-between presence and absence, that which is neither presence nor absence, is hiddenness.²⁰ The hidden does not appear and yet is not nothing; it is not shown or present-at-hand, and yet is not absent. The hidden is contained in and implied by a situation without being present-at-hand or absent. The hidden is the implicit or the implied, and, vice versa, the implicit or the implied is the hidden.

If this holds, however, does it not establish the falsity of Heidegger's critique of Hegel? Recall that Heidegger criticizes Hegel for understanding being solely as presence-at-hand and for thereby failing to recognize the hiddenness or lethe that, in Heidegger's view, also belongs to the essential structure of being. Yet, it has now been shown that being-as-implication is a real and necessary dimension in Hegel's system. For Hegel, being is not only the aggregate of categories but also their development, derivation, inference, and analyticity. These features establish being-as-implication, so, in Hegel's view, being is not only presence-at-hand or explicitness but also implication or implicitness. The absolute idea, the totality of categories, are contained and thereby are implicit in the positing of pure being (they are not absent or nothing at that moment), but what is shown or is present-at-hand is solely pure being. (This is why pure being is said to be ‘indeterminate’, even though the totality of determinations is contained in it.) As seen, though, being-as-implication is nothing else than hiddenness, that which lies in-between presence and absence. Therefore, pace Heidegger, it does not hold that Hegel does not recognize the hiddenness or lethe of fundamental being. Heidegger's critique, consequently, should be rejected.

V. Being-as-implication as ‘subordinated’ to presence-at-hand: Why Heidegger's critique of Hegel is not false.

Although the above argument is formally valid, its effectiveness against Heidegger's critique of Hegel might be challenged. Being-as-implication, in Hegel's case, amounts to the categories being implied in pure, indeterminate being, the Logic's very first category (as well as in any category, and in consciousness, nature, language, culture, and so on). In so far as they are implied, they are neither present-at-hand nor absent: they are hidden, in-between presence and absence. They are not vanished or nothing, yet they do not appear or present themselves. This ontological status of the implied or implicit categories, however, is compatible with their having a drive or impulse towards presence-at-hand or appearance.

A drive towards presence-at-hand on the plane of absolutely self-subsistent and immanent being would entail that presence-at-hand will necessarily eventually be realized. If an absolutely self-subsistent and immanent element has a drive towards presence-at-hand, it cannot fail to become present-at-hand. This drive excludes two possibilities: (a) the affirmation of a permanent or eternal hiddenness (namely, a hiddenness that cannot or will not become presence-at-hand) and (b) the collapse into absence or nothingness. Therefore, given that eternal hiddenness and absence generate unknowability and presence-at-hand generates knowability, the aforementioned drive excludes unknowability and establishes the absolute reign of knowability.

If one could show that, in Hegel's philosophy, being-as-implication has such a drive, then Heidegger's critique of Hegel would go through. For, indeed, on the one hand, it may be true that Heidegger does not recognize in Hegelian philosophy that dimension of being that is neither presence nor absence, to wit, being-as-implication; yet, on the other hand, if being-as-implication has an immanent drive towards presence-at-hand, it establishes the very thing Heidegger says it should not establish, to wit, absolute knowability. If such a drive existed in Hegel, being-as-implication, despite still being a third dimension of being, would be ‘subordinated’ to presence-at-hand, in the sense that it would eventually become presence-at-hand and hence knowable. Being-as-implication would be a separate but very much dependent dimension of being, a dimension that would exist only for the dimension of presence-at-hand. This, of course, could be countered if one showed that Hegel affirms not only the possibility of a movement from hiddenness to presence-at-hand but also either (a) the possibility of permanent hiddenness or (b) the possibility of hiddenness's collapsing into absence or absolute, irreversible nothingness (a nothingness that cannot beget presence-at-hand).

