Hegel's Philosophy of Nature A Critical Guide Cambridge Marina F
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Mamadou TraoreHEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature constitutes the second part of his
mature philosophical system presented in the Encyclopaedia of the
Philosophical Sciences, and covers an exceptionally broad spectrum of
themes and issues, as Hegel considers the content and structure of
how humanity approaches nature and how nature is understood by
humanity. The essays in this volume bring together various perspec-
tives on Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, emphasizing its functional
role within the Encyclopaedia and its importance for understanding
the complexity of Hegel’s philosophical project. Together they illu-
minate the core ideas which form Hegel’s philosophical framework in
the realm of nature.
. is Professor of Philosophy at North Carolina
State University. She has most recently edited Hegel’s Philosophy of
Spirit: A Critical Guide (), The German Idealism Reader: Ideas,
Responses and Legacies (), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Fichte
(), and The Palgrave Hegel Handbook (coedited with
K. Westphal, ).
Titles published in this series:
Kierkegaard’s Either/Or A Critical Guide
.
Cicero’s De Officiis
Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death
Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra
- .
Aristotle’s On the Soul
.
Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation
Kant’s Prolegomena
Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences
Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
Fichte’s System of Ethics
Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
Hobbes’s On the Citizen
Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit
.
Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics
.
Spinoza’s Political Treatise
.
Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae
Aristotle’s Generation of Animals
Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
. ’
Spinoza’s Ethics
.
Plato’s Symposium
,
Fichte’s Foundations of Natural Right
Aquinas’s Disputed Questions on Evil
. .
Aristotle’s Politics
Aristotle’s Physics
Kant’s Lectures on Ethics
Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling
Kant’s Lectures on Anthropology
Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
Descartes’ Meditations
Augustine’s City of God
Kant’s Observations and Remarks
Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morality
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
Continued after the Index
HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY
OF NATURE
A Critical Guide
MARINA F. BYKOVA
North Carolina State University
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: Hegel’s Philosophy of nature : a critical guide / edited by Marina F. Bykova,
North Carolina State University.
: Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, . | Series: Cambridge
critical guides | Includes bibliographical references and index.
: (print) | (ebook) |
(hardback) | (paperback) | (epub)
: : Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, -. Naturphilosophie. |
Philosophy of nature.
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remain, accurate or appropriate.
To John W. Burbidge, colleague and friend
In Memoriam
Contents
List of Contributors page xi
Acknowledgments xiii
List of Abbreviations xiv
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature: Its Origins, Development,
and Contemporary Relevance
Marina F. Bykova
’
The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature: A Challenge to
Conceptual Realism?
Robert Stern and Leonard Weiss
Nature and Its Limits: Hegel’s Idealist Critiques
of Physicalism, Naturalism, and Essentialism
Sebastian Stein
Naturphilosophie and the Problem of Clean Hands: Hegel and
Alexander von Humboldt on Nature
Elizabeth Millán Brusslan
On Hegel’s Account of Nature and Its Philosophical
Investigation
Marina F. Bykova
The Logic of Nature: Nature as the “Idea in the Form
of Otherness”
Angelica Nuzzo
ix
x Contents
, ,
Hegel’s Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets:
Plato, Kepler, and Newton as Cosmologists
Paul Redding
Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Organic Conception
of Cosmic Life: A Speculative Kantian Legacy in His
Absolute Mechanics?
Cinzia Ferrini
Hegel’s Mechanics as a System of Steps from Space
and Time to Celestial Motion
Ralph M. Kaufmann
Logic and Physics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
Stephen Houlgate
Hegel’s Theory of Animal Embodiment
Christopher Yeomans
A Past without History and the Conditions of Life:
Hegel on the Terrestrial Organism
Ansgar Lyssy
Human Beings as the “Perfect Animals”: Hegel on the
Difference between Animal Life and Human Spirit
Nicolás García Mills
The Prospects for an Idealist Natural Philosophy: Logic
and Nature
Terry Pinkard
Is There a Future for the Philosophy of Nature?
John W. Burbidge
Bibliography
Index
Contributors
ˊ is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul
University.
. was Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Trent
University.
. is Professor of Philosophy at North Carolina State
University.
is a senior researcher in philosophy at the University
of Trieste.
is Professor of Philosophy at the University
of Warwick.
. is Professor of Mathematics with courtesy appoint-
ments in the Departments of Philosophy and Physics & Astronomy at
Purdue University.
is a lecturer and research associate in philosophy at the
University of Leipzig.
ˊ í is a lecturer in philosophy at Binghamton
University.
is Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center and
Brooklyn College, City University of New York.
is Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University.
is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University
of Sydney.
is a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft researcher in
philosophy at the University of Heidelberg.
xi
xii List of Contributors
is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University
of Sheffield.
is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University
of Sheffield.
is Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University.
Acknowledgments
This volume is the result of the collective efforts of those who contributed
to its creation. I am honored and grateful to have worked with such a
distinguished group of Hegel scholars who generously shared their know-
ledge and enthusiasm, making this volume a valuable contribution not
only to Hegel studies but also to broader discussions about the role of
philosophy in investigating nature and its interaction with humanity.
This book would not have been possible without the support, encour-
agement, and valuable assistance I received from Hilary Gaskin at
Cambridge University Press. I am thankful to Hilary for guiding me
through all the stages of the book’s development. Many thanks are also
owed to Abi Sears, the senior editorial assistant at Cambridge University
Press, for her assistance with logistical questions. Special words of appreci-
ation go to the two anonymous reviewers whose valuable suggestions and
comments helped shape the scope of this volume and find a more pro-
ductive approach to certain arguments, thereby enriching the content and
enhancing the overall quality of the volume.
Numerous scholarly discussions and private conversations with several
colleagues and contributors were instrumental in my work on this volume.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to Cinzia Ferrini, who generously shared
her ideas and work, responding to my queries and questions.
I want to express my gratitude to my student Kerry Synowiez for his
invaluable assistance in creating the index for this book. Additionally, I am
pleased to acknowledge the Google Books library for providing a copy of
the first edition () of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical
Sciences, from which extracts are used for the cover of this volume.
xiii
Abbreviations
The following is a list of abbreviations used throughout the volume for
core references, along with their English translations. References to pages
in English translations are provided only when the translation lacks pagin-
ation from the critical edition of the relevant thinker’s works.
If translations have been modified, this is explicitly stated either in a text
or in a note, and unless otherwise noted, all emphases are in the original.
Multivolume editions are cited by volume: page numbers; when neces-
sary, line numbers are also included (volume: page.line numbers). Works
divided into numbered sections are cited by section (§) number.
Hegel’s Writings
Hegel’s works Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences and
Philosophy of Right are cited using section (§) numbers. For these works,
“R” indicates Remarks (Anmerkungen) and “A” indicates Additions
(Zusätze). When citing Hegel’s published Remarks, the section number
is followed by the suffix “R,” as in “§R.” When citing student notes
from Hegel’s lectures, the section number is followed by the suffix “A,” as
in “§A.” When both a main section and a remark or a lecture note are
cited, an ampersand is inserted, as follows: “§ & R” or “§ & A.”
Diff. “Differenz des Fichte’schen und Schelling’schen Systems
der Philosophie.” Kritisches Journal der Philosophie ()
(): –; rpt. GW :–. (English translation:
The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of
Philosophy, ed. and trans. H. S. Harris and W. Cerf
[Albany, State University of New York Press, ].)
Diss. “Philosophical Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets and
the Habilitation Theses,” trans. Pierre Adler.
In Miscellaneous Writings of G. W. F. Hegel, ed. Jon
xiv
List of Abbreviations xv
Stewart. (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, .)
Enc. Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (st ed.:
, nd ed.: , d ed.: ), vols., GW , ,
; cited by §, as needed with the suffix “R” or “Z” (for
explanation see start of section).
Enc. Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, trans. T. Geraets, W. Suchting,
and H. S. Harris. (Cambridge, MA: Hackett, .)
Enc. BD Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline –
Part : Science of Logic, trans. and ed. K. Brinkmann and
D. O. Dahlstrom. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, .)
Enc. Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, trans. A. V. Miller. (Oxford:
The Clarendon Press, ; nd ed. .)
Enc. P Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, vols., ed. and trans. M. J.
Petry. (London: George Allen & Unwin; New York:
Humanities Press, .)
Enc. Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, trans. W. Wallace and A. V.
Miller. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, .)
Enc. I Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, trans. W. Wallace and A. V.
Miller, with revisions and commentary by M. J. Inwood.
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, .)
Enc. P Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit (Enc. , §§–),
vols., trans. and ed. M. J. Petry. (Dordrecht:
D. Reidel, .)
ENZ Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften ().
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, .)
GVNat Vorlesung über Naturphilosophie Berlin /.
Nachschrift von K. G. J. v. Griesheim, hrsg.
v. G. Marmasse. (Frankfurt a.M. et al.: Peter Lang, .)
GW Gesammelte Werke, vols. Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft, with the Hegel-Kommission
der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften and the Hegel-Archiv der Ruhr-
Universität Bochum. (Hamburg: Meiner, –.)
HEnc. Encyclopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im
Grundrisse. (Heidelberg: August Osswald’s
Universitaetsbuchhandlung, .)
IPH Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans. Leo Rauch.
(Indianapolis: Hackett, .)
xvi List of Abbreviations
JS III Jena Systementwürfe III (–). GW .
LFA Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. vols., trans. and
ed. T. M. Knox. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, .)
LHP-B Lectures on the History of Philosophy: The Lectures of
–. vols., trans. and ed. R. F. Brown. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, .)
LPhWH-N Lectures on the Philosophy of World History : Introduction,
Reason in History, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister, trans. H. B.
Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .)
MM Werke in Bänden, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl
Markus Michel, vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,
–)
PhG System der Wissenschaft. Erster Theil, die Phänomenologie
des Geistes (). GW .
PR Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. A. Wood, trans.
H. B. Nisbet. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
.) (Translation of Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft
im Grundrisse: Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts
(). GW .
PRH Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, nd ed., ed. T. M. Knox,
trans. S. Houlgate. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press,
.)
PS The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. T. Pinkard. (New
York: Cambridge University Press, .) Cited by
paragraph numbers.
SL The Science of Logic, trans. George di Giovanni.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .)
UVNat Vorlesung über Naturphilosophie Berlin /.
Nachschrift von Boris von Uexküll. Hgg. v. Gilles
Marmasse und Thomas Posch. (Frankfurt a.M. et al:
Lang, .)
V Vorlesungen: Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte.
vols. (Hamburg: Meiner, –.)
VGPh-L Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, with an
Introduction by Theodor Litt. (Stuttgart: Reclam, .)
VGPh– Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie.
In Vorlesungen, vols. –, ed. P. Garniron and
W. Jaeschke. (Hamburg: Meiner, –.)
VHGesch Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, ed. J. Hoffmeister.
Hamburg: Felix Meiner, .
List of Abbreviations xvii
VNat Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Natur (–).
Vorlesungen vol. , ed. M. Bondeli and H. N. Seelmann.
(Hamburg: Meiner, .)
VNat Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Natur (–).
Vorlesungen vol. , ed. K. Bal, G. Marmasse, Th. Posch,
and K. Vieweg. (Hamburg: Meiner, .)
VNat-GW Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Natur. GW .
VNat-GW Nachschriften zu den Kollegien der Jahre /, /
und /. Hg. v. Wolfgang Bonsiepen. . GW ,
VNat-GW Nachschriften zu den Kollegien der Jahre / und
. Unter Mitarbeit von Wolfgang Bonsiepen hg.
v. Niklas Hebing. . GW , .
VNat-GW Sekundäre Überlieferung. Hg. v. Niklas Hebing. .
GW ,.
WL Wissenschaft der Logik. Erster Band: Die objective Logik
(). GW .
Wissenschaft der Logik. Zweiter Band: Die subjective Logik
oder Lehre vom Begriff (). GW .
Wissenschaft der Logik. Erster Teil: Die objective Logik.
Erster Band. Die Lehre vom Seyn (). GW .
Kant’s Writings
Ak. Kants Gesammelte Schriften, vols. Königlich Preußische
(now Deutsche) Akademie der Wissenschaften. (Berlin:
G. Reimer, now De Gruyter, –)
CJ Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. P. Guyer, trans.
P. Guyer and E. Matthews. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, .) (English translation of Kritik der
Urteilskraft [], Ak .) Cited by Ak paragraph numbers.
CNM “Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Magnitudes
into Philosophy ().” In Theoretical Philosophy, –,
trans. and ed. David Walford in collaboration with Ralf
Meerbote. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .)
Corr. Briefwechsel. In Ak. (–)/Ak. (–). (English
translation: Correspondence, trans. and ed. A. Zweig.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .)
CPR Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. P. Guyer and A. Wood.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .) (English
translation of Kritik der reinen Vernunft, st ed., [A], Ak
; nd ed., [B], Ak .) Cited by A/B pagination.
xviii List of Abbreviations
MFNS Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (), Ak
. (English translation: Metaphysical Foundations of Natural
Science, trans., ed. M. Friedman. [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, ].)
MMr Metaphysik Mrongovius. In Ak. , –. (English tanslation:
Metaphysic Mrongovius [–]. In I. Kant, Lectures on
Metaphysics, trans. and ed. Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon,
–. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ].)
Ref. Reflexionen zur Physik und Chemie. In Ak. , Kants
PC Handschriflicher Nachlaß, Bd. I. Mathematik-Physik und
Chemie Physische Geographie, –.
THA Allgemeiner Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels oder
Versuch von der Verfassung und dem mechanischen Ursprunge des
ganzen Welgebäude, nach Newtonischen Grundsätzen
abgehandelt. In Ak. : –. (English translation: Universal
Natural History and Theory of the Heavens or Essay on the
Constitution and the Mechanical Origin of the Whole Universe
according to Newtonian principles []. In I. Kant, Natural
Science, ed. Eric Watkins, trans. Lewis White Beck et al.,
–. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ].)
Schelling’s Writings
HKA Werke: Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe. Projekt Schelling –
Edition und Archiv der Bayerischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-
Holzboog, –.)
HMPhA On the History of Modern Philosophy, trans. Andrew Bowie.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, .)
PSPh Presentation of My System of Philosophy (). In The
Philosophical Rupture between Fichte and Schelling: Selected
Texts and Correspondence (–), trans. and ed.
Michael G. Vater and David W. Wood, –. (Albany:
State University of New York Press, . SSW I/.)
SW Schellings Werke, ed. M. Schröter. (Munich: Beck, .)
Tim Timaeus (): Zur Bedeutung der Timaeus-Handschrift fur
Schellings Naturphilosophie, ed. Hartmut Buchner and Hermann
Krings. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, .)
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
Its Origins, Development, and Contemporary Relevance
Marina F. Bykova
Over the past three decades, there has been a growing surge of interest in
Hegel among Anglophone scholars. Initially, this interest was predominantly
directed toward the study of his major published works, including the
Science of Logic, the Phenomenology of Spirit, and the Philosophy of Right.
In recent years, the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, which was
previously undervalued and viewed primarily as a secondary text for teaching
purposes alongside Hegel’s lectures, has started to receive the recognition it
deserves. However, despite acknowledging the immense significance of the
Encyclopaedia as the only form in which Hegel ever published his entire
mature philosophical system, certain parts, such as the Logic and the
Philosophy of Spirit, have garnered a disproportionately greater attention
from scholars. The Philosophy of Nature, which holds a central position
within Hegel’s tripartite comprehensive philosophical system as its second
part, has remained marginalized in terms of its systematic importance and
contemporary relevance, if not largely overlooked altogether.
. On the Reception of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
To be sure, over almost two centuries since the release of the third edition
of the Encyclopaedia in which Hegel introduced the final revisions to the
text of his Philosophy of Nature, there have been several reputable
instances of positive receptions of Hegel’s natural philosophy worth men-
tioning. The first is associated with the “Hegel Renaissance” at the turn of
the twentieth century and during its first decades. It is true that despite an
intensifying enthusiasm about Hegel and a new rise of Hegelianism, many
commentators maintained a generally skeptical and dismissive stance
toward his philosophy of nature, which is particularly evident within the
German scholarly community. However, at the same time, in England,
For publications reflecting the early (–) reactions to Hegel’s philosophy of nature, see Neuser
b (cited in Ferrini , n).
.
such scholars as Charles Sanders Peirce, Alfred North Whitehead, and
John M. E. McTaggart were in the process of developing ideas that show
substantial influence from Hegel, including his philosophy of nature.
Perhaps the most prominent example was Peirce, who openly claimed to
have revitalized Hegel’s metaphysics and philosophy of nature in his own
interpretation of matter as “effete mind” and his speculative notions
concerning the spiritual attributes of cytoplasm, elaborated in his work
Man’s Glassy Essence (). Significant parallels can be also drawn
between Hegel’s views of nature and Whitehead’s process philosophy that
develops similar ideas. One such example is Hegel’s conception of organ-
ism that undoubtedly inform Whitehead’s metaphysics of Process and
Reality (), a work often described by the author and commentators
as “the philosophy of organism” (see Tabaczek ). One of the key
representatives of the second wave of British idealism, John McTaggart,
dedicated decades to grappling with Hegel’s ideas, culminating not only in
numerous interpretations and critical commentaries on Hegel’s works but
also in his original metaphysical system expounded in the two-volume
masterpiece The Nature of Existence (; ). This work advances
concepts closely aligned with Hegel’s ontology, underscoring McTaggart’s
profound engagement with Hegelian thought but also providing an oppor-
tunity to see how this thought inspired new ideas (Kreines b).
When, after a long period of outright rejection, in the s and s,
Hegel’s star rose again in the Anglo-Saxon world, so did efforts to revive
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature emerge. Initiated by the publication
of Michael Petry’s English translation of the Encyclopaedia
Philosophy of Nature (Enc. P), accompanied by an elaborate commentary
that illuminated the importance of this part of Hegel’s system in compre-
hending his overall philosophy, those efforts materialized in intensified
attempts to engage the topic (Hortstman et al. ; Petry ; ;
Burbidge ; Houlgate ).
Nevertheless, many scholars who recognized the importance of Hegel’s
philosophy of nature within the comprehensive framework, and lauded
its essential role in interpreting the transition from Idea to Spirit, still
harbored contempt for the outcomes presented by Hegel in this realm.
They cast doubt on the scientific validity of his conception of nature and
the relevance of the content of his natural philosophy to then-contemporary
results from the empirical sciences (Pippin , ; ; Bungay ,
For a more detailed discussion of the reception of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature in this period, see
Ferrini .
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
–). It is only during the last decade that scholars began showing a
renewed interest in Hegel’s philosophy of nature, setting in motion its
close examination (Stone ; Rand ; Khurana and Menke ;
Stone ; Giladi ; Corti and Schülein a). What is characteris-
tic of the present engagement with this topic is an increasing renunciation
of the dismissive attitude toward Hegel’s philosophy of nature and a
growing appreciation for its contents worthy of recognition in its own
right. This has expanded the topics of inquiry from traditional, merely
systematic questions, such as the place and actual functionality of this area
within Hegel’s mature philosophical system, the relation of Nature to the
Idea and Spirit, to more specific ones, including the development of
Hegel’s concept of embodied life, his notion of organism, and such issues
as human nature, human autonomy, and the emergence of consciousness
(Corti and Schülein a; b). Prompted by a growing appeal of a
“metaphysical” reinterpretation of Hegelian thought (Pippin ; ;
Kreines ) and the lately introduced “naturalist” reading of Hegel
(Pinkard ; Stone ; Giladi ), contemporary scholarship has
been marked by attention to aspects crucial to understanding Hegel’s
project of the philosophy of nature and the strategy he employs there.
This requires an investigation of a variety of topics treated by Hegel in each
of the three main sections of his Philosophy of Nature – the “Mechanics,”
“Physics,” and “Organics” – along with their subsections. Aspects of
Hegel’s thought introduced in the “Organics” are generally better repre-
sented in the recent secondary literature than their counterparts from the
“Mechanics” and “Physics” (Rand , ). While such a disparity is
not surprising, especially given the present appeal of the concept of life and
intensified attempts to understand the emergence of organic nature largely
fueled by contemporary research in the biological sciences, insufficient
coverage of topics from the “Mechanics” and “Physics” leads to an incom-
plete picture of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, which makes the develop-
ment of an explicit evaluation of its rich and complex content, as well as an
appreciation of its systematic function and task, difficult to achieve.
The present collection addresses this gap by offering a systematic
reading of the Philosophy of Nature and its key topics, emphasizing the
methodically and coherently organized unity of this part of Hegel’s tripar-
tite philosophy and its harmonious relation to two others. The idea of the
whole and its organic development, so pervasive throughout Hegel’s
system, could not be grasped properly without revealing the aims he
associates with his philosophy of nature. Similarly, it would be a mistake
to approach the Philosophy of Nature as merely an “empty otherness”
.
outdated scientifically and void of any independent philosophical signifi-
cance. Hegel never intended his Philosophy of Nature to be a rival to the
empirical sciences but rather developed it as an independent philosophical
discipline capable of grasping nature and natural things through reason, as
opposed to the natural sciences whose results belong to the domain of the
understanding. Important in its own right, Hegel’s Naturphilosophie
generates a philosophically sophisticated account of nature as a complex
process of formation, leading toward organic life.
. Theoretical Roots and the Evolution of Hegel’s Views of a
Philosophy of Nature
.. Influences and Inspirations
As a representative of the post-Kantian tradition, Hegel develops his views
of the philosophy of nature, being inspired by the consistent efforts of his
contemporaries to come up with a plausible picture of the natural world
and the kinds of relations existing between and within natural objects.
While well informed in the advances of the sciences of his day, Hegel and
his thought are certainly situated in the context of post-Newtonian scien-
tific developments manifested through the expansion and blossoming of
“Romantic science.” Comparatively “new” phenomena such as electricity,
magnetism, and chemistry that turned out to be inexplicable in terms of
Newtonian forces served as an impetus for further scientific explorations,
providing material for philosophical reflection. Hegel’s own views depicted
in his studies of the philosophy of nature are very much representative of a
scientific outlook of his day. It suffices to recall that the idea that electricity
and magnetism serve as a bridge between mechanism, organic life, and
consciousness, which is so prominently featured in Hegel’s writings, is
essentially a product of “Romantic science” considered by many at that
time to be plausible. Perhaps the most significant result of Romanticism in
science was an introduction of a new “organic” conception of nature,
which stood in sharp contrast to its Newtonian (mechanistic) counterpart
that prevailed in England and Continental Europe at the time (Beiser
; ; Richards ; Klancher ). This is the idea that deter-
mined the development of post-Kantian Naturphilosophie, championed by
Schelling and later advanced by Hegel. When scholars of German idealism
point to an influence that Romantics’ scientific views had on the emer-
gence of Hegelian and Schellingian thought, they afford the most import-
ant role to Schiller’s theory of nature and Goethean science (Hoffheimer
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
; Richards ; Beiser , –, –; Nassar ; Förster
, –, –, –). It was indeed Schiller who first drew the
attention of his contemporaries to nature as an object of a true inspiration,
insisting, “our culture should lead us along the path of reason and freedom
back to nature” (Schiller , ). Goethe and his conception of natural
science (“morphology”) served as a strong impulse for the development of
a new Naturphilosophie, offering a concept of natural order that more
closely corresponds to the emerging picture of a nature now seen to be
dynamic and ever-changing, to nature’s “infinitely free exercise of life”
(Lebenstätigkeit) (Goethe , ).
Both Schiller and Goethe, whose works Hegel first encountered while in
Frankfurt and continued to follow closely thereafter, had a profound
impact on his philosophical development and the maturation of his
thought (Hoffheimer , –; Förster , , , ,
f.). In the realm of natural philosophy, one of the most profound
influences on Hegel, with enduring effects for decades, was his friend and
fellow student at the Tübingen Seminary (Stift), Friedrich Schelling. Some
commentators have even credited Schelling with the “invention” of post-
Kantian Naturphilosophie. While this assessment is somewhat problematic,
especially since Goethe had already produced several writings on the
subject by , introducing significant concepts in natural philosophy,
Schelling’s role as a central and pivotal figure in the natural philosophy of
that era cannot be overstated. Hegel’s growing interest in a philosophical
exploration of nature at the outset of his academic journey can be largely
attributed to his collaboration with Schelling in Jena from to .
Their initial programs in Naturphilosophie shared numerous similarities
and fundamental overlaps. However, their divergent views on the philoso-
phy of nature and its place within their systems marked a significant
contrast between the thinkers. It was Hegel’s dissatisfaction with
Schelling’s portrayal of nature as a “series of stages” that motivated his
own search for “understanding the necessity of the various forms of
nature,” the project he launched in Jena (Enc. §A).
.. Tracing a Pathway to the Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Nature
... Dissertatio Philosophica de Orbitis Planetarum
Hegel’s first work on topics directly relevant to his interest in natural
philosophy is his Dissertatio philosophica de orbitis planetarum ().
Commenting on this early publication, scholars tend to primarily focus,
.
often exclusively, on a notable mistake made by Hegel within it. It pertains
to his erroneous dismissal of astronomers’ predictions – founded upon the
Titius–Bode arithmetical sequence, commonly known as the Bode law –
regarding the existence of an eighth planet situated between Mars and
Jupiter. Even J. H. Stirling, who was among the few early proponents of
Hegel’s philosophy of nature, expressed regret in that the Dissertatio
was ever written, acknowledging the presence of serious flaws in the work
(Stirling , ). However, while this “grave miscalculation” of Hegel’s
stands as a fundamental point of the text, it is far from being the sole or even
the most significant outcome of this work. Within the text, Hegel formu-
lates some elements of his Naturphilosophie for the first time, and many of
the ideas he presents in this work remain largely unchanged in his subse-
quent writings, including the Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Nature.
A key concept among these notions is the organic perspective within
natural philosophy, which entails the idea of the universe as a coherent
organic entity. This organic viewpoint conceives of the universe as a whole,
emphasizing the interconnectedness of the natural realm and stressing a
continuity between inorganic and organic nature, life, and (human) mind-
edness. All these components harmoniously coexist within an organic unity,
where their interrelationships are governed by the whole. These organicist
views fundamentally shape and inform Hegel’s stance toward the empirical
sciences. He holds that in physics, it is crucial to proceed from a holistic
approach to nature, and advocates the comprehension of the solar system as
a complex living entity within the field of astronomy. Hegel’s anti-
reductionism, clearly visible in his later versions of the Encyclopaedia
Philosophy of Nature, directly emanates from his organic convictions.
Another salient topic addressed in the Dissertatio pertains to Isaac
Newton and his foundational physical laws and principles. Hegel’s under-
standing of Newton and his ideas about matter and motion, initially
formulated in the Dissertatio, persist consistently, in largely unchanged
form, throughout his academic trajectory.
Considerable attention within the Dissertatio is devoted to scrutinizing
the relationship between mathematics and physics. Hegel criticizes
Newton’s mathematical demonstration of Kepler’s second law of planetary
motion, rebuking the amalgamation of mathematical considerations with
Cited in Ferrini , n. In the edition of the Encyclopaedia, Hegel acknowledged the
inadequacy of his attempt to establish a law governing the distances of planets from the sun. In the
subsequent editions of the Encyclopaedia ( and ), he omitted any reference to
his dissertation.
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
physical ones. He cautions against the utilization of mathematical tech-
niques in physics when driven solely by mathematical expediency and
procedural efficiency. Interestingly, the Dissertatio outlines the core direc-
tions of Hegel’s subsequent critique of the force concept. Within this
context, Hegel emerges as an original thinker, introducing several ideas
later adopted by Schelling. Notably, Hegel’s interpretation of the interplay
between Kepler’s and Newton’s mechanics, as delineated in the Dissertatio,
eventually found resonance in Schelling’s work (SW I/: ; ; see also
Closs ).
... The Jena System Drafts
During his time in Jena, Hegel showed a profound interest in the philo-
sophical inquiry into nature, initially allocating to the philosophy of nature
a much more prominent role and position compared to its eventual place
in his mature system (Beiser , –). The systematic works pro-
duced during this phase include three Jena Drafts of a Philosophical
System that contain substantial surviving fragments delving into the realm
of philosophy of nature. The most thorough exploration of this subject can
be found in two key documents from this period: The First Systematic
Draft of Naturphilosophie from – (Erster Entwurf eines Systems der
Naturphilosophie) and Jenaer Realphilosophie from – (see GW ; JS
III / GW ). Both these documents are based on manuscripts of lectures
that Hegel delivered during his time in Jena. These writings stand as
foundational records of his evolving ideas on the philosophy of nature
during this early period of his intellectual development.
The distinguishing feature of all the Jena iterations of Hegel’s philoso-
phy of nature lies in his initiation with the concept of “ether.” This
concept, coupled with the notion of “matter” (Materie), forms the foun-
dational framework through which he scrutinizes natural phenomena, as
well as their interplay and processes.
Hegel introduces “ether” as something akin to a materialized Absolute,
which unfolds itself within space and time. This “absolute matter” (as he
calls it) becomes the crux of his exploration, where the philosophy of
nature endeavors to interpret diverse natural phenomena in their inter-
actions with each other as distinct manifestations of this absolute matter.
Hegel’s aim goes beyond merely demonstrating that each natural
For a very informative discussion of a specific content of Hegel’s Dissertation see Ferrini ,
–.
.
phenomenon represents a particular expression of absolute matter.
He seeks to establish that nature embodies a cohesive and structured
arrangement, where every natural phenomenon constitutes an integral
element within a systematic sequence of natural occurrences. This
approach serves two main purposes. It () reaffirms an organic (organicist)
view of nature while advancing the idea of its underlying systematic
organization; and () allows for the perception of the natural order as
shaped by specific principles emerging from the structural attributes of
absolute matter, rather than being externally imposed.
These foundational principles persist consistently throughout all ver-
sions of Hegel’s philosophy of nature from the Jena period. Variations in
these versions primarily stem from the incorporation of newly available
scientific information resulting from the advancements of contemporary
science. For instance, the – manuscripts lack a developed section on
organic life, yet Hegel introduces it in his – lectures in response to
several scientific developments such as the emergence of paleontology and
the evolution-based ideas gaining ground within biology.
... The Phenomenology
While the Phenomenology of Spirit () does not directly deal with issues
central to the philosophy of nature, it contains two sections that are
somewhat pertinent to its themes and can also shed light on how Hegel
positions it within his mature system. One such section is the chapter titled
“Force and Understanding, Appearance and the Supersensible World” (III).
In this chapter, Hegel explores the relation of natural scientific cognition to
its object. Distinguishing between the essence and the phenomenon,
consciousness as the understanding reduces the realm of phenomena to
the stable existence of matter, conceiving of it as the action of force. Even
more significant is the chapter titled “Observing Reason” (V.A), where
Hegel outlines some primary ideas of his philosophy of nature. This chapter
traces the progression of consciousness from mere perception to the
universality of thought. The advancement occurs through the discovery
of forces and laws operating within nature, and this process describes our
self-conscious cognitive engagement with the world, informed by the
findings of empirical sciences. While in the Philosophy of Nature Hegel
presents an unfolding development encompassing the transitions from the
For a detailed discussion of this chapter and its significance for Hegel’s mature philosophy see Ferrini
b.
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
inorganic to the organic and thinking life, in the Phenomenology he is more
concerned with the gradual progression of forms of consciousness and the
specific structures of consciousness in relation to nature.
It is also noteworthy that in the Phenomenology, Hegel distances himself
from Schelling’s reductionist approach, which seeks to explain the organic
unity of both inorganic and organic nature by relying on quantitative
forces and laws that drive the organized inner productivity of nature’s
development. This divergence illustrates Hegel’s distinct perspective on
the relationship between nature and consciousness and the underlying
principles that shape their interactions.
... The Encyclopaedia
Hegel develops his own philosophy of nature as a system of qualitatively
differentiated stages, the first exposition of which he gives in his
Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences that in its entirety represents his
mature philosophical system. Presented as the second part of the system,
and positioned between Logic (the ideal part) and the Philosophy of Spirit
(the real part), the Philosophy of Nature now acquires its systematic place
as the domain of the “self-externality of the concept” (SL /GW : ).
Its primary objective is to grasp the (logical) Idea in the externality of the
natural world by giving its theoretical (philosophical) account. Yet Hegel’s
engagement with the philosophy of nature extends beyond its merely
systematic or architectonic function. His interest is deeply rooted in the
pursuit of formulating a comprehensive conception of nature that would
explain it as an organic unity characterized by an intrinsic dynamic
structure capable of self-generation.
Hegel expands his philosophical treatment of nature in his and
editions of the Encyclopaedia. While his view of nature and his
understanding of the aims of his philosophy of nature remain relatively
consistent, notable revisions are introduced in successive editions of the
work. One significant change is a marked shift in his understanding of the
relationship between reason and the empirical world that occurred between
and (Ferrini ). Additionally, specific concepts, such as
chemism, undergo revisions in the later editions (see Houlgate ,
–; Houlgate , :n). Furthermore, Hegel adjusts his eluci-
dation of what John Burbidge calls “his account of the logic of nature”
(Burbidge , –). His revisions take into account emerging scien-
tific findings, leading him to acknowledge that empirical phenomena
cannot be solely deduced through logical means. He recognizes that
.
understanding natural phenomena requires empirical exploration, observa-
tions, and experiential engagement, including scientific experiments. This
shift in his perspective offers a more nuanced and justified position
regarding the role of the empirical sciences in comprehending nature and
its intricate processes. By incorporating empirical methods, Hegel’s appre-
ciation for scientific investigations becomes more substantiated and well-
defined within his philosophical framework.
What undergoes even more significant alteration is largely the exposition of
details (Enc. P, : ). Significant textual expansions introduced in the
and editions include additional chapters and elaborations on various
topics in the form of Remarks. Hegel further develops and refines his ideas on
physics, chemistry, geology, and organic life, offering a more comprehensive
and detailed examination of natural phenomena. In the successive editions,
he also takes into account advancements made in various scientific disciplines,
such as astronomy, biology, paleontology, and geology. Along with making
his work relevant to the scientific context of his time, it also led to some shifts
in philosophical emphasis, such as more rigorously stressing the interconnec-
tions between the physical and organic aspects of nature, as well as highlight-
ing the organic unity and continuity of natural processes.
It is noteworthy that for a number of consecutive semesters from
– to –, Hegel taught the philosophy of nature at the
University in Berlin, a fact that demonstrates his continuing engagement
with the subject matter. In his Lectures, he discussed an impressive range
of topics. In comparison, the Encyclopaedia includes only a few of them,
mainly in Remarks. Still, the differences between the editions of the
Encyclopaedia version of this part of his system reflect the persistent
development of his thought in this area.
Consequently, the Philosophy of Nature offers a wealth of stimulating
material that demands careful scrutiny and precise interpretation. A careful
reading of this text reveals a fundamental coherence in Hegel’s philosophical
endeavor. Many themes and concerns introduced in the Philosophy of Nature
resurface and find treatment in other works and aspects of his mature system.
Within the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel raises significant inquiries
about the natural world and its dynamism, contemplating the extent to
which scientific cognition can grasp its complexities. Additionally, he
explores the relationship between philosophy and science, displaying a
Recently published, Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Nature provide valuable supplementary
material, setting the stage for a more insightful philosophical exploration of Hegel’s Philosophy of
Nature. See: VNat-GW; VNat-GW; VNat-GW.
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
keen interest in understanding their interplay. This engagement with
nature and its scientific comprehension underscores the philosophical
significance of Hegel’s exploration in this area.
. About This Volume
The primary goal of this collection is to demonstrate the genuine value of
Hegel’s philosophy of nature, not limiting it merely to its role as an
intrinsic constituent of his system but also recognizing its profound
significance as a well-developed, original account of the natural world that
merits scholarly attention and urges a new and more insightful interpret-
ation. However, this is not just another attempt to merely rehabilitate
Hegel’s project of the philosophy of nature. The task is to uncover its
inherent vitality and show that Hegel’s philosophy of nature can be
thoroughly comprehended within the scope of a philosophical understand-
ing of modern natural science, its objectives, and its results.
The Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Nature encompasses an exceptionally
broad spectrum of themes and issues worthy of careful scholarly attention.
The essays in this volume do not seek to provide an exhaustive analysis of
every topic addressed by Hegel. Instead, their focus is directed toward an
in-depth examination of some of the principal questions that Hegel delves
into within his Philosophy of Nature and related texts. By concentrating
on the central themes, the volume aims to shed light on the core ideas that
constitute Hegel’s philosophical framework in the realm of nature. This
targeted approach permits a more focused and thorough exploration of the
key concepts and insights that Hegel presents in his Philosophy of Nature.
The essays in this volume bring together various perspectives on Hegel’s
philosophical account of the natural world. They introduce novel queries,
foster significant dialogues, and pave the way for insightful discussions that
collectively hold the potential to extend beyond the confines of the book
itself. This collective effort possesses the capacity to stimulate further
constructive engagement with Hegel’s philosophy of nature, thereby nur-
turing a further exploration of its intricate themes and implications.
The volume comprises a total of fourteen chapters, distributed among
four distinct parts of slightly varying lengths. Part I, consisting of five
chapters, serves as an introductory framework for the book’s discourse.
It sets the stage for the book discussion by putting Hegel’s philosophy of
nature into its historical and systematic context, and assessing it through
lenses such as the conceptual paradigms of (methodological) naturalism,
realism, essentialism, and physicalism. This part aims to provide a
.
foundational understanding of the intellectual landscape within which
Hegel’s philosophy of nature should be read.
Parts II and Part III, which include four and three chapters respectively,
deal with specific themes that form the core of Hegel’s deliberations within
the Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Nature. These chosen topics are integral
to comprehending his conceptual pursuits concerning such domains as
mechanics, physics, and organics. The focus extends to unraveling the
internal interrelations and dynamics that shape these domains.
Part IV, encompassing two final essays, addresses the question of the
possibility of a future philosophy of nature and the contemporary chal-
lenges it confronts. By contemplating these future prospects and contem-
porary obstacles, the essays in this part engage with the evolving nature of
philosophical inquiry into the natural world.
In our contemporary era, the relationship between humanity and the
natural world has captured our collective consciousness in unprecedented
ways. Within this context, Hegel’s perspective on nature holds a distinctive
position. Unlike other approaches that seek to explore nature as an isolated
entity, Hegel is concerned with the intricate interplay between Spirit
(largely correlated with humanity) and Nature. His philosophy delves into
how humanity comprehends and interacts with nature.
Throughout history, the prevailing notion has been that our reliance on
nature is primarily rooted in fulfilling our physical needs. However, a
growing body of scholarly disciplines – ranging from theology to evolu-
tionary psychology – has recently begun to question this perspective.
These disciplines are exploring the possibility that the natural world might
exert a significant influence on shaping diverse cultural forms. Could
Hegel’s ideas, or a reconstructed version of them, provide valuable insights
for addressing this very task?
This collection ventures to offer an affirmative response to this question.
Hegel’s unique approach could provide insightful perspectives on the
interplay between humanity and nature, acknowledging that this relation-
ship extends beyond mere physical sustenance. Because Hegel not only
scrutinizes how we relate to nature but explores what this relationship
comprises, a reevaluation of Hegel and his ideas through a contemporary
lens could indeed provide fresh insights into the connection between
nature and the human cultural world.
Hegel’s exploration of a wide range of topics, central to numerous
philosophical and scientific disciplines, also means that fresh attention to
these themes from a contemporary perspective will inevitably and signifi-
cantly contribute to current discussions in these areas of investigation,
promising novel insights.
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature in the
Historical and Systematic Context
The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature
A Challenge to Conceptual Realism?
Robert Stern and Leonard Weiss
. Introduction
Tackling issues in philosophy can sometimes feel like trying to get rid of a
bump in the carpet – no sooner do you smooth the carpet down in one
place, than a similar bump appears elsewhere. It could be argued that this
is the situation with regard to debates about Hegel’s idealism. In response
to claims that Hegel is a kind of Kantian idealist according to which reality
has a structure imposed on it by our ways of thinking, conceptual realists
have argued that Hegel takes that structure to be inherent to the world
itself, maintaining instead that on Hegel’s account, individuals are instanti-
ations of substance universals such as “horse” or “human being” which we
come to know but which belong essentially to those individuals in their
own right. Thus, it is claimed, Hegel is closer to Aristotle than he is to
Kant, as he is an idealist not because he thinks we bring form to matter but
because he recognizes the reality of conceptual structures such as laws and
universals in the world, making his idealism a kind of anti-materialism that
is also a type of realism, as it is in Plato and Aristotle. However, critics of
this conceptual realist reading have then countered that when we look at
his philosophy of nature, Hegel speaks about the “feebleness of the
concept in nature,” which seems to allow for a good deal of indeterminacy
in the way individuals are classified into kinds; and this then appears to
reintroduce a role for cognitive subjects to impose an order onto nature as
they see fit, rather than to uncover an order that is already there –
suggesting that a more Kantian reading of Hegel’s idealism might be right
after all. So the bump in the carpet comes back.
For a brief characterization of conceptual realism with further references, see Redding (, chapter
.) and Kreines (, n). This reading of Hegel is also discussed in Stern (, ).
Further examples of conceptual realist readings are deVries (, ), Westphal (, ),
Stern (), Houlgate (), Kreines (, ), and Yeomans ().
It is this debate that we focus on in this chapter. We question whether
the argument really works: From the fact that Hegel allows for limits to the
taxonomic project, does it follow that the conceptual realist’s interpret-
ation of his position is flawed? And if this is the case, is the nominalist
reading then correct, allowing for a more constructivist account of the
natural order? We begin by saying a little more about the conceptual
realist reading and how it is said to differ from the Kantian one (Section
.). We then turn to consider how Hegel’s account of the classification of
nature in the Phenomenology and Philosophy of Nature has been used to
raise problems for the conceptual realist reading (Section .). We finally
suggest how in fact nothing in what Hegel says about the problems in
classifying nature threatens that reading, and everything he says about those
problems can be made compatible with it (Section .), as can his talk of
the “impotence” of the concept in nature (Section .). Of course, this is
not a complete vindication of that reading – but hopefully it does enough
to smooth out this particular bump.
. Flattening the Bump: Hegel as a Conceptual Realist
As its name suggests, conceptual realism is a form of realism, in the sense of
taking fundamental aspects of what there is to be mind-independent; but it
is also a form of idealism, as what is said to be mind-independent in this
way includes concepts or ideas, not merely what is material. This approach
to Hegel then explains his important distinction between subjective ideal-
ism (which he associates with Kant, among others) and his own objective
idealism as hinging on this issue: Whereas the former takes the cognitive
subject to be the source of the order we find in the world, the latter treats
that order as inherent to the world itself, which we uncover through our
inquiries – but this still counts as a form of idealism, as what that order
involves is not mere matter but matter informed by various conceptual
structures, such as laws and kinds (what Charles S. Peirce was later to call
“real generals”). These structures are ideal because epistemologically they
are not immediately accessible in experience but require thought and
inquiry to be revealed, while metaphysically they are not material but
rather structure matter. While conceptual realism could take a Platonic
We are using the term “nominalism” to refer to the view that universals are () mind-dependent concepts
and therefore () do not carve nature at its joints. In the contemporary literature “nominalism” can be
used more narrowly just to refer to the view that universals do not exist either in the world or in the mind.
“Conventionalism” (or “constructivism”) can be used as a label for () and/or () in this literature,
whereas both these aspects are incorporated under nominalism as we understand it in this chapter.
For the parallels between Hegel and Peirce here, see Stern (, –).
The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature
form, placing what is ideal outside the world, it is argued that Hegel’s
conceptual realism is more Aristotelian, locating these ideal structures
within it – so, for example, the natural kind of animal requires to be
instantiated in individual animals (cf. Enc. BD § A; Enc. §). Hegel’s
position on this issue is said to be expounded in his account of the concept
in the Logic and its dialectical exposition (WL GW : –/SL –)
of the categories of universality, particularity, and singularity.
Focusing now just on the case of natural kinds, as this is the one most
relevant to this chapter, it is suggested that Hegel adopts a variety of related
arguments to defend his conceptual realism with regard to them, which
might most simply be understood as arguments directed against a nomin-
alist who disputes the mind-independent existence of such kinds. The aim
is to show that the nominalist, due to their denial of objectively existing
natural kinds, cannot account for the very individuals which they make
central to their account. On this reading, Hegel is committed to three
central arguments: Unless individuals exemplify kinds () there cannot be
individuals at all; () there can be no necessary truths about individuals;
and () there can be no normative truths about individuals.
Given that all these arguments seem to be found in Hegel and given that
they all appear to point toward conceptual realism, and given also that
Hegel raises objections against various other forms of idealism (such as
Kant’s) which cannot be elaborated here, this then explains why concep-
tual realism as characterized here has arisen as a significant option in recent
considerations of Hegel’s position.
. The Bump Comes Back: The Feebleness of the Concept and
the Case for Nominalism
However, a number of recent publications (Bowman ; Wolf ;
Lindquist ) question the adequacy of conceptual realist readings of
Hegel by appealing to his philosophy of nature. In particular, it is claimed
that Hegel’s emphasis on the “feebleness of the concept” in the realm of
animal life warrants the conclusion that he treats kinds not as objectively
existing universals but as representing more or less artificial boundaries,
For consistency with the translation by di Giovanni in SL, we use “singular/singularity” for
“Einzelnes/Einzelheit” and “concept” for “Begriff.” Throughout translations have been modified
where necessary. Where reference is made to the Encyclopaedia, we have indicated the § number
of the GW edition (Enc.) as well as the volume and page number of the relevant English translation
(Enc. P, Enc. BD). Since GW , , (= Enc.) omit the Additions/Zusätze, we have cited only
the translation when quoting from this material. For comparison with the German text of the
Additions, readers are advised to consult MM – or GW ., ..
For further details of these arguments see Stern (, –).
which in turn suggests that Hegel’s notion of natural kinds is not robust
enough to do the work that the conceptual realist requires it to do,
showing that he is closer to nominalism. We now look at some of the
relevant material in Hegel and the case that the nominalist builds on it.
.. Hegel on the Feebleness of the Concept in Nature
The context in which Hegel discusses the problematic status of natural
kinds is a sort of modern “Universalienstreit” among then contemporary
biologists. The debate was about whether biological kinds and species
make up a “natural system” which cuts nature at its joints, or if instead
they are just useful constructions amounting to an “artificial system” of
classification. In discussing these accounts Hegel highlights difficulties in
establishing a natural system through the definition of generic terms: On the
one hand it is hard to find properties that are unique to a specific kind so
that they are exemplified exclusively by members of the kind. For example,
while most fish do have fins, defining fish by virtue of this property makes
whales a member of this kind, which is implausible regarding their similar-
ities to land animals in other respects. On the other hand, it seems hard to
find any list of properties that are exemplified by all members of a kind
because in nature there are deviant cases (“monstrosities”).
The point made by Hegel’s nominalist readers is that the resulting
difficulties in achieving a natural system are not merely the result of poor
science but a consequence of the ontological structure of natural things. The
fact that the kinds defined by scientists do not map neatly on to the natural
world seems to suggest that nature is not governed by objectively existing
universals, that there are no natural kinds to be found but only more or less
useful constructions to be made. And indeed, on several occasions, Hegel
appears to concede to nominalism what he calls the “feebleness of the
concept in nature,” thereby suggesting that in nature the “moments” of
the concept (universality, particularity, and singularity) come apart.
For instance, with reference to the deviant instantiations of animal life
mentioned earlier, Hegel says that there “are of course animals which
cannot be clearly classified; the reason for this lies in nature’s not having
the power to remain true to the concept, and to coalesce neatly with
the determinations of thought” (Enc. P § A, : ). The idea that
On this debate cf. Mayr (, –), on Hegel’s reception cf. Heuer ().
The section listed as § in the English translation (Enc. P) corresponds to § in the German
edition (Enc. GW viz. MM for the Addition).
The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature
natural objects – by their very nature – are incompatible with a full realization
of the concept not only leads to some isolated hard cases for taxonomists;
rather, the division into kinds is compromised as a whole, because in nature
the order that the concept suggests is afflicted by contingency. As Hegel points
out, this is especially true of “the animal world” which is
perhaps even less able than the other spheres of nature to present an
immanently independent and rational system of organization, to keep to
the forms which would be determined by the concept, and to preserve them
in the face of the imperfection and mixing of conditions, against mingling,
stuntedness and intermediaries. The feebleness [die Schwäche] of the con-
cept in nature in general, not only subjects the formation of individuals to
external accidents, which in the developed animal, and particularly in man,
give rise to monstrosities, but also makes the genera themselves completely
subservient to the changes of the external universal life of nature. (Enc.
§ R/Enc. P § R, : )
This basic conception of nature as external to a full realization of the
concept is also conveyed in the Science of Logic:
This is the impotence [die Ohnmacht] of nature, that it cannot abide by and
exhibit the rigor of the concept and loses itself in a blind manifoldness void of
concept. We can wonder at nature, at the manifoldness of its genera and species,
in the infinite diversity of its shapes, for wonder is without concept and its object
is the irrational. It is allowed to nature, since nature is the self-externality of the
concept, to indulge in this diversity. (WL GW : /SL )
According to the nominalist interpretation mentioned earlier, these pas-
sages suggest that Hegel is no conceptual realist regarding natural objects;
on the contrary, it is argued, Hegel explicitly embraces a form of nominal-
ism according to which the attribution of kinds to nature is the result of
our subjective activity, rather than a matter of “reason in the world”:
We want to know the nature that really is, not something which is not, but
instead of leaving it alone and accepting it as it is in truth, instead of taking
it as given, we make something completely different out of it. By thinking
things, we transform them into something universal; things are singularities
however, and the lion in general does not exist. We make them into
something subjective, produced by us, belonging to us, and of course
peculiar to us as men; for the things of nature do not think, and are neither
representations nor thought. (Enc. P § A, : )
This and the other passages quoted here form an important background
for the new nominalists, who argue that the complete interpenetration of
reason and world which Hegel advocates cannot be meant to apply to the
sphere of nature. We now turn to how exactly critics use them to construct
an argument against conceptual realism and make the case for a Hegelian
nominalism.
.. The Case for Nominalism
Starting from Clark Butler’s “view that Hegel is a conceptualistic nomin-
alist, not an essentialist” (, ), Brady Bowman argues that it “may
well be that substance-kind universals like ‘lion’ do not in fact exist in re,
pace Stern and Aristotle” (, ). While Bowman concedes that Hegel
is not “a nominalist in the traditional sense,” he does maintain that “the
robust existence of universals like ‘lion’ or ‘rose’ is compromised by
metaphysical deficiencies in the finite sphere of nature. Nature falls short
of the concept partly owing to its poor nomological behavior, which in
turn conditions the degree to which real universals are present and identi-
fiable in it” (Bowman , ). Similarly, Wolf () constructs an
argument against conceptual realism from Hegel’s interpretation of the
ontological stature of nature. Conceptual realists, Wolf argues, claim that
the Hegelian concept somehow constitutes things – either as a monist
source that “deploys” finite reality (Taylor , ), or as an inner
essence that renders things explicable (Kreines , – and passim), or
as a “substance-kind” that accounts for the structure of the object (Stern
, –). But given this commitment, how do conceptual realists
make sense of Hegel’s claim that in nature things do not fully comply to
their putative inner, conceptual core? For instance, “on Kreines’s essential-
ist account, it is curious why the ontic concepts that are supposed to
function as explanatory reasons should fail to account fully for things.
It seems destructive of the realistic view of essences to put a distance
between the essence and the thing or to find a defect on the part of the
essences themselves” (Wolf , ). Thus, Wolf concludes, either we
have to see Hegel in more Platonic terms and admit that universals are not
really immanent to things but have some sort of separate existence; or we
have to admit that the correct location of universals is the mind, not the
world, as then “it is easy to see why some part of reality might fail to
conform, since the concept itself does not stand in an originative relation
to that reality” (Wolf , ).
Most recently, Lindquist expresses his contention that “uses of Aristotle
to illuminate Hegel [are] problematic” because “Aristotelian ‘natural kinds’
take the form of dichotomous divisions of each higher genus into lower
species” while “Hegel’s taxonomic categories explicitly overlap” (Lindquist
, ). Lindquist acknowledges that according to Hegel, the
The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature
definition of kinds must somehow be rooted in “differences which matter
to the animal” (Lindquist , ). But he argues that this does not
constitute a commitment to an immanent, ontological structure in nature
but merely refers to an ontologically noncommitted adequateness of sortal
terms. In face of these considerations Lindquist argues that Hegel is
neither a nominalist nor a realist but should be “properly thought of as a
sort of ‘species-constructivist’” (Lindquist , ). But while Lindquist
stays neutral on the thorny question of Hegel’s realism, he builds his
“constructivist” reading on the same concern about the “impotence of
nature” raised by nominalist readers and concludes that according to Hegel
“we have to construct our systems of nature because nature herself is too
weak to do so” (Lindquist , ).
Thus, while the opposition to conceptual realism comes in two flavors –
an ontologically committed nominalist one and an ontologically neutral
constructivist one – we have seen how both variations gain their thrust
from Hegel’s appeal to the “impotence” and conceptual “feebleness” of
nature and his analysis of the difficulties involved in biological taxonomy.
The challenge for the conceptual realist is then to demonstrate that these
elements of Hegel’s theory are compatible with the interpretation of kinds
as objectively existing, immanent universals, which is the aim of the
subsequent sections of this paper.
. The Realist Rejoinder: What Bumps?
We now consider the two central nominalist objections. First, on Hegel’s
account there is no objective system of natural kinds to be found in nature,
due to the “feebleness of the concept” in the realm of animal life, which
therefore consists in more or less artificial boundaries. Second, it therefore
follows that no appeal to kinds can be made in thinking about the essential
nature of individuals, in the way the conceptual realist claims. Our
response to these challenges is twofold: In Section .., we argue that,
despite appearances, Hegel is quite positive about the possibility of finding
a workable conception of kinds. In Section .., we argue that nominalist
interpreters reject conceptual realism on the basis of a misunderstanding
concerning Hegel’s appeal to immanent universals. Moreover, by provid-
ing a more nuanced discussion of Hegel’s appeal to natural kinds, we
demonstrate that the “impotence of nature” is indeed compatible with
realism about universals in nature (Section .). Thus, what appeared to be
bumps will turn out to be mere shadows once examined in the light of
further analysis.
.. Finding Kinds in Nature
While it is true that Hegel believes nature cannot perfectly realize the
concept, he also points out that some of the issues with finding a system in
nature are homemade problems of then contemporary science. His exten-
sive critique of the latter, in the Phenomenology’s “Observing Reason”
chapter, argues that the emaciated epistemology with which observing
reason operates means it fails to properly theorize the knowable structure
of natural objects and their relations.
Initially, approaching nature in the mode of observation and description
seems to yield a theory-neutral representation of the object. However, as
Hegel notes, the observing mind of a scientist also aims for generality in its
findings. Thus it will “without further ado admit that it is in general not
that much concerned with perceiving, and that, for example, the
perception that the penknife lies next to this tobacco-box will not count
for it as an observation. The meaning of what is perceived should at least
be that of a universal, not a sensuous this” (PhG /PS ). In fact, Hegel
argues, the observational approach always already involves some sort of
universality that cannot be traced in sensory impressions as such; for
despite its predilection for the realm of “tasting, smelling, feeling, hearing,
and seeing [. . .] it has no less essentially already determined the object of
this sensing” (PhG /PS ).
Thus, observing reason’s characteristic denial of theory-ladenness
doesn’t change the fact that any description of an object always already
deploys at least some basic universal ideas that are not immediately present
in the sensory manifold of empirical material. While pretending to have an
interpretation-free interest in the object, the observing mind always already
processes perceptive input found in nature and makes a “distinction
between the essential and the inessential” (PhG /PS ). But in doing
so, the allegedly neutral observing mind brings its own notions of distinc-
tion into the object and so betrays “that what is at issue essentially has to
do at least as much with itself as it does with things” (PhG /PS ).
This, in turn, brings about a nagging doubt about the appropriateness of
the knower’s account of the object to the object’s mind-independent
reality: There is a “wavering back and forth about whether what is
essential and necessary for cognition can also be said to be in the things”
(PhG /PS ; cf. Enc. P § A, : ). According to Hegel this
As Hegel elsewhere puts it: “physics contains much more thought than it will either realize or admit”
(Enc. P Introduction A, : ).
The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature
hesitation is well justified for he suspects that the universals operational in
the sciences of his time are indeed foreign to the so characterized,
natural things.
Not only does the empiricist self-misunderstanding of science overlook
its own use of universals; in as much as observation does involve the use of
generic terms, the form of universality with which it works is also severely
impoverished. This version of universality (which Hegel calls “abstract”)
is generated through the selection of properties that are common to groups
of objects. As Hegel makes clear, the appeal to such abstract universality is
precisely what brings about the failure to capture the natural order. On the
one hand, kinds usually have members that do not exemplify features that
are statistically normal among the group (cats are usually furry but there
are some furless specimens that are nonetheless cats). On the other hand, it
is difficult to identify exclusive features exemplified by members of one
kind only (cats are carnivore quadrupeds with retractable claws – but so are
tigers and foxes). Consequentially, the procrustean method of dividing
nature through abstract universals leads to a mismatch between the wealth
of natural forms and the order attached to it by observers. In Hegel’s eyes,
this mismatch occurs not because nature has no conceptual structure but
because the concepts applied to it “silence the universality it has reached,
and which set it back again to unthinking observing and describing” (PhG
/PS ).
A similar concern is at work in Hegel’s engagement with biological
taxonomy in the Encyclopaedia. Here Hegel argues that most taxonomists
of his time deployed the method of reducing essential characteristics of
kinds to properties commonly shared among their members. In this way,
he claims, taxonomists appeal to a form of generality that is alien to nature:
The method used by research which has as its object the classification of
animals, is to look for the common element to which the concrete forms
can be reduced, i.e., for a simple sensuous determinateness, which moreover
is also an external one. There are no such simple determinations however.
For example, one might accept the general concept “Fish,” as the common
element of what one includes under this name when one thinks about it,
and then enquire as to the simple determinateness or objective characteristic
of fish. The conclusion to be drawn from this enquiry would be that fish
swim in water, but as a number of land animals also do this, it would be
insufficient. What is more, swimming is neither an organ nor a formation;
it is a mode of the activity of Fish, and in no respect is it part of their shape.
In brief: According to Hegel, abstract universals are merely common to many instances, whereas
concrete ones determine their own variations. For more on this distinction see Stern , –.
Simply as a universal, a universal such as fish is not bound in any particular
mode to its external existence. If one now assumes that a common element
must be present as a simple determinateness, such as fins for example, and
such a determinateness is not to be found, classification will be difficult.
In this classification, the features and habits of the individual genera and
species are used as the basis and rule, but the untrammelled variety of life in
this genera and species does not admit of any universal feature [lässt aber
nichts Allgemeines zu]. (Enc. P § A, : )
This last-mentioned universality, which Hegel says is not allowed for in
nature, is the abstract universality used in observations and descriptions,
which is statistical in approach and which overemphasizes the role of
common properties. The corresponding genus-notions are much too rigid
and cannot do justice to nature’s complexity. However, it is important to
recognize that Hegel is not saying here that no system of genera can be
found in nature, as the nominalist might claim: For, he argues, a more
sophisticated type of universal may be able to perform better and do
without the overly sharp boundaries taxonomists seek to define. “Thus, a
universal like fish” is being misunderstood if we were to make a list of
observable features that are necessary and sufficient in order to define “X”
as a fish and to exclude “Y” from the fishy kind. This approach fails
because it deploys concepts that are too rigid for nature and so yields a
crude and arbitrary “map of the world.”
Thus, Hegel’s point is directed not at universality per se but at the
abstract universality achieved through the selection of common features
which is inadequate for the type of generality sustained by living things.
More specifically, Hegel argues that the observable properties exemplified
in an individual should be viewed as the result of an underlying activity
which determines the kind to which the individual belongs. Universality
that is “concrete” in this sense pertains primarily to the sort of life an
animal lives and only secondarily to the properties it exemplifies in the
course of doing so. It is important to note that this concrete universality is
compatible with a wide range of qualities and cannot be reduced to any
definitive list of properties. At the same time, individuals that share a
similar type of inner activity and so live a relevantly similar life may indeed
tend to have typical surface-properties. But the nature of their kind can be
In MM this section is numbered as § Z, and the quotation comes from pp. –.
This is why care has to be taken with the passage quoted above (Enc. P § A, : ): When
read in context it becomes clear that Hegel is not endorsing a subjective view of universals but
rejecting it as a one-sided option to which a realist account of universals is to be preferred.
The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature
expressed in different ways, so that any attempt to directly conclude from
the resultant properties to the underlying genus-specific activity is bound
to fail.
Moreover, Hegel thinks that in some respects biologists of his day did
show awareness for this type of process- and activity-related universality.
Most notably, researchers such as Carl von Linné and, to an even greater
extent, George Cuvier took an interest in properties insofar as they are
connected to the functional organization of living beings. That way, their
approach can be seen as at least partly moving away from the purely
observational interest in properties as convenient signs for knowers. What
they are moving toward is, by contrast, an interest in how such properties
matter to the living beings themselves characterized in this manner.
Although Linné championed a version of the property-based account of
classification criticized earlier, Hegel traces a “sound instinct” in his choice to
take the distinguishing marks of kinds from the “teeth, the claws etc.” (Enc.
§ R/Enc. P § R, § R, : ). Hegel finds this choice remark-
able because, according to his interpretation, it betrays an implicit under-
standing of the functional roles of features and how they work toward the
maintenance (“reproduction”) of an animal’s specific way of life.
As Hegel argues, kinds acquire reality not merely “in general” but
through the individuals that are their members. Part of the activity of
self-preservation that these individuals perform is that they relate to the
world around them, such that they survive external influence without
losing their characteristic form. This self-maintenance in the face of
otherness is something animal individuals orchestrate through specialized
parts of their bodies – such as their claws and teeth – that serve for fighting
back predators or rivals, or for catching prey. Thus, Linné touched upon a
relevant aspect of animal life when he suggested taking the distinguishing
properties “from the animal’s weapons.” For it is through them that “that
the animal, in distinguishing itself from others, establishes and preserves
itself as a being-for-self” (Enc. § R/Enc. P § R, : ).
It is significant to note that this is not only relevant for the problem of
individuation but also for the question of how to differentiate kinds from
one another. In order to know a kind as different from another one, Hegel
suggests, it is important to know how its members are geared to supporting
a typical way of relating to the outer world. In this respect, pointing, for
example, to the claws of tigers and the beaks of birds is not entirely external
to the inner activity or life of entities classified in that way. On the
contrary, this choice betrays an “instinct” for how living organisms realize
their kind in maintaining a characteristic way of being.
To be sure, Hegel’s point is not that Linné had deliberately chosen this
sort of functionalist, teleological approach. Rather his interpretation is
that – despite Linné’s faulty appeal to descriptive properties – an uncon-
scious but “sound instinct” brought about the previously discussed focus
on the self-preserving capacities of animals. A more explicit appeal to this
train of thought is identified by Hegel in the works of Cuvier. Cuvier’s big
discovery, as Hegel sees it, is his holism about animal organisms. Cuvier
turned away from the idea that isolated features could determine the kind
of an individual and instead embraced the view that kind-specific charac-
teristics can only be found in the whole composition of the organism:
“particular importance has been attached to the habit [Habitus] of the
individual forms, which has been regarded as a coherence [Zusammenhang]
determining the construction of every part” (Enc. § R/Enc. P § R,
: ). This “coherence” points to the idea of a specific, underlying
activity governing the exemplification and composition of features.
The reason why Hegel finds Cuvier’s approach more interesting than
conventional observation is its turn away from regarding observable prop-
erties as immediate expressions of a kind-specific essence. On the perspec-
tive Hegel reconstructs as Cuvier’s, an observable feature of an animal is
not informative as such but only in the context of an overall arrangement
of characteristics that, in their totality, bespeak the kind-specific way of life
of the individual. The idea that Hegel connects with these discoveries is
that animal life follows patterns of organization that betray a purposeful
activity, the life typical for a specific kind of animal.
On a fundamental level, he argues, there is a basic pattern common to
all animal life. This so-called general type is characterized by the arrange-
ment of functions toward self-preservation (“reproduction”). As such, the
basic pattern of animal life, the Goethe-inspired “Urtier,” does not exist.
What does exist, according to Hegel, are various modifications as particular
ways of realizing the basic end of self-preservation: “There is only one
animal type, and all animal difference is merely a modification of it. [. . .]
The universal type which forms the basis cannot exist as such of course;
but the universal, because it exists, exists in a particularity” (Enc. P §
A, : –). These modifications of the general type represent what we
call kinds or species. Knowing their differences means knowing in what
ways different types of animals achieve a self-preserving form through the
coordinated (“harmonic”) arrangement of functional properties: “The
organism is alive, and its viscera are determined by the concept, although
it also develops entirely in accordance with this particularity. This particu-
lar determination pervades all the parts of the shape, and harmonizes them
The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature
with one another” (Enc. P § A, : ). Studying the way animal
organisms are built can lead to understanding in what specific way they
achieve functional tasks (such as processing sensory input or reacting to
external influences) in order to “reproduce,” that is, to preserve their way
of life. Difference on the level of kinds arises through different ways of
doing so.
More specifically, Hegel argues that there are two ways in which kinds
differ in their specific modification of the general type. They exhibit ()
different levels of complexity in the sense that some have primitive “all-
rounder organs” while members of more advanced kinds possess special-
ized organs for fulfilling sensory, nutritive, and other tasks. This type of
modification reflects the degree of organization and lies at heart of Cuvier’s
approach. On the other hand, there is also () a modification of the general
type according to the environmental conditions that animals face. For
instance, animals that live in water require a motor system that differs
from that of animals that live on land. In fact, their whole bodies will
have a different design that is required to maintain life under exactly
these living conditions. This is the kernel of truth that Hegel grants
to Linné’s idea that the claws have something to do with the characteris-
tics of a genus: They reflect the individuals’ active engagement with their
specific environment and as such their “outward orientation toward a
determinate inorganic nature” (Enc. P § A, : ). However, Hegel
maintains that the relevant target is not an isolated feature like having
such and such claws or legs etc. but the overall harmony of functions that
such parts serve.
In conclusion, Hegel accepts two basic laws of division: () the degree of
complexity in the arrangement of functional properties and () the adaptation
of such features to specific living conditions:
Two principles are therefore effective in determining the difference between
animal genera. The first principle of classification, which is closer to the
Idea, is that each subsequent stage is merely a further development of the
simple animal type; the second is, that the organic type’s scale of develop-
ment is essentially connected with the elements into which animal life
is cast. (Enc. P § A, : )
It is true that Hegel did not establish a biological classification along these
lines; but what he does say about the principles of division is enough to see
that a natural system would have to differentiate kinds according to the
overall patterns of organization inherent to their members and acknow-
ledge that the specific execution of such patterns is subject to contingent,
external influence. This latter element, the role of contingency, explains
why the inner, concept-governed structure can never be realized in an
unadulterated, ideal way. But at the same time, this is not to say that there
are no inherent and knowable structures in nature at all. All Hegel says is
that these structures cannot be grasped through exact lists of properties
common to all members of a kind.
.. Kinds as Essences
Hegel’s conviction that abstract universality cannot be traced in nature is
thus not to be confused with the nominalist claim that there are no
universals to be found at all. As we have seen, while Hegel is critical of
the prospects of a nonarbitrary taxonomy based on observable properties,
he is more positive regarding taxonomies based on a deeper conception of
universal kinds, so in this respect his position is compatible with essential-
ism. However, we now turn to address a second challenge, which claims
that these kinds cannot be essential to individuals in nature, as it is
impossible for them to be properly realized in this domain. In response,
we show that Hegel’s teleological account of immanent universals is
compatible with nonideal instances of kinds and can still accommodate
the idea that these kinds are essential to their instances even if these
individuals realize them imperfectly.
The fact that in nature imperfection is ubiquitous may be regarded as a
challenge to any account of objectively existing universals in nature – both
abstract or concrete. As we have seen, it has thus been argued by
nominalists that because things in nature fail to correspond to “their”
kinds on a regular basis, it is hard to see these kinds as constituting
immanent essences determining the reality of these things. What realists
mistake for immanent essences are said to be just our more or less
appropriate conceptions of things so that concepts “can conform to reality
more or less” and things can be more or less appropriate to (what we
stipulate as) their concepts.
But upon closer examination this does not constitute a convincing
argument against conceptual realism. In order to understand why, we
need to remind ourselves of the fact that Hegel’s essentialism is teleological
in character. As Hegel sees it, the genus-concepts forming the immanent
universals of things are to be understood as “their determination and
purpose” (Enc. §/Enc. BD: ; cf. Enc. P § A, : ).
In the context of contemporary philosophy of biology, this position would seem to resemble
Richard Boyd’s homeostatic property cluster theory of natural kinds (cf. , ).
The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature
On this view, concrete, individual oak trees are seen as realizations of a
preexisting goal-structure determined by the natural kind “oak tree.”
As deVries (cf. , ) points out, such goal-directedness relies on the
idea that the goal is, in some sense or other, ideal or good, a standard that
ought to be realized in one particular way rather than another. But, as he
also makes clear, this does not mean that such a standard is always perfectly
met. Objective purposes, just like the intentional ends of agents, are
approximations to a goal that is achieved in higher or lesser degrees of
perfection. The teleological character of Hegel’s essentialism thus makes it
possible to reconcile individual imperfection with the assumption of
immanent universals as immanent essences: Such essences do not have
to be realized in full perfection, rather it is intrinsic to their teleological
character that they constitute immanent goals that can be achieved to
various degrees of perfection (cf. WL GW : –/SL ). As Hegel
himself puts it, the “finitude [of things] consists in the fact that their
particular [character] may or may not be adequate to the universal” (Enc.
§/Enc. BD: ). Such finitude, however, is not a sign of the absence
of universals in nature. Quite to the contrary, natural things are regarded as
finite precisely because they have inner standards which they can fail to live
up to; and as mentioned earlier in Section ., it was always part of the
conceptual realist’s case that the substance universal provides a normative
standard in this way, making this a feature of the position rather than
a bug.
That being said, nominalist readers may want to retort that Hegel’s
remarks about the “feebleness of the concept in nature” do not only
pertain to individual imperfections but also to the very standards individ-
uals (arguably) strive to realize. For example, Hegel writes: “The feebleness
of the concept in nature [. . .] not only subjects the formation of individ-
uals to external accidents [. . .] but also makes the genera themselves
completely subservient to the changes of the external universal life of nature”
(Enc. § R/Enc. P § R, : ). It might appear that Hegel believes
Rejecting a Kantian account of purposes as mere aids for our reflection, Hegel says that to the extent
that we recognize the inner goal structure of things as their universal content, “[t]his universality of
things is not something subjective and belonging to us; it is, rather, the [. . .] objectivity, and actual
being of the things themselves” (Enc. P § A, : ).
This has also been noticed by Knappik, according to whom Hegel holds the view that the concepts
of living things “come with standards that individual organisms and persons aim to live up to.”
While “these standards are defined by sets of individually necessary properties [. . .] which are
required for a full realization” of a kind-specific concept, Hegel, according to Knappik,
“emphasizes” that individual exemplars “can fall short of such full realization” (Knappik
, ).
that in nature not just individuals but also the standards themselves
(genus-concepts such as “oak tree” and “lion”) are affected by the feeble-
ness of the concept. This, and other remarks by Hegel in similar a spirit,
can be accommodated within a nominalist account of universals. However,
a nominalist interpretation is not the only way to make sense of what
Hegel says here and given the overall textual evidence for conceptual
realism it is not the most convincing one either.
In order to distinguish and then evaluate both readings, consider the
following scenario. Suppose the essence of the kind “oak tree” includes
that its members grow flowers in spring that develop into acorns when
pollinated. Now suppose we find a tree that follows the overall organiza-
tional patterns of oak trees but won’t grow any such flowers. It may seem
that this tree could either be classified as a poor example of the kind “oak
tree” or as an instance of the different kind of “noak trees,” for which it is
not essential to grow acorn-producing flowers in spring. In the latter case,
it is not that the tree fails to realize the standard determined by the kind of
oak trees; there is nothing wrong with it, it simply realizes different
standards determined by a different genus concept.
Now, a nominalist would analyze this scenario as follows: Because
nature does not contain either of the kind-concepts of oak trees or “noak
trees,” it is up to us to decide whether we are faced with a poor oak or with
something entirely different, such as a “noak tree.” Since nature is
governed by contingency, the decision is a matter of the subject’s choice
instead of the world’s own structure. However, from the standpoint of
conceptual realism, things look different: Since the standards things aspire
to realize are objective and immanent to natural things, it cannot be
arbitrary whether something is a bad oak tree or rather a member of a
different kind. For each and any such decision there must be an objectively
correct way of analyzing some individual as either a defective instance of a
kind or as a member of a different kind.
The question is whether such an appeal to a definitive division of natural
kinds is compatible with what must be acknowledged as Hegel’s claim that
biological kinds are affected by contingency. In order to make this decision
we have to examine the way in which Hegel believes the concept is realized
in nature, that is, his account of the idea of life. The concept, says Hegel in
this context, “is the impulse that gives itself reality through a process of
objectification” (WL GW : /SL ). Life as a logical category
describes such realization in terms of an unadulterated self-relation of the
concept. In nature, however, this impulse is not purely conceptual but
conditioned by contingent, for example environmental, factors:
The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature
As treated in the philosophy of nature, as the life of nature and to that
extent exposed to the externality of existence, life is conditioned by inorganic
nature and its moments as idea are a manifold of actual shapes. Life in the
idea is without such presuppositions, which are in shapes of actuality; its
presupposition is the concept. (WL GW : /SL )
For the type of beings that enjoy natural life, what it means to realize their
immanent standard is not to realize a pure ideal but something more
mundane: a compromise between the perfect self-relation of the concept
and the conditions of contingent existence. What Hegel says in this
passage implies that the realization of universals in nature has contingent
presuppositions. But saying this is a way of explaining the existence of
universals in nature, not a way of denying it. The fact that natural kinds
are, in part, conditioned by contingent factors does not allow an inference
to the claim that they are nonexistent. Far from claiming the absence of
immanent universals in nature, Hegel puts forth the idea instead that the
reality of these universals is conditioned by contingent factors. This view is
also operative in the Philosophy of Nature where Hegel says that “one side
of it [nature] is formed by the conceptually generated necessity of its
formations and their rational determination within the organic totality,
and the other by their indifferent contingency and indeterminable irregu-
larity” (Enc. §/Enc. P : ). As he goes on, the “impotence of
nature is to be attributed to its only being able to maintain the determin-
ations of the concept in an abstract manner, and to its exposing the
foundation of the particular to determination from without” (Enc. §/
Enc. P : ). This shows that by the “impotence of nature” Hegel
means that the concept is not fully autonomous in nature but not that it is
absent from it. The true upshot of what Hegel says here is that the
realization of universals in nature is a joint venture (so to speak) between
the conceptual core of actuality and its contingent reality. But the fact that
universals such as “lion” and “oak tree” are shaped partly by contingent
factors does not make them unreal. Thus, there is no need to depart from
what is generally Hegel’s view, namely that reason is a feature of the world
and not just of our thinking.
