Hegel, Husserl and the Phenomenology of Historical Worlds

Tanja Staehler

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781786602886
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Phenomenology in Philosophy

GWF Hegel famously described philosophy as 'its own time apprehended in thoughts', reflecting a desire that we increasingly experience, namely, the desire to understand our complex and fast-changing world. But how can we philosophically describe the world we live in? When Hegel attempted his systematic account of the historical world, he needed to conceive of history as rational progress to allow for such description. After the events of the twentieth century, we are rightfully doubtful about such progress. However, in the twentieth century, another German philosopher, Edmund Husserl, attempted a similar project when he realised that a philosophical account of our human experience requires attending to the historical world we live in. According to Husserl, the Western world is a world in crisis. In this book, Tanja Staehler explores how Husserl thus radicalises Hegel’s philosophy by providing an account of historical movement as open. Husserl’s phenomenology allows thinking of historical worlds in the plural, without hierarchy, determined by ethics and aesthetics. Staehler argues that, through his radicalization of Hegel’s philosophy, Husserl provides us with a historical phenomenology and a coherent concept of a culture that points to the future for phenomenology as a philosophy that provides the methodological grounding for a variety of qualitative approaches in the humanities and social sciences.

Chapter 1 Phenomenological Method I – Epoché

Consequently, we do not need to import criteria, or to make use of our own bright ideas and thoughts during the course of the inquiry; it is precisely when we leave these aside that we succeed in contemplating the matter in hand as it is in and for itself.

Hegel, PhS, 77/54

In this situation it is unavoidable the he [i.e., Descartes], and anyone who seriously seeks to be a philosopher, begin with a sort of radical, skeptical epochē which places in question all his hitherto existing convictions, which forbids in advance any judgmental use of them, forbids taking any position as to their validity or invalidity. Once in his life every philosopher must proceed in this way. …

Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology

This is the first of three chapters concerned with methodology, and it presents an approach that emerges in retrospect from the Husserlian perspective as ‘static’ because it neither considers time (or temporality) nor history (or historicity). At the same time, it is concerned with an element that even Hegel, the greatest philosopher of history, deems a necessary component of all philosophy, as we will see. Although there will be many transformations especially of Husserl’s phenomenology, the element discussed here at the beginning remains an important component throughout. This element is an essential component of what it means to do a phenomenology, namely, to start with ‘mere’ description, leaving out anything that goes beyond what experience delivers to us.

This element requires a discontinuity to our normal attitude; yet it is this discontinuity that allows us to explore the natural attitude later on. The discontinuous aspect of the move to philosophy shall be examined in this chapter with respect to the phenomenological epoché in Husserl and the activity which Hegel, in his ‘Introduction’ to the Phenomenology of Spirit, designates as ‘simply looking on’. The connecting element is provided by ancient scepticism. Hegel and Husserl strive to free their introductions to philosophy from presuppositions. While the principle of scepticism is well suited for this task, both of them – albeit in different ways and for different reasons – conclude that ancient scepticism falls short of its inherent principle which they now wish to fulfil with their own philosophies.

HEGEL AND SCEPTICISM

In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel claims that although scepticism has always been held to be the ‘invincible opponent of philosophy’, in fact, ‘it does not oppose it, nor is it outside of it, for skepticism is a moment in it’, namely, in positive philosophy.¹ In this section, I examine how Hegel comes to this statement. There are three stages of Hegel’s discussion of scepticism. Hegel for the first time tackled scepticism in 1802 in an essay entitled ‘The Relation of Skepticism to Philosophy: A Presentation of Its Various Modifications and a Comparison of the Newest Skepticism with Ancient Skepticism’. This essay deals in a partly rather polemic way with a form of new scepticism that is presented by Gottlob Ernst Schulze in his book Critique of Theoretical Philosophy. Hegel criticizes Schulze’s theory by showing its inner contradictions as well as showing how it did not remain true to the principles of ancient scepticism. Ancient scepticism is said to be widely superior to new scepticism since it refrains from expressing a certainty while the new scepticism develops the concept of a thing which lies behind and underneath the things as appearing.² Instead of criticizing natural consciousness and showing its contradictions, which, according to Hegel, is the most honourable side of ancient scepticism, new scepticism asserts the certainty of natural consciousness’ convictions. It affirms that every fact of consciousness is certain and true. Ancient scepticism, on the other hand, develops and keeps up the true principle of scepticism, as it will be investigated in the following part of this chapter.