I will now defend the claim that, for Hegel, being-as-implication has indeed a structural inescapable drive towards presence-at-hand, and that, therefore, Heidegger's critique is correctly formulated or, if you prefer, is not false. To begin with, I have already noted that the pinnacle of being-as-implication occurs at the category of pure being, the Logic's very first category. At this very moment, no other determination of being has appeared, yet all of them are implied. For Heidegger's critique to be rejected, it should be the case that this pure being could generate a nothing that does not fall back into being or, if you will, that the possibility of an eternal nothingness is explicitly acknowledged and respected. In other words, it should be shown that there is at least the possibility that the movement of being stops as soon as it passes over into nothing, that it falls into an abyss from which it cannot get out.

Hegel, however, explicitly denies such a possibility. Pure being does indeed generate nothing, yet the latter is only a nothing that ought (soll) to return into being and (eventually) generate determinate being and something. In Hegel's own words,

[a]s yet there is nothing, and something ought (soll) to become. The beginning is not pure nothing but a nothing, rather, from which something ought to come out (ausgehen soll); also being, therefore, is already contained in the beginning [i.e. in nothing]. (SL: 51/I.73, translation modified)

If we distinguish between (a) a nothing that does not generate being, something, or a presence, that is, a nothingness that is eternal and absolute, an ‘abyss’ (Heidegger 2015b: 38; Heidegger 1993c: 48), and (b) a nothing that does return to being and eventually gives rise to presence, evidently the ‘pure nothing’ into which pure being momentarily passes over is only the second. The possibility that it is the first notion of nothing is not acknowledged or respected by Hegel (see Willet 1990 and the reply by Di Giovanni 1990). Hegel admits thus much in the above excerpt. The constant passing-over of pure being into pure nothing and of pure nothing into pure being not only eventually settles into determinate being and something but also should settle into them. In the structure of determinate being pure nothing is transformed into non-being. Non-being, in its turn, has absolutely nothing to do with eternal, permanent, absolute nothingness, with the abyss or ‘infinite absence’ (Haas 2017: 157). Non-being (or negation or negativity) is only the function that facilitates the determinacy of being (or of the absolute idea), the element that brings otherness or non-identity or difference into being (SL: 51/I.73–74). In fact, there is no notion of absolute nothingness, of absence, of the abyss, in the Logic. This is why Heidegger feels that Hegel does not take negativity ‘seriously’:

Philosophy as ab-solute, as un-conditioned philosophy must enclose negativity in a peculiar manner, and that basically means not to take it seriously. The de-tachment as retention, the complete conciliation in everything. There is no nothing. And that appears to be quite all right. The nothing ‘is’ nothing and is not. (Heidegger 2015b: 19; Heidegger 1993c: 24)

Or again:

Hegel's negativity is not a negativity because it never takes seriously the not and the nihilating,—it has already sublated the not into the ‘yes’. (Heidegger 2015b: 37; Heidegger 1993c: 47).

Hegel emphasizes the idea of an ‘ought’ in being as the motor of the emergence or unfolding of its whole determinacy, to wit, as the drive or impulse towards presence-at-hand, in the ‘Judgement’ chapter of the Logic and especially in that section of it entitled ‘The Judgement of the Concept’ (SL: 581–87/II.344–51). In the preceding section, ‘The Judgement of Necessity’ (SL: 575–81/II.335–44), Hegel has argued that while the logical subject—that is, being-as-the-concept—is implicitly the totality of determinations, the logical predicate is the explicit positing of that same totality. Additionally, in that earlier section Hegel criticizes the judgement of necessity and the main fault he ascribes to it is that its form does not manifest the immanence and necessity of the content substantiating the subject-predicate relation (see Trisokkas 2012: 318).²¹ The judgement of the concept is supposed to remedy this fault by, first, demanding the emergence of the totality of determinations (the categories) in the domain of the logical predicate from the domain of the logical subject, namely from pure being (the very first appearance of being-as-the-concept), where they are hidden, implicit, or implied, and, second, satisfying that demand by taking the form of the speculative proposition (which is, in truth, the speculative theory, the absolute idea itself). Given that the emergence in question must safeguard immanence, the demand of the judgement of the concept has the character of an ‘ought’ (Sollen) embedded in pure being, which in the meantime has been shown to be in truth being-as-the-concept (see Trisokkas 2012: 318–30). In Hegel's words, ‘[t]he concept has now been laid to the ground […] as an ought’ (SL: 582/II.344, my translation) and ‘the omnipotence of the concept [is] the absolute connection of ought and being to each other’ (SL: 586/II.350). Thus, it is not only the notion of absolute nothingness, absence, the abyss, that is disrespected in the Logic, but also the notion of eternal hiddenness. Hegel denies the possibility that being could collapse into any of these dimensions; it is destined to appear and thereby to become presence-at-hand.