This interpretation also aligns well with what Hegel intimates about the
division of biological kinds. Considering the Janus-faced character of
essence in nature, Hegel recommends the joint application of “[t]wo
principles [. . .] in determining the difference between animal genera”
(Enc. P § A, : ). One principle directly concerns the universal
form of animal life: The essence of an animal kind is characterized by a
form of self-realization which constitutes its purely conceptual structure.
The other “is, that the organic type’s scale of development is essentially
connected with the elements into which animal life is cast” (Enc. P § A,
: ). As such, the purposes that self-realize in nature are partly condi-
tioned by contingent factors. Thus, it could be that some oak trees develop
in a way that means they can no longer reproduce, in which case they would
be defective members of the kind; or they could develop to have a different
way to reproduce themselves, in which case it might make sense to classify
them as “noak trees” instead. But either way, it would be wrong to conclude
that this made the kind they exemplify either nonimmanent to the things it
ensouls or unintelligible to knowers who thoughtfully observe them.
However, despite the responses we have given to the nominalist chal-
lenge, a concern may still remain surrounding Hegel’s talk of the “impo-
tence” of nature and the way in which it is “concept-less” (cf. Wolf ,
). In Section ., we acknowledge that there is one further dimension of
Hegel’s thinking here that we have not yet covered – but argue that while it
does embody a criticism of nature from Hegel’s perspective, it is not
incompatible with the essentialist commitments we wish to attribute to him.
. The Infinite Manifoldness of Nature
As we have seen, one passage that is important to the nominalist reading of
Hegel on nature is the one where he speaks of “the impotence of nature” in
the Science of Logic; and this may seem all the more challenging for the
conceptual realist when it is cited in full:
This is the impotence of nature, that it cannot abide by and exhibit the
rigor of the concept and loses itself in a blind manifoldness void of concept.
We can wonder at nature, at the manifoldness of its genera and species, in
the infinite diversity of its shapes, for wonder is without concept
and its object is the irrational. It is allowed to nature, since nature is the
self-externality of the concept, to indulge in this diversity, just as spirit, even
though it possesses the concept in the shape of the concept, lets itself
go into pictorial representation and runs riot in the infinite manifoldness
of the latter. The manifold genera and species of nature must not be
esteemed to be anything more than arbitrary notions of spirit engaged in
pictorial representations. Both indeed show traces and intimations of the
concept, but they do not exhibit it in a trustworthy copy, for they are the
sides of its free self-externality; the concept is the absolute power precisely
because it can let its difference go free in the shape of self-subsistent
diversity, external necessity, accidentality, arbitrariness, opinion – all of
which, however, must not be taken as anything more than the abstract
side of nothingness. (WL GW : /SL )
The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature
It is easy to think that in saying that the “manifold genera and species of
nature must not be esteemed to be anything more than arbitrary notions of
spirit engaged in pictorial representations,” Hegel is confining genera and
species to a way in which we choose to view the world rather than being
features of how things are, thus undermining the realist case completely.
However, we now suggest, while this passage does indeed tell us something
significant about Hegel’s views concerning the inadequacy of nature in
certain important respects, this does nothing to undermine his commit-
ment to essentialism – which we take to be an interpretative advantage of
our approach to this passage, as this then makes it compatible with the
many other passages in which Hegel seems to endorse essentialism, and
which are highlighted by the conceptual realist (cf. Stern , –,
–, –).
First of all, it is important to put this passage in context. It comes in the
second subsection of the chapter on “The Concept” in Hegel’s Science of
Logic, where he is dealing with “The Particular Concept,” having dealt
with “The Universal Concept” in the previous subsection. By speaking of
“particularity” here, Hegel does not mean singularity (which is the topic of
the next subsection) but the division of a concept into particular types –
for example, isosceles, scalene, and equilateral are particularizations of the
universal “triangle,” as these are the three ways in which something can be
a triangle. As Hegel notes, there is thus an affinity here between how a
universal relates to its particularization and how a genus relates to the
species that fall under it.
However, in discussing this example of a triangle in his Introduction to
the Science of Logic, Hegel claims that this division is
not implicit in the determinateness of the triangle itself, that is, not in
what is usually called the concept of a triangle, no more than in the
concept of animal in general, or of mammal, bird, etc., one can find the
determinations according to which animal in general is divided into
mammal, bird, etc., and these classes are then divided into further genera.
(WL GW : /SL )
Hegel argues that while “[s]uch determinations are taken from elsewhere,
from empirical intuition,” and so “come to those so-called concepts from
without,” by contrast when it comes to the “philosophical treatment of
division, the concept must show that it itself holds the source of the
determinations” (WL GW : /SL ), which is what Hegel claims for
his division of the Logic into Being, Essence, and Concept, and likewise
elsewhere for other parts of his system, such as the division of beauty in art
into the three forms of symbolic, classical, and romantic (MM : –/
LFA : –). Similarly, in an example Hegel gives just before the
passage we are discussing, he argues that there can be a complete division
into two ways in which causality can manifest itself, namely as cause and as
effect (WL GW : /SL ).
Now, it is precisely at this point that Hegel draws a contrast with species
in nature, as “there are more than two species to be found in any genus in
nature, and these many species cannot stand in the same relation to each
other as the one we have been discussing [viz. complete division]” (WL
GW : /SL ). The key contrast here, then, is a case where we can
particularize a universal genus into species through an a priori process of
complete division, and where we cannot – and the point Hegel is making
here is that we cannot do this when it comes to nature, in a way that we
can for the Logic and also for forms of art.
It is this, then, that Hegel has in mind when he talks in our passage
about the “impotence of nature,” namely that it does not manifest the
“rigor” of the concept in the sense it cannot be divided completely into
species in this way, but instead each genus has many different particular-
izations, which makes nature manifold in a way that the categories of Logic
and forms of art are not – there are only three divisions to those categories
and art forms, but there are potentially endlessly many ways of being a
parrot, a horse, or a human being, and we therefore cannot deduce these
ways a priori, hence the “impotence” of the concept in these domains.
Moreover, Hegel warns here, we should not allow ourselves to be
impressed by this manifoldness of nature and think it makes nature
somehow superior to logical categories or art forms. On the contrary,
while this manifoldness might lead us to wonder at nature, and enable it
to appeal to our representational capacity, this manifoldness should be
viewed more severely as a definite fault from a rational perspective,
precisely because in all this exuberant diversity we do not find any real
rational order, because there is no way to move here from the universal to
its division into particular types in a complete and a priori manner; this
makes nature an “unreliable copy” of the concept, which is beset by “self-
subsistent diversity” (i.e., a diversity that does not itself come from the
Hegel makes similar remarks regarding the division of all the parts of his system, including “the Idea
of nature” into mechanics, physics, and organics (Enc. §/Enc. P : ).
Hegel allows that when it comes to art, there may also be some difficulties in fitting everything into
the systematic division into the types of individual arts (architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and
poetry), and once more we should not allow ourselves to be impressed by this as again it betokens a
kind of “impotence,” just as it does in nature (MM : –/LFA, : –).
The Feebleness of the Concept in Nature
universality of the concept), thereby giving rise to “external necessity,
accidentality, arbitrariness, opinion” (WL GW : /SL ) in the kinds
of diversity that are to be found. Nonetheless, Hegel reassures us, this does
not mean that nature is wholly other than the concept, as the concept has
the “absolute power” to let this exuberance of nature carry on without its
being overcome, so that even in all this manifoldness, “traces and intim-
ations” of the concept are still to be found in nature (cf. MM : –/
LFA : ), though we must allow that nature would be more rational if
this manifoldness were not so and everything in nature could be deduced
from the concept. However, as Hegel argues elsewhere, the kind of
contingency that leads to this manifoldness is itself essential to nature, and
so in that sense it is something we can explain and should not surprise us.
Now, if this is the right way to understand this key passage, where does
it leave the conceptual realist? In our view, it leaves their position intact, as
it is no part of conceptual realism that the individuals for whom kind
membership is essential belong to kinds that can be deduced a priori. The
essentialist claim is just that kind membership is essential to the individuals
who belong to those kinds, not that these kinds can be deduced from some
higher kind in an a priori manner. The essentialist can of course allow that
this might be possible, as Hegel does in the divisions he offers in the Logic
and in his aesthetics. But while it may possible in these cases, this does not
mean when it is not, being a dog is any less essential to an individual; and
when it is not possible, nor does this prevent Hegel stating that kind
membership is essential, as we have seen.
As a result, therefore, we believe the conceptual realist can accommodate
the claims that Hegel makes regarding how nature is problematic to reason
in certain key respects, but without this undermining the central point that
the conceptual realist wants to make, and thus without this undercutting
its arguments against those who read Hegel differently. The carpet, it
therefore seems, is flat after all.
Cf. Henrich’s () classic interpretation of Hegel’s theory of contingency.
We are very grateful to Brady Bowman, Franz Knappik, James Kreines, and Clark Wolf for
discussion of their readings of Hegel on these issues, and to our Sheffield colleagues Luca
Barlassina, Will Morgan, and Jerry Viera for good naturedly considering with us where Hegel
might stand in relation to contemporary debates.
Nature and Its Limits
Hegel’s Idealist Critiques of Physicalism, Naturalism,
and Essentialism
Sebastian Stein
Time is a game played beautifully by children.
Heraclitus, Fragment
It has recently been suggested that Hegel’s notions of a mind-independent
nature and of a consciousness-external, “real” world imply that the labels of
“essentialism” (Knappik ) and “naturalism” (Pinkard ) are suitable
for describing his philosophical position. This is accompanied by discussions
of Hegel’s Geist as “second nature” (Khurana ; Wretzel ), an
emphasis on Hegel’s notions of “life” (Ng ) and immanent teleology
(Koch ), and seemingly neo-Aristotelian interpretations of Hegel’s
metaphysics (Kreines ) and his practical philosophy (Novakovic
b). These readings mostly aim to contrast Hegel’s philosophical stance
with Kant’s and Fichte’s commitment to the alleged reduction of nature and
objective reality to being a function of subjective mind. They also emphasize
the objective status of Hegel’s concepts that structure metaphysical, natural,
and spiritual reality. Hegel has thus been labeled a “(Neo-)Platonist” and an
“Aristotelian” “realist” because his “concept” is akin to objectively manifest,
reality-structuring “natural kinds” (Knappik , –).
Against such labels and emphasis, it is argued in this chapter that realist,
essentialist, and other naturalist readings risk not accounting for Hegel’s
decidedly post-Kantian, unapologetically idealist, and irreducible realm
of Geist within which all nature is embedded, that is “sublated” (Enc.
§/Enc. I: ). From the perspective of Hegel’s indeterminacy-
accommodating and thus supernatural realm of Geist, Geist is all there is:
Geist is “the truth of nature” as nature has “vanished” (Enc. §/Enc. I: )
in it and been turned into Geist’s objectivity. Threatening to obscure this
As for example in his philosophy of nature.
While a sublation of nature into Geist does entail that at least in some sense, Geist does “not leave
nature behind” (Wretzel , ), it undermines the notion that at the level of Geist, Geist is
somehow grounded in or dependent on nature, as if nature were ontologically first and Geist second.
Nature and Its Limits: Hegel’s Idealist Critiques
conceptual fact, the labels “naturalism,” “realism,” and “essentialism” risk an
association of Hegel’s absolute idealism with Geist-undermining physicalism
and natural reductionism as well as with pre-Kantian substance and
rationalist metaphysics.
While it is true that Hegel argues against Kant and Fichte in favor of an
irreducibly “real” realm of “nature as such” rather than just of “nature for
Geist,” he still remains a distinctly post-Kantian philosopher of Geist about
the conceptual structure of mind-related reality and denies that Geist’s
unconditioned and indeterminacy-featuring, self-positing subjectivity can
be explained with reference to a “realist,” objective principle such as
nature, substance, a cosmic ideas-oriented order, or a presupposed god
(Stein ). Hegel might thus be a “naturalist” about “nature as such,”
but he is also a spiritualist about Geist while ultimately, he is an (absolute)
idealist about both nature and Geist.
More precisely, given the architecture and labels of Hegel’s encyclopedic
system, the name “essentialist naturalist” is shown to imply that he is a
physicalist reductionist due to the essence-like, mediation-centered position
that physics takes within his philosophy of nature. As an analysis of his
philosophical account of physics illustrates, Hegel rejects physicalism on the
grounds that its assumption of a difference between physical form and
physical bodies sabotages an explanation of why form is able to define,
guide, and give particularity to individual bodies in the way physics implies.
Furthermore, it is argued that even if the meaning of “naturalism”
included all the categories of Hegel’s philosophy of nature and thus also
“Mechanics” and “Organics,” his arguments about the sublation of nature
into Geist and about Geist’s irreducibility imply that he would still reject
the naturalist label. A discussion of nature’s most concrete category, “the
death of the individual” (Enc. §/MM : ), is used to illustrate how
the category of “nature” assumes a difference between the particularity of
Describing Geist as a “second nature” that “is nature, too” (Wretzel , ) and thus thinking of it
as a continuation of nature “by other means” (Wretzel , ) could be taken to suggest that
Geist’s unity is ontologically dependent on nature’s disunity in a manner that contradicts Geist’s
irreducibility and Hegel’s argument that on the level of Geist, Geist accommodates nature and is
defined by a distinctly unnatural and supernatural, indeterminacy- and unity-based, self-
determination (Enc. §/Enc. I: ff.). This absolute status of Geist also applies in the context of
Hegel’s anthropology where the distinctly geistige and nature-accommodating soul ontologically
embeds the seemingly “natural” elements that are sublated in Geist and are able to affect the soul
because they are Geist as well.
Hegel does at times loosely employ the term “essence” to rhetorically stress the realist dimension of
his notion of the concept and its shapes (cf. Knappik , ). However, he argues in his Logic
that “objective” (WL SL vii), essentialist notions of reality and thought are overcome by his concept-
based ontology (cf. WL SL ).
the individual organism’s life and the death-inducing negativity of its
genus’ universality and therefore fails to explain the implied compatibility
of the moments. Since nature ends in death but fails to explain how death
is possible, Hegel would consider a “naturalism” that explains Geist and its
explicitly eternal “life” (Enc. §Z/Enc. I: ) in terms of nature to be
an inconsistent “philosophy of death.”
The chapter ends with the argument that Hegel’s absolute idealism
would be mischaracterized if one were to subscribe to a more – and maybe
the most – abstract sense of “naturalism” as “metaphysical essentialism.”
According to Hegel’s Logic, essentialism is committed to the priority of an
essential universal over an unessential particular and ends up undermining
both. This also applies to essence-based descriptions of the relationship
between a subjective mind and an objective world: According to Hegel,
essentialist accounts of mind presuppose a “real” and objective, world-
structuring principle and define mind’s subjectivity as a function of such a
principle. This undercuts the irreducibility of mind’s subjectivity and
thereby the objectivity of the privileged principle. In contrast, Hegel’s
concept-based idealism is designed to balance the mind’s subjectivity and
the world’s objectivity without prioritizing or reducing either.
The chapter consists of three sections. Section . analyzes Hegel’s cri-
tiques of physicalism and of narrow and wide naturalism. This shows that he
would reject the labels “essentialist naturalism” as well as “naturalist essential-
ism” because the former fails to explain its assumed unity of physical bodies
and form and the latter implies either an inconsistent general metaphysics of
essence or an essentialist metaphysics of mind. Section . reconstructs and
analyzes Hegel’s critique of naturalist essentialism and argues that his
concept-metaphysics seek to avoid an essence-based undermining of meta-
physical particularity and of the mind’s subjectivity. The chapter closes with
the analysis in Section . of Hegel’s absolute idealism that conceives of Geist
and nature as irreducible variations of the concept-based idea, arguing that
this makes him neither a naturalist nor a spiritualist but an idealist.
. Hegel vs. Physicalism, Naturalism, and Metaphysical and
Mind-Related Essentialism
.. The Philosophy of Nature and Logical Metaphysics
What would it mean in Hegel’s own terms to think of his idealism as an
“essentialist naturalism”? Systematically, given physics’ essence-style, con-
ceptual concern with mediation that entails its positioning between
Nature and Its Limits: Hegel’s Idealist Critiques
“Mechanics” and “Organics” within the Philosophy of Nature, for Hegel,
“essentialist naturalism” entails a commitment to the absolute status of
physics and thus to the notion that ultimately, all of metaphysical, natural,
and spiritual reality can be explained in terms of the categories of physics.
Within the philosophy of nature, “Physics” parallels the Logic’s pos-
itioning of “essence” that is framed by the logic of “Being” and of “the
Concept” because conceptually, both essence and physics are focused on
relationality and mediation: While the logic of essence conceives of meta-
physical truth as a relation between the essential and the unessential (Enc.
§ff./ENZ ff.), physics describe natural reality as a relation between
form and material bodies (Enc. §ff./ENZ ff.; Enc. §ff./ENZ
ff.). To Hegel, physics thus constitutes nature’s essentialist moment.
The following analysis of Hegel’s account of the features of physics’
categorial framework aims to reconstruct why he rejects physicalism as
an account of fundamental truth by means of his characteristic philosoph-
ical method of a combined conceptual analysis and a reductio ad absurdum.
The more precise context of Hegel’s engagement with physics and
physicalism is located in his philosophy of nature. He there argues that
physics defines the second categorial dimension of “nature,” which itself
constitutes the encyclopedic system’s second part and describes the logical
“idea” (Enc. §/ENZ ) in the form of “self-negation” (Enc. §/ENZ
). While the Logic constitutes the system’s first part and critically deduces
the constituent categories of the idea in its purely logico-metaphysical form
and thereby defines the realm of metaphysical reality and intelligibility, the
idea as nature does the same for the realm of natural entities and events.
Since the “idea of nature” is a variation of the Logic’s “absolute idea,”
nature’s philosophical description aspires to the same degree of “eternal”
(WL SL ; Enc. §/ENZ ) validity as the logico-metaphysical account
of the logical idea. This makes the philosophy of nature a kind of metaphys-
ics, albeit an idea-based and thus “idealist” metaphysics of nature:
Nature is to be considered as a system of levels, where each follows onto the
previous one with necessity and the latter is the truth of the former. But not in
such a way that one is naturally created out of the other but that each is created
in the inner idea that constitutes the ground of nature. (Enc. §/ENZ )
.. Philosophy of Nature and Natural Science
Hegel’s philosophy of nature thus aims to define and deduce only those
categories that he thinks follow from the internal logic of the concept-
based, metaphysical idea in its natural form (Enc. §/ENZ ).
While the empirical and natural scientific definition and discovery of
nature’s categories may and often does historically precede their philosoph-
ical definition and deduction, the philosophy of nature lays claim to
focusing on and deducing only those unconditioned categories that struc-
ture and enable natural science and natural reality. While their philosoph-
ical presentation and deduction empirically presupposes that the
philosopher “thinks through” science and its engagement with empirical
reality, the philosophically discovered categories do not conceptually rely on
empirical reality and science because they are what enables empirical
reality, thought, and science in the first place (Enc. §/MM : ).
Hegel’s philosophy of nature thus aims to show that there is an empirically
unconditioned and conceptually necessary sequence of independent,
intelligibility- and reality-defining categories that ground and structure
nature – and the philosophical categories of physics form part of this
project (Enc. §/MM : ).
.. The Structure of Nature
Hegel then subdivides his philosophical account of nature into the three
moments: “Mechanics,” “Physics,” and “Organics” (Enc. §/MM : ).
The most abstract moment, “Mechanics,” defines the foundation and
abstract categorial presuppositions of physics. Insofar as mechanics’ notions
of “individual bodies” and “form”-representing “gravity” are sublated and
thus integrated into physics, they supply a foundation for physics.
More precisely, Hegel argues that mechanics is nature “[i]n the deter-
mination of externality, of infinite individuation, outside of which the
unity of form is merely in itself and thus only as an ideal, and as something
that is sought. [Mechanics] is matter and its ideal system” (Enc. §/MM
: ). Mechanics thus defines nature as a manifold of spatio-temporal
(Enc. §/ENZ ), material entities (bodies) that repulse and attract
each other; that have weight, transmit movement, and strive toward a
center of gravity. It thus prioritizes the individuality of bodies over any
notion of their formal unity so that unity remains something added to the
weighty, individual bodies and is striven for in the form of a center of
gravity that is never integrated into the bodies (Enc. §/ENZ –).
Hegel argues that this assumed difference between bodies, bodies and
weight, and bodies and the center of gravity prevents mechanics from
explaining why the bodies are heavy, why they are able to relate to each
All translations are by the author unless stated otherwise.
Nature and Its Limits: Hegel’s Idealist Critiques
other, and why gravity has an effect on them: If, by assumption, the
individual bodies differ from each other and from the formal dimensions
of weight and gravity, why can they interact with these? According to
Hegel, mechanics’ inability to answer this conceptually inevitable question
disqualifies it as an account that could exhaust nature. Instead, its short-
coming motivates the more concrete categories of “Physics” and thus the
main categorial framework of “essentialist naturalism.”
.. Hegel on Physics
According to Hegel, physics describes nature in “the determinacy of
particularity, so that reality is defined with immanent formal determin-
ation and a difference that exists as a part of it. Physics is a relation of
reflexivity, where natural individuality constitutes its being-in-itself” (Enc.
§/MM : ).
Physics is thus concerned with the essentialist, reflective prioritization of
the relationship between a prioritized, universality-based, immaterial form
and particular, material matter. Where mechanics assume material bodies’
difference and posit unified form as something added “ad hoc” and
“sought after,” physics discusses how physical form always already relates
to, defines, and guides matter and its individual bodies. Physics thus
conceptually begins with a formal unity that functions as a condition for
the difference of mechanics’ individual bodies and thus defines individual
bodies through differences in universal form. Where mechanics simply
assumes the individual, material bodies’ difference, physics justifies it with
reference to form:
[According to physics, matter] has individuality insofar as it has the being-
for-itself within itself in such a manner that being-for-itself is developed
within matter and thus determines matter in itself. Matter thus emancipates
itself from heaviness, manifests itself, determining itself in itself and deter-
mines the spatial out of itself through its own immanent form in contrast to
heaviness, which was previously only being determined as something other
to matter, as a center that was sought by matter. (Enc. §/ENZ )
Physics thus describes nature in terms of a form that has emancipated itself
from mechanics’ priority of the bodies of individualized matter (Enc.
§/ENZ ). Matter accordingly follows form: Physical bodies are
what they are and behave in the way they do because they are defined
and guided by a body-specific form (that nevertheless differs from the
bodies) (Enc. §/ENZ ). Physics’ form is thus something concrete
that equips individual bodies with a particularity they lacked in mechanics.
Parallel to the beginning of Hegel’s discussion of the Logic’s “logical
essence” with “shine,” “identity,” “difference,” and “contradiction” as
forms of pure relationality (WL SL ), physics begins with the self-
identity of immaterial form for which bodies are indifferent and which
determines matter’s individuality in an immediate manner.
The first of these are what Hegel labels the categories of a “physics of
universal individuality” (Enc. §/ENZ ), where form is initially
purely abstract and slowly increases its materiality. This produces the
categories of “light” as formal self-identity, the formal differentiation of
“darkness,” the form-matter duality of “rigidity,” and the form–body
contradictions that are “the bodies of moons and comets” (Enc. §/
ENZ ). Physical form also immediately structures individual bodies
according to the categories of the “elements” air, fire, water, and earth and
in the “elemental and meteorological process” (Enc. §ff./ENZ ff.).
The more concrete “physics of particular individuality” then describe
how physical form defines the particularity of individual, material bodies
and their interaction with each other and with their environment. This
gives rise to the categories of “specific heaviness,” “adhesion,” “pointed-
ness,” “brittleness,” “linearity,” “rigidity,” “tenacity,” “elasticity,” “cohe-
sion,” “sound,” and “warmth” (Enc. §ff./ENZ ff.) until finally, the
physics of total individuality describe nature as a self-referential form
within which material bodies are utterly defined and guided by form’s
processes (Enc. §ff./ENZ ff.).
Physics’ qualified differentiation of matter’s individuality by form thus
ultimately leads into form’s complete determination of matter. This estab-
lishes form as the totality that defines matter as well as the finite processes
that guide finite, material bodies (Enc. §/ENZ ): Physical bodies
and their procedural interactions are now how form makes and guides
them. This domination of matter by form also shapes the most concrete
physical categories of “magnetism,” “electricity,” and finally “chemical
physics” (Enc. §/ENZ ff.).
.. Hegel’s Rejection of Physicalism
However, even in chemical physics (or “chemism”), the totality of
assumed, form-defined, and form-guided physical bodies and processes
fundamentally differ from the form that determines and differentiates
them. Chemism is accordingly marked by the contradiction between an
overarching, form-based identity of differing bodies and the bodies’ differ-
ence (Enc. §/ENZ ): According to the form, the bodies are one,
Nature and Its Limits: Hegel’s Idealist Critiques
according to their bodily differences, they are many. This enables che-
mism’s form-defined processes in which differentiated, material bodies are
identified while identified bodies are differentiated (Enc. §/ENZ ).
Chemism thus assumes an overarching form that separates and unites
individual bodies so that the bodies’ unity as well as their differences are a
function of this form: The bodies are and behave in the way that the form
determines. Still, even here, the bodies remain finite individuals that differ
from the form and from each other by assumption. The form-based
chemical process is thus also something “external” that happens to inher-
ently chemical bodies. This renders such bodies to be either presuppositions
by the form-based chemical process or results of it (Enc. §/ENZ ff.).
Furthermore, Hegel argues that the individual sequences of the
chemical processes differ from each other and thus define particular, finite
processes that presuppose each other and therefore have a beginning and
an end. They thus fail to automatically lead into one another, which
prevents the kind of “infinite,” self-referential process that is required for
explaining an integrated unity of form and bodies (Enc. §/ENZ ff.).
The bodies of the chemical processes thus remain immediate individuals
throughout: While their analyses result in mutually indifferent products,
even heat-based and other unificatory chemical processes disappear in the
neutral product of the process where bodies and processes remain differ-
entiated (Enc. §/ENZ ).
Crucially, chemical physics thus still fails to explain why form-defined
bodies and the form-based processes that guide them are able to interact in
the first place: If, by assumption, the formal process is immaterial and the
differing bodies are material, why is the form that defines the chemical
process able to affect and determine the bodies at all? While the formally
particularized bodies of chemism are determined through a shared form-
based process, they remain differentiated from it and from each other.
Whether physics discusses () form in absence of bodies, () form-
defined, particular bodies, or () bodies as functions of a formal process, it
consistently assumes the difference between the form’s immateriality and
the bodies’ particularized, material nature and thereby prevents a funda-
mental explanation of their compatibility and even chemism, as the most
concrete category of essentialist nature’s physics, fails to overcome physics’
divisive assumptions:
The chemical process is affected by separation because of the immediacy of
the bodies that enter the process. Its moments thus appear to be external
conditions, whatever separates itself in the process turns into mutually
indifferent products, the fire and the inspiration extinguish in neutrality
and do not reignite themselves again; the beginning and the end of the
chemical process differ from each other; – this defines the process’ finitude,
which prevents it from participating in life and which differentiates it
from it. (Enc. §/ENZ )
Hegel thus argues via a reductio ad absurdum that chemism falls victim
to a fundamental self-contradiction when it assumes difference. This
motivates him to reject physics’ claim to being the final and thus absolute
description of the conceptual truth about nature and reality in general.
He thus rejects a reductionist physicalism that claims to explain all
of reality in terms of physics either by suggesting that physical reality is
the purpose of the logical idea’s metaphysical reality and of nature’s
mechanics or by arguing that all seemingly nonphysical facts and events
can be explained in terms of physics. Since physics constitutes nature’s
“essentialist” moment, Hegel’s reductio of physics entails that he rejects
the label of “essentialist naturalism” and of “physicalism” for his philoso-
phy as a whole.
.. Hegel’s Rejection of General Naturalism
Still, one may wonder if Hegel is still a “naturalist” in the sense that he
accepts the idea of nature in its categorial entirety as the most adequate
description of reality. His suggestion that chemism and thus physics is not
the highest determination of nature leaves it open whether nature’s most
concrete determination, “organics” (Enc. §/ENZ ), is able to avoid
self-contradiction.
Hegel thus argues that the inability of physics’ chemical process to
account for the interaction of the processes and bodies is remedied by
organics’ integration of these within a self-referential, internally differenti-
ated, and embodied organic process:
The mutually indifferent bodies are thus defined as a mere moment
of individuality [. . .] ; it is the concrete unity with itself that creates itself
at once out of the particularization of the differentiated bodies. It is the
activity of negating this one-sided form of relation to itself, to separate itself
into the moments of the concept and to particularize itself and at the same
time, to guide itself back into this unity. This is the infinite, self-igniting
and maintaining process, the organism. (Enc. §/MM : )
Within the organism, all form-defined processes as well as all form-shaped,
individual bodies are thus united in a self-perpetuating unity (Enc. §/
MM : ). Each moment is cause and effect, and each sustains and
Nature and Its Limits: Hegel’s Idealist Critiques
depends on every other moment through the shared, bodies-coordinating
and -animating form. This enables organics to explain the bodies’ and
form’s compatibility: The organic bodies and the form-based organic
process are a unity from the beginning; the form renders the bodies what
they are and the bodies enable the self-referential, formal process. Bodies
and form support and orientate each other, the bodies are the formal
process and vice versa. The bodies are compatible because their identity
integrates their difference and their individuality is a function of the
overarching form: The individual aspects of the organic body are shaped
by the process; it is their coordinating principle. Bodies are how they are
and they function in the way they do because the form is their organizing,
procedural principle. Meanwhile, the formal process of life is only possible
because of the bodies and their contributions. Organics’ fundamental
unification of the form’s universality and the bodies’ particularity enables
it to explain the particulars as aspects of the universal’s self-reference.
As the final, most concrete dimension of nature, Hegel’s organics thus
describe how the form and the bodies’ individuality are integrated in an
“immediate” manner (Enc. §ff./MM : ff.): They are one and they
can be differentiated at all because they are always already united. This
notion informs the categories of “plant life” (Enc. §/MM : ) and
finally of “animal life” (Enc. §/MM : ), which includes “illness”
(Enc. §/MM : ) and “the death of the individual animal” (Enc.
§/MM : ). All of these undermine physics’ claim to being the most
concrete description and purpose of natural reality because they manage to
explain the compatibility of form and bodies out of a prioritized yet
internally differentiated unity that escapes physics’ assumption of the differ-
ence between form and bodies. This “deduction” of organics amounts to
Hegel’s proof of how and why physicalism self-contradicts and why the label
“physicalist” is inadequate for describing his philosophy. Mechanics’ and
physics’ self-undermining assumption of a difference between bodies and
form is thus overcome in the unity-based notion of organics.
.. Hegel’s Critique of Organics and Broad Naturalism:
From Nature to Geist
Does this entail that Hegel is a “naturalist” in the sense that organics as
nature’s highest categorial form are deemed to be the most adequate
description of reality? A case can be made to the contrary. In the
Philosophy of Nature, Hegel argues by way of yet another reductio that
even organics’ and thus nature’s most concrete category, the “death of the
individual out of itself” (Enc. §/MM : ), suffers from a difference-
related self-contradiction. By describing what he perceives to be the
immanent contradiction in the categories of “individual animal life and
death,” Hegel thus sets out to refute the notion that nature could be the
most concrete category of reality.
Following his deductions and critiques of the categories of “the nonliv-
ing organism,” “plant life,” and “animal life,” Hegel argues that the
category of “the living individual animal” (Enc. §/MM : ) repre-
sents organics’ and thus nature’s most advanced category that describes the
purpose of mechanical and physical reality: These exist so that natural life
can exist. However, organics’ “living (animal) individual” is confronted by
an internal, negative force that first leads to its “illness” and then to its
eventual “death” (Enc. §/MM : ). In both cases, this negation of
natural life has its roots in the assumed difference between the universality
of the living individual’s genus on the one hand and the living individual’s
particularity (Enc. §/ENZ ) on the other: The particular individual
fails to live up to the immanent, universal standard of its natural genus.
The category of “the animal’s death” proves that in all of nature, univer-
sality, and particularity remain fundamentally unreconciled: Death’s
universality-based negativity contradicts the particularity of life entailing
that the ultimate purpose of natural life is death. To Hegel, this renders
naturalism a “philosophy of death” because despite organisms’ birth,
sustenance, growth, and procreation, they must eventually, and finally, die.
However, this notion of death also raises the question why the genus’
negativity is able to destroy the individual at all. If the genus’ universality
differs from the individual’s particularity to the degree that they funda-
mentally contradict each other, why are they able to interact in the first
place? According to Hegel, death’s annihilating effect on natural life
implies that the two must be identical from the start: The genus’ univer-
sality is able to destroy life’s particularity because from the beginning, they
are aspects of the same unity.
This realization gives rise to the notion that particular individuality
must be an aspect of the negativity of the genus’ self-referring universality
(Enc. §ff./ENZ ). In negating the individual’s particularity, the
genus’ universality truly negates itself, albeit in particular form. What
seems to be an external negation of particularity is thus truly a self-negation
by universality. Death’s contradiction between the particular individual’s
life and the genus’ universality turns out to be an internal dynamic of a
particularity-accommodating universality’s overarching self-reference (Enc.
§/ENZ ).
Nature and Its Limits: Hegel’s Idealist Critiques
.. The Emergence of Geist out of Nature
According to Hegel, this categorial shift away from nature and death
undermines nature’s absolute status and rejects the notion that “death”
constitutes the final purpose of reality. It gives rise to the category of
“Geist” (Enc. §/ENZ ). Geist’s all-encompassing unity identifies ()
the genus’ seemingly individuality-external, universality-based negativity
and () the individual’s particular positivity. It renders them aspects of an
explicitly self-referring category: Geist is both genus and particular individ-
ual so that within Geist, individuality becomes an aspect of the genus’ self-
reference. Now, all exists and happens within Geist, everything forms part
of Geist’s concrete universality (Enc. §/ENZ ). This includes the
Logic’s metaphysical categories, mechanical and physical facts and events,
and natural life, pain, sickness, and death (Enc. §/Enc. I: ). These
have become features of Geist’s negativity-driven, particularity- and
individuality-accommodating self-reference so that all positivity and all
negation is an articulation of Geist.
Since all is within Geist, there is nothing to contradict Geist: All negation
is a self-negation undertaken by Geist’s self-referential, dynamic “eternity”
(Enc. §/Enc. I: ). In contrast to nature, Geist’s particularity is now
“adequate” to its genus because the two are aspects of the same metaphys-
ical principle. Consequently, nothing can harm or kill the particular,
geistige individuals that constitute the “appearance of Geist” apart from
Geist’s own universality (Enc. §/Enc. I: ). However, such annihila-
tion of individual geistige beings is not a “suicide” by Geist as this would
imply an unreconciled inadequacy to obtain between them as Geist’s
particular manifestations and Geist’s universality. This is impossible since
from the beginning, Geist’s universal and its particulars are explicitly
integrated and thus “live up to each other’s standards.” Since geistige beings
are universal Geist as much as universal Geist is particular geistige beings,
the creation and destruction of Geist’s particulars by Geist’s universality is
Geist’s life rather than its death.
The self-positing structure of Geist entails that in contrast to animals, the natural drives of geistige
agents are always informed by the active indeterminacy of the will that enables the agent to choose to
negate, assert, form and direct the drives in any way she or he sees fit (cf. PRH ff.). This Kant-
inherited notion of active and spontaneous indeterminacy is unavailable to (neo-)Aristotelian
essentialist naturalism. This also entails that our drive-related, moral, and ethical orientation does
not unconsciously grow like a tree grows from a germ to its final form (PRH ) but is actively
formed through the “supernatural” power of our geistige will’s indeterminacy (PRH ).
This overarching self-referentiality of Geist implies that Geist has already
overcome any possible obstacle, that it has recovered from any compli-
cation and has negated any negation: Since all negation is internal to Geist,
it is in its service from the beginning. Meanwhile, “we” are Geist’s
consciousness-equipped appearance and from “our” perspective, we con-
front an objective, obstacle-ridden reality, live, suffer hardship, get ill, and
die. To us, Geist appears to be limited as much as we are insofar as we think
of it in terms of our consciousness. In truth, however, our suffering and
death is a Geist-internal event, expressive of Geist’s self-development and -
negation. It is not Geist that is negated in the individual suffering and
death but Geist lives in and through the life and death of its particular
individuals (Enc. §/Enc. I: ff.). Individuals live, suffer, and die
within Geist’s “eternal” (Enc. §Z/Enc. I: ) and thus self-referential
life. In contrast to nature, Hegel argues, Geist’s overarching and self-
referential unity is explicit from the beginning so nature’s and thus
naturalism’s “philosophy of death” is replaced by a Geist-based philosophy
of explicitly anti-naturalistic, “eternal life” (Enc. §/MM : ).
.. Geist and the Sublation of Nature
Crucially, nature’s categorial sublation within Geist reveals Geist to be the
true ground of nature. This entails that nature’s time, space, mechanics,
physics, life, and death exist as mind-related aspects of Geist (Enc. §/
Enc. I:). While the Philosophy of Nature describes nature as inde-
pendent reality, the Philosophy of Spirit (Geist) describes “nature” – with
the human body and man-made objective reality – as part of Geist’s
objective dimension. Nature as such thus becomes a dimension of Geist
and is thus “nature in, for and as Geist.”
At the level of Geist, all that seems to be “natural,” like parts of the
mind-external world, the mind-related body, the mind-internal psycho-
logical drives, etc., are thus truly Geist that presents itself “as if it were not
itself” (Enc. §/Enc. I:). What seems to be nature to “us” truly is
Geist in objective form(s). Tautologically, from Geist’s conceptual perspec-
tive barring philosophy, Geist is all there is and all metaphysical and natural
realities are an aspect of it.
For a constructivist reading of nonnatural Geist cf. Pippin .
If there were anything else but Geist at Geist’s ontological level, for example non-geistige nature, Geist
would be incompatible with and geistige beings could not cognize or interact with it.
Nature and Its Limits: Hegel’s Idealist Critiques
To Hegel, Geist is thus the ontologically “first” (Enc. §/Enc. I:)
foundation and “ground” of the objective and subjective, mind-related
world: The objective world that finite, geistige beings confront can only be
explained as the objective aspect of Geist and thus as related to Geist’s
subjective dimension “mind.” It is thus nature’s status as sublated in Geist
and thus as an aspect of Geist that enables the explanation of nature’s
compatibility with Geist’s “soul,” “consciousness,” and “mind”: The seem-
ingly natural, objective dimension of Geist successfully relates to these
because these are Geist.
. Hegel vs. Essentialism
.. Hegel and Naturalist Essentialism
Hegel thus not only rejects the essentialist naturalist position of
physicalism but also defies a broader naturalism when he rejects the most
concrete category of nature in favor of Geist. And yet, this leaves open the
possibility that he might still be a “naturalist essentialist” who argues in
favor of truly objective essences of entities and events that are in some
sense mind- and thus subjectivity-independent.
As recent interpreters have pointed out, Hegel’s remarks about “real”
concepts that define the world instead of just existing in and through the
mind’s subjectivity allow for this question: Are Hegel’s concepts “real” in
the sense that they play a role similar to the one that essences and claims
about the “nature” of entities and events played in the substance-meta-
physics of Plato, Aristotle, and some rationalists? Put in their terms, is
Hegel a naturalist essentialist?
.. Hegel’s Critique of Metaphysical Essentialism
Parts of an answer might be found in Hegel’s critique of essentialist
metaphysics and in the structure of his notion of Geist. In his Logic,
Hegel argues that by the ever implicit and thus inevitable standard of
“the Concept,” all notions of truth that rely on any form of essentialist
Hegel argues that this does not entail the subjective idealist thesis that denies the reality of “nature as
such”: From the system’s overarching perspective, the “objective” (Enc. § Enc. I:)
ontological domain of “nature as such” determines Geist negatively as “subjective” domain. At the
same time, the domain of Geist determines nature so that each can only be comprehended in
negative delineation from the other. Nature as objective idea is “not Geist,” that is the “subjective
idea,” while Geist is “not nature” that is the “objective idea” (Enc. § Enc. I:).
metaphysics eventually self-contradict. Each contradiction leads to its
replacement by ever more concrete, still essentialist categories until the
most elaborate essentialist account of truth in the form of “reciprocity”
(WL SL ) self-contradicts and is sublated into the notion of “the
concept” (WL SL ). What does essentialism get wrong?
Hegel identifies essentialism’s commitment to relationality and “mediation”
as the fundamental source of the essentialist categories’ self-contradictions (WL
SL ). They assume a difference between the “essential” and the “unessen-
tial” and even the most concrete categories of essence maintain that truth
consists of two elements that relate to, determine, and mediate each other
while one of them is prioritized over the other (WL SL ). This renders the
categories of the Logic of Essence unable to explain each category’s moments’
determination with reference to its reflective counterpart: Like the “essential”
is not the “inessential” so the “thing” is not its “properties,” “substance” is not
its “accidents,” “existence” is not its “ground,” etc. (Enc. §/Enc. BD:;
Enc. §/Enc. BD:; Enc. §/Enc. BD:).
The logic of essence thus assumes determinacy through mediation and
relationality. Initially, the categories of essence consist in the forms of
seemingly relata-free relationality called “identity,” “difference,” “contradic-
tion,” and “ground” (Enc. §ff./Enc. BD:ff.), while the more con-
crete categories explicate the mutual determining and mediation of two
relata. This enables the notion that no moment is simply assumed or
presupposed: There is a reason for each moment’s existence and determin-
ation that inheres in its relationship to its counterpart so that each moment
is mediated and justified with reference to its other. While this blocks the
charge that one simply assumes an immediate, self-identical notion of truth,
it enables another: as was the case with physics’ framing of form and bodies,
assuming the logical moments’ difference renders inexplicable how and why
the moments are compatible in the first place. Since their difference is
posited as fundamental, their compatibility becomes inexplicable.
Still, what makes the categories of essence appealing is their ability to
convey a sense of “realism”: They suggest that there is a prioritized,
objective, and thus “real” universal truth, order, harmony, nature,
substance, etc. on which the subordinated, inessential particulars such as
modi, accidents, and properties depend (Enc. §ff./Enc. BD:ff.).
At the same time, the subordinated particular elements are not mere,
reducible illusions because they aid in determining the prioritized univer-
sal. Nevertheless, the prioritized, universal truth is privileged over the
subordinated particular and thus retains a sense of “realist” priority and
objectivity in the face of the subordinated moment’s “subjectivity.”
Nature and Its Limits: Hegel’s Idealist Critiques
And yet, Hegel maintains that the essentialist difference between uni-
versal and particulars is itself instable: While the moments’ difference is
assumed and thus enables their mutual mediation, it is not intelligible why
the differentiated entities are able to relate to each other in the first place.
Unless the universal and particular elements are explicable in terms of a
singular unity that explains how the differentiated elements mutually
constitute and hang together without undermining their specific determin-
ation (Enc. §/Enc. BD:), their compatibility remains inexplicable.
However, in one sense the logic of essence achieves such unity because
in order to ensure the compatibility of its moments, the prioritized,
identity-representing universal moment is posited as absolute: For
example, the universality of “the thing” precedes the particular “proper-
ties,” the “ground” precedes “existence,” and “substance” precedes the
“modi” and “accidents” (WL SL –). And yet, this reduces the
subordinated moment to being a variation of the prioritized moment:
For example, the accident is substance, the appearance is the ground, albeit
in a particular form. This undermines the subordinated moment and
deprives the prioritized moment of a means for its own determination by
mediation (WL SL ). Without a particular to contrast itself with, the
prioritized universal is underdetermined.
Since the Logic of Essence prioritizes the difference of the moments over
their identity, it cannot justify this difference with reference to their
identity (Enc. §/Enc. BD:). The moments are merely implied to
be compatible and thus identical in some sense, which contradicts their
explicitly assumed difference (Enc. §/Enc. BD:). Since the logic of
essence’s argumentative push for the explication of the moments’ reflective
identity comes logically after the assumption of their difference, difference
and identity remain in conflict: Either the moments differ and mutually
mediate or they are identical and are therefore able to relate to each other.
Forced to choose between the moments’ identity and their difference, their
identity is prioritized, which in turn undermines their initially assumed
difference and mutual determination.
For example, given the priority of the universal moment, the particular
“properties” are the universal “thing,” particular “existence” is the universal
“ground,” particular “accidents” are the universal “substance,” etc. The
subordinated, inessential, and particular moment is explained away with
reference to the prioritized, essential, and universal moment: Ultimately,
all there is is the “thing,” the “ground,” the “substance,” etc.
To Hegel, the privileging of the universal thus entails its undermining:
If fundamentally, metaphysical truth is the universal principle, it is not
intelligible what this is determined as because on its own level, it cannot be
contrasted with its particular manifestation. If every inessential particular
truly is the essential universal, all is the universal. So on its own ontological
level, the universal cannot be “non-particularity” and is, therefore, under-
determined. According to Hegel, essentialist logic thus () assumes its
moments’ difference, thereby () provokes the need to unify the moments,
and thereby () leads into the undermining of the moment that is
prioritized in the attempt to unify the moments (Enc. §/Enc.
BD:ff.). The objective “reality” of essentialist metaphysics comes at
the price of irreconcilable self-contradiction.
Given this logical instability of the categories of essence and thus the
metaphysics of essentialism, Hegel rejects essentialism’s strategy of
attempting to guarantee a “realist” sense of the objective, prioritized
universality by assuming the difference between it and its subordinated,
inessential, and particular counterpart. Hegel sets out to improve on this
conceptual instability with his “Logic of the Concept” (WL SL ff.), that
is with his concept-metaphysics, where universality and particularity are
simultaneous rather than hierarchically ordered. To Hegel, the objective
and real validity of concepts is not grounded in their forming part of an
essentialist (e.g., substance-based) cosmic order. Instead, they are real
because they are variations of the reality-defining concept that avoids
essentialist self-contradiction with its universality- and particularity-
balancing unity that he calls “individuality” (Enc. §/Enc. BD:).
The label “naturalist essentialism” accordingly misrepresents Hegel’s
concept-metaphysical anti-essentialism.
.. Hegel’s Critique of Essentialism in the Philosophy of Mind
A similar criticism applies to neo-Aristotelian readings of Hegel in the
context of what he describes in his philosophy of Geist: Unlike some
naturalist and realist interpreters of Hegel can be taken to imply,
Hegel’s finite and particular, geistige subjects do not confront a prioritized,
substance-metaphysics-based, “real” and objective order, or an assumed or
given substance-based objective order of value.
Instead, the objectivity encountered by Hegel’s finite subjects is a
conceptual moment of the same concept-structured Geist that simultan-
eously grounds the mind’s irreducible subjectivity (Enc. §/Enc.
The term is used here not in the technical sense that Hegel assigns to it in the Science of Logic but
rather in the sense of a nonideal, objective objectivity or world order.
Nature and Its Limits: Hegel’s Idealist Critiques
I:ff.). Hegel’s notion of Geist thus balances the mind’s subjectivity and
the world’s objectivity without privileging or reducing either: While we as
soul-, consciousness-, and mind-possessing finite subjects define and con-
front a presupposed, irreducible objectivity, this objectivity is determined
by the irreducible subjectivity of our minds (Enc. §/Enc. I:)
Without our minds’ subjectivity, there are no objective worlds or bodies.
At the same time, our minds’ subjectivity implies a relation to an objective
world and order. According to Hegel, this concept-based notion of the
Geist-based, mutual constitution of objectivity and subjective mind escapes
essentialist and realist accounts as these presuppose a real, objective world
and its order to then explain the mind’s subjectivity in terms of that order.
In contrast to the notion of Geist, Hegel argues, essentialist accounts of
the mind thus undermine the mind’s indeterminacy-based subjectivity:
The mind becomes an aspect of the objectivity of the cosmic, essentialist,
and naturalist order. Ultimately, and despite all assertions to the contrary,
all reality, including the mind, is thus objective. And since there exist no
ontologically independent, undetermined subjects in an essentialist frame-
work, there cannot be individual self-determination or freedom. Whatever
happens, takes place within and because of the objective order and its
principles (Enc. §/Enc. I:). This entails that our subjectivity is
“real” because it is an aspect of the real, presupposed objectivity (nature/
substance) and our minds are capable of cognition and action because
they, too, form part of it. As was the case with general essentialist
metaphysics, this explains the compatibility of our particular minds with
our bodies and with the world: All of these are based on the same objective
order. However, this comes at the price of a reduction of our subjectivity
to the objective order: “We” are compatible with and have access to our
bodies and the ordered world because we are aspects of the same objective
order. Everything that fundamentally exists, including us, is the
objective order.
This not only undermines the irreducible subjectivity of our minds but
also affects our status as particulars: If, ultimately, substance’s objective
universality is all there is, then particular, mind-equipped beings are not
real. Our subjectivity is reduced away, depriving the objective world and
its order of a means of logical mediation.
To avoid this, Hegel bases his account of Geist on the metaphysics of
“the Concept,” according to which the world’s objectivity and the world-
confronting, subjective mind mutually mediate and are as irreducible as
the metaphysical Concept’s moments of universality and of particularity
within the Concept’s individuality (Enc. §/Enc. BD:). The
subjectivity of mind and of the objective world are logically simultaneous:
Neither moment is prioritized in a manner that undermines or reduces the
status of the other. Each moment limits and negatively determines the
other as each is each the other’s negation (Enc. §/Enc. I:). The
moments’ difference is thus justified with reference to their unity and vice
versa. Where the metaphysics of essence assumes difference and could only
establish identity and thus compatibility at the expense of difference, the
logic of the Concept mediates and protects both the moments’ identity
and difference at once (Enc. §/Enc. BD:; cf. Wretzel ).
Hegel’s Geist-related concepts are thus “objectively real” as aspects
of Geist’s objective dimension and they are “subjectively real” as aspects of
Geist’s subjective dimension, that is of the same principle that also appears
in form of our minds. But they can only be so because they are always
already conceptually grounded in concept-based Geist. In contrast to “real-
ist” accounts, Hegel’s thus implies a Geist-internal relationship between an
irreducibly objective reality and an irreducibly subjective mind.
Apart from physicalism and naturalism, Hegel thus also rejects the
“metaphysical naturalism” of pre-Kantian essentialism and of its reduc-
tionist metaphysics of mind and world. What, then, is Hegel’s constructive
alternative to these conceptual competitors?
. Hegel’s Own Concept-Idealism
.. Geist and Nature as Moments of the Idea
On a linear reading of Hegel’s truly circular system, it might seem that he
argues that Geist is all there is and that the logical idea and nature are but
sublated aspects of Geist. Do the metaphysical order of the logical idea and
the natural-metaphysical order of the idea as nature only exist “for,
through, and in Geist”?
Hegel seems to reject this notion when he argues that the sublation of
nature’s externality in Geist’s self-reference does not entail that nature as
such loses its status as Geist-independent reality (Enc. §/Enc. I:).
From the perspective of Geist, nature is always “for Geist” and thus an aspect
of Geist. In this sense, Hegel agrees with the consciousness-based idealisms
of Kant and Fichte: Unless nature would not always already be an aspect of
Geist, nature would not be compatible with, accessible to, and shapeable
by geistige subjects (Enc. §ff./Enc. I:). However, Hegel further
argues that given the primacy of Geist, the logical idea and nature would
only exist because there is Geist. This would render the logical idea
Nature and Its Limits: Hegel’s Idealist Critiques
“abstract Geist” and nature “unconscious Geist,” making Hegel a spiritual-
ist or “Geistphilosoph” rather than an idealist.
And yet, if this were the case, the same contrasting issue that haunted
essentialism would reoccur at the system’s level: If Geist were all there was,
it would have nothing to be contrasted with and it would be determined
and mediated by on its own ontological level (Enc. §/Enc. I:).
This would render Geist underdetermined and incomprehensible.
To avoid this, Hegel’s system describes the logical idea, the idea as
nature, and the idea as Geist as aspects of a “conceptual” relationship in
which the logical idea functions like the metaphysical concept’s
universality, nature like particularity, and Geist-like individuality (Enc.
§/Enc. BD:). This enables him to argue that the logical idea and
nature are not only for Geist but are also real in the same sense in which
Geist is real. The logical idea thus exists “as such” and “for Geist.” Nature
exists “as such” and “for Geist” as the logical idea, nature, and Geist
mediate and define each other within a conceptual unity.
At the most general level of the system, Hegel’s systematic account of
the relationship between logical idea, Geist, and nature may thus be read as
an attempt to defend the reality of the logical idea and of nature in the face
of Geist while enabling the mediation and determination of Geist: The
subjective idea “Geist” is defined as “non-objective” and “non-abstract”
while the objective idea “nature” is “non-subjective” and “non-abstract.”
Meanwhile, the abstract, logical idea is “non-objective” and “non-subjec-
tive.” At the same time, Hegel wants to guarantee that despite these
differences, Geist is still compatible with the logical idea and nature as
they are part of the same unity.
Hegel’s idealism thus fundamentally rests on the notion of the concep-
tual and therefore speculative unity of logical idea, Geist, and nature.
Nature as such and nature-sublating Geist are defined as irreducible,
differentiated, and independently “real” forms of the idea (Enc. D, §/
Enc. BD: ) so that all three forms are immediate and determined
variations of the same idea that mediate and determine each other.
Meanwhile, all three are determinate, differentiated, and still compatible
and knowable (Enc. §/Enc. I:).
The logical idea and nature thus retain their realist properties despite
their unity with and within Geist. The same idea and nature that are
sublated within Geist are also as irreducibly “real” as Geist because from the
overarching, systematic perspective, idea- and nature-sublating Geist
remains determined in contrast to the logical idea and to nature (Enc.
§/Enc. I:).
This enables the claim notion that the idea and nature exist within Geist
and “in their own right”: They cannot be reduced to Geist since Geist is
only what it is in contrast to the logical idea and to nature. Even the idea-
and nature-sublating Geist needs the contrast to the logical idea and to
nature to be what it is. The contrast between the logical idea, nature, and
idea- and nature-sublating Geist as well as the identity-based sublation of
idea and nature in Geist are possible because both nature and Geist are
forms of the idea: Nature and Geist are differentiated and compatible and
can therefore be contrasted, compared, and identified because they share
the common ontological status of being forms of the Idea (Enc. §/
Enc. I:).
With regard to the label “naturalism” as a description of Hegel’s
idealism, this entails that since nature is only defined in contrast to Geist,
there is no sense in which one could argue that for Hegel, nature is
independent from Geist. At the most basic ontological level, nature is only
what it is in contrast to the logical idea and to Geist, just like Geist is only
what it is in contrast to the idea and to nature. Just as nature is irreducible
to Geist, Geist is irreducible to nature, while both are forms of the idea.
Naturalism can thus be rejected both from the perspective of nature-
sublating Geist and from the overarching perspective of the idea-based
system: To Geist, nature is Geist, while to the system, Geist and nature are
mutually mediating, equally footed forms of the idea (Enc. §/Enc.
I:). The ultimate ontological principle of Hegel’s system is thus the
idea and not nature or Geist. And since Hegel’s rejections of physicalism,
of narrowly conceived naturalism, and of metaphysical essentialism’s wide
naturalism are based on the metaphysics of the concept-based idea, he is
best described as an idealist rather than as a naturalist or essentialist.
. Conclusion
Hegel rejects “essentialist naturalism” – and thus physicalism – on the
grounds that physics is not able to explain the very compatibility between
form and material individual bodies that it presupposes. At the same time,
he defies a mechanics-, physics-, and organics-based naturalism by arguing
that nature is sublated into Geist. This undermines naturalism’s claim that
nature constitutes the most fundamental principle of reality. Meanwhile,
Hegel rejects metaphysical essentialism on the grounds that it fails to
achieve a conceptual stability between universality and particularity and
inadvertently undermines the privileged universality. While Hegel’s
Nature and Its Limits: Hegel’s Idealist Critiques
absolute idealism acknowledges a notion of “nature as such,” nature still
relies on mediation by Geist and is grounded in the ontological Idea. This
undermines any notion of “naturalism” according to which the idea or
Geist can be reduced to nature or have nature as their purpose and suggests
that Hegel’s circular system rests on the Idea as nature and Geist-generating
notion of truth.
I would like to express my deeply felt gratitude to Christopher Yeomans and Joshua Wretzel for
commenting on an earlier draft of this chapter.
Naturphilosophie and the Problem of Clean Hands
Hegel and Alexander von Humboldt on Nature
Elizabeth Millán Brusslan
The late s and early s were years of intense and innovative
intellectual development in German-speaking lands; the arts flourished
and aesthetics developed as a serious branch of philosophy. Philosophers,
scientists, and artists collaborated without the borders to which we have
become all too accustomed. Part of this collaborative spirit arose out of
necessity, as certain fields had not yet defined their borders. As John
Reddick points out, “[w]e need to appreciate the real enormity of the
problems faced by life-scientists in the half-century or so before Darwin
did for biology what Newton had done for physics almost two centuries
earlier; even the very word ‘scientist’ – not coined until (by William
Whewell) – is an anachronism that tends to beg essential questions”
(Reddick , ). The two thinkers I discuss in what follows were
each dedicated to the life sciences by way of the study of nature but
addressed this study in markedly different ways. Alexander von
Humboldt (–) and Hegel each carved out space for two distinct
approaches to “science”: one more empirical and the other largely specula-
tive. Humboldt, working and writing before the “magnificent vantage
point that Darwin” (Reddick , ) was to construct, did not have
an established scheme into which to place his contributions to our under-
standing of the natural world. Nonetheless, Humboldt’s careful measure-
ments had a powerful impact on our understanding of that world. Given
that Humboldt’s investigation of nature took him on a voyage to the
Americas (–), he also faced the problem of presenting a radical
new landscape to his European readers. Charting uncharted territory
became Humboldt’s specialty, and it resulted in approaches to his subject
matter and the development of literary forms that were (and remain)
difficult to characterize. Humboldt dealt with the problem of science’s
disarray by carving out new spaces for his areas of inquiry. Hegel, too,
especially the Hegel of the Differenzschfrift, was focused on the
problem of nature’s fate at the hands of philosophers, and he too
Hegel and Alexander von Humboldt on Nature
attempted to carve out new areas of inquiry that blended the natural
sciences with aesthetics. The relation between the natural sciences and
philosophy in Hegel’s thought remains a source of controversy among
scholars.
How should we categorize the blend of empirical and aesthetic methods
that was a hallmark of philosophical investigations of nature during this
period of thought? Was it Naturphilosophie or rather Naturforschung?
Do these terms point to a meaningful difference? Or are we dealing with
distinctions without difference? Clarifying Hegel’s and Humboldt’s rela-
tion to these areas of investigation of nature will help us to assess their
contribution to the intellectual developments at the turn of the nineteenth
century, and it will also help us to mark important distinctions between
their approaches to nature. In choosing to focus upon the work of Hegel
and Humboldt and their contributions to our understanding of nature,
while leaving another prominent Naturphilosoph of the period, Friedrich
Schelling, in the background, I hope to bring attention to overlooked
connections between Humboldt and Hegel, connections which uncover
important aspects of the understanding of nature, in general, and the
landscape of Latin America, in particular, during the period. I begin with
a brief historical overview so that we have some sense of the main themes
that fueled the development of Naturphilosophie.
. Natural Beauty in the Age of Goethe and Schiller
In their lifetimes, Goethe and Schiller shaped the culture of German-
speaking lands, not only through their writings on nature and art and their
prolific literary work but also in their role as editors of journals that helped
to set the intellectual tone of the period. Schiller’s journal, Die Horen
(–), and Goethe’s Propyläen (–), though short-lived,
were important literary vehicles of the period and provided forums that
brought scientists, historians, philosophers, and poets into conversation
with one another. According to Ilse Jahn and Fritz Lange, editors of the
Jugendbriefe Alexander von Humboldt –, in the letter that Schiller
sent to Humboldt inviting him to contribute to Die Horen, Humboldt was
told that the journal would deal with everything that can be treated “with
taste and philosophical spirit.” Schiller mentions philosophical investiga-
tions and historical and poetic presentations of topics for the journal:
Natural scientific investigations were not explicitly mentioned. Yet, in
For an excellent treatment of these issues, see Houlgate , xi–xxvii.
his lone contribution to Die Horen, Humboldt delivered a piece that
brought science and literary fancy together. As Humboldt tells us in the
preface to the second edition of Ansichten der Natur:
The second edition of the Views of Nature, was published by me in Paris in
. Two papers were then added, one, “An inquiry into the structure and
mode of action of Volcanos in different regions of the earth”; the other,
“Vital Force, or The Rhodian Genius.” Schiller, in remembrance of his
youthful medial studies, loved to converse with me, during my long stay at
Jena, on physiological subjects. The inquiries in which I was then engaged,
in preparing my work “On the condition of the fibres of muscles and
nerves, when irritated by contact with substances chemically opposed,”
often imparted a more serious direction to our conversation. It was at this
period that I wrote the little allegory on vital force, called “The Rhodian
Genius.” The predilection which Schiller entertained for this piece, and
which he admitted into his periodical, Die Horen, gave me the confidence
to introduce it here. (Humboldt /, )
Humboldt’s work involved precise physiological experiments and more
whimsical musings about Lebenskraft (see Millán Brusslan ).
Questions about the nature of the forces of life guided some of the
experiments he conducted on his very own body; speculation about nature
was always balanced with concrete empirical experimentation. Humboldt
approached the phenomena of nature with the empirical scientist’s quest to
quantify and so master the objects of his study. But he knew that to
address the issue of nature’s meaning for us, something more than data
collection was necessary. Experimentation and speculation mix and fuse in
Humboldt’s work, a fusion that could have led Humboldt to the territory
of Naturphilosophie. Yet Humboldt’s relation to Naturphilosophie was
ambivalent – from an early zeal for Schelling’s Naturphilosophie (in his
Ideen zu einer Geographie der Pflanzen [Humboldt ], he explicitly
states that there is no need for any conflict between empiricists and
Naturphilosophen) to a later rejection of the same (in his Kosmos
[Humboldt ]). Certainly, some thinkers of Humboldt’s generation
were guilty of replacing experimentation with empty speculation.
Humboldt and Schelling, a sort of poster boy for Naturphilosophie, had
what Petra Werner has so well described as a tension-filled relationship
An excellent recent translation is done by Mark W. Person (Humboldt ). The introduction,
Reclaiming Consilience, by Dassow Walls, Jackson, and Person is especially valuable. While I have
used the Otte and Bohn translation (Humboldt /), I also provide the Person pagination so
that readers can compare the two. For the German original, see Humboldt .
For more details on these thinkers and their flights of speculation, see Snelders .
Hegel and Alexander von Humboldt on Nature
(wiedersprüchliches Verhältnis), in large part due precisely to their different
views of Naturphilosophie (Werner ). In the foreword to Ideen, while
stating his goal in the work on the geography of plants, namely, to get at a
view of nature that will include its inner workings (ihrem inner
Zusammenwirken), Humboldt makes reference to Schelling. He hopes that
his work will demonstrate that it is possible to
present canvasses of nature of a completely different and at the same time
higher kind, in a naturphilosophisch (nature-philosophical) way. . . . Not
entirely unacquainted with the spirit of Schelling’s system, I am far from the
opinion that true [ächte] naturphilsophische study harms empirical investi-
gation and that empiricists and Naturphilosophen must be engaged in
eternal battle. (Humboldt , iv–v)
What does Humboldt have in mind when he speaks of an ächte
Naturphilosophie? Empirical study, that is, a grappling with the phenomena
of the natural world, a grappling in which one would get one’s hands dirty,
would be central to this true Naturphilosophie, so it could not be purely
speculative. Empirical experiments were a necessary element of
Humboldt’s view of what Naturphilosophie should be, for anything other
than an authentic or true Naturphilosophie could harm the empirical
investigation of nature. What are the harms posed by the inauthentic
naturphilosophische study of nature? An inauthentic naturphilosophische
study of nature would be one that did not provide precise empirical
knowledge of nature and so would remove us from the facts on the
ground, a problem to which we turn as we discuss Hegel’s views of
America. To his credit, Humboldt was also aware of the harm to our
investigation of nature that came from what he dubbed a “vicious empiri-
cism” (rohe Empirie). The most serious harm inflicted by a “vicious
empiricism” would be the suffocation of the “living breath of nature.”
Humboldt, committed as he was to a presentation of nature that would
not kill its living breath, was after a way to present nature as both an
empirical realm to be mastered and as a realm of freedom (indeed, he defines
nature as the realm of freedom [Reich der Freiheit] that was beyond mastery).
Humboldt emphasized in his work that empiricism is vicious only when it is
deployed as the only way to understand nature, a way to dominate the forces
of nature and tell just one side of the story of nature’s meaning.
In the late s, before embarking upon his American Voyage,
Humboldt spent time with Goethe and members of the early German
All translations are mine, unless otherwise stated.
Romantic (Frühromantik) circle, and the exchanges of thought he had with
these thinkers influenced his approach to nature. Humboldt’s travels to
America took him and his collaborator, Aimé Bonpland, to Venezuela,
Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Cuba, and the USA. His account of
that voyage is recorded in Humboldt and Bonpland (–). Unlike
many of his European contemporaries, his views of America were based on
detailed encounters with the place and its people. He was often irritated by
the material that was delivered on America to European audiences, for it
was based on Eurocentric stereotypes rather than accurate accounts.
Hegel’s views of America, as expressed in his lectures on history, were
particularly vexing to Humboldt. I turn to those views now, for they can
be used to highlight an important set of contrasts between Humboldt’s
and Hegel’s approaches to nature.
. Hegel and Humboldt on America
In Berlin, in , Hegel lectured about America without ever having
stepped foot on the continent or consulted Humboldt’s first-hand
accounts of the region. Hegel’s Eurocentric lens created just the sort of
hierarchy that began during the colonial period and remains a problem
today. He writes:
The main character of the native Americans is a placidity, a lassitude, a
humble and cringing submissiveness toward a Creole, and even more
toward a European – and it will take a long time for the Europeans to
produce any feeling of self-confidence in them. The inferiority of these
individuals in every respect, even in regard to size, is very apparent. Only
the extremely southern tribes, in Patagonia, are stronger by nature, but they
are still in the natural condition of barbarism and savagery. (IPH )
The image of America as the dwelling place of beasts and barbarians was
not unique to Hegel; he was just one of a number of myopic intellectuals
responsible for disseminating distorted views of America. Hegel may have
had much to teach his students about the structure and workings of Geist,
In March and December of , April of , and December of , Humboldt was in Jena and
Weimar and visited Goethe, Schiller, Schelling, and the Schlegel brothers.
“Sanftmut und Trieblosigkeit, Demut und kriechende Unterwürfigkeit gegen einen Kreolen und
mehr noch gegen einen Europäer sind dort der Hauptcharakter der Amerikaner, und es wird noch
lange dauern, bis die Europäer dahin kommen, einiges Selbstgefühl in sie zu bringen. Die Inferiorität
dieser Individuen in jeder Rücksicht, selbst in Hinsicht der Größe gibt sich in allem zu erkennen;
nur die ganz südlichen Stämme in Patagonien sind kräftigere Naturen, aber noch ganz in dem
natürlichen Zustande der Roheit und Wildheit” (VGPh-L ).
Hegel and Alexander von Humboldt on Nature
offering them a “Wald von Ideen” (forest of ideas) and important insights
about the historical nature of philosophy, but his lectures on America were
bound to mislead students. It is no great surprise that one does not find
monuments of Hegel in the plazas of Mexico or Venezuela, or streets
honoring Hegel. In contrast, vestiges of Humboldt’s legacy are ubiquitous
in America, where he was once most fondly referred to as the “filósofo
viajero” (“traveling philosopher”).
Though not often heralded as a philosopher of any sort, the title of
“traveling philosopher” suits Humboldt well. We can also speak of him as
a “philosophical traveler.” Michael Dettelbach makes a valuable connec-
tion between travel, physiology, and aesthetics, emphasizing that:
“attending to the effects of the tropics on one’s own physiology (including
aesthetic effects) was critical to establishing one’s authority as a philosoph-
ical traveler” (Dettelbach , ). Humboldt did indeed attend to the
effects of the Latin American landscape on his own physiology. Humboldt
wanted his readers to feel the aesthetic effects that had made such an
impact upon him during his exploration of the equinoctial regions of the
earth, and the development of an entirely new literary genre, the
Naturgemälde, was one way he tried to give his readers an accurate sense
of the tropics as he experienced them. Certainly, travel is a crucial
dimension of Humboldt’s work. Humboldt traveled to America and then
presented scenes of American nature to his readers. Humboldt’s travel
spared him the sorts of errors made by Hegel in his description of America.
We can recall Humboldt’s worry about Hegel’s writings on America,
namely, that “the most dangerous Weltanschauung is the Weltanschauung
of people who have not looked at the world” (quoted in Osten , ).
Humboldt was well aware that the story of nature did not begin or end
in Europe. In place of hierarchies and strict borders between disciplines,
what we find in Humboldt’s work is a commitment to the view that nature
is best served when our investigation of it is guided by a variety of
disciplines (science, philosophy, art) joining together in new ways, with
For more on Humboldt’s critique of Hegel’s lectures, see Humboldt , Letters and ,
pp. –. The reference to a “Wald von Ideen” comes from Letter . Ottmar Ette provides a
detailed analysis of Humboldt’s critique of Hegel in his recent book. See Ette . I thank Ulrich
Päßler for bringing the letters and Ette’s book to my attention.
From a letter to Humboldt from Francisco de Arango, dated July , (unpublished
manuscript). With thanks to the Alexander von Humboldt Forschungsstelle, Brandenburgische
Akademie der Wissenschaften, for access to this letter and others.
Humboldt’s collection of the scenes of nature he experience in America are presented in his
Ansichten der Natur ().
no privileged center (of a geographical, cultural, or disciplinary sort) to
serve as the standard against which all else is judged.
Had Humboldt delivered his Political Essay on the Kingdom of New
Spain in a series of lectures (as he did his Kosmos work at the Singakademie
in –), the listeners would have received a much more accurate and
favorable view of the natives than the one offered by Hegel. In this Essay,
Humboldt writes:
The natives were hunters and shepherds, and they withdrew as the European
conquerors advanced towards the north. Agriculture alone attaches man to
the soil and develops love of country. Thus we see that in the . . . part of
Anáhuac, in the cultivated region adjacent to Tenochtitlán, the Aztec colon-
ists patiently endured the cruel vexation exercised towards them by their
conquerors and suffered everything rather than quit the soil which their
fathers had cultivated. (Humboldt , ; cf. Humboldt , )
Instead of lassitude and submissiveness, Humboldt finds dedication and
loyalty in the character of the natives of New Spain. And in addition to
highlighting the virtues of the natives of the region, Humboldt also
reminds the reader of European cruelty, leading us to question Hegel’s
claim that it is the natives who are barbaric and savage. Unlike Hegel, who
generalized about America without ever having set foot on that continent,
Humboldt carefully studied the flora, fauna, and culture of America, and
his observations were based on what he saw, measured, and experienced.
Indeed, as he was to write in a letter to Varnhagen von Ense from July of
, when discussing his views of Hegel’s Lectures, “for a person like me,
who is drawn much like an insect to the ground and its diversity, an
abstract claim of purely false facts and views of America . . . is a threat to
freedom and most alarming” (Humboldt , ; cited in Ette ,
n). Given that Humboldt defines nature as “the realm of freedom,” a
view of America that is based on purely false facts kills not only truth but
also the very meaning of nature, because such falsehoods are a threat to
freedom and so to the life of nature itself. As Ette observes, Humboldt
would have been most queasy (mulmig) upon reading Hegel’s generaliza-
tions about America and its people, for the heart of Humboldtian science
is not the placement of empirical data into a preconstructed system of ideas
but rather the “living relation between analysis and synthesis, between the
collection of data and generalizations of that data, between particular
observations and general conclusions.” An emphasis on and respect for
“Humboldt, der zu den von Hegel hier am Ende seiner Vorlesung angesprochenen Studenten
gehört haben könnte, mochte es beim Gedanken an diesen Weltgeist, wie sehr er auch aus antiken
Hegel and Alexander von Humboldt on Nature
the living forces of nature was indeed a salient feature of Humboldt’s
approach to America and an essential element of his openness to the land
and people of America.
Humboldt did not fall into the trap that marks Hegel’s approach to
America: that of a Eurocentrism that blinded him to the cultural contri-
butions of America. Humboldt was aware that his views of America
diverged from those of many of his contemporaries, and he was even able
to joke about this. In , he writes to Varnhagen von Ense that, “I have
organized my life in a truly bad way. I am doing everything to become
stupid quite early. I enthusiastically renounced European beef, which
Hegel finds to be so much better than American beef, and lived next to
the weak and powerless crocodiles” (Humboldt , ; cited in Ette
, n). Humboldt’s views did indeed clash with those of Hegel’s –
but America’s leading nation builders did not find anything stupid in the
views of our “filósofo viajero” – indeed, his views were received with great
respect and admiration. Furthermore, Humboldt’s view of nature found a
supporter in Theodor Adorno.
. Natural Beauty in Hegel and Humboldt
Humboldt’s contributions to our understanding of nature have been
largely ignored by philosophers, even by thinkers who work specifically
on the aesthetic appreciation of nature, a topic that is explicit in his work.
Adorno, in an act of rebellion against the style of philosophy conducted by
Hegel, addresses and supports Humboldt’s work. Humboldt’s work on
nature is lauded by Adorno, who tells us that:
Humboldt occupies a position between Kant and Hegel in that he holds
fast to natural beauty yet in contrast to Kantian formalism endeavors to
concretize it . . . [H]e presents a critique of nature that, contrary to what
would be expected one hundred and fifty years later has not become
ridiculous in spite of its earnestness . . . Humboldt’s descriptions of nature
hold their own in any comparison. (Adorno , )
Adorno moves from talk of natural beauty to a reference to the critique
of nature and finally to descriptions of nature. This movement occurs in
Quellen schöpfte, etwas mulmig geworden sein. Nicht die ‘Einpassung’ vorhandenen Materials in
vorgefertigte Denksysteme, sondern die lebendige Beziehung zwischen Analyse und Synthese,
zwischen Datensammlung und Generalisierung, zwischen partikulären Beobachtung und stets
vorläufig bleibender Schlußfolgerung, die immer auf einer vergleichenden Vorgehensweise
basierte, bildeten die Grundlage der Humboldtschen Wissenschaft” (Ette , ).