By contrasting ancient and new scepticism, Hegel arrives at two important insights on the relation of ancient scepticism to philosophy: First, ancient scepticism can be regarded as the first step on the way to philosophy, meaning that it can provide a beginning of philosophy. For philosophy to begin with natural consciousness, it has to overcome the convictions of natural consciousness – and this is exactly what ancient scepticism does by opposing the dogmatism of common consciousness. New scepticism, on the other hand, asserts the truth of natural consciousness and hence can be refuted not only by ancient scepticism but even by natural consciousness itself that knows very well that its convictions do not hold as stable truth.³

Second, Hegel states that scepticism in its true form is intimately one with philosophy, and that its principle can be found as an implicit moment of each philosophical system. This principle is expressed in the sentence: ‘panti logo logos isos antikeitai’ – ‘every logos has an equally valid logos opposed to it’. The fact that this principle does not obey to the proposition of non-contradiction cannot be brought up as a valid objection since, according to Hegel, every genuine philosophy has to sublate (aufheben) the proposition of non-contradiction; thus, this ‘negative side’, this principle of scepticism, is inherent in every genuine philosophy.

In the ‘Introduction’ to the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), the thesis of scepticism being a principle inherent in philosophy emerges again. Two forms of scepticism are distinguished in this text: on the one hand, there is ‘thoroughgoing skepticism’;⁴ on the other hand, we have scepticism as a mere shape of incomplete consciousness. Scepticism as merely being a shape has not yet fully recognized itself, and has not yet completely carried out its principle. Following the shape of stoicism and preceding so-called ‘unhappy consciousness’, scepticism as a shape is a negative in itself and annihilates the being of the world.⁵ However, what scepticism in this incomplete form does not recognize and what causes its inner contradictions is the fact that the nothingness evolving out of negation is not a pure nothingness, but a determinate nothingness: It is the nothingness of whatever it results from and hence has a content. The principle incomplete scepticism has not yet at its disposal but which presents the essential feature of thoroughgoing scepticism is this principle of determinate negation. In recognizing that the nothingness resulting from negation is determined by what is negated as well as preserved and elevated in it, a new shape of consciousness has arisen.

Scepticism has a significance for the Phenomenology of Spirit in yet another sense: It can be shown that there is a movement going on that is similar to the sceptic epoché. The epoché is an important element of ancient scepticism: Realizing that opposite matters and arguments have equal validity, the sceptics decided to refrain from judgement altogether – this refraining is the epoché. In the ‘Introduction’ to his Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel describes a shift which is a necessary beginning for the development of Spirit that has certain similarities with this epoché. Hegel is talking about a ‘we’, a ‘we’ that accompanies consciousness on its way to absolute knowing. ‘We’ are already philosophers – and precisely because of this, we are not allowed to prescribe anything to natural consciousness, but just watch it on its way. Hegel says that ‘all that is left for us to do is simply to look on’,⁶ and that in order to do this, we leave aside all our criteria and ideas about the matter at hand – which basically means that we refrain from our assumptions and judgements.⁷ Refraining from all judgements yields presuppositionlessness which is the condition for entering into science. The transition into philosophy is not a continuous one, but rather requires something like a leap, as it were – this fact is articulated by Hegel’s request to leave all assumptions aside in the very beginning.

Finally, certain features of scepticism can be found in Hegel’s account of the first shape of consciousness in his Phenomenology, sense-certainty (which will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 4).⁸ The well-known example that is used to show the inner contradictoriness of sense-certainty, ‘Now is night’, can be found in Sextus Empiricus.⁹ Moreover, confronting the statement ‘Now is night’ with the statement ‘Now is day’ or ‘Now is noon’ means to follow the sceptical principle. While ancient scepticism’s response to the confrontation of statements having equal rights would be to carry out the epoché and thus to refrain from judgement, the result in Hegel is a determinate negation which means moving on to the next moment of sense-certainty. As we will see next, the ten tropes of Pyrrhonean scepticism can be put into a relation with the three moments of sense-certainty. Let me just note here that the third moment, mere pointing, resembles the reaction of Cratylus who after recognizing the impossibility to express a true statement apparently proceeded to just moving his finger.¹⁰