That being-as-implication has, for Hegel, the character of a drive or impulse towards presence-at-hand and hence is ‘subordinated’ to it is made very clear in the Logic's final chapter, ‘The Absolute Idea’. He writes the following:

In fact, the demand [Forderung] that being should be exhibited [aufzuzeigen] has a further, inner meaning in which more is at issue than just this abstract determination; implied in it is the demand for the realization of the concept, a realization that is missing at the beginning itself but is rather the goal and the business of the entire subsequent development of cognition. (SL: 739/II.554)

Here Hegel tells us that there is a demand that being should move towards presence-at-hand (or ‘exhibition’) rather than towards either an absolute, irreversible, permanent nothing or a permanent hiddenness. This demand is not external to being—it is rather immanent in it. As the Logic has eventually shown, being is the concept, so what being demands of itself is the full ‘realization’ or ‘exhibition’ of the concept, to wit, the exposition of being-as-concept's full determinacy. Being demands this of itself precisely because that realization is an inherent ‘goal’ of it. No one ‘gives’ it this goal; being is defined by it even at the very beginning of its life, at its presence as pure being.

This interpretation is strengthened by what Hegel says next:

Where the method, however, is the objective and immanent form, the immediate character of the beginning must be a lack inherent in the beginning itself, which must be endowed with the impulse [Triebe] to carry itself further. (SL: 739/II.555)

Here Hegel simply points out what must have been made obvious by now, namely that the logical beginning, pure being, despite its implying the totality of the logical determinations, is defined by a ‘lack’. This is the lack of explicitness at the moment of pure being, to wit, the concept lacks the explicit presence-at-hand of the totality of its determinations, their ‘exposition’ or ‘presentation’. This lack, however, is not allowed to reign, to persist, to condemn explicitness to an absolute vanishing. This is why ‘it must be endowed with the impulse to carry itself further’. This impulse is an inherent feature of being and is the ‘motor’ of its making explicit the totality of its determinations. As Hegel remarks, ‘[t]he concrete totality which makes the beginning possesses as such, within it, the beginning of [its] advance and development’ (SL: 740/II.556, my emphasis).

All in all, I have established that, for Hegel, being-as-implication has a drive or an impulse towards presence-at-hand (or exposition or appearance or presentation). This drive entails that presence-at-hand will eventually be realized. What this drive excludes is the possibility of affirmation, on the one hand, of absence, irreversible nothingness, the abyss, and, on the other hand, of eternal hiddenness or lethe.²² This means that Heidegger's critique of Hegel as a thinker who does not appreciate absolute nothingness or permanent hiddenness cannot be rejected as based on a false reading of Hegel.

VI. Language and being-as-implication

I close the article with a remark on the relation between language and being-as-implication.

The ‘subordination’ of being-as-implication to presence-at-hand in the Logic mirrors itself in Hegel's understanding of the relation between language and being-as-implication. He avers that the categories are ‘stored [niedergelegt] in human language’, which ‘has […] penetrated’ ‘[i]n everything that the human being has interiorized, in everything that in some way or other has become for him a representation, in whatever he has made his own’ (SL: 12/20). Yet, Hegel does not mean that the categories are ‘stored’ in language in the sense that they are settled next to all other things that are also ‘stored’ therein. Rather, ‘everything that [the human being] transforms into language and expresses it contains a category’ (SL: 12/20). Everything we talk about, in other words, involves one or more categories. This is why ‘logic [is] natural to the human being, is indeed his very nature’ (SL: 12/20).