Humboldt’s work as well as he discusses the beauties of nature, presenting
a critique of nature that is born of detailed descriptions of nature that come
insektartig, from the ground up. What Adorno finds of great value in
Humboldt’s writing on nature is the emphasis on natural beauty.
According to Adorno, natural beauty was repressed by a series of displace-
ments that took place in philosophy beginning with Kant and culminating
with Hegel. In Aesthetic Theory, while lamenting the disappearance of
natural beauty from the realm of aesthetics, Adorno emphasizes the
significant consequences the idea of freedom and its place in a given
philosophical system have upon the role of the subject in descriptions of
the world. The disappearance of natural beauty from the realm of aesthet-
ics was the result of what Adorno says was “the burgeoning domination of
the concept of freedom and human dignity, which was inaugurated by
Kant and then rigorously transplanted into aesthetics by Schiller and
Hegel; in accord with this concept nothing in the world is worthy of
attention except that for which the autonomous subject has itself to thank”
(Adorno , ). Adorno’s trenchant critique, one that indicts Hegel for
the repression of natural beauty, recalls Hegel’s own critique in the preface
of the Differenzschrift:
[T]he dignity that is beginning to be accorded, more or less clearly or
obscurely, to poetry and art in general in their true scope – indicate the
need for a philosophy that will recompense nature for the mishandling that
it suffered in Kant and Fichte’s systems, and set Reason itself in harmony
with nature, not by having Reason renounce itself or become an insipid
imitator of nature, but by Reason recasting itself into nature out of its own
inner strength. (Diff. /GW : )
It is important to note that Hegel connects the move to recompense nature
with its proper value to a philosophy of poetry and art; yet the saving touch
will be offered by reason recasting itself into nature. This sort of recasting
brings us precisely to the problem articulated by Adorno; even in the move
toward nature that Hegel makes, even as he claims to be saving nature
from its mishandling in the systems of Kant and Fichte, Hegel is not able
to see nature as something independent of human reason or subjectivity.
For Humboldt, understanding nature and appreciating its beauty is not a
matter of what the autonomous subject grants to nature but rather a more
Spinozistic position that we are just finite parts of an infinite whole that is
much greater than we are: Subjectivity and objectivity are balanced. For
Humboldt the sum of all of nature’s forces and development is nothing
less than the Cosmos, certainly not something at all dependent upon what
the autonomous subject does or does not do (alas, as we have learned, the
Hegel and Alexander von Humboldt on Nature
earth and everything that is in it can be terribly harmed by what
humans do).
In , upon his return from his American voyage, Humboldt was
welcomed back to Europe as a figure uniquely situated to present the
exotic and unfamiliar territories of America to Europeans. He did indeed,
as Goethe’s character Ottilie comments in Elective Affinities, “describe and
represent the strangest and most exotic things in their locality, always in
their own special element, with all that surrounds them” (Goethe ,
). Humboldt spent the first period after his return from America
(–) in the “scientific capital” of his time, Paris, where he published
his Essai sur la géographie des plantes (). The German edition of this
book was dedicated to Goethe and has been described by Meyer-Abich as a
“true spiritual companion” (getreues geistesgeschichtliches Pendant)
(Humboldt , ix) to Goethe’s Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen ().
Also in this period, Humboldt published his Ansichten der Natur ().
To appreciate Humboldt’s work on nature, we must understand the
important relation he had to Goethe. Humboldt and Goethe had a close
intellectual and personal relationship. The younger Humboldt was, in
some ways, the accomplished and recognized scientist that the elder
Goethe never quite became. Consider what Meyer-Abich claims in his
introduction to Humboldt’s Ideen zu einer Geographie der Pflanzen: “One
is not guilty of overstatement about the natural sciences in the Age of
Goethe, if one claims that Goethe was the inaugurator and Humboldt the
person who perfected the natural sciences” (Humboldt , ix) – this
claim is part of a well-established pattern of discussing the scientific work
of Goethe and Humboldt by way of a common historical horizon.
Both Goethe and Humboldt fused art and science in a seemingly
effortless way (and a way that continues to bewilder scholars in our
overspecialized times). While Humboldt’s scientific work does not raise
the same sorts of doubts as Goethe’s did (i.e., is he a scientist or just a poet
who derived pleasure from dabbling in science?), we do find in
Humboldt’s work a unique blend of the aesthetic with the scientific, a
blending that has caused not only a forgetting of his work but, as Laura
Dassow Walls has argued, a kind of erasure (Dassow Walls , ).
As Dassow Walls observes:
I am not the first to find an important connection between the work of Alexander von Humboldt
and Goethe. For an excellent collection dedicated to this very topic, see Jahn and Kleinert .
I thank Ulrike Leitner for bringing this collection to my attention.
[Humboldt’s] absolute absence suggests more an active excision than a mere
lapse – not merely a forgetting but an erasure. . . . Humboldt championed
aesthetic forms that emerged from the particulars of nature, and scientific
forms that embraced, rather than excluded, the subjectivity of the observer.
This put him on a collision course with the emergent concept of
“objectivity,” such that Humboldt’s bold, experimental texts were
absorbed, reshaped, and in large part silenced by the split we have come
to know as “the Two Cultures.” (Dassow Walls , )
In Dassow Walls’ observation we find important clues for unpacking the
features in Humboldt’s work on nature that push the Naturforscher into
the territory of the Naturphilosoph. In his championing of “aesthetic forms
that emerged from the particularities of nature,” Humboldt moved from
the empirically driven realm of the natural scientist (Naturforscher) to the
realm of Naturphilosophie, which in his work emerges as a way to present
nature as a realm that can be dominated, but which is also, always, a realm
of freedom, and so beyond the controlling grasp of the human.
Humboldt’s writings on nature are an attempt to balance these two aspects
of nature. Unlike Schelling, who takes us back to his theological roots with
his presentation of nature, the speculative aspects of Humboldt’s presenta-
tion of nature do not bring us to any divinity (in fact, an early review of his
Cosmos critiqued the absence of the term “God” from the book).
Humboldt’s path away from the empirical realm of nature delivers us to
the aesthetic realm, which is a celebration of human subjectivity in its
freedom. Humboldt’s approach to nature did indeed embrace the subject-
ivity of the observer and with that embrace departed from a strictly
empirical approach to nature. Yet he did not allow the human subject to
eclipse nature. In his work, Humboldt also pushed for an embrace of new
landscapes and practices, providing a break from the typical Eurocentric
rejections of America by so many of his contemporaries.
Both Goethe and Humboldt are after a method of presentation of
nature (Darstellung der Natur) that will enable them to “see” the inner
unity of nature, a unity that cannot be captured through the methods of
the natural sciences alone. Although there is no poetic tribute to Goethe
found in Humboldt’s work, sincere dedications to and gratitude for
Goethe’s influence abound in his work. Humboldt was quite fond of
Goethe. Indeed in at a large, international gathering of scientists in
As Dassow Walls puts it, the term “the Two Cultures” is an “unforgettable term coined in a
forgettable lecture by C.P. Snow” (, ).
Hegel and Alexander von Humboldt on Nature
Berlin, Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte, Humboldt
undoubtedly surprised the audience when he named Goethe as first
patriarch (erster Patriarch) of the sciences. Humboldt told the audience
that the great creations of Goethe’s poetic fantasy (dichterischer Phantasie)
had not kept him from immersing a researcher’s gaze (den Forscherblick)
into all of the depths of the life of nature (alle Tiefen des Naturlebens).
Böhme points out that while Humboldt’s deferential nod to scientists such
as the astronomer Wilhelm Olbers (–), anatomist Thomas
Sömmerling (–), or Humboldt’s teacher in Göttingen, the
well-known physiologist and natural historian Friedrich Blumenbach
(–), was followed by details regarding their scientific contribu-
tions, his endorsement of Goethe’s “Blick in die Tiefen des Naturlebens”
was delivered to the audience at the scientific gathering without further
elaboration (Böhme , ). How can one elaborate on the Blick in die
Tiefen des Naturlebens?
. Goethe, Humboldt, and the Problem of Darstellung
For Humboldt and for Goethe, the presentation of nature is both a
scientific and an aesthetic task, and in this blending there are moves toward
a Naturphilosophie. Darstellung is not an uncomplicated term in the work
of either thinker. With respect to Goethe’s work, Agnes Arber points out:
For the type of explanation based on cause and effect, Goethe substituted a
process that can be described only by the untranslatable German word,
“Darstellung,” which may be defined, approximately, as the demonstration
or representation of an object, brought into relation with others in such a
way that its significance is revealed. (Arber , )
Arber’s emphasis on the important role that Goethe gives to Darstellung as
a way to create a Zusammenhang or context for understanding elements of
nature in relation to one another is well placed. This emphasis on
Darstellung as a way to allow the relations between objects of nature to
emerge is found in Humboldt’s work as well. As Arber observes, “Goethe
himself spoke of morphology as a discipline which ‘merely presents and
will not clarify” (nur darstellen und nicht erklären will)” (Arber , ).
For both Goethe and Humboldt, getting at the unity of nature is essential
to presenting nature, for said unity allows the Zusammenhang of nature to
unfold and the work of Darstellung to be accomplished. We can draw a line
between what Goethe and Humboldt have in mind with the “unity” of
nature and what Schelling had in mind when he made the following claim:
“Nature should be visible spirit, spirit should be invisible nature. Hence it
is here in the absolute identity of spirit in us and of nature out of us that
we must solve the problem of how nature out of us is possible” (HKA I/:
). Neither Goethe nor Humboldt is concerned with the question of
how nature outside of us is possible, for the I is not their reference point.
One reason, for example, that Humboldt emphasizes the empirical aspect
of coming to an understanding of nature is because he begins with what is
there in the world to see, to measure, to experience. The außer uns/in uns
distinction is just not an issue for Humboldt or for Goethe. The Geist of
which Schelling speaks is a much different sort of Geist than the one which
surfaces in, for example, Humboldt’s talk of the “spirit of nature.” It is a
mistake to categorize all thinkers who speak of the Geist der Natur as
idealists. The spirit of nature in Goethe and Humboldt is closer to what
Werner Heisenberg describes as something similar to the molecules of
molecular biology: They cannot be seen with our “usual” eyes, but they are
not merely images of the mind. In the work of Goethe and Humboldt, the
spirit of nature emerges from the objects of nature, not, as seems to be the
case in Schelling’s work, from the I. Goethe certainly did exert an influence
on prominent German idealists of the period, and I do not want to
disconnect Goethe and Humboldt from German idealism tout court,
but I do think that it is important to note where there are significant
differences in the philosophical commitments of Goethe and Humboldt,
on the one hand, and thinkers such as Schelling and Hegel, on the other.
The work of Darstellung does, in the long run, explain many more
aspects of nature than a lonely, isolated scientific explanation would be
able to do. The work of Darstellung is not merely an empirical task but is,
in Goethe and Humboldt, always at least empirical. So whatever
Humboldt’s notion of Naturphilosophie is, it would never be an approach
to nature guilty of what he so bitterly complained of in his letter to
Varnhagen, namely, “a chemistry in which one does not get one’s hands
wet” (eine Chemie in der man sich die Hände nicht nass machte) (Humboldt
, , quoted in Snelders , ). Steuer stresses the difference
between “the more speculative of the Romantics” and Goethe’s “insistence
on empirical evidence and demonstration” (Humboldt , , quoted
in Snelders , ), an insistence shared by Humboldt. In order to
For more on Goethe’s relation to German Idealism, see Millán Brusslan and Smith . For the
important connections between Naturphilosophie and Kant, see Beiser . For an excellent
account of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie and relation to German Romanticism, see Richards .
Hegel and Alexander von Humboldt on Nature
present nature, knowledge of the laws that govern living organisms is
necessary, but so is an understanding of the idea of freedom. For
Humboldt nature is a realm in which law and freedom blend. Nature
for Humboldt is “the realm of freedom” (das Reich der Freiheit; trans.
revised) (Humboldt , ; Humboldt , :). Humboldt
emphasized that nature is, “as Carus [Carl Gustav Carus (–)]
so pointedly claimed and as the word itself indicated to the Romans and
Greeks, that ‘which is conceived as eternally growing, eternally developing
and unfolding’” (das ewig Wachsende, ewig im Bilden und Entfalten
Begriffene). Humboldt saw a common challenge facing all of those who
wanted to present nature, be the presenter an artist or a scientist: “In
scientific circles as in the circles of landscape poetry and painting, the
presentation gains clarity and objective liveliness when the parts are
determined and limited” (Humboldt , –). The landscape artist
and the scientist need to use empirical methods: “The landscape artist and
the scientist need to use empirical methods: Humans cannot have any
effect on nature or get close to any of her powers, if they do not have
knowledge of the laws of nature according to relations of measurements
and data” (Humboldt , ). When nature is considered rationally, we
get to its unity: “In thoughtful contemplation, nature is unity in multipli-
city, the connection of the manifold in form and composition (Verbindung
des Mannigfaltigen in Form und Mischung), the essence of natural
phenomena (Naturdinge) and forces of nature as a living whole”
(Humboldt , –, cf. ). This theme of connection in nature is a
central theme in Goethe and Humboldt’s Darstellung of nature. Both
thinkers strive to combine the empirical or measurable elements of nature
with those elements that are “measureless to man.”
Hegel too, at least in the view of some scholars, was attempting to
balance philosophy and the natural sciences as he presented his view of
nature. Adorno’s critique leaves us with a vexing question: For Hegel, is
the structure of the philosophy of nature determined a priori by self-
determining reason or a posteriori by the findings of science? From
Humboldt’s standpoint, if Hegel is not willing to get his hands dirty with
experiments that test his views of nature, his philosophy of nature will
remain too removed from the life of the earth; too speculative, in short, it
would amount to a version of bad Naturphilosophie.
Carl Gustav Carus and Humboldt shared common interests in science and in landscape. See Carus
.
. Variations on Naturphilosophie
In Consilience, Edward O. Wilson claims that a unified system of knowledge
is “the surest means of identifying the still unexplored domains of reality”
(Wilson , ). While Wilson lauds Goethe for his “noble purpose,”
namely, “[to couple] the soul of the humanities to the engine of science,” he
distances Goethe’s “noble purpose” from the work of the Naturphilosophen.
Naturphilosophie is defined most dismissively by Wilson as “a hybrid of
sentiment, mysticism, and quasi-scientific hypothesis” (Wilson , ).
I do not endorse this dismissive characterization of Naturphilosophie, believ-
ing instead that like art, there can be good Naturphilosophie and bad
Naturphilosophie. The bad sort of Naturphilosophie involves an approach to
nature that remains merely speculative, with the hands of the investigator
remaining far from the dirt of the earth, and so all too clean.
Goethe and Humboldt were aware, long before our present age of
interdisciplinarity, that certain concepts could best be approached by a
perspective that drew from a variety of disciplines and methods, rather
than just one. Both Goethe and Humboldt wanted to free science from the
narrow boundaries of the specialist and make it something that would be
intelligible to all thoughtful people. Yet they were not willing to unhinge
their philosophy of nature from the findings of science. The departure
from the role of science in our understanding of nature is what gave
Naturphilosophie a bad name in certain scientific circles.
As Humboldt never tired of reminding us, humans cannot have any
effect on nature; get close to any of her powers, if they do not have
knowledge of the laws of nature according to relations of measurements
and data. But empirical mastery of nature is not enough:
The most important result of a rational inquiry into nature is . . . the
following . . . to capture the spirit of nature (Geist der Natur), which lies
hidden beneath the mantel of appearances. In this way, our striving reaches
beyond the narrow limits of the sense world, and we can succeed in
mastering nature conceptually through the raw material of empirical
intuition as well as through ideas. (Humboldt , )
For Humboldt, mastery is never final: We can get an approximation of
mastery through empirical measurements, but the ideas that enable us to
complete the process of understanding nature cannot be mastered, they are
never under our dominion. Since Humboldt’s notion of the mastery of
The English version in Humboldt , :–, is too imprecise for this passage.
Hegel and Alexander von Humboldt on Nature
nature involves the move to ideas, we see at once that there will be no
domination of nature. The spirit of nature cannot be mastered, just as an
idea cannot be mastered: An idea can be thought but it cannot be known
or proved in the way that a fact is known or established to be true. What
can the scientist present? What is Humboldt trying to do in his unveiling
of nature, in his talk of capturing the spirit of nature? Humboldt describes
his goal as follows: “The principal interest by which I was directed was the
earnest endeavor to comprehend the phenomena of physical objects in
their general connection (allegemeine Zusammenhang), and to grasp (auf-
fassen) nature as one great whole, moved and animated by internal forces”
(Humboldt , :, trans. revised).
Humboldt’s concern for the Zusammenhang or general context of nature
and his project of grasping nature in its unity leads to an ambitious project of
presenting nature in way that will tell both stories of nature’s meaning for us:
the empirical, measurable story of nature and that part of the story involving
nature’s Geist, which cannot be measured, but which can be approximated
via the aesthetic tools Humboldt develops and deploys. Humboldt was well
aware that the precise way in which nature would be presented was crucial,
for suffocating the “living breath of nature” with any narrow empirical
method would make it impossible to present nature as “one great whole
moved and animated by internal forces.” He warns: “Descriptions of nature
ought not to be deprived of the breath of life (Hauch des Lebens), yet the
mere enumeration of a series of general results is productive of a no less
wearying impression than the elaborate accumulation of the individual data
of observation” (Humboldt , :, trans. modified)
A tedious tabulation of the empirical dimensions of nature suffocates
the living breath of nature, and the scientist should take care to make sure
that her Naturschilderung is not guilty of such a one-sided account of
nature. A concern for the “living breath of nature” makes Humboldt aware
of the limits of the merely empirical methods of the natural sciences.
In order to grasp the deepest connections of nature, to grasp the spirit of
nature, something more is needed. When we glimpse the deep connections
of nature, then, “[o]rganic forms that had long remained isolated, both in
the animal and vegetable kingdom, [are] connected by the discovery of
intermediate links or stages of transition” (Humboldt , :) and
“Den Naturschilderungen darf nicht der Hauch des Lebens entzogen werden, und doch erzeugt das
Aneinanderreihen bloss allgemeiner Resultate einen eben so ermüdenden Eindruck also die
Anhäufung zu vieler Einzelheiten der Beobachtung” (Humboldt , viii).
“Pflanzen und Tiergebilde, die lange isoliert erschienen, reihen sich durch neu entdeckte
Mittelglieder oder durch Übergangsformen aneinander” (Humboldt , ).
the unity of nature is unveiled. Humboldt was an empirical scientist,
dedicated most assiduously to precise data collection and measurements,
but he realized that to come to a fuller understanding of nature, he had to
go beyond the merely empirical data to the sort of unity to which he makes
reference in the lines just cited. Böhme points to the following tension in
Humboldt’s work:
On the one hand, we find the scientist, who with strict empiricism (mit einem
strikten Empirismus) advanced the emancipation of the natural sciences from
philosophy . . . On the other hand, we have the man, who with literary and
philosophical concepts developed around , concepts of the beautiful and
the sublime, tightly clings to the idea of a homogenizing totality between
humans and nature (unverdrossen an der Idee einer Mensch und Natur homo-
genisierenden Totalität festhält). (Böhme , )
In this description, we find the path Humboldt took to emancipate the
natural sciences from philosophy, and then the push to bring the natural
sciences back again to philosophy through his aesthetic turn. Humboldt’s
goal is to present the results of his scientific investigation within a wider
historical/cultural context and connection:
The person who considers (betrachtet) the results of her study of nature
(Naturfoschung), not in their relation to the individual levels of cultivation
(Bildung) or in relation to the individual needs of social life, but rather in their
grand relation to the whole of humanity, is offered as the joyful (erfreuliche)
fruit of this research the benefit (Gewinn) that through the insight into the
connection of the phenomena (durch Einsicht in den Zusammenhang der
Erscheinungen), the pleasure (Genuss) taken in nature is increased
and ennobled. (Humboldt , :, trans. significantly modified)
The purely empirical scientist or Naturforscher does not get to the
Zusammenhang der Erscheinungen or to the pleasures such insight into
the inner connections of nature yields. There is an empirical story that
needs to be told as we explore nature, but Humboldt never tires of
reminding us that the empirical, measurable story of nature is only part
of the story – for the beauty, grandeur, and deeper joys of nature to be
revealed, we must go beyond mastery of nature to appreciation of what it
“Auf der einen Seite finden wir den Wissenschaftler, der mit einem strikten Empirismus die
Emanizipation der Naturwissenschaft von der Philosophie befördert . . . Auf der anderen Seite
finden wir einen Mann, der mit den um literatursprachlich und philosophisch entwickelten
Formeln des Schönen und Erhabenen unverdrossen an der Idee einer Mensch und Natur
homogenisierenden Totalität festhält.”
For original, see Humboldt , .
Hegel and Alexander von Humboldt on Nature
offers. We need, in short, to understand (or at least attempt to understand)
the living breath of nature.
. Concluding Remarks
As I hope has become clear, Humboldt’s and Hegel’s contributions to our
understanding of nature come into sharpest focus when we read them
within the context of a rich period of scientific and literary developments
that took shape in the late s into the early s in German-speaking
lands. Goethe’s work is of particular importance in shedding light on a
cluster of ideas that opened new views of nature. Goethe and Humboldt
shared a concern for unity in nature, a unity approximated by the notion
of the Urpflanze or the Naturgemälde, notions anchored to the empirical
methods of the natural sciences but not bound by such methods. For
bondage to the methods of the natural sciences would sabotage another
important aspect of their approach to nature, namely, an attempt (to use
E. O. Wilson’s phrase) to couple the soul of the humanities to the engine
of science. In order to appreciate the contributions that Hegel and
Humboldt made to our understanding of nature, we must see that while
empirical, quantifiable aspects of nature were central to their work as
Naturforscher or investigators of nature, neither thinker endorsed an
empirically reductionist approach to understanding nature: A strong com-
mitment to moving science beyond the charts and graphs of the measur-
able in order to uncover the meaning and value of nature is found in the
work of both thinkers. Hence, the speculation that characterizes
Naturphilosophie of the period is part of their approach to nature. What
the botanist Agnes Arber said of Goethe, namely that “he was a great
biologist who, in the long run, overstepped the bounds of science” (Arber
, ), is also true of Humboldt. Hegel might be faulted for not
taking the empirical side of nature seriously enough, a problem that I have
illustrated by way of his views of America. In keeping his hands clean,
Hegel remained too distant from the very phenomena of nature (the
people and landscape of America) that he sought to present. Humboldt
successfully overstepped the bounds of empirical sciences to reach a richer
field from which to contemplate nature, but he was always drawn back to
the messy, empirical matters of the earth, where he was most certainly not
afraid to get his hands dirty.
Arber’s claim would have Goethe spinning from joy in his grave, for the claim recognizes that
Goethe was, in the first place, a scientist, something still open to debate.
On Hegel’s Account of Nature and Its
Philosophical Investigation
Marina F. Bykova
A primary objective of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature is the systematic
organization of our fundamental ontological and natural scientific
concepts and principles, beginning with the most abstract and universal
ideas, such as space and time, and proceeding through a meticulously
structured sequence of steps toward organic life and its most complex
level of organization reached in animal species, ultimately culminating
in the consideration of intelligent (thinking) life. Hegel’s task is to organize
and understand this conceptual content as the process of “mapping” the
whole, and this “whole” is Nature and its composition. As a result, the
question of Hegel’s understanding of Nature emerges as a central and
profoundly significant inquiry, deserving – careful examination. It is,
however, a complex question, and its analysis encompasses both historical
and systematic viewpoints. At its very basic level, this inquiry revolves
around the question of the reality of Nature, and granting or denying
Nature’s reality becomes a complex task, particularly in light of Kant’s
contributions and the solutions he offered in his metaphysics of Nature.
Similarly, the architectonic of Hegel’s philosophical system that unfolds
through the progression of Idea, Nature, and Spirit presents a
systematic challenge.
As is commonly recognized, Hegel places significant emphasis on the
Concept’s continuous development, which is a vital aspect of his philo-
sophical system. From a systematic standpoint, Nature is the Idea in its
external manifestation, in the form of “otherness,” and thus, “the Idea is
present in each grade or level of Nature itself” (Enc. §A, trans.
modified). This is widely interpreted as implying that the philosophy of
the Idea cannot provide an account of the true essence of Nature, an
account of what Nature ultimately is. The realm of the Idea extends
beyond the boundaries set by the Logic, permeating other parts of the
system. On this reading, Nature is never able to maintain its independent
reality and instead functions solely as an extension of the Idea, with no
Hegel’s Account of Nature
intrinsic significance beyond this role. This interpretation, widely
accepted even today, has been referred to by Donald Verene as the
“‘idea-ization’ of nature” (Verene , ).
Another equally challenging issue is that even if we acknowledge that, in
Hegel’s system, Nature possesses an independent reality and it cannot be
reduced to a mere “function” or “mirror” of the Idea, there still persists a
skeptical and often dismissive treatment of Hegel’s theory of nature in
contemporary scholarship (e.g., Pippin , ff.). For many, Hegel
remains nothing more than that “arrogant and ignorant German philoso-
pher who denied evolution and who . . . ‘proved’ a priori that there could be
only seven planets . . . between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter” (Houlgate
, xi). Consequently, the specific ideas and concepts that Hegel presents
in his philosophy of nature not only face suspicion and criticism but are also
denied scholarly significance, particularly in terms of their scientific rele-
vance. Therefore, it is no surprise that while the discussion of the philosophy
of nature as a structural component of Hegel’s system garners some atten-
tion among scholars, there is not much literature dedicated to its actual
content and the account of nature that emerges from it.
This chapter seeks to counter a largely dismissive treatment of Hegel’s
conception of nature as being insignificant from both philosophical and
natural scientific perspectives. It aims to illustrate that Hegel not only offers
a thoughtfully grounded and compelling view of nature but he also contri-
butes novel insights regarding the course and internal processes of its
development. These insights persist in shaping our comprehension of the
natural world, underlining the enduring relevance of Hegel’s exploration
of nature.
I begin my discussion () with a brief overview of Schelling’s
Naturphilosophie and the perspective it offers on the concept of nature.
Since Hegel’s own ideas about nature were significantly shaped in response
to Schelling’s work, understanding this historical context is crucial for the
analysis I am proposing. Subsequently, I delve into a comparative exami-
nation of Hegel’s views on nature versus Schelling’s, which should help
underscore the fundamental differences in their approaches. Furthermore,
I () address the charge of the alleged apriorism of Hegel’s system and
his philosophical investigation of nature. This should allow me to clarify
the goals he pursues in his Philosophy of Nature and show that his
Charles Taylor views Hegel as an absolute idealist and points out that “absolute idealism means that
nothing exists which is not a manifestation of the Idea, that is, of rational necessity” (Taylor
, ).
.
ambitious project aims to reconsider nature philosophically, while critically
assessing its treatment in the natural sciences (see Ferrini b). Hegel’s
systematic exposition and integration of fundamental scientific principles
and concepts not only bear relevance for the natural sciences but also
significantly contribute to our proper understanding of them. Following
this, I () examine the account of nature that arises from Hegel’s philo-
sophical inquiry into the natural world. Lastly (), I address one of the
most challenging and contentious topics in the field of Hegel studies – the
interpretation of Hegel’s seemingly “anti-evolutionary” stance in his
Philosophy of Nature. I argue that Hegel’s account of nature is far from
being obscure or anti-realistic (or what is commonly termed “anti-natural-
ist”). I further contend that he does acknowledge historical trends in nature
and that his understanding of nature’s development is somewhat similar to
what is currently discussed in terms of “emergentism,” which posits that a
natural system’s behavior results from both its structural organization and
the material composition of its components. Hegel’s emergentist agenda,
infused with dialectics, aims to elucidate why and how a specific set of
concepts and principles enable us to comprehend particular natural
phenomena at a certain level of systematic complexity and provide the
necessary foundation for progressing to the subsequent level.
. Schelling, Hegel, and Their Views of Nature
Schelling holds a prominent position within the German tradition of a
philosophy of nature, emerging as the author of the large-scale project of
the Naturphilosophie that encapsulated an entire research program during
the era often referred to as the “Romantic sciences” or Goethezeit. Notably,
Schelling’s project exerted a significant influence on Hegel’s early intellec-
tual development, particularly during their time as (still) close friends and
colleagues in Jena (–). Hegel’s dissertation, De orbitis plane-
tarum (Diss.), which qualified him for the position of Privatdozent at Jena,
as well as his earlier (– and –) drafts of his future system,
especially his Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (GW ),
reveal the imprint of Schelling’s natural philosophy on Hegel’s thought.
Initially, Hegel embraced Schelling’s project of a new Naturphilosophie
with enthusiasm, viewing it as a much-needed response to Kant’s inability
to provide a philosophically sound account of nature, a challenge posed by
What Hegel offers is one of the richest and most sophisticated philosophical accounts of the natural
world ever produced (Enc. P, : ).
Hegel’s Account of Nature
the developments in the natural sciences. In the early stages of their
collaboration, Hegel aligned himself with Schelling’s chosen path and his
conceptualization of nature. However, only a few years later, starting with
his – Jenaer Realphilosophie (JS III/GW ), Hegel’s independent
exploration of a philosophy of nature led him to diverge from Schelling’s
answers. This marked a turning point where Hegel critically reevaluated
Schelling’s project and its outcomes, thus beginning his own distinct
philosophical journey in the domain of nature.
Schelling and Hegel initially shared several important concerns, particu-
larly their reservations about the limitations of the transcendental philoso-
phy of nature and its inclination toward Newtonian physics. They both
recognized that this philosophical framework, advanced by Kant and
Fichte, fell short in adequately addressing the complexity of nature and
explaining the emergence of life. In their efforts to rectify these limitations
and offer a more comprehensive perspective on the natural world, they
found a kindred spirit in Goethe, a prominent figure in the discussion,
who vehemently argued against deterministic and mechanistic approaches
to nature. While Goethe’s perspective provided valuable support, Schelling
and Hegel also realized that to effectively confront the existing challenges,
they needed to radically rethink the very concept of nature, which would
require a philosophical assessment of the findings and insights derived
from scientific investigations into the natural world.
Both Schelling’s and Hegel’s projects emerged from their dissatisfaction
with Kant’s account of nature, particularly the limitations he imposed on
teleological judgments in their application to organic phenomena, which
led to explanations grounded in mechanical causality (CJ AA : –;
for more details see Rand , –). The goal of overcoming the
understanding of nature in terms of mechanical-causal relations became
the core of their projects, which nonetheless substantially diverged in terms
of specific aims, methods employed, and the outcomes they generated.
Schelling’s direct engagement with natural philosophy stretches over
two periods in his intellectual development: one that is associated with his
early Naturphilosophie (–) and the second one known as the
Philosophy of Identity (–). During the former, he was mainly
concerned with the structure of the natural world, seeking to develop a
new concept of nature that would acknowledge the inadequacy of a purely
mechanical-causal explanation and instead account for nature’s ontological
independence and inherent vitality, during the latter he shifts his attention
to the fundamental principles of his natural philosophy (which he termed
“speculative physics” to distinguish it from empirical science), arguing – in
.
a manner broadly influenced by Spinoza – for the identity of mind and
nature at the most fundamental level of reality, and asserting an underlying
unity between the mental and natural realms. Not aiming to offer a
detailed exposition of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie here, I briefly enumerate
some of its key ideas and principles that either reappear or become points
of contention in Hegel’s own philosophy of nature.
First, by dismissing the prevailing mechanical view of nature that domin-
ated Enlightenment-era natural science, a perspective still identifiable in
Kant’s philosophy, Schelling adopts an organicist interpretation, where
nature is conceived of as a unified organism in which life and internal
vitality constitute its core. This organic interpretation of nature implies that
nature possesses an inherent reality, characterized by self-contained causality
and independence from external factors. It is intrinsically dynamic, is
capable of self-realization, and possesses a self-organizational capacity.
The second related idea is that the inherent dynamism of the natural
world is applicable to both inorganic and organic realms. This distin-
guishes Schelling’s stance from Kant’s insistence on a rigid differentiation
between matter and life capable of thought. Kant firmly maintains that
matter lacks vitality and is subject to the law of inertia. Rejecting this
dualistic perspective, Schelling, in his Naturphilosophie, seeks to establish
the organic unity of nature in all its forms and manifestations and to
understand how thinking life (mind [Geist] and human subjectivity)
emerges, without resorting to Kant’s dichotomy. While he agrees with
Kant that the organic cannot spontaneously generate from the inorganic
(as suggested by Fichte), he posits that nature itself is inherently organic,
and thus the natural principles of development within nature can give rise
to organic life from seemingly inorganic components. His solution is to
think of the whole of nature as a “productivity.” Following Spinoza, he
distinguishes between nature as productive (Spinoza’s Natura naturans)
and nature as the product (Spinoza’s Natura naturata). What we typically
encounter are the “products” (Natura naturata) – empirical objects and
phenomena, collectively forming the world. Appearing as fixed, these
Schelling’s natural philosophy – in both its early version as well as the subject that plays a central role
in his thought throughout his career – has been extensively examined in both English and German
literature. Among earlier works – more focused on the history of science, rather than the history of
philosophy – are Förster ; Wieland ; Bowie , –. For more recent publications
that pay closer attention to philosophical issues, see Fisher ; Franks ; Garcia ; Satoor
; Woodard . A substantial amount of recent scholarly research has been dedicated to
exploring Hegel’s efforts to differentiate his philosophical project from Schelling’s Naturphilosophie.
See Grant ; Wandschneider ; McGrath ; Berger ; Rand .
Hegel’s Account of Nature
products can be categorized and studied under predefined rules within the
domain of empirical sciences. Naturphilosophie, distinct from empirical
natural sciences, assumes the additional task of exploring the “ground”
underlying what appears and shapes these objects (products). According to
Schelling, this grounding must be understood as “something non-object-
ive” (i.e., subjective) and unconditioned (unbedingt) existing in nature
itself, and it is “precisely the original productivity of nature” (SW I/:
) or nature as productivity (Natura naturans). Schelling views nature in
its entirety as teeming with life and productivity. Instead of being meta-
physically bound by a set of mechanistic laws, matter is inherently active,
possessing the ability to self-organize and engage in dynamic processes that
connect it to thinking life.
A third significant insight pertains to the concept of nature’s
development, which is understood as an evolutionary process marked by
a gradual succession of emerging levels. Schelling elucidates this develop-
ment by appealing to dynamic “potencies” (Potenzen), forces that “inhibit”
or interact with each other, revealing their power through opposition.
While he employs various fundamental processes as explanatory models
for the major orders and levels, a common thread running through all of
them is the presence of antagonism between negative and positive forces
inherent within each “potency,” holding it together. The structure of these
forces is actually tripartite: two natural forces opposing each other, main-
tained in equilibrium by a third force. This triadic structure is exemplified
in phenomena such as gravity, where repulsive and attractive forces are
coupled, or in magnetism, with its polarity and reversals of polarity. Their
interdependent dynamics constitute a comprehensive system of “poten-
cies” (forces) that are grounded in the “continually operative natural activ-
ity” and the inherent “productivity” of nature itself (SW I/: ). For
Schelling, nature is in a perpetual state of (self-)transformation, and its
productivity arises and remains sustainable through the interplay of polar
oppositions. As Bowie explicates, “[Schelling’s] Naturphilosophie articulates
the system of nature on the basis of a fundamental principle of difference
within identity” (Bowie , ). While the forces of nature simultan-
eously manifest opposing tendencies – expansion (associated with growth
and life) and contraction (linked to decadence and death) – they coexist
and act harmoniously within an organic unity, depicted as an intercon-
nected whole. Human beings are integral components of this unified
For a well-informed discussion of how Schelling conceives the working of forces see Rand ,
–.
.
whole, and the journey toward self-consciousness occurs within the realm
of nature itself, explained by its generative forces.
The fourth crucial aspect of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie is his under-
standing of nature as a sequence of evolving metamorphoses. It was
Goethe who initially formulated the notion of metamorphosis (transform-
ation) of forms within an idealist morphological framework in his Versuch
die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären (), translated into English
as Metamorphoses of Plants. Becoming acquainted with this concept
through his intensive exchanges with Goethe starting from ,
Schelling extended it beyond the realm of plants to encompass the entirety
of nature, introducing the law of polarity into this framework (HKA III/:
‒; HKA I/: f., –; I/: f.; see also Nassar ,
–). He viewed the products of nature as engaged in an “infinite
metamorphosis,” understood in a radical way as “not merely a partial but a
total change” (HKA I/: ; I/: ). Despite perceiving natural
phenomena in such a dynamic manner, Schelling attributed genuine
agency only to Natura naturans, an unconscious productive force that is
not directly observable and remains beyond the scope of “conscious”
comprehension, and that reveals itself only in and through the products
of nature. The achieved result is a philosophical account of nature as
independent, autonomous, and self-generating. Nature’s unconditioned
and unconscious productivity operates within the universal framework of
polarity and manifests itself through a process of continual intensification
(Steigerung) and increase in complexity.
A fifth important idea that animates Schelling’s Naturphilosophie is
teleology. In an effort to overcome the Kantian division between
mechanism and teleology leading to “the antinomy of judgements” (CJ
§/AA : –), Schelling proposes an all-encompassing teleological
system of nature, describing it as a “universal organism.” Central to this
model of nature is the idea of a self-organizing whole, a unified force from
which all other forces derive. Schelling argues that similar to how an
organism exhibits purposiveness within itself, the whole of nature must
be understood as intrinsically purposive. In this treatment of nature as
purposive, Schelling closely follows Kant, drawing heavily on the latter’s
conception of nature as a “system of ends” (CJ §/AA : –).
However, Schelling diverges significantly from Kant’s conclusions
regarding the teleology of nature as a whole. First, contrary to Kant, who
regarded the idea of the organic structure of nature as purely regulative,
Schelling, true to his goal of explicating a “productive organization” of
nature, asserts the objective and constitutive character of this idea. Second,
Hegel’s Account of Nature
while Kant’s teleological idea of a system of purposes leads to the postula-
tion of a final purpose (Endzweck) for nature, which as an “unconditioned
end” must be external to it, Schelling maintains that nature possesses
internal purposiveness. Like an organism, nature exists for its own sake,
serving as its own ultimate purpose and functioning both as the cause and
the effect within itself. As a whole, it is “organized out of itself and by
itself” (SW I/: ). The teleological account of nature as a “universal
organism” underscores the organic structure of nature while acknowledg-
ing the diversity of particular forms within its unified organization.
In providing this overview of the key ideas of Schelling’s
Naturphilosophie, the aim has been to underscore its basic principles,
particularly those that can shed light on Hegel’s project of the philosophy
of nature. Hegel’s own exploration of natural philosophy was profoundly
influenced by Schelling, and there are indeed significant parallels and
similarities between their theories. One of the most fundamental common-
alities is their shared commitment to dynamic holistic accounts of the
natural world, which incorporate human beings within this world rather
than positioning them in opposition to it. Both thinkers regard nature as an
autonomous whole in which all its elements exist in organic unity.
Nevertheless, despite the substantial similarities in their conceptions of
nature and their shared intellectual roots, including their mutual departure
from several Kantian principles, leading to superseding him in various
respects (such as the principle of self-organization of nature and the attribu-
tion of a constitutive purposive structure to nature itself ), there are undeni-
able differences between their respective programs of Naturphilosophie.
This topic has received considerable attention in recent scholarly litera-
ture devoted to both Schelling and Hegel (Grant ; Rand ;
Wandschneider ; McGrath ; Berger ). However, a prevail-
ing view assigns to Hegel an allegedly epistemological orientation toward
nature, which emphasizes his occupation with the conceptual understand-
ing of nature rather than a direct interest in nature as such, central to
Schelling. This interpretation denies Hegel’s concern with the existing
nature itself, and charges him with a radicalization of “Kant’s elimination
of the natural” and having as his subject “nature as cognized by Geist”
(Miller , ; Chepurin , ). Interestingly, this reading is
For Kant, this is a human being under the moral law.
Fisher rightly points out that “the change in terminology – shifting to calling nature an organism,
instead of a system of ends – indicates a substantive philosophical difference” between Schelling and
Kant (Fisher , ).
.
shared by scholars from both camps: those who hold a more sympathetic
view of Hegel and those who favor Schelling. It is not my intention here to
engage in this debate, but it is crucial to clarify that this interpretation
fundamentally misrepresents Hegel’s approach to nature. Throughout his
philosophical career, Hegel remains committed to a dynamic natural realism
and naturalism that he borrows from the young Schelling’s ideas, and in his
philosophical system, he assigns nature a fundamental ontological status.
As John N. Findlay aptly points out, “there is, for Hegel, nothing ideal or
spiritual which does not have its roots in Nature, and which is not nourished
and brought to full fruition by Nature” (Enc. , xiii). This underscores
Hegel’s genuine interest in existing nature and his eagerness to engage with a
picture of nature that emerges from empirical sciences and the insights they
offer – a perspective akin to that of the young Schelling.
When it comes to the substantive differences between Schelling’s and
Hegel’s philosophical treatments of nature, those primarily revolve around
the two thinkers’ interpretations of the transition from inorganic nature to
organic life and human consciousness, specifically the manner in which life
and spirit emerge. The differences become evident when examining the
distinct methodologies they employ, the divergent explanatory models they
utilize, and their contrasting treatments of the developmental process itself.
While in order to describe the emergence of life and spirit, both
Schelling and Hegel refer to nature’s movement through “levels” or
“stages” (Stufen), they fundamentally diverge in how they understand these
stages and conceptualize the movement itself. Schelling views nature as
advancing through hierarchically organized “stages” (Stufengang), conceiv-
ing of this process in terms of dynamics of natural forces or “potencies”
(Potenzen). He characterizes this process as nature’s “self-potentiating”
activity, wherein the entire process of nature’s internal self-differentiation
is achieved through the activity of “potentiation” (Potenzierung). In this
context, dynamic natural forces possess the potential to intensify (steigern)
themselves, leading to the emergence of new natural phenomena and
stages in the development of nature. As inorganic forces elevate themselves
to higher (“second”) powers, new phenomena and properties emerge,
giving rise to universal physical categories such as magnetism, electricity,
and chemical processes. Continuing this trajectory, inorganic nature, when
reaching even higher (“third”) powers, engenders the categories associated
with organic life, including sensibility, irritability, and the formative drive.
This marks the transition from mechanical and physical forces to vital and
living processes, signifying a progression toward higher levels of (self-)
organization within nature.
Hegel’s Account of Nature
Hegel perceives Schelling’s Naturphilosophie as lacking the necessary
explanatory power to fully grasp the development from inorganic nature
to life and spirit. While he commends Schelling for attempting to articu-
late the structure of organic activity and for having “introduced forms of
the concept of reason into nature” (VGPh/MM : ), Hegel finds
Schelling’s reliance on force unsatisfactory and fundamentally limited,
particularly when applied to organic life, which, according to Hegel,
cannot be adequately explained in terms of cause-and-effect relationships.
In his own philosophical treatment of nature, Hegel turns to logic, confi-
dent that the transitions within the philosophy of nature are systematic
rather than natural and that this systematicity can only be captured
through logic, which operates with concepts rather than representational
content. At the core of Hegel’s approach is the belief that nature is a realm
of external relations, forming an organic whole with an implicit systematic
structure and interrelated parts. The philosophy of nature’s goal is to make
explicit what is logically implicit. Hegel accomplishes this by presenting
nature as a “system of stages [System von Stufen]” (Enc. §/GW :
), where each stage represents a distinct set of conceptual relations,
which serve as the determinations of nature. This perspective on nature
fundamentally differs from Schelling’s in at least two crucial aspects. First,
it concerns Hegel’s understanding of the stage-based structure of nature
and what it means for him to comprehend nature in stages. Second, it
involves the idea that these stages exist as a system. Unlike Schelling,
whose philosophical treatment of nature entails its interpretation as “a
sequence of stages” (Stufenfolge) developmentally linked to one another,
illustrating the ascending path from simplicity to complexity and from
lower to higher forms, Hegel views “stages” as “not generated naturally out
of the other.” As “external, contingent determination[s],” they are “more
or less indifferent to one another” (Enc. §, /GW : ,
–). Hegel’s focus in the philosophy of nature is not on isolated
natural singularities, such as various individual natural entities (things),
but rather on explaining the universals of nature. For the “inner being of
Nature is none other than the universal” (Enc. §A/GW : ).
Consequently, the conceptual comprehension of these universals of nature
involves grasping them as stages, each describing a particular aspect of
Hegel uses the concept of the animal to demonstrate that as a subject, the animal cannot enter into a
cause-and-effect relationship with anything, whether it is organic or inorganic, without actively
engaging with it (Enc. § & A; see also Rand , –).
.
nature’s structure in its externality, independently of their counterparts.
This perspective makes the stages irreducible to one another.
However, this irreducibility should not be misconstrued to mean that
the stages of nature exist in a complete “disunity” and have no connections
to one another. If that were Hegel’s standpoint, those who criticize his
philosophical explanation of nature for its alleged inability to explain how
development occurs in nature would have a valid point. The twist that
Hegel introduces into his account of stages is that they operate as a system.
While at the level of appearance, the structures of nature may not exhibit
unity, at the essential – conceptual – level, the stages exist in a dialectical
relationship with one another. I return to this question later when closely
examining Hegel’s account of nature. For now, it is important to empha-
size a substantial difference in Schelling’s and Hegel’s frameworks in their
approaches to nature. Whereas Schelling adopts a model of productivity to
account for the unconditioned in nature, Hegel’s philosophy of nature is
framed by an inner concept that follows a logical model. This is where the
issue of apriorism takes center stage.
. Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature and the Charge of Apriorism
In contemporary Hegel scholarship, there is a prevalent assumption that
Hegel insists on the a priori status for his Realphilosophie, including his
philosophical exploration of nature. This perspective is endorsed by
scholars such Alison Stone, Will Dudley, John Burbidge, and Stephen
Houlgate, and to some extent by Terry Pinkard, although Pinkard offers a
slightly modified conception of Hegel’s understanding of the a priori (see
Burbidge ; Dudley ; Pinkard ; Stone ; Houlgate
). I would argue that the aprioristic interpretation of Hegel’s philo-
sophical system is not accurate, particularly if we continue to apply
“a priori” in the vein of Kant’s first Critique. One immediate implication
of this approach for the Philosophy of Nature is that it reduces it to a
specific application (to actuality) of the concepts, principles, and structures
“deduced” in Logic. Such an interpretation poses a significant barrier to
understanding the true place and role of the Philosophy of Nature within
Hegel’s system. This interpretation erroneously prioritizes the tracking
of alleged a priori concepts of nature over a genuine attempt to grasp the
content of those concepts (Rand , –). Moreover, the insistence
on the apriority of the philosophy of nature results in misconceptions
about Hegel’s understanding of nature and makes his account of the
relationship between spirit and nature incomprehensible: Spirit becomes
Hegel’s Account of Nature
divorced from nature, and we end up mired in the dualism that Hegel
himself seeks to overcome. Elaboration on the latter point is beyond the
scope of this chapter, while the former is directly relevant to my discussion
of Hegel’s account of nature. However, before delving into this specific
topic, it is noteworthy to consider a few points relevant to the question
about the a priori status of the philosophy of nature.
Dissociating himself from all previous pseudo-versions of
Naturphilosophie, in the Introduction to the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel
makes it clear that “[w]hat we are engaged on here, is not an affair of
imagination and fancy, but of the Notion, of Reason.” It is “a knowledge
of Nature from thought,” indicating that it is a philosophical endeavor, not
an empirical one (Enc. §A). However, Hegel also acknowledges that
any philosophy of nature can attain its goals only in cooperation with
natural sciences. He emphasizes that “not only must philosophy accord
with the experience nature gives rise to; in its formation and its
development, philosophic science presupposes and is conditioned by empir-
ical physics” (Enc. §R). The idea that Hegel first formulated in the
Phenomenology of Spirit and reiterated in his Introduction to the
Philosophy of Nature was that any viable philosophical theory of know-
ledge must take into consideration the natural sciences and use their
findings as material for “metaphysical” (genuinely philosophical, second-
order) reflection, a stance that rejects the anti-naturalism associated with
traditional Cartesian epistemology (Westphal , –). It also dis-
misses the apriorism associated with this epistemology. Hegel advocates
for an epistemology grounded in nature, where empirical knowledge is not
only possible but also essential, as it forms the basis upon which philoso-
phy constructs its concepts and theories. Moreover, as recent research has
convincingly demonstrated, Hegel’s holistic ontology is based on an
examination of causal forces that is not exclusively philosophical but also
includes the results of their natural scientific studies (Ferrini ; b).
Therefore, the Philosophy of Nature should not be seen solely as a
conceptual exercise, especially not an a priori one. Instead, it primarily
concerns the analysis of interactive forces and actual causal relationships
prevalent in nature, which are captured by these concepts. Hegel seeks to
comprehend the natural world as a dynamic whole, making the philosophy
of nature a philosophical theory that delves into the holistic conceptual
content and the ontological implications thereof. If we were to speak of
Traditional epistemology must be a priori because it must first establish the possibility of empirical
knowledge in order to justify it.
.
“deduction” of concepts and principles in the context of Hegel’s Philosophy
of Nature, it would be in the Kantian sense, for whom to “deduce” means to
account for and to justify (Enc. GW §). This becomes one of the
principal tasks of Hegel’s philosophical examination of nature.
Hegel is acutely aware that the adequacy of any conceptual explanation
can only be accessed within the actual context of its possible application,
rather than in hypothetical or desired scenarios. This fundamental point is
vividly illustrated in his Philosophy of Nature. Consequently, it is incorrect
to label Hegel as an a priori rationalist, and the assertion of apriorism in his
philosophy of nature (and his entire system) lacks a solid foundation within
Hegel’s systematic framework. Moreover, there are at least two logistical
problems with the aprioristic reading of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature: one is
conceptual, and the other pertains to content. First, formal logical deduction
does not allow for the derivation of specific forms from more general ones.
And yet Hegel’s philosophical analysis of nature presents precisely this
progression. Second, if the Philosophy of Nature were merely an instanti-
ation of the formal logical concepts “deduced” in Logic, it would be hard to
explain how Hegel avoids falling into the “schematizing formalism” that he
criticizes in Schelling. In fact, what permits Hegel to escape such formalism
is his approach of commencing his analysis with natural phenomena them-
selves and – through a critical examination of these phenomena – demon-
strating that they exhibit the conceptual principles revealed in Logic.
Hegel’s philosophy of nature is a work of philosophy, similar to
Aristotle’s Metaphysics or Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural
Science, and, as mentioned before, as such is primarily concerned with
the conceptual organization of nature. This distinguishes it from natural
science, which presents empirical findings and mathematical analyses, and
the philosophy of science, which focuses on scientific inquiry, seeking to
understand it from a philosophical perspective, as illustrated by thinkers
such as Popper, Kuhn, and Lakatos.
What Hegel offers is a metaphysical (philosophical) account of the
conceptual structure of nature itself; not how it is represented in scientific
models but rather what nature itself ultimately is. He seeks to uncover the
very essence and underlying principles that constitute the fabric of nature,
going beyond the boundaries of empirical data and scientific theories.
. Hegel’s Account of Nature
My aim in this and the following sections is to address a systematic
challenge mentioned earlier and to show that the commonly held assertion
Hegel’s Account of Nature
regarding Hegel’s “‘idea-ization’ of nature” is far from accurate. Hegel’s
conception of systematicity not only clashes with but also necessitates the
rejection of the view of his philosophy as a metaphysical theory of Idea,
one that disregards the facticity of the given world and subsumes all
otherness and finitude into thought. In my defense of this viewpoint,
I strive to elucidate the account of Nature that arises from Hegel’s
Philosophy of Nature. I explore how Hegel conceives of Nature in its
relationship to the Idea and delve into his comprehension of Nature’s
development. During this exploration, I draw attention to two passages –
one from the Philosophy of Nature and another from the Science of Logic –
that, in my estimation, have been underappreciated in existing literature,
or at the very least have not received the attention they rightly deserve.
The first passage that originates from section B, “The Notion of
Nature,” in the Philosophy of Nature opens with the following statement:
“Nature has presented itself as the Idea in the form of otherness. Since
therefore the Idea is the negative of itself, or is external to itself, Nature is
not merely external in relation to this Idea . . . ; the truth is rather that
externality constitutes the specific character in which Nature, as Nature,
exists” (Enc. §).
From this paragraph we discern that Nature () is the “otherness” of the
Idea; () “is external in relation to this Idea”; but () this externality
possesses a distinct and specific character, which substantiates the existence
of nature as nature. Before delving further into this discussion, it is crucial to
grasp the meaning of “Nature, as Nature, exists.” In a preceding paragraph,
Hegel criticizes both practical and theoretical approaches to Nature as one-
sided. In their understanding of Nature, the former imposes the criteria of
human pragmatic practicality while the latter relies solely on its sensory
perception and conceptualization. Hegel unequivocally asserts that our true
objective in approaching Nature is to know how it truly is. He articulates:
We want to know the Nature that really is, not something that is not. But
instead of leaving Nature as she is, and taking her as she is in truth, instead
of simply perceiving her, we make her into something quite different.
In thinking things, we transform them into something universal; but things
are singular and the Lion as Such does not exist. We give them the form of
something subjective, of something produced by us and belonging to us in
our specifically human character: for natural objects do not think, and are
not presentations of thoughts. (Enc. §A)
It is evident that when Hegel refers to Nature, he is referring to a given
nature in its genuine existence. Importantly, he does not envision of this
given Nature as a product of thought, nor does he equate thought with
.
Nature. According to Hegel, Nature stands independently as a given reality
and is not a “creation” (or any kind of “product”) of the (logical) Idea. There
is a radical nonidentity of the Idea (thought) and Nature, which, in fact,
constitutes the otherness of Nature in relation to the Idea. Hegel commences
his Philosophy of Nature with this notion of the fundamental nonidentity of
the Idea and Nature, holding that the two have no commonality and do not
even bear any resemblance to one another. Furthermore, Hegel contends
that only by conceiving the Idea in this way can Nature be properly
understood philosophically and in a sound manner.
Up to this point, the primary focus has been on how Nature is
conceived in its relationship to the Idea within the Philosophy of
Nature. Now, let us turn our attention to the transition to Nature that
Hegel introduces in the concluding pages of the Science of Logic. Indeed, if
we seek to provide an accurate and comprehensive account of Nature, it is
imperative that we approach it systematically.
In the closing paragraph of the Science of Logic, where Hegel delineates the
transition of the Idea into Nature, he states: “The transition is to be grasped,
therefore, in the sense that the idea freely discharges [frei enläβt] itself,
absolutely certain of itself and internally at rest” (SL /GW : ).
Illuminating this transition in his Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel affirms
that the Idea “resolves to release freely from itself [frei aus sich zu entlassen]
the moment of its particularity or the first determining and otherness, the
immediate idea, as its reflection [Widerschein], itself as Nature” (Enc. §).
From a systematic viewpoint, Nature is the Idea in its external mani-
festation. This assertion has often been interpreted to mean that the Idea
“produces” or gives rise to Nature, which aligns with a metaphysically
idealistic reading positing that reality is thought-like or, at the very least, a
derivative product of thought (or the Idea). I find this interpretation
problematic and would suggest an alternative reading: The relationship
between the Idea and Nature can be described in terms of determination.
In pursuit of its own determination, the Idea negates itself as something
“other” and external to itself. The resultant determination, which is natural
reality itself, stands apart from the conceptual development of the (logical)
Idea, as something that is “other” than the Idea itself. Both natural reality
and the Idea exist as external to each other, and this is what Hegel appears
to have in mind when characterizing Nature as the externality and
otherness of the Idea (Enc. §). Space, time, and other natural
categories that Hegel considers in his Philosophy of Nature are simply
determinations of the Idea in the sense described earlier. The movement
from the Idea to Nature and subsequently to Spirit is not a process akin to
Hegel’s Account of Nature
divine creation – as Findlay, Verene, and some other scholars believe (Verene
, ) – or a mere “process of becoming” (ein Gewordensein). Instead, it
is properly considered a “transition” (Übergang), similar to those found in
Hegel’s Logic and driven by dialectics. This transition should be seen as an
essential “moment” within the dynamics of the system. From a systematic
viewpoint, this passage to Nature is an absolute liberation – the “free release”
of the Idea into its own externality in the form of “otherness.” However, it is
crucial not to misconstrue this as implying that Nature depends on the Idea
or any other cognitive content for its existence. Instead, Nature (the natural
reality) is a freely emerging entity, existing independently of any mind or
thought. As an autonomous and self-sufficient entity, it operates according to
its own laws, distinct from the laws of logic. This distinction becomes
apparent even in the initial categories of the philosophy of nature: Space
and time are determinations that are markedly different from the rational
principles of thought that constitute the content of the Idea. While historic-
ally, the laws governing nature were often understood to be ontologically
distinct from the material they govern (Halper , –), Hegel contends
that these laws are inherent within nature itself. This is, I suggest, what Hegel
means when he declares that “the Idea is present in each grade or level of
Nature itself” (Enc. §A, trans. modified). The Philosophy of Nature
aims to demonstrate that rational principles are not external to Nature but are
somehow embedded within it. Only by recognizing these laws as intrinsic to
Nature can we justify regarding them as the laws of Nature.
. Making Sense of Hegel’s Anti-evolutionism
In the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel offers a comprehensive and intricate
account of the natural world, presented as a series of stages arranged in
a sequenced manner. The three main sections – “Mechanics,” “Physics,”
and “Organics” – represent the key phases through which nature under-
goes a gradual progression, moving from simple and still contingent
phenomena typical of inorganic nature to highly developed organisms
characterized by increasing degrees of self-determination, which are dis-
tinctive features of organic life. Each of these three main stages encom-
passes a variety of natural phenomena, and all these diverse elements
within each stage are bounded (or united) by certain central characteristics.
Hegel contends that a true understanding of the individual components
can only be achieved when they are considered in relation to the whole.
Consequently, while each of the three divisions in the Philosophy of
Nature serves a specific and significant role, they also function within an
.
integrated system. Therefore, only when considered together, in their
systematic unity, can these stages (including their substages) provide us
with a comprehensive depiction of the natural world “that really is,”
allowing us to recognize that this world is more than just the sum of its
individual parts and forces (mechanical, physical, chemical, etc.) function-
ing in isolation.
What Hegel seeks to demonstrate is how all the various parts, forces,
and natural phenomena interrelate and gradually progress toward what
constitutes the telos of nature. Importantly, this telos is not something
external to nature that exists beyond it and necessitates external interven-
tion. Instead, nature itself is inherently perfect and capable of fulfilling its
own purpose. Thus, in Hegel’s view, the teleology of nature coincides with
the idea of development in nature, illustrating an internal drive toward
self-realization and fulfillment.
In this philosophical exploration, it is essential to discern, in their
singular and immediate manifestations, the universal and complex whole.
Hence, Hegel commences his analysis of nature by examining the most
abstract forms of objectivity (space) and subjectivity (time) and then
progresses toward the examination of the most complete and complex
natural forms, such as the structure of organisms, assimilation, and the
concept of genus described in organic life. It is impossible to delve into all
the intricate details of Hegel’s account of the natural world here. Instead,
I limit my discussion to the question of how Hegel understands the
development taking place in nature. This issue has been the subject of
ongoing debate among scholars, and with good reason. According to
Hegel, the development of nature is a complex and contentious process,
not solely because contradiction drives this development but also because
what undergoes differentiation remains preserved and reproduced
throughout this developmental process. There are two principal ways in
which the progression of nature is conceived: evolution and emanation.
Hegel describes evolution as a “gradual alteration” that moves from the
“imperfect and formless” toward more intricate natural objects and organ-
isms. Acknowledging that this theory has its origins in other conceptions
of Naturphilosophie, he points out that it “does not really explain anything
at all” (Enc. §R). In contrast, the concept of emanation, which,
Indeed, even before the emergence of Charles Darwin and his groundbreaking theory of evolution
by natural selection, there existed a longstanding tradition that put forth theories regarding natural
and biological evolutionary processes. Claims of this nature were already at the core of Empedocles’
philosophical thinking.
Hegel’s Account of Nature
according to Hegel, originates “from the oriental world,” portrays
development as a regression that involves the “degradation of being,
starting with the perfect being, the absolute totality, God” and ending
“with the absence of all form” (Enc. §R). Hegel clearly favors
emanation because it sets the most complete and perfect standard for
explaining the lower forms. This aligns more closely with the principle
of dialectics, which is driven by the immanence of the whole (the Concept)
within its individual moments. Nevertheless, he regards both approaches –
evolution and emanation – as “one-sided and superficial.” However, he
seems to recognize that both convey something essential about develop-
ment: the multidimensionality of its temporality. He recognizes that in its
development “the point proceeds towards a place which is its future” but
“this is the truth of time, that the goal is not the future but the past” (Enc.
§A). In other words, the moment of evolution captures the necessity of
the process, while the moment of emanation conveys its purposefulness or
telos. Without a determinate goal, there can be no concept of development.
Despite acknowledging some positive aspects of evolutionary thinking
about development in nature and the evolutionary impulse within his own
system, Hegel rejects the theories of evolution known to him. In his view,
evolution falls into the genetic fallacy by seeking the explanation of what
presently exists in past occurrences. However, the most crucial point he
makes is that neither of these two approaches to the diversity of nature is
sufficient. They merely list various stages in a predetermined order without
revealing the necessary relationships between them. Such an approach does
not render the relationship between stages intelligible or provide an explan-
ation for qualitative changes. Hegel contends that this relationship can only
be explained in terms of the whole development of the Concept itself.
In Enc. §, he unequivocally articulates his perspective:
Nature is to be regarded as a system of stages, one arising necessarily from the
other and being the proximate truth of the stage from which it results: but it
is not generated naturally out of the other but only in the inner Idea which
constitutes the ground of Nature. Metamorphosis pertains only to the
Notion as such, since only its alteration is development.
In his Philosophy of Nature and several subsequent texts, Hegel consist-
ently rejects theories that explain the natural process in terms of the
progression where lower organisms give rise to higher developmental
The passages in which Hegel rejects the doctrine of historical evolution in the biological realm are
well known and well recorded: Enc. §A, §A.
.
species. So, what is Hegel’s positive account of the development of nature?
Indeed, how should we read his claim that “nature is to be regarded as a
system of stages”? Does he propose a reductive account of nature, in which
the system is understood as an aggregative totality, as some contemporary
scholars tend to interpret it?
Upon closer examination, it becomes evident that Hegel’s philosophy of
nature is neither reductive nor reductionist in nature. While it may
appear that Hegel employs a somewhat “reductive” methodology, he does
so with the aim of exposing the limitations of reductionist accounts. His
goal is to accurately identify and explain nature in all its systematic
complexity, which stands in contrast to a mere aggregative perspective
(Westphal ).
The account of nature that Hegel presents in his Philosophy of Nature
aligns with what is now discussed in terms of “emergentism.” This concept
has its roots in Naturphilosophie, and it represents the idea that the
behavior of a natural system or organism results from both its structural
organization and the material components it comprises. While the material
sets certain limits on how a physical system can behave, the proper
organization enables physical systems to perform functions that transcend
the physical capacities of their constituent matter. It is noteworthy that
the initial principles of emergentism, originally formulated by reductionist
philosophers, were harnessed in the context of Naturphilosophie to support
anti-reductionist theories. Naturphilosophie aimed to explain various bio-
logical and human phenomena by organizing matter into systematic
structures, establishing a hierarchy of organization levels, with each level
serving as the foundation for the next. Schelling’s Naturphilosophie largely
exemplifies this approach.
In contrast, Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature tackles a fundamental philo-
sophical question: If nature and the natural phenomena he examines are
indeed real, then how are they and our cognition of them possible? Hegel’s
philosophical task goes beyond discerning what distinguishes each specific
level and how it gives rise to the emergence of its successor. He focuses on
determining how and to what extent we are justified in employing various
concepts and principles in our cognition of natural phenomena (Enc.
§A). This underpins Hegel’s own emergentist agenda, which differs
substantially from the one proposed by Naturphilosophie. Hegel’s version
For an enlightening and well-argued discussion of Hegel’s nonreductionist position concerning
natural organisms, see Kabeshkin , –.
For a very accessible and concise explanation of emergentism, see Westphal , .
Hegel’s Account of Nature
of emergentism aims to demonstrate why a particular set of concepts and
principles is sufficient for comprehending natural phenomena at a specific
level of complexity and how these concepts and principles logically neces-
sitate the emergence of the succeeding level. This “system of stages” is not
propelled by external factors such as divine command or preordination;
instead, it operates internally and metalogically, driven by its own inherent
logic and principles.
This emergentist account of nature allows Hegel to avoid both pre-
Kantian eliminative materialism and Descartes’ (substance) dualism.
Starting with the empirical condition of particularity or multiplicity and
abstracting the essence of development from these conditions (as in
Aristotle) can undermine the internal consistency of a developmental model.
Hegel is unquestionably a monist, and as a monistic ontologist with a
developmental perspective, he demonstrates continuity through the logical
structure of his system, unfolding through Idea, Nature, and Spirit. This
continuity should not be misconstrued as a complete and finalized account of
the entire world. After all, Hegel’s Encyclopaedia is not describing the gener-
ation of the universe. What is crucial about this continuity is that it unfolds
from within the system itself, avoiding the pitfall of being an empty formalism
where a fixed template, even if genetic, is imposed upon phenomena. This
architectonic model also sheds light on how Hegel perceives the relationship
between Nature and Spirit, a topic beyond the scope of this chapter.
. Concluding Remarks
To summarize, I would like to offer some reflections on the enduring
relevance and significance of a philosophical examination of nature by
Hegel. In my view, which in general aligns with the position argued by
Christian Martin, the lasting value of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature lies in
its presentation of a philosophical argument that addresses the insuffi-
ciency of both empirical methods employed in natural science and deter-
minations based on human instrumental or pragmatic criteria in fully
grasping the truth of nature (Martin ). Faced with the limitations of
these modes of thinking and their production of an incomplete image of
nature, Hegel also cautions against abandoning the pursuit of a rational-
philosophical comprehension of nature in favor of adopting mystical,
religious, or solely aesthetic forms of insight (Furlotte , ).
The success or failure of Hegel’s own project in addressing the identified
issues can be a matter of interpretation and the criteria utilized. However,
reading it in terms of emergentism may offer a productive perspective.
.
Emergentist theories appear to be genuinely philosophical and, therefore,
align with the internal criteria Hegel outlined for a philosophy of nature.
When nature is viewed solely through the lens of empirical sciences, it does
not inherently generate meaning or interpretations itself. This is what
Hegel referred to as the “impotence of nature” (Ohnmacht der Natur).
Quantitative aggregation alone cannot account for qualitative shifts that
produce rationally significant phenomena such as “life” or “consciousness”
from inert matter. It is the standpoint of rationality that presupposes the
objective value of these distinctions.
In this sense, the defense of a philosophy of nature seems to find
support only in idealism, which affirms the primacy of meaning over the
sensibly appearing manifold. This idealism is inherently in tension with
what Hegel calls “crude empiricism,” which assumes that nature’s unity is
purely an empirical matter, and that empiricism holds ultimate authority
over the intelligibility of what is real. Hegel’s idealist approach to philosophy
of nature rebels against such arguments. However, it would be incorrect to
understand Hegel’s idealism as inherently “anti-naturalistic.” His account of
nature is not anti-realistic either. He not only affirms the reality of nature
but also views it as an autonomous entity governed by its own internal laws
and principles. While the “logic of the system” guides its progression
through the Idea, Nature, and then Spirit, it would be a mistake to interpret
Nature in Hegel’s philosophy as an “incarnation” of the Idea, even when
viewed through the lens of this “logic” where Nature is introduced as the
“externality” of the Idea. What this “logic of the system” captures is not the
development of reality itself but rather the movement of thought, “the
movement which is cognition” (PS /GW : ). When taken together,
the progression of the system through different stages tells the story of this
movement. This chapter aimed to illustrate these points.
The Logic of Nature
Nature as the “Idea in the Form of Otherness”
Angelica Nuzzo
Given that the Philosophy of Nature constitutes the second main division
of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in its three editions
(, , ), we can easily take this book, and the definitive
systematic structure it contains, as the first and most obvious place to start
when addressing the question of the systematic placement of nature in
Hegel’s philosophy. This, however, can be only a general starting point.
For what the second division of the Encyclopaedia investigates under the
title of “nature” is a complex array of topics that includes the material
world of nature, our human theoretical and cognitive attitudes toward
nature, and our practical and pragmatic relationship to it. Indeed, as the
thematic object of the “philosophy of nature,” nature is from the outset a
complex object. Now, precisely because of this complexity, nature is
present in other systematic spheres of Hegel’s system as well and is not
confined to its second division. In order to address this more pervasive
presence of nature within the system, then, we may, as it is usually done,
rightly qualify it, first, as “logical” nature (e.g., organic “life” as stage of
“Objectivity” in the Logic); we may want to repeat the longstanding
Aristotelian distinction between “first” and “second” nature (to name just
one occurrence, the presence of natural determinations within the “family”
in “ethical life” within the philosophy of objective spirit); and we may
resort to calling certain instances of the concept of nature “anticipations”
of what is still to come and other instances “returns” of what has been
dialectically aufgehoben. However, this way of sorting out the recurrence of
(the concept of ) nature at different stages of the development of the
system, while certainly correct, does not address the deeper question that
such recurrence and pervasiveness of nature poses. It is, in fact, the very
character of Hegel’s philosophical Encyclopaedia to require thinking’s
movement throughout the different systematic spheres to produce neces-
sary “transitions,” to stage a development whereby a certain stage or object
of thinking obtains from the process that has led to it as its necessary
result. At issue, then, is not so much to sort out the different occurrences
of nature across the spheres of Hegel’s philosophy but rather to account for
the systematic logic that guides the unfolding of the concept of nature in
this way, that is, to account for the inner logic that grounds the necessity
for nature to appear as the second division of the system of philosophy and
also, at the same time, to be present at crucial junctures in the first and the
third division, namely, in the Logic and the Philosophy of Spirit.
This, then, is the question that I set out to investigate: What is the
“logic of nature,” that is, the internal, specific logic that guides the
unfolding of the concept of nature within the second division of the
system but also accounts for nature’s broader pervasiveness within
Hegel’s philosophy? This question immediately prompts another one:
How is the logic of nature related to the dialectic-speculative pure logic
that occupies the first division of the system? The perspective of the logic
of nature constitutes the framework within which I address the question
concerning the systematic relation connecting the pure determinations of
thinking presented by the Logic, nature as specific object of the Philosophy
of Nature, and spirit in its emerging from nature yet caught in a
development that is still bounded by nature.
What distinguishes Hegel’s Encyclopaedia from traditional philosophical
and nonphilosophical treatises of the same genre is, first and foremost, the
immanent dynamic movement that engages thinking throughout its dif-
ferent spheres. Accordingly, these spheres are not static disciplinary div-
isions but organic parts of the same dialectical development. This means
that the points of juncture – the “transitions” or Übergänge – that connect
and properly produce successive spheres leading from one to the next have
a peculiar significance for the constitution of the whole since they are the
dynamic places in which the new thematic “object” arises from the
preceding movement. Importantly, transitions are structured according
to the dialectic-speculative logic immanently governing the development
of Hegel’s philosophy. In this way, then, Nature arises out of the Logic at
its conclusive point; while Spirit arises out of the sphere of Nature once its
development is exhausted. On the basis of this sketch of the overall
movement of Hegel’s philosophy, in a first part of this chapter I give a
brief account of the place that Nature occupies in Hegel’s Encyclopaedia in
This is its proper systematic and genetic “deduction.”
Henceforth I use the capitalized “Nature” (and Spirit) to indicate the systematic second sphere of the
system (the Philosophy of Nature) and “nature” to indicate the thematic and material object that is
the world of nature.
Nature as the “Idea in the Form of Otherness”
order to address, second, the famous transition from the “absolute idea” of
the Logic to Nature. There is a sense in which this movement can be
described as the logical idea becoming itself nature as its opposite and other or
as the idea yielding to nature as its opposite and other. Indeed, in this
transition, nature is famously defined as the “idea in the form of otherness”
(Enc. §). At stake here is the connection between the meaning of
nature’s “otherness” and the systematic “transition” achieved by means of
this otherness. What interests me herein is the difference between the logical
reality of the idea and the natural reality achieved in the next sphere. The
third step of my argument is dedicated to the analysis of the specific logic of
nature, which Hegel presents programmatically in Encyclopaedia §–.
Herein, the difference between the pure logic of the first systematic division
and the logic of nature comes to the fore in a thematic way. The latter
considers nature’s specificity as the “other” or “otherness” of the logical
idea – the logical idea “in the form of otherness.” The chapter concludes
with a brief discussion of the relationship between nature and spirit framed,
more pointedly, in terms of the “otherness” that nature embodies. At issue is
the way in which the logic of nature necessarily leads beyond nature but so
as to maintain nature as the material basis of spirit’s own specific develop-
ment, that is, as the enduring basis of freedom’s process of actualization.
In fact, this is true despite – or, indeed, dialectically, on the basis of – Hegel’s
description of the transition from Nature to Spirit as the movement of
nature’s own vanishing in spirit (Enc. §).
. Hegel’s Encyclopaedia and the Philosophy of Nature
In the Nuremberg years (–), Hegel’s multiple drafts of a
Philosophical Encyclopaedia or “propaedeutic” for use in his classes aim,
for the first time, at presenting a reflection on the general overall structure
of the whole of philosophy itself. At this time, Hegel further investigates
the separation between nonphilosophical consciousness and the speculative
standpoint – an issue that is already explored in the Phenomenology of Spirit
(). In this context, Hegel proposes a conception of the internal
division of the philosophical science which is thought now as an encyclo-
pedic division. As Hegel makes clear in his Privatgutachten to
Niethammer, the whole of philosophy encyclopedically structured – or
the “general content of philosophy” – comprises three “main sciences,”
namely, “. the logic, . the philosophy of nature, and . the philosophy of
spirit.” All other sciences, which are necessarily “nonphilosophical” (for
otherwise they would be reducible to those three disciplines), are already
included within the philosophical sciences with regard to their “begin-
nings” and first principles. In a philosophical encyclopedia, Hegel main-
tains, they should be considered in these beginnings only (and not, for
example, in their detailed empirical developments: MM , f.). The
logic is the only “pure science” or the science of the pure essence con-
sidered as simple and in itself, while the philosophy of nature and spirit are
“applied sciences” that have as their object the pure essence respectively in
its “alienation” (or movement in otherness) and in the return to itself from
this alienation. This disciplinary partition, already latently present in the
Jena system drafts, is now explicitly an encyclopedic division and, most
importantly, is brought back to the dynamic of an inner, necessary
development (the pure essence in itself, in its alienation, in the overcoming
of its alienation). Significantly, by thematizing the movement of the idea’s
alienation, or becoming other, the philosophy of nature sets the tone for
the “applied” or “real” philosophical disciplines which, circularly or rather
systematically, ultimately aim at overcoming the idea’s alienation and yet
at preserving its real embodiment in the natural and spiritual world.