While in the Phenomenology of Spirit scepticism plays an important role in a number of respects, the significance of scepticism for Hegel’s method seems to grow less in the Science of Logic and in the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences. Yet there are some remarks in the Encyclopaedia that show the remaining importance of scepticism; it rather seems that in developing the final shape of his method, Hegel integrated the sceptic principle into his method such that he no longer deals with it separately. In Section 78 of the Encyclopaedia we find some short, but dense remarks about scepticism. Hegel states that ‘being a negative science that has gone through all forms of cognition, skepticism might offer itself as an introduction’.¹¹ But at the same time, Hegel designates the sceptic way as ‘redundant’ since it is an essential element of affirmative science; besides, it only takes up the finite forms ‘empirically and unscientifically’. Is there a contradiction between calling scepticism a science and yet an unscientific way? If those statements should be true without contradicting each other, they have to refer to different aspects of the problematic. The problem is connected to the distinction of thoroughgoing scepticism and incomplete scepticism as Hegel develops it in the ‘Introduction’ of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Scepticism is scientific in so far as it is thoroughgoing scepticism, scepticism recognizing its principle. But, as Hegel says in this paragraph, scepticism that has gone through all forms of cognition is a moment of affirmative science, and if it is integrated in this way, it no longer serves as an introduction. On the other hand, scepticism as a separate way, dissolved from other moments of science, could be a possible introduction into philosophy. Scepticism that has not yet fully come to its principle is closer to natural consciousness and would in that sense make a good introduction – but scepticism as separate from science is unscientific; it merely takes up shapes as it finds them and is thus determined by contingency. Incomplete scepticism lacks the necessity science requires, and it does not provide completeness since it merely takes up what it finds.

Since the problem of a beginning of philosophy lies in the very fact that this beginning must already be science, scepticism as incomplete and unscientific cannot serve as a beginning; the question whether thoroughgoing scepticism can provide an introduction has to be taken up below. The quest for thorough-going scepticism, so Hegel says, can be equated with presuppositionlessness as the condition for science; yet this condition is carried out in the ‘will to think purely’.¹² This will resembles the request to leave all assumptions aside in the very beginning as it is expressed in the Phenomenology of Spirit. While philosophy, on the one hand, requires a leap in the beginning, on the other hand it has to go through a movement, a development, and it is Hegel’s merit to put the emphasis on the developmental character of philosophy. Therefore, the ‘determination to think purely’ is not sufficient, but is only a very first step. The question is how to move on, and scepticism, as long as it is merely negative, does not provide an answer to this question. In the following section, I want to give an account of the concept of scepticism as Hegel develops it in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy; I will thereby contextualize what has been evoked in the previous section.

ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF ANCIENT SCEPTICISM

What are the essential features of ancient scepticism that Hegel develops in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy? Since Hegel states himself that Sextus Empiricus for us is by far the most important writer upon scepticism,¹³ the main focus here will be on Sextus’s account of Pyrrhonean scepticism as it is presented in Hegel’s lectures and as Sextus presents it in his own writings. The term skepsis derives from the verb skeptomai, which means to look around, to examine, to search. Sextus introduces the Skeptics by distinguishing three types of philosophy, all of which have in common that they search for something.¹⁴ The first group are the so-called Dogmatics who claim that they have found the truth; the second group are the Academics who state that the truth cannot be apprehended. The third are the Skeptics who are still searching and continue to do so.

Hegel begins his account by saying that scepticism substituted for Being the expression appearance.¹⁵ In order to understand both the problems scepticism was responding to and the solutions it suggested, it is essential to clarify the distinction between Being and appearance. Already in prephilosophical life, we encounter the relativity of appearances: For example, people argue about matters that appear differently to them, and in doing so, they presuppose that there is something like a true and final answer to the question since otherwise there would be no point in arguing. The argument presupposes that the matter in question actually is one way or the other, and that this true Being of the matter can be disclosed. Natural consciousness claims that ‘Now is night’, not seeing that things are never permanent, but change. The example of night and day that Sextus first brought up and that Hegel employs as the major example in his analysis of sense-certainty in the Phenomenology of Spirit is taken up in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy; Hegel says furthermore that scepticism is directed against the being of sense-certainty which takes its being as the truth as such.¹⁶ Natural consciousness has the tendency not to remain with the things as they appear, but to attribute a Being to those things. Yet when consciousness takes something as the truth, it holds on to it and thus is bound to it; and since this truth is not stable, but changes and moves, consciousness loses its stability and its rest.¹⁷

In order to bring the soul to rest, consciousness thus has to refrain from judgements about the Being of th...

Table of contents

• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Phenomenological Method I – Epoché
• 2 The Perceptual World
• 3 Moving Up: Origins of Ideality
• 4 Moving Down: Origins of Perceptions
• 5 Phenomenological Method II – From Stasis to Genesis
• 6 Motivating the Turn towards History
• 7 Origins of (Inter-)Subjectivity
• 8 Phenomenological Method III – Historical Phenomenology
• 9 Phenomenology of Historical Worlds: Possibilities and Problems
• 10 Cultural Worlds, or the Good and the Beautiful
• Postscript: Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty
• Bibliography