Yet, more often than not the categories are ‘concealed’ (eingehüllter) in our expressions (SL: 12/20), they ‘pervade our spirit everywhere’ ‘instinctively [instinktartig] and unconsciously’ (bewußtlos), and ‘remain […] unnoticed [unbeachtet] even when they enter language’ (SL: 19/30). Even when their form has not been concealed, their content or true meaning can be corrupted by incessant and familiar use. In Hegel's words,

[b]ut even when logical matters and their expressions are common coin in a culture, still […] what is familiar is for that reason not known, and it can even be a source of irritation to have to occupy oneself with the familiar—and what could be more familiar than just those determinations of thought [i.e. the categories] which we employ everywhere, and are on our lips in every sentence that we utter? (SL: 13/22)

Thus, the categories’ form and content can be—and more often than not are—hidden in language.

The Logic's purpose is to unearth the categories and, ‘[by] leav[ing] familiar acquaintance behind’, ‘free’ them ‘from the material in which they are submerged [versenkt]’ in language (SL: 13/22). The result of this ‘unearthing’ and ‘purification’ of the categories will be the disclosure, the exposition, the presentation of their true form and content. The Logic thusly brings to presence-at-hand what is hidden, implicit or implied in language, whether this is the form or the content of the categories. As Hegel puts it, in the medium of language man ‘can recognize the expression of spirit as spirit, and this is logic’ (SL: 36/53, my emphasis).

The Logic, however, is not alien to language: it is, of course, itself, to borrow a phrase from Allen, ‘an instance of language’ (Allen 2007:1)—it is expressed by meaningful judgements (Lau 2004: 85–117; Trisokkas 2008; Trisokkas 2012: 104–6, 225–46). So, it is language itself that discloses what is hidden or implied in its own self. For Hegel, it is language itself that cannot tolerate the categories’ hiddenness, namely being-as-implication, and strives to destroy it. In other words, language has a drive or impulse towards presence-at-hand when the issue is the categories that are hidden in it, to wit, being-as-implication.

All in all, Hegel's conception of language affirms but disrespects being-as-implication. In language being-as-implication is indeed upheld as a third dimension of being, for the categories are hidden, implicit or implied in it. Yet, being-as-implication is also disrespected by language, for as logic language discloses them in their entirety or fullness. In language being-as-implication proves to be only a parochial, dependent, temporary and contingent phenomenon; a phenomenon that is only in order to become present-at-hand and that with the advent of logic vanishes altogether. This shows that, for Hegel, in the realm of language being-as-implication is ‘subordinated’ to presence-at-hand.

Could language, pace Hegel, respect being-as-implication? Could language, pace Hegel, tolerate the possibility of being's eternal hiddenness or appreciate the possibility of being's collapse into ‘infinite absence’? Haas has recently endeavoured to make a case for the autonomy of being-as-implication in the domain of language (Haas 2017: 162f.). His strategy is to put the spotlight on the syntactic phenomenon of the ellipsis of the ‘is’. More precisely, his claim is that language itself hides the ‘is’ from the open space spawned by a proposition and hence hides being from presence. This is taken to provide an affirmation of language's respect for or appreciation of the autonomy of being-as-implication. He furnishes the following examples:

οὐκ ἀγαθόν πολυκοιρανίη [The rule of many not good]. (Homer) (Homer 1920: B.204; Haas 2020: 25:56)

ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων [Man's character his fate]. (Heraclitus) (Diels 1960: B119; Haas 2017: 162; Haas 2020: 25:56)

omnia praeclara rara [Everything precious rare]. (Cicero) (Cicero 1923: section 79; Haas 2020: 25:56)