Moreover, the fact that the second encyclopedic division is concerned with
the idea’s “otherness” or, as Hegel also puts it, with the “opposite of the
concept” which is to be “converted into the concept” for it to be the topic
of a science of nature, constitutes the peculiar difficulty in the teaching of
the philosophy of nature in the gymnasium (MM , ).
Since “the whole of the science is the presentation of the idea, its
partition (Einteilung) can be first conceived only from the idea” (HEnc.
§; Enc. §). Now, “the idea is the self-identical reason that, in order
to be for itself, sets itself in front of itself (sich gegenüberstellt) and is an
other to itself, but then in this other it is identical to itself” (HEnc. §).
Thereby Hegel concisely renders the necessary unfolding of the partition
of the Encyclopaedia through the main division of the Logic, the
Philosophy of Nature, and the Philosophy of Spirit. The “idea” as self-
identical reason is the protagonist of this partition. In order to be what it is
in a self-conscious, actualized way (i.e., to be “for itself”), reason reflect-
ively sets itself against itself becoming the “other of itself” in an act of self-
alienation. This is nature. In this otherness, however, reason ultimately
recognizes itself and is thereby truly free in the sense of being-at-home,
reconciled in its otherness. Spirit finds itself in nature and is finally at
home within it. The Logic as the first, foundational sphere of the system
gives an account of reason considered “in and for itself” (Enc. §) in its
pure structures, that is, it offers an account of “thinking” as such or of the
“idea” in the complete development of its pure forms. But the Logic also
Nature as the “Idea in the Form of Otherness”
gives an account of the real examined in its internal logical distinctions,
that is, it considers that which distinguishes, logically or formally, Realität
from Dasein, Existenz from Erscheinung and Wirklichkeit, and examines the
inner logical articulation of Objektivität. The apparent separation of reason
from its actuality – reason’s “otherness” (Anderssein: Enc. §), “alien-
ation,” or exteriorization (Entäußerung: Enc. §R) and becoming other,
as Hegel intimates already in the Nürnberg Encyclopaedia – is the topic of
the Philosophy of Nature. Herein we find Hegel’s dialectic-speculative
transformation of metaphysical cosmology but also an account of the
philosophical cognition of nature conducted in a close confrontation with
the natural sciences of the time and with past philosophical views of
nature. Finally, the process of reason’s “reconciliation” with actuality,
namely, the reconciliation of “reason that exists” and “self-conscious
reason,” or the idea’s “return to itself from its otherness” (Enc. §), takes
place in the development of the Philosophy of Spirit.
With regard to the encyclopedic partition outlined earlier, it is the
systematic logic of philosophical thinking that prescribes the fundamental
qualification of Nature as the sphere of “otherness,” as the movement of
“becoming other,” of “alienation” and “externalization” (Entäußerung).
Importantly, this movement takes place in the intermediary sphere of
the system, thereby placing Nature as a dialectical “in-between,” that is,
as the movement taking place between pure logical thinking and the
emergence and actualization of spirit. Now, the position of the in-between,
quite generally, denotes for Hegel the sphere of negativity, that is, the
strictly “dialectical” moment of a process or the “negatively rational
(negativ-vernünftige)” side of it (Enc. §). This is the moment in which,
formally, the “transition into the opposite” takes place (Enc. §). But this
step also entails the movement of mediation, and, methodologically, it is
here that thinking advances by pushing beyond the systematic beginning,
setting the conditions for thinking to return circularly and conclusively
back to itself. In sum, the characterization of the sphere of Nature as the
sphere of otherness emerges, first, as a systematic and topological charac-
terization dictated by the logic of the philosophical encyclopedia or by the
logic of thinking’s systematic totality. Otherness designates the intermedi-
ate phase of thinking’s dynamic process. It is not, directly, a descriptive,
objective mark of nature in its material reality.
See for this latter, methodological aspect, Nuzzo . The theory of the three syllogisms placed at
the very end of the Encyclopaedia proposes, conclusively, a set of different permutations of the
sequence (Enc. §§–; Nuzzo ).
. From the Logical Idea to Nature: The “Idea in the
Form of Otherness”
Hegel stages the movement from the Logic to Nature as the “transition,”
which, he clarifies, is not properly a transition (or is not a proper transition
like the ones that have taken place throughout the Logic) from the “pure
idea” to its “determining itself as external idea” (MM , ). In order to
address this peculiar movement, a preliminary clarification is necessary.
The question concerns the status of the logical forms vis-à-vis the “real”
determinations proper of the spheres of nature and spirit – the thematic
objects of the Realphilosophie. Indeed, this has been the topic of heated
debate since the early reception of Hegel’s philosophy – a debate that has
invested not only the problematic “transition” at hand but also the type of
“nature” that results from such a transition.
In agreement with a longstanding tradition, Hegel claims that his
dialectic-speculative Logic deals with thinking in its pure formality.
However, following this time Kant’s idea of transcendental logic as a logic
of knowing (and not of mere thinking – CPR BXXVI; Bff./Aff.),
logical form as such is not devoid of content (Nuzzo ). Pure think-
ing’s determination is “absolute form,” that is, a form able to give itself a
determinate content. This implies that the content is not “external” (and
externally given) to the form (as Kant’s intuition in relation to the
concepts) but is self-produced by the form itself. Furthermore, Hegel’s
logic, following in Kant’s aftermath, replaces traditional metaphysics as it
critically but also dialectically “sublates” it within itself. With regard to the
specific issue that I address here, this means, first, that the relation between
logical forms – and the “absolute idea” as the highest form attained by the
Logic – and the “real” manifestations of nature and spirit is not simply the
relation between the abstract (i.e., lacking content) and the concrete; and it
means, second, that the relation between the science of logic and the
philosophy of nature is not a simple “application” of an empty logical
form to formless and independently given contents. Finally, it means that
the Logic is already tasked with taking up metaphysical and epistemo-
logical issues concerning nature – first and foremost ontological and
cosmological issues concerning the totality of the world but also scientific
issues such as the ones concerning classifications in nature, nature’s
As I have explored this topic extensively elsewhere (see Nuzzo , chapters –), I limit myself
here to two programmatic passages. See Nuzzo for an account of Trendelenburg’s and
Schelling’s critiques of this transition; and Houlgate in reference to Schelling.
Nature as the “Idea in the Form of Otherness”
continuum, and the understanding of living organisms. This accounts for
the necessary presence of nature within the Logic – from the Logic of
Being (Quantity, for example, where the Kantian cosmological antinomies
are addressed; and Measure, in which theories of the continuum in nature
are featured) to the Logic of the Concept (where organic life and mechan-
ical and chemical phenomena find their place). But then the obvious
question emerges of what properly distinguishes logical from natural and
spiritual forms; or, to push the point further, if nature is somehow already
present in the Logic, what is the difference between “logical” nature and
“real” (or material) nature? What is it that is properly achieved in and by
the transition that leads beyond the Logic to Nature? The short answer
herein points to the notion of “otherness.” As we shall see, somehow the
nature that appears in the Logic – or intra-logical nature, as it were – is not
the other of the idea (MM , ). True otherness can emerge only at the
end of the Logic.
In the introduction to the Science of Logic, in outlining the relation
between his new dialectic-speculative logic and traditional metaphysics on
the one hand and Kant’s transcendental logic on the other, but also in
relation to his own Phenomenology of Spirit (), Hegel claims that the
“content” of the “pure science” is thinking that having been “liberated
from the opposition of consciousness” is now “objective thinking” (MM ,
). Thinking’s objectivity guarantees that the logic does not “lack the
matter (Materie) of an actual and true cognition; that its content is the
absolute true” or, Hegel suggests, “the absolute matter,” namely, a matter
that is not “external (ein Äusserliches) to the form” and is not independently
given but is rather self-produced as “absolute form” (MM , ). There is
no exteriority binding matter and form, thinking and its objectivity,
cognition and its object. Such is the character of logical form-matter both
in contrast to phenomenological consciousness and to Kant’s idea of
transcendental cognition and in contrast to the knowledge of the particular
sciences. As a consequence, Hegel defines the Logic as the “system of pure
reason, as the realm of pure thinking.” In its systematic totality, the sphere
of logical thinking is the “realm of truth,” which lacking all exteriority and
otherness is “truth as it is without veil (Hülle), in and for itself.”
By contrast, then, the determination of thinking’s content as nature and
as spirit implies, somehow, an exteriority that is not (yet) present in the
Logic as it does not belong to logical “absolute form.” Or, to put the point
differently, the specification of the content as nature is the external,
This issue deserves an exploration of its own. See the literature quoted earlier for further discussion.
additional “veil” that the logical form in its absolute “in and for itself” does
not possess. As a somehow equivalent formulation, Hegel proposes the
famous image whereby the content of the Logic is “the presentation of god
as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and of a finite
spirit” (MM , ). The Logic embraces the totality of the universe as the
totality of all there is, “before” and independently of its specification in
“nature” and “finite spirit.” This is the case to the extent that nature’s and
spirit’s being, and being thought, are equivalent to the “eternal essence” or
to the totality of the “world” or cosmos, the principle of which, Anaxagoras
declares, is Nous or thinking in its objectivity. Logical objectivity is think-
ing’s worldliness as considered, logically, “before” its specification in nature
and spirit. Thus, in the Logic, nature is not yet there as nature although it
is certainly there in the ontological and epistemological structures it shares
with the infinite essence and the cosmos embraced in its totality by the
logical form.
Hegel opens the second main division of the Science of Logic, the
Subjective Logic or Doctrine of the Concept, with an account of the
peculiar ways in which the dialectic-speculative Begriff differs, among other
positions, from what Kant’s transcendental logic takes to be the concepts
of the understanding or categories. At stake, once again, is the issue of
logical formality (MM , ) and Hegel’s insistence on the fact that the
dialectic-speculative concept far from being an abstract form lacking
content, hence needing a special “deduction” as proof of its “objective
validity” or “reality” (as Kant instead claimed it did) is, instead, what is
most real or actual and capable of producing its own content. The
movement of the concept taking place in the Subjective Logic is its
“realization” to idea. In this regard, the concept’s “truth” is not “abstract
truth” but real and realized truth (MM f.). Hegel concedes, however,
that in relation to the “other parts of philosophy, namely, the sciences of
nature and spirit,” which are “concrete sciences,” the Logic is indeed “the
formal science (die formelle Wissenschaft)” (MM f.). In what then does
this difference consist?
Given that the Logic deals with the Begriff, which is itself utterly “real,”
Hegel resorts to describing that difference in terms of degrees of reality.
The “concrete sciences” of nature and spirit do attain “a more real form
(einer reelleren Form) of the idea” than the Logic (MM , , emphasis
added). In other words, there is the logical real and the natural and
spiritual “more real” – a claim that seems, in fact, only to shift the
question. For, it should be asked, in what does that difference in (degree
of ) reality consist? Hegel’s explanation begins by ruling out that the
Nature as the “Idea in the Form of Otherness”
enhanced “reality” of the concrete sciences of nature and spirit may be
their falling back to the appearances that phenomenological consciousness
continues to oppose to itself. But he also rules out that it may consist in
apprehending a reality that can be grasped by the determinations of
reflections and, more generally, by the categories of the finite presented
in the Logic of Being and Essence. The reality of the concrete sciences
consists, instead, in taking the “concept” as their “Vorbildner” or proto-
type. But, more precisely, their reality can be understood only by regarding
their specific object – namely, nature and spirit, respectively – from the
height of the “idea” into which the logical concept actualizes itself. For, at
this highest and conclusive stage of the Logic the “idea” becomes “the
creator of nature (Schöpferin der Nature)” passing over into “a form of
concrete immediacy” that is the reality of nature. Before this stage, there is
no specific difference between the logical real and the natural and spiritual
real. The image or representation of the “creation” is appealed to in both
passages in order to signal the radical shift and discontinuity – the
“transition” or “passing over” (überschreiten), as it were – that takes place
between the two successive spheres, namely, Logic and Nature despite the
reality and conceptuality underlying both. The counterpart of this logical
conclusion on the side of the concrete sciences is to hold on to the realized
concept as their “inner formative principle (inneren Bildner),” that is, as the
rational basis on which the specific reality of their respective object
successively unfolds (MM , ). As the logical idea can be considered,
figuratively, the “creator of nature,” the realized concept continues to be
the immanent formative and creative force within nature.
In the introduction to the Doctrine of the Concept, Hegel shifts the
discussion of the peculiarity of the dialectic-speculative Begriff as “absolute
form” from its difference from the abstractness and lack of content of
traditional views of the logical concept (Kant’s in particular) to its rela-
tionship to the “concrete sciences” that further articulate the philosophical
system. Since the concept is real, what is systematically relevant is not the
issue of “deduction” or its “objective reality” as such but its relationship to
the forms of nature and spirit. For the concept is “already for itself the
truth” (MM , ). It does not need an additional deduction to prove its
objectivity. Importantly, Hegel adds that in the case of the logical concept
the content is, first, self-produced or “posited by the form itself,” and
second, and by consequence, is entirely “adequate” to the form. The “pure
It is important to underline that in both cases the image is employed in introductory contexts, not in
the immanent development of the logical movement.
truth” embodied in the logical concept is truth in its “pure” form “because
the determinations of the content do not yet have the form of an absolute
otherness or of absolute immediacy” (MM , , emphasis added). Again, at
stake in the Logic is truth “before” its display of the “veil” of externality or
otherness, before its transition to concrete immediacy (MM , ). This
latter is Nature. It is only herein that the content displays “the form of an
absolute otherness.” Accordingly, what changes in nature is the relation-
ship between concept and reality, hence the form assumed by truth itself,
which is now no longer “pure truth.” It is not that in the sphere of nature
there is no truth or adequacy of concept and reality. The fact is rather that
the relationship of the two sides is shaped differently because of the
fundamental externality and otherness that now measure and determine
that congruence of concept and reality. This latter (hence truth) takes place
in and through otherness. This accounts for the “more real” form of the idea
encountered in nature.
In sum, this is then the true relationship between the formal science of
logic and the concrete sciences of nature and spirit: The former shows how
the specific reality of nature obtains from the intra-logical actualization of
the concept through a peculiar “transition”; the latter take the “concept” as
the immanent “formative force,” operating within the full-fledged materi-
ality of nature and spirit. In nature, then, the “idea” displays a “more real
form” than in the Logic first because nature obtains from the logical idea
as a transition to “concrete immediacy” or immediate being, and second
because the development of the sphere of nature adds a specific “external”
determination to the inner formative activity of the concept thereby
displaying “the form of an absolute otherness” (MM , ) which the
pure concept does not confront throughout the logical development.
In his introductory discussion of the dialectic-speculative concept,
Hegel offers another important hint as to how to understand the relation-
ship between the reality of logical form and natural and spiritual reality.
The immediate reference is to the inadequacy of Kant’s account of the
concept in terms of “representation” and its being set in contrast with
“intuition” – these being forms of subjective “self-conscious spirit” that
have no place within the Logic. Hegel explains that “the pure determin-
ations of being, essence, and the concept, do also constitute the basis and
the inner, simple sustaining structure (die Grundlage und das innere
einfache Gerüst) of the forms of spirit” just as they are the inner framework
of the forms of nature. The relationship, then, should be put as follows:
Spirit “as intuiting spirit” is spirit “in the determination of being.” This,
however, is a claim belonging not to the science of logic but to the specific
Nature as the “Idea in the Form of Otherness”
logic of spirit, in which “concrete figures (konkreten Gestalten)” are con-
nected to pure logical determinations. Hegel insists that such concrete
figures are of no concern to the Logic just as “the concrete forms that the
logical determinations assume in nature” are of no concern – such as, in
Hegel’s example, space and time, and inorganic and organic nature. The
intra-logical reality captured by the concept is not the “concrete,” that is,
specific reality of nature’s and spirit’s “figures.” Thus, while the Begriff is
present throughout nature and spirit, in the Logic the concept is con-
sidered “in and for itself.” Correspondingly, viewed from the spheres of
nature and spirit, the logical “in and for itself” is the perspective in which
the concept is “the basis and the inner sustaining structure” of both – its
reality being purely logical. And this is how Hegel puts this point: The
concept “in and for itself” “constitutes both a stage of nature as well as a
stage of spirit” (MM , ). There is an ontological neutrality to the
logical concept and its reality vis-à-vis the specificity of nature and spirit
captured instead by the concreteness of the “figures” of which the concept
constitutes the basis. It is precisely its ontological neutrality that makes of
the concept the “inner sustaining structure” “ebesowhol” of nature “als
[auch]” of spirit.
So now, on this basis, let us turn to the conclusion of the Logic and the
peculiar “transition” to Nature. It is important to underline, first, that this
transition takes place – can take place – only at the end of the Logic. This is
the point in which the logical process of determination has exhausted – or
has completely fulfilled – its course. This means that no other determin-
ation or form can be obtained that is still a logical determination, that is, a
determination that fulfills the characters proper to the “absolute form”
characterizing of logical thinking. Now, among these characters are the
utterly internal self-production of content and the intrinsic congruence of
the content’s reality to the concept (i.e., the exclusion of externality and
otherness). These remain the characters of the absolute idea up to the end.
Being at the end, the movement that concludes the Logic cannot produce
any logical determination that has not already been encountered within the
previous development. It follows that the outcome of such a transition, or
the outcome of the idea’s last action, can only be a nonlogical
I have analyzed this conclusion extensively elsewhere (see Nuzzo , chapter ); here I address
only the limited aspect leading to the definition of nature as the otherness of the idea.
The equivalence of the “absolute idea” to “absolute method” is closely related to this consideration.
In the last chapter of the Logic there is no new “content” that can properly be obtained (that has not
been encountered in the previous development). What is left is a thematization of the “method”
through which all logical contents have been obtained up to this point (see Nuzzo , chapter ).
determination or the opposite of that which characterizes the logical form
as logical. Thus, the “idea” is “as the negative of itself or external to itself”
(Enc. §). Now, at this point, “externality” and “otherness” are first and
foremost systematic markers of the nonlogical “element” produced by the
Logic’s end. The claim that identifies nature with “the idea in the form of
otherness” is the claim that posits nature as the systematic successor of the
Logic after its conclusion, that is, after the process of pure thinking has
completed the development of all its forms: “Nature has resulted (hat sich
[. . .] ergeben) as the idea in the form of otherness” (Enc. § – my
emphasis). This is what the transition looks like from the other side.
From the side of the Logic, Hegel discloses that the “idea” is now
“intuition.” Not primarily Begriff as it has been so far but Anschauen.
And “the intuiting idea is nature” (Enc. §). In the introduction to the
Doctrine of the Concept, Hegel argues against Kant’s split that makes
(sensible) intuition external to the concept by reclaiming the grasp on
reality back to the dialectic-speculative concept and referring intuition to
the more concrete figures of subjective spirit (MM , ). At the end of
the Logic, though, intuition regains the character of externality with regard
to the logical idea, and the intrinsically dialectical formulation that posits
nature as the “intuiting idea” embodies the systematic threshold reached at
this point. We are both in and out of the Logic – “intuiting idea” is indeed
another expression of the idea’s “otherness.”
Hegel famously claims that the last action of the logical idea is
Entschluss – the Schluss of conclusion and the closing of the circle of the
science of logic; the Entschluss of the final decision that expresses the idea’s
highest “liberation” or Befreiung (MM , ; Nuzzo ). But there is
yet another meaning to that Entschluss. Ent-Schluss is the idea’s act of
opening up to a dimension that was not there for the logical process, which
was consistently maintained closed within the idea, within the self-
contained absoluteness of the “in and for itself.” Indeed, in the conclusion
of the Logic, Hegel underlines how the “idea is still logical” since “it is shut
up within pure thinking (in den reinen Gedanken eingeschlossen)” (MM ,
). Entschluss, by contrast, is the act of cracking open and breaking away
from that “eingeschlossen.” It is the act of opening up that closure ushering
in the dimension of externality and otherness. Entschluss is the act whereby
the idea finally unlocks the tight enclosure of the logical sphere, escaping
from it, as it were, escaping from the “world of shadows” of the Logic into
the world of the concrete bodies that cast those shadows (MM , ;
Nuzzo , ff.). At this point the “inner sustaining structure” or the
“skeleton” (MM , ) that is the fully realized logical concept for the
Nature as the “Idea in the Form of Otherness”
first time wears its flesh. This is how nature emerges, systematically, as the
otherness and externality of the logical idea, as the utter “immediacy of
being” (MM , ).
It is only after the systematic break announced by the transition of the
idea to nature that “otherness,” in addition to being a marker of systematic
succession, becomes properly content: Otherness is “the externality of
space and time absolutely existing for itself without subjectivity” (MM ,
) – the first “figures” of nature. Viewing, this time, the transition
from the side of the “concept of nature,” Hegel establishes a third meaning
for the Anderssein and Äusserlichkeit thereby achieved. Exteriority
and otherness do not designate the relative position of nature toward
the idea – and toward “its subjective existence, namely, spirit.” They
constitute rather “the determination in which idea is properly as nature”
(Enc. §). Otherness and exteriority are the ontological and epistemo-
logical ciphers constitutive of nature; they are the “element” in which the
development of the logic of nature takes place and by which it is
specifically informed.
With regard to all three meanings of nature’s otherness – the systematic
meaning, otherness as content determination of the object “nature,” and
otherness as the “element” of the logic of nature – and in contrast with
many usual readings, I want to underscore that Anderssein and
Äusserlichkeit do not represent a regression of the absolute idea in its falling
back and down from the heights of the Logic into the alienated immediacy
of being, nor are they signs of deficiency and imperfection only awaiting to
be eliminated or overcome in spirit, only there in order to “vanish” in spirit
(Enc. §, also §; Schülein , ). For one thing, they mark the
“liberation” of the idea to a truly novel dimension of existence – they
express the gesture whereby the logical sphere opens up to a different,
necessary dimension of nonlogical existence. For another, as much as
nature is “the idea in the form of otherness,” the (logical) idea is itself
the otherness of nature. In the second systematic sphere, the idea is
“otherness” just as nature is; or through the figure of “otherness” the idea
and nature are now one. As much as this reciprocity may be resisted on the
ground that at stake herein is nature and not spirit, as much as reciprocity
may be denied on the ground that there is no awareness in nature of the
otherness that it embodies, logically that reciprocity is inscribed in the very
notion of Anderssein as well as in the systematic succession at stake herein.
Thus, the idea is the otherness of nature as much as nature is the otherness
of the idea. The recognition of both these sides is important when what is
at stake is the question of what remains of nature once spirit comes to the
scene – and comes to dominate the scene. But, most of all, it becomes
relevant when an issue is at stake with which we, not Hegel, are dramatic-
ally confronted today, namely, the issue of the “end of nature.” Perhaps, at
this historical juncture, spirit has to recognize what it means for it to be the
very other and otherness of nature, and let nature be, set it free as the
absolute idea does at the end of the logic – Entlassen. In fact, this is a very
different act than to posit nature as the other of spirit – an otherness there
in order to be sublated and overcome in its otherness.
. The “Concept of Nature” and the Logic of Nature
The logic of the encyclopedic system of philosophy is provided by the
dialectic-speculative method that Hegel thematizes in the conclusion of the
Logic. The logic of the encyclopedic whole, however, is this logical
method as it is successively modified – that is, both specified and expanded –
by its interaction with the different “elements” characterizing the thematic
objects proper to each sphere, each one being the result of the previous
sphere: nature and “otherness” as its “element” being the result of the
logical idea’s first alienation (Enc. §); spirit and “subjectivity” as its
“element” being the result of nature’s transition to its “truth,” that is, to
the “subjectivity of the concept” in which the overcoming of nature’s
alienation begins (Enc. §). Thus, the logic guiding the development
of the sphere of Nature displays two components. The first is provided by
the pure logic that reveals the basic, fundamental structures of nature’s
reality and its forms of cognition. This is the method provided by the
Logic as the first sphere of the philosophical system. At stake herein is the
actualized Begriff (the idea) that, as we have seen, in its pure form and
ontological neutrality is the underlying “inner sustaining structure” of both
nature and spirit (MM , ). The second component is the modification
of the pure logical method that arises as the concept now interacts with the
specific “element” characterizing nature – as we have seen, the element of
“otherness” and “externality” that systematically identify nature as the
successor of the logical idea. Such an “element” is the medium in which
the concept is now specifically considered; it is the “veil” (MM , ), to
use Hegel’s image, in which that sustaining logical structure receives full-
fledged reality. Accordingly, nature is initially the idea in the exteriority of
I touch on this issue only briefly at the end of these considerations. See for this my forthcoming
essay “Spirit as the Other to Nature.”
Henceforth I take “method” to mean, minimally, the inner “logic” of a process (which is both the
process that constitutes the object and its cognition).
Nature as the “Idea in the Form of Otherness”
its space and time determined “otherness.” Furthermore, the “element” of
nature in which the logical concept is successively to be considered is
constituted by the manifold representations that accompany our cognitive
and practical attitudes toward nature.
Let us now look at how Hegel programmatically discloses the necessary
modification of the logical method at the beginning of the Philosophy of
Nature. Herein at stake is the general introduction of the specific logic that
is to guide the immanent development of the sphere of nature up to the
emergence of Spirit.
Hegel presents two lines of argument. First, he introduces the idea of
nature by addressing the different modalities in which we relate to it –
practically and cognitively – as well as the different common, scientific,
and philosophical representations that we have of nature. Thereby, the
identity between the “intuiting idea” and “nature” that has concluded the
previous sphere (Enc. §) is confirmed and fleshed out in a nonlogical,
concrete way. Indeed, nature is also Welt-Anschauung as it includes the
worldviews in which we are always already implicated. Second, Hegel
brings the common understanding of nature thereby disclosed to bear on
that which, more properly and scientifically, constitutes the “Concept of
Nature” that has arisen in the transition from the logical idea (Enc.
§§–). In sum, the Philosophy of Nature begins by showing, first,
how the “concept” of nature corresponds to common, concrete, historical
“representations” and practices, and second, what is the properly philo-
sophical “concept” that in connection with the specific element of nature,
namely, its otherness and externality, is set to guide the development of the
new systematic sphere as its specific logic.
While the beginning of the Logic rests on no presupposition at all, both
the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit systematically
develop on the basis of presupposed representations of their respective
objects. These representations are both common ways of relating to their
specific objects and historical notions of them but are also implied by the
intra-systematic conceptions yielded by the transition from the previous
sphere. From the “practical” attitude that we assume toward nature, which
is disclosed by the “finite teleological standpoint” and consists in appropri-
ating natural objects instrumentally for our purposes, we can infer the
characters of immediacy, exteriority, and contingency we generally attri-
bute to “nature.” In this framework, we are led to the “correct presuppos-
ition that nature does not have in itself the absolute final end” (Enc. §).
The “theoretical” approach to nature by contrast – the one proper to
“physics” and to traditional versions of the “philosophy of nature” – being
a “conceptual consideration (begreifende Betrachtung)” of nature does not
appeal to external determinations of its object as the practical attitude does
but aims at a “cognition of the universal” in nature, that is, at nature’s laws,
genera, and species, which in its turn leads to a view of nature as an
“organization” (Enc. §).
While the end of the Logic posits nature as the exteriority and otherness
of the idea, the beginning of the Philosophy of Nature confirms this result,
underscoring how those formal determinations of exteriority and otherness
are implied in man’s practical and theoretical attitude toward nature.
Hegel’s point, however, is to insist that the dialectic-speculative compre-
hension of nature must overcome the one-sidedness of such commonsense
unscientific “presuppositions” and replace them with determinations that
arise out of the immanent development of the concept of nature (Enc.
§). Thus, in contrast to the practical attitude toward nature, at stake
now is the “method” – the Betrachtungsweise – that given by the very
“concept” of nature guides the unfolding of nature as a whole (Enc. §);
while in contrast to the theoretical attitude of “physics” at stake in Hegel’s
new speculative “philosophy of nature” is the “conceptual consideration”
(Enc. §) of the universal and necessary development of its object. This
aim is achieved by endorsing a method guided by “the proper, immanent
necessity” of the concept of its object so that the articulation of the
“philosophy of nature” is ultimately the “self-determination of the con-
cept” of nature itself (Enc. §). This twofold claim now specifies, in the
case of “nature,” the general contention that Hegel presents with regard to
the overall method of the Encyclopaedia, namely, that its divisions be
produced by the “necessity of the concept” (Enc. §). Now at stake is
not the pure logical concept but the concept of nature, or the concept that
exists in and as nature.
The “concept” of nature that results from the conclusion of the Logic is
now reestablished: “[N]ature is the idea in the form of otherness.” With
regard to the task of developing this concept in its specific immanent
determinations, this definition means not only that nature is exteriority
with regard to the idea or with regard to its “subjective existence in spirit.”
It now means that “exteriority constitutes the very determination in which
the idea is nature” (Enc. §). Exteriority is the fundamental feature
proper to “nature” as it constitutes the “element” in which the concept
develops (its first appearance of which are the conditions of space and time
and matter); hence it is one of the chief determinations that modify and
expand the logical method presented at the end of the Logic. Accordingly,
Hegel claims that immersed “in this exteriority the determinations of the
Nature as the “Idea in the Form of Otherness”
concept have the appearance (Schein) of an indifferent subsistence and of the
singularization (Vereinzelung) against each other.” The modality in which
nature displays its forms of existence (Dasein) is “necessity and
contingency,” not freedom. Herein, the “concept” constitutes the dimen-
sion of “interiority” within the “exteriority” that nature itself is (Enc.
§). Furthermore, “contradiction” is present in nature specifically as a
contradiction in natural existence. At the most general level, nature displays
the contradiction between the “necessity” and lawfulness of its forms (the
ground of which is the concept) and their “contingency” and utter lack of
regularity (Enc. §). Importantly, this is a contradiction that nature
cannot resolve. It is the “unaufgelöster Widerspruch” (Enc. §R) whereby
a gap – hence a constitutive otherness – always separates the concept from
its natural existence. Herein we encounter nature’s distinctive “Ohnmacht”
or powerlessness (Enc. §R). This is a powerlessness that has its specific
“right” in it and constitutes nature’s specific truth as nature (Enc. §).
Ultimately, in its successive modifications through nature’s mechanical,
physical, organic manifestations, this is the contradiction that leads the
philosophy of nature to its end and to its transition to spirit. “Natural
death” dialectically entails the idea of the “life” of spirit, namely,
“subjectivity,” whereby the “transition” to – hence the beginning of –
the new sphere of spirit is achieved (Enc. §).
Hegel maintains that nature must be considered “a system of levels,”
each one obtaining from the previous one in a necessary way so as to find its
“truth” in the stage that follows (Enc. §; Wolff ). This necessary
succession of levels, however, should not be taken ontologically in the
sense of a “natural” production, that is, in the sense of Goethe’s “meta-
morphosis” or of an “evolution” in which the whole of nature is seen as the
protagonist. Rather, the succession of nature’s levels is a logical succession,
structured by the “idea” as its internal “ground.” For it is only the
“concept” that can be the subject of a “metamorphosis.” Within nature,
because of its constitutive exteriority, only the living individual, not nature
as a whole, can be considered subject to it – and the subject of it (Enc.
§). Accordingly, the method of Hegel’s philosophy of nature is not a
logic of “evolution” but the logic of the unfolding of its conceptual levels.
The reason for this lies in the way in which the development of the logical
concept is modified by the exteriority proper of nature’s element, that is,
by the way in which the determinations of the concept are manifested in
the medium of natural existence. Thus, in the logic of nature the develop-
ment of the inner “dialectical concept” does not necessarily correspond to
the wealth of its manifold external manifestations (Enc. §R). It follows
that there is evolution (or “metamorphosis”) in nature; but there is no
evolution of nature. Herein the movement of nature through its levels differs
logically from that of spirit. Indeed, the process and successive modifica-
tion of nature is not properly Entwicklung. This term describes the “devel-
opment” of the pure logical concept as well as that of spirit’s actualization
but not the movement of nature as a whole (Enc. §). And yet, although
Hegel does not view nature as an evolving totality, he does consider it an
organic whole. Nature is “in itself a living whole” (Enc. §).
While the first sphere of the Philosophy of Nature, the Mechanics,
addresses the exteriority of nature’s spatio-temporal materiality, the second
sphere, the Physics, brings to the fore the forms of natural individuality, in
order to end, with the Organics, by thematizing the processes of natural
“subjectivity” (Enc. §). The movement that articulates its successive
levels and gives the inner logic and division of Hegel’s philosophy of nature
is the movement whereby “the idea posits itself as that which it is in itself,”
that is, the movement whereby the idea “from its immediacy and exterior-
ity, which is death, goes into itself in order to be first as living being, and
then to overcome this determination in which it is only life, and to
produce itself in the existence of spirit.” The latter is now disclosed as
the “truth and final end (Endzweck) of nature” (Enc. §) – that end
which the commonsense practical, teleological attitude toward nature
correctly considers external to it (Enc. §).
. Spirit as the “Other to Nature”?
I want to conclude with a brief discussion of a suggestion that I outlined
earlier in connection with Hegel’s presentation of nature as the “idea in the
form of otherness.”
Hegel contends that Nature is Otherness not only in relation to the
logical absolute idea (nature is the idea “in the form of otherness”) and in
relation to spirit’s subjectivity (which successively overcomes and appro-
priates such otherness in its freedom). Nature is Otherness as such in the
sense that otherness and externality are the constitutive elements in which
nature unfolds its determinations, maintaining the concept as inner
ground but constantly betraying it, constantly modifying it through
nature’s existing exteriority and through the opposition and contradiction
this exteriority poses to it. Heretofore I have explored this claim by viewing
it from two different perspectives, namely, from the Logic and its
See Enc. § for an account of the “Stufen des Geistes” in the development of the sphere of spirit.
Nature as the “Idea in the Form of Otherness”
conclusion, and from the beginning of the Philosophy of Nature.
However, pushing the notion of nature’s Otherness further, I have also
suggested that if nature is Otherness – Anderssein and Andersheit (Henrich
) – it must itself have its own other and otherness, in other words,
something that is, in turn, other to it. I hesitate here to say “other for it”
because, as mentioned earlier, there is no spiritual subjectivity and aware-
ness and properly no self-consciousness in nature – although, importantly,
in the animal living and dying individual nature does in fact reach a form
of (proto-)subjectivity (Enc. §; Schülein , f.). I maintain,
though, that to claim that if nature is otherness, then there must be
something that is other to it, is fully appropriate and is also sufficient to
raise the question of nature’s otherness as the question of what it is that is
other, this time, to nature.
In and as nature, the idea is not the “other to nature.” Spirit, on its part,
is not the “other to nature” in its resulting from nature. For spirit emerges
from nature once nature’s otherness has “vanished” or, rather, has begun to
vanish. Spirit emerges, in other words, when its proximity to nature is
established to the point that spirit relates only to itself in it. At this point,
the “alienation” or Entäusserung that nature represents as the “complete
external objectivity” of the concept, is overcome in the “identity” of spirit
coming back to itself “from nature” (Enc. §). What lies ahead for spirit
after this beginning is yet another long path of successive mastery and
appropriation of its own naturalness, self-alienation, and coming back to
itself from self-alienation. But is spirit, at any point, the true other to
nature? What does the figure of the “other to nature” even mean?
This figure implies, first, that there is something systematically beyond
and outside of nature that is different from and irreducible to it, and that
warrants nature’s independence of this other but also, at the same time, a
peculiar position or stance in relation to it. It seems that there must be
something other to nature in order for Nature to constitute a systematic
sphere in its own right. Such otherness (and only it) would in fact deepen
the discontinuity that separates nature and the logical idea on the one hand
and nature and spirit on the other. As “other to nature,” spirit would not
find itself and its own identity in nature – or such self-finding would reveal
itself as an illusion. For spirit’s otherness would remain because it is not up
to spirit to overcome it (if anything, it is up to nature to revoke it). This
As a question of otherness as the objective genitive of/to nature.
This is certainly a simplifying way of putting the trajectory of the Philosophy of Spirit. It is not,
however, my topic here.
leads to the second meaning of the figure of the “other to nature.” To posit
something as otherness seems to imply an active perspective and the mean-
ingfulness within an active perspective – that which is other to something as
declared and framed by this something. Accordingly, the “other to nature”
implies an active standpoint within the sphere of nature. Indeed, it is
nature itself that sanctions what is other to it. In this regard, the “other to
nature” is construed quite differently than nature’s own otherness. It follows
that if spirit, in any of its figures, is to be the “other to nature,” it is nature
that must confer such otherness to spirit. In this perspective, the “other to
nature” is something that nature regards as not belonging to itself, as
impenetrable in its very being in relation to nature. I see this meaning of
the “other to nature” as the counterpart of the claim that Hegel repeatedly
establishes at the beginning of the Philosophy of Nature, namely, the claim
that nature is a riddle or an “enigma for us,” that “we do not understand
it.” This latter is nature’s otherness vis-à-vis spirit as established by spirit.
Correspondingly, it is important to acknowledge that we humans may very
well be an enigma to nature – that we are the “other to nature.” Construed in
parallel to Hegel’s general remark concerning the “riddle” of nature, the
reverse claim concerning the “enigma” of the human (or the spiritual) in
nature’s perspective means that nature does not “understand” us humans.
In conclusion, I want to suggest that this claim is worth exploring,
particularly in relation to the current global climate and environmental
crisis. As much as our practical and cognitive attitudes to nature constitute
the entry point to Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, nature’s otherness seems
to demand not only the possibility of framing nature’s existence independ-
ently of them but even to view them as the very “other to nature,” namely,
as something that nature itself resists and rejects and regards as utterly
meaningless. This stronger step is necessary, I suggest, for us to undertake.
To recognize that we may be “other to nature” in our attitudes and deeds –
to ask: How does nature see us? – is a way to put in perspective the hubris
(and often the foolishness) inherent in many of our human endeavors
within and toward nature. To recognize that it may be “other to nature” is
a powerfully humbling experience for spirit. And it is also a way to bring to
the forefront a crucial element of our human freedom in our action in and
impact on the natural world.
I want to insist on this “active” perspective in order to underline that this “otherness” is not posited
by spirit or the idea or the philosopher of nature but by Nature itself. The figure of the “other to
nature” then implies some kind of agency (subjectivity) on the part of nature.
See all the references quoted in Schülein (, –) in relation to the different Vorlesungen on
the Philosophy of Nature recently published in GW : .
Cosmology, Mechanics, and Physics
Hegel’s Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets
Plato, Kepler, and Newton as Cosmologists
Paul Redding
The area within Hegel’s comprehensive encyclopedic system with which
he is most readily identified is surely that of Objective Spirit (the second
section of part III, the Philosophy of Spirit) – the part corresponding to his
Philosophy of Right which stands as one of the canonical works of political
philosophy in the European tradition. This is consonant with the fact that
Hegel is generally understood as a humanist, whose philosophical interests
were predominantly oriented around the topics of history, politics, art, and
religion. In contrast, the contents of the Encyclopaedia’s part II, the
Philosophy of Nature, have rarely been treated as having the same import-
ance. Even by those sympathetic to Hegel, this is usually understood as so
dependent on the state of empirical science of his time as to have little
relevance for the present-day reader. In contrast, critics dismiss it outright
as the meddlings of an amateur out of his depth – a rearguard attempt to
preserve an earlier philosophico-theological worldview that was being
increasingly challenged by the great discoveries of science.
While defenders of Hegel often soften his stance toward scientific
explanation by characterizing it as directed more against the promotion
of an exclusively scientific worldview than science per se, his critics have
been by no means restricted to such “hard-liners.” Take, for example,
William Whewell, the Cambridge academic, polymath, and general advo-
cate of the sciences who Thomas Posch cites as having declared Hegel’s
account of the solar system as “non-sensical” (Whewell ; Posch ,
). Whewell, an Anglican minister, was no “scientistic” critic of reli-
gion and would oppose, based on conflicts with Christian doctrine,
Darwin’s theory of evolution as well as the thesis of the possibility of life
existing elsewhere in the universe (Crowe ). Moreover, given that
Hegel had chosen science’s greatest hero, Isaac Newton, as his representa-
tive target of attack, it is not surprising that Whewell’s criticisms would
often be shared by that developing class of specialists whom he had
christened “scientists.”
While Hegel’s social and political philosophy has remained the most
prominent focus of interest within those reassessments of his philosophy
that have developed over the last fifty years, a degree of sympathetic
reception to his philosophy of nature is, nevertheless, still to be found.
This is often accompanied by a general interpretation stressing the degree
to which Hegel had given up the pretension to a metaphysics of “pure
reason” with which Kant had broken – some type of substantive, a priori
theoretical knowledge of the world that might be seen as being in competi-
tion with modern science. Recent examples of such a metaphysically modest
interpretative attitude extended to Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature can be
found in the synoptic accounts of Michael Wolff (), Sebastian Rand
(), and Christian Martin ().
Wolff, for example, asserts that “one can only understand Hegel’s
procedure [in relation to the philosophy of nature] appropriately if one
conceives it as a modification of Kant’s transcendental philosophy” (Wolff
, ), with this attitude manifest in the Logic from which the
Philosophy of Nature issues, in particular in relation to the status of its
central “metaphysical” category of the “absolute idea.” This notion, Wolff
claims, refers to “nothing other than our own logical, or more precisely:
dialectical thinking – our thinking by which we know the contradictory
character of the categories” (Wolff , –). As such, modesty at a
metaphysical level would deflate even the intelligibility of a thinkable
transcendent realm beyond empirical reach – the realm of Kant’s unknow-
able “things in themselves” – and a certain scientific realism might now be
thought to possibly coexist with Hegel’s project.
Similar deflationary elements can be identified in Rand’s interpretation of
Hegel’s philosophy of nature since, as Rand has it, as conceived philosophic-
ally by Hegel, nature is interpreted not so much as such but from a particular
point of view – that oriented by the project of the realization of human
freedom structuring his philosophy as a whole (Rand ). While the idea
of nature as construed internally to a goal of practical reason and action has a
Kantian ring, Rand stresses that what separates Hegel from Kant is the
For an overview of the recent reception of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature see Ferrini , section
I and Houlgate .
Such defenses of course depend on freeing Hegel from those shortcomings of Kant’s own
transcendental idealism of which he had been such an astute critic.
Martin similarly writes that the Logic “deals with the thinking of us thinkers” which “requires spatial
and temporal embodiment.” However, for methodological reasons it does so “in abstraction from
such embodiment” (Martin , –). This initial abstraction can give the false impression that
the Logic “treats of a different kind of thinking from ours,” that of a divine thinker, for example.
Hegel’s Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets
different ways in which the concepts freedom and nature are related in their
respective philosophies. For Kant, the ethical freedom of a human being is
predominantly conceived of as a type of freedom from what constitutes him
or her as a natural being. In contrast, Hegel had acknowledged nature in the
broader sense as needing to be included in the realm for which freedom is to
be achieved. It is as if the more familiar idea linking the freedom of any
particular human to that of all others becomes now broadened to a picture in
which the freedom of humans as a whole is somehow similarly bound up
with realms of nature beyond them.
Construing Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature within the context of such
metaphysically modest accounts of Hegel’s Logic is not the only way in
which his Philosophy of Nature has sought to be redeemed, with more
robustly metaphysical interpretations being pursued by others. Here I do
not argue for any such metaphysically modest reading in relation to its
opponents; I simply adopt it in line with a strategy that, in its very
modesty, is likely to make it more able to address the types of concerns
typical of Whewell’s working scientists, who are likely to be suspicious of
any substantive claims about the world arrived at in some aprioristic
manner rather than empirically.
Nevertheless, I argue that this metaphysically modest interpretation
must be compatible with Hegel’s endorsement of the ancient model of
philosophy and, seemingly paradoxically, with that of its apparent über-
metaphysician, Plato. Signs of such an engagement can be found in
Hegel’s much denounced first venture in the Philosophy of Nature, his
Philosophical Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets – an engagement
that must be taken more seriously than is often the case among Hegel’s
defenders. Hegel claimed that Kepler rather than Newton had been able to
Clearly this is a perspective that many might find more appropriate in the face of the present
ecological crisis threatening humanity.
For example, on the basis of Hegel’s Logic, James Kreines () argues for the substantive rationalist
metaphysical claims of the objective existence of “reason in the world” independently of human
reasoners, linked to a nonempiricist understanding of natural laws.
For my own deflationary “actualist” understanding of Hegel’s metaphysical claims see Redding .
For a critique of Kreines’ notion of “reason in the world,” see Redding and Martin .
From the point of view of Wolff’s understanding of Hegel’s ultimate “metaphysical” content of the
Logic, a response to the working scientist’s skepticism might start with little more than a request that
she reflects on the self-correcting logical processes she shares with her scientific colleagues –
effectively, what Wolff’s version of Hegel’s “absolute idea” might amount to – and to consider
whether the epistemic success of those processes could be explained in terms of the same causal
explanations of the world that those processes have accompanied. This might then open the way for
the possibility of a degree of peaceful coexistence between Hegel, or at least some more recent
application of his purported approach, and the scientists.
Olivier Depré () stresses this dimension of Hegel’s position in .
formulate realistically understood laws of planetary motion based on
empirical findings. Regardless of the soundness of Hegel’s case here, the
criteria to which he appeals would surely speak to the modern scientist.
However, it seems equally clear that for Hegel, Kepler’s success had been
linked to his pursuit of what seems the antithesis of the modern empirical
approach, Plato’s “music of the spheres” approach to cosmology. It is the
undoing of this paradox that is the aim of this chapter.
. Hegel’s Dissertation: A First Simple Defense of Kepler as
Empirical Cosmologist
From the skeptic’s point of view, no better example of Hegel’s ignorance of
the modern sciences might be found than that of his Dissertation, “On the
Orbits of the Planets” (Diss., –), submitted at the University of
Jena in to satisfy the conditions allowing him to teach there. The
Dissertation, which shows clear connections with central themes of his later
Philosophy of Nature, is infamous for Hegel’s having adopted and adapted
a sequence of seven numbers from Plato’s Timaeus – , , , , , ,
(Diss., ; Plato , b) – in an apparent attempt to explain the
comparative distances of the (then known) seven planets from the sun, a
claim that he never really retracted (Ferrini , n). Worse still, it
is often said that Hegel was thereby dismissing, on a priori grounds, the
possibility that an eighth planet might be discovered, and indeed doing so
in the very year in which a minor planet, or asteroid, was found. Were this
to be the case, of course, Hegel would be engaging in that very type of
aprioristic reasoning to features of the actual world that he appears to deny
in the Philosophy of Nature with the claim that “[i]t is not only that
philosophy must accord with the experience nature gives rise to; in its
formation and in its development, philosophic science presupposes and is
conditioned by empirical physics” (Enc. P, §, remark).
Various defenders of Hegel have responded to the gross exaggerations
found in standard accusations of this aprioristic approach to cosmology.
Cinzia Ferrini has summarized some of the negative reception of Hegel’s dissertation as including
the accusations of: “incongruities, inconsistencies, absurdities, obscurity, external formalism and
powers of imagination, crudest empirical ignorance, ridiculous errors and lack of scientific
knowledge, ill-grounded a priori logical deduction of empirical reality, introduction of real
content hidden within the formalism of the logical movement, the inability of the dialectical
method to produce any actual progress at a cognitive level, and so on” (Ferrini , ).
Among the many textually based refutation of this claim see, for example, Harris , ; Craig
and Hoskin ; and Posch .
Hegel’s Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets
Hegel, they note, had been commenting on a similarly formulated series of
numbers that had been offered by the astronomers Johann Elert Bode and
Johann Daniel Titius, because of which Bode had urged astronomers to
search for an eighth planet between Mars and Jupiter, as predicted by the
series. Hegel had simply suggested that were Plato’s series to be accepted
rather than the Titius–Bode series, then no thesis of a “missing planet”
would be required (e.g., Posch , ). Such defenders also typically
point out that the bulk of Hegel’s Dissertation had been devoted to a topic
much more expected of a modern philosopher – a critique of the idea that
Newton’s laws could be said to explain the laws of planetary motion that
Kepler had arrived at empirically. From this point of view, in his defense of
Kepler over Newton, Hegel’s strategy, as Cinzia Ferrini has argued, “leaves
room for an absolute principle of empirical reality” (Ferrini , ).
In supporting Kepler, Hegel was, on this reading, supporting an emi-
nently, empirically based approach to astronomy. On the basis of his
extensive observational data of the movement of Mars accumulated over
decades, together with data acquired from his employer in Prague, Tycho
Brahe, Kepler had come to propose three laws of planetary motion:
A planet orbits its sun in an ellipse that has the sun standing at one of
its two foci; next, a line segment from the planet to the sun (its “radius
vector”) sweeps out equal areas in equal units of time, entailing the planet
speed up as it approaches the sun and slow down as it moves away; and
finally, the square of a planet’s orbit is proportional to the cube of the
length of the shorter diameter of its elliptic orbit.
With his universal laws of gravitational attraction, Newton is conven-
tionally taken as having been able to explain Kepler’s laws because while
Kepler’s had said something about the behavior of planets, Newton’s were
able to account for the behavior of many other things besides. For example,
Newton’s laws simultaneously explained Galileo’s “Law of Fall” for terres-
trial objects (that the velocity of a falling objects increases proportionally
with the square of time). This type of subsuming generalization is com-
monly understood as exemplifying progress in science. Newton had never
denied the advantage of having stood on the shoulders of Kepler, and why
should this not have allowed him to see further? Beyond mere regional
Titius had advanced the idea in with Bode taking it up in .
Brigitte Falkenburg also stresses the role played by “regularized empirical observations” in science
on Hegel’s account. While the phenomena of empirical science for Hegel are “theory-dependent”
and not the bare “givens” typically postulated by empiricists (, ), nevertheless, “the
empiricist criticism of unobservables such as forces and atoms, was completely in the spirit of
Hegel’s own phenomenological attitude towards physics itself (, ).
loyalties (Kepler had come from the area around Stuttgart, Hegel’s birth-
place, and, like Hegel, had studied at the Tübingen seminary), why should
Newton’s success be denied? The simplest answer in defense of Hegel here,
I suggest, is that in line with the modern scientists’ insistence on the role of
empirical evidence, Hegel would argue that only Kepler’s laws were
empirically based while Newton’s relied on postulates that themselves
could not be empirically justified.
There is much to be said in favor of such a stance being taken at the turn
of the nineteenth century, as concerns with problems of the type of
explanations employed by Newton were still extant within the generally
“scientific” community. Crucially, Hegel argues that Newton’s reduction
of Kepler’s laws involved an unacceptable reliance on infinitesimally small
magnitudes (Diss., –, –). Such an appeal to infinitesimals is
standardly associated with the framework of differential and integral
calculus of which Newton, along with Leibniz, had been a co-developer.
In Europe, Newton’s mechanics had been developed throughout the
eighteenth century with the aid of calculus, but that had not been the
method employed by Newton himself in Principia Mathematica (de Gandt
). Nevertheless, both Newton’s and Leibniz’s calculus-based
approaches to mechanics had relied upon the idea of infinitesimal
magnitudes that Berkeley would later mock as the “ghosts of departed
quantities” (Berkeley , ). According to Berkeley, the physicists were
as much committed to entities as mysterious as those they condemned in
the accounts of the theologians. One did not have to accept Berkeley’s rival
spiritualistic metaphysics to feel the weight of this critique, and concern
about the use of infinitesimals in science still persisted around the turn of
the nineteenth century (Boyer , ). In The Science of Logic, Hegel
devotes considerable discussion to this problem engaging with books that
were “state of the art” at that time.
In fact, the infinitesimal had been just one of a number of worrisome
mathematical magnitudes that had come to be employed in science since
the seventeenth century. These “impossible numbers” (Nagel )
included the number zero, the negative numbers, and the perplexing
“imaginary number” “i” that when multiplied by itself gave the result of
John Bell has described two French works appearing – Joseph-Louis Lagrange’s Théorie des
fonctions analytique and Lazare Carnot’s Reflexions sur la Metaphysique du Calcul Infinitesimal – as
“the last efforts of the eighteenth-century mathematicians to demystify infinitesimals and banish the
persistent doubts concerning the soundness of the calculus” (Bell , ). Hegel possessed both
works (Mense , and ) and employs them in The Science of Logic in discussing the
problem of infinitesimals (SL, –).
Hegel’s Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets
. These magnitudes had been introduced into the sciences as a conse-
quence of the adoption of algebra from the late sixteenth century and had
been shown to be indispensable for the solution of the types of equations
the emerging sciences employed, but pragmatic success alone did not
satisfy critics who often pointed to the apparent absurdities involved in
their use (Martinez ). Kant had addressed the problem of negative
numbers in a precritical essay in (CNM) and their problematic status
is said to have been particularly live around the turn of the nineteenth
century (Martinez , ) when Hegel was writing his Dissertation.
As with infinitesimals, justification for such magnitudes could not, of
course, be simply answered in empiricist terms, but neither could they be
justified in terms of the sorts of criteria that had been inherited from Greek
mathematics. The “axiomatic method” in which theorems are deduced from
axioms and definitions had provided the main model of justification found
in Greek geometry and the Greeks had neither a well-developed system of
algebra nor the zero or negative numbers that would be required for such
algebra. Simple justification by the success enabled by their use was really all
that was left, but many at the time would have agreed, as many would still
agree, with Hegel’s declaration in the Dissertation that a principle must not
be evaluated simply “on the basis of its use and consequences” (Diss., ).
One might afford these mysterious entities some role in the prediction of
phenomena but why extend this to belief in the reality of those structures
described in the theories that employed them?
Hegel thus raises the question of the ontological status of mathematical
objects within the “coupling of physics and mathematics” and warns
against confusing “purely mathematical relations with the physical ones;
rashly taking the lines used by geometry to construct demonstrations of its
theorems for forces or directions of forces” (Diss., ). However, this itself
was not to deny that mathematical entities per se could have an empirical
reality, as Hegel insists that Kepler’s ellipses are examples of exactly this.
Kepler’s ellipses were, are, real figures to be observed over time as carved
out by the actual movements of the planets in their paths around the
sun. Rather, his criticism is directed at Newton’s directed line-segments
or “vectors” to which such elliptical shapes are reduced in his explanations of
the elliptical orbits because of the role of infinitesimals in this reduction.
This is to ignore those imperfections in orbits caused by the gravitational effects of other planets: so-
called perturbations. While Hegel acknowledges that it is a strength of Newton’s approach that it is
able to account for these, he presumably does not see this as contradicting his main criticism.
I am restricting the scope of Hegel’s criticism here to that of the empirical reality of Newton’s
vectorial analysans. For further dimensions of Hegel’s criticism see De Vincentis .
It is the reality of Newton’s posited rather than observed centripetal and
centrifugal components into which Kepler’s curves are resolved, along with
the forces defined in terms of them, that are in question here.
Justification for the resolution of a curve into rectilinear components, he
points out, is not to be found in pure geometry, which “does not modify
the true form of the circle” (Diss., ). In contrast, the nonpure geometry
in question is one “that endeavors to subject the circle to calculation and to
express numerically the relation of circumference to the radius” and that
does so by seeking refuge “in the hypothesis of an infinitely-sided regular
polygon” but which “does this, however, in such a way that in the same
move it suppresses this very polygon and the straight lines by means of the
concepts of the infinite and of last ratio” (Diss., ). Two types of
“nonpure” geometry can be recognized as implicit in this passage: ancient
and modern.
Hegel was clearly aware that in ancient times, the great mathematician
Archimedes had employed a method for estimating the ratio between the
circumference and the diameter of a circle (later called the number π).
In this “method of exclusion,” Archimedes had constructed a regular
polygon inside a circle such that the polygon’s vertices touched the circle’s
circumference. While the length of an arc of the circle could not be
measured, the lengths of the corresponding side of the polygon could be.
A similar polygon could now be constructed outside the circle such that its
sides touched the circumference of the circle. If P denotes the combined
lengths of the sides of the inner polygon and P0 the combined length of the
sides of the outer polygon, it can be seen that the circumference of the
circle will be greater than P but less than P0 . By increasing the number of
sides of both polygons the difference between P and P0 steadily decreases
allowing the circumference of the circle to be estimated with greater and
greater accuracy. In Principia, Newton would effectively employ the
same technique in order to measure the area under a curve, but for
Hegel there were crucial differences in the ways the Greeks and Newton
had employed this mathematical procedure.
Techniques such as that of Archimedes had allowed the Greeks to apply
geometry to the world and estimate astronomical distances with great
A German translation from of Archimedes’ works On the Sphere and Cylinder and
Measurement of a Circle was in Hegel’s library (Mense , –). This was representative of
Hegel’s “heavy investment in standard works on the calculus and mechanics” as evidenced by his
library (Mense , ), the publication dates of which seeming to indicate their having been
purchased around the time of the dissertation.
Archimedes had achieved a value of π as lying between and
.
Hegel’s Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets
accuracy. Archimedes’ friend Eratosthenes, for example, made remarkably
accurate calculations of the circumference of the earth. But while the
Greeks were satisfied with values of π that were accurate enough for their
purposes, Newton imagined this method as being carried to infinity such
that what had been originally lines were ultimately reduced to points.
Hegel says that with this modern mathematics “conceals this identity of
incommensurables with the word ‘infinite’” (Diss., ), alluding to the
fact that the Greeks had treated curves and linear magnitudes as incom-
mensurable magnitudes – they were different kinds of magnitude. Newton,
he says, conceals this difference, he “suppresses this very polygon and the
straight lines” from which he calculated his areas (Diss., ). When Hegel
refers to “the geometry called higher geometry” that “reduces the plane to
the line, and both to the infinitely small, that is, to the point” in this way
(Diss., ), he clearly has in mind the modern “analytic geometry” that
had been introduced in the seventeenth century by Rene Descartes and
Pierre Fermat and upon which Newton had drawn in his mechanics.
In his Géométrie of , Descartes had proposed a type of algebraized
geometry by introducing the now familiar “x” and “y” orthogonal coordin-
ates within which geometric figures could be situated. As each point on a
two-dimensional figure can be linked to a pair of numbers via the coordin-
ates, such a figure could be represented by an algebraic equation as when,
for example, a circle centered on the origin of the coordinates and of radius
a units is represented by the equation “x + y = a.” Analytic geometry had
quickly caught on because of the great advantages it offered to developing
sciences such Newton’s. Many, however, were concerned that the use of
algebra did not conform to the strict axiomatic method found in ancient –
or what would now be called in contrast “synthetic” – geometry.
With the reliance on infinitesimals, Newton’s methods were still able to
be understood at the end of the eighteenth century as far from being free
from the sorts of metaphysical “fictions” that working modern scientists
might denounce in Hegel. On the other side of the ledger, Kepler’s ellipses
were for Hegel genuinely empirical objects. Nevertheless, the empirical
The Greeks were in general not positively disposed to the notion of the infinite, as conveyed by
Koyré’s contrast of the “closed world” of the Greeks to the “infinite universe” of the moderns
(Koyré ).
The number π was not proved to be irrational until the eighteenth century, but the Greeks were
very aware of the “incommensurability” between curved and linear numbers, as testified to by the
ancient problem of “squaring the circle.”
Koyré had stressed Kepler’s empiricist attitude in his rejection of Bruno’s conception of an infinite
universe (Koyré , –).
scientist was only one aspect of Kepler’s character. Hegel’s somewhat off-
handed reference to Plato’s number series might well raise concerns despite
its being merely offered as a hypothetical alternative to an existing “Titius–
Bode” law.
. The Other Kepler: Kepler as Platonic Cosmologist
Hegel was well aware that Kepler’s empirical research coexisted with a
commitment to the ancient thesis of the “music of the spheres” as
expressed in Plato’s Timaeus. In a move similar to Hegel’s employment
of Plato’s number series, Kepler, in his Mysterium Cosmographicum of
, had modeled the solar system by embedding the orbits of the planets
within a nested structure made up of the five Platonic solids, each of the
solids fitting between the spheres of the orbits of the then known six
planets (Caspar , –). Kepler’s enthusiasm had persisted, and
while the first two of his laws had been published in one of the major
works of modern astronomy, his Astronomica Nova of , the third law
would be published ten years later in Harmonies Mundi devoted mostly to
the “music of the spheres” thesis (Caspar , part IV, chapter ).
Kepler thus seems to have still had one foot firmly planted in the ancient
“cosmos” that was in the process of being transformed into the modern
“universe” (Koyré ). Given the relatively informed level of the discus-
sion of contemporary issues that could be found in earlier parts of the
Dissertation, what could Hegel have been getting at with these allusions to
Platonic cosmology? I suggest that while Hegel’s defense of Kepler should
not be quarantined from these aspects of his approach from which modern
science would surely liberate it, neither should it condemn Hegel from the
modern point of view. In fact, when Hegel’s attitude to the Platonic
“musical” cosmology is correctly understood, it reveals fundamental fea-
tures of Hegel’s logic that can be seen to complement his nonatomistic
empiricism in matters of science. In short, the significance of Plato’s
cosmology was not so much cosmological as logical. Plato’s cosmos gave
expression to the logical structure implicit in the pursuit of a modern
scientific cosmology, as Hegel understood it.
In , during his time with Hegel at the Tübingen Seminary,
Friedrich Schelling had written a commentary on Plato’s Timaeus (see
Tim) that would feed into the philosophy of nature that he would
From outer to inner: Saturn – (cube) – Jupiter – (tetrahedron) – Mars – (dodecahedron) – Earth –
(icosahedron) – Venus – (octahedron) – Mercury.
Hegel’s Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets
continue to pursue during his time at the University of Jena and his
collaboration with Hegel. Schelling’s subsequent work On the
World-Soul had caught the attention of the scientifically trained romantic
Naturphilosopher Franz von Baader who, in the same year published a small
book, On the Pythagorean Tetrad in Nature, or The Four Regions of the
World (Baader ; Förster , –), critical of Schelling’s adop-
tion of Kant’s model of opposed attractive and repulsive forces in nature
found in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (MFNS). Such
opposed forces, Baader argued, should be seen as expressions of a single
underlying force – gravity or heaviness (Schwere) – which was to be
regarded as “the immediate expression of the individual inhering in and
individualizing itself [sich individualizierenden] in all single [einzelnen] or
moveable bodies” (Baader , , quoted in Förster , ).
There are clear signs of Baader’s influence in the Dissertation in terms of
ideas that would be continued in Hegel’s Encyclopaedia Philosophy of
Nature. Hegel commences Part II of the Dissertation with Baader’s idea:
“Gravity so constitutes matter that matter is objective gravity” (Diss., )
and later, in the Philosophy of Nature, he continues to describe gravity (die
Gravitation) in the same way as the “true and determinate notion of
material corporeality . . . Universal corporeality divides itself essentially
into particular bodies [besondere Körper], and links itself together in the
moment of singularity or subjectivity [Einzelheit oder Subjectivität], as
determinate being appearing in motion; this, in its immediacy, is thus a
system of many bodies” (Enc. P, §). There too he notes that the
moments of gravity “suffer the fate of being grasped as distinct forces
corresponding to the forces of attraction and repulsion” such that the
“thought of universal gravity is annulled by this” (Enc. P, §, remark).
In the Dissertation, Hegel also linked this Baaderian view to Kepler, who
“knew that gravitation was a quality universal to bodies” (Diss., ).
In the Philosophy of Nature, Kepler’s views would be most extensively
defended in the Remark added to §, where the solar system had been
described in ways stressing the ideas of singularity and externality, notions
central to his “concept of nature” as such. Thus, the sun, exemplifying the
category of abstract universality, stands at an extreme to “lunar and
cometary bodies” which express the maximally external form of singularity
On Baader’s complex relationships to German idealist and romantic thought, see Betanzos ,
introduction and chapter .
In the following paragraph Hegel describes “the concept of gravity/heaviness [Begriff der Schwere]”
as that which realizes its full freedom it these bodies (ENC. P, §).
(Einzelheit) while planets “simultaneously stand as much in the determin-
ations of self-externality, as they do in that of being-in-itself; they are in
themselves centers and find their essential unity through relating them-
selves to the universal center” (Enc. P, §). We will see that this stress
on externality and singularity will link Hegel, via Baader’s heterodox, neo-
Platonic understanding of the Christian Trinitary doctrine, back to Plato’s
Timaeus and its peculiarly Pythagorean aspects, and from there to a
criticism of Aristotle’s formal syllogism.
The “Pythagoraische Quadrat” in the title of Baader’s book had referred
to a figurative number employed by ancient Pythagorean mathematicians
called the “tetraktys,” consisting of an array of ten elements arranged like
the pins in ten-pin bowling – that is, in four rows of , , , and units
respectively. Baader, a devout catholic, had linked the tetraktys to a
triangular representation of the Holy Trinity via a diagram containing an
equilateral triangle, the Catholic symbol of the Holy Trinity, with a central
point (Baader , n). It was meant to somehow link Catholic
Trinitarian theology to the world of the ancient Pythagoreans in a way
which emphasized the this-worldly nature of God’s incarnated “son” while,
at the same time, avoiding pantheism.
Hegel alludes to Baader’s “four regions” of the world in the Dissertation
in a confusing discussion laden with Schellingian concepts (Diss., –),
but Hegel’s interest in Baader’s Pythagorean ideas is also evident in a now
lost diagram, dating from around the time of the Dissertation and found
after Hegel’s death by his biographer Karl Rosenkranz, depicting a “tri-
angle of triangles” showing the inverted embedding of one equilateral
triangle within another (Figure .). It clearly relates to both the ancient
tetraktys and Baader’s Quadrat. According to Rosenkranz the diagram had
been an attempt to represent what Plato had described in the Timaeus as a
complex double-relation – a “ratio of ratios” – responsible for the unifica-
tion of the various parts of the “cosmic animal.” Later, in the Lectures on
the History of Philosophy, Hegel would refer to this “beautiful bond” as a
syllogism, and in this way, Plato’s cosmology could be read as a presentation
of the type of logic which Hegel was pursuing in part I of the Encyclopaedia
and that was to provide the logical presuppositions for the Philosophies of
Nature and Spirit.
It has been noted (e.g., Lukács , –; Harris , ) that
while, during the earlier years of his stay in Frankfurt from to ,
Baader also seems to have been responsible for having introduced Hegel and others around this time
to the Silesian mystic Jakob Böhme.
Hegel’s Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets
Figure . Hegel’s “Triangle of Triangles,” the tetraktys, and Baader’s Quadrat
Hegel had been attracted to such “mystical” or “theosophical” elements
within medieval Christianity such as Baader’s, he nevertheless soon moved
beyond these to a more philosophical stance. More recently, Helmut
Schneider has insisted that “the ‘triangle fragment’ does not rest on
mystical experience. It is about rational construction and geometrical
logic” (Schneider , ). The account of “the syllogism” in Hegel’s
Logic clearly has something to do with the syllogism Hegel finds implicit
in Plato’s cosmology in the Timaeus and of which he regards Aristotle’s
formal syllogism as both an elaboration and reductive distortion. For
Hegel, the superiority of Kepler’s approach to science, I argue, stems from
the fact that it instantiates the type of logic implicit in Plato’s cosmology in
contrast to the otherwise dominant Verstandeslogik implicit in Newton’s,
which had its ultimate source in Aristotle’s formal logic. A key difference in
Hegel’s account of the Platonic syllogism in comparison to Aristotle’s was
that Plato’s had an explicit four-part structure in contrast to the three-part
structure of Aristotle’s formal syllogism, and, as with Baader’s “tri-une”
God acquiring a type of Pythagorean fourfold quality, Plato’s concrete
fourfold version of Aristotle’s trinary syllogism will have to do with its
being applied to the three-dimensional world. Hegel’s way of characteriz-
ing this describes the “middle term” of Aristotle’s formal syllogism as being
“divided,” “split,” or “broken” in Plato’s syllogism (LHP-B, ).
. Hegel’s Interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus
In Plato’s Timaeus a peculiar complex of contemporary arithmetic,
geometry, and Pythagorean musical theory making up the framework of
For the technical vocabulary of his syllogistic, Aristotle had drawn upon the terminology used in
Pythagorean music theory – that is, the same sources as Plato’s cosmology in the Timaeus (Einarson
; Smith ). While Aristotle seems to have adhered to much of Pythagorean science
(Brumbaugh , chapter ), he did not accept the application of music theory to cosmology.
Timaeus’ mythical account of how the craftsman or demiurge had brought
order to the cosmos out of its initial state of disorder can be found (Plato
, c). The demiurge had wanted everything to be good and nothing
bad and brought order to an “out of tune” (plemmelos) disorderly state
(Plato , a), shaping the cosmos into a single living animal of which
all other living things formed parts, both individually and as kinds. The
question arises, however: How are the parts combined?
[I]t isn’t possible to combine two things well all by themselves, without a
third; there has to be some bond between the two that unites them. Now the
best bond is one that really and truly makes a unity of itself together with the
things bonded by it, and this in the nature of things is best accomplished by
proportion [analogia]. For whenever of three numbers which are either solids
or squares the middle term between any two of them is such that what the
first is to it, it is to the last, and, conversely, what the last term is to the
middle, it is to the first, then, since the middle term turns out to be both first
and last, and the last and the first likewise both turn out to be middle terms,
they will all of necessity turn out to have the same relationship to each other,
and, given this, will all be unified. (Plato , b–a)
In his discussion of this and related passages in his Lectures on the History of
Philosophy, and in accord with Baader’s linking of the three-part trinity
structure to the Pythagorean tetraktys, Hegel focuses on how this appar-
ently trinary structure becomes complicated by the idea that not one but
two middle terms are needed to unify its extremes (LHP-B, ).
To understand this, we need to understand something about how the
tetraktys functioned in Pythagorean thought.
The Pythagoreans had an arithmetic worldview, the principle of all
number being the “monas” which, besides the unit used in counting,
was also meant to play the role of a spatial point, conceived as a monadic
unit “in position.” In this way a line could then be conceived as composed
of such units, two-dimensional figures such as squares and rectangles could
be conceived as compounded of arrays of two-dimensional lines, and
three-dimensional solid figures as compounded of those planar ones.
That is, what we know as “square numbers” (numbers multiplied by
On the details of the Pythagorean music theory and cosmology by which Plato had been influenced
see, for example, Barker and Zhmud . Hegel had been influenced by the heavily
Pythagorean account of Plato’s philosophy promoted by late Neoplatonists such as Proclus. See,
for example, Krämer .
As McKirahan points out, the Pythagorean conception of a point as a unit in position “skips over the
facts that geometrical points are different to arithmetical units, and straight lines are determined by
two points in a different way from that in which the number is composed of two units”
(McKirahan , ).
Hegel’s Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets
themselves) were, for the Pythagoreans, literally square, determinations of
areas rather than lengths, and “cubic” numbers were similarly cubic.
Around the time of Plato, however, this reduction of geometric continuous
magnitudes to arithmetic ones was being challenged by a new geometrical
approach in which such continua were understood as is some sense
primary (Klein , part I) – a view reflected in Aristotle’s thought as
well as in his logic (Lasserre , ).
Plato, however, was still more aligned with Pythagorean mathematics,
within which the four rows of the tetraktys were meant to represent these
four spatial dimensions of point, line, area, and volume, the series of
exponential powers associated with them, as well as the four fundamental
elements, fire, air, water, and earth. Like the kinds of the four substances
with which they were associated, numbers raised to different exponential
powers were understood as different kinds of numbers, with the idea of
different and incommensurable kinds of magnitude being a deeply held
belief within Greek mathematics after the discovery of incommensurable
numbers sometime in the fifth century (von Fritz ). This was the
type of incommensurability holding between curves and straight lines to
which Hegel had alluded in his critique of Newton’s reduction of curves to
straight lines and ultimately points.
Noting that anything with bodily form must be both visible and
tangible, Plato has the demiurge compose the body of the cosmic animal
out of the elements of visible fire and tangible earth, elements existing at
the extremes of the tetraktic structure, and so having two intermediaries.
Along with this, Timaeus points out that were the cosmos planar rather
than three-dimensional, only a single middle term would be needed, but as
it actually is three-dimensional, there is a need for two middle terms
standing between the monadic elements themselves and the solids into
which they were compounded. The demiurge had thus “set water and air
between fire and earth, and made them as proportionate to one another as
was possible, so that what fire is to air, air is to water, and what air is to
water, water is to earth. He then bound them together and thus he
constructed the visible and tangible universe . . . making it a symphony
of proportion” (Plato , b–c).
Heath discusses the way that such “figured numbers” as square, triangular, and oblong numbers
were used in Pythagorean calculations in Heath , :–. This meant, however, that there
was no sense to be given to the idea of a number raised to a power greater than three.
In part II of the Dissertation there are forced attempts to apply the idea of a “split middle term” to
various aspects of Kepler’s model of the solar system. For example: “From that real difference in
gravity, we distinguish the idea of difference, namely, that of the potencies of time and space; for
In relation to Plato’s rational syllogism with its Pythagorean structure,
Hegel portrays Aristotle’s formal syllogism as a type of corrupted form with
only a single middle term (LHP-B, ). Aristotle seems to have been
heavily influenced by contemporary geometers who were reacting against
the Pythagoreans reduction of continuous to discrete magnitudes (Lasserre
, chapter ). As with continuous magnitudes, the relations among its
three terms, A, B, and C, are understood comparatively according to the
idea of the containment of the smaller in the larger, the transitivity of
which means if C is contained in B and B in A, then C is contained in
A (Aristotle , b–a). This is how we how we are to understand
how the combination of two premises, A–B and B–C, can result in the
conclusion, A–C. All of Aristotle’s terms must be general, as each must be
able to play the role of subject (container) or predicate (contained) in a
judgment and singular terms such as proper names cannot be predicates.
There are, then, no remnants of the Pythagorean monas (Hegel’s singular-
ities) in Aristotle’s logic. Thus, there is nothing in Aristotle’s logic to
properly capture the absolute singularities of external nature as understood
by Hegel.
. Hegel’s Logic and the Paradox of Singularity
As emphasized by both Wolff and Martin (Wolff ; Martin ),
Hegel’s Logic is intended as an entirely internal project in which thought
determinations are generated from the operations of thought itself. In the
Logic’s Subjective Logic, we find Hegel’s analog of Aristotle’s syllogistic but
modified such that Aristotle’s terms designated by A, B, and C are now
identified with Hegel’s three fundamental conceptual determinations
(“moments” of “the concept”), universality, particularity, and singularity.
It is tempting here to think of the distinction between singularity and
particularity as defined by the different ways in which a thought can be
related to an object – the former, as expressed in a “singular term” such as a
demonstrative phrase or a proper name, picking out something in its
specificity, the latter as in a “definite description” that is “satisfied” by
when a twofoldness has been posited, a double twofoldness – one of the poles, the other of the
potencies – or four regions, must be posited” (Diss., –). While much of Hegel’s language in
the Dissertation is that used by Schelling in his philosophy of nature, Hegel’s use of the split-middle
structure is clearly contrary to Schelling’s thought. Thus, Hegel describes a “line of cohesion” that
seems to allude to Schelling’s “constructed line” from his essay “Presentation of My System of
Philosophy” (PSPh §§–). But while Schelling’s line has an extreme divided by one middle
term, Hegel’s “line of cohesion” is divided by two.
Hegel’s Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets
whatever worldly object or objects it is true of. This is a distinction that had
been used by Hegel’s effective logic teacher, Gottfried Ploucquet
(Ploucquet , §§–; Pozzo ), and it incorporates the innov-
ation of earlier nominalist logicians (transmitted via Leibniz) so to give a
type of “extensional” interpretation to judgments. However, the method-
ology of Hegel’s Logic prevents us from understanding the distinction in
this way. Given its entirely “internal” constitution as the self-articulation of
pure thought, there is no equivalent of any extensional “semantics” in it.
From the purely logical point of view, we are to understand singularity as
somehow different to particularity and universality while related to both.
As is argued by Martin (), however, such extensional semantic consid-
erations start to come into focus in the early paragraphs of the Philosophy
of Nature.
Introducing the “concept of nature,” Hegel states that “Nature has
yielded itself as the Idea in the form of otherness . . . nature is not merely
external relative to this Idea (and to the subjective existence of the same,
spirit), but is embodied as nature in the determination of externality” (Enc.
P, §), and this theme of the “externality” of nature is further elabor-
ated in the following paragraph. “In this externality, the determinations of
the concept have the appearance of an indifferent subsistence and isolation
with regard to one another” (Enc. P, §). This combination of “exter-
nality” and “singularity” gives a dimension to every actual natural thing
what Hegel later refers to as its “infinite singularization or separation”
(unendlichen Vereinzelung) (Enc. P, §).
As we have seen, from a strictly logical point of view, the difference
between the conceptual determinations of singularity and particularity
cannot be accounted for by the question of how they pick out worldly
objects, but now, in the context of the Philosophy of Nature, this intern-
ally articulated system of thought faces a world with its own inherent
logical structure, including the element of “infinite singularization or
separation.” This status possessed by a natural thing qua natural clearly
resists the type of conceptually articulated unification upon which
intelligibility relies. Where something is grasped as a particular it is grasped
in terms of what it has in common with other instances of a universal. This
rose, grasped in the judgment “this rose is red” can be grasped in terms of
what it has in common with other roses or other red things. But when
grasped as singular such connections must be put in abeyance. Hegel’s split
Ploucquet describes the distinction as between “exclusive” and “comprehensive” forms of
particularity.
middle term, I suggest, signals the paradox of the conceptual determinacy
of “singularity.” When I grasp this rose in a judgment, I abstract from its
specificity and weave it as a rose into the fabric of my understanding. This
comes at the price of annulling its “infinite singularization,” however.
Hegel refers to this as the contradiction at the heart of theoretical reason.
I seek to understand the thing as it is but
the more thought predominates in ordinary perceptiveness, so much the
more does the naturalness, individuality, and immediacy of things vanish
away. As thoughts invade the limitless multiformity of nature, its richness is
impoverished, its springtimes die, and there is a fading in the play of its
colours. That which in nature was noisy with life, falls silent in the quietude
of thought; its warm abundance, which shaped itself into a thousand
intriguing wonders, withers into acrid forms and shapeless generalities,
which resemble a dull northern fog. (Enc. P, § A)
This is the price paid by Newtonian thought in which abstractions come
to completely replace the specific entities – Kepler’s observed elliptical orbits,
for example – that had been concretely perceived. As with understanding the
role of mathematics within science, one might advise against confusing
“purely conceptual relations with the physical ones.” The infinite singulariza-
tion or “separation” of things in nature does not mean they are uncon-
nected – if nature is “noisy with life” then clearly there are real physical
relations at work in the world. What it suggests is that these physical
relations cannot be simply reduced to the types of relations existing among
the determinate concepts we bring to it – concepts mutually determined
within the fixed oppositions of the “logic of the understanding.”
Because of such consequences, Goethe, Schelling, Baader, and various
other Naturphilosophies had sought forms of science that preserved the
immediacy of living nature, but Hegel’s solution was different: “what has
been dismembered may be restored to simple universality through
thought” rather than intuition (Enc. P, § addition, p. ). By our
becoming more self-aware of what we are doing when employing concepts
in our practical and theoretical engagements with the world we may return
to a proper grasp of the living processes implicit in nature itself. In this way
Hegel’s philosophy of nature does not aim to challenge the results of the
working scientist’s investigations with an account of how the world they
are investigating really is. Rather, as based upon a correct understanding of
the logic implicit in the empirical investigation of the natural world,
philosophy of nature will help the working scientist to avoid the pitfalls
brought about by the contradictions implicit within the mind’s own
Hegel’s Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets
theorizing. Examples of such pitfalls can be recognized in Newton’s
projections of concepts onto the world, such as the concept of the infini-
tesimal, that, not reflecting empirically detectable existences in the world
itself, have to be understood as mere posits of the mind.
It is then in this indirect sense that Hegel’s defense of Kepler over
Newton is premised upon the Platonic cosmology to which Kepler had
been attracted: In it, Plato had given the first concrete expression to the
logic implicit in the activity of empirical science itself.
Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Organic
Conception of Cosmic Life
A Speculative Kantian Legacy in His Absolute
Mechanics?
Cinzia Ferrini
. Introduction
In the Preface to the Phenomenology (PhG GW : .–; PS ), Hegel
states that both reason and nature are determined as zweckmäßige Thun,
purposive activity. In Hegel view, this amounts to saying that genuine
scientific knowledge of nature – that is, theoretical consideration of nature
which is not just an external aggregate of isolated data – is knowledge of
what is both universal (genera, laws, forces) and internally organized and
finalized (Enc. §/Enc. P : ). In other words, a judicious, sensible
experimental physics “will present the rational science of nature [. . .] as an
external image that mirrors the Concept” (Enc. §R/Enc. : ). This
chapter argues that Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature aims to present the
advance from the abstract work of the Understanding to the syllogistic
work of Reason in the scientific study of empirical nature itself. To do so,
I address a neglected issue in the key relation between speculation and
scientific empirical knowledge in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature: the role of
rational analogies in grounding empirical determinations in the object’s
inner nature or concept, overcoming Kant’s formal division between pure
and applied logic and the heuristic role of teleology in cognizing natural
products. While dismissing an empty and extrinsic use of analogy in
contemporaneous philosophies of nature, which in his view fail to present
an empirical instance grounded in the inner nature and universality of the
thing, Hegel acknowledges the importance of analogy and appreciates its
role in many empirical scientific discoveries. First, I examine Hegel’s
“syllogism of analogy” in the Logic as a concrete, determinate, and object-
ive tool, by use of which the reason of the syllogistic inference is used to
cognize the singular nature of things as particulars of a specified universal-
ity, focusing on an example drawn from celestial mechanics. I contend that
this syllogistic inferential quest for an essential determination of form
Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Conception of Cosmic Life
appearing as a content determination – filling with probability the gaps of
our experience of singularities – is the guiding thread of Hegel’s philo-
sophical science of the logical Idea in its otherness as system of stages. Then
I discuss the role of analogy in the Philosophy of Nature’s Absolute
Mechanics, accounting for Hegel’s view that the structural or constitutive
form of the organism already begins to appear in the “ideal” point of unity
which governs the movement of free, independent bodies in the solar
system, and for his reappraisal of the solar system as manifesting a
thorough-going unity (Physics). Finally, I argue for the thesis of a sufficient
legacy of Kant’s analogical theory of the arrangement of the heavenly
bodies in Hegel’s self-sublating finite mechanical account of the starry
vault in his Philosophy of Nature.
. The Logic of the Nature of Things: Reasoning from
Judgment to Syllogism
In the first section of his Doctrine of Concept, Subjectivity, Hegel’s
logic presents syllogism as resulting from the transition of judgment into a
more integrated, concrete, relational form of reasoning. The dialectic
movement of subject and predicate posits them through the determinate
connection of the copula, which operates as the universal running through
the two apparently independent, abstract extremes, thus restoring in the
unity of judgment the rational or speculative identity of a concept holding
its moments sublated within a whole (WL GW : /SL ). The
accomplished result of the copula of the judgment is a (concrete) determin-
ateness as a universal (i.e., a genus, a species, a kind), that is, a specifying
qualitative determination, what Hegel calls particularity (Besonderheit).
“The Syllogism” is the third and last chapter of that section, preparing
for the transition to Objectivity (Mechanism, Chemism, Teleology).
In the first subdivision of “The Syllogism,” “The Syllogism of Existence
(Daseyns),” Hegel contends that “the nature” of things (Dinge), which he
takes as synonymous to “the rational,” does not operate by discrete,
independent steps, first connecting some particular property (eine
Besonderheit, e.g., mortality) to a subsistent universal (e.g., humankind)
and then discovering a separate connection of a singularity (e.g., Socrates)
to such particularity; in that way the rational or concept of a thing, its very
“nature,” would be no more than a subjective syllogistic inference from
one separate proposition to another, as if the syllogism would consist of
three judgments (including the conclusion), omitting, in accord with the
Understanding’s abstract mode of thinking, what really matters: the
mutual, constitutive relation of these determinations (WL GW : /SL
). In such a formalistic approach to syllogistic inference, we would
cognize only an alleged “essential whole,” made up of distinct propositions
and links, judging the immediacy of each connection. By contrast, the
nature of the Thing (Sache) “is that its various conceptual determinations
are united in the essential unity,” which would be an objective form,
grounded in the object’s inherent, constitutive kind. Hegel writes that
“[a]ll things (alle Dinge) are the syllogism of a universal united through the
particularity with the singularity” (WL GW : /SL ). In the syllo-
gistic conclusion, the connection between singularity and universality is
drawn “through a determinate middle which is replete with content, that is
precisely the meaning of the syllogistic inference” (WL GW : /SL
). The same approach is maintained in the Encyclopaedia Logic:
The syllogistic linkage is not to be regarded as a mere subjective reflection
that splits the connection of the terms into isolated premises and a distinct
conclusion but is in general “a universal form of all things (eine allgemeine
Form aller Dinge)” (Enc. §A/Enc. : ).
How, then, can we make sense of this logical difference between rational
(speculative) and abstract or reflected syllogistic inferences in cognizing the
form of all things for our knowledge of the things of experience? For it goes
without saying that in experience “all” can mean only what so far we have
encountered, but no “all” cases and not “all” individual things may ever
have been observed, and single instances, even within a specific domain,
are countless, and therefore “allness” can be provisionally reached only
through generalization by induction. How does Hegel account for think-
ing “allness” and how does he justify his accomplished and well-ground
rational, speculative sense of the universal inward nature of “all” the
singular things of experience, contrasting it to treating syllogistic inference
in a subjective and formalistic way?
It is worth noting that in the Phenomenology’s chapter on
“Observing Reason,” Hegel compares contemporary classificatory systems
of the animal kingdom with animals’ own essentially distinguishing marks
such as teeth and claws. He states that, between the universality of any
scheme and the singularities of the individuals remains an unresolved
tension so that the phenomena themselves are simply not captured by
their classifications under abstract headings. Hegel views the natural scien-
tists’ failure in grasping objectivity as the typical consequence of the
separation and external connections of the determinations of natural
phenomena set up by the Understanding’s logical procedures (Enc.
§A/Enc. P : ). Similarly, in the Philosophy of Nature we find
Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Conception of Cosmic Life
that the determination of the universal of physics “does not pass over into
particularity.” In contrast with rational syllogistic inference, the determin-
ate content falls outside the universal, and so is split up, shattered, dismem-
bered, and separated (Enc. §A/Enc. P : ).
. Grounding Empirical Determinations in the Object’s Inner
Nature: From Induction to Analogy
The second subdivision of “The Syllogism,” called “The Syllogism of
Reflection,” results from the dialectic of the immediate first form of
Syllogism, the syllogism of existence, which sublates the abstractness of
its terms in four figures. The second form now presents both terms and the
connection of the terms, so that each determinateness is not posited as an
isolated self-subsisting extreme but with reference to the others. On the one
hand, Hegel regards the syllogism of reflection as the first to possess
“genuine determinateness of form, since the middle is posited as the
totality of the determinations” (WL GW : /SL ); on the other,
he views the middle term of its first figure, the syllogism of allness, as still
an abstract particularity, showing only the (illusory) perfection of the
abstract operations of the Understanding, with its external collection of
the singular under the universal, granting the independent immediate
subsistence of the former in the latter. In short, the examination of the
syllogism of allness shows that the singular is connected to its predicate
immediately and that we confront the (abstract) external universality of
reflection and not yet the (concrete) universality of the concept. However,
the thought of the singularity as allness is nothing but a new form of
syllogism: that of induction or of experience, that is, “of the subjective
gathering together of singulars in the genus, and of the conjoining of the
genus with a universal determinateness because the latter is found in all
singulars” (WL GW : /SL ). Against the backdrop of this form of
syllogism, the constitutive feature of any induction or generalization
emerges, which can never presuppose completeness in experience: “The
a, b, c, d, e, constitute the genus only further on, in the infinite: they do
not yield a complete experience. The conclusion of induction thus remains
problematic.” Overcoming this imperfection leads to the syllogism of
analogy. Hegel writes that the truth of the syllogism of induction is a
syllogism that has for its middle term a singularity which is immediately in
itself (an sich selbst) universality or is an essential universality (WL GW :
/SL ). If I say that the “earth” has inhabitants and that the moon is
“an earth,” I take “earth” both as a concrete singular (this planet Earth) and
a genus (a heavenly body), whereas in induction the middle term is an
indeterminate numbers of singulars and in allness the middle term is only
the external form determination of all things.
This analogical inferential restatement of any inductive general signifi-
cance of empirical singularity is open to superficiality and vacuity when the
universal that unites the extremes is a property assumed as common on the
basis of mere similarity. The text states that this kind of simple
representation “should have no place in logic.” In my view, this note is of
the highest importance because, against the customary division between
content and form, and the customary abstraction of common universals
from independent extant particulars of the same kind, typical of operations
of the Understanding, Hegel contends that from Subjectivity to
Objectivity the logic of the concept advances with the thought of form
made into empirical content. We are now in the position of thinking about
natural things with enduring actual content determination, manifest in
observation, and no longer subject to abstraction or to separation between
beings and their (universal) essence. He writes:
But that the form determines itself to content is first of all a necessary
advance on the part of the formal side, and therefore an advance that
touches the nature of the syllogism essentially; secondly, such a content
determination cannot, therefore, be regarded as any other empirical con-
tent, and abstraction cannot be made from it. (WL GW : /SL )
This assessment overcomes Kant’s division between pure and applied logic.
Kant holds that logic as Elementarlehre (concept, judgment, inference) is
neither an organon of truth relative to the content of thought, nor an
(heuristic) organon of new cognition but a normative, analytic science of
the necessary rules of thinking, the canon of the understanding and reason
in their use but only in regard to what is formal (Capozzi , –).
Hence, there are logical reasons behind Hegel’s disparaging assessment of
what he regards as an empty, extrinsic use of analogical inference in the
futile play of contemporaneous philosophies of nature (Steffens,
Schelling). In § of the Encyclopaedia, Hegel mentions the com-
plete failure of astronomy to discover anything rational (i.e., any actual
law) regarding the series of planets and their distances from the sun,
referring to his own early attempt in the Dissertatio philosophica de
orbitis planetarum. In the revised text, § of the and editions
Capozzi (, –) recalls a marginal note (ca. ) of Kant’s Logik Bauch prospecting the
desirable addition of a chapter on heuristic strategies and provisional cognition to the formal canon of
truth exposed in the pure first part of his logic, the Doctrine of Elements.
Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Conception of Cosmic Life
of the Encyclopaedia, Hegel retains his remark on astronomers’ unsuccess-
ful attempts but deletes the note about his dissatisfaction with his
Dissertation and is much more explicit about the shortcomings of contem-
poraneous philosophy of nature (Enc. §R/Enc. P : ): In the
Addition to § we read him disparaging the tentative analogy drawn by
Schelling and Steffens between the planetary series and the series of metals
(Enc. §R/Enc. P : ). Recasting at the level of philosophy of nature
the example of superficial analogy given in his Logic, Hegel under-
scores that to ascribe by analogy to the Moon, as an individual heavenly
body, the particularity to be inhabited (a particular belonging to the univer-
sal of life), on the major premise (of the same form of the conclusion) that
the Earth, which is a heavenly body (an earth), has inhabitants, is false
because to state that the Earth has inhabitants “does not rest merely on the
fact that it is a heavenly body” (Enc. §A/Enc. : ).
In light of the presentation of the syllogism of analogy sketched
here, in the case of Schelling and Steffens, the analogy would fail to present
an empirical instance grounded in the inner nature and universality of the
thing, because further conditions are necessary for life on Earth: atmosphere,
water, and so on. As Richard Winfield puts it: “Unless the individual is
connected to the particular and universal through its own constitution, the
syllogism [scil. of analogy] cannot infer what it infers” (Winfield , ).
We can conclude that Hegel saw that in his Logic there was room only for
analogy as a concrete, determinate, and objective tool, by use of which the
reason of the syllogistic inference is used to cognize the singular nature of
things as particulars of a specified universality. In contrast to mere general-
ization by induction, Hegel acknowledges and underscores the importance
of a sound, ampliative analogy that allows transferring properties and infor-
mation from a known source domain to an unknown target domain,
because of essential relations shared between the source and the target
analogs. Hegel appreciates its role in many empirical scientific discoveries
by providing a constitutive criterion to distinguish between superficial and
justified, rationally grounded analogies, for both nonliving and living bodies.
“True” analogies derive from “the instinct of reason which surmises that this
or that empirical determination is grounded in an object’s inner nature or
kind, and which proceeds on that basis” (Enc. §A/Enc. : ).
Hegel thus provides a “constitutive” criterion for good analogies based on identity of ground. In the
– Metaphysik Mrongovius, Kant remarks: “We cannot at all dispense with analogy. Most of
our inferences are analogical; we infer, namely: because two things have these properties in common
that we know, they will also agree in those properties that we do not know. Of course here deception
is also possible, and in many cases actual” (Ak. : /MMr ). In his note to § of the Critique
This purposive internal drive of rational thinking urges us to truly
comprehend sensuous beings as aiming at realizing themselves by express-
ing their own inward, universal, durable, stable essence (genus, species,
kind, laws). But to move the epistemic status of conceptual cognition
beyond Subjectivity implies also that the significance and validity of these
universals rest in being taken from the perceptually sensed external world,
for the Logic presupposes the chapter on reason observing the world in the
Phenomenology. As is well known, Hegel speaks of empirical science’s
knowledge as the presupposition and condition for the birth and forma-
tion of the conceptual way of considering nature, proper to the philosoph-
ical science (see Enc. §/Enc. P : –). To legitimate the
speculative syllogistic inferential comprehension of what is actually real
and objective in the concrete natural kingdom requires then that Logic
shows the connection of these universals in experience by examples, relying
on the findings of the natural sciences rooted in the durable, stable,
constitutive structure of their objects. Indeed, at this juncture of the text
Hegel gives a sound example of analogical inference drawn from celestial
mechanics: “It is an example of a syllogism of analogy when we say: ‘We
have found that all the planets observed so far obey such and such a law of
motion, and that therefore any newly discovered planet will probably move
according to the same law’” (Enc. §A/Enc. : , emphasis added).
In Section ., I focus on the different conception of gravity and solar
system at the two different levels of Mechanics and Physics in Hegel’s
Philosophy of Nature.
. The Universal Significance of Empirical Singularity:
The Relations of Determinations in the Philosophy of Nature
In his – Lectures on the Philosophy of Nature Hegel explains that,
although the “basic form” (Grundform) of qualitative natural bodies
(organic and inorganic) is to appear as merely coexisting, this mutual
externality is only a “semblance” (Schein). What essentially rules the
appearance of natural things – and is the sole concern of the philosophy
of nature – is the syllogistic process of the concept as “the master that keeps
singularities together” (GVNat ). This is to say that even a nonliving
of Judgment (Ak. : /CJ ), Kant defines the qualitative meaning of analogy as “the identity of
the relation between ground and consequences (causes and effects),” insofar as two specifically
different things have a general concept in common.
See on the point Ferrini , –.
Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Conception of Cosmic Life
celestial mass that is seen to be part of a mechanical complex of heavenly
bodies rotating around a center of unity exhibits “to the eye of the
concept” (i.e., to thought or “ideally”) that syllogistic integration into a
systematic unity that is also distinctive of living processes. Thus each
planet deserves, philosophically, the (organic) designation member
(Glieder) rather than part (Teil). Hegel constantly translates the syllogistic
structure of organic life, a universal united through particularity with
singularity, into the concrete terms of natural shapes, as it is apparent in
a passage from the Addition to § of his Encyclopaedia and from his
– course on the Philosophy of Nature:
Life is where inner and outer, cause and effect, end and means, subjectivity
and objectivity etc. are one and the same. The true determination of life is
that by the union of the concept with reality, this reality no longer is an
immediate and independent mode of being as a plurality of properties
existing apart from each other. (Enc. §A/Enc. P : )
[L]ife is essentially organism. In the organism the form is this unity, and at
the same time these parts of the form are not parts but members, they
are ideal. (VNat .; emphasis added)
Here Hegel’s point is that from the speculative standpoint of philosophical
science, what unphilosophical science views only as self-subsistent “parts” of a
complex form are essentially or inwardly interrelated as interdependent
moments of one whole. Hence the real differentiation and division among
members is ideally and necessarily reintegrated into the unity of their common
purpose, namely, the conservation of the kind of organism they constitute.
In the – Philosophy of Nature, Hegel further explains how this
“ideal” or speculative structure of life, as movement of division, determin-
ation, and reintegration into the unity of universality and singularity, is “the
process of leading the members back to identity” (UVNat ).
Coming back to the Encyclopaedia, distinctive of Hegel’s Philosophy of
Nature as a system of stages is that its three main divisions – “Mechanics,”
“Physics,” and “Organic Physics” – show increasing degrees of self-
determination and self-preservation (the syllogistic or rational character
of organic life) and decreasing degrees of externality and contingency
Elsewhere (Ferrini b) I have shown that this logical speculative element is also what Hegel
indicated in the Encyclopaedia as the common ground of empiricism and philosophy of nature,
which can and must make use of the material that scientific empirical knowledge has developed by
drawing from experience, because empirical physics, although it is not comprehending (begreifende),
speculative cognition, is nevertheless thinking (denkende) cognition of nature: See Enc. §A/Enc. :
–; Enc. §A/Enc. P : –; and Enc. §A/Enc. P : .
(separation and isolation: the abstract and reflective character of external
and merely mechanical relations as used by the Understanding). In the
section on “Mechanics,” Hegel discusses three kinds of movement: uni-
form motion resulting from external thrust and expressed by the simple
relation of space to time, relatively free motion (where motion accelerates
uniformly due to gravity), and absolutely free motion (the movement of
orbiting planets in the solar system). These three stages of “Mechanics”
show how a relatively homogeneous matter passes from passivity to activ-
ity, from being set in motion by external thrust to having the principle of
motion within itself. Since matter is defined in “Mechanics” as essentially
composite, consisting entirely of discrete parts which all tend toward a
center, it is still characterized above all by “essential externality” and is still
governed by gravity: It has thus not yet become properly self-determining
(Enc. §A/Enc. P : ). Consequently, as Hegel notes in –, in
this mechanical sphere, the organism “does not allow itself to occur”; that
is to say, living organisms cannot be produced by purely mechanical or
gravitational motion (VNat .). At a logical level, this means that the
type of object referred to in “Mechanics” is not yet thought as a subject that
maintains itself during its effective realization, for it is taken as “attaining
concrete existence through other corporeal individuals” (WL GW : /
SL ). However, the structural or essential (not yet actualized) form of the
organism has already begun to appear in the “ideal” point of unity that
governs the movement of free, independent material parts in the solar
system: the sun in relation to orbiting bodies which carry the principle of
motion (gravity) within themselves.
Already in his Dissertation on the Orbits of the Planets, Hegel called
the planets of the solar system “animals,” indicating they are organized
bodies endowed with an autonomous inner principle of motion. However,
due to their confinement by a central body regarding mechanical motion
of mutually external and independent bodies, in the section “Mechanics”
of his Philosophy of Nature, Hegel regards the solar system as the first
organism, or “only” an organism of mechanism:
In the system of the heavenly bodies [. . .] all particular moments of the
concept exist freely for themselves as independent bodies which have not
yet returned into the unity of the concept. The first organism was the solar
system; it was merely implicitly (an sich) organic however, it was not yet an
organic existence. The gigantic members of which it is composed are
independent configurations (Gestalten) and it is only their motion which
constitutes the ideality of their independence. The solar system is merely an
organism of mechanism. (Enc. §A/Enc. P : , trans. revised)
Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Conception of Cosmic Life
Only at the higher stage of Physics do we have a kind of object that is
“real” matter; or, in Hegel’s terms, matter having a certain inner form
which it manifests (in its empirical being) as its own essential form. This
inner form endows bodies with individuality (and a distinctive quality or
specificity) that bodies lack insofar as they are taken and understood as
purely mechanical bodies (or mere quantities of indifferent parts of matter,
disregarding body’s inner composition or structure):
These bodies now come under the power (Macht) of individuality. What
follows is the reduction of the free bodies under the power of the individual
point of unity, which digests (verdaut) them. Gravity, as the inward essence
of matter, only inner identity, passes [. . .] into the manifestation of essence.
(Enc. §A/Enc. P : , trans. revised)
In the first qualified state of matter, gravity thus ceases to count as an
undifferentiated heaviness that ignores internal differentiation, and matter’s
general and abstract appearance to and for others (not for itself ) becomes
light. Hegel argues in distinct stages that light manifests (outwardly) the
inward essential identity of gravity in the heavenly bodies, by reducing the
apparent autonomous independence of these “animals” to moments held
sublated within the unity of cosmic life, as individual manifestations of their
living essence, appearing as particulars of a universality:
It is the property [. . .] of organic being to digest the completely universal
astral powers which appear to have independence as heavenly bodies, and to
bring them under the sway of individuality, so that these gigantic members
reduce themselves to moments. (Enc. §A/Enc. P : , my emphasis)
and:
Living existence posits everything particular as appearing (als erscheinend),
however, and so holds these gigantic members [i.e., heavenly bodies] within
a unity. In life, therefore, light is the complete master of gravity. (Enc.
§A/Enc. P : )
In the Philosophy of Nature of – (JS III .–) we find a clear
assessment of how and why with the physical dimension of light we reach
the thought of the universal form of “life”: the key notion is the thorough
co-penetration of all the parts of a transparent body (i.e., a glass, a crystal)
by a unity of presence and actuality. Light exemplifies a unity of space,
externality, and generality, which thoroughly co-penetrates all parts of a
body, though still in an external, simple way. Hence the unity realized by
light is not yet that of “the singular (einzelne) self,” as is the case with
organic nature or the self-conscious “I” at the higher level of the
philosophy of spirit. However, since the spectrum of colors light displays
results from its inner principle of differentiating itself when it thoroughly
permeates the material structure of the body it illuminates (i.e., the prism);
light, though simple, is no longer the kind of unity that governs the
motion of parts that remain external to their center.
This is why “Physics” reappraises the system of the heavenly bodies,
noting features absent from the previous section on celestial or absolute
mechanics. What was previously understood as a mere organism of
mechanism is now determined as the manifestation of a thorough-going
unity – the wholly universal, “cosmic” life in which all heavenly bodies
participate. This life is constituted by the union of the mechanical connec-
tions among heavenly bodies governed by gravity with their physical
relation governed by the Sun’s light. By regarding the Sun as a star, we
reach the stage of matter in the condition of unity: “This physical relation-
ship between the heavenly bodies, together with their mechanical relation,
constitutes cosmic nature, which is the foundation, the completely univer-
sal life, in which the whole of animated nature participates” (Enc. §A/
Enc. P : ). Indeed, only when matter is regarded as inwardly self-
determining, and the sun is no longer understood as merely a center of
motion but also according to its higher determination “as self-sustaining
natural source of light” which illuminates all the planets and is the source
of life on Earth, do we have light as the complete master of gravity that
holds the “gigantic members” of the heavenly bodies within a unity that
has the principle of difference within itself and is immanently active (Enc.
§A/Enc. P : ) in the entire solar system as a whole. The solar
system is in fact a system for it is in itself an “essentially interconnected
totality” (Enc. §R/Enc. P : ). Otherwise stated, only at the stage of
the qualified matter of individual bodies, no longer characterized by weight
as one abstract totalizing feature, do we have the thought of the solar
system as the syllogism of the sun (as the moment of universality), the
comets, and the moon (which represent the moment of particularity) and
the singularity of the planets (the moment of the reflection within itself,
the unity of universality and particularity, Enc. §A/Enc. P : ).
In this brief survey of the principal stages of Hegel’s speculative
approach to the heavens there are some mutually connected distinctive
points worth noting: () The importance of analogy in extending the
known to the unknown and the acknowledgment of rational analogies
grounded in the inherent kind of the natural object, with reference to our
scientific empirical knowledge and celestial mechanics; () the comprehen-
sion of the heavenly bodies not as parts but members of a systematic,
Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Conception of Cosmic Life
organized whole as the organism of mechanism; and () the physical role of
the luminescent stars as points of unity and their essential inner linkage
with their orbiting planets.
In Section ., I try to show that there is a Kantian speculative legacy in
Hegel’s approach regarding these key points.
. A Kantian Legacy in Hegel’s Absolute Mechanics?
Traditional readings may regard my attempt as misguided, for at least two
reasons:
. Kant’s cosmogony had a different goal from Hegel’s speculative,
rational syllogistic cosmology in his Philosophy of Nature: In
Kant aimed to provide a genetic natural history of the heavens, in
which, inter alia, the formation of planets and the causes of their
systematic relations were to be determined from the characteristics of
their presently observable configurations, by analogically extending
Newton’s laws beyond the solar system. Moreover, in Kant’s account,
the main issue at stake was to demonstrate that the beauty and
regularity of the heavens were due only to the inner development of
the mechanical properties of matter, through the divine artistry
concealed within their own (blind) lawfulness.
. In Kant maintained that God’s plan and activity endowed
lifeless or inert matter with properties so that its smallest parts could
arrange and join themselves into systems, such as the fixed stars in the
Milky Way, taking by analogy (in space) all the stars moving in one
vast ring like those of Saturn. In the Addition to § of his
Encyclopaedia, on Finite Mechanics, Hegel states that the fall of
heavy matter, described in Aristotelian terms as “the effort of matter
to reach one place, as center,” is more adequate to the concept of
matter than inert matter. The abstract positing of a single center has
the logical moment of the “one,” or self-identity, through sublating
the other necessary logical moment of the “many” or becoming other.
However, falling “is the one-sided positing of matter as attraction”
because it still lacks the moment of differentiation of the center within
See THA /: “Thus all the suns of the firmament have orbital motions either around one
universal center point or around many. In this context, we may use the analogy of what has been
observed in the orbits of our solar system, namely that the same cause that has imparted centrifugal
force to the planets as a result of which they describe their orbits, has also arranged them in such a
way that they all relate to one plane.”
itself as posited by gravity. Heavy attracted matter is not yet real true
matter as it has not yet posited itself in the determinations of all
the logical moments of its concept or internal essence. Real repulsion
is “where the center repels itself, multiplies itself so that masses are
posited as a many, each with its center,” as in the third main division of
absolute mechanics and absolutely free matter, which, in its existence, is
completely adequate to its concept and is rationally conceived. Within
this context, as an example of formal, abstract repulsion, Hegel
considers the host of fixed stars beyond the Sun. They constitute a
formal world where dead repulsion finds existence, because “as bodies
they are as yet simply multiple and exhibit no difference”; their plurality
within immensurable spaces is of no significance to reason, since they
exhibit mere externality, emptiness and negative infinity. Stars here “are
not yet to be regarded as luminous, for this is a physical determination.”
Hegel regards the heavenly vault as a sphere of interest only for human
feelings, not for philosophy, by speaking of the “admiration” of the
serenity of the night sky, the “delight to the eye” of stars’ lights, and the
contemplation of their tranquility to calm a passionate heart. Against
this backdrop, it would appear difficult, or at least controversial,
to speak of any specific, significant Kantian legacy in Hegel’s theory
of the heavenly vault.
However, exactly in the same Addition to § where, mechanically
speaking, the plurality of stars is said to be the realm of abstract and
infinite diremption, Hegel makes clear that any rational and speculative
interest in them, that is, any conceptual comprehension of the expression
or appearance of any essential, internal relations, would rest upon their way
of grouping, that is, in the figurations in which they are reciprocally
disposed, although:
Little can be said about the necessity of these figurations. Herschel has noted
forms in nebulae indicative of regularity. The spaces are emptier as the
distances from the Milky Way increase, and from this has been concluded
(Herschel and Kant), that the stars form the figure of a lens; but this is
something wholly indeterminate and general. (Enc. §A/Enc. P : )
We will start from this piece of evidence. Despite the caveat of indetermin-
acy and generality, Hegel himself acknowledges sharing at least one
speculative point with Kant’s cosmogony: the quest to comprehend the
expression of the inherent relational nature of the stars through their
(geometrical) external configuration, to the point that Hegel also speaks
of the host or plurality of stars as a “system,” though setting it at a lower
Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Conception of Cosmic Life
level in respect to the solar system in which we first discern the system of
reason as a reality in the heavens.
In the Universal History and Theory of the Heavens, Kant had
explained the origin of heavenly bodies by assuming that their matter was
at one time separated into its elements of varying sizes and densities and
scattered through infinite space. In the opening paragraph of the Preface,
Kant writes that his audacious aim is: “To discover the systematicity which
binds together the great members (Glieder) of creation in the whole extent
of infinity, to derive the formation of the celestial bodies themselves and
the origin of their motions, from the first state of nature through mechan-
ical laws” (THA .–/, translation revised). He then claimed that
matter organizes itself by attraction and repulsion so as to revolve about
a common center of gravity, and his nebulae hypotheses endorsed
Maupertuis’ view of the fixed stars as suns like ours, very likely (“for
reasons of nature and analogy”) revolving about an axis and a common
plane (THA –/). Maupertuis argued for the notion of the
specific flattened elliptical configuration of an apparently disaggregated
plurality of stars as expressing their internal mutual relationship, for they
were seen to group geometrically according to a common plane (what
Hegel calls “the figure of a lens”).
Kant’s Theory of the Heavens was published anonymously, its
publisher soon went bankrupt, and most copies of it were impounded.
For decades, Kant’s precritical cosmogony was mostly known through the
Beweisgrund as an argument proving God’s existence. In Hegel’s
time, the text circulated in the new, corrected edition of , published
by Voigt, in Tieftrunk’s collection of Kant’s essays, and in reprints or
minor editions.
It is worth considering that by referring both to Herschel and Kant,
Hegel appears to refer to the German edition of W. Herschel, Über
den Bau des Himmels, to which was appended “an authentic excerpt”
from Kant’s Theorie des Himmels, abridged for the occasion by the
“The host of stars is a formal world, because only this onesided determination is able to hold sway
there. As a system it should not be put on a level with the solar system which for us is the primary
knowable system of real rationality within the heavens” (Enc. §A/Enc. P : ).
Kant quotes (in the original French) the second, augmented edition of Maupertuis’ Discourse
sur les différentes figures des astres, from an excerpt published in the Acta Eruditorum (THA –
/). Maupertuis used our solar system to model any stellar nebula, regarding its stars as rotating
about a common axis, so that the nebula would likely have a flattened form of an elliptical figure
(Maupertuis , –).
For a list of the early German editions of Kant’s work issued before Hegel’s death, see Albrect
and Delfosse , xliii.
school inspector J. F. Gensichen upon Kant’s personal request and under
his supervision (Herschel , –). This Appendix was said to contain
the “very gist (das Wesentlichste)” of the work (Herschel , ), and
at the beginning of his own note to the Appendix, Gensichen assured the
reader that the excerpt reported what the author would have written in
if he had wanted to expound his thoughts briefly.
Elsewhere I have shown that, despite assurances, the text is very far from
a simple and neutral condensation, essentially representative of Kant’s
precritical cosmogony, insofar as, thirty-six years later, all reference to
the derivation of the essential properties of elementary matter from the
divine intelligence is deleted. A comparison between the and the
text documents how Kant shifted from a genetic theological explan-
ation based on dogmatic mechanics to a descriptive critical one, more
explicitly based on a chemical-dynamical framework, pointing to the
union of mechanism with unintentional natural ends in the systematic
self-formation of inorganic matter. In , Kant claims that chaotic
matter has merely “an endeavor (eine Bestrebung),” that is, a striving, a
tendency, “to self-forming (sich zu bilden)” into a perfect constitution
through natural development: Though renouncing any speculative theory
about origins, Kant’s critical reassessment remained compatible with an
argument from God’s design.
To speak of Bestrebung in cosmogony without reference to God’s plans
and will should only connote an original, immanent predisposition of
matter to indeterminate purposiveness, an efficient causal tendency to
acquire a determinate, complete form. Contemporaneous readers would
have understood this to involve a theoretical and analogical extension of
the Bestreben from the living back to the nonliving, phenomenal realm.
In this period, Bestreben was used to indicate the formative force
(Bildungstrieb or nisus formativus) by which all organisms assume their
own determinate shape. As a matter of fact, later Blumenbach himself
explicitly distinguished between Bildungstrieb (nisus formativus), a vital
force operating only on the generative substance of living organisms, and
Bildungskraft (vis formativa), a force operating on the progressive formation
of structured but inorganic bodies such as crystals.
In , Herschel had published his On the Construction of the Heavens; in he presented to the
Royal Society the memoir On the Satellites of the Planets Saturn, and the Rotation of its Ring on an
Axis (see Grillenzoni , n). On Gensichen’s excerpt, we have a letter from Kant to
Gensichen dated April , (Ak. : –/Corr. –).
In the following comparison between Kant’s and cosmogony, I draw upon Ferrini .
For details and discussion, see Fabbri Bertoletti , –.
Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Conception of Cosmic Life
Considering what Hegel could more likely have had at hand, it is worth
referring also to J. C. Schwab’s review of Kant’s cosmogony. Schwab
admits that he had no first-hand knowledge of the book, though he
was acquainted with the exposition; thus, when he comes to speak of
the introduction of chemical attraction in the self-formation of the planets,
he stresses that no mention of that force was made in (Schwab ,
), indicating this aspect as a true novelty in Kant’s account.
Indeed, central to Kant’s view was to make more explicit that
masses form from chaos not only because matter is mechanically endowed
with a motive power but because it unites the (blind) capacity for
movement (mechanism) with the specifically oriented attraction of
chemical affinity: Affinity belongs to the qualitative constitution of the
body itself, it works inwardly to form its shape through the reciprocal
action of specifically different matters. In this way Kant explained the
composition of planetary bodies by parts which reciprocally produce each
other, regarding their form and combination.
I contend that from this standpoint, Kant’s legacy to Hegel is the compre-
hension of the systematicity of the Heavens as a kind of “organism of
mechanism.” In a passage of the Critique of Judgment, Kant distinguishes
between the causal relation among parts in a watch and in an organized
natural product, stressing that, since neither one wheel produces the other,
nor the watch reproduces itself organizing other matter for this purpose, then
a watch cannot by itself replace damaged or lacking parts, or somehow repair
itself when it has fallen into disorder (Unordnung). Hence, he concludes:
An organized being is thus not a mere machine, for that has only a motive
power (bewegende Kraft), while the organized being possesses in itself a
formative power (es besitzt in sich bildende Kraft ), and indeed one that it
communicates to the matter, which does not have it (it organizes the latter):
thus it has a self-propagating formative power (eine sich fortpflanzende
bildende Kraft), which cannot be explained through the capacity for
movement alone (that is, mechanism). (Ak. : /CJ §, )
Note that, in analogy with plants and animals, to which the passage is chiefly
addressed, the question of a natural being that possesses a power that it
communicates to matter recurs in Reflexion , where the verb fortpflanzen
(to propagate) is used by Kant, not just to identify the kind of force that
inheres in living organisms so far as they are not machines but to define the
action of fire, with heat viewed as something that “communicates itself.”
See Ref.PC : : “Die Wärme theilt sich mit, aber Flamme planzt sich fort.”
Likewise, as early as , Kant ascribed an inorganic power, analogous of
the organic power of self-repair when disordered, to heavenly bodies in the
course of their self-formation.
It seems to me that the same view is echoed in the Kantian notion of
Unordnung stated in § of the Critique of Judgment: It appears that the
relation between cause and effect is identical in both organic and inorganic
cases, and is therefore analogical in this formal sense, since the latter case
pertains to structured nature (heavenly bodies and crystals, so far as they are
not cognized as aggregates but as systematically organized natural products).
Hence it appears that in his “critical” cosmogony, by also giving new
significance to some earlier tenets, Kant suggests that the heavenly bodies
should be judged (reflectively/aesthetically) as natural ends in themselves and
thus in accordance with their inner possibility, namely that their formation
should be investigated by taking as a guideline a process of the organization
of matter that, as in the case of crystalline structures, is analogous to the
formation of living organisms with regard to the concept of purposiveness.
Against this background, the systematicity of the Heavens is no longer
seen as the problem of explaining the harmonic arrangement of blindly
formed bodies, through the common origin of the essential properties of
their matter in the design of God’s infinite Understanding (as also in ).
Instead, Kant’s revised problem is the philosophical grounding (a
priori) of that which pertains materially to the possibility of the actual
existence of the heavenly bodies as masses whose free formation is based
on “indeterminate” purposiveness due to the “technique” (Technik) of
nature, brought about by emerging selective (chemical) attractive forces.
Hegel could have well seen here in Kant what he calls the “instinct of
reason,” surmising that an empirical determination is grounded in the
inner kind of an individual object – because no part of the Heavens was
posited as either independent or necessary on its own account but with
reference to the others – according to the hypotheses that parts were
arranged as self-organizing members of a whole in greater unities.
Echoed by Hegel, who, in the Addition to § of his Encyclopaedia on
“Finite Mechanics,”, compares the infinite plurality of luminescent stars to
a swarm of flies, Kant had also declared (in ) to have regarded bright
points we see filling the space above us “as a scattered milling mass without
visible order” (Ak. : /THA ); that is, as a confused and dispersed
cluster, before changing his view under influence of Thomas Wright’s
An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe (). Kant’s
version retains this contrast to the view of a scattered heap of an
inconceivably numerous host of stars deriving from an original state of
Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Conception of Cosmic Life
disorganized, dispersed matter; Kant’s focus is not on the aspect of repre-
senting an immeasurable multitude as due to the effect of repulsion; rather,
the aesthetic feeling of the subject in judging the beautiful was occasioned
by seeing an arrangement and grouping of the stars, what Hegel calls their
Figuration around a common center.
It seems that even at an early stage of his development, Kant already saw
that any aesthetic appreciation of the fixed stars must be sought only in the
mind of the one who judges, depending upon a shift in the view: from
regarding the fixed stars merely as a shapeless disorganized multitude, to
considering them as systematically arranged according to an order which,
though perceived without the presentation of any purpose, indicates their
relation to a common plane. In § of the Critique of the Aesthetic
Power of Judgment, the “immeasurable multitude” of the “nebulae,”
systems of the Milky Way “which presumably constitute such a system
among themselves in turn,” are mentioned as an example of the math-
ematically sublime in nature in mere intuition. However, the aesthetic
judging of the nebulae exemplifies the mathematical sublime in nature, not
for the magnitude of the number but because “as we progress we always
arrive at ever greater units” (Ak. : /CJ ).
All of this line of argument seems echoed by Hegel in the Addition to
§, which notes that the subjective interest of feelings (with the exclu-
sion of any objective interest of reason) in the contemplation of the fixed
stars appears only after comparing the infinite plurality of luminescent stars
to a swarm of flies. Terms such as “admiration,” “delight,” and “contem-
plation” appear only within the context of the fixed stars regarded as a
system, when Hegel refers to them as representing crystallizations which
have a lawful inner connection (Enc. §A/Enc. P : ).
In the Doctrine of Essence of the Science of Logic, Hegel highlights
how knowledge cannot advance and runs into circles when making formal
distinctions and proceeding by premising as ground that which is in fact
derived, as in the case with the mutual attractive force of the Sun and the
Earth and in the processes of crystallization:
For instance, the ground for the planets moving around the sun is given to
be the reciprocal attractive force of the sun and the earth. So far as content
goes, this says no more than what is contained in the phenomenon, namely
that the movements of the two bodies are correlated, except that it is
expressed in the form of a determination reflected into itself, that of force.
If it is asked what kind of force this attractive force might be, the answer is
that it is the force that makes the earth move around the sun, that is to say,
it has exactly the same content as the existence for which it is supposed to be
the ground; the connection of the earth and sun with respect to motion is the
identical substrate of ground and grounded. – When a form of crystallization
is explained in this way, namely that it is grounded in the particular
arrangement into which the molecules enter with one another, the actual
crystallization is this arrangement itself, except expressed as ground. These
etiologies, which are the privilege of the sciences, are valued in ordinary life
for what they are – tautological, empty talk. (WL GW : /SL )
By contrast, in the Preface to the second edition of the Science of
Logic, Hegel praises the recent significant adoption of the dialectical
category of polarity in physics, when previously predominant was the
reflective category of force, thus marking an advance from the abstract
work of the Understanding to the syllogistic work of Reason in the
scientific study of empirical nature:
It [scil. polarity] defines a difference in which the different terms are insepar-
ably bound together, and it is indeed of infinite importance that an advance
has thereby been made beyond the abstractive form of identity, by which a
determinateness such as for example that of force acquires independent
status, and the determining form of difference, the difference that at the
same time remains an inseparable moment of identity, is instead brought to
the forefront and is given general acceptance. The study of nature, because of
the stable reality of its objects, is inevitably led to fix categories that can no
longer be ignored in it [. . .] it is not given room from abstracting from
opposition and moving on to generalities. (WL GW : –/SL )
At the time of Hegel’s philosophy of nature, galvanic chains based on the
thesis of the fundamental polarity of any natural process were presented as
showing the very essential content, the internal linkage connecting the
complex of nonmechanical modalities of self-organization of matter found
in active phenomena such as manifestations of electricity, the effects of
thermomagnetic chains, combustions, chemical transformations, and finally
the formation processes of crystallization: “von der kleinsten Regung bis zum
kosmischen Rhythmus der Planetenbewegung” (Pohl , xiv).
. Conclusions
I have shown that Kant’s analogy between the chemistry involved in the
self-structuring or self-forming processes of crystallization and those laws of
Hegel had in his library a presentation copy of Pohl’s work. On Hegel’s taking the side of Pohl
(who attended Hegel’s lectures in Berlin) in his polemics against Berzelius, endorsing Pohl’s
highlighting “German’s speculative awareness of the vitality of nature” and the role of philosophy
in chemical theory, see Burbidge , –.
Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Conception of Cosmic Life
chemical combination which regulate the initial formations of heavenly
masses from dispersed and very thin particles of cosmic matter paved the
way to a further analogy between the systematicity of the arrangement of
heavenly bodies (and crystals) and the organization of organic, living beings.
In my view, Hegel’s approach to true analogy as grounded in the inner nature
or constitutive kind of an object and his mechanical account of the heavens
in terms of systematicity and organism of mechanism inherits Kant’s theory
of the Milky Way based on “reasons of nature and analogy,” and owes a debt
to the Kantian view of the heavenly bodies as members mutually connected in
further unities; the same holds for Hegel’s reference to the inner connection
representing crystallizations which relates systematically the fixed stars of the
Milky Way according to their figurations, thus making their essential linkage
or rationale manifest to observation. For both Hegel and Kant, mere mech-
anism treats the stars of the Milky Way only as scattered innumerable parts
of a complex form, whereas they are essentially or inwardly related as
interdependent moments of one whole.
Against this backdrop, it seems to me that we can retrace the presence of
a significant Kantian legacy in Hegel’s Finite Mechanics regarding the
intrinsic limits of any mechanical explanation also for organized nonliving
natural products, which show the necessity to subordinate Newtonian
attraction among indifferent masses to the prior operations of specific
laws of chemical affinity. In Hegel’s reappraisal, these intrinsic limits
would mark the transition of the gravitational masses of Mechanism into
the chemical objects of Chemism. In the terms of the Science of Logic, the
kind of object of Mechanism is a nonindividual external object, striving
toward a middle point because it lacks self-subsistence and determinate
difference, ruled by a law immanent within it that constitutes its nature
and power. The second kind is a determinateness posited by the concept;
idealized difference is immanent within it, and though not yet living, the
object of Chemism strives toward the object determinedly opposed to it.
In terms of the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel’s reference to processes of
crystallization regarding the inner linkages of the Milky Way’s elliptic
figurations marks the initial presence of the higher logical sphere of
Chemismus in the lower Mechanism (as the sphere of gravity taken as
undifferentiated heaviness without internal differentiation), and the
movement of self-superseding of the latter into the former through
Physics, where universal matter is particularized and qualified, the highest
achievement of which is to make manifest the point of unity that contains
the difference of the various material components within itself, becoming
fully individualized matter.
Hegel’s Mechanics as a System of Steps from
Space and Time to Celestial Motion
Ralph M. Kaufmann
. Introduction
The treatment of mechanics has a threefold role in Hegel’s system. As a
necessary step in the ladder of nature, it realizes the more ideal step of time,
space, their dimensionalities, and interactions; explains the inner truth of
the laws of mechanics; and forms the basis of all further analyses. The
outcome is a tetrapartite system that brings into reality the different
motions and centers and physically displays the logic of a dialectic with
two particulars as is necessary in his system to describe nature and its
processes. Hegel’s intermediate goal is not to merely rederive Kepler’s laws
or equations of motions but to offer a deeper reason, a truth for them
founded in a hierarchical system in which free motion is as individual
freedom not unrestrained unboundedness but a positioning into a
governing system, not as a mere subject but as a subject-object which
retains certain degrees of freedom. This approach differentiates Hegel from
both Kant and Newton. The system-inherent importance cannot be
overstated, but the relevance for physics can easily be understated by
neglecting the metaphysical aspiration.
There are indeed questions which are still open today that Hegel
addresses. Why are there real-world quadratic central potentials which
are crucial to the existence of life as it is? The behavior of these laws is
intimately tied to having the power of two in a three-dimensional space.
What are forces exactly? How do they “attach” to a body? How does action
at a distance work, which these forces presuppose? How much physical
and metaphysical content is contained in the mathematical theory of
vector addition and free body diagrams? How are the initial conditions
for the solar system or the universe set? What is mass? Given that E = mc,
identifying mass with energy up to a constant, this question has become
more complicated. For calculational purposes these questions are perhaps
irrelevant but for an understanding they pose pertinent challenges.
Hegel’s Mechanics as a System of Steps
Hegel might not have a complete set of answers here, especially for those
critical to his notion of dialectic, but in an uncanny fashion he pinpoints
exactly the dark spots for which a deeper understanding is metaphysically
relevant. He offers interesting concepts and constructs for the analysis
that are to some extent realized in modern theory. To make these access-
ible, we highlight Hegel’s specific constructions by tracing his argument
intrinsically, concentrating mostly on the system-immanent aspects, com-
menting only briefly on the relations to Kant, Newton, and classical
mechanics.
. Analysis
The ostensible aim of the sections on finite and absolute mechanics is to
give an understanding, versus a mere mathematical computational tool, of
classical mechanics in a multistep process that parallels the dimensional
unfolding of space, time, and movement, given by heaviness (Schwere),
collision, fall, and gravitation or “absolute mechanics,” that is, celestial
movement as governed by Kepler’s laws. Hegel does not use the terms
Schwere and Gravitation interchangeably, which is why we translated the
first one as heaviness. As explicated later, heaviness is a basic property of
extended matter, while gravitation is the term for a gravitational system
comprising many bodies.
This touchstone, which Hegel deems “of the utmost beauty of what
natural science has to offer” and the “most interesting to comprehend”
(Enc. §A, ), appears at a crucial point of the development of the
whole theory, wedged between considerations of space and time and the
following section on physics, which ultimately leads to living organisms.
This positioning and argument are not haphazard, as in Hegel’s theory
matter and motion emanate directly from time and space and are the basis
for all more complex structures and processes, be they physical, chemical,
or organic. In his system of steps, it is necessary that this paragon of natural
science is not isolated but both builds on what has already been laid out
and provides the basis for the further rungs: “Nature is a to be considered
as a system of steps, where the next step necessarily results from the
previous one providing the truth of the previous one, but not in a natural
There has been a great amount of work on this subject of Hegel, Kant, and Newton. I mention
Inwood , Halper , and Ferrini for excellent overviews and refer to the comprehensive
volume Petry .
.
genesis kind of way, but as an inner idea that provides the reason of its
nature” (Enc. §, ).
It might seem odd that the macro scale of the solar system is the basis for
the micro scale of life or even cell life. Hegel (Enc. §, ) argues that
although there are, prima vista, two valid directions of analysis, one
moving from the existing into the abstract and one starting from the
abstract particularizing to the more concrete, the latter is de facto the only
choice: “Since the establishment of conceptual definitions is of vital
importance, we should not start with the real sphere, but instead begin
with the most abstract.” This method is not to be misconstrued as a top-
down explanation of all details of nature especially the accidental ones
(Enc. §, ), but tracing the necessary concepts is what allows for spirit
(Geist) to comprehend its essence in nature (“Geiste die Erkenntnis seines
Wesens in der Natur gewährt” (Enc. §, )). It is in this vein that the
sections on mechanics have importance to both the understanding of
Hegel and more broadly a metaphysical discussion of physical theories.
There are several interweaved lines of thought that are brought to bear
in the analysis. The first is the relationship of space, time, motion, and
matter with their dimensionalities and interrelations. These are used as a
measure to gauge the progression of the discussion and the realization of
the concepts (Begriff). This is a continuation of the analysis of space and
time that ended with locus (Ort), movement, and matter as a synthesis of
these. A second, new aspect of the theory is the notion of centers which
plays a fundamental functional role in the subsequent analyses. Centers
appear in the transition from matter to a plurality of matter, which in
modern terms can be understood as the transition from point-like matter
to extended matter – although one must be cautious not to import too many
preconceived notions. Extended matter or bodies are considered as one unit
subsuming a multitude that constitutes both centers and heaviness. This
heaviness is the concept underlying mass, both inert and gravitational,
grounding it simply in plurality of matter and striving toward a center.
The existence of centers and their quality of being real or ideal is one of
the key principles in Hegel’s system. The different constellations of these
centers classify the steps of the mechanics and serve as a main feature to
contrast Newton’s approach to that of Kepler, to which Hegel is more
“Die Natur ist als ein System von Stufen zu betrachten, deren eine aus der andern notwendig
hervorgeht und die nächste Wahrheit derjenigen ist, aus welcher sie resultiert, aber nicht so, daß die
eine aus der andern natürlich erzeugt würde, sondern in der inneren, den Grund der Natur
ausmachenden Idee.” All translations are provided by the author.
Hegel’s Mechanics as a System of Steps
sympathetic as it has a more global description. This preference is not
merely about mathematical or physical simplicity or aesthetics, but it is
crucial for Hegel, as the wider applicability of these types of motions all the
way up to biology and sociology in a system of steps are at stake (see
Kaufmann et al. ). This accounts for the necessity of having a bound
elliptic motion be the free motion rather than a circular motion, or the
classical Newtonian straight-line motion. In Hegel’s system the former is
not complex enough, as measured by degrees of freedom and dimension-
ality, and the latter is devoid of any metaphysical meaning. Parallel to the
development of the notion of time and space one can express this in
modern terms as a locally free motion and a globally free motion (see
Kaufmann and Yeomans ). The locally free motion is the linear view,
just like the unfolding of dimensions of space, while the globally free
motion can be seen as a system of inclusions, which reaches beyond the
linear in a bounded motion.
In the lead-over to physics Hegel, in a third line of thought, constructs a
system of four celestial bodies, starting from the central potential with two
bodies, sun and earth (sometimes planet), then augmenting it with the
moon to obtain a tripartite system – as it appears in his dialectic and logic –
and finally adding the fourth constituent, the comet, as a second particular
(Besondere). While the tripartite structure reflects the syllogisms and their
interpretation by Hegel, this tetrapartite system is what is necessary to be
able to classify nature:
The totality of the disjunction of the concept exists in nature as a quaternity
because the first is the general, but the second, or the difference, appears in
nature as doubled, as the different needs to exist in nature for itself as a
differentiated, so that the subjective unity of the general and the particular
becomes the fourth. (Enc. §A, )
The various parts and relations can be distinguished by the respective roles
of their inner and outer centers. Ideal centers are initially derived from
extended objects whose analysis gives the metaphysical basis for heaviness
and gravity. The role of the centers is progressed to more reality by having
or being centers in or for others. The underlying relational metaphysics
allows direct contact to be made with philosophical notions of identity
and the Hegelian “being-for-itself” (Sein-für-Sich) and “being-for-other”
“Es existiert in der Natur die Totalität der Disjunktion des Begriffs als Vierheit darum, weil das Erste
die Allgemeinheit als solche ist, das Zweite oder der Unterschied aber in der Natur selbst als ein
Gedoppeltes erscheint, indem in der Natur das Andere für sich als Anderes existieren muß, so daß
die subjektive Einheit der Allgemeinheit und Besonderheit das Vierte ist.”
.
(Sein-für-Andere). The quaternity of the sun, comet-moon, and Earth is
widely used in the text to both explain mutual relationships, but in Hegel’s
own objective it does more. As the underlying subsystem on which things
are built – the necessary reality of concepts that is at the foundation of all
higher steps – it is of central importance, going far beyond the immediate
application to mechanics.
.. From Space and Time to Heavy Matter
Right before delving into the discussion of mechanics, Hegel distills the
notions of matter and movement from space and time or rather the
oscillation between these aspects or dimensions of space-time.
This passing away and regeneration of space into time and time into space,
namely that time posits itself spatially as a locus, but this indifferent
spatiality being equally directly temporally posited, is movement. – This
becoming is, however, just as much the internal collapse of its contradic-
tion, the directly identically existing unity of both, matter. (Enc. §, )
Hegel establishes matter directly from time and space by progressing from
locus (Ort), the unity of here and now (“Die Einheit von Hier und Jetzt,
§Z, ) – which can be called a space-time point in the analysis of
Kaufmann and Yeomans () – to movement, which incorporates the
possibility to change places and represents the ideal aspect of Werden,
becoming, and finally matter as the dialectic unity which encapsulates this
striving and its opposite, that of collapsing differences. This gives matter its
metaphysical foundation, namely, “that matter is the reality of time and
space, . . . that matter is their truth” (“daß die Materie das Reale an Raum
und Zeit ist . . . daß die Materie ihre Wahrheit ist”) (Enc. §A, ).
The next step, transitioning to a multitude of matter that agglomerates
to a body, is parallel to the development of space-time in the previous
section by starting from a negation and in the Hegelian dialectic lifting it
by resolving it into moments. The two opposing aspects are the identity,
given by the homogeneity and continuity of matter, and plurality, given by
its separation, whose moments are attraction and repulsion. The negative
For instance, in the discussion on “Form” the solar system is referenced as the organizing principle
(Enc. §A, ). (In the solar system sensibility corresponds to the sun, the differentiated are
comet and moon and the reproduction is the planet.)
“Dies Vergehen und Sichwiedererzeugen des Raums in Zeit und der Zeit in Raum, daß die Zeit sich
räumlich als Ort, aber diese gleichgültige Räumlichkeit ebenso unmittelbar zeitlich gesetzt wird, ist
die Bewegung. – Dies Werden ist aber selbst ebensosehr das in sich zusammenfallen seines
Widerspruchs, die unmittelbar identische daseiende Einheit beider, die Materie.”
Hegel’s Mechanics as a System of Steps
unity of these two opposing forces is what constitutes heaviness (Schwere)
and gives an ideal center (Mittelpunkt). Heavy matter is thus a system of
many, a body, with an ideal center:
Matter is the form in which the being-exterior-to-itself of nature transitions
to the first being-in-itself, the abstract being-for-itself, the exclusion, which
is thereby a multitude, whose unit, the many being-for-itselfs collected into
a general being-for-itself, is both an inner part of and exterior to matter –-
heaviness. (Enc. §, )
Extended matter can fill space and thus make it real, though not yet fully
real as ideal aspects remain; the form is not material yet. The formlessness of
matter at this stage is reflected in the fact that the center of mass is an ideal
point expressing an aspiration of unity which is suspended since “if matter
were to achieve what it seeks in heaviness, it would shrivel into one point”
(§A, ). Not only does it lack reality but even ideal unity (der Begriff des
Begrifflosen). This deficit will only be lifted in the chapter on physics in the
form of light (“erst im Licht kommt es, . . . zur Existenz dieser Einheit für
sich”, §A, ). This provides an inner structure of matter, albeit not fully
developed, comprising centers. Given this aspect, one can advance to the
next level, where matter with this inner structure is considered within an
external environment and reanalyzed in terms of movement.
.. Inert Matter, Collision
The first quality of matter as a quantity of mass is that it can fill space and
time and as such is inert. This is a consequence of the fivefold unfolding of
space (Kaufmann et al. ), which results in enclosed space bounded by
a surface (Oberfläche). “Masses which in the superficial determination as a
whole or one are bodies” (“Massen, welche in der oberflächlichen
Bestimmung eines Ganzen oder Eins Körper sind”) (Enc. §, ).
Similarly, the dimensionality of matter fills time in the sense of duration,
past-present, and now. This is an external filling made possible by the
inner synthesis of movement into matter. It is not yet an external move-
ment. To the contrary, the fact that matter is the unity of rest and
movement is what constitutes its inertia, which is the resistance to change
“Die Materie ist die Form, in welcher das Außersichsein der Natur zu ihrem ersten Insichsein
kommt, dem abstrakten Fürsichsein, das ausschließend und damit eine Vielheit ist, welche ihre
Einheit, als das fürsichseiende Viele in ein allgemeines Fürsichsein zusammenfassend, in sich
zugleich und noch außer sich hat, – die Schwere.”
.
of either rest or movement. This resistance is thought of as being on a
conceptual level and results from a derealization (aufgehobene Realität)
rendering inertia an abstract quality. The internality versus externality of
concepts is tied to freedom and infinity versus finiteness. As a whole,
matter is finite and not free and is therefore inert and can only be moved
by exterior causes. This is precisely the point where Hegel differs from the
usual terminology of free bodies. One body is finite not free for Hegel and
consequentially there is no free motion in the usual sense. Freedom will
only come in Absolute Mechanics, where it is realized as a system with a
central body and an elliptical orbiter.
As it is not possible to realize movement with one body it must be
relative to at least one other body. For two such pari passu bodies, as a
system of many, the previous analysis applies: They have a common center
and heaviness. This achieves relative movement and provides a version of
momentum: “The magnitude of movement is determined by these two
moments: mass and the determination of movement as speed” (“Die
Größe seiner Bewegung ist bestimmt durch diese beiden Momente: die
Masse und die Bestimmtheit jener Bewegung als Geschwindigkeit”) (Enc.
§, ). This innocuous comment and the examples provided in this
passage again illustrate Hegel’s main assertion about composite
magnitudes. There is only one fundamental magnitude, what we call
momentum today. This is what has impact or action. One can disentangle
velocity and mass as factors in p = mv, but this is a secondary structure,
moments in Hegelian terms, and for Hegel is not the truth of the matter.
Velocity is only the ideal relationship of space and time. Jokingly he
summarizes this as a man is not killed by the mass of a brick alone but
by its momentum, which it attains in combination with speed, which
means that he is killed by time and space.
The possibility of elastic and inelastic collision is equally tied to the
lower or inner structures. Matter comprises both attraction and repulsion
and is thus shape-retaining and deformable at the same time – not by
coincidence but by constitutionality as a system of many with an ideal
center occupying space. As a whole continuity, a body is hard, occupying
the space enclosed by its surface, its extensive oneness being due to
attraction. The elasticity is the intensive oneness, the repulsion, that is,
the resistive repulsion of a deformation of its structure.
“A brick by itself does not kill a person, its effect (Wirkung) is only attained via its speed, that is the
person is killed by space and time” (Enc. §, ).
Hegel’s Mechanics as a System of Steps
.. Fall
The dialectic synthesis of inert mass and collision is fall. Note that this is
free fall in modern terminology, but for Hegel it is important that this is
not yet a free motion but only a step in this direction, a relatively free
motion. The difference between relative movement and fall is codified in
terms of centers. In collision, there is a common center for both bodies
toward which both strive. In fall, one body, the falling body, puts the
center of its striving into the center of the central body. The fact that such
centers exist is elevated to an organizing principle: “All masses belong to
such centers and every single mass is dependent” (Enc. §A, ). What
is brought in from collision is that it is possible to have the center, the
relative center, outside of the ideal center of mass of the body itself. Going
beyond this: “Every body has a center of mass as to have as a center its
center in the another” (Enc. §A, ). This sets up a subject–object
relation for where the subject is a mass that has a center in itself, the central
body, and an object which has its center in the central body. The striving
of heaviness (Schwere) is now toward that center and the relative ideal
center is identified with an ideal center of mass of a central body which
imbues reality to that center. This move concludes part B of the Mechanics
section via the dialectic synthesis of relative motion and ideal centers of
mass into the relative-free motion of falling. It is free, as the concept of
motion is a manifestation of heaviness itself. It is only relatively free, in
Hegel’s account, as there is an ambiguity in the distance to its center.
There is still a further deficiency in the concept of a falling body due to its
lack of dimensional representation: “The finitude of a body of not being
commensurate with its concept, manifests itself in this sphere as the fact
that as matter it is only the immediate unity of time and space, but not the
developed, agitated unity, movement posited in it as an immanent feature”
(Enc. §, ). The relatively free motion is, however, essential (wesen-
tlich), contrary to the accidental motion resulting from throwing an object.
Hegel uses projectile motion to contrast the two components of the
motion, again illustrating his point of view that the decomposition of
the two motions as superimposed on an equal footing, although math-
ematically sensible is metaphysically not tenable. One of the components,
fall, is commensurate with the concept as striving toward a center. The
“Die Endlichkeit des Körpers, seinem Begriffe nicht gemäß zu sein, besteht in dieser Sphäre darin,
daß er als Materie nur die unmittelbare Einheit der Zeit und des Raums, nicht aber in einem deren
entwickelte, unruhige Einheit, die Bewegung als immanent an ihm gesetzt ist.”
.
accidental part of the straight-line motion is not real for Hegel, it is merely
a construct that cannot appear separately and moreover only exists under
assumptions, such as no friction and no interference, that are never
realized. Hegel’s presentation stresses that both the gravitational and the
inert mass entering into projectile motion are the same realized concept of
heaviness which manifests itself essentially only in fall.
.. Hegel and Kant
Hegel’s exposition up to this point is in close contact with Kant’s account
in the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft but rearranges
the hierarchy in Kant’s phoronomy and dynamics. For Kant, matter is the
moveable in space (MFNS Erklärung ), which according to Hegel is not
wrong but premature and conflates the levels of space, time, space-time,
movement, and matter (Enc. §). Abstracting away from the inner
structure, Kant obtains his phoronomy which privileges straight-line
motion of uniform speed. This is the movement of relative spaces and
there is a possibility to switch between bodies in enclosed space and
movement of the containing space (MFNS Grundsatz, ). This is what
allows the definition of addition or superposition of movements (MFNS
Lehrsatz, ). Hegel, in contrast, judges that as premature or at the wrong
level. It is not space or bodies that move; time and space combine to give
the concept of movement – what moves is matter, not space. The centers
to which Kant switches the frame are given by extended matter. The idea
of moving enclosed spaces and superposition is to Hegel the ruse of
attaching metaphysical meaning to components of a movement of con-
founding necessary essential movement with accidental movement as in
projectile motion. For Kant, phoronomy can be taken as the measure
theory of movement, which Hegel denies, again on hierarchical basis, as
momentum is the fundamental magnitude. In the second part, dynamics,
of the Anfangsgründe, matter fills space, as it does for Hegel, but in a
different way. For Kant this is a physical homogeneous filling, while for
Hegel the first layer is given by a plurality making up a body which has
both continuous and polypartite features giving at once repulsion and
attraction. Kant has attraction already at the filling level, but repulsion
comes later with resistance to penetration, although Kant with hindsight
does put it on an equal level with attraction. This is close to the account of
One can argue that such conditions are given in space or in vacuum, but there are always
gravitational effects in space and no vacuum is perfect.
Hegel’s Mechanics as a System of Steps
elastic and inelastic scattering, which enters at a later stage for Hegel.
Repulsion and penetration per se are already built in for Hegel in the first
step of heaviness and they are neither space-filling forces nor forces of
movement but represent the movement as a synthesis of time and space at
a higher level.
.. Absolute Mechanics
The deficiency of fall to represent true free motion is identified as the mere
abstract positing of a center. To obtain a true being-for-itself and hence
freeness, the realized movement needs to also contain the moment of
repulsion and to lift this self-negation. This is made possible through the
movement of a system of many bodies as gravitation:
Gravitation is the true and determinate concept of material embodiment
which has been realized into an idea. The general corporality essentially
discerns itself into particular bodies and combines itself into the moment of
individuality or subjectivity as an apparent being-present in movement,
which is thereby directly a system of several bodies. (Enc. §, )
A motion that is free in the sense that it is commensurate with the concept
involves the central body and at least one more peripheral body that
asymmetrically has its center in the central body. The motion of the
peripheral body needs to be a closed periodic orbit to resolve the move-
ments of attraction and repulsion. Although a circular orbit is a tempting
alternative, Hegel argues that the correct resolution of the concept realized
as an Idee needs a further step, the outcome of which are elliptical orbits.
The two main characteristics for this orbit type is that they are closed and
that there is a varying distance quantified by the two major axes. This
guarantees variation which is equated with an independence from the
central body and makes for an absolutely free motion that unifies the
two aspects: freedom expressed in the motion through altering the distance
and unity with the central body expressed by the closed orbit. In this way,
the orbiting body receives an independence and a true relationship with
the central body; it is as much true that the ellipse determines its focal
points as that the focal points and the half-axes determine an ellipse. This
system now represents the concept of matter and movement in its totality
“Die Gravitation ist der wahrhafte und bestimmte Begriff der materiellen Körperlichkeit, der zur
Idee realisiert ist. Die allgemeine Körperlichkeit urteilt sich wesentlich in besondere Körper und
schließt sich zum Momente der Einzelheit oder Subjektivität als erscheinendes Dasein in der
Bewegung zusammen, welche hierdurch unmittelbar ein System mehrerer Körper ist.”
.
and is thus the culmination and tentative logical conclusion of mechanics.
There is a valuative metaphysical observation tied in at this point that has
great reach with immense explanatory power and promise. The planets
choose to “posit their unity in another outside of themselves” (Enc. §A,
) thus differentiating them from stars and being pure subjects, and in
their freedom and as subject-objects attain the highest position; “as the
immediately concrete most perfect in their existence” (Enc. §A, ).
This is where true freedom lies for Hegel, which in the mechanical sphere
manifests itself as free motion. It is important that the moments of
attraction and repulsion, subject and object, continuity and plurality are
all contained and unified in one motion representing a concretely realized
concept. The only open point at this stage is the choice of one focal point
and the actual rules for the motion through the ellipse. This former as a
concept is the locus (Ort) of the center of the central body and the latter is
determined by dimensionality.
In the ladder system of steps or spheres, the dimensionality of time and
space must also find its truth as an idea in the different aspects of
mechanical movement. In the lower sphere of space, its unfolding is
depicted through a four-step inclusion dimensionality: point-line-plane-
space, culminating in a capstone of totality reached by the space enclosed
by a surface. This dimensionality, along with the three-dimensionality of
time (past-present-future or line-direction-point), constitutes an essential
aspect (cf. Kaufmann and Yeomans ). At the next higher level, this
concept needs to be present as an idea and discernible as realized. Spatially,
there are three primary steps, plus an additional one, for elliptical orbits
(see e.g., Enc. §§, A). These steps correspond to the inclusion
dimension of point-line-plane, initially halting at two-dimensionality and
then culminating with the enclosed area by a curve. This falls short of the
full three-dimensionality of space, which is realized through elliptical
orbits. This allows Hegel to tie all of Kepler’s laws to the concept of
space-time in its unfolding dimensionalities, thereby realizing the ideal
concepts as truths, by an expression in terms of powers (Potenz) of space
and time. Power is Hegel’s own terminology that explicitly includes both
the facets of faculty of directing or influencing and the mathematical term
as an ideal expression of this (“The true concepts of other mathematical
The version of Kepler’s laws found Hegel’s footnotes are: () Planets move on ellipses whose one
focal point is the sun; () the distance planet–sun (radius vector) sweeps out equal areas in equal
times; and () the squares of the obit periods of two planets is proportional to the third powers of
their major axes.
Hegel’s Mechanics as a System of Steps
determinations, like the infinite, . . . powers, etc., lie in philosophy” [Enc.
§A, ]). The powers are fundamentally what relates the different steps
in the hierarchy that ascends from space and time to the biological and
even spirit (Geist) (Enc. §, ). Using this power analysis, the first step
from space-time via matter to bodies and celestial motion is accomplished
in an inherent way.
The progression is as follows. In the dimension-zero section, point is
realized as the locus (Ort) which is occupied by the body together with its
point-like center. The pertinent concept is heaviness (Schwere), this is the
general or monas in the move from monas to quintas laid out in §A.
Its manifestation in the solar system is the central body. The next dimension,
corresponding to duas, is given by diremption, that is, two bodies with
attraction and repulsion. The opposition is given by collision and the concept
of relative heaviness (relative Schwere). Geometrically, this is at the level of
two points with the inherent feature that they define a line and have a
common center on that line. The dialectical synthesis is given by fall, the
relatively free motion that physically realizes the geometric line as a trajectory
yielding a further reality. Hegel’s argument roots this one level deeper in the
fact that, in nature, there are always several particularities, and this necessarily
establishes a common center. In this step, time becomes relevant as the
physical realization involves actual motion. In Hegel’s dimensional analysis
of fall, that is, constant acceleration, he finds space, not time, unfolded to the
second power in a somewhat ad hoc way by arguing that here time is merely a
unit and hence presents only one dimension, while the second power in
s / t signifies an additional difference as a being apart and thus pertains to
space (Enc. §). This is noteworthy as there is a unital argument that gets
entwined with a mere power count. Time being the unit of the relation
is commensurate with previously developed results in the section on time
and space. Indeed, time as negation is the agent of discretization and is in the
position which in Hegel’s theory of fractions is the unit (Enc. §, ).