God ist das Sein, das Prädikat das Sein [God is being, the predicate being]. (Hegel) (PS: 38/59; Haas 2020: 25:56)

Beauty is truth, truth beauty. (Keats) (Keats 1905: 194; Haas 2017: 168, n.18)

The significance of all these examples, Haas reckons, is that

the word ‘is’ is not in [these propositions]—being is not present, or absent; it is implied, an implication, that which neither comes to presence nor simply remains in absence. (Haas 2017: 162)

Or, again,

[in these propositions] ‘is’ is not present, and not just absent either—for being is implied. (Haas 2017: 168, n.18)

Haas is right: language, by means of the elliptical ‘is’, ‘speaks of implication’ or ‘speaks in the language of implication’ (Haas 2017: 162). That is to say, language does accommodate being-as-implication; the latter is really manifested in language as a ‘third’ dimension of being, besides presence and absence. If you will, language lends a ‘home’ for being-as-implication. Nevertheless, this does not suffice for establishing the autonomy or independence of being-as-implication in language. To avoid the pitfalls of Hegel's account, Haas's examples must not be susceptible to the allegation that in language being-as-implication exists only in order to collapse into presence-at-hand. That is to say, it should not be the case that the syntactic ellipsis of the ‘is’ necessarily results in being's presence-at-hand, that it does not give even a slim chance to the possibility of eternal hiddenness or of the collapse into absence.

This is, though, exactly what Haas misses. The syntactic ellipsis of the ‘is’ is destined to be replaced by the disclosure of the ‘is’. Any proposition containing the elliptical ‘is’ must be transformed into a proposition in which the ‘is’ has come to light. This is made clear by syntactic analysis, whose purpose is to reveal all essentially constitutive parts of a proposition and assign to each a syntactic function. When it comes to the part of the proposition that hides the ‘is’ or, if you prefer, that should have manifested the ‘is’, syntactic analysis cannot but provide the missing ‘is’. It can neither leave it hidden nor remove it altogether. If, for example, a student of ancient Greek has been asked to analyse the syntax of a proposition in which the ‘is’ is missing and she has not specified the ‘is’ in her analysis, the teacher will consider this an error and marks will be deducted. This shows that, pace Haas, language's respect for the autonomy or independence of being-as-implication cannot be argued for on the basis of the phenomenon of the syntactic ellipsis of the ‘is’. This phenomenon only reinforces the Hegelian point that in language being-as-implication is ‘subordinated’ to presence-at-hand. Haas writes that in language ‘implication is a way of being that suspends the necessity […] of the event of coming to presence’ (Haas 2017: 164) and that in language being-as-implication is not ‘merely a modification of presence’ (Haas 2017: 167–68, n.14). This is exactly what does not happen in the syntactic ellipsis of the ‘is’: implication is shown therein to be a way of being that necessarily generates the coming to presence and hence is, at the end of the day, ‘a modification of presence’.

One may object that language is the ‘home’ of implication also by means other than the syntactic ellipsis of the ‘is’ and that these other means do not show language to have a drive or an impulse towards presence-at-hand and, therefore, that with regards to these means language shows respect for eternal hiddenness or ‘infinite absence’. One may mention, for example, the hiddenness of the meaning of a poem, the hiddenness of an adjective that could fit in front of a noun included in a proposition, or even the hiddenness of an infinity of propositions that could be posited in the open space of language (‘the universe of discourse’). All these cases differ from the syntactic ellipsis of the ‘is’ in that with regards to them no analysis or any other procedure whatsoever could exclude the possibility that the true meaning of the poem is still hidden²³ or that some other adjective than the one we have provided could still fit in front of a certain noun included in a proposition or that the open space of language could still accommodate an infinity of propositions. In the syntactic ellipsis of the ‘is’, by contrast, syntactic analysis annihilates the possibility that the ‘is’ remains hidden: it has to be disclosed. The point is that even though the syntactic ellipsis of the ‘is’ fails to show that language is the ‘home’ of implication in such a way that implication is not ‘subordinated’ to presence-at-hand, the above examples prove that language can still be considered the ‘home’ of implication in the way specified. This surely can justify the rejection of the Hegelian account of the status of implication in language.