In the absolute mechanics, the two-dimensionality is more clearly
realized by quadratic curves, that is, conic sections, qua the second powers
in their equations. This is an intrinsically realized manifestation of two-
dimensionality, as previously established in Enc. §. The capstone-
enclosing feature forces the trajectories to be closed. At this stage a circular
motion would give a satisfactory answer, but this does not capture the full
freedom of the concept of motion as a circular motion does not exhibit the
freedom of movement as variation in the orbiting body. The choices would
be an accelerated and retarded motion which Hegel rejects on logical
grounds as there is only one degree of freedom in fixing a circle: its radius.
.
Moreover, the circular motion is the full unity of the three dimensions of
time past-present-future (Enc. §A, ) and thus not unfolded.
To overcome this, Hegel argues, one needs to transition to the ellipse,
which solves several problems at once. Due to its shape, there is a variation
in radius and there is a new degree of freedom, the ratio of the major axes,
which further produces a time asymmetry in the orbit.
In free motion, however, where spatial and temporal determinations inter-
sect in disparity, a qualitative relationship emerges. This relationship neces-
sarily manifests in space as a difference, requiring two determinations.
Therefore, the form of the closed trajectory becomes essentially an ellipse
(Enc. §A, –).
This gives a concept to Kepler’s first law by singling out ellipses from
conic sections with the central body as a focal point. This is an important
concern to Hegel as he notes that Laplace rightly points out that proceed-
ing in Newtonian fashion, the possible trajectory could be any conic
section (Enc. §, ). The second law is founded in the determination
of the two spatial dimensions of a curvilinear motion as area of a sector (“in
this way a two-dimensional determination of space arises, the sector” [Enc.
§, ]) now also measured by time. The third law then develops space
into dimension three via the third power of the major axes and time into
dimension two via the square. This expresses that time is used twice as a
unit: first for the motion and then a second time to compare the periods.
There is a deficiency as time is not expanded to the third dimension, which
Hegel explains by the fact that time is only developed into the “formal
identity with itself” (Enc. §, ). Time is not yet free at this stage, it is
only “light the ideality liberated from heaviness, [that is] a free time” (Enc.
§, ). Kepler’s third law is thus the perfection being commensurate
with the internal dimensions of space and time and their relation in matter
and motion as developed so far. It is the sense or reasonableness of the
subject matter (“Vernunft der Sache” [Enc. §, ]).
.. Relation to Newton, Classical Mechanics, and Modern Examples
In his critique of Newton, Hegel is not rejecting his views and contribu-
tions outright but is emphasizing that their explications lack a refined
“In der freien Bewegung aber, wo räumliche und zeitliche Bestimmung in Verschiedenheit, in ein
qualitatives Verhältnis zueinander treten, tritt notwendig dies Verhältnis an dem Räumlichen selbst
als eine Differenz desselben hervor welche hiermit zwei Bestimmungen erfordert. Dadurch wird die
Gestalt der in sich zurückgehenden Bahn wesentlich eine Ellipse.”
Hegel’s Mechanics as a System of Steps
hierarchy that stratifies the phenomena into accidental (zufällig) or neces-
sary (notwendig). With a more sophisticated approach, Hegel aims to
disentangle a democracy of cacophony of proliferated forces (e.g., “diesen
Staat von Kräften können wir jedoch entbehren” [we can dispense with
this conglomerate of forces] [Enc. §, ]) into those concepts that are
essential – tied to space, time, and matter – and those simply having
mathematical convenience. In several passages, Hegel expressly does not
disqualify the mathematical convenience of Newton’s approach or that of
forces but does contend that it obscures the actually existing or ideally
founded from the merely formal (e.g., Enc. §, ; §, ). Forces,
although conducive to mathematical calculations, are neither empirical nor
fundamental quantities and therefore cannot be used to grasp the true
character (Wesen) of matter. The reality (Wirklichkeit) of movement is tied
to action or effect (Wirkung).
The main equation in Newtonian physics is the famous F = ma. In the
absence of forces F = and hence a = , which means no acceleration.
Commonly this is called free motion, a name that Hegel takes issue with,
which is in a straight line with constant speed. The conserved momentum
p = mv associated to this motion is given by inertial mass. For Hegel,
inertial mass as a concept is not given by free motion, but the logic is
reversed. Mass, or rather heaviness, is the first concept and momentum is
secondary, observed only in collision. A modern argument to Hegel’s point
is that by changing the frame of reference one can simply make any free
motion to have velocity and hence the mass would not be visible as the
momentum and would vanish, showing that rest and movement are frame
dependent. Hegel instead argues on a metaphysical level in attributing a
concept to heaviness; that of having or striving toward a center.
Furthermore, in the modeling of the motion of a solid body it is replaced
by a point particle with the total mass. The metaphysical conundrums that
are not answered by this, and that Hegel’s concept addresses, are that point
particles only have a mysterious “infinitesimal” mass, a limit density, and
as such the total mass given by the integral of the mass density, the region,
that is, the form, must be specified as an antecedent input.
Hegel and modern physics are in accord in the treatment of collision.
The momentum and the inertial mass are only measurable through
The paradigm here is the usual vector addition of forces using the familiar parallelogram, which
inversely allows to decompose any force into a sum, where one of the summands is a free choice.
This ambiguity is what Hegel’s argument runs counter to.
Not coincidentally both Wirkung and Wirklichkeit have a common root with the English “work.”
.
scattering, that is, in a two-body system with the total conserved momen-
tum governing the process. The independent quantity under a change of
reference frame, which can be used to transform the total momentum to
zero, is the relative moment.
In Newton’s theory, for both fall and planets, the law of gravitation with
the force F ¼ G Mm r is used. For fall M is the mass of the earth, so that GM
is constant, and r can be approximated by the radius rE of the Earth,
resulting in F = mg with g = GM/rE. Inserting into F = ma = mg mass
cancels out using the now necessary identification “inertial mass is gravita-
tional mass.” This yields a = g, which does not involve forces and is Hegel’s
starting point, a uniformly accelerated motion. The approximation of r by
the radius of Earth is only possible if one of the masses, that of the central
body, is much larger than the other; this is Hegel’s external center. The
Kepler problem, that is, an inverse square law in three dimensions, has conic
sections as solutions. Which conic section is realized depends on the initial
conditions, initial position, and initial velocity; an unsatisfactory state of
affairs for Hegel. The derivation of the equations of motion further uses a
parallelogram of forces to decompose the acceleration into tangent (free) and
normal (fall) directions. Hegel is not against this computation as a tool but
strongly objects to any metaphysical relevance of this construction. There is
only one, albeit asymmetric, relationship between the two bodies realized in
gravitational motion representing true freedom.
One modern approach involves the utilization of conserved quantities.
In addition to the conservation of energy and total momentum, angular
momentum is also preserved, resulting in planarity. There is a second
conserved quantity the Runge–Lenz vector, which can be shown to be
equivalent to Kepler’s third law. These conserved quantities, or integrals of
motion, in lieu of differential equations of motion could be understood as
a modern version of the totality of the concepts that Hegel is looking for.
The systematic construct of matter and movement as the synthesis of time
and space is reflected today in particle–wave duality, which equates point
particles with oscillations, as well as in the fluctuating vacuum in which
energy oscillations are possible and pairs of virtual particles are created
spontaneously as emergent matter. The organizing principle of centers and
their relations is present in everything from atoms to galaxies whose centers
are now taken to be black holes. Fixing dimensions of space-time is a major
part of string theory, but the core space-time is still fixed to be that of
Hegel ridicules this point of view: “In this fashion boys hit a ball with a club, . . . We do not think it
proper to apply such boyishness to free motion” (Enc. §A, ).
Hegel’s Mechanics as a System of Steps
three-space and time. That mass is a formative constituent of the shape of
this space-time is what is the basis of general relativity. All these examples
are much closer to Hegel’s view than to a strict Newtonian one.
.. The Transition to a System of Four: The Sun-Moon-Earth
and Sun-Comets-Earth-Moon Systems
Although the dimensional analysis yields a raison d’être for Kepler’s laws,
there are several issues that are not totally brought out in the concept of a
two-body central potential system from the point of view of logic and
nature. The center of the central body is only ideal, the planets are not
fully subject-objects yet (logically there should be a system of three –
general, particular, and individual), and finally the particular should be
doubled in nature. There is a progression of three constellations that Hegel
offers to resolve the situation which culminates in the quaternity sun,
comets-moon, planet, specifically Earth, which furnishes the model for all
further processes: “The solar, planetary, lunar and cometary nature will be
traced through all following steps of nature; the gaining of depth of nature
is only a continuing reshaping of these four.” The exact arguments are
worthy of a separate chapter, but we will give the broad strokes. To make
its center real to itself, the central body should have some movement about
it. But as it is in the perfect general position this movement can only be a
stationary movement (ruhende Bewegung). This is possible as a rotation
about an axis, which the sun does exhibit. This has a second ramification
in that the planets can also possess this type of rotation, thereby making
their centers real. This is a first step into the individuality of the planets,
speaking in terms of Hegel’s logic. The planets have both a center in
themselves, through rotation, and a center outside of themselves by
orbiting the central body, thus exhibiting a being-for-themselves and a
being-other, but not yet a being-for-another, which at this stage only the
central body evinces. The full subject-object is only achieved in a tripartite
system, when the moon is added, as witnessing the difference between the
central body and the orbiting planet. As the moon now orbits earth, it
“Die solarische, planetarische, lunarische, kometarische Natur werden wir durch alle folgenden
Stufen der Natur verfolgen; die Vertiefung der Natur ist nur die fortschreitende Umbildung
dieser Vier.”
This type of stationary movement can already be found in Plato Nomoi (c) “that those which
have the quality of being at rest at the center move in one location, as when the circumference of
circles that are said to stand still revolves?”
On the central concept of being-other, see Ferrini .
.
S E
Figure . The sun-earth system with independent rotation axes
becomes a center outside of the moon and hence a being-for-others.
Logically, the situation is now squared with the sun as the general, the
moon as the particular, and earth as the individual. In nature, however,
there should be a doubled particular. This role is taken over by the comets,
which even Hegel finds in need of explanation (“It may seem odd to try fit
the comets into this; but what is present, must necessarily be contained in
the concept” [Enc. §A, ]). He offers two interlinked ways of
explanation. The first is through the two aspects of the rotational move-
ment of the sun being stationary and excessive (ausschweifend), which are
represented by the moon and comet, respectively. The excessiveness is a
manifestation of the agitation (Unruhe) underlying the time-space oscilla-
tion and as a vortex (Wirbel) the being-ready-for-action (Auf-dem-Sprunge-
Stehen, Figure .). In terms of centers, we now have the sun with a center
for itself and a center for others; the comet, which has a center in the
central body; and the moon, which has a center in the earth, which is not
central but now has a center in another and is a center for another
(Figure .). This is a powerful relational system which is used throughout
the text. Two notable explanations on this basis of four already provided in
this section are the description of the functionaries of a state (Enc. §A)
and the processes of the body (Enc. §A). In terms of the realization of
space-time, this system is also more complete as the different types of
movements are now embodied and with them the dimensions of time and
space, with the comet standing for the future and the moon for the past
(Enc. §A). The next step, which is outside the realm of the
“Mechanics,” is to add an internal dynamic, which is provided in
“Physics” by using the system of four to model transitions.
. Conclusion
The Hegelian treatment of mechanics is a thought-provoking excursion
into metaphysical questions which still have importance today. Although
Hegel’s Mechanics as a System of Steps
C
S E
Figure . The full sun-comet-earth-moon system with its centers
critics may see Hegel’s treatment of mechanics as an idiosyncratic way of
presenting celestial mechanics solely designed to bring it in line with his
dialectic, and in this way rather obscuring than illuminating science, it calls
out the desirability of foundations beyond elegance in formalism and
computational applicability and offers fascinating examples of deeper
concepts. Intra-systematic, the complex constructs can be used to illumin-
ate parts of Hegel’s Logic by providing examples, but for his Science of
Nature the space-time-movement-matter embodiment of the quaternity in
terms of the solar system is foundational and serves as a Rosetta stone, with
all ensuing processes and the respective elements being built on it.
Logic and Physics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
Stephen Houlgate
. Philosophy, Science, and Experience
Hegel’s philosophy of nature has frequently been subjected to critique
during the last two centuries. Karl Popper described Hegel’s remarks on
sound as “gibberish” (Popper , :), and Matthias Schleiden dis-
missed his “strange formulas” as “completely unfruitful for the natural
sciences” (Schleiden , , ). Schleiden’s critique suggests that the
value of a philosophy of nature consists in furthering science. This,
however, is not Hegel’s aim, but he provides a distinctively philosophical
account of nature. He is critical of what he regards as the unwarranted
“metaphysical” assumptions underlying some scientific theories, and in
that sense, he seeks to reform science (see, e.g., Enc. §R []). Yet his
principal aim is to show that nature is governed, not just by scientific laws,
but also by reason as philosophy conceives it (see GW , : ).
Nature, however, is the object of our everyday (and scientific)
experience. Hegel must show, therefore, that there is reason in what
experience reveals nature to be. Indeed, he insists, “accord with actuality
and experience is [. . .] an outward touchstone, at least, for the truth of a
philosophy” (Enc. §). Schleiden quotes this passage in his book on
Schelling and Hegel but accuses the latter of “the crudest empirical
ignorance” (Schleiden , ). This accusation, however, is unjustified:
For Hegel had a large collection of scientific texts in his private library (see
Neuser a), and he makes copious references to the work of scientists,
such as Galileo, Kepler, Herschel, and Davy, in his Encyclopaedia and
lectures on the philosophy of nature.
For Hegel, both science and philosophy must make sense of what is
observed. Yet he recognizes that empirical perceptions and observations are
informed by categories of thought (see Enc. § & R). Furthermore, he
Page numbers in square brackets refer to Enc. .
Logic and Physics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
notes, an empirical phenomenon is “capable of various categories”
(Enc. §R). It can be conceived through categories of the understanding
(as occurs, for the most part, in science) or those of speculative reason (as in
Hegel’s philosophy of nature). The understanding presupposes that there are
sharp distinctions between categories such as “form” and “matter.” Reason,
on the other hand – as we learn in Hegel’s logic – discerns the dialectic in
such categories through which they turn into their opposites or prove in
other ways to be tied to their negations (see SL , and Enc. §§–).
Hegel conceives of nature through such dialectical categories of reason.
Note, however, that there is a subtle difference between the categories
examined in Hegel’s logic and those employed in his philosophy of nature:
The latter are derived from and incorporate the former but they are not
reducible to them. This difference between the two sets of categories has its
ground in the transition from logic to the philosophy of nature in
Hegel’s system.
. From Logic to Nature
Hegel’s logic examines categories that belong to both thought and being.
It is thus not only a logic but also an ontology: It constitutes “metaphysics
proper or pure speculative philosophy” (SL ; see Houlgate , : ).
Such logic begins with pure being and then demonstrates that being
proves to be quality, quantity, essence, and the “concept” (or universality
that particularizes and individuates itself ). The concept – which is a
further form of being, not an “act of the self-conscious understanding”
(SL ) – in turn proves to be mechanical and chemical objectivity, then
life, and finally the “absolute idea” (absolute Idee).
The absolute idea, Hegel writes, is “being, imperishable life, self-knowing
truth, and is all truth” (SL ). Since it is “all truth,” however, it is not one
form of being among others, like those preceding it in Hegel’s logic, but it
stretches back and incorporates all the latter within itself. More precisely,
Hegel explains, it is the whole series of those forms of being, or categories,
conceived as a single process of “self-determination” or self-determining
reason (SL –). The “true content” of the absolute Idea is thus “the
entire system” whose “development” is articulated in speculative logic
(Enc. §A). The absolute idea is, indeed, the final determination to
emerge in such logic; but this is because it is only at the end of its logical
development that being proves to be, not just a series of different categor-
ies, but the single systematic “self-movement” that Hegel calls the “abso-
lute idea” (SL ; see Houlgate , : –).
Note that being, as absolute idea, does not relate to anything other than
itself. It is not something in relation to something else but pure self-deter-
mination. In other words, it is “the whole that has withdrawn into itself
and is identical with itself” (SL ). This means in turn that it is simply
and immediately itself and so “has given itself again the form of
immediacy.” At the start of logic, being is “indeterminate immediacy” that
has “no difference within it, nor any outwardly” (SL ). At the end of
logic, Hegel contends, being, as absolute idea, proves once again to be
simple, unrelated immediacy. “Logic,” he writes, “has returned in the
absolute idea to this simple unity which is its beginning” – “the simple
relation to itself [Beziehung auf sich] which is being” (SL ).
Yet the absolute idea does not revert to the utterly indeterminate being
with which logic starts, since it incorporates all the categories that have
since emerged. It is, rather, internally differentiated being or “fulfilled
being” (erfülltes Sein) (SL ). It is “being as the concrete and just as
absolutely intensive totality.” In speculative logic, therefore, being develops
from its initial indeterminate immediacy, through the different categories
it makes necessary, to the point at which it proves to be a single process of
self-determination: the absolute idea. At that point being recovers the
simple, self-relating immediacy it first enjoyed but in a new “concrete”
form that is the logical result of the development it has undergone.
There is, however, an ambiguity in the absolute idea. This ambiguity is
not explicitly highlighted by Hegel, but it is evident in a change of
emphasis in the last two paragraphs of the Science of Logic. In the penulti-
mate paragraph Hegel states that logic has “returned” in the absolute idea
to the “simple unity” of being. He insists, however, that such being is
“fulfilled being” or being as an “intensive totality” (SL ), and by
emphasizing the words “fulfilled” and “intensive” he indicates that what
has emerged is not just pure being but the internally differentiated idea in
the form of immediacy or being.
In the final paragraph Hegel changes the emphasis and writes that the
idea collects itself into “the immediacy of being” (SL ). This does not
now mean that it reverts to pure being after all. It remains the concrete
idea as being, as Hegel makes clear by saying that it is in the form of being
“as totality.” Yet, through his change of emphasis, Hegel indicates that the
idea is not only the idea as being but also the idea as being. This change is
not arbitrary on Hegel’s part but renders explicit what is implicit in the
I have occasionally (as here) amended di Giovanni’s translation in SL.
Di Giovanni has “fulfilled concept.”
Logic and Physics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
absolute idea itself – the fact that the idea, through being wholly self-
relating, not only is the systematic unity of all the categories but also
constitutes simple immediacy, simple being. Furthermore, Hegel’s change
of emphasis has a significant consequence: For, he states, insofar as the idea
(or “totality”) is in the form of being, it is no longer just the idea but nature.
At the end of Hegel’s logic, therefore, being proves not only to be the
absolute idea – or rational self-determination – but in being the latter also to
be nature. Nature in turn is not something other than the absolute idea but
(in the words of the Encyclopaedia) is itself “the immediate idea,” “the idea as
being,” or “this idea that is” (diese seiende Idee) (Enc. § & A).
The transition in Hegel’s system from logic to nature has been severely
criticized by Schelling among others (see HMPhA –), but it is in fact
relatively simple: The idea takes the form of nature insofar as it is not just the
idea as such but the idea “in the immediacy of being.” Note, however, that
the transition from logic to nature does not take us into the sphere of
“being” for the first time in Hegel’s system. Hegel writes that the idea as idea
is “still logical” and is “enclosed [eingeschlossen] in pure thought” (SL ), so
one might think that the transition to nature takes us from within thought
out into being. Yet Hegel’s logic is the study of thought and being through-
out its course. In such logic, Hegel states, “being is known to be in itself
pure concept and the pure concept to be true being” (SL ), so the
transition from logic to nature is in fact the transition from being to being –
from being qua being and absolute idea to being qua nature. What then
distinguishes nature from being as it is conceived in speculative logic?
Being in logic takes many forms, culminating in the “idea,” but it does
not yet take the form of space, time, and matter (and is intelligible without
reference to the latter). So “becoming,” for example, is not becoming in
time but simply the vanishing of being and nothing into one another (SL
). All such forms of being are thus purely ontological, rather than spatio-
temporal, structures (and in that sense remain “enclosed” in pure thought).
Nature, by contrast, is being as “the externality of space and time” (and as
matter in space-time). What now needs to be explained, therefore, is why
the absolute idea, in “collecting itself” into “the immediacy of being,” also
takes the form of “externality” (SL –).
Note first that, pace John Burbidge, nature is not something external to,
and other than, the idea (see Enc. §; Burbidge , –; Houlgate
–, ). It is, rather, a further form of the idea, and the latter
consequently remains visible in nature; or, as Hegel puts it, “the simple
being” – nature – “to which the idea determines itself remains perfectly
transparent to it” (SL ). The idea, therefore, does not pass over, or
change, into nature, but it “freely releases itself” (sich selbst frei entläßt) as
nature, or discloses itself to be nature (SL ).
Such “release” of itself is “free” because the idea proves to be nature
through itself alone – through being what it is – and remains itself in the
process: In Hegel’s words, it remains thereby “absolutely certain of itself
and internally at rest.” Yet there is a further aspect to the idea’s freedom
that needs to be highlighted: For in freely releasing itself, the idea lets itself
go free, and this in turn means that it lets itself be free in its immediacy. It is
this aspect of the idea that explains why it takes the form of “externality” or
nature. As Hegel writes, “on account of this freedom, the form of its [the
idea’s] determinateness is just as absolutely free: the externality of space and
time absolutely existing for itself without subjectivity” (SL ).
More precisely, the idea as being takes the form of externality because it
is in two respects free of the form of the idea as such. The idea qua idea
comprises the “system of the logical” conceived as the self-determining of
being (Enc. §§–). It is thus () the logical interconnectedness of all
the categories in logic but () conceived as a “whole” that is “identical with
itself” or a “simple unity” (SL , ). As this unity the idea is the
“simple relation to itself which is being”; yet initially – before (logically) it
proves to be nature – it retains its character as idea and so is the idea as
being. It is thus what Hegel calls “fulfilled being” (SL ). In “collecting”
itself into the “immediacy of being,” however, the idea releases itself as
nature – the idea as being – and in so doing releases itself from itself as idea.
It thus releases itself () from being the logical interconnectedness of the
categories and () from being an explicit unity. Nature remains a further
form of the idea and so remains a “totality” (SL ) encompassing
different moments; yet such moments are no longer logically intercon-
nected and so must be external to one another. Furthermore, they no
longer constitute an explicit unity and so must lack the moment of
“subjectivity,” or self-determining unity, that characterizes the idea as
such. The idea as nature must, therefore, be “externality” existing for itself
“without subjectivity” – an externality that, in the philosophy of nature,
Hegel identifies with space (SL ). (Such externality, by the way, does
not lack continuity, since it is initially understood as “the abstract
universality” of its “self-externality” [Enc. §], but it lacks the explicit
systematic unity of the idea.)
The externality of nature is thus made necessary by the fact that the idea
“freely releases itself” as nature and thereby releases itself, or sets itself free,
from itself as idea. The idea in the form of nature is, therefore, the
“negative of itself” (Enc. §) – the idea that is no longer the “intensive”
Logic and Physics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
unity of logically interconnected moments. Yet nature remains the idea,
albeit the idea as being rather than the idea as being. Nature is thus not
something other than the idea. It is not a separate realm of being distinct
from the sphere of the “logical,” but what the idea itself proves to be.
Nature, in other words, is the idea itself in a form that is not that of the
idea as such, and so is “the idea in the form of otherness” (Enc. §; see
also §; in addition, see Bormann , ).
Since nature is not something other than, and separate from, the idea,
the idea does not precede nature in time – despite Hegel’s claim that logic is
the “exposition of God” as he is “before the creation of nature and a finite
spirit” (SL ). For Hegel, “nature is the first in point of time,” even
though “the absolute prius is the idea” (Enc. §A []). The idea
precedes nature logically, since logically being proves first to be the idea.
Yet the idea itself proves, through its own logic, not just to be the idea but
to be nature. The idea, therefore, is in truth nothing less than, and nothing
beyond, nature, and so is what Spinoza would call the “immanent cause”
of nature (see Spinoza , [Ethics IP]; Houlgate , ).
Since, however, nature is the “idea in the form of otherness” – of (self-)
externality – the idea is not present in nature as the idea, as pure self-
determining reason. Nature, therefore, does not exhibit the categories
comprising the idea in their purely ontological interconnectedness, but
such categories, which Hegel also calls “determinations of the concept,”
are, more or less, external to one another: They display an “indifferent
subsistence and isolation in regard to each other” (Enc. §). Accordingly,
they inform different, and in some cases quite separate, natural
phenomena. So, for example, in Hegel’s philosophical physics, the
category of “identity” is exhibited by light, whereas “diversity”
(Verschiedenheit) and “opposition” (Entgegensetzung) are exhibited (in a
qualified form) by moons and comets respectively (Enc. §§, ).
There are, indeed, logical connections between different categories in
nature, and the latter thus proves to be “a system of stages, one arising
necessarily from the other” (Enc. §). Yet this system comprises the
categories derived from the idea as externality, not just (as in logic) those
derived from pure being – categories that remain external to one another
even in their logical connection. The categories that govern nature, there-
fore, are not merely logical but natural-logical ones.
I have occasionally (as here) amended Miller’s translation in Enc. . (Miller has “difference” instead
of “diversity.”)
Since different phenomena in nature are also characterized by externality
and so are (more or less) external to one another, they are determined, in
Hegel’s view, not just by the natural-logical categories that inform them
but at the same time by other external factors: They are vulnerable to
“determination from without” (Enc. §). Such factors, as external to
things, are not derivable from the categories that otherwise make things
what they are. From the perspective of the philosophy of nature, therefore,
these external factors determining natural phenomena are contingent.
They are perhaps explicable by science but not by philosophical reason.
The latter is thus limited in what it can do: It can determine the categories
made necessary by the idea as externality, but “it is quite improper to
expect the concept to comprehend [. . .] contingent products of nature”
(Enc. §R).
Nature, therefore, is not governed by the idea alone and so is not purely
rational. For philosophy, it is marked by contingency (or the “unreason of
externality” [Enc. §R]), as well as by reason; and the reason that does in
part govern it is that which is inherent in externality (or self-externality),
not just pure being. “This,” Hegel writes, “is the impotence of nature, that
it preserves the determinations of the concept only abstractly” – as in some
respect external to one another – “and leaves their detailed specification to
external determination” (Enc. §).
The idea, therefore, does not exhaust the realm of nature it constitutes
but turns itself into a moment of the latter – the moment of rational
necessity that coexists with contingency (Enc. §§, ). Moreover, the
idea as such – as ontological – does not exhaust even the moment of reason
in nature, since the latter is the idea in the “form of externality” (Enc.
§R). The self-determining reason or “idea” that philosophy discerns in
nature incorporates that which emerges in logic, but it is not reducible to
the latter.
. The Task and Method of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
In speculative logic several categories (or ways of being) contain the
moment of externality, including “external reflection” and “mechanism,”
yet they remain ontological categories conceived by pure thought. Nature,
however, is the idea as utter (self-)externality, and as such not only has a
rational structure discernible by thought but also affects us externally
Except for the “idea of cognition,” which prefigures the realm of “spirit” (see SL –).
Logic and Physics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
through the senses. Nature, unlike being as the pure idea, is thus the object
of our empirical experience.
Accordingly, Hegel has a twofold task in his philosophy of nature: first
to derive the categories of nature logically – a priori – from the idea as
externality, and then to identify the empirical phenomena that match
those categories (see Enc. §R). Hegel provides empirical examples in
the Logic too, but these are not necessary in speculative logic. They are
required in the philosophy of nature, however, because nature is the object
of empirical experience as well as of pure thought.
Note, though, that empirical examples may play no role in the deriv-
ation of the categories of nature. The latter are derived logically through
simply rendering explicit what is implicit in the idea as externality. Hegel’s
philosophy of nature does not, therefore, “apply” categories from his logic
to nature, but it continues the project of that logic, starting, where the
latter ends, with the idea as nature. This is not to deny that discoveries by
science may have aided Hegel in working out the relation in which natural-
logical categories stand to one another (see Houlgate , –); but
in the philosophy of nature itself these categories (or ways of being) must
be shown to emerge logically and immanently from sheer externality (see
Enc. §).
Empirical phenomena, of course, cannot be derived logically in the
same way but must be discovered through observation and experience
(including scientific experiments). In his account of light Hegel maintains
that “the immanent philosophical element is here, as everywhere, the
inherent necessity of the conceptual determination [Begriffsbestimmung],
which must then be pointed out as some natural existence”; but, he insists,
the proof that the category of “identity-with-self” exists as light must be
“conducted empirically” (Enc. §R).
Empirical observation, however, cannot invalidate the logical derivation
of nature’s categories. This does not mean that this derivation, as Hegel
presents it, is beyond criticism; but if it requires revision, this must be,
ultimately, for logical, not empirical, reasons (and Hegel did in fact revise
his account of the logic of nature, just as he made changes to the Logic in
the second edition of the doctrine of being). If, therefore, a given natural
phenomenon turns out not to match a natural-logical category that is
properly derived, then it is not the category that must be changed but a
different phenomenon must be found.
See Burbidge , – (for changes in Hegel’s conception of chemism in successive editions of
his Encyclopaedia), and Houlgate , :n. See also Houlgate , .
Hegel is unequivocal about this. In his – lectures, for example,
he says that “self-externality [Außersichsein] is the first determination” in
our idea of nature, and if we look for “what corresponds to this thought in
our representation [Vorstellung]” we find space (GW , : ). He adds,
however, that even if space does not match that thought, “this harms
nothing in the thought” itself and “the latter remains for that reason true.”
Similarly, after setting out the “thought-determination of light,” Hegel
states that “light is the presence [Vorhandensein] of the thought,” but “if by
chance it were not this, the thought would still be correct and something
else would have to take the place of light” (GW , : –). In fact,
Hegel does not doubt that space and light are the appropriate phenomena
in these cases and that his philosophy of nature thus accords “with
actuality and experience” (Enc. §). It is clear, however, that, in his view,
the immanent derivation of the natural-logical categories comes first, and
these categories (or ways of being) are then matched with empirical
phenomena.
Note that, for Hegel, the task of philosophy is not to explain all aspects
of those phenomena; many aspects, perhaps most, are explained by science
(see, e.g., GW , : .–). Philosophy’s task is to show that natural-
logical categories are made necessary by nature and are embodied in various
natural phenomena. Its task, in other words, is to show that there is reason
in nature – reason that science cannot see (or can see only dimly). Such
reason, however, does not conflict with the causal processes discovered by
science but works through the latter, just as reason in history works
“cunningly” through the passions of people to bring about political states
that are (more or less) rational and free (see VHGesch ).
Hegel’s philosophy of nature thus complements science and does not
seek to supplant or discredit it. Indeed, it depends on science, as well as
on everyday experience, when matching empirical phenomena to natural-
logical categories. This is not to say that Hegel leaves science utterly to its
own devices; he is especially critical of the abstract metaphysics he takes to
underlie some science (Enc. §R []). Yet his aim in the philosophy
of nature is not to compete with, or contribute to, science as an empirical
discipline. His project is a philosophical one: to show that nature exhibits
an immanent rationality that only philosophy can articulate.
All translations from Hegel’s lectures are my own. Note that, for Hegel, our experience of space is
not purely empirical but presupposes the a priori form of spatial intuition (see Enc. §).
See Stone , –, –, – on “strong apriorism.”
For Hegel, whereas philosophy shows that certain natural phenomena conform to reason, empirical
science is concerned with their “modes of origin” (Entstehungsweisen) (see Enc. §R []).
Logic and Physics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
Since Hegel’s philosophy of nature combines logical development with
empirical observation, students of that philosophy are confronted with several
different tasks. First, we must determine what is logically necessary in it, that
is, what must follow from the idea as sheer (self-)externality. In so doing, we
must also establish whether Hegel makes claims that appear to be based on
natural-logical categories but are not in fact justified by the latter. Second, we
have to distinguish these categories from the empirical phenomena Hegel
connects with them. This is not always easy, since sometimes – especially in
his lectures – Hegel conflates the two and talks simply of “light” or “air”
when he has their categories principally in view. This conflation can in turn
lead him to make statements that look absurd, such as that air is “passive
light” (GW , : ), even though the phenomena concerned merely share
the same “thought-determination” and are not physically the same (GW ,
: ). Third, we need to keep in mind that Hegel is interested primarily in
the logical, not empirical or physical, connections between phenomena. So,
for example, he claims that magnetism leads logically, through its corres-
ponding category, to the crystal (and its category), not that the former causes
the latter physically (see Enc. §§–).
Fourth, we need to distinguish any empirical errors on Hegel’s part –
due to his misjudgment or reliance on the science of his day – from
conclusions that follow from the logic of nature itself. Such errors can be
corrected without detriment to that logic but only if they are clearly
identified as empirical, rather than logical, errors. Fifth, we need to deter-
mine whether ideas in Hegel’s philosophy of nature that appear to conflict
with subsequent developments in science actually do so. In Section . we
consider the apparent conflict between Hegel’s conception of light and that
of quantum physics; but we must first look more closely at Hegel’s own
philosophical physics, the second part of his philosophy of nature.
. Hegel’s Philosophical Physics: From Light to the
Elementary Process
The first part of that philosophy – mechanics – begins with “the abstract
universality of nature’s self-externality,” which Hegel identifies with space
(Enc. §). Through the moments of negation and negativity it contains,
space (or self-externality) then makes time, place, motion, and matter
necessary (Enc. §§–). Matter, however, is initially no more than
enduring, self-identical space (or “place”) that moves (see Winfield ,
–; Houlgate , ). It separates itself from, or “repels,” other
matter (and in that respect is self-external); but it also “attracts,” and is
attracted by, other matter (since it is, essentially, continuous in its self-
externality), and so gravitates toward the latter. For Hegel, therefore,
gravity (Schwere) is not a force within bodies but simply their inherent
motion toward one another. More specifically, it is the movement of a
body toward a “center” that lies outside it (Enc. §).
Note that matter as mechanical lacks physical characteristics or qualities,
such as density and cohesion, and is distinguished from other matter by its
quantity. Each body is “particularized into different quanta or masses”
which give it, insofar as it gravitates toward other bodies, a distinctive
weight (Enc. §§, ). Hegel argues, however, that gravitation itself
makes it necessary logically that matter have physical qualities. Gravitation
does so by first giving rise to a “system of several bodies” that contains its
“center” within itself (Enc. §§–).
In this system – which Hegel identifies with the solar system – the
bodies remain external to one another; but they form a “totality” organized
around a central body, which falls within, rather than outside, the self-
external matter constituting the system. As Hegel puts it, therefore, in this
system “matter is nothing outside of this its being-outside-one-another
[Außereinanderseyn]” (Enc. §, emphasis added). Moreover, the system
is not just a collection of massive bodies but it has a differentiated form that
is determined by the “concept.” It comprises a “universal center” – the
sun – that is surrounded by “centerless singularity” in the form of comets
and moons, the latter of which orbit particular bodies – the planets – that
are “centers for themselves” but find their “essential unity” in the “univer-
sal center” (Enc. §). In the solar system, therefore, form – specifically
conceptual form – is “materialized” and matter in turn acquires “deter-
minateness of form” (Enc. §). Furthermore, Hegel argues, since matter
has now “resolved itself into form,” it is no longer simply “heavy” (schwer)
and divided into masses that are quantitatively distinct. It is also, at least
implicitly, “qualified matter”; and when matter is conceived explicitly as
having a distinctive form or quality, we enter the sphere of physics.
Two things should be noted about this transition from mechanics to
physics. First, it is a logical (or natural-logical) transition, not a strictly
natural one. Stars did indeed give birth to the naturally occurring chemical
elements (see Cohen , ), but this is not what Hegel has in mind
here. His claim is a logical one: that form is “materialized” in the solar
system and the materialization of form becomes fully explicit in physical
matter.
On the “concept” as uniting the universal, particular, and singular (or individual), see SL –.
Logic and Physics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
Second, the physical qualities of material bodies do not supplant their
mechanical properties but constitute a dimension of bodies that move and
have mass. More specifically, “qualified matter” in its immediacy takes the
form of “the now physically determined celestial bodies” of the solar
system, and different physical qualities thereby fall, initially, “outside one
another in an independent way” (Enc. §, emphasis added).
As explicitly qualified, however, matter no longer has its center outside
itself in another body but is “reflected” back into itself and has a determin-
ate form within itself. The categories that inform such matter, therefore,
are the “determinations of reflection” derived in the doctrine of essence in
the Logic, namely, identity, diversity, and opposition (see GW , :
.–, and SL ff.; see also Wandschneider , ). Yet
since these categories initially inform bodies that are “independent” of one
another – despite belonging to one system – they are themselves independ-
ent in a more explicit way than is the case in the Logic.
Matter in its first qualified state is thus “pure identity-with-self” as the
“unity of reflection-into-self ” (Enc. §). As such, it is qualitatively
different from heavy matter and so has no mass: it is “absolutely weightless”
(Enc. §). Hegel identifies such “material ideality,” or “immaterial
matter” (Enc. §A []), with light and notes that it is emitted by the
sun and other stars – bodies that themselves have mass. He states, however,
that “the physical conditions of the solar light do not concern us inasmuch
as they are not determinations of the concept, but only matters of empir-
ical fact” (Enc. §A []).
Since “weightless” light belongs to nature, it is still matter characterized
by self-externality. It thus moves across space, as all matter does, with a
certain velocity. Yet, as pure self-identity, light is “infinite self-externality”
(Enc. §) and so moves with “absolute velocity” (Enc. §A []). This
in turn is taken by Dieter Wandschneider to mean that, implicitly, Hegel
agrees with Einstein that light moves at the same constant speed regardless
of the frame of reference (Wandschneider , ).
“Dark” matter – heavy matter as itself qualitative – is, Hegel maintains,
“the opposition [Gegensatz] to light’s abstractly identical ideality” (Enc.
§). Indeed, since such matter is logically separate from light, it is
“opposition in its own self” and so “falls apart into a duality.” It is charac-
terized, therefore, by the two forms of difference that, in the doctrine of
essence, are not just moments of identity (see SL –). Qualified heavy
matter thus first takes the form of “corporeal diversity [Verschiedenheit]” or
On Hegel’s concept of light, see especially Falkenburg , –.
“material being-for-self” – material separateness that Hegel calls “rigidity.”
Second, it takes the form of “opposition” (Entgegensetzung) as such, which,
since it stands alone “for itself,” is opposed even to itself and so under-
mines itself and dissolves into “neutrality” (in a manner echoing the
collapse of opposition in the Logic into contradiction and then the “null”)
(see SL ). For reasons that need not detain us here, Hegel associates
rigidity with “lunar” bodies – moons that are tidally locked to their
planets – and “dissolution and neutrality” with comets that behave “aber-
rantly” by following “eccentric” orbits (Enc. § & R).
In the doctrine of essence, contradiction does not just collapse into the
“null” – the neither-nor – but it also leads to the positive unity of its
moments (i.e., the positive and the negative) (SL ). Similarly, dark
matter, as the moment of “opposition,” takes the form of a positive unity
of “real differences” – a unity that is an “individual totality” in its own
right. Such a “totality” Hegel finds in planets and specifically the Earth
(Enc. §). Qualified matter thus takes the form of all four types of body
that make up the solar system as conceived in mechanics.
In philosophical physics, however, these bodies are distinguished not just
by their mass but by their physical qualities (in Hegel’s distinctive sense).
Since the Earth, unlike the other celestial bodies, is the positive unity of
the moments in “opposition,” it must encompass the forms of qualified
matter so far derived, or rather matter that is informed by their underlying
categories. This includes matter as “undifferentiated simplicity” (initially
exemplified by light) to which opposition is itself opposed.
As “subordinate moments” of the Earth, however, the different forms of
qualified matter cannot constitute separate celestial bodies but must be
what Hegel calls the physical “elements” (Enc. §§–). These elements,
he contends, are – or are embodied in – air, fire, water, and “earthiness”
(Erdigkeit) (Enc. §§–).
Since these elements are moments of the earth and so lack the independ-
ence of celestial bodies, the natural-logical categories informing the latter
must appear in the earth in a negated, and indeed explicitly negative, form.
Accordingly, Hegel maintains, whereas light is “positive identity-with-
self,” air is “negative universality” and thus, though transparent to light,
the “insidious and consuming power over what is individual and organic”
(Enc. §). In other words, through its underlying category air is a
corrosive element (even if this is explained chemically by the presence of
oxygen and moisture) (see GW , : .–).
Hegel understands asteroids to be “smaller planets” (Enc. §A []).
Logic and Physics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
The elements are then further negated in the “elementary” (or “meteoro-
logical”) process, in which, Hegel maintains, they change dialectically into
one another – in this case, both logically and naturally (Enc. §). This
process principally involves water and air and is exemplified by atmos-
pheric condensation (producing clouds and rain) and evaporation, in
which, for Hegel, water changes its state from liquid to gaseous and is
not just thinly distributed as liquid water throughout the air (see GW ,
: –; : –). Yet Hegel also sees such dialectical change in the
igniting of tinder through air compression in a fire piston – even though
this is not a “meteorological” process – and he claims that this empirical
phenomenon finds its “deduction” in the logical transition from air as the
“negative” to fire as “self-relating negativity” (GW , : ; see also :
; : –). Such change is evident too in volcanoes, in which –
though again not meteorological processes – the earth produces fire from
within itself (Enc. §R).
. Hegel’s Philosophical Physics: From Specific Gravity
to Chemistry
The earth, for Hegel, is the unity of its constituent “elements.” In the
processes just described, however, the elements negate themselves into one
another, and the earth itself proves to be the “negative unity” of the latter
(Enc. §). When the idea of matter as such a unity is made explicit,
matter comes to exhibit new physical qualities.
As an explicit “negative unity,” Hegel contends, matter has a unified,
but internally differentiated, form – an “immanent form” (Enc. §).
This form (and the moment of negation it contains) makes matter more
than merely heavy, and indeed “determines matter in opposition to its
gravity.” More specifically, it determines matter to occupy a space that is
not just a function of the matter’s weight or mass. Matter, therefore, now
consists in the difference and relation between “the spatial determinateness
as such and the matter belonging to it” – between its volume and mass
(Enc. §). The physical quality exhibited by matter is thus density. Since,
however, bodies with density are characterized logically by difference and
relation, each must also relate to another body; so, their defining quality is
in fact specific gravity, which is the density of a body in relation to that of a
reference substance (such as water) (Enc. §§–).
For Hegel’s account of specific gravity in the Logic, see SL –. See also Houlgate ,
:–.
Hegel then argues that the “immanent form” of matter must also consist
in the “spatial juxtaposition [Nebeneinanderseyn] of the material parts” that
are “distinct from that determined by gravity.” In other words, it must
consist in the specific cohesion of those parts – cohesion that shows itself as
“a peculiar mode of resistance” to “other masses” (Enc. §). Such
cohesion in turn takes the form of brittleness, ductility and malleability,
and elasticity (Enc. §§–).
Elasticity is a body’s reassertion of itself against the external “negation”
it suffers from another body, and it can thus be understood as the negation
of that negation. In such “double negating” (Enc. §) the body’s
material parts are compressed and then rebound, and in the process,
Hegel contends, they cease simply to lie outside one another and become
“ideal” moments of the body’s changing density. “The ideal” (das Ideelle),
for Hegel, does not lack being but lacks independence and so is simply a
moment of a process or unity (SL ; see also Houlgate , :–).
In gravitational motion heavy matter “sought” such “ideality” – sought to
be a unity of moments – but in elasticity the latter now comes into explicit
“existence” in such matter. Ideality becomes further explicit in the emission
of sound (Enc. §§–).
A body that resounds oscillates internally. In the process, however, its
“ideality,” or “inward form,” does not remain submerged in the body, but
becomes “free,” and acquires “independent existence,” in the sound that the
body emits (Enc. §§–). Since sound detaches itself from its material
source, Hegel calls it the “ideal ideality” of a body. The further explicit
“idealization” of the material body – or the latter’s “real ideality” – then
takes the form of heat (Enc. §). Hegel thus understands the latter to be
simply the internal “activity,” or motion, of the body that causes it to
expand and leads eventually to its “dissolution” (through melting, evapor-
ating, or igniting) (Enc. §§, –), and he rejects the contemporary
idea that heat is produced by an independent “heat-matter” (or “caloric”)
(Enc. §§R, R; see also Posch , –; Hobson , , ).
In Hegel’s mechanics, matter is essentially “self-external” and seeks
unity with other matter in gravitational movement (see Enc. §§,
). The logical development we have traced in Hegel’s physics then
involves the progressive “idealization” of such heavy matter – the progres-
sive negation of its mutually external parts into moments of a unity or
“totality” that is the (increasingly dynamic) form of a body. When
such form is rendered further explicit, it becomes “selfhood” as “infinite
Emphasis added to “juxtaposition.”
Logic and Physics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
self-relating form,” and the body it informs is conceived as a “free
individuality” – one that, through its form, “freely determines” its own
internal structure and relation to other bodies and does not simply respond
to external effects by rebounding, emitting sound or changing its tempera-
ture (Enc. §).
Free, or “total,” individuality appears first as simple shape (Gestalt) – the
“immanent and developed form” that determines, not only a body’s “inner
connectedness,” but also its “external limitation in space” (Enc. §).
Such form is initially either “punctiform” or “spherical” (as, for example, in
water droplets), and so, Hegel states, is in fact “shape as an inner shapeless-
ness” (Enc. §). It then differentiates itself into opposed “extremes,”
which, however, “as moments, lack a subsistence [Bestehen] of their own”
and are “held only in their relation” (Enc. §). Form, as this “identity of
subsisting differences,” determines in turn the spatial relation of a body to
another body. More specifically, “the activity of the form” is “to posit the
identical as different and the different as identical.” Such form is thus
exemplified, Hegel claims, by magnetism, in which identical poles in
different bodies repel, and opposing poles attract, one another (Enc.
§§–).
Form then determines a body to be a unity of differences “through and
through,” and so to have a fully “developed form” or shape proper – form
that is found, for example, in the crystal (Enc. §). At this point, form no
longer just determines “relationships of place” between bodies (as does
magnetism) (Enc. §) but it gives a body a distinctive quality or “physical
specification” that manifests itself in the body’s relation to light and the
physical elements (Enc. §). Hegel thus examines the way a shaped body
refracts light and displays colors, as well as its relation to air (which gives it
a smell) and to water (which gives it a taste) (Enc. §§–).
Bodies as “shaped wholes,” or “physical individualities,” are then con-
sidered in relation to one another (Enc. §). According to Hegel, as
“wholes,” bodies are “independent” of one another. Yet they (or at least
many of them) must also stand in a relation of “physical tension,” in which
they are connected as opposed – as positive and negative. Since they remain
separate bodies, however, they do not enter such a relation with all their
“concrete determinateness,” but only their surfaces come into contact
mechanically (through, for example, rubbing against one another)
(Enc. § & R). Moreover, each relates to the other, as Hegel puts it,
only as “a reality of the abstract self, as light, and as light pregnant with
On magnetism and the “concept,” see GW , : –.
opposition.” When the tension between them is discharged, the result is
thus “an undifferentiated light” – a flash – which “immediately vanishes”
(together with the “mechanical effect of shock”) (Enc. §). Such a
relation Hegel calls an “electrical relation,” and he finds it exemplified in
static electricity (Enc. §).
Hegel concludes his physics by arguing that “individuality in its
developed totality” requires bodies to relate to one another, not just
through surface contact but as “individual totalities, as whole particular
bodies” (Enc. §). In such “chemical” relations, he maintains, bodies
that are “simply opposed” to one another, such as acids and alkalis,
combine to form neutral salts, but compounds are also separated into their
components (Enc. §§, ). In this process, all such bodies prove to be,
not just the “immediate presuppositions” of chemical reactions, but prod-
ucts of the latter – moments whose existence is dependent upon, and
relative to, the processes that give rise to them. “What is thus posited in
general in the chemical process,” Hegel writes, “is the relativity of the
immediate substances and properties” (Enc. §).
Hegel points out, however, that the end of one chemical process does
not directly initiate a different one: “[W]hat is dissociated,” for example,
“falls apart into mutually indifferent products” that do not immediately
react with one another again (Enc. §). Chemical processes that do give
rise to, and so reproduce, one another, thus cease being purely chemical.
They form a single “infinite process that kindles and sustains itself” – the
process of life – and we pass from the sphere of physics into that of
“organic physics” (Enc. §§–).
. The Problem of Light
My account of Hegel’s physics is highly abridged, but it shows that the
latter discloses what is made necessary in one sphere of nature by reason –
specifically, the physical phenomena, or rather corresponding categories,
that reason requires there to be. This is not to deny that, for Hegel, such
phenomena have natural conditions that science must discover. Yet he
argues that the category (or way of being) informing one phenomenon
renders explicit what is implicit in another category and in that sense each
phenomenon is made necessary logically by its predecessor.
Some of Hegel’s arguments ground criticisms of early nineteenth-
century science (such as his rejection of “heat-matter”). Yet, in his view,
philosophical physics is not inherently at odds with science (and certainly
does not ignore the latter’s empirical findings). What are we to say,
Logic and Physics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
however, if Hegel’s physics appears to be at odds with more recent science?
This is the problem with his account of light (see Falkenburg ,
–).
Hegel connects light with the category of “pure identity-with-self” (Enc.
§) and concludes that it is thus not “divisible into masses,” as heavy
matter is – a position that accords with the modern view that photons have
no mass (Enc. §R; Cox and Forshaw , , ). Yet he goes
further and insists that light is “without difference in itself” (GW , : )
and so contains no distinct “corpuscles” or “waves” at all (Enc. §R).
In this respect, Hegel’s conception of light appears quite at odds with that of
modern physics, for which light exhibits both “particle behavior” and “wave
behavior” (Calle , ). Closer inspection reveals, however, that the
two conceptions of light are not in fact incompatible.
Note first that Hegel does not seek to provide an exhaustive account of
light but aims only to show that light, as an observable phenomenon,
exemplifies the category of identity in the ways indicated in Section ..
Further aspects of light, he concedes, may be brought out by “the empirical
sciences” (GW , : .–). Moreover, he is aware of Oersted’s
discovery (in ) that a magnetic effect is associated with an electric
current (Enc. §A []; see Gribbin , ). His conception of light
thus leaves room in principle for the idea that light is itself a form of
electromagnetic radiation, even though he does not entertain this
idea himself.
Second, Hegel does not actually banish all difference and negation from
light. He acknowledges that light can be limited in various ways by “dark”
matter and refracted by a prism into different colors (Enc. §§, R,
R [–]). Furthermore, he suggests on occasion that light implicitly
contains difference within itself. He says, for example, that light is the
“oneness [Eins-Seyn] of different determinations” (GW , : .)
and – in partial anticipation of James Clerk Maxwell – that light is
“determinateness, oscillation, but only in itself” (Enc. §A []; see
Calle , ).
What Hegel rejects, however, is the idea that observable light “consists,”
or is “composed,” of “discrete, simple rays of light, and of particles and
bundles of them” (Enc. §§R, R [–]). So, does modern physics
contradict Hegel in this regard?
Such physics is concerned, not just with the observable qualities of light,
but with light as electromagnetic radiation that is describable, in quantita-
tive terms, through mathematics (though its predictions must still match
the results of experiments) (see Falkenburg , ; Cox and Forshaw
, –, ). Yet physics clearly understands light to contain, or
“consist of,” electromagnetic waves of different frequencies, and it main-
tains that such waves propagate in distinct quanta or “photons” (see Calle
, –; Cox and Forshaw , –).
Light waves and photons, however, are not conceived by physics in
precisely the way that Hegel rejects. Hegel dismisses what he regards as the
crude scientific view that light consists of quite “discrete” and “simple” rays or
particles (Enc. §R). In quantum physics, however, photons are not just
discrete, simple units of light – “not the small isolated particles” that
“Newton had in mind” – but they behave (individually, not only collectively)
like waves (Hobson , ; see also Cox and Forshaw , ). Indeed,
they are quanta of light waves, and as such must be conceived as “spatially
extended objects” that are not, strictly speaking, particles at all but “sometimes
behave like small particles” (Hobson , , see also , , , ).
Furthermore, light waves, considered as waves, are not simple and
discrete either. For Maxwell, light is “the propagation of oscillating electric
and magnetic fields through space” in the form of “an electromagnetic
wave” (Calle , ). It is not, however, just one uniform wave but
consists of different waves of different frequencies (see Calle , ,
). Yet the latter as propagating electromagnetic fields – albeit ones that
propagate in quanta – overlap and thereby, through “superposition,” act
like a single field (see Hobson , , , , , ). Indeed,
according to Art Hobson, they are vibrations or “disturbances” of a single,
unified electromagnetic field that is “present everywhere” (Hobson ,
, –). This then renders intelligible how an “infinite possible
number of different electromagnetic waves” (Calle , ) can produce
observable light that Hegel understands as the “oneness of different deter-
minations” (GW , : ., emphasis added), and indeed as “identity-
with-self” (Enc. §).
Modern physics clearly goes beyond Hegel and, moreover, introduces
into light, conceived as electromagnetic radiation, components that Hegel
wants to banish from observable light: waves and “particles” (in the form
of photons). Yet physics does not conceive of those components in exactly
the manner criticized by Hegel, namely as utterly simple and discrete (and
as connected “externally”) (GW , : ). So while light, for quantum
physics, has a different, and more complex, structure from that attributed
See also Hobson , : “Maxwell showed his equations implied EM fields could spread through
empty space.”
For a similar point about quarks, see Posch , –.
Logic and Physics in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
to observable light by Hegel, the two do not diverge from one another
completely – at least in the respect I have considered – and it is possible to
see how different electromagnetic light waves (and their photons) can form,
not just an aggregate, but an observable unity.
Light can thus be understood, in the philosophy of nature, as an
observable phenomenon that exhibits logical “identity” without “discrete,
simple” constituents (and that is refracted into qualitatively different colors
by a medium, such as a prism). Yet it can be further understood, in
modern physics, as radiation consisting of vibrations, or “waves,” of the
electromagnetic field that propagate in “photons” – components that are
quantitatively distinct from one another but not wholly “discrete” and
“simple” in the sense that Hegel rejects. Philosophy and physics, in other
words, disclose two different, but not incompatible, aspects of light,
neither of which alone exhausts the character of the latter.
Hegel understood science to be primarily an empirical discipline.
He was thus critical of the scientific attempt to prove claims about physical
(rather than mechanical) aspects of nature “mathematically” (GW , :
), and also of the use in science of what he regarded as the abstractly
metaphysical concept of “force” (see Enc. §R []). He may well,
therefore, have been critical of quantum physics, insofar as it no longer
restricts its description of nature “to things we can directly sense” and
makes extensive use of the concept of “force” (Cox and Forshaw , ;
Hobson , , –). Despite his criticisms of science, however,
Hegel saw the latter as, in principle, complementing, not competing with,
the philosophy of nature. We who live after Hegel, and know that
mathematically based predictions in quantum physics have been con-
firmed by experiment, can thus understand such physics as comple-
menting his philosophy of nature, rather than competing with it. Yet
we should also understand Hegel’s philosophy of nature as complementing
quantum physics: For, although nature can be made intelligible in quanti-
tative terms at the microscopic level (perhaps through a single, unified
“theory of everything”) (Hobson , ), Hegel shows that at the
Hegel understands light to have “infinite extension [Ausdehnung],” that is, to spread itself across
space (Enc. §R []). Space, however, is “pure quantity” existing “externally” (Enc. §R), and
quantity in turn “contains the two moments of continuity and discreteness” (SL ). In this
respect, light, as Hegel conceives it, is possibly more similar in structure than I have indicated to the
“quantized field” that physics understands light to be (see Hobson , ).
See, for example, Hobson , : “[Dirac’s] predicted positron was discovered experimentally a
few years later.”
On the compatibility of Hegel’s philosophy of nature with special and general relativity and with
Darwin’s theory of evolution, see Houlgate , –, –. See also Wandschneider .
macroscopic level it comprises “stages” that are logically, and in that sense
qualitatively, distinct (Enc. §) – stages that should not be reduced to
one another or to a single, univocal way of being (or, indeed, to mere
effects of microscopic “quantum” activity). Whether quantum physicists
might also share this understanding, and see in Hegel’s philosophical
account of light a conception that complements their own, I cannot say.
Art Hobson argues that objects “lose their extended quantum field nature and behave classically”
through “decoherence” – the process of becoming determinate (either this or that) (Hobson ,
). This process alone, however, does not explain the different “stages” of nature derived in
Hegel’s philosophy of nature. On Hegel’s anti-reductivism, see Houlgate , – and Posch
, –.
Organics
Hegel’s Theory of Animal Embodiment
Christopher Yeomans
With animal embodiment, the project of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
comes full circle: The opening selection of text on space and time end with
twin terms – place and movement – and in animal embodiment we finally
get the natural phenomenon that does justice to both. The animal body is
the first physical body to have three properly distinguished dimensions,
and it is only in virtue of those qualitative, organic dimensions that we can
abstract away a three-dimensional Euclidean space in which such bodies
are taken to appear and to move. The claim to be redeemed here was
made in (Kaufmann and Yeomans , –):
Our most radical claim is anticipatory and cannot be fully established here,
but deserves stating because it sets out the goal of Hegel’s discussion of
space and time: the addition of free choice (.) to inclusion (.) allows
Hegel to recoup both linearity (.) and homogeneity () in local contexts via
motion and eventually the movement of animal bodies. The addition of
time then gives you the dimensionality of space in the intuitive sense, but
only in the local contexts and perceiving animals in which intuition is at home.
To briefly recap the argument made in that earlier paper, Hegel argues that
our intuitive conceptions of what constitutes a dimension – a linear
extension or just a measurable extent – are incapable of providing concep-
tual resources for individuating and thus counting dimensions. In the
absence of that ability, we are at a loss to say what the three-dimensionality
of space amounts to, and thus at a loss to characterize perhaps the single
most basic aspect of natural space. Through the development of geomet-
rical figures (point-line-plane-enclosing surface), each step of which adds
an additional dimension, Hegel points to a conception of dimensionality
Here and throughout the chapter, “Euclidian” is used in the modern mathematical sense, in which
the primary contrast is “affine” space rather than “non-Euclidian” space. Thus, the essential features
of Euclidian space in this modern usage are its measurability and orientability, rather than the
obtaining of the parallel postulate.
that would now be called an inclusion dimension (such as the Krull
dimension in contemporary mathematics). In such a dimension, we count
by the steps in a chain of inclusion, so that, for example, a line is one-
dimensional because it is one step beyond the point, which it includes.
This inclusion sense of a dimension, however, is algebraic or discrete, and
thus loses the linearity and homogeneity that attach to the intuitive senses
of a dimension that characterize our experience of space. And, indeed, on
Hegel’s view we never recapture that experience as a global characterization
of space; we never have the intuition of space as a continuous and
unbounded extended whole as Kant thought. We do, however, recapture
that experience as a local characterization of the context of movement
through the combination of space with time. In particular, with time we
get what we call a freedom dimension: a degree of freedom in a system, that
is, a parameter that has a free choice. The more such parameters a system
has, the more dimensions it has. Hegel makes the peculiar claim that time
has three dimensions; we interpret this to mean that time is three-
dimensional because it is linear, ordered, and has a special point (i.e.,
now). The linearity of time is obviously a linear dimension, but the last two
are freedom dimensions – different orderings or special points can be
picked – and those two are connected to the linear dimension via a string
of inclusions, so the total number of dimensions of time is counted in the
same way as are the dimensions of space.
When it comes to the freedom of picking an ordering and a special
point via movement, the central text is Hegel’s own first introduction of
the animal (das Tier):
The animal has contingent self-movement because its subjectivity is a free
time in the way that light is ideality wrested away from gravity, and which,
as withdrawn from real externality, determines its place from itself and
according to its own whim. (Enc. §)
(Das Tier hat zufällige Selbstbewegung, weil seine Subjectivität, wie das
Licht, die der Schwere entrissene Idealität, eine freie Zeit ist, die, als der reellen
Äußerlichkeit entnommen, sich nach innerem Zufall aus sich selbst zum Orte
bestimmt.)
The basic task of this chapter is thus to understand how the free time of
the animal makes its contingent self-movement in three dimensions pos-
sible and makes it possible in the sense of also constituting the three
dimensions “within which” such movement takes place. The basic tension is
that we need both fixed axes of variation to constitute the dimensions but
free determination along those axes. How to get this tension right is a
Hegel’s Theory of Animal Embodiment
problem analogous to the problem Hegel sets himself in the Logic which he
says is like the task of repairing a fishing net – one wants to get rid of the
tangles that prevent it from moving freely but keep the knots that give it
structure (WL .).
The first key notion is Hegel’s claim that the organic individual exists as
subjectivity insofar as it is idealized into members (Gliedern) (Enc. §).
That is, something about the free time of subjectivity requires the articu-
lation of the body – this will give us our connection between the two sides
of the tension, and the different parts of the body will orient the animal
both toward itself and toward its environment in three dimensions.
A comparison with more basic mechanics might be helpful: In the
Addition (Zusatz) appended to Enc. §, Hegel points out that gravity
(Schwere) gives you the shape of a ball (Kugel). The ball is the shape that
results when attraction and repulsion compete in a nondimensional way
(i.e., equally in all dimensions). In contrast, animal bodies are extended
nonhomogeneously, and whatever attraction and repulsion are involved
will be different along different dimensions. More radically put, the
different lines along which animal bodies are extended constitute qualita-
tively different dimensions. The result is an enclosing surface that is not
uniform and nonoriented like a ball but rather an enclosing surface that is
nonuniform and oriented left–right, up–down, and forward–backward.
But it will only be the qualitative differences between the members that
generates the nonuniform surface, and which thus finally makes dimen-
sions discriminable as length, width, and height. It is these discriminable
dimensions that form the concrete basis from which the x, y, and z axes are
abstracted in geometry.
Hegel divides his discussion of the animal into discussions of its forma-
tion, assimilation, and species process, and I adopt that categorization as
the structure of this chapter. Because the characterization I am offering is
highly theoretical and in a vocabulary that is not Hegel’s own, I stick close
to the text and its order to enable comprehension of specific passages.
In each section, I lay out the different forms of spatial and temporal
dimensionality that each aspect of the animal’s body enables. As a first
pass, we can say that form (Gestalt) gives us the special point for time
and the step from the plane to an enclosing surface for space; assimilation
gives us the order of time and the step from line to plane for space; and the
species process (Gattusprozeß) gives us the linearity of time and the step
from point to line for space. These combinations display the animal body
as the spatio-temporal object par excellence, and thus the object by
reference to which all spatiality and temporality is understood. If we think
of understanding a phenomenon by reference to its fullest expression as a
characteristically rationalist move (as opposed to the characteristically
empiricist move of understand a phenomenon by reference to its simplest
expression), then we can call this Hegel’s rationalism about space and time
(see Enc. §A).
. Form
In some ways, the point in this section is quite simple. Before we can talk
about what an animal body does to inorganic bodies or with other animal
bodies, we need to construct the animal body itself. What kind of a place is
it, and what sort of time does it have? Hegel constructs the animal body
by constructing its form (Gestalt), which means considering the animal
“as the individual idea, which in its processes refers only to itself and
merges with itself within itself [als die individuelle Idee, die in ihrem Prozesse
sich nur auf sich selbst bezieht und innerhalb ihrer selbst sich mit sich
zusammenschließt]” (Enc. §). This we will understand in terms of the
spatial inclusion dimension of the step from the plane to the enclosing
surface, and in terms of the temporal freedom dimension of a special point
. We will go on to flesh out this point in some detail, but it is worth
lingering just on this first brief description of what we are doing when we
consider the animal as form, in order to develop an initial grasp of
the point.
To begin with, the notion of an individual idea is naturally the notion of
something with a distinctiveness or uniqueness, and which can be picked
out as one rather than as a heap, an arbitrary point, or a continuum. This
then branches into both a temporal and a spatial articulation of that
oneness. In the notion of processes in which the animal only refers to
itself we get the temporal articulation. Hegel does not speak of processes
until the part of the Philosophy of Nature entitled Physics, which is when
he first speaks of thermodynamic and electrical phenomena that have a
temporal direction specified by the nature of the phenomena (as opposed
to mechanics). That these processes are self-referential specifies the
animal’s body as a distinctive temporal moment, an extended present in
which the processes coincide and at which they aim. In this way the body
presents a special temporal point , an origin point for the local time of the
animal. Second, the notion of something merging or joining with itself is
almost already the image of a plane bending around to enclose a space.
One might expect a point rather than a plane or a surface, but that
wouldn’t make sense of the notion of something happening within itself
Hegel’s Theory of Animal Embodiment
(since a point is not extended, and thus has no interiority). Thus, we come
to the interesting correlation between a temporal point and a spatial
region, but this temporal point is extended by the processes that take place
in it. To use another metaphor employed by Hegel for the free time of the
animal, it is a “free trembling within itself [freies Erzittern in sich selbst]”
(Enc. §). And furthermore, he emphasizes that “Form is the animal
subject as a whole only in relation to itself ” (Enc. §). This is clearly a
specific perspective, designed to bring out specific features of the animal
body – namely concerning the way in which its articulated form is self-
referential. Hegel finds three kinds of such self-referentiality, which are
thus three ways in which the animal is formed. The three kinds of self-
referentiality are sensibility, irritability, and reproduction, and the corres-
ponding ways in which the animal is formed are the nervous, circulatory,
and digestive systems. Every bit of the animal is revealed to be a spatio-
temporal region of the animal’s enclosed space and extended present by
virtue of its interaction with these three systems. Collectively they are the
coordinate system that specify the bounded and internally articulated space
of the animal’s body and the different rhythms that give temporal structure
to its extended present. Hegel is quite clear, in introducing these three
systems, that they correspond to the conceptual moments – universality,
particularity, and individuality, respectively (Enc. §) – and thus Hegel’s
construction of the animal body aims to make good on his initial claim
that the three-dimensionality of space follows from the threefold nature of
the concept (Enc. §).
In the following reconstruction I largely abstract away from the logical
foundations and attempt to make good on the claim that these systems
construct a distinctive spatio-temporality of the animal body, but there is a
logical aspect of these systems that is important to bring to the fore. This
aspect is a feature that Hegel emphasizes in the Logic’s first section on the
subjective concept, but which extends to the later presentation of the Idea
as well: Each conceptual moment is a standpoint from which perspective
the other conceptual moments are brought into view (see Yeomans ).
In Enc. § Hegel writes that: “These three moments of the concept are
(b) not only implicitly concrete elements [i.e., sensibility, irritability, and
reproduction], but rather have their reality in three systems, the nervous,
circulatory, and digestive systems, of which each as totality differentiates
itself within itself according to the same conceptual determinations.” What
this means is that each of these three systems is a way of presenting the
whole from a particular perspective – that is, from the universal perspective
of sensibility, the particular perspective of irritability, and the individual
perspective of reproduction. Again, I won’t try to make those abstract
conceptual determinations do much work here, but it is important to note
that, dimensionally speaking, Hegel is presenting the systems as spatial and
temporal axes that run through every point in a bounded region, and thus
constitute the local space and time of the animal. Every part is involved in
a process that involves all three systems and so is oriented by the spatial
connections and temporal scales of all three processes at once. The Zusatz
to Enc. § sets this out nicely:
Since sensibility as a nervous system, irritability as a circulatory system, and
reproduction as a digestive system also exist for themselves, the body of all
animals can be broken down into three different constituents, from which
all organs are composed: in cell tissue, muscle fibers and nerve marrow - the
simple, abstract elements of the three systems. But since these systems are
just as undivided and every point contains all three in an immediate unity,
they are not the abstract conceptual moments, universality, particularity
and particularity. Rather, each of these moments represents the totality of
the concept in its determinateness, so that the other systems are present in
each as existing: everywhere there is blood and nerves, everywhere also
something glandular, lymphatic, which makes up reproduction.
There is thus running through every bodily point in the internal space of
the animal a set of processes and constituents, and the specific spatio-
temporal location of each point within the animal is determinable by
reference to those processes and constituents. And this determinability
demarcates the animal’s body from its environment – it may be related to
its environment in complicated ways that Hegel aims to cover in his
treatment of assimilation and the species process, but only the points
within the body itself are directly codetermined by these three systems.
There is an even further set of spatio-temporal determinations which
Hegel adds in Enc. §, and which to some degree point the way to the
significance of Assimilation and the Species Process as well. In that section,
Hegel argues that not only are internal points defined by reference to these
systems, but the systems themselves have and mark out distinctive
In the previous addition (§A) there is also a comparison of the three systems with the elements of
the solar system, according to which sensibility is like the sun, assimilation is like the comet and
moon, and reproduction is like the planet earth. These can easily seem bizarre associations, but they
have to do with relative centers of motion, and the analogy marks out these organic systems as
different kinds of centers for different kinds of movement within the animal body.
For another treatment of Hegel on animal spaces that goes in the opposite direction to that pursued
in the present chapter, emphasizing the way in which digestion undermines the objective distinction
between the inner and the outer, see (Ferrini , ). In my view, Ferrini overgeneralizes the
point about digestion and thus misses the way the space itself is constructed by the animal.
Hegel’s Theory of Animal Embodiment
locations and orientations. The systems themselves mark out distinctive
and qualitatively distinct regions of the body – the head, the torso, and the
abdomen – as the areas dominated by the nervous, circulatory, and
digestive systems. These centers (Centra) of the three systems are, of
course, partially enclosed spaces themselves, and are even enclosed by
qualitatively different surfaces (skull, ribs, skin). The general enclosed
space of the animal body is thus given further articulation into these
multiple partially enclosed spaces. Hegel also thinks that these systems
each have an inward-facing and outward-facing element or character,
which distinguishes in a general way between inner and outer – really
three different ways of differentiating between inner and outer (as relevant
to sensation, circulation, or digestion). And finally, there is the relationship
to other individuals in the environment, particularly along lines of sex
difference – here we get a relationship between enclosed spaces themselves,
which Hegel mainly leaves for Assimilation and the Species Process.
Most of the sections on form are clearly spatial, but in Enc. § Hegel
turns more explicitly to the temporal aspect through the notion of process:
[Form] is as living essentially process, and furthermore as abstract, the
formation process within itself, in which the organism makes its own
members [Glieder] into its inorganic nature, into means, draws sustenance
from them [aus sich zehrt] and self-produces itself, i.e., even this totality of
articulation [Gliederung], so that every member is reciprocally end and
means, preserved from the others and against them – the process, which
results in simple immediate proprioception [Selbstgefühl].
For the notion that form specifies a temporal special point , the two most
important aspects of Hegel’s discussion are the way in which processes
render each member of the animal both end and means, and the way in
which the process as a whole produces proprioception. That Hegel would
appeal not just to purposive functioning, but to a reciprocal form of
purposive functioning, emphasizes the simultaneity of the processes
involved. As Kant made abundantly clear, mechanistic causal relations
have an essentially progressive temporal structure – the cause must precede
the effect. In contrast, both reciprocal interaction and purposive function-
ing presuppose the simultaneity of cause and effect, means and end. And
particularly with purposive functioning, that simultaneity is construed in
terms of an extended present. The animal then has an awareness of this
special temporal point that it is – has an awareness of its own present – as a
simple awareness of its own body. But that awareness that it has a location
of its own – that it is its own place – is produced by the interaction of these
functional systems. The time of the animal body is the time in which it
simultaneously communicates with its members, circulates blood, and
digests food. This time is thus an overlap of an incredibly fast communi-
cation system (the nervous system), a medium-paced circulatory system,
and a slow digestive system. For the human body, for example, nervous
signals to the muscles can travel at more than meters per second (m/s),
blood at . m/s, and digestion at /, m/s. Or perhaps better is to
note that nerves are constantly firing in multiple direction, blood circulates
with a pump that works approximately seventy-five times per minute and
circulation takes approximately forty-five seconds, and digestion goes in
one direction, taking anywhere from twenty-four to seventy-two hours to
complete. The special point in time that the animal represents is thus
defined as that extended present that encompasses all three processes, and
this is the time of the animal’s proprioception. Importantly, we almost
never feel either our digestion or our circulation, and never our nervous
system actually firing, but we are aware of ourselves in a distinctive present
with a distinctive temporal scale that would be quite different if it did not
involve the overlap and tension between the scales of these three systems.
It is not that we are aware of those systems but that we are aware of
ourselves by virtue of those systems.
. Assimilation
With assimilation, we get the temporal dimension of an order and the
spatial dimension of the step from the line to the plane. With respect to
the latter, we just saw the way in which aspects of the form-systems of the
animal generated an initial distinction between inner and outer but in a
relatively undifferentiated way. These could be visualized as a line or as a
set of lines. But in assimilation, these hints are picked up and fully
developed, leading to two fundamentally different registers of the distinc-
tion between inner and outer, which can be visualized as a plane in two
dimensions. These two dimensions are theoretical and practical assimila-
tion, or the senses and the instinctual desires. These make possible a
determinate feeling of inside vs. outside along two different axes that can
be related to each other in informative ways.
If we begin with Hegel’s initial presentation in Enc. §, we under-
stand the assimilating animal body as “the idea, which relates itself to its
other, its inorganic nature, and posits that nature ideally in itself [als Idee,
die sich zu ihrem Anderen, ihrer unorganischen Natur verhält und sie ideell in
sich setzt].” Hegel emphasizes that in this process of repositing nature in an
ideal form, the distinction between inner and outer is marked and
Hegel’s Theory of Animal Embodiment
proprioception is thus made determinate. The animal is tensed against
nature and this tension renders the sense of nature as outer determinate:
The proprioception of individuality is however just as much exclusive and
tensed against an inorganic nature as against its external condition and
material. Insofar as (a) the animal organization is immediately reflected into
itself in this external relationship, this ideal relating is the theoretical
process, sensibility as external process, and furthermore as determinate
feeling, which differentiates itself into the multiple sensibility of
inorganic nature. (Enc. §)
Das Selbstgefühl der Einzelnheit ist aber ebenso unmittelbar ausschließend und
gegen eine unorganische Natur als gegen seine äußerliche Bedingung und
Material sich spannend. Indem (a) die tierische Organisation in dieser
äußerlichen Beziehung unmittelbar in sich reflektiert ist, so ist dies ideelle
Verhalten der theoretische Prozeß, die Sensibilität als äußerer Prozeß, und
zwar als bestimmtes Gefühl, welches sich in die Vielsinnigkeit der unorga-
nischen Natur unterscheidet.
Here the direction of the process – and that means the temporal order of
the process as well – is from outer to inner. Something outer exists and
then impinges on the senses of the animal. Though a full discussion is
beyond the bounds of this chapter, two features of Hegel’s discussion of
the senses deserve particular mention. First, he constructs the senses as
ways in which the animal body is related to the kinds of phenomena that
have been discussed in earlier parts of the book. Feeling is the sense of
mechanical phenomena, taste and smell are the sensation of physical
phenomena, and sight and hearing are the sensation of ideal phenomena
(i.e., of light and sound) (Enc. §). The construction of the senses is a
construction of the determinate spatio-temporal relations in which those
phenomena stand to an observer who is globally placed in the sense of not
directly being an element of the system that is sensed. Second, though
there is only the relation between the animal body and three kinds of
phenomena (mechanical, physical, ideal), there are five senses because of
the doubling of particularity in physical and ideal phenomena – that is, the
thought that such phenomena require qualitatively distinct kinds of
entities (Enc. §R).
In contrast to the “theoretical” process of the senses, there is the “real”
or “practical” process of the instincts:
The real process or the practical relation to inorganic nature begins with
diremption in itself, with the feeling of externality as the negation of the
subject, which is at the same time the positive relation to itself and whose
certainty is against this its negation – with the feeling of lack and the drive to
overcome it, with respect to which appears the condition of its becoming
excited from outside and negation of the subject posited within it in the
mode of an object against which it is tensed. (Enc. §)
(Der reelle Prozeß oder das praktische Verhältnis zu der unorganischen Natur
beginnt mit der Diremtion in sich selbst, dem Gefühle der Äußerlichkeit als der
Negation des Subjekts, welches zugleich die positive Beziehung auf sich selbst
und deren Gewißheit gegen diese seine Negation ist, - mit dem Gefühl des
Mangels und dem Trieb, ihn aufzuheben, an welchem die Bedingung eines
Erregtwerdens von außen und die darin gesetzte Negation des Subjekts in der
Weise eines Objekts, gegen das jenes gespannt ist, erscheint.)
Here we have an axis with a different order, beginning in the animal
subject and proceeding to the object within nature. If in the theoretical
process the order is felt by the way in which the objects of the senses
impinge on that subject, in the practical process first a sense of oneself as
lacking something generates the turn outward and the search for a way to
overcome that lack. In the following section he represents this drive as the
animal’s attempt to overcome the merely subjective form of the content of
that drive, that is, to make that content objective (Enc. §).
There is an additional distinction between the temporality of theoretical
and practical assimilation that returns to an issue we have already seen,
namely the difference between the temporality of mechanical causation and
purposive interaction. The former is more strictly progressive, the latter more
bidirectional and simultaneous. In the theoretical assimilation of the senses,
at least the emphasis is on the causal impingement of the world on the
subject. In contrast, in practical assimilation not only does everything start
with the “becoming excited” of the subject, but Hegel is at pains to
emphasize the teleological nature of the drives and instincts (Enc. §).
Both theoretical and practical assimilation play a role in constructing the
local space of the animal. This is perhaps obvious for the senses (since they
are limited to varying degrees in the scope of their awareness), but Hegel
also notes this for practical assimilation:
But [only] as the relationship of the animal to its own inorganic, individual-
ized nature, is [the connection] determinate at all, and because of further
particularity only a limited region of universal inorganic nature is its own.
Instinct is a practical relating to it, inner excitement in the guise of an
In Enc. §R, he both praises Kant for renewing the Aristotelian conception of inner teleology and
criticizes the tendency to treat ends as essentially conscious. The ends of the animal are unconscious
(bewußtlos). See (Ferrini a).
Hegel’s Theory of Animal Embodiment
external excitement, and its activity is partially formal and partially real
assimilation of inorganic nature. (Enc. §)
(Aber als Verhältnis des Tiers zu seiner unorganischen, vereinzelten Natur ist
[der Zusammenhang] überhaupt bestimmt, und nach weiterer Partikularität
ist nur ein beschränkter Umkreis der allgemeinen unorganischen Natur der
seinige. Der Instinkt ist gegen sie ein praktisches Verhalten, innere Erregung
mit dem Scheine einer äußerlichen Erregung verbunden, und seine Tätigkeit
teils formelle teils reelle Assimilation der unorganischen Natur.)
The animal body does not directly relate to anything like a global space but
relates to universal nature through the constitution of a local space, a
limited region which is its own. With respect to that region and the
individuals within it, the animal can measure the space and orient itself
to it by means of its senses and drives. It exists in tension with the
individual objects in the space, and those lines of tension provide the
orientation to the local space as such; the strength of those tensions allows
for the measurement of distance along different parameters. That Hegel
means the processes of theoretical and practical assimilation to have such a
profound function is in part signaled by his attempts to distinguish them
sharply from sleep and wake cycles, as well as migration – these are “an
unmediated going-along (Mitgehen) with nature and its changes” (in Enc.
§ & A).
He further takes them up in Enc. §:
Life, the subject of these moments of totality, tenses itself in itself [spannt
sich in sich] as concept and in the moments as reality external to it and is in
continuous [fortdauernd] conflict, in which it overcomes this externality.
Because the animal, which behaves here as immediate individual, is enabled
only individually along all determinations of individuality (this place, this
time, etc.) [dies nu rim einzelnen nach allen Bestimmungen der Einzelheit
(dieses Orts, dieser Zeit usf.) vermag], this realization of itself is not adequate
to its concept, and it returns continuously [fortdauernd] from its satisfaction
into a condition of need.
The “moments of totality” to which he refers are three processes of the real
assimilation of inorganic nature – breath, thirst, and hunger – and their
satisfaction. Here the continual return of the tensions is key to perhaps the
hardest point in the Philosophy of Nature, which is to understand how
time could be three-dimensional and three-dimensional in the Philosophy
For a discussion of Hegel’s conception of instinct with reference to Blumenbach’s Bildungstrieb, see
(Kelm ).
of Nature in which there is no proper past or future, only the present.
In this continual return to the same condition of need, where the condi-
tion generates the purposiveness of the animal’s practical activities, we have a
return to the same time – to the same present. It is a special point, it is
ordered, and it is even locally linear (there is a continuous time from need to
satisfaction and back to need). But it doesn’t point beyond itself to a future
nor leave behind itself a past. Instead there is an extended, tensed present in
which the cycles of breathing, drinking, and eating co-occur. But these
cycles are different from the cycles of formation – of nervous functioning,
blood circulation, and digestion – because these cycles of formation have an
outward orientation, even though they alternate between states of need and
satisfaction: “The desiring organism, which knows itself as the unity of itself
and that which confronts it, and so sees through the being of the other, is
the form which is turned outward and armed [die nach außen gekehrte,
bewaffnete Gestalt].” (Enc. §A; see also Enc. §).
. Species Process
In the species process, we return to a simplified view of the animal body –
of that body as an instance of a species, “in implicit simple unity” with the
species (Enc. §) – and we trace the way that these simple instances are
necessarily connected with each other in a progressive way. This is how the
linearity of time is presented, along with the transition from a point to a line
to depict space. It is furthermore the capstone process, because in these
transitions from points to lines it shows us how local space-timelines are
built up into global space-timelines. Here we take animal bodies that are
special temporal points and enclosed spaces, which have temporal orienta-
tions and multiple spatial axes oriented by the inner vs. outer contrast, and
reduce them to simple points which are then shown to be in a linear relation
In Enc. §–, there is quite a bit of discussion of the relation between organic assimilation and
earlier kinds of phenomena (particularly mechanical and chemical). It is beyond the bounds of this
short chapter to reconstruct these relations, but it is the implication of the argument of this chapter
that those relations also show the way in which such phenomena can be placed in the space-time that
is measured and oriented by animal perception.
Throughout, I translate “Gattung” as “species,” except for those passage where it is contrasted with
“Art,” in which case I translate the latter as “species” and the former as “genus.” Hegel uses the term
primarily to refer not to a specific level in the hierarchy of species but to the notion of a kind of an
animal more general than an individual. It is our judgment that the term “species” better captures
this general meaning in English than “genus.”
It is worth noting here Hegel’s well-known rejection of the evolutionary theories of his day, which
would provide another route to the unification of local and global timelines. There no space to go
into the issue here, but the best treatment of the subject remains (Kolb ).
Hegel’s Theory of Animal Embodiment
with other bodies construed as simple points. Thus it is not surprising that
in his initial presentation of the species process, we see language that is also
used in the development of Hegel’s conception of quantity, for example,
“the idea, as related to an other, which is itself living individual, and thereby
related to itself in the other – the species process” (Enc. §).
In addition, we get three ways in which the local and the global are related
in the three aspects of the species process. First, in the relation between
genus and species (Gattung und Arten), we get the traditional pyramidal
structure but also the violent competition between members of the same
genus, which provides one way in which the local space-timelines of
individual animals are connected. Second, in the sex-relationship, we get
the space-timeline of the animal species stitched together, as it were, by the
overlapping lifespans of reproducing animals. Finally, we get the internally
determined measure of the animal’s space-timeline, through sickness and
natural death. Though all three processes give us different forms of linear-
ity, there is a recursive element to the analysis by which they give us the
linear version of an enclosed space, of a line, and of an extended point. The
pyramidal structure is an enclosed space which is primarily rendered as the
lines of the base, that is, the lines representing the competitive struggles
between members of the species that stands at the apex. The species is not a
separate entity, so it isn’t a real spatio-temporal location, but it sets out the
dimensions of the base, which are filled as a kind of affine space of lines of
competition, rather than a Euclidean space that is globally orientable. The
line provided by the process of mating and reproduction is similarly com-
plex. Though an implicit unity of the species is produced by the mating
process, Hegel says, the actually existent time line is produced through the
overlapping of the times of individual animals as mating pairs and as
generations. The first two relationships Hegel characterizes as ones in which
“the process of the self-mediation of the species with itself through its
diremption into individuals and the supersession [Aufheben] of their differ-
ences proceeds” (Enc. §). Finally, in sickness, the inner linear extent of
the lifespan of the animal is given form, but paradoxically its measure is
determined by the ways in which it comes apart. In contrast to the first two,
Hegel characterizes this third relation as the negative relation of the species
to the individual – sickness is the way the species makes the case that it is
something above and beyond the individual, as it were.
At any rate, this seems to be the order of the edition of the text. Petry reorders them, to reverse
the first and the second, and there is some textual evidence in his favor (e.g., Enc. §A). For our
argument, nothing hangs on the order.
There is a lot going on in the first relation of genus and species, but one of
the most important parts comes out in the voluminous lecture notes
appended by Michelet as the Addition (Zusatz) to Enc. §, in which
Hegel makes the claim that the differences between the species of the genus,
and between the genera of the single type “animal,” are the same differences
as were developed already in the system of inorganic nature. There is a lot of
detailed lecture material here, and so the point can’t be given the treatment
it deserves in this short chapter, but this is in principle another way in which
the local space-times of different species of animals are integrated with each
other by integrating inorganic nature as well. That is, if the ways in which
the local space-times are differentiated from each other by virtue of their
different relations to inorganic nature, then one could use the former
differences to reconstruct the spatio-temporal positions of bits of inorganic
nature in relation to those of the individual animal. We are not suggesting
that anything like this is worked out in detail by Hegel, only that it provides
another route (in addition to perception) by means of which inorganic
nature – which cannot provide its own space-time – can be spatio-
temporally located by reference to animal bodies.
With respect to the second relation – the sex relation (Geschlechtsverhältnis) –
one of the most interesting things is that it has very little to do with sex
differences (Geschlecht) and almost exclusively to do with mating (Begattung).
This is, of course, in accordance with the reduction we have seen, in which we
abstract away from the internal form of the animal body in order to treat it
quantitatively. But this quantitative relation is made practical through a drive:
“As the tension against the inadequacy of [the species’] individual actuality, the
species in [the individual] is thus the drive to attain [the individual’s] proprio-
ception [Selbstgefühl] in another of [the individual’s] species, to integrate itself
through unification [Einung] with it, and through this mediation to merge
with the species and bring it to existence – mating [Begattung]” (Enc. §).
Even in the Addition (Zusatz), where he largely repeats Aristotle’s understand-
ing of the sex difference, his remarks primarily tend toward showing that
the male and the female differ by virtue of the relative prominence of different
characteristics which are nonetheless shared by both sexes. But the most
obviously quantitative language is in Enc. §, in which the progress of
the generations is rendered as the bad infinite, one natural individual after
another – but this “after” requires the death of the prior generation. Thus we
have points strung together on a line but only by having multiple points
overlap: both the mating pair and their offspring.
Of course, as Hegel notes, some animals die almost immediately after
mating (e.g., butterflies). But others live a while longer, dying from disease.
Hegel’s Theory of Animal Embodiment
The most striking thing about Hegel’s discussion of disease is the way he
describes it as a disintegration of the organism: “The organism is in a
condition of sickness, insofar as one of its systems or organs is excited in a
conflict with inorganic power [Potenz], sets itself for itself [sich für sich
festsetzt] and hardens itself in its particular activity against the activity of
the whole, whose fluidity and process which runs through all factors is
thereby impeded” (Enc. §). Disease literally stops the flow of time
through the animal – stops the processes which we have seen run through
all parts of the animal, bringing them together into a special point which
is the extended present of the animal. In sickness, one of these systems goes
its own way, as it were, and the unique tension in which the animal
maintains itself temporally breaks down, which blocks the flow of the
whole. The time of the animal becomes purely linear – or perhaps we she
should say “continuous” – but at the expense of the animal body itself.
It begins to decompose already into the separate timelines of its systems, a
precursor to it decomposing into its inorganic nature and the processes
proper to that nature.
Hegel presents the dialectic between these moments as the dialectic of
fever and recovery in sickness:
The peculiar appearance of sickness is thus, that the identity of the whole
organic process presents itself as the successive course of the movement of life
through its differentiated moments – sensibility, irritability, and
reproduction – i.e., as fever, which however as the course of the totality
against individualized activity is just as much the attempt and beginning of
healing. (Enc. §)
Die eigentümliche Erscheinung der Krankheit ist daher, daß die Identität des
ganzen organischen Prozesses sich als sukzessiver Verlauf der Lebensbewegung
durch seine unterschiedenen Momente, die Sensibilität, Irritabilität und
Reproduktion, d. i. als Fieber darstellt, welches aber als Verlauf der Totalität
gegen die vereinzelte Tätigkeit ebensosehr der Versuch und Beginn der
Heilung ist.
The phenomenology here is mundane – fever is both part of the appear-
ance (symptoms) of disease and part of its cure. But the conceptual
reconstruction Hegel gives it can be hard to grasp. His point is that
fever is, in fact, the intensification of the usual course of life through the
different systems of form of the animal. If we are right in our
For a far-reaching interpretation of the importance of sickness and recovery to individual animal
life, see Düffel .
reconstruction this far, “movement” is to be taken quite literally – this is
the paradigmatic movement because these three systems provide the
richest possible coordinate system of an enclosed space. The fact that this
movement can be accelerated internally, without any change to the move-
ment outside of it, is one way in which the space-time of the animal is truly
local. But it is essential that this movement has been rendered linear in a
way not seen in the section on form – it is a “successive course” through the
different systems. This has both a tendency to separate them off from the
tension that defines the present of the animal – it is potentially an escape
velocity, to use a celestial metaphor – and a tendency to bring them into
connection with each other through this greater intensity. If the intercon-
nections can be restored, then the animal heals from the sickness and
maintains its special temporal point and enclosed spatial surface.
The remedy is supposed to prod the animal body into healing itself:
“The remedy [Heilmittel] excites the organism to supersede the particular
excitement, in which the formal activity of the whole is fixed, and to
produce the fluidity of the specific organs or systems in the whole” (Enc.
§). Hegel has an almost homeopathic conception of the remedy, in
which it represents an external version of what is going wrong internally
with the animal, which induces the animal to fight against both by getting
it to fight off the external version. But the important thing for our theme is
the way that it attempts to induce the animal to overcome the blockage
that results from all of its activity being concentrated in a specific system or
organ, and thus attempts to return the animal to the state of tension
between the systems and organs that allowed free movement along all
three systematic axes between them (nervous, circulatory, digestive). But
the externality is important for the inducement, which is why Hegel
emphasizes that they are, strictly speaking, “something indigestible [ein
Unverdauliches].”
But whatever happens in a particular case of sickness for a particular
animal, the general point that Hegel wants to make is that there is always
the possibility of death. Conceptually, of course, this possibility arises from
the finitude of the animal, which like all finite things is inadequate to its
concept. The particular way that this inadequacy is present in the animal is
as a contest between the potential concentration of the power of the
animal – its “quantitative strength” (Enc. §) – in a single system or
organ, and the potential use of precisely that power to overcome an
isolated concentration of that strength. This is all made possible by the
very nature of nature, which is to be the “free release of the idea’s
particularity” – that is, to be the sphere in which the possibilities of
Hegel’s Theory of Animal Embodiment
multiple realization of every concept are realized. These multiple realiza-
tions can take the form of different strengths in different animals – both
different species and different individuals – but the same process that
generates these different strengths can also go too far and isolate strength
in a particular system which then blocks the general movement of life in
the animal. Disease and thus the possibility of death are necessary possi-
bilities for the animal. This means that every animal has a temporal and
spatial range of linear extent that mark it as an individual.
. Conclusion
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the way in which the Philosophy
of Nature comes full circle is the way it becomes as quantitative at the end
as it was at the beginning. And in some respects the genesis of this
quantitative mode of approach is the same as well: Just as space and time
are introduced as simplified ways of representing the mutual externality of
logical perspectives developed to a fever pitch of complexity in the Idea
chapter of the Science of Logic, the genus process reduces the multiple
measures and orientations of the animal bodies to points which can then
be set into lines – the multiple affine lines of the relations between
individual animals, and the Euclidean lines of the generations produced
by mating and the lifespan of the animal brought to an end by death.
Sickness provides one actual, practical route in which this reduction
occurs, and this is why it is the last phenomenon discussed: because it is
the actual phenomenon closest to the concept. In sickness, the complex
internal tension that generated the special point and enclosed space of the
animal comes apart through its own intensification in a limited part of the
animal, and thus the integrity of the animal comes to an end. The
penultimate phenomenon is mating, in which animals have an implicit
relation to the species simply in virtue of the range of their sexual attrac-
tions and successful mating partners. Here the complexities of form are
reduced to a simple difference – the sex difference – which is how two
different space-timelines of two different animals converge at a single
point, from which point the space-timelines of their offspring begin.
Mating provides the beginning of the lifespan and disease the end. These
processes collectively define the space-time of the animal body, which is
the paradigmatic space-time for all natural objects. But along the way,
Hegel suggests multiple routes – both theoretical and practical – through
which the phenomena of inorganic objects can be placed on the coordinate
system provided by the animal body. But one must actually say, placed on
the coordinate systems provided by animal bodies, since in the end we are
still lacking any sort of global coordinate system that would come first in
the order of either analysis or being. We have instead a network of animal
bodies and other natural phenomena, each with their own space-times,
existing in determinate relations to each other. If we understand that
network as if it were an individual body, we generate a globally
Euclidean space. But such a space is an abstraction useful for the purposes
of doing mathematics, not a metaphysical fact about the world.
A Past without History and the Conditions of Life
Hegel on the Terrestrial Organism
Ansgar Lyssy
. Introduction
While Hegel’s philosophy of nature has received some scholarly treatment,
his conception of the earth as a complex organic body – or, as he calls it, a
terrestrial organism – has received little attention by commentators. This
lacuna is puzzling for two key reasons. First, it is here that Hegel draws a
relationship between the mechanical and chemical domains of nature to
the domain of living organisms in such a way that he subverts the
traditional juxtaposition between inorganic and organic nature – a project
of significant philosophical ambition. Additionally, he is one of the few
philosophers to reflect on geological knowledge from the vantage point of
the philosophy of nature. These two reasons alone merit an examination of
Hegel’s account of geology.One possible reason for the comparative lack of
interest in Hegelian geology might be his dismissal of the major strands of
geology. (Throughout this chapter, I use “geology” as a shorthand for
numerous branches of the earth sciences.) In his earlier lectures on nature,
Hegel claims that geology was nothing but a thoughtless taxonomy of
rocks (cf. Jenaer Vorlesungen zur Realphilosophie/JS III/GW : ). Later,
in the Encyclopaedia, he goes so far as to state that the geohistorical
knowledge of the earth’s past and its transformations has no philosophical
relevance: “All this is a matter of history, and has to be accepted as a fact; it
is not the concern of philosophy.” (Enc. §A/MM : /Enc. P :
). And yet, these dismissals of geology as taxonomic science and as a
historical science seem out of place. Hegel devotes a surprising amount of
analysis to geological notions in the Encyclopaedia: The chapter on the
For example, out of the more recent Hegel dictionaries, only Cobben contains an entry on
geology or earth as terrestrial organism, while Inwood and Magee do not.
terrestrial organism with all its additions is more comprehensive than any
other chapter in the first part of his philosophy of nature (“Mechanics”).
This chapter sets out to make sense of this apparent incongruity. What
role is attributed to geological knowledge within the broader whole of the
Encyclopaedia? Is it simply included for the sake of completeness, rendering
its function in the project trivial? Which perspective is adequate to make
philosophical sense of geological knowledge? My response to these ques-
tions consists in a three-step argument. First, I show that, for Hegel, it is
only the temporal notion of geological speculation in terms of geohistory
that is irrelevant to philosophy, since as it discusses a geological past that
extends beyond human history and thus fails to contribute much to spirit’s
self-understanding. Second, I argue that geology is nonetheless important as
it develops the emergence of forms or formations (Formationen, Bildungen)
and shapes or structures (Gebilde) as well as spatio-temporal relations with a
particular dynamic that do not have a strict precedent in the domains of
mechanical physics and chemistry, even if they arise from them. These
formations and structures are not merely geometrical but denote an intrinsic
unity of composition and appearance. Mountains or rivers are forms or
structures in the sense that they combine a perceptible form with a specific
elemental composition. Third, I argue that by means of said emergence of
formations and structures and their global arrangement, geology provides us
with the basic notion of environment that serves as a precondition for the
emergence of organic life. As we shall see, this notion of environment ties in
with Hegel’s claim that the terrestrial organism serves as the “ground and soil
of life” (Enc. §/MM : ).
. Past Beyond History: On the Philosophical Relevance
of Geology
Before I turn to Hegel’s account of geology, I briefly consider the state of
geology at Hegel’s time and why it did matter to other thinkers, historically
speaking. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, geology developed
in three directions. First, it had a taxonomic bent, according to which
different types of rock, sediment, stratum, etc. were distinguished and
classified. Second, it sought to uncover the universal regularities that
govern the motion of the earth’s parts, for example, the motions of
tectonic plates, sedimentation, or volcanic eruptions. These regularities
However, the discussion of vegetable nature is twice as long, and that of the animal organism almost
four times.
Hegel on the Terrestrial Organism
govern the system of the terrestrial body and allow for causal explanations
and predictions. Third, it strove to reconstruct the geohistorical past of the
earth. Here it engaged in conjectures, that is, it speculated about factual
events that are neither the subject matter of proper empirical observation
nor something deduced from higher principles. A case in point would be
the wide-ranging debate of the time about whether the earth has emerged
from fire or water as the primordial substance of all terrestrial matter (the
debate between the so-called vulcanists and neptunists). In such recon-
struction, different forms of order were interconnected: Geology aimed at
identifying the different strata of the earth in their spatial location and to
situate such discoveries within a temporal order. The eternal laws that
govern geological processes enabled scientists to relate contemporary obser-
vations and facts to past and future events alike. Turning the “gaze” of
natural history toward the center of the earth permitted them to investigate
its past.
This endeavor of producing an evidence-based natural history of the
earth is of great importance to the worldview of the nineteenth century.
In the seventeenth century, many scholars were following a literalist
interpretation of the Bible according to which the earth was created
approximately , years ago (see Rossi ). But this view became
untenable. Kant, for instance, speculated in that “a number of
millions of years has passed before the sphere of formed nature in which
we find ourselves has grown to the perfection that now attends it”
(Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Ak. : ). Such
a claim was increasingly bolstered by geological evidence and the conjec-
tures mentioned earlier. A few examples should suffice here. Some
scholars, such as Leibniz, Burnet, and Buffon, had proposed that the earth
had once been a boiling ball of liquid material that had cooled down,
resulting in a hardened crust of plates floating on a still liquid inner core.
By observing how long it takes for molten lava to cool down and harden,
one could estimate how long it must have taken the earth’s entire crust to
cool down and harden in a similar manner. While the results of such
calculations varied greatly, they all nevertheless indicated that the earth
must have been much older than any calculation based on the biblical
Hegel acknowledges both sides as representing different but interlocking principles that are only
formally relevant and one-sided (cf. Enc. §A/MM : ).
Darwin himself makes extensive use of these debates to argue for the possibility of millions of
subsequent generations, each involving only minimal mutations: “the number of intermediate and
transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great”
(Darwin , ).
narrative suggested. James Hutton took up the idea that different strata of
stone and other materials would constantly push into each other, provid-
ing shifts in geological layers. This would create mountains and cliffs on
the earth’s surface, which would be gradually eroded by weather and rivers;
and the sediment was washed away into the ocean and compacted into
stone again. This model was used to create a cyclical and dynamical model
of the earth’s transformation wherein “we find no vestige of a beginning, –
no prospect of an end” (Hutton [] , :). The earth’s past was
not just profoundly older than human existence but also determined by
geological revolutions, that is, cataclysmic shifts of surface structures,
which led Hutton to speak of a “succession of worlds.” Such observations
and calculations created, together with their rebuke by creationists such as
William Paley, one of the great scientific debates around the turn of the
eighteenth century, not only because they challenged the biblical narrative,
and thereby the veracity of the sacred text, but also because they informed
conjectural history and the role of humans in nature. By reflecting on the
processes of fossilization, sedimentation, and erosion, scholars argued for
the enormous age of the earth dating back millions and billions of years
before human existence. George Cuvier said this discovery of the earth’s
true age meant to know how to “burst the limits of time” (cited in
Rudwick , vi). Hegel is familiar with these debates, but he asserts
their philosophical irrelevancy:
Interesting conjectures may be made about the wide intervals separating
revolutions of this kind, about the profounder revolutions caused by
alterations of the Earth’s axis, and about revolutions due to the sea.
In the historical field these are hypotheses however, and this explanation
of events by mere succession has nothing whatever to contribute to
philosophic consideration. (Enc. §A/MM : –; cf. Enc. P : )
As indicated by the increasingly comprehensive fossil record, these
geological events had caused mass extinctions of unimaginable propor-
tions. Not only were larger dinosaur bones unearthed and collected, but
strata such as limestone and chalk contain an enormous number of skeletal
remains of small animals, even microscopically small ones, which are often
strikingly different from any currently living organism. Furthermore, the
size and complexity of the fossils correspond to the type and depth of the
geological strata from which they were excavated, indicating that simpler
According to Stephen Toulmin and Jane Goodfield, this meant that the “historical time-barrier was
broken” (Toulmin and Goodfield , ).
Hegel on the Terrestrial Organism
species had come into being, went extinct, and bigger and more complex
species had emerged later. As human fossils were nowhere to be found,
human existence must have been a very recent event, an ephemeral blip on
the ever-increasing timescale. Obviously, this posed a profound challenge
to the established Christian worldview. Some scholars have compared these
insights to other paradigm-shifting scientific discoveries that concerned
humankind’s place in the cosmos, such as the Copernican Revolution or
Darwin’s discovery of the descent of humankind (Rudwick , ; cf.
Rossi ).
Yet again, Hegel is surprisingly uninterested in all this. He knows about
these debates, and yet in this context he writes: “The point of interest is
not to determine the conditions prevailing millions of years ago (and there
is no need to stint on the years), but to concentrate upon that which is
present in the system of these various formations” (Enc. §A/MM :
/Enc. P : ). While Hegel may grant that geohistory can satisfy
natural human curiosity, he does not think that it furthers
philosophical understanding.
When it comes to understanding history, the major philosophical task
assigned to spirit is to understand itself in its most concrete conception.
Spirit is conceptually juxtaposed to nature, albeit it presupposes it and uses
it as a means. The appearance of the development of freedom can be
conceived in terms of history. For Hegel, history is not just the past but
rather “the process whereby the spirit discovers itself and its own concept”
(LPhWH-N ). This means that without freedom there can be no history.
In geological history, we do not find history proper but merely a pre-
Adamitic past that lies beyond history. Mere necessity reigns. However, for
our understanding of necessity, the natural order that determines contin-
gent things is philosophically irrelevant. The structural determinations that
implement this necessity can and should be conceived without regard to
temporal order. Put differently, the past beyond history can be conceived
in entirely a-historical terms. From a philosophical vantage point, the earth
These debates still reverberate today in the modern rejection of evolutionary theory
through creationists.
In the Encyclopaedia, he refers to some of the relevant books by Georges Cuvier, Abraham Gottlob
Werner, René Just Haüy, and others. For a better survey of Hegel’s knowledge of geology, see the
annotations to Enc. P as well as Fritscher , Ferrini , and Levere .
See also Hegel’s remark in the – lecture on the philosophy of nature: “Indem [das] Interesse
vornehmlich auf die Zeit geht, so hat dies Interesse keinen wahrhaften Gehalt. Der Zusammenhang
dem Inhalt nach ist nicht der Zusammenhang der Zeit, sondern der der Gebilde nach ihrer
Beschaffenheit in sich. Somit die Stellung des Systems im Begriffe ist unser Wesentlicheres”
(VNat, ).
and its process of formation should therefore constitute a timeless totality.
Hegel writes: “The sense and spirit of the process is the internal connection
[Zusammenhang], the necessary relation of these formations, for which the
[mere] sequence does nothing” (Enc. §A/MM : ). The typical
geohistorical speculations are neither properly empirical observations nor
philosophical analyses of actual necessity. The relevant regularities that
determine the earth are maintained within the earth and continue to
subsist there as a formal universal (see Enc. §A/MM : –).
One major task of a philosophy of nature is to articulate how actual
objects are spatio-temporally determined. Mechanics understands the
earth as a celestial body, distinguished from the rest primarily through its
external determinations by other celestial bodies. From a chemical perspec-
tive, the earth is an aggregate of different substances and processes, distin-
guished from other planets through its unique composition and
arrangement. The earth is constituted through the unsublated heterogen-
eity of its parts: The liquid and crystalline forms are not mixed but
separated; the surface is structured by separate factors, such as climate,
magnetism, or earth’s rotation; and so on. On earth, mechanical and
chemical factors work together to bring forth a particular form.
However, the philosophical understanding of the earth needs to rely on
a posteriori knowledge that is gained through empirical science and,
despite Hegel’s earlier polemic against the “thoughtless” cataloguing in
geological taxonomy, he cannot escape it himself. The mineral compos-
ition of the entire earth, as well as its liquid and gaseous aspects, cannot be
deduced a priori. However, Hegel is not so much interested in the
particular qualities of the minerals but rather in the determinative relations
between them. For example, Hegel claims that peat (Torf) is a particular
that is defined by the fact that it can grow in a vegetable way, but due to its
inherent shapelessness, it belongs to the mineralogical realm. Geological
taxonomy is sublated in abstract conceptual relations and the empirical
import of geology is reduced to the trivial fact that peat is part of the earth’s
composition. Granite, slate, peat, quartz, etc. are philosophically
Another remark that philosophical considerations should avoid speculations about factual processes
of generation can be found in Enc. §: “Der Sinn und Geist des Prozesses ist der innere
Zusammenhang, die notwendige Beziehung dieser Gebilde, wozu das Nacheinander gar nichts
tut” (MM : ).
It is trivially the case that peat is found on the earth and not on other planets. Nonetheless, Hegel’s
way of distinguishing geological entities in terms of external and internal determinations would
hypothetically allow us to identify alien substances on other planets as peat as well, regardless of
their actual chemical composition.
Hegel on the Terrestrial Organism
interesting only as they are relevant to the emergence of universal spatial
formations such as pebbles, rocks, mountains, or tunnels, as well as to the
respective mechanico-chemical processes that facilitate the emergence of
these forms. They are nothing but determinations of a holistic process of
physical organization (cf. Enc. §/MM : ).
In the following, I develop this Hegelian model further. I take Hegel’s
philosophy of nature to develop how particularity “fills out” space and, by
implication, time. By means of the notion of external determination that
is at the core of mechanical physics, space is essentially empty, apart from
occasional Newtonian mass-points. Spatial relations are entirely relational
and uniform, only cognizable as mere quantities. Chemical space, on the
other hand, is developed through internal determination, construed as an
arrangement of elemental substances, yet it lacks any order that connects
this internal determination to the external determination of mechanics.
“Filling out” space is thus a matter of increasingly concrete determinations
of spatial relations beyond merely quantitative notions. The earth is
conceived through its unique regularities and their determinations of
spatio-temporal relations that lead to the creation of geological formations.
The notion of geological nature mediates between two interrelated con-
ceptual oppositions and serves a twofold function. Laurent Merigonde
speaks of the terrestrial organism as a “double notion,” inasmuch as it
concerns the organic moment that is contained within the inorganic, but
also the production of organic life on the surface of an anorganic body.
This distinction will implicitly play a role in the subsequent argument, but
for the sake of reading the terrestrial organism as geological particularity
extended in space and time, I propose a slightly different reading. The
relevant dichotomy in the notion of geological nature is as follows.
First, the terrestrial organism introduces the notion of organic life.
Therefore, it needs to mediate the notion of an instantiation of natural
kinds, such as chemical elements, with the relation between individual and
species, in which proper individuality becomes possible. It will turn out
that the emergence of geological structures and formations from their
This is developed in programmatic form in Kaufmann et al. .
“II y a un double terme à la necessite interne de la differenciation, non seulement dans la forme
organique dans l’element de l’inorganique, mais aussi dans la production d’un moment de
l’organique qui conditionne la possibilite d’une vie subjective à sa surface” (Mérigonde
, ).
“Das Allgemeine hat sich an ihm selbst zu verwirklichen. [. . .] Das Organische ist gegen sich selbst
als dies unmittelbar Allgemeine, als diese organische Gattung gekehrt” (Enc. §A/MM : ).
Note that the issue of individualization is also at stake in the account of geology developed in
Hegel’s – lectures on the philosophy of nature (see VNat, –).
chemical elements by means of mechanical interaction will serve as the
necessary mediation between two types of individuation.
Second, it is necessary to develop the notion of the earth as a global
environment. Life cannot be fully distinct from inorganic matter because
this would endanger the unity of nature, and yet it needs to be conceived
in opposition to it. Here, the terrestrial organism as the “universal type of
life” (Enc. §/MM : ) will serve as the necessary mediation. The
terrestrial organism manifests itself as a system of purposively usable objects,
a system that must precede the functional structures of living organisms.
The earth as environment does not yet exhibit any actual purposes, but its
parts and moments are rather so structured as to lend themselves toward
purposiveness. Here we find specific dispositions that are geared
toward life.
. Mediating between Inanimate Matter and Life
Hegel calls the earth an organism. In the Encyclopaedia, organisms are
introduced as internally and externally differentiated bodies (cf. Enc. §,
A/MM : –). Both forms of differentiation converge as self-
differentiation and self-determination, from which purposiveness and
subjectivity emerge. Internal differentiation is produced through a con-
crete universal, namely the species, which reproduces itself by means of
bringing forth individuals whose internal differentiation it provides the
structure for. These individuals are numerically distinct insofar as they are
externally separated and differentiated through a determinative moment
that Hegel calls “particularization” (Besonderung). An individual form (a
Gestalt) emerges that draws both on abstract and concrete forms
(Gebilden). The organism itself as a self-sustaining entity with its own
metamorphosis of growth and decay coincides with the process of the self-
actualization of the species. The species is a universal that separates itself
into internal and external differences and particularities, all of which are
mediated by actual individuals (see e.g., Enc. §A/MM : –). The
instantiation of a species in the individual body of a plant or animal is
significantly different from the instantiation of a chemical element in its
individual manifestation, which is a type–token relation. Conceptually,
this piece of gold is not different from the element of gold that it instanti-
ates, while this dog is different from both other dogs and its species in
For a historical account of conceiving of earth in terms of an organism, see Taub .
Hegel on the Terrestrial Organism
terms of its actuality and qua its self-differentiation and self-determination.
It is only the latter relation, the self-sublation of the species into the
individual and hence the externality of the species against the separation
of individuals, that constitutes organisms as individual entities. While
chemical elements are dependent on external factors to produce actual
instances of them, organic individuals reproduce themselves by natural
means of procreation and thereby reproduce the species; and the species
maintains itself through individual procreation. However, such a
reciprocity between the species and its individual members and vice versa
cannot be derived directly from the way chemical elements are manifest-
ations of universal kinds, as in the chemical process, the universal precedes
the individual and remains independent of it. This dog is internally
differentiated because of its external differentiation, and vice versa.
As the earth is a totality, neither internal nor external differentiation have
fully manifested themselves as such. It is still fully dependent on mechan-
ical and chemical processes that lack the necessary unity for organic life.
The earth does not represent this unity to itself.
To understand why Hegel believes himself warranted to refer to the
earth as a terrestrial organism, it is helpful to distinguish between () an
organism as a self-sustaining, ordered, and functionally aligned whole that
may just as well be devoid of life, and () organic life, which entails
subjectivity and hence a form of self-transparency or rudimentary forms
of apperception. The terrestrial organism is an internally and externally
differentiated, autopoietic body. Hegel calls the earth a crystal, as it is both
an autopoietic process of growth and the product thereof; but in contrast
to uniform minerals, it brings forth the double-sided structure of internal
differentiation and external determination. Thereby it is incorporating
both abstract and concrete parts in the same way as vegetable and animal
organisms. Regarding their appearance, there are significant formal simi-
larities between individual organisms and the terrestrial organism that
allow us to speak of the earth as if it were a living organism. However,
the earth can only be conceived of as a totality, and it has no external
determination by means of the notion of the species. As a celestial body,
the earth is determined by external mechanical forces and hence it has no
distinct relation to its externality or environment. Wherein the individual
organism can reconcile the difference between internal and external deter-
mination as a form of self-determination, in the earth these relations are
The counterpart to this might be spirit, which is alive but not an (individual) organism.
not fully separated in the first place. Hence, it falls short of constituting
any proper form of self-determination and subjectivity. While a living
organism can bring forth a new actuality by incorporating external entities
into its own principle and thereby allows for ordered contingencies, the
earth as a totality cannot produce anything new. It already contains
everything within its sphere. Without the emergence of something new,
there is a past that is governed by necessity but neither history nor life. The
earth as an organic structure is not properly alive: Hegel calls it “inani-
mate” (totliegend, Enc. §/MM : ) and “cadaver” (Leichnam, Enc.
§A/MM : ). Here, organism is separated from life.
I now discuss this distinction between an organic structure and organic
life as the terrestrial way in which particularity is realized in time and space.
While the chemical process dissolves the tension between aligned or
opposing elements by bringing them to an equilibrium that mediates the
extremes of the process with each other, the organic process of living
organisms is self-sustaining and maintains its parts as themselves, all the
while without dissolving their identity within the whole process, as the
identity of the whole determines itself internally and thereby maintains the
identity of its parts. The earth itself, however, is equally embedded in a
tension between its crystalline and liquid parts, which are maintained as
themselves without engaging in an all-consuming chemical process. These
elements are both causes and effects within this “lifeless” organic process
(Enc. §, A/MM : –) and they lead to a self-stabilizing dynamic
that I discuss later. The earth is internally differentiated, like an organism; but
like a mechanism, it is indifferent to this internal differentiation.
Importantly, mechanical and chemical processes fail to constitute the
natural past as a proper history, as their temporal order can be inverted.
When taken as parts of the whole system of the earth, geological processes
manifest order in their specific way of organizing and thereby fill out space
temporally: Erosion, sedimentation, or the growth of crystals are tied to
the direction of the arrow of time in the same way as biological growth is
unidirectional in time. Mechanism and chemism are bidirectional or time-
symmetric, whereas organic self-determination is not.
Stefan Büttner argues that Hegel does not consider the cadaver to be fully opposed to life but rather
as a form of negation that still contains life in form of an externality, as the image of life or “life-
environment” (Büttner , –). Thereby, however, Büttner conflates life and organism. Cf.
also Rühling .
Hegel cites Berthollet, who discovered the reversibility of chemical processes, multiple times in the
Encyclopaedia.
Hegel on the Terrestrial Organism
Chemical elements bring forth their own shapes in time and by means
of mechanical processes, and it is one of the tasks of geology to identify and
understand this process in its temporal and environmental complexity. For
example, water and air, formerly only discussed as elements, become oceans
and the atmosphere. They serve to internally differentiate the earth in
mutually interacting “spheres,” and gain significance and meaning as parts
of a habitable world. Furthermore, they are also connected by the circula-
tion of water in the global water cycle (see Enc. §A/MM : –).
Such a global superstructure creates a nexus of interacting principles and
determinations in which clouds are connected to springs, rivers connected to
oceans, and ice shelves to global temperature regulation. The motion of
tectonic plates would be another such superstructure that connects the
different strata with sedimentation processes, mountains to tunnels, etc.
In such a dynamic yet globally self-stabilizing system, formations are created
whose actuality is resting in themselves yet dynamically interacting with
other parts in a more complex system, such as rivers or volcanoes. The
totality of the earth determines its parts, but the interaction of the parts
shapes the appearance of the totality without determining it. In such a
process of internal differentiation, ever more concrete and subtle structures
and formations emerge in their respective places and further refine this
process of determination through differentiation.
These structures, spheres, and structures are not the results of an
independent process that is external to them – this would be to construe
them as consequences of mere mechanism. Rather, both structure or shape
as products and structuring or shaping as processes are necessary parts of a
more comprehensive process of determination by means of which geological
particularity is created: Agglomerations of material substances are developed
as layers and strata that pervade the body of the earth and, on the surface,
take form as continents and oceans, mountains, plains, and valleys, as
sediment and rocks. Chemical composition serves as ground for the deter-
mination of the process of taking shape in an increasingly subtle and refined
way. We can understand this by analogy with mathematics: A specific
formula can be used to create fractals of ever-increasing subtlety by means
of repeating structures. In Hegel’s geology, the processes of combination and
separation of chemical elements are driven by their own framework of
sympathies and antagonisms, but the laws of mechanical physics determine
their spatial motions. Together, both create the terrestrial globe with an ever-
increasing complexity on the surface. In contrast to mechanical
This point is inspired by Ferrini , .
determination, this process is largely contingent and in all its details not fully
comprehensible (see Enc. §A/MM : ).
The spatial differentiation of the geological process thus happens along
two axes of determination: One axis moves from the inside, the planetary
core, to the outside, the surface. Here, mechanism is determined by
chemistry: The mechanical mass-point is filling out space by means of
the aggregation chemical elements that are organized by virtue of gravity as
a fundamental power, as well as in accordance with their own framework
of chemical alignments and oppositions. The other axis consists in the
determination of chemistry by mechanism. The different agglomerations
of chemical substances interact mechanically with each other, forming
heavier and more uniform strata of metal and rock to lighter and more
fine-grained layers of chalk and limestone. Here, the chemical powers of
conjunction and separation are fundamental but organized and driven by
mechanical forces which bring the physically separated elements into
contact with each other, whereby the elemental bodies externally deter-
mine one another. Both dynamical developments of determinations give
rise to the structures we witness in the planet, which exist in a gradation of
a simple and roughly uniform core to an increasingly subtle arrangement
of layers and ever more fine-grained formations.
In this process of spatio-temporal determinations, individual structures
emerge that provide a distinct relation to abstract and concrete determin-
ations. The structures thus created rely on both in different ways: Silver
veins, rivers, and cumulus nimbus clouds are all internally dependent on
their respective universals, such as silver, liquid water, and evaporated
water. Through external determination, concrete formations, spatial rela-
tions, and numerical distinctness become manifest. While Hegel had
already discussed the material structure and conditions of different shapes
in Enc. §/MM : – (Die Gestalt), he had only done so as
manifestations of chemical elements. A crystal, for example, has its form
due to its internal determination. In his discussion of geology, he conceives
the relational interplay of external and internal determinations, thereby
placing the conceptual emphasis on the way they are moments of a whole,
building on each other as if they were to create an ordered whole.
(I discuss this apparent teleology later.)
The individual form that mediates the mere instantiation of chemical
elements with the functional shape of organisms, their Gestalt, is different
from the geometrical shape involved in mechanical explanations, as it
The teleology at stake here seems to be entirely formal.
Hegel on the Terrestrial Organism
mediately results from the reciprocal determination of a body through both
internal and external factors. Mechanical shapes are causally connected to
their internal composition, and vice versa. By means of the generation of
shapes or structures that correspond to the object’s internal composition
and external determination, the immediate determination that takes place
qua the chemical elements is sublated into a more complex and concrete
form of context-dependent determination that requires us to conceive of it
as part of a totality, which however has not yet fully asserted itself as an
individual unity. These forms of the earth’s subsystems are entirely deter-
mined by external and internal causes that are integrated into the external
process of geological determination. Hence, they are still lacking self-
subsistence and self-containment that are characteristic for and unique to
living organisms.
In this process of creating and sustaining isolated and “particularized”
structures and formations, internal and external determinations are glob-
ally conjoined. The autopoietic generation of the global identity, in which
the earth as a specific whole is constituted from an inner vantage point,
satisfies the more basic formal notion of life, namely liveliness
(Lebendigkeit, Enc. §/MM : ), but only insofar as it is conceived
of as a totality. This totality reflects back on itself: in a first moment,
the earth was conceived as a mere cosmic body, that is, as a product of
causal processes. Now it proves itself to be an individuality that acts on
itself in an autopoietic way. This tendency for self-determination by means
of creating structures in accordance to both internal and external
factors is then passed on from the earth as a totality to its particular
subsystems, such as the oceans, the atmosphere, the mountains (see Enc.
§A/MM : –).
It is largely due to such considerations that Hegel conceives of terrestrial
matter, which is defined by the different contrasting elements and prin-
ciples that shape the earth as an organism, as the “possibility of life” (Enc.
§/MM : ). Terrestrial matter cannot be juxtaposed to the organ-
isms that inhabit the earth, as this would make the emergence and explan-
ation of life impossible. Consequently, a primitive form of “proto-life”
must be ascribed to the terrestrial organism, which is the previously
mentioned formal liveliness that emerges from this particular self-
organization. It is not the case that an inorganic earth gives rise to life, as
this would entail the conception of creating life where none was before,
thereby positing an irreconcilable opposition between both. The inanimate
earth is rather the ground for life, and ground and consequence cannot be
fully juxtaposed to each other.
The terrestrial organism cannot fully sublate its own mechanical or
chemical nature into its identity. The various chemical elements and parts
out of which the earth is composed remain independent and irreducible.
Consequently, the organic body always stands on the precipice of
returning to its chemical composition and becoming a mere thing (a
corpse) defined by its chemical composition, which happens at the
moment of death. It is the process of life that dissolves this tension between
being a self-sustaining unity on the one hand and a merely complicated
aggregate of chemical compounds on the other, but it does so only for our
(conceptual) understanding of life and not for the organic process of living.
Geological life, itself an abstract totality that integrates a tension between
unity and aggregate or compound into itself, remains purely speculative
(see Enc. §A/MM : –). Life will only come to itself fully as an
idea (or as spirit). The other three realms (Reiche) of life, the mineral realm,
the vegetative realm, and the animal realm, are all incomplete “pathways”
to such a fully realized life of spirit (Enc. §A/MM : ). In this
regard, Hegel’s account of geology enables us to push these incomplete
“pathways” further back into his analysis, with geology providing the
bridge between mechanical physics, chemistry, and organic physics, that
is, between the inorganic and the organic. Through the processes of
growth, change, and the spatio-temporal situation of mechanico-chemical
interaction described earlier, geological formations increasingly resemble
organic matter. For example, mountains lose some of their mineralogical
qualities, such as their uniform, internally determined structure, as they
break through the surface of earth. They start to mechanically interact with
their surroundings, all the while still being governed by their internal
chemical dispositions, and thereby gain a “particularized” shape or struc-
ture and thus arrive at the realm of basic individual entities, that is,
mountains “border” on the realm of vegetable entities.
The terrestrial organism is the entirety of these processes that fill out
space by constituting structures and particularizations appropriate to the
underlying material. These processes generate different geological entities,
including the earth’s subsystems, such as the atmosphere, the lithosphere,
and the hydrosphere, but also the different types of sediments, strata,
veins, and rocks. Hegel lends some room to the empirical geological
discussions of his time, but he reframes them as the abstract principles
However, individual life needs to be understood as sufficiently independent, as one crucial feature
of organisms is that they can ignore some environmental factors in favor of others, and they can
actively act back on the environment.
Hegel on the Terrestrial Organism
that govern the emergence of particularized formations and structures. The
narrative that he reconstructs on basis of geology can be sketched like this.
Geological substances are treated as principles which interact and produce
a variety of spatio-temporally ordered formations and structures. The
simplest of these processes is the interaction of the principle of granite
with that of limestone. Granite can be chemically instantiated as pebble,
quartz, mica, or feldspar, each with their own distinct dispositional qual-
ities (brittle, flammable, etc.; see Enc. §A/MM : –). It is the
constitutive material for the surface of the earth, as it contains the basis of
metals and crystals, each of which can develop their own shapes. Granite
itself is shapeless, but in interaction with other minerals it creates moun-
tains, tunnels, strata, seams (Flöze), more rocks and pebbles, and finally
more shapeless mixtures such as sand or clay. These formations and
mixtures generate other forms and structures, such as veins, grains, cores,
or germs (Keime). Furthermore, limestone is originally and internally
connected (vergesellschaftet) with granite. It also is crystalline, which means
that it repeats its own structural shape throughout all sizes (see Enc. §§,
A/MM : –). It also contains a sequence of potential trans-
formations, ranging from shapeless marble through shell formations to
pebbles, depending on the interaction with other minerals. Mixed with
granite, limestone forms mountains and valley, but when left to itself,
it takes shapes that appear as if they belong to animals: As opposed to
the “vegetable-like” (vegetabilische) peat, it “is the calcareousness [die
Kalkformation] which in its ultimate formations develops into the osseous
substance of the animal” (Enc. §A/MM : /Enc. P : ). Simple
forms emerge that border on animal shapes, such as primitive fossils whose
shapes look as if they were the results of living organisms. Hegel points out
that these emerging structures may look like mussels or fossilized wood but
should not be understood as residuals from an ancient animal realm (see
Enc. §A/MM : ). They already have the basic shapes of life but
are lacking the determinative boundary (Grenze) that separates the organ-
ism from its environment. These structures are the ultimate form of self-
determination of inorganic matter before it sublates itself into organic
life properly speaking. The terrestrial organism thus constitutes a
Hegel occasionally conflates fossils with crystals, e.g., Enc. §/MM : –.
Karen Ng suggests that the organism is defined by the twofold directedness of the concept, which
manifests itself as the outwardly directed and inwardly redirected process of self-production of the
organism as an individual and as a member of a species (see Ng , –; cf. also Ferrini
a). For this, the individual organism has had to establish some boundaries that separates it from
the environment.
“proto-form” of life, namely a crystalline, inanimate organism. It contains
the necessary structural determinations for life but not the individuality
needed to constitute a minimum of subjectivity that is necessary for life.
The earth entails a self-determining process that should be understood as
a totality, internally differentiated by means of self-differentiation and self-
formation. This duplicity will mediate between our understanding of – to
put this in modern terms – physical and chemical determinations on
the one hand and biological determinations on the other, between dead
matter and living beings. This is why geology does, in fact, play a key role
in Hegel’s philosophy of nature.
. The Earth as “Ground and Soil of Life”
The twofold duplicity of internal and external determinations, as well as
that of abstract and concrete determinations, manifests a self-stabilizing
structure. Yet subjectivity is only manifest here as a general process. It fails
to become an individual process and it only acquires its formal particularity
in vegetable life as the plant situates itself in opposition to its external
surroundings. However, it would be no exaggeration to call this process of
emerging subjectivity an inanimate environment, as it contains a type of
order that is more than just a set of physico-chemical relations. The earth
manifests a unique way of “filling out” space and time, even though it is
constituted on the basis of physical and chemical relations. It also already
contains enough individual externalities that subjectivity can relate itself to
in a meaningful way, namely for the sake of maintaining and furthering
life. The earth then becomes the name for an individual that is uniquely
different from all other possible earth-sized physical bodies of the overall
same chemical composition that may exist somewhere else in the universe
inasmuch as it contains structures that define its general (proto-)
subjectivity. This subjectivity or liveliness expands through space by taking
on the form of different terrestrial subsystems, creating locations and
arrangements of particular unities and identities.
Through its self-stabilizing structure, it resembles a functional arrange-
ment of parts and hence manifests a formal teleology. The earth is not
properly alive, but it contains a formal liveliness that is not yet fully
subjective, and only to a very “puny” degree (Enc. §A/MM : ).
This notion of rudimentary liveliness mirrors Kant’s notion of
purposiveness: It is a concept of formal as if relations that are not defined
by an immanent subjectivity or end, but the actuality thereof entails the
formal structure of directedness all the same. The earth’s parts thus are
Hegel on the Terrestrial Organism
conceived to be organs of a sort. This allows us to understand the self-
regulating and interlocking processes of the different systems (geosphere,
hydrosphere, etc.) in terms that do them justice, namely as self-regulating,
self-stabilizing processes:
Consequently, the origin of inexhaustible springs ought not to be explained
in a mechanical and completely superficial way by means of percolation;
volcanoes and thermal springs form another aspect, which is equally
unamenable to this interpretation. Just as springs are the lungs and secre-
tory glands by which the Earth transpires, so volcanoes are its liver, in that
they represent the spontaneous generation of heat within it. [. . .] Like
Naiads, the genuine springs which engender rivers such as the Ganges,
the Rhone and the Rhine, have an inner life, endeavour, and activity. The
Earth excretes the abstractness of its fresh water, and in these outpourings
this water hurries towards its concrete animation, which is the sea. (Enc.
§A/MM : /Enc. P : )
This is not merely metaphorical language. The conceptual lens provided
by the notion of purposiveness, which entails the formal structure of
directedness, captures something true about the earth that would otherwise
fail to be adequately conceptualized. As the global whole structures and
determines its parts and subsystems, these subsystems come to have their
own place in that whole, that is, they exist as if they were assigned a place.
The dynamical determination of the parts within the whole and in accord-
ance with principles ensures that the shape of things is not fully contingent:
Rivers, clouds, beaches, etc. give rise to their particular shapes in accordance to
their places within the earth’s subsystems. This dialectic of whole and parts
present in the earth is nothing but the result of the earth being a totality:
We cannot conceive of the earth’s subsystems without situating them in
relation to the totality. The atmosphere must exist on the outside of the
lithosphere; the hydrosphere must exist on the surface; and it must be
connected to internal, subterranean springs and superficial rivers, or else the
circulation of water would be impossible. The earth’s diverging subsystems are
both internally determined and externally situated within a greater whole, in
the same way as the organs of a living body. Everything is in its place.
Within this process of ever-increasing concretion, the abstract notion of
life manifests itself in “punctual and ephemeral” moments of liveliness
(Enc. §/MM : ). As such, pseudo-individual structures emerge
“Land und insbesondere das Meer, so als reale Möglichkeit des Lebens, schlägt unendlich auf jedem
Punkte in punktuelle und vorübergehende Lebendigkeit aus; – Flechten, Infusorien, unermeßliche
Mengen phosphoreszierender Lebenspunkte im Meere” (Enc. §A/MM : ).
that are not quite yet organisms to the extent that they still lack the internal
structure of functionality and the capacity for reproduction requisite for
something to be a full-fledged organism (generatio univoca, see Enc. §/
MM : ). They do constitute the subjective-objective-unity that makes
up the foundation of life, even if they are, as merely punctual instantiations
of subjectivity, lacking the unity of a shape that gives rise to the physical
appearance of individuality, that is, the Gestalt displayed by organisms.
The latter are both dependent on and independent from their environ-
ment insofar as they require it for sustenance, and yet they have a certain
independence vis-à-vis it, which is seen in how they can favor certain
aspects of it over others and actively react to their environment.
Now I sketch how Hegel’s notion of terrestrial organism provides a
basic notion of environment that builds on the general form of liveliness
outlined earlier. Hegel is not developing a notion of environment as an
Umwelt as it was introduced by Jakob von Uexküll, who defined it as the
phenomenally given surroundings of an organism that are broken down
into different “carriers of significance” (Merkmalsträger), such as chemical
signals that point toward nutrition, or sensory effects that indicate changes
of temperatures. Such an environment makes it possible for an organism to
orient itself, as simple sensory impulses can direct an organism toward the
means of survival and away from possible dangers. The organism’s phe-
nomenal experience of its surroundings can only take on significance – can
only become an environment in this sense of the word – once the organism
is on the scene. It adds another layer of meaning to the different shapes and
forms that we find on the earth, and geology (in Hegel’s broad understand-
ing of the field) alone cannot tell us what this additional layer of meaning
is. The modern notion of environment as Umwelt is conceived from the
vantage point of organic life and Hegel might accuse Uexküll of putting
the cart before the horse: All conceptions of organic life always already
presuppose a conception of the earth as the ordered and dynamic totality
of all preconditions of organic life. Without the perspective of life, the
carriers of significance are nothing but carriers of possible significance at
best. This is still an advancement over the merely mechanic and chemical
determinations of inanimate matter: By virtue of being part of an intern-
ally determinate whole, geological entities, formations, and structures are
such that they lend themselves to be such carriers of significance. They
do so by relating both chemical elements and physical forces to their
respective places. This spatio-temporal and causal order constitutes a
formal teleology that facilitates the rise of organic purposiveness. Let me
elaborate this point.
Hegel on the Terrestrial Organism
An organism is determined by a twofold mereological relation. It is an
organized and self-contained whole, yet it also is a part of an environment
to which it relates itself and within which it situates itself. The functional
alignment of the parts of the organic body thus serves a twofold purpose:
When endowed with life, an organ’s function is to facilitate the survival
and procreation of the individual animal, and it has to do so in a functional
relation to an environment. For example, a beak is made for eating by
means of picking berries; and picking berries is a means for survival.
In contrast, a mechanical watch is made for displaying the time, but it
has no need for an open-ended, functional, reactive interaction with the
environment. However, as such a notion of an organism depends on the
notion of an environment, the same holds vice versa: The notion of an
environment entails the notion of organic life. The notions of organic life
and of an environment thus need to be developed alongside each other.
From our vantage point as living beings, the process of the earth formation
has concluded. The earth still contains meaningful traces of this process;
we can “read” its history from its stones. The distant past has crystallized
and has now come to “a state of quiescence” (“Die Geschichte ist früher in
die Erde gefallen, jetzt aber ist sie zur Ruhe gekommen,” Enc. §A/MM
: ). This is a condition of possibility for the emergence of self-
sustained organisms, as these can constitute individuality by means of a
certain dependence–independence relation to and from the surroundings,
which are not mutually dependent on the organism.
As sketched earlier, the subsystems of the earth act as organs and, by
virtue of being self-stabilizing parts of an internally determined whole,
have unique spatio-temporal determinations to them. An emerging struc-
ture such as a mountain, a river, or a beach is conceived as a geological
activity of tectonic motion, water circulation, or erosion, such that the
form passes over into the product and is sublated therein – a structure or
formation emerges. The chemical process is herein dispersed over bodies
that have so far only been determined by their mechanical properties, and
their appearance is stabilized in time. Thus, the geological entities “fill out”
space in such a way that they allow for the conception of bodies that stand
in an external relation by means of mechanical arrangements (e.g., one
geological stratum pushing at a specific angle at another stratum), while
also being conceived in a framework of internal identities, such as chemical
elements, compositions, or materials. A river is not only a body of water in
a specific shape but it carries minerals, regulates heat, leads to
For a more detailed account of this relation, see Ferrini a.
condensation, facilitates sedimentation, and brings forth different types of
mixtures and compositions. This functional role within subsystems can be
exploited for the purposes of living beings. The surface of the earth is
conceived as a complex topography of mutually determining principles
which give rise to dynamic but largely self-stabilizing forms and forma-
tions, all of which are interconnected. Hereby, the earth is determined as
“ground and soil” wherein ephemeral, punctual moments of liveliness and
proto-subjectivity arise. Thanks to this, soil and water have become
universally “fertile” (e.g., Enc. §A/MM : ) in the sense that they
lend themselves to stable and reliable use through organic beings.
A riverbed is fertile not only because it manifests a complex relation
between different types of rocks and sediment, water, and air but also
because it manifests a dynamic yet sufficiently stable structure that separ-
ates itself from other parts of the earth, yet it relates itself to them. Life
would not be possible if rocks, water, and air would be kept fully separated
and determined only internally or externally. However, the qualities that
define the earth are not yet constitutive as an environment, as they have no
entity they are represented to as environment.
. Conclusion
In this chapter, I have argued that geology matters to Hegel’s grand philoso-
phy of nature not as a view into the earth’s past but as our understanding
of how chemical elements interact mechanically, expanding thus in space
and time and creating an order in which specific forms and structures
are situated at their respective places. The emergence of forms mediates
between two forms of individuation and its type–token relation, namely
the externality of the chemical element as such against any individual
chemical object and the reciprocal dependency of species and individual
animals or plants. Then, the emergence of an order in which specific
structures are spatio-temporally situated with respect to their internal com-
position and external causal determination creates a formal teleology that
mediates inanimate, causally determined matter with organic purposiveness.
As such, the earth comes to be understood as the very ground and soil of life.
The importance of the earth as a geological totality for Hegel is best
understood from the vantage point of living beings. That is, the earth exists
as an environment for living organisms, and since living organisms are
dependent on their environment, it precedes them; but this entails that
abstracting living beings from the earth is artificial and makes it incompre-
hensible as an environment in the sense of Umwelt. Hence, we can see why
Hegel on the Terrestrial Organism
geological knowledge plays a pivotal role in the Encyclopaedia, despite
Hegel’s apparent dismissal of geology. There is a necessity to further the
conceptual development of the philosophy of nature from the terrestrial
organism to the notion of vegetable and animal organism and, beyond
that, to the subject. When individual life finally emerges on the earth, it
finds its surroundings as if they are prepared to be the conditions of life.
From the viewpoint of the terrestrial organism, however, it is as if nature
strives to produce spirit by means of life. But it needs an actual individual
organism to which these forms and structures can become transparent.
I would like to thank Joseph Carew for helping me out with the subtleties of the English language,
and extend my gratitude to him, Marina Bykova, and the members of Christian Martin’s
colloquium in Heidelberg in for their valuable comments.
Human Beings as the “Perfect Animals”
Hegel on the Difference between Animal Life
and Human Spirit
Nicolás García Mills
The topic of this chapter is the difference between animal life and human
spirit, as Hegel construes it in the final section of his Philosophy of Nature,
“The Genus Process.” My main question in approaching this topic and
this stretch of text is: In what way are nonhuman animal organisms
“inadequate” or “imperfect” and in what way, correspondingly, are human
beings the “perfect” animal, as he tells us? In that final section of the text,
Hegel makes the mysterious claim that nonhuman animal organisms “do
not accord with the genus [Gattung] immanent in [them]” and that this
failure to accord with its genus makes for an “inadequacy
[Unangemessenheit]” and even a “feeling of defect [Mangel]” on the part
of the individual animal (Enc. §). And the ensuing discussion makes
it clear that human beings, which he describes on several occasions as the
“perfect animal [das vollkommene Tier]” or even the “perfect living organ-
ism [der vollkommene Organismus]” (Enc. §§A, & A), are
supposed to somehow overcome the “inadequacy” or “defect” that afflicts
mere animals. My principal objective in this chapter is to clarify the precise
sense in which nonhuman animal organisms are “inadequate” (in that they
fail to correspond to their genus concept) and the way in which human
beings allegedly overcome this “inadequacy” and might thus be character-
ized as the “perfect animals.”
There are at least two reasons that make focusing on the end of the
Philosophy of Nature and the question I have just outlined worthwhile.
One is that doing so should help us understand the extent to which
freedom qua self-determination is (and is not) already present in nature,
in particular, in the behavior of nonhuman animals. The second reason
that makes focusing on the end of the Philosophy of Nature and our
question worth our while is that doing so should also help us to better
understand the difference between nature (specifically animal nature) and
spirit, as Hegel conceives them. Commentators interested in the difference
between animal life and human spirit have tended to focus in recent years
The Difference between Animal Life and Human Spirit
on Hegel’s Anthropology. This focus on the Anthropology is well
motivated, of course, since the official program of that text is precisely
to track the transition from the animal soul to human consciousness.
By comparison, however, the end of the Philosophy of Nature has been
relatively neglected. This neglect is understandable, to some extent.
As we will see, Hegel’s claims in the final pages of the Philosophy of
Nature are extremely cryptic, even by his stylistic standards. But the
neglect is also unfortunate. The systematic placement of Hegel’s discus-
sion of animal life and human spirit in “The Genus Process,” at the point
of transition from nature to spirit, should alone suffice to establish
the importance of that stretch of text, at least in Hegel’s own mind.
With this chapter, I hope to contribute to remedying the exegetical
situation in which we find ourselves vis-à-vis the final paragraphs of
the Philosophy of Nature.
In attempting to elucidate the sense in which nonhuman
animals’ relation to their genus makes for an “inadequacy” or “imper-
fection,” I am concerning myself with the final rung of the scala naturae
or hierarchy that Hegel articulates in his Philosophy of Nature.
Accordingly, I begin in Section . by briefly describing what I take
to be Hegel’s project in the Philosophy of Nature as a whole, and the
“Organics” in particular, of articulating such a hierarchy, after which
I summarize his general, threefold analysis of the concept of life.
Against this background, I then turn my attention in Section . to
that final rung and take a first pass at answering my main question
about animals’ “inadequacy” and human beings’ “perfection.” Finally,
in Section ., I raise and attempt to respond to several worries
to which my discussion of Hegel on the difference between animal
life and human spirit gives rise.
. The Philosophy of Nature and the “Organics”
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature is rich with detailed discussions of particular
scientific theories as well as the natural phenomena that those theories
study (from Newtonian mechanics to meteorology, geology, botany, or
physiology). Unfortunately, when it comes to describing the overall topic
See e.g., Lumsden , Nuzzo , Testa , and Novakovic a.
í
and aim of the Philosophy of Nature itself, Hegel is considerably terser.
In one of the passages in which Hegel does take up such methodological
issues, in the introductory paragraphs to the Philosophy of Nature, he tells
us that nature consists of a “system of stages [System von Stufen]” (Enc.
§). The Philosophy of Nature, I propose, is accordingly meant to
track the conceptual underpinnings or the series of natural forms that
underlie the phenomena that make up each of the “stages” in question.
But in what sense is each point within the “system of stages” supposed to
represent the “truth” of its immediate predecessor, as Hegel also tells us?
Otherwise put, how is the series of natural forms that the Philosophy of
Nature tracks supposed to form a hierarchy or ordered series, a scala
naturae, as I have already suggested, such that the later members of that
series are somehow “higher” than their earlier counterparts?
Hegel gives us a clue to the answer to the question I have just posed
when he suggests that the Philosophy of Nature as a whole can be regarded
as a process whereby “externality” is gradually overcome. In the introduc-
tory paragraphs to both the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of
Spirit, Hegel tells us that the “determinacy [Bestimmtheit]” that charac-
terizes nature as such is “externality [Äußerlichkeit]” (see especially Enc.
§ and Enc. §A). And in the recapitulation of his treatment of
nature that we find at the outset of the Philosophy of Spirit, Hegel
explicitly describes the aim of the Philosophy of Nature as the “overcom-
ing of externality [Überwindung der Äußerlichkeit]” (Enc. §A).
In that same context, he characterizes nature qua realm of externality
as follows:
A lengthier, more detailed counterpart to the story I go on to briefly summarize would go by way of a
discussion of the three “attitudes” towards nature with which Hegel opens the Introduction to the
Philosophy of Nature. For an excellent, recent treatment of this material, see Martin .
There is a split within the literature on Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature between those commentators
who maintain that Hegel is in the business of providing a pure or a priori deduction of those natural
forms and the commentators who deny this interpretive claim (either because they take Hegel to be
more modestly providing an a posteriori reconstruction and systematization of the results of the
natural sciences or because they take the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori itself to
be one that Hegel calls into question). Within the first camp are Stone , Houlgate ,
chapter , Martin and . Burbidge , Rand and , Pinkard and ,
chapter are representatives of the second camp. Fortunately for my purposes in this chapter, I do
not need to attempt to settle the interpretive dispute between these camps here.
Hegel elaborates on this theme in Enc. §A: “The philosophy of nature teaches us how nature
sublates its externality by stages, how matter already refutes the independence of the individual, of
the many, by gravity, and how this refutation begun by gravity, and still more by simple, indivisible
light, is completed by animal life, by the sentient creature, since this reveals to us the omnipresence of
the one soul at every point of its bodiliness, and so the sublatedness [Aufgehobensein] of the
asunderness [Außereinander] of matter.”
The Difference between Animal Life and Human Spirit
We know that what is natural is spatial and temporal, that in nature this
stands next to that, this follows after that, in short, that everything natural is
mutually external ad infinitum [alles Natürliche ins Unendliche außereinander
ist]; further, that matter . . . holds itself asunder [sich auseinanderhält] against
its own self, divides itself into concrete points, into material atoms, of which
it is composed. The differences into which the concept of nature unfolds are
more or less mutually independent existences [Existenzen]. (Enc. §A)
As the passage about the externality of nature that I have just quoted has it,
nature, in particular merely material or mechanical nature, is “external” to the
extent that it is made up of material parts whose behavior is determined by
their interactions with other “independent existences.” Simplifying a much
longer story, we might say that the “externality” of nature is correspondingly
overcome to the extent that the behavior of natural phenomena is explained
not by any action from without but by appeal to the universal or concept
under which those phenomena fall. According to this criterion, animal
organisms represent the highest point that nature can achieve, that is to
say, the final rung of the natural hierarchy or ladder. For unlike the behavior
of merely material nature, animal organisms’ vital processes are guided
by ends that are their own or issue from their genus concept. In other words,
nonhuman animals’ behavior is explained by the concept or universal under
which those animals fall to a greater extent than is the case for phenomena
belonging to the lower “stages” of nature. As Hegel reportedly states: “It is
only in life that we meet with . . . the counter to externality” (Enc. §A).
Nonetheless, even an individual animal organism, Hegel tells us, is “inad-
equate” in that it “does not accord with the genus immanent in it” (Enc.
§). That animal life does not completely overcome the externality of
nature, or that the behavior of nonhuman animal organisms is not com-
pletely explained by the genus concept under which those organisms fall, as
I have also put it, is evident from Hegel’s remark that life is “at the mercy
of the unreason [Unvernunft] of externality” (Enc. §R) or from his
reported claim that “in animal life the concept does not attain to an actuality
[Wirklichkeit] resembling its soulful essence, to the complete overcoming of
the externality and finitude of its reality [Dasein]” (Enc. §A).
See again §A as well, where we read that “in the animal body the complete untruth of
asenderness [Außereinander] is exposed.”
I take Stone (, –) to be summarizing the characterization of the Philosophy of Nature that
I have just sketched when she writes: “Hegel thus regards nature as a rationally organized realm in
which matter gradually becomes shaped and organized by ‘the concept’, in the process assuming
organic form. In that nature exhibits this progression towards organism, all natural forms
approximate to organic status to varying degrees (down to a vanishingly low degree in
mechanism).”
í
Before taking up the issue of nonhuman animals’ “inadequacy” and human
beings’ “perfection” in the following sections, I summarize Hegel’s threefold
analysis of the concept of life, which will serve as the background for our
subsequent discussion. Briefly, animal organisms, for Hegel, are complex causal
systems whose parts and whole are reciprocally determined. In particular,
each, parts and whole, is simultaneously cause and effect. As Hegel supposedly
puts it: “As its own product . . . animal life is end and means simultaneously”
(Enc. §A). The individual parts of an animal organism are causally
dependent on other individual parts, and ultimately on the organism as a
whole, for their proper functioning. Animal life is thus a means to the proper
functioning of its parts. But animal life is also an end, as we have just seen
in Hegel’s quotation. The individual parts are also causally responsible for
the subsistence of the whole. By cleansing our blood, for example, our liver
causally contributes to the survival of the organism to which it belongs.
Hegel adds to this general characterization of animal organisms as
teleological systems by describing them in terms of three, more specific
processes or operations. The first, “shape process” or “formation process
[Gestaltungsprozess],” comprises the set of operations of the blood, nervous,
and other physiological systems, whereby the organism relates to its own
body parts without consideration of these parts’ interaction with the
organism’s external surroundings. From the point of view of this first
process, the organism “only relates to itself,” Hegel writes (Enc. §).
The second, “assimilation process,” comprises both the “theoretical” oper-
ations (sensations) and the “practical” operations (e.g., respiration or
nourishment), whereby the animal relates to its external surroundings.
In this second process, Hegel tells us, the organism “relates itself to its
other, its inorganic nature” (Enc. §). Finally, the third, “genus
process [Gattungsprozess],” consists in the production, by some members
of an animal species, of other individuals of the same kind or with the same
complex causal structure. This third process represents the “unity” of the
previous two, as Hegel notes in §, in that the animal “relat[es] to an
other which is itself a living individual, and thereby relat[es] itself to itself
in the other.” To bring together the different pieces of Hegel’s description
In his treatment of vegetable organisms, Hegel describes this “triad of processes” as follows: “[T]he
first . . . is the universal process, the process of the vegetable organism within itself, the relation of the
individual to itself . . . Secondly, the organism has its other, not within it, but outside of it, as a self-
subsistent other . . . That is the specialized process towards an external nature. The third is the
process of the genus, the union of the first two; the process of the individuals with themselves as
genus, the production and the preservation of the genus – the destruction of the individuals for the
preservation of the genus as production of another individual” (Enc. §A). Although this passage
The Difference between Animal Life and Human Spirit
of animal organisms in a brief statement: For Hegel, animals are causal
systems that are teleologically structured, both () internally and () exter-
nally or in their relations to the environment, so as to guarantee their own
survival or individual preservation as well as () their reproduction or the
preservation of the species.
. The “Perfect” and “Imperfect” Animal
The hierarchical structure of the Philosophy of Nature as a whole, whereby
“externality” is gradually overcome, also applies to the “Organics” and
Hegel’s discussion of animal life therein. It is on this final rung of his scala
naturae that I focus in the rest of the chapter. To make my task more
manageable, I divide our general question about the “inadequacy” of
nonhuman animal organisms and the “perfection” of human beings into
three more specific questions and take a piecemeal approach. The three
questions are: () In what way is any nonhuman animal “inadequate” or
“imperfect”? () In what way are human beings, in contrast to their
nonhuman counterparts, the “perfect animals”? And () in what way does
the human being qua “perfect animal” serve as a “standard” or “archetype”
by which the “lower grades” of animal life are to be judged? I take up each
of these questions in turn in this section. I then turn, in Section ., to
several objections and rejoinders to which my discussion gives rise.