This objection, however, is evidently confused or, at least, in need of extensive clarificatory work. While it has argued that language accommodates implication without ‘subordinating’ it to presence-at-hand, Hegel has only argued that language fails to accommodate being-as-implication without ‘subordinating’ it to presence-at-hand. For the objection to make a case against Hegel, it must state that the implication of meaning or of an adjective or of an infinity of propositions is the same as the implication of being. But for this to hold, ‘meaning’, ‘adjective’, and ‘infinity of propositions’ must be synonyms of ‘being’. Despite its shortcomings, what was appealing in Haas's argument for the autonomy of being-as-implication in language was that it was based on the syntactic ellipsis of the ‘is’: its appeal had to do with the obvious fact that the ‘is’ refers to being.²⁴ However, neither that ‘meaning’, ‘adjective’, and ‘infinity of propositions’ refer to being nor that they are synonyms of ‘being’ is obvious. For the objection to pass, therefore, detailed and convincing arguments have to be provided for that sameness of reference or that synonymy. I would not want to make the strong claim that arguments of this nature are impossible to find or be formulated. I would rather go for the weaker claim that in its current state (to wit, as described above), the objection has not provided us with such arguments and must, consequently, be (at least, tentatively) rejected.

VII. Conclusion

Heidegger excoriates Hegel for conceiving being solely as presence-at-hand and hence as full transparency or full knowability. Heidegger's view is that being is not only presence-at-hand or aletheia but also hiddenness or lethe and, accordingly, is partially unknowable. By focusing exclusively on presence-at-hand, Heidegger concludes, Hegel ignores or disrespects hiddenness and hence unknowability.

I have considered an objection to this Heideggerian critique of Hegel, namely that since being, for Hegel, is not only the list of categories but also their immanent or ‘analytic’ derivation or ‘inference’ from pure being, being is not only presence-at-hand (the exposition or disclosure of the categories) but also implication or implicitness (the containment of the totality of categories in pure being prior to their derivation and exposition). Yet, implication or implicitness is nothing other than hiddenness. Therefore, Heidegger is mistaken: Hegel does recognize and respect being's hiddenness and unknowability.

I have suggested that this objection is questionable, because, for Hegel, being-as-implication, despite being indeed a dimension of being distinct from presence-at-hand, is ‘subordinated’ to the latter. It is ‘subordinated’ in the precise sense that it exists only in order to become presence-at-hand: it is intrinsic to it that it ought to become presence-at-hand. The possibility that being-as-implication remains in perpetuum implication or that it collapses into absence stays unrecognized in Hegel's account. The objection, then, fails, for Hegel does indeed disrespect being-as-implication, being's hiddenness and unknowability. Heidegger is not wrong.

Hegel's approach to being-as-implication is echoed in his account of the relation between being-as-implication and language. For him, language is the ‘home’ of being-as-implication, in as much as the categories are hidden in language. Yet, language itself sabotages this ‘home’ because logic is a form of language and ‘ought’ to disclose the totality of categories. Language, for Hegel, is only a temporary, parochial, and contingent ‘home’ for being-as-implication, as in language the latter cannot but collapse into presence-at-hand.

I have, finally, examined Haas's view that the phenomenon of the syntactic ellipsis of the ‘is’ in propositions ensures, pace Hegel, the autonomy of being-as-implication in language and have concluded that it fails to consider the fact that syntactic analysis demands the disclosure of the ‘is’ and hence manifests the ‘subordination’ of being-as-implication to presence-at-hand. I have also explored and rejected the view that the autonomy of being-as-implication in language can be manifested by means other than the syntactic ellipsis of the ‘is’, such as the hiddenness of meaning, the hiddenness of an adjective, and the hiddenness of an infinity of propositions.