() It is by now widely (even if not unanimously) accepted among Hegel
commentators that individual animal organisms and their parts are nor-
matively evaluable, for Hegel, in the light of some internal, species-specific
standards. A three-legged gazelle, for example, is defective or not as it
ought to be in this internal, species-specific way, in Hegel’s view. But
Hegel also seems to maintain, more bizarrely, that all animal organisms,
including healthy, well-functioning organisms such as four-legged gazelles,
are in some sense “inadequate” or “defective.” In a passage I have already
partially quoted, Hegel writes of nonhuman animal organisms that “the
individual as a singular does not accord with the genus immanent in it”
strikes me as comparatively clearer than others, similar statements of the “triad of processes” can be
found in the chapter on animal organisms (specifically, §§ & A). For discussions of the same
material in Hegel’s Logic, see §§– of the Encyclopaedia.
More specifically, as I understand Hegel, a three-legged gazelle is defective in that it lacks a feature
without which its species would not have been able to survive and reproduce to give rise to that
individual three-legged gazelle. For more on Hegel on the normative evaluability of animal
organisms and their parts, see Kreines and , chapter , Alznauer , and Garcia Mills
. For the view that animal organisms are not evaluable in the way I have just indicated,
according to Hegel, see Rand .
í
(Enc. §). He then turns to a discussion of copulation or the “sex-
relation [Geschlechtsverhältnis]” as a way to allegedly solve the problem
or “inadequacy” he has just diagnosed. But what exactly is problematic
about the way in which nonhuman animals bear their genus such that
they are thereby rendered “inadequate” or “defective,” as Hegel tells us?
And in what way is a discussion of copulation supposed to help with the
problem?
We find Hegel’s own, summary answer to the first of the questions
I have just posed in the Zusatz to §:
The contradiction [between individual animals and their genus] is . . . that
the universality of the genus, the identity of individuals, is distinct from
their particular individuality; the individual is only one of two [sexed
individuals], and does not exist as a unity [with its genus] but only as
a singular. (Enc. §A)
As I understand Hegel’s discussion at the outset of “The Genus Process,”
the problem that underlies the “inadequacy” charge is the following. Natures
or essences are not sexed – for example, the horse as such, the nature or
genus that Bucephalus, Babieca, and Phar Lap all share, is neither male nor
female. As we know at this point in the text from Hegel’s foregoing
discussion of animal life, a description of the genus horse, or any other
animal nature, includes a description of the ways in which that genus or life-
form reproduces, along with descriptions of the way in which it assimilates
its environment and the way in which it is internally structured. Bucephalus,
Babieca, and Phar Lap, however, precisely because they are sexed, cannot
satisfy the description that articulates the content of their genus. And the
point generalizes. It is supposed to be true of any individual, sexed animal
organism that bears some genus or other that it fails to meet at least some of
the conditions that make up the content of the genus in question, namely,
those conditions pertaining to reproduction. Insofar as it fails to meet at least
some such conditions, the individual animal organism “does not accord with
the genus immanent in it” and so is “inadequate” or “imperfect.”
The way of parsing nonhuman animals’ “inadequacy” that I have just
sketched anticipates the role that copulation is supposed to play in its
remedy. In reproducing via copulation, healthy, well-functioning, sexed
The passage from § that I have partially quoted reads in full: “[T]he individual as a singular does
not accord with the genus immanent in it, and yet at the same time is the identical self-relation of
the genus in one unity; it thus has the feeling of this defect. The genus is therefore present in the
individual as a straining against the inadequacy of its single actuality, as the urge to obtain its self-
feeling in the other of its genus, to integrate itself through union with it and through this mediation
to close the genus with itself and bring it into existence – copulation [Begattung].”
The Difference between Animal Life and Human Spirit
animal organisms realize their genus. Through the process of copulation,
male and female animal organisms come to jointly meet the conditions
that make up the content of their genus and which they cannot meet or
satisfy on their own. As Hegel reportedly puts it:
[B]oth sides [of the process] are organisms and belong to the genus, so that
they exist only as one sex [Geschlecht]. Their union is the disappearance of
the sexes into which the simple genus has developed . . . The process
consists in this, that [the individuals] become in reality what they are in
themselves, namely, one genus . . . (Enc. §A)
Of course, as Hegel also quickly notes, the appeal to copulation only raises a
further problem. Because the process of reproduction via copulation engen-
ders new, sexed individuals, “the sublation of the contradiction” (i.e., the
lack of correspondence between the individual animal and its genus) “is
always the beginning of a new [contradiction]” (Enc. §A).
Consequently, in the case of nonhuman animals, the genus exists only as
a “spurious infinite progress [schlechte Unendlichkeit des Progresses]” (Enc.
§). The progress is “infinite” because each point in that progress or series
“engenders a new [contradiction]” that calls for yet a further step to resolve
it. The progress is “spurious” (or “bad”) because no matter how far along in
the series we might be, the individual animal organism at that point in the
series fails to accord with its genus and is therefore “inadequate.”
() Hegel’s discussion of sexual difference and reproduction invites an
obvious objection, namely, that not all animals reproduce sexually or are
even sexed, which I address in Section .. For now, I turn to our second
question: How do human beings avoid the “inadequacy” that Hegel argues
afflicts other animals? In what sense, that is, are human beings the
“perfect” animals? To answer this question, we need to understand how
our genus, namely, spirit, and our relation to our genus, differs from that
of other animals. Toward the end of the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel
seems to speak interchangeably, and without elaborating, of spirit,
thought, and consciousness. Just a few paragraphs after his discussion
See for example Enc. §A, where whatever else Hegel is claiming, it seems clear he is identifying
spirit, consciousness, and thought: “[I]n locomotion the animal is completely liberated from gravity,
in sensation it feels itself, in voice it hears itself; in the genus-process the genus exists, but still only
as a singular. Now since this existence is still inadequate to the universality of the Idea, the Idea
must break out of this circle and by shattering this inadequate form make room for itself. Therefore,
instead of the third moment in the genus-process sinking back again into singularity, the other side,
death, is the sublating of the singular and therewith the emergence of the genus, the procession of
spirit; for the negation of natural being, i.e. of immediate singularity, is this, that the universal, the
genus, is posited and that, too, in the form of genus. In the individuality, this movement of the two
í
of the “genus process” at the end of the Philosophy of Nature, he is more
forthcoming. At the outset of the Philosophy of Spirit, he tells us that the
essence of spirit is freedom, which he describes as an ability to step back or
abstract from our sensations, needs, desires, from anything that belongs to
our biological makeup or organic life. He writes: “[F]ormally the essence of
spirit is freedom . . . In accordance with this formal determination, the
mind can abstract from everything external and from its own externality,
from its very life . . . This possibility is its intrinsic abstract universality”
(Enc. §).
Hegel’s claim about freedom in this passage in no way flies in the face of
his remarks about spirit toward the end of the Philosophy of Nature,
where he appears to equate spirit with the capacity for thought or
consciousness. For, as the description of freedom in terms of an ability
to “abstract from everything external” or natural suggests, freedom has as a
necessary condition or otherwise includes thought, understood precisely
as a capacity for a certain kind of abstraction or reflection. Because our
relation to the genus, life-form, or universal that we bear is mediated by
thought and so reflection, Hegel adds, that universal can become an object
for us. As he puts it in the course of his discussion of copulation: Its genus
or “its concrete universality never becomes for [the animal] a theoretical
object of intuition: else it would become thought, consciousness” (Enc.
§A). Moreover, Hegel maintains that our making the genus or the
universal that we bear an “object of intuition” is somehow connected to
the way in which that genus is realized. To put this latter point somewhat
more precisely: The fact that we are free creatures capable of treating our
genus as an “object of intuition” has the consequence, for Hegel, that our
existence as free creatures is in part a function of our taking or knowing
ourselves to be free. In other words, human, spirited creatures make
themselves what they are or give themselves an existence as free beings
on the basis of their knowledge that they are essentially or by nature free.
Hegel is perhaps at his most perspicuous on this point in his Lectures on the
Philosophy of History, where he is reported as saying: “Spirit knows itself: it
is the judging of its own nature, and at the same time it is the activity of
sides is the process which sublates itself and whose result is consciousness, unity, the unity in and for
itself of both, as self, not merely as genus in the inner concept of the singular. Herewith, the Idea
exists in the self-subsistent subject, for which, as organ of the concept, everything is ideal and fluid;
that is, the subject thinks, makes everything in space and time its own and in this way has
universality, i.e. its own self, present within it . . . Thought, as this universal which exists for itself,
is immortal being; mortal being is that in which the Idea, the universal, exists in an inadequate
form” (emphases modified).
The Difference between Animal Life and Human Spirit
coming to itself, of producing itself, making itself what it is in itself [an
sich]” (MM : ). None of the features I have just outlined – freedom,
thought, the ability to make oneself what one is essentially or by nature –
are supposed to hold of other, lower animals, in Hegel’s view.
Against the background of the foregoing discussion, we can now take a
pass at answering the question: How do human, spirited beings overcome
the “inadequacy” that Hegel believes afflicts nonhuman animals and the
way in which they relate to their genus? The content of a (nonhuman) life-
form or genus articulates the set of conditions that individuals bearing that
genus must satisfy in order to qualify as sound, nondefective members of
that life-form. But, it turns out, all sexed, individual animal organisms fail
to satisfy at least some of those conditions and are to that extent “inad-
equate.” The first thing to note in response to the question we are now
tackling is that sexual difference does not play the same role vis-à-vis our
genus, and the relation that we have to it, that it plays in the case of other
animals. The fact that we are male or female is (or should be) irrelevant
from the point of view of the exercise of the capacity for thought and the
realization of freedom. Thus, if sexual difference is supposed to be the
source of the “inadequacy” that Hegel identifies, then that “inadequacy”
should not be one that affects the way human, spirited beings relate to
their genus.
More generally, because the universal that we bear, and our relation to
it, is unlike that of any other, nonhuman animal, there can be no gap in
principle between that universal (i.e., freedom) and the way in which the
universal is realized in individual human beings. For Hegel, what we are as
Hegel puts the point much more tersely in discussing the transition from nature to spirit at the very
end of the Philosophy of Nature: “[B]ecause spirit . . . is itself its object, it is inseparable from its
reality [Realität]” (Enc. §A). See also Enc. P : –, where he elaborates: “[I]f we ask what
spirit is, the immediate answer is that it is [the] motion, [the] process of proceeding forth from, of
freeing itself from nature; this is the being, the substance of spirit itself . . . [I]t is of the very nature
of spirit to be this absolute liveliness, this process, to proceed forth from naturality, immediacy, to
sublate, to quit its naturality, and to come to itself, and to free itself, it being itself only as it comes
to itself as such a product of itself; its actuality being merely that it has made itself into what it is.”
Although nonhuman animals cannot grasp their genus concept or have the universal they bear as an
object of theoretical awareness, they do have some sort of sensory intimation of that genus,
according to Hegel. That sensory intimation is manifested in the different ways in which they
seek out and relate to members of their genus, on the one hand, and to the rest of their
environment, on the other. Animals, for example, breed with other members of their genus but
flee from or perhaps attack members of other species. As Hegel reportedly puts it at the outset of the
Philosophy of Spirit: “The animal only senses [empfindet] the genus, it is not aware of [weiß nicht von]
it; in the animal . . . the universal as such is not for the universal” (Enc. §A).
But see Hegel’s discussion of the division of social roles within the family in the Philosophy of Right
(§§–). On this issue, see also Stone , chapters and .
í
free beings is a function of what we take ourselves to be. As we have just
seen, as spirited creatures, we make ourselves or give ourselves an existence
on the basis of our knowledge of our essence or nature as free beings. And
to the extent that we make ourselves what we are essentially or by nature, it
is within our power, for us spirited creatures, to fully realize our genus.
Because spirit produces itself or gives itself its own reality, spirited creatures
are not inadequate in the ways that other, nonhuman animals are. That is
to say, individuals can accord in the human, spirited case with the univer-
sal or “genus immanent in them” (Enc. §).
That human beings can realize their concept fully or without remainder,
it is worth noting, implies neither (i) that I can enjoy whatever existence
I wish just by entertaining some self-conception or other, nor (ii) that our
essence, freedom, is compatible with any existence whatsoever or sets no
constraints on its realization. Realizing the freedom that we essentially
enjoy requires in part that we pursue some set of particular ends that we
might have as, for example, sculptors, philosophy teachers, or amateur
chess players. But it is clearly not sufficient to my having an existence as a
sculptor or philosophy teacher that I simply entertain the respective self-
conceptions. In order to enjoy such an existence, it is in addition necessary
that I act in ways that are confirmatory of those self-conceptions and that
I be socially recognized as having an existence corresponding to such self-
conceptions. That our essence as free beings places certain constraints on
its realization can be easily appreciated by noting that practical freedom is
incompatible in Hegel’s mind with an existence as a slave owner or a petty
thief, for example.
() Finally, and against the background of our discussion of the way in
which we relate to our essence as free beings, we can now ask: In what way
do human beings, understood as spirited or free beings in the manner
I have described, serve as a “standard” or “archetype” by which the “lower
grades” within Hegel’s hierarchy of life forms, and specifically animal life,
are to be judged and understood? In the Zusatz to the final paragraph of
the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel confesses that his aim in the foregoing
lectures has been to find in nature “only the mirror of ourselves,” that is,
“to see in nature a free reflex of spirit” (Enc. §A). Taking our lead
from this remark, we might try to give the following answer to our third
In the introductory paragraphs to the Philosophy of Nature, we read along similar lines: “The
thoughtful [denkende] consideration of nature must consider how nature is in its own self this
process of becoming spirit, of sublating its otherness [Anderssein]” (Enc. §A).
The Difference between Animal Life and Human Spirit
question: To the extent that we are capable of abstracting from our
sensations, desires, and drives and are thus free, we are, Hegel tells us,
“with ourselves,” by which he means that we are not determined by
anything “external,” outside ourselves, or “other.” Nonhuman animals
are certainly not capable of abstracting from everything “external” in the
same way. Unlike ours, their behavior is governed by their instincts or
drives. Nonetheless, we can understand (nonhuman) animals’ behavior as
approximating or “mirroring” humans’ ability to be “with themselves,” as
the passage I have just partially quoted suggests. Unlike inanimate or
merely material nature, animal organisms are not just governed by forces
outside themselves. Their behavior and vital processes are guided by ends
that are their own or issue from their genus concept. To the extent that
mere animals’ behavior is susceptible of explanation by appeal to such
genus-specific ends and not by appeal to outside forces, that behavior is
self-determined and animals are bei sich or “free.” Thus, understanding
ourselves as free or self-determining creatures supplies us with a standard in
the light of which we can understand and appraise the extent to which
nonhuman animals and other parts of nature are (and are not) also self-
determining.
Moreover, and in line with the general characterization of the project of
the Philosophy of Nature that I sketched in Section ., the lesser and
greater freedom enjoyed by nonhuman and human animals, respectively, is
supposed to track the extent to which each of their behaviors is explained
by their concept or universal, in Hegel’s mind. Our behavior is supposed
to be completely explained by that concept, namely, freedom, whereas the
behavior of other animals is only incompletely explained by their genus
concept, in ways that the discussion of their “inadequacy” has hopefully
helped to capture. That genus concept would be completely explanatory of
the behavior of its bearers only if the latter corresponded fully to that
concept, that is to say, only if they exhibited all the features that the
concept comprises. But, as we have seen, all nonhuman animal organisms,
even healthy, well-functioning specimens, fail to meet at least some of the
conditions that make up the content of the genus that they bear, according
to Hegel’s discussion in “The Genus Process.”
Hegel characterizes freedom as the absence of determination by an external “other” perhaps most
perspicuously in the context of his discussion of the will in the Introduction to the Philosophy of
Right. He there writes that an entity is free just in case it is “completely with itself [bei sich] because
it has reference to nothing other than itself, so that every relationship of dependence on something
other than itself is thereby eliminated” (PR §).
í
. Objections and Rejoinders
Having taken a first pass at answering our question about nonhuman
animals’ “inadequacy” and human beings’ “perfection,” I turn in this
section to several objections that my discussion so far invites. The first
objection targets Hegel’s treatment of sexual difference and reproduction;
the second objection asks about the role of biological death within Hegel’s
discussion of the “genus process”; the third objection has as its focus
the role that our animality is supposed to play in Hegel’s characterization
of human, spirited beings as the “perfect animal” or the “perfect living
organism”; the fourth and final objection concerns the connection
between Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature and his Anthropology. I address
each of these objections in turn.
The first and perhaps most obvious objection to which my interpretive
proposal in Section . gives rise concerns sexual difference and
reproduction. Hegel’s way of spelling out the “inadequacy” that afflicts
nonhuman animal organisms, as I interpreted it, turns on the claim that
animals are differentiated and reproduce sexually. That claim, however,
does not appear to be true of all or only animals. How, then, is Hegel
supposed to account for the fact that not all animals reproduce via
copulation or are even sexed? Hegel’s answer, I suggest, would be that
animal organisms that do not reproduce sexually are, to that extent, plant-
like. Plants and their parts appear to be both cause and effect, or “end and
means simultaneously,” as we saw Hegel say about animal life. The main
difference between plants and animals, on Hegel’s account, is that ()
plant parts can typically subsist apart from the whole to which they
originally belong and () the causal role of some part within the whole
can frequently be carried out by other parts, thereby guaranteeing the
continued existence of the whole. A branch, for example, might break off,
take root, and continue to subsist and grow apart from the organism to
which it belonged. And the original function of the branch in that whole
might in turn be taken over by any number of other parts. I take Hegel
Lindquist offers a reading of Hegel on the “genus process” that intends to sidestep his claims
about sexual reproduction (or reproduction generally, for that matter). Whatever the merits of
Lindquist’s interpretation as a reading of the chapter on life in the Logic (see § of the
Encyclopaedia, however), the passages I quote in Section . from § and the accompanying
Zusatz seem to me to be hard to square with such an interpretation.
For more on Hegel on plants see Matthias Haase’s manuscript “Vegetation and Individuation:
Hegel on the Life of Plants” and also Stone , chapter .
The Difference between Animal Life and Human Spirit
to be making these points, () and (), in his discussion of plant life when
he writes:
[] [T]he process whereby the vegetable subject differentiates itself into
distinct parts and sustains itself is one in which it . . . falls apart into a
number of individuals, the whole plant being rather the basis [Boden] for
these individuals than a subjective unity of members; the part – bud,
branch, and so on, is also the whole plant . . . [] [T]he difference of the
organic parts is merely a superficial metamorphosis, and the one part can
easily assume the function of the other. (Enc. §)
Hegel makes the first point, (), perhaps most clearly in the introduction
to the “Organics”: “[E]ach plant is only an infinite number of subjects, and
the connection whereby these subjects appear as a single subject is merely
superficial. The plant is unable to maintain its power over its members, for
they detach themselves from it and become independent” (Enc. §A).
For animals to reproduce nonsexually is for them to be plant-like, as I have
mentioned, in that () one of their parts is separated and continues to exist
apart from the whole to which it belonged. In the case of the nonsexual
reproduction of animals, that is, it is true of them as it is of plants that “the
part . . . is also the whole” or that, as Hegel also says, “[the parts] detach
themselves from [the whole] and become independent.”
Reproduction, in the case of plants as I have so far described them, is a matter of outgrowth.
A branch grows, “detaches itself” or breaks off, and takes root. In some plant species, the outgrowths
even share the same root system as the original host plant, a circumstance that in Hegel’s mind
speaks to the inseparability of the vital processes of formation and reproduction in plant organisms.
As he tells us, in the case of plants, “the process of formation and assimilation is itself already
reproduction as production of new individuals” (Enc. §). That the processes of formation and
assimilation are similarly inseparable is evident from the fact that plants take in nutrients, for
example water, through growth or by extending their parts in the direction of those nutrients. Hegel
notes that “the process of formation, the diremption [Diremtion] into root and leaf is itself a
diremption into the direction of earth and water and that of light and air: into the absorption of
water and its assimilation through the intermediation of leaf and bark and of light and air” (Enc.
§). But what about sexual reproduction in plants? Hegel concedes that pollination is “a
beginning and an adumbration of the genus process” (Enc. §) proper, distinct or separate
from the formation and assimilation processes. Nonetheless, according to his account of plant life,
reproduction via pollination is best understood as the combination of parts belonging to the same
whole and not, as in the case of copulation, as the behavior of two individual organisms that relate
to each other as members of the same genus and differently from the way in which they relate to the
rest of their environment. In the context of Hegel’s discussion of pollination, we read: “[T]he sides
of the [sexual] relation are not two individuals. There are only a few plants where the difference of
sex occurs in such a manner that the separate sexes are distributed in two separate and distinct
plants” (Enc. §A). Thus, some plants mark a step towards higher forms of life. For the most
part, however, plants fail to fully exhibit the complex structure that is distinctive of living things, as
points () and () in the body of the chapter and the inseparability of the three vital
processes suggest.
í
The second objection, to which I now turn, draws attention to the
role of biological death in Hegel’s discussion in “The Genus Process.”
That death plays some important role in Hegel’s discussion is evident
from passages such as the following, which we find in the context of his
remarks about copulation: “The genus preserves itself only through the
destruction [Untergang] of individuals who, in the process of copulation,
fulfil their determination [Bestimmung] and, insofar as they have no
higher determination, in this process meet their death” (Enc. §).
A few paragraphs later, Hegel writes: “[The animal’s] disparity
[Unangemessenheit] with its universality is its original disease and the
inborn germ of death. The removal [Aufheben] of this disparity is itself
the accomplishment of this destiny [das Vollstrecken dieses Schicksals]”
(Enc. §). So far, however, I have been silent on the role that death is
supposed to play in Hegel’s discussion. Thus, the question arises: What
exactly is the connection between death, on the one hand, and the
process of sexual reproduction and the relation of nonhuman animals
to their genus, on the other, according to the interpretive proposal I have
put forward up until this point?
We can piece together Hegel’s answer to this question from his
scattered remarks on the topic as follows: The genus (the horse as
such, say) is a concept or universal that unites its manifold instances
(e.g., Bucephalus, Babieca, Phar Lap), each of which imperfectly real-
izes the genus they bear, as we saw in Section .. A condition of
the existence of the genus is thus the reproduction of its instances,
without which there would be no plurality of individuals for the genus
to unite or encompass in the first place. That the genus is a universal
that unites any number of its imperfect instances also implies that the
genus outstrips these instances, that is, it continues to exist apart
from or beyond any one of these imperfect or inadequate instances.
In other words, the genus demonstrates its universality, so to speak,
in or through the death of the individuals that fall under it. This is the
point I take Hegel to be conveying when he tells us that “[t]he genus
preserves itself only through the destruction of individuals” (Enc.
§). Because in the case of human beings the genus can be fully
realized by a single instance, the genus does not outstrip its instances in
the way it does in the case of nonhuman animals. As a result, repro-
duction and death do not, in the human, spiritual realm, play the
role that they do in the subhuman, animal realm. To put it in the
terms Hegel himself employs: Human beings, unlike their subhuman
counterparts, do not accomplish their “destiny” in or through death.
The Difference between Animal Life and Human Spirit
That the role of death in the subhuman animal realm is a function
of nonhuman animals’ “inadequacy,” and that that role is therefore
absent from human life, is confirmed by the second of the two passages
about death that I have just quoted. In that passage, Hegel tells us that
nonhuman animals’ “inadequacy” or what he there calls their “original
disease” (i.e., their “disparity with [their] universality,” as he puts it) is
the “inborn germ of death” (Enc. §).
The third objection focuses on Hegel’s talk of human beings as the
“perfect animal” or even the “perfect living organism.” Such talk seems to
suggest that our animality, or the way in which the vital processes of
formation, assimilation, and reproduction figure in human life, accounts in
some way for our alleged “perfection.” But exactly what role, if any, is our
animality supposed to play in Hegel’s discussion of the way in which
human beings overcome the “inadequacy” that he thinks affects nonhu-
man animals? How, if at all, do the vital processes that we share with other
animals account for our alleged “perfection”?
Despite what the phrases “perfect living organism” or “perfect animal”
might suggest, we should not expect our animality or the vital processes
that we share with other animals to be what accounts for our overcoming
the “inadequacy” that affects other animals. I submit that the terms
“perfect” or “developed,” when Hegel uses them to describe human beings
as the “perfect living organism” or the “developed animal,” are best read as
having a privative sense. In telling us that human beings are the “perfect”
or “developed” animals, Hegel is in effect signaling that our relation to our
animality is unlike that of any other animal. I take him to be getting at the
point I am attempting to make about the sense of “perfection” in the
phrase “perfect animal” in a passage from his Lectures on Aesthetics, where
he summarizes part of our discussion in Section .. In the passage I have
in mind, Hegel tells us:
The human being is an animal, but even in his animal functions, he is not
confined to the in itself [Ansich] as the animal is; he becomes conscious of
them, cognizes them [erkennt sie] . . . In this way the human being breaks the
barrier of his in itself and immediacy [seiner ansichseienden Unmittelbarkeit],
so that precisely because he knows that he is an animal, he ceases to be an
animal and attains knowledge of himself as spirit. (MM : )
In “ceas[ing] to be an animal,” our lives and our behavior cease to be
dictated by the processes of shape, assimilation, and reproduction in the
See Houlgate , –.
í
manner in which they are in the case of nonhuman animals. Other
animals’ bodily behavior is entirely controlled by these three processes.
By contrast, our body, and the way in which it can be put to use to
assimilate the environment, for instance, is an instrument or tool in the
realization of our own spiritual, freely chosen ends. Human beings, Hegel
tells us, are the “perfect” or “fundamental type of organism” because our
organism, unlike that of nonhuman animals, is “the instrument
[Werkzeug] of spirit” (Enc. §).
The fourth and final objection concerns the relation between the
Philosophy of Nature and the Anthropology. I noted at the outset that
whereas the Anthropology has been the subject of growing attention
among those commentators interested in the question of the relation
between (animal) nature and spirit, the end of the Philosophy of Nature
has been comparatively neglected. But what is the difference between
the approaches to this question adopted in each of the two texts? The
Philosophy of Nature ends with the transition from (organic animal)
nature to spirit (see Enc. § & A). But given that that is so, what
exactly is the role of the Anthropology, whose official task seems to be
precisely to trace the move from animality to human spirit or, more
precisely, from the animal soul to objective consciousness? Very briefly,
the answer I propose to this general interpretive worry is that the
capacity for thought appears at the end of the “Organics” as a kind of
promissory note. It is left for Hegel to make good on that promissory
note in the Anthropology and explain how exactly the capacity for
See also Enc. §, where Hegel writes that the “most perfect” organized being found in nature
(i.e., the human being) is “the instrument of spirit.” According to the line of thought I have been
pursuing on Hegel’s behalf, human beings count as the “perfect animal” to the extent that they
escape the “inadequacy” that afflicts nonhuman animals and are thus the “instrument of spirit,” in
the sense I have just indicated. However, in Hegel’s text, this line of thought is intertwined with
another, separate line, according to which the human organism exhibits a degree of “harmony” and
“development” that is unmatched within the rest of the natural world. “[T]o say that the animal is
more perfect than man, is inept. In one or other respects, the animal can, indeed, be better
developed; but perfection consists precisely in the harmony of the organism” (Enc. §A).
In an earlier passage, Hegel appears to be making a similar point: “In the perfect animal, in the
human organism, [the] processes [of formation, assimilation, and the genus] are developed in the
fullest and clearest way; this highest organism therefore presents us in general with a universal type,
and it is only in and from this type that we can ascertain and explain the meaning of the
undeveloped organism” (Enc. §A). If we attempt to bring together the two lines of thought
I have just distinguished, Hegel’s suggestion seems to be that the degree of “harmony” or
“development” exhibited by the human body somehow makes it more permeable to the ends of
spirit or more prone to serve as the “instrument of spirit.”
The Difference between Animal Life and Human Spirit
thought emerges from (animal) nature. As I read it, Hegel’s account of
the transition from the animal soul to objective consciousness in the
Anthropology thus takes as its raw materials features and capacities that
we in some sense share with other animals and explains how human
consciousness develops out of those capacities (see e.g., Forman
and Novakovic a).
The initial impetus to write this chapter came out of a reading group with Dan Mendez. Thanks to
Dan for the many hours of conversation on the Philosophy of Nature and all other things Hegel.
For discussing some of the ideas in the chapter with me, I wish to thank Mark Alznauer and
Matthias Haase. I presented a version of the chapter at the European Philosophy Workshop at
Harvard. Thanks especially to Michael Rosen for inviting me to present at the workshop and to
Lucas Stanczyk and Paul Katsafanas for helpful questions and suggestions about some of the
contents of the presentation. Finally, I also wish to thank Marina Bykova for her editorial work
on this volume and for feedback on the penultimate draft of this chapter.
On Contemporary Challenges for the
Philosophy of Nature
The Prospects for an Idealist Natural Philosophy
Logic and Nature
Terry Pinkard
. What Is the Problem?
Of all the things he did, Hegel’s Naturphilosophie has had the most
controversial and convoluted reception, indeed far more than anything
else in Hegel’s works. As Cinzia Ferrini has shown in her authoritative
history of its reception, outside of a very small acceptance in Hegel’s
lifetime it was scorned in the nineteenth century as a botched job, perhaps
a work of an incompetent in over his head, only to emerge much later on
in the s more or less as at least a competent engagement with figures
in the history of science, and only from the s onward as something
itself of philosophical importance and as perhaps opening up entirely new
avenues of research (Ferrini ).
Even the term itself, Naturphilosophie, proves to be problematical when
one tries to translate it. Almost all people writing on it prefer the term
“philosophy of nature.” However, earlier natural scientists, to use the later
term, called themselves “natural philosophers,” a usage that Hegel at least
somewhat approves. Moreover, Hegel actually stresses the continuity of
his Naturphilosophie with “natural philosophy” in statements such as: “In
the first place, we find Naturphilosophie in a peculiar relationship to natural
science in general, to physics, natural history, and physiology; it is itself
physics, but rational physics” (Enc. , ). Thus, I shall take Hegel’s
Naturphilosophie to be his “natural philosophy,” a Wissenschaft (or
Ferrini herself has been one of the leading figures in the rehabilitation of Hegel’s Naturphilosophie.
Hegel only uses “philosophy of nature” (Philosophie der Natur) once in his collected writings, and
that is in the first preface to the Science of Logic, where he speaks of the Logic itself and the two
sciences of the real (realen Wissenschaften der Philosophie) that follow it: “philosophy of nature and
philosophy of spirit” (see WL/MM : ).
“What is now called physics was formerly called natural philosophy, and it is also a theoretical, and
indeed a thinking consideration of Nature” (Enc. §/Enc. , ). In several places, I have modified
very slightly Miller’s translation (Enc. ). For example, I replace his “Notion” with that of “concept.”
“rigorous theory”) that he takes to have at least equal standing with the
natural sciences.
How one interprets Hegel’s Naturphilosophie depends on how one
interprets Hegel’s philosophy overall. Here I shall lay my cards on the
table. I locate Hegel’s topic – why nature is a proper, even necessary topic
for philosophy – within the background of a Kantian–Fichtean debate
about the relation of logic to the world and to the possibility of an idealist
“natural philosophy,” that is, by locating Hegel in what has come to be
called a “post-Kantian” mode of interpretation. By this is meant very
broadly seeing Hegel as responding to Kant’s philosophy by reworking
the main themes of that philosophy to avoid what had come to seem to
Hegel and his contemporaries as the unavoidable pitfalls in Kant’s own
statements of his views. The goal of that kind of post-Kantianism is the
production not simply of a slimmed down and more consistent
Kantianism but something that takes Kant in directions he himself did
not want to go but which follow from or are developments out of his
central concerns and themes.
Part of the debate in the post-Kantian hothouse of the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century had to do with how to carry Kant forward
without any reliance on what Kant himself had thought was completely
necessary, namely, pure nonconceptual intuitions (of space and time) to
provide content to otherwise empty but necessary self-conscious concep-
tual form. Almost everyone important in the debate agreed that there were
no such things as pure nonconceptual intuitions but how to do without
them was a matter of intense disagreement. In his own Science of Logic,
characterized as a “thinking thinking about what it is to be thinking,”
Hegel proposed that such pure thought can in fact generate new a priori
content for itself so that Kant’s own worry about emptiness can be shunted
to the side. As all readers of Hegel know, he employed a dialectical method
in which apparent contradictions among what seem to be unconditionally
valid concepts can – by the way in which thinking tries to stabilize itself in
light of such contradictions (and to avoid what Kant called the threat of
the euthanasia of reason that comes with such a procedure) – be driven on
its own terms to develop new concepts that provide that stabilization.
To this end, Hegel developed a logic, a “pure thought” of “Being” (of
individuals as qualitatively and quantitatively determined), a logic of
“essence” (of structures that explain appearances of these individuals as
having the shape they do), and then finally a logic of “concept” (or of
“conceptuality” in general in which one looks at the overall formal and
material inferential structure of thinking), capped off with an
The Prospects for an Idealist Natural Philosophy
understanding of thought grasping that these are indeed the essential
determinations of thought thinking about what is a priori necessary for
thinking itself (i.e., as Hegel puts it, grasping the absolute Idea as the
“method” behind all of this).
. From Logic to Nature
However, the way in which Hegel describes the move from Logic to
“natural philosophy” is and has always been seen as problematic. The
move comes at the end of the Logic, where Hegel’s system goes from the
pure Idea in the Logic to the Naturphilosophie – the pure “Idea” technically
in Hegel’s regulated terminology is the unity of the concept and its
objectivity or reality but, putting it a bit more colloquially, it is the
expression of a comprehensive conception of agency and nature. Hegel’s
description of the move, famous as it is, is worth stating relatively fully:
[T]he move is an absolute liberation for which there is no longer an
immediate determination which is not equally posited and is not concept;
in this freedom, therefore, there is no transition that takes place . . . The
transition is to be grasped, therefore, in the sense that the idea freely
discharges itself, absolutely certain of itself and internally at rest.
On account of this freedom, the form of its determinateness is just as
absolutely free: the externality of space and time absolutely existing for itself
without subjectivity. (SL /WL GW : )
The pure thought of the Logic is free, that is, completely self-determining,
and it now stands in relation to an other that is or is supposed to be no
absolute other. However, if nature were something else besides or along-
side the pure thought of the Logic, then the Logic itself would be, as Hegel
would put it, only finite, and that would stand in contradiction to what he
says about it.
How one makes sense of the passage from Logic to natural philosophy
really depends on how one sees Hegel’s project as a whole (which should
be itself a rather obviously Hegelian point). One possible interpretation of
the passage, held by many for a long time, would quasi-theological: God
(which some take to be the absolute Idea of the Logic) emanates the world
from himself in the act of creation. Hegel does in fact at times use language
“What is left to be considered here, therefore, is thus not a content as such, but the universal
character of its form – that is, method . . . For this course the method has resulted as the absolutely
self-knowing concept, as the concept that has the absolute, both as subjective and objective, as its
subject matter, and consequently as the pure correspondence of the concept and its reality, a concrete
existence that is the concept itself” (SL –/WL GW : ).
that suggests that, but I take his use there to be metaphorical. Instead,
I take Hegel to be saying something very generally along early
Wittgensteinian lines: Logic is the form of the world, the basis of all
intelligibility. But where do we go from there?
If nature were the pure externality of the self-enclosed thought of the
Logic, then the natural philosophy that would follow would be that which
follows a priori from the very thought of there being a sphere that is other
than pure thinking. Roughly put, that generation sees the concept of
externality itself as already a concept that has been developed in the Logic,
at first in the “Doctrine of Being,” so that the concept of externality is itself
not external to the Logic, not something brought in from the outside.
Hegel’s natural philosophy is thus an answer to the question: What is
implied in pure thought’s concept of externality when applied to pure
thought itself? At first, that concept is itself empty. It refers solely to what
the pure thought of the Logic does not encompass, and it follows from the
concept of “externality” that is itself already developed in the Logic.
Given that question, one possible answer obviously suggests itself, but it
is not Hegel’s answer, and it would go like this. Outside of logical form,
there is nothing more a priori to be said about externality. After stating the
case about externality, the rest that comes after would be just empirical
observation and empirically informed theory building. On that way of
understanding it, since everything else would be an empirical matter, the
“natural philosophy” following the Logic would turn out to be only a
couple of pages long.
. What Is Doing the Work of Explanation in Natural
Philosophy?
But in fact, Hegel begins his natural philosophy with the categories of
space and time since these are the pure forms of the thought of externality
to pure thought. Space, he says, is “a mere form, i.e., an abstraction, that of
immediate externality,” and he goes on to add that in intuition, space shall
correspond to the thought of pure self-externality” (Enc. §/Enc. , ).
“Nature has presented itself as the Idea in the form of otherness. Since therefore the Idea is the
negative of itself, or is external to itself, Nature is not merely external in relation to this Idea (and to its
subjective existence Spirit); the truth is rather that externality constitutes the specific character in
which Nature, as Nature, exists” (Enc. §/Enc. , –). For those (both of you) who are curious
about how this relates to the way I earlier presented the relation between logic and nature, this
substantially modifies the way I saw the relation between the logical and the empirical in the first part
of (Pinkard ).
The Prospects for an Idealist Natural Philosophy
Likewise, time is “the negative unity of self-externality” (Enc. §/Enc. ,
). Hegel affirms the Kantian idea that space and time are forms of
intuition but with a weighty proviso: They are forms of intuition only
because they are also the forms of material things, so that, as Hegel puts it,
in time “as in the case of space, the distinction of objectivity and a
subjective consciousness confronting it, does not apply” (Enc. §R/
Enc. , ). The thought of something external to the concepts of the
pure Logic are the thoughts of space and time, and as the basis of the pure
intelligibility of nature they are therefore not merely features of our
contingent, subjective makeup. Just as the pure thought of, say, quantita-
tive difference is identical to the reality of quantitative difference (since if it
were not, there would be no intelligibility to such thought at all), the
thought of space as the pure externality of pure thought is the thought of
the reality of space. And as the form of pure externality itself, space and
time are to be thought of in terms of the categories of “quantity,” namely,
geometry and mathematics, continuous and discrete magnitudes.
But, as Hegel puts it (which is a point to which we shall return), “nature
is, in itself, a living whole” (Enc. §/Enc. , ), and described purely in
terms of mathematical representation, nature would not be represented as
the “living whole” it is supposed to be. In fact, if nature were completely
the domain of a kind of absolute externality, it would be merely a
concatenation of objects, each fully external in its determinateness to the
other, and the study of nature would be that of noting and observing
regularities and then giving them at best a mathematical form for purposes
of prediction. If so, then nature as a whole would only be a grab-bag
collection of things and regularities that would possess only as much unity
as a particularly formed mathematical theory could give it.
In Hegel’s eyes, the very defect of that conception of nature lies not in
the idea of a “mathematized” nature itself but in all the forms of overly
strong commitments to empiricism as the appropriate and sole method for
studying nature. The regularities that empiricists find in nature are indeed
real enough, they exist, but they are not, in Hegel’s rather technical
This line of thought shares with Christian Martin’s writing on the subject the idea that nature as a
whole is self-external and thus incorporates continuity and discreteness within itself. See (Martín
). That the idea of agency itself would be present in an account of nature is given an admirable
explication by (Rand ).
Of the laws of motion as established empirically, for example, Hegel says: “The next step concerns
their proof independently of empirical methods; and this proof has also been furnished by
mathematical mechanics, so that even a science based on empirically ascertained facts is not
satisfied with the merely empirical pointing out (monstrating)[Weisen (Monstrieren)]” (Enc. §/
Enc. , ).
distinction, actual, wirklich (or effectif, as the French render wirklich).
Empiricism is not so much wrong as it is one-sided. Empiricism thinks
that once it has established the empirical regularities and tied them into
empirically based theories, it has explained why things are. However, the job
of philosophy (as a kind of Hegelian logic-as-metaphysics) is first to deter-
mine the basic objects (or “totalities” as he also calls them) of nature, and by
determining them, determine their intrinsic powers (Potenzen), and then by
virtue of those powers investigate what those objects would do in terms of
what would count as following from their nature. What is doing “the work”
in nature are these basic “objects,” not the regularities. Or, as Hegel defines
Wirklichkeit (almost always rendered as “actuality”), “What is actual can have
an effect; something announces its actuality by what it produces” (“Was
wirklich ist, kann wirken, seine Wirklichkeit gibt etwas kund durch das,
was es hervorbringt”) (SL /WL GW : –). Or, as we might more
succinctly put it: The actual is that which is really at work in reality.
These basic “objects” and their powers are to be established by develop-
ing them out of the concept of what is external to (logical) thought.
Moreover, or so Hegel thinks, these basic “objects” not only have a nature
or “essence” intrinsic to them, they also each stand to each other in a kind
of a priori order such that the more elementary of them stand at a lower
level of sorts to the more complex, and this ordering itself is also supposed
to be a priori, not something discovered after the fact. Only grasped in that
way can nature be comprehended as a whole, a unity, and not as the name
for a diverse and perhaps incompatible grab-bag of states of affairs.
Hegel establishes this view near the beginning of the “natural
philosophy” of the Encyclopaedia:
Each stage is a specific realm of Nature and all appear to have independent
existence. But the last is the concrete unity of all the preceding ones, just as,
in general, each successive stage embodies the lower stages, but equally
posits these, as its nonorganic nature, over against itself. One stage is the
power of the other, and this relation is reciprocal. Here can be seen the true
meaning of powers (Potenzen). (Enc. §/Enc. , )
The empirical laws the natural scientist discovers are thus themselves to
be explained in terms of the powers the natural philosopher establishes,
where those powers express the object’s nature, and in the levels of such
powers, each is a power of the other (as analogously four is a power of
two squared).
DiGiovanni renders the first part as “What is actual can act,” which I have changed.
The Prospects for an Idealist Natural Philosophy
. The Unity of Nature?
Since nature as a whole would be the unity of these basic objects and not
just a collection of empirically established events of various sorts, nor just a
collection of empirically established regularities, the empirically discovered
laws that govern those objects find their own limits in the limits of the
“totality” in question, and natural philosophy would therefore be the
derivation of what these objects must be and which objects there are, all
in terms of what is necessary to think through the concept of externality to
pure thought (i.e., external to the system presented in the Logic).
Although the goal of an idealist natural philosophy is to comprehend
nature as a whole, which involves the generation of all the forms that
would arise from externality to thought and thus incorporate all the ways
in which at first discreteness and continuity take shape, and then later as
the way in which process and product dialectically play off each other in
the chemical object, and then on to a variety of other shapes that all
embody the central tensions within nature conceived as a whole.
However, nature as a whole cannot itself be neatly grasped completely as
a whole. Hegel says of nature that “[t]he contradiction of the Idea, arising
from the fact that, as Nature, it is external to itself, is more precisely this:
that on the one hand there is the necessity of its forms which is generated
by the concept, and their rational determination in the organic totality;
while on the other hand, there is their indifferent contingency and inde-
terminable irregularity.” He calls this (quite famously) the “impotence of
nature,” nature’s inability to fully and completely organize itself intelligibly
(Enc. §/Enc. , –).
The idea of the “impotence of nature” throws more light on what these
“rational objects” are supposed to be. Although “natural philosophy”
necessarily presents nature as an intelligible whole, not all of the necessary
forms are realized in the way that the concepts of their domain would seem
to indicate. Nature as a whole seems to embody what some have come to
call generic universality that is not the universality of quantification (where
one counterexample disproves the universalization) but that of a practice
or form of life in which there can be many deviations from the universal-
ization that simply count as something like defects, not as disproof of the
generalization. (To take Michael Thompson’s now iconic example: The
three-legged cat remains a cat even if a bit off the norm of feline nature
[Thompson , ].) That however follows from Hegel’s conception
For a detailed and insightful overview of this development, see (Ferrini a).
of nature as a whole as something akin to an organic life-form, and
although he is happy to take up the requirement, it is not clear that he
has in fact established that organic view of nature or instead simply be led
by it. In any event, nature’s “impotence” is not merely a matter of
contingency but of the lack of capacity on nature’s part to live up to its
concept, of what it is “supposed” to be or do, and that depends on seeing
nature as a whole as a life-form.
Even Hegel himself admits that in speaking of the world as an organic
life-form, he is using “life” in an extended sense. For example, he says:
But the concept of life, i.e. life in itself, which of course is found every-
where, is one thing: real life, the subjectivity of the living organism, in
which each part exists as vivified, is another. Thus the geological organism is
alive, not in its separate parts (im Einzelnen) but only as a whole: it is only
in itself (an sich) alive, not in present existence. (Enc. §Z/Enc. , )
That seems to be saying that all forms of systematic organization of matter
in nature (such as the solar system, one of Hegel’s prime examples) had to
be taken as, as it were, unities on the way to life, so much so that the
concept of “living” itself could be extended to them not as they really
existed but only in terms of what kinds of possibilities were open to them
(in their “in itself,” an sich existence). All systematically organized matter is
on the way to life until it finally gets there. It does not follow from Hegel’s
system that life was fated to emerge but rather that all it required was the
right systematic ordering of matter. The systematic ordering in place was
not within the purview of “natural philosophy” to discover, but rather was
to be established by the empirical science of biology.
On Hegel’s view, instead of presenting itself as a pristine logical system,
nature, as external to itself, is always dependent on something other than
what it happens to be in order to be what it is, whose overall shape is clear
and ordered but whose details, because of the “impotence of nature,”
necessarily have to be muddy and checkered in parts. For Hegel himself,
nature simply does not have, as it were, the power as a whole to live up to
all its other powers, to be what it is supposed to be or at least what would
follow from its being external to (logical) thought. That is the “impotence”
of nature, which is not merely a function of its contingency.
Is that view of nature as a whole logically demanded by the very concept
of “externality to (logical) thought”? I for one do not see it. It requires
On the complexities, details, and further outlook for Hegel’s idea that nature as a whole is
something like (or just is) an organic life-form, see the detailed discussion in (Ferrini a).
The Prospects for an Idealist Natural Philosophy
some extra premises to make that leap, such as when Hegel says in closing:
“The aim of these lectures has been to give a picture of Nature in order to
subdue this Proteus: to find in this externality only the mirror of ourselves,
to see in Nature a free reflex of spirit: to know God, not in the contem-
plation of him as spirit, but in this his immediate existence” (Enc. §/
Enc. , ). If that is the aim, then something like the view that nature as
a whole exhibits something like the structure of a life-form would perhaps
make some sense. But without that supposition, that view becomes
considerably less compelling. If so, its externality to thought would result
in a nonorganic view of nature as a whole, and accommodating that would
force a major change in the Hegelian system as it stood in Hegel’s
lifetime.
The rational objects of Hegelian natural philosophy function more like
paradigms for investigation (although not Kuhnian paradigms) but even
more so as models to be used in guiding empirical investigation. The
mechanical model, for example, which uses analytical geometry and calcu-
lus as its view of how things interact sets up a field of investigation (a
“totality,” as Hegel would see it), and it is this totality which thus sets up
Newton to be able to unify Galilean laws about falling bodies with Kepler’s
laws of planetary motion. Newton could do this, so Hegel seems to say,
because of the unity which is already present in the concept of the
mechanical realm itself and which then only needs to be posited or
rendered explicit. Each of Hegel’s “rational objects” of nature is such an
ideal model, an unified field of investigation that defines the field’s powers
and which in turn calls out for an empirical investigation of how these
powers actually operate in the vast continuum of nature.
The ideal totalities of nature are, in Hegel’s account, what is doing the
work in explaining the regularities of nature. These ideal wholes (the
mechanical object, the chemical object, the living object, and so on) as
each having a distinctive set of powers thus also each exercise a different
James Kreines argues that what is really at stake here is the failure of nature to give a self-grounding
for itself. It fails, as it were, by virtue of the incompleteness of reasons nature as a whole can offer for
itself. That, according to Kreines, is the “deflationary” aspect of Hegel’s Naturphilosophie. The
“inflationary” aspect has to do with what Kreines calls the “concept thesis,” namely, that the reasons
that explain why things are as they are and do what they do are immanent “concepts,” akin to
immanent universals or kinds (Kreines , ). Christian Martín has argued that in the
“concept thesis,” Kreines ends up thereby attributing a dogmatic rationalist metaphysics to Hegel
which is alien to Hegel’s system. As Martin puts it, “the logical and the real are determined in a
completely different way: one is a totality of distinct internally related thoughts that have their
source in the self-determination of thinking, while the other is an inhomogeneous material space-
time continuum that does not in itself involve any distinctions” (Martín , –).
form of causality. Mechanical causality, for example, is different from
chemical causality. These wholes exercise a form of causality that is
supposed to follow from thinking about what is external to pure thought,
but as external, the specific causal laws falling under these ideal wholes
have to be themselves empirically established. The causal power of the
mechanical realm is explicated in the terms of the mathematics of physics,
that is, the combination of otherwise mutually indifferent entities that are
what they are outside of the wholes into which they are combined. The
causality of the chemical realm has to do with the way in which different
substantial individuals can combine with other such substantive individ-
uals to make new substances with new and different powers than that of
simply adding up the individual powers of the components. In such
chemical causality, the product is determined by the process that creates
it, and the process is what it is only in combining these matters. Which
things combine with which has to do with locating the “elective affinities”
(Wahlverwandtschaften) that hold between the entities. Finally, there is the
area of biology – of life – where, as Hegel says, “the causal relation falls
away, and generally in the sphere of life, all the categories of the
Understanding cease to be valid” (Enc. §/Enc. , ). In life, to be
sure, mechanical causality as well as chemical causality is present, but, as
Hegel understood the matter, life involved more than just biomechanics
and biochemistry: One had to understand the organism as a self-organizing
whole, whose parts are functions, and where the parts become detached
and identifiable apart from the organism, the organism becomes ill or dies.
Hegel’s conception of biology was nonvitalist – he posited no special
metaphysical force to explain life – but he did claim that the specific mode
of organization of life’s elements was the crucial matter in accounting for
life as a special “object” or totality in nature that was not exhausted by
mechanical or chemical models of explanation. Hegel also noted (in a
kind of “hedging his bets” way) that “the chemical process is thus an
analogue of life,” to which he adds, “if the chemical process could carry
itself on spontaneously, it would be life; this explains our tendency to see
life in terms of chemistry” (Enc. §Z/Enc. , ). The domain of
That Hegel was also not a vitalist was in fact recognized by many of the biologists of his own day
and taken as a sign in his favor as against the more Romantic conceptions of life at that time. This is
discussed at some length in (Ferrini a).
The innovation of cellular biology provided the beginning of just that account, but that did not
really start until after Hegel’s death. Luca Corti () argues, however, that Hegel’s conception of
“organism” as “organization” offers a variety of openings to understand Hegelian concepts of life
and biology that are in tune with some recent developments in the life sciences.
The Prospects for an Idealist Natural Philosophy
“life” is that of the causality of self-organization and not that of mechanical
causality or the “product-process” causality of chemistry.
This extends all the way to Geist, whose constitutive causal power would
be that of freedom, which is a power other than all the other natural
powers – in fact, it is so different from mechanical causality that it is easy
to suppose that it must be a nonnatural power, but it is, at least in Hegel’s
construction of nature, a firm feature of the natural world belonging to
those set of creatures we call “the human” and of which the model is that
of Geist taken as “self-conscious life.” It is not the language of mechanical
causality, nor that of chemical causality, nor even just that of organic,
holistic self-organization. It is instead that of manifestation, of expression,
of the way, for example, a language shows itself in the activities of its
speakers and the way in which the speakers manifest the language. How
that specific realm of nature develops, how it at first takes itself to be
nonnatural, and how it comes back to a recognition and affirmation of its
natural status as a matter of its own sociality is, however, another story for
another place and time.
Hegel was also aware of the skepticism that many in the community of
natural scientists of his day had toward this kind of philosophy since they
were for the most part committed empiricists intent on studying regular-
ities. However, he notes: “I have therefore set down here only the rudi-
ments of a rational procedure in the comprehension of the mathematical
and mechanical laws of Nature as this free realm of measures. This
standpoint, I know, is ignored by professionals in the field; but a time
will come when this science will require for its satisfaction the philosoph-
ical concept” (Enc. §/Enc. , –). Hegel’s optimism on that point
has not exactly borne fruit.
. From Logic to Nature (Again)
This brings us back to the issue with which we began, which asks what is
the best way to make sense of the transition from the Logic to the
Naturphilosophie and how does this help us to understand what was at
stake in Hegel’s overall philosophy as a whole? The post-Kantian inter-
pretation I have put forward here suggests the following. The Logic is the
As Hegel puts it rather formulaically: “The determinateness of spirit is consequently that of
manifestation” (Enc. §/MM : ). I speak about this a bit more with regard to Hegel in
(Pinkard ). I go into the idea of “manifestation” in more depth in (Pinkard ).
On the recent debate about “nature” and “second nature” in Hegel’s philosophy of freedom and the
sphere it covers, see the important pieces by Andrea Kern: (Kern ) and (Kern ).
domain of pure thought, pure reason, and it sets the limits for making
sense of making sense. However, pure thought has no causal power on its
own. It does not therefore form one of the basic models (i.e., Hegel’s
rational objects) that demarcate what is doing the explanatory work in
accounts of nature. Pure thought does indeed have the concept of causal
power, but it lacks that power itself. This should not be surprising. Hegel
himself speaks this way in a variety of places, but it comes more often to
the fore in his practical philosophy, as for example when he says, rather
forcefully, that “laws and principles have no immediate life or validity in
themselves. The activity puts them into operation . . . has its source in the
needs, impulses, inclinations and passions of man” (LPhWH-N ).
(However, unlike the Humean model, which sees pure thought and
natural movement as two different spheres which have to be added on to
each other at best, Hegel sees them – at least with regard to human action –
as functional parts within a larger whole.)
On its own, the domain of pure thought is, Hegel says, a “realm of
shadows” where the light source has to be that of the unity of nature and
spirit coming together to provide the conceptual account of itself, an
account which, as logic-metaphysics, is in fact the first book in the whole
series in which it gives the final account. It thus presents the image of
“infinity” so central to Hegel. In finite matters, the image is that of a line
or a series extending out to infinity such that no matter how far out one
goes in the series, one always has further to go. Hegel calls this the bad
infinite or the untrue infinite. The image of the good infinite, on the other
hand, is that of the circle: If one begins at a point on the circle and starts
traveling on the line from that, one will eventually come back to where one
began, and one will do that infinitely if one keeps traveling. In that way,
“thinking” has the infinite as its determination since it starts out empty,
gets entangled in new content, and finally arrives back at the point at
which it started in the circle. It also follows that to the extent that the circle
and not the line is the guiding metaphor, in principle one can start
anywhere in the system since one will always end up back there.
Thus, as Hegel somewhat enigmatically points out, the whole system of
his kind of Wissenschaft is that of a “circle of circles,” in which no matter
This conception of “making sense of making sense” – to be distinguished from “making sense of
things” – is found in (Moore ), but I have adopted it for characterizing Hegel’s philosophy.
In his recent and well-received book on the Logic, Robert Pippin () took the image of the
“realm of shadows” as his guiding motif, but even he admits at the end that it remains a troubling
image for the relation of the Logic to the philosophy of the “real.” My proposals are intended to
mitigate some of that trouble.
The Prospects for an Idealist Natural Philosophy
where one begins, one always arrives back at the same place if one travels
long enough (SL –/WL GW : ). In another work, at the very
end of the Phenomenology, Hegel misquotes some lines of poetry
from Schiller to use a different metaphor to make essentially the same
point: “Out of the chalice of this realm of spirits / Foams forth to him his
infinity.” Instead of the Logic freely “releasing itself,” in the Phenomenology,
absolute knowing, on its way to the system, “foams up” (schäumt) as this
kind of infinity that emerges only out of the “conceptually grasped history”
of self-conscious life – Geist – comprehending what it is and what ultim-
ately matters to it (PS /PhG GW –). The image of absolute spirit
as merely reflecting on itself without that element of the “real” (in this case,
conceptualized history, begriffne Geschichte) would only leave us with a
picture of self-conscious life sitting on its throne “lifeless and alone,”
whereas in the Logic, we have a metaphorical picture of pure thought
coming to see itself as only a shadow seeking to become efficacious in more
than its own self-enclosed, self-determining realm of thought thinking
thought. In both cases, the point has to do with the self-enclosed nature
of conceptual thought, its powerlessness to effect matters, and the logic of
that relation of purely conceptual thought and “external to” purely con-
ceptual thought. That image – of the necessity and self-enclosed nature of
“pure thought” and the externality of the world without which it would be
powerless – is at the heart of the dynamic of the Hegelian system.
. Conclusion
The history of science has not exactly been kind to Hegel’s view of the a
priori status of the basic models he proposed. It has also long struck
Many of Hegel’s own interventions in the science of his times are, rather unfortunately, not
completely reassuring about his own grasp of what follows from the causal powers of these basic
rational “objects.” For example, he assures us that water cannot consist of hydrogen and oxygen.
“Does water really consist of oxygen and hydrogen? It is true that both are turned into water by an
electric spark; but water is not composed of them. More correctly, it must be said that oxygen and
hydrogen are only different forms assumed by water” (Enc. §/Enc. , ). Moreover, what
seem to be inexhaustible deep springs (of water) cannot, he insists, be explained mechanically by
percolation. “We must not, therefore, explain the origin of inexhaustible springs by mechanically
and quite superficially attributing them to percolation; any more than we must use a similar kind of
explanation, on the other side, to account for volcanoes and hot springs. On the contrary, just as
springs are the lungs and secretory glands for the earth’s process of evaporation (für die Ausdünstung
der Erde), so are volcanoes the earth’s liver, in that they represent the earth’s spontaneous generation
of heat within itself” (Enc. §/Enc. , ). He also insists that people cannot in principle get
tapeworms by ingesting food contaminated with tapeworm eggs. “This isolated functioning
(Isolieren) can go so far that animals are generated in the intestines; all animals, at certain times,
have worms in the heart, lungs, and brain (see §, Zusatz). In general, the animal is feebler than
readers of Hegel that he might have done better if he had taken more of a
view of “natural philosophy” as part of its own time grasped in thought
and given it more of the treatment that the Phenomenology gave to other
formations of self-conscious life (Geist) in terms of how it is that we have
come to see certain modes of natural philosophy as necessary for us by
virtue of the way in which past solutions have broken down and failed (in
other words, if he had pursued a philosophical history of science instead of
his own “natural philosophy”). In such a view, the unity of nature would
be preserved, but space would be cleared out for a more dynamic idealist
version of natural philosophy. We have a bit of a model for something like
that in Ernst Cassirer’s Phenomenology of Knowledge (the third volume of
his philosophy of symbolic forms) where he explicitly links his version of
“phenomenology” to Hegel’s own (and not to Husserl’s version of )
“phenomenology” (Cassirer ). Looking at Cassirer’s attempt (and at
those of his more recent admirers, such as Michael Friedman) might be a
way of enriching the Hegelian proposals (Friedman ). That, however,
would the topic of a very different chapter, which, as far as Hegelian circles
that always initiate new circles goes, is exactly what one would expect.
man, who is the strongest animal; but it is a false hypothesis that tapeworms in human beings are
the result of swallowing the eggs of such creatures. The restoration of health can consist only in the
overcoming of this particularization” (Enc. §/Enc. , ). And he assures us we have no need to
fear that comets might hit the earth because the solar system is, at least as a rudimentary organic
system, a system that protects itself. “For we can then accept the idea that the other bodies of the
system protect themselves against them, i.e. that they (the other bodies) function as necessary
organic moments of the system, and as such must preserve themselves. This point of view can afford
better grounds for comfort against cometary dangers than those based mainly on the fact that
comets have so much celestial space for their paths, that they should not really hit the earth—which
‘should not really’ is transformed into a learned theory of probability” (Enc. §R/Enc. , ).
Is There a Future for the Philosophy of Nature?
John W. Burbidge
Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature does not weather well. While he was well
acquainted with what was going on in the sciences of his day and found a
creative way of weaving their discoveries into a system of increasing
complexity, starting with space and time and ending with the emergence
of conscious, intelligent life, those sciences have moved on, introducing
and validating explanatory models that have transformed our understand-
ing of the world. Physics now sees the speed of light as a primitive concept,
while space and time are derivative and flexible. Within a few years of
Hegel’s death, chemistry showed that electricity produces chemical
changes, not the other way around. The year before he died, Charles
Lyell provided the evidence that geology had a long history of transforma-
tive change (Lyell –). And within thirty years Darwin provided an
explanatory model that gave biology a long history of development. In all
these sciences, discoveries have increased exponentially. We now know
that the universe has been expanding for billions of years; that atoms
emerge from a rich range of dynamic particles of both mass and energy;
that the periodic table provides a structure that shows how chemical
elements are related; and that biology is currently discovering the processes
through which components of living cells both produce the energy that
maintains life and structure the development of embryos.
In the early nineteenth century it was still possible for someone to keep
abreast of what was happening in science. Physics was primarily interested
in mechanics; chemistry was discovering new elements; biology, which had
been the hobby of amateur naturalists, was beginning to explore explana-
tory models. Today each of these sciences has expanded into a rich range of
subdisciplines, where only a few step back to consider how discoveries even
in closely related subjects are interconnected. To attempt a philosophical
system that incorporates all the explanations that have survived experi-
mental check would not only be an act of reckless hubris but also beyond
the capacity of even the most voracious investigator.
.
This suggests that any attempt to revive a Hegelian form of natural
philosophy would be anachronistic. As Hegel recognized, history develops
and is transformed by changing conditions. One cannot simply impose
criteria adopted in past centuries and expect to achieve comprehensive
perspectives that make sense of what we are currently discovering.
Nonetheless, Hegel also identified the task of philosophy as reflecting on
where we have arrived as a human species and finding a way of making
sense of it all. So, if our present situation requires humility before the rich
range of explorations into the nature of things, it also cries out for effective
ways of taking advantage of what we have discovered. For the actions we
initiate based on our contemporary understanding play a role in determin-
ing what the future will be.
This chapter explores a possible way of resolving this dilemma.
It starts, in Section ., by reviewing Hegel’s systematic project: how
one arrives at a philosophical perspective; the concepts philosophy has at
hand for understanding the world; and how one can use those concepts
to construct a comprehensive framework that incorporates what the
sciences tell us about nature. Section . identifies key features that
have emerged in the sciences over the two centuries since Hegel died,
many of which call into question some of his basic assumptions. Section
. proposes a way of rethinking the relationship between what the
sciences teach us about the world and the role of disciplined reflective
thought. A revised version of Hegel’s project may do justice to what we
now know about the world.
. Hegel’s Systematic Project
Hegel’s system has four major components. His first major work, the
Phenomenology of Spirit (), showed how to reach the standpoint of
philosophy, where we use concepts to comprehend the world. In the
Science of Logic (–), his second treatise, he explores the way those
concepts themselves are systematically interconnected. While the third and
fourth components never acquired independent treatments, he outlined
what they involved in the manual he provided for his lectures: the
Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. The Philosophy of Nature shows
how logical concepts organize what had been discovered about the natural
world, while the Philosophy of Spirit develops a philosophical framework
for understanding human society. If we want to grasp the central core of
Hegel’s thought, we need to work out how those distinct disciplines
are interconnected.
Is There a Future for the Philosophy of Nature?
Once Hegel had worked out how to weave logic, nature, and spirit
together into a single systematic framework, he faced a preliminary chal-
lenge. People do not use philosophical concepts when exploring the nature
of their experience. Normally, as the British empiricists emphasized, we
work with representations or (their term) ideas. But, as Kant saw, these
representations emerge when individuals interact with their environment
and are simply associated with each other using the contingent relations of
space and time that emerge within the stream of consciousness. They tell
us nothing about the structure inherent in reality. Kant proposed that we
need to call, instead, on concepts to discover objective causal laws, whose
reliability is established by appealing to sufficient reasons (see his Second
Analogy, Af./Bf.). But he does not tell us what those reasons would
look like nor where they acquire that reliability. That lacuna sets the stage
for Hegel’s systematic project: “The distinction between representation
and thought is all the more important because we can say in general that
philosophy does nothing but transform representations into thoughts –
although, of course, it does go on to transform the mere thought into the
concept” (Enc. , §R / GW : ).
In the Phenomenology of Spirit he shows how that transformation comes
about. The method adopted is outlined in its Introduction: One con-
siders a claim to knowledge and implements that claim in practice; when
that venture fails to achieve its objective, even after several attempts, it
collapses and opens the space for a second claim – one that takes into
account what has been learned from the failure of the first (see PhG §§–
/ GW : –).
Few people notice that in his final chapter on Absolute Knowing (PhG
§§– / GW : –), Hegel distilled into abstract prose the process
of learning from experience sketched in the Introduction. The beautiful
soul passes through confident claim, despair at failure, and new beginning
in the sequence of action, judgment, and forgiveness; and, in the Christian
tradition, both God and the believer follow a similar pattern as they
When introducing the Philosophy of Spirit in his first course on assuming the Rectorship of the
Nürnberg Gymnasium in , after several false starts, Hegel wrote: “§. . A beginning in
philosophy has above all to consider the different characteristics and functions of spirit through
which it passes in order to arrive at science. Since these spiritual characteristics and functions stand
within a necessary interconnection, this self-knowledge constitutes a science as well. §.. The theory
of spirit considers spirit according to the different species of its consciousness and according to the
different species of its functions. The former consideration can be called the Theory of
Consciousness, the latter, the theory of the soul” (GW .: ). The first option appears to refer
to what he had developed in the Phenomenology, published the previous year. The second anticipates
what he will later spell out in his Encyclopaedia Psychology.
.
become reconciled – God through the crucifixion of his son and Christians
through the dark experience of the death of God. Those three narratives
mark the culmination of the long history of human experience. When one
takes them together and focuses on what they have in common, they all
tell a tale of confident convictions, putting them into practice, and then
discovering new possibilities from their failure. That has been established
as the only way to arrive at reliable knowledge. In the Phenomenology of
Spirit, then, Hegel is outlining the path through which humans, both as
individuals and as social beings, move from simply reacting to immediate
sensations to developing sustainable ways of functioning within the world.
This, then, sets the stage for philosophy – for exploring the concepts
that enable us to both understand the world and act effectively within it.
That is the task of the Science of Logic. The motor that drives its
development can no longer be experience, with its interplay between
confident claim and unexpected results, since that pattern achieved its
apotheosis when it became fully self-conscious as absolute knowing. The
logic works with what has been acquired through that process: with the
concepts that have been gradually incorporated into our understanding of
the world as the result of our experience. In that work, Hegel sets out to
explore how philosophical thinking – starting from an initial, completely
indeterminate thought and drawing on what humans have discovered
through the ages – moves from concept to concept as more and more
determinations come into play.
The engine that makes that development work surfaces in the first
moves he makes. When we think about (or intuit, since it is so indetermin-
ate) pure being, Hegel suggests, we discover that there is nothing to
consider. Similarly, when we then either think or intuit nothing, we find
that it too is completely indeterminate, yet nonetheless a thought – which
was the original definition of pure being. Reflecting on what has occurred,
he points out that, while “being” and “nothing” have turned out to have
the same sense, they nonetheless can be differentiated, because one has
moved from being to nothing, and from nothing to being. There is a
transition – a passing over. The name for such a conceptual passing over
is “becoming.” Where does that “passing over” happen? From his descrip-
tion of those initial moves, it appears that the transitions emerge when we
are either thinking or intuiting the relevant term. It is a function of our
psychology. In other words, what moves the argument from concept to
concept is the process of thinking through carefully what each one means
This seems to violate Frege’s psychological fallacy; but see Burbidge for a rebuttal.
Is There a Future for the Philosophy of Nature?
and the implications that emerge. For Hegel, then, the role of the Logic is
to work out the connections linking thought to thought that have survived
the distilling process of accumulated experience. Having repeatedly learned
from failed ventures, we retain in our thoughts the fundamental patterns
that govern the world within which we live.
Two examples of how the Logic works will set the stage for later
discussions. The first looks at the move from the concept “finite” to
“self-contained being” – or (in literal translation) “being-for-self.” The
concept of a limited being, or something finite, implies that there is a
barrier that prevents that thing from going beyond the limit. What is
beyond the limit is the opposite of the finite; in other words, the infinite.
But that infinite turns out to be itself limited because it is defined by its
opposite. Thus, thought ends up with an infinite regress which moves
from the thought of something limited to the infinite and back to
something limited. (It is important to remember that we are thinking of
the meanings of concepts, not the objects those terms could refer to.)
We have a double transition that moves back and forth ad infinitum,
which happens to introduce a second sense of “infinite.” At this point
Hegel makes his most distinctive move. For that repetitive cycle collapses
into a new thought: of a single process that continually generates the
infinite from the finite and the finite from the infinite. Such an infinite
process turns out to be self-contained, a being-for-self.
The next moves are significant. For a self-contained being is a unit, what
Hegel calls a “being-for-one.” As a unit, or “one,” there is nothing external
that relates to it. To that extent it is situated in a void – pure emptiness.
Whatever happens to be there would have to be equally self-contained and
isolated. So one reaches the thought of a multitude of units, necessarily
isolated from each other, driven apart by a process of repulsion. But a
process can only be maintained if it is constantly being rejuvenated, and
the only way to rejuvenate repulsion is to presuppose a contrary attraction.
One has, then, ended up with discrete units that nonetheless attract and
repel each other in a continuum, which turns out to be a good definition of
the concept of “quantity.”
In other words, within that discussion of being-for-itself, Hegel has
developed the conceptual core of Democritus’ atomism, in which a multi-
tude of indivisible, self-contained atoms function in a void.
The second example is Hegel’s discussion of cause (GW : –).
In that analysis, he starts from the fact that an agent cause has, as its
The German phrase für sich has the same sense as the English “of itself” in “in and of itself.”
.
necessary counterpart, a passive condition or set of conditions which it acts
upon. Both the active and the passive moment are requisite for the cause to
become operative. That means, however, that until the passive condition
makes its appearance, the agent cause is itself passive and unable to produce
its effect. It becomes active only through the agency of what initially we
called the passive condition. Thus, for any causation to be effective there is a
kind of double activity; each moment is in one respect passive and in
another active. The two causes reciprocally interact. However, just as the
reciprocal action between finite and infinite collapsed into the concept of
being-for-self, and the reciprocal action between attraction and repulsion
collapsed into the concept of quantity, reciprocity collapses into an inte-
grated process which incorporates all its components within a single
dynamic. Since it is the nature of conceptual thought to integrate singulars,
by virtue of their particular characteristics, into a universal, Hegel uses the
term “concept” to characterize this thought of an integrated reciprocity.
By turning our focus, in the way these examples suggest, from the casual
associations that regularly structure the stream of consciousness to discip-
lined reflection on what is contained in the concepts that have survived the
refining process of experience, philosophy articulates the patterns and
relationships inherent in the world. Logic has taken over the role formerly
played by metaphysics.
Hegel engineers his move to the Philosophy of Nature at the end of the
Science of Logic. The Encyclopaedia Logic concludes by making explicit the
method that has structured its development. Each concept can only be
defined by relating it to its opposite; that second concept equally requires
reference to the first. That double transition collapses into a new, more
complex concept. In this way the method ties all the concepts into a single,
integrated dynamic. Central to that dynamic is the move from a concept to
its contrary or opposite. So, once it has worked out its own integrated
method, conceptual thought starts to wonder what its opposite would be
like: What is the nature of the realm of external, contingent relations that
is other than thought? In the course of its development, the Logic has
already shown how the concept of the internal is related to the concept of
the external, how the concept of contingency is related to the concepts of
actuality, possibility, and necessity, and how the concept of the singular is
related to the concepts of the particular and the universal. These moves
have provided the theoretical resources for setting whatever is other than
logical within a philosophical framework. Pure thought can thus confi-
dently “let itself go” (“sich selbst frei entläßt” GW , , my translation)
and turn its attention to the real, nonlogical, world.
Is There a Future for the Philosophy of Nature?
When it starts from the bare thought of external relations – of being
next to each other without any linking relationships – thought looks at the
world and sees that space fits that model. Under analysis, thought,
expecting to find internal differentiation, notices that space has its own
complexity. One can start from a single point, move to the relation
between two points in a line, on to lines set out in two dimensions, and
end with the three dimensions that mark its distinctive nature.
Thought, then, reflects on what it has discovered. It has found a structure
of external relations which nonetheless has internal distinctions. It develops
the concept of an external relation which not only has internal differences
but can also move from one state to a second, externally related state. When
it turns back to the real world, it discovers that time fits that model. After it
has explored the characteristics of time, it combines what it has discovered
and formulates a new concept: an entity that is situated in space but also
develops through time. That thought involves place, matter, and movement.
The philosophy of nature has used the skills of conceptual analysis to
organize what it encounters within the world of external relations.
In his major works, then, Hegel has developed a closely integrated
philosophical structure, using the resources of conceptual thought. In the
Phenomenology he outlined the way conscious agents learn over time and
which universals have reliably captured the way experience functions.
In the Science of Logic he explored the network of relationships that bind
those concepts together. Consequently, in the Philosophy of Nature he
used those fundamental patterns to organize what experimental science
tells us about the real world.
. How the World Has Changed
.. Where Hegel Got It Wrong
In the schematic outline of his system developed in Section ., Hegel’s
move to the Philosophy of Nature involves logical thought recognizing its
See Enc. § / GW : : “Space, as in itself the concept as such, contains within itself the
differences of the concept, (a) In the indifference of space, these are immediately the three
dimensions, which are merely diverse and possess no determination whatever” (my emphasis in
bold). Note that, in the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel regularly uses the term “the concept” (der
Begriff) to indicate where conceptual thought comes into play.
Spirit introduces into that world of external relations a kind of being that embodies internal relations.
So, the task of the Philosophy of Spirit is to construct a systematic picture of how spirit functions,
starting from a basic sensitivity to the natural world in which it finds itself and ending with the
panorama of world history.
.
limitations. It “lets itself go” to take account of external relations and
explore how they are to be understood. In addition, because the Logic has
already explored the conceptual relations between internal and external,
contingent and necessary, and singular and universal, it has the tools for
framing that investigation. When applying that structure, however, Hegel
was prepared to do more than simply organize what science had revealed
systematically. He also ventured into the debates of the scientific commu-
nity as it sought to understand and explain the evidence of experience and
experiment. I consider several of these ventures.
First, in the Introduction to his Philosophy of Nature he notes that,
while nature is to be regarded as a system of stages, development from one
level to another is not one of its inherent features. Only conceptual
thought can show how one stage is related to the next (Enc. § /
GW ). In his lectures he makes explicit that he has thereby ruled out
both emanation and evolution. In other words, the developmental history
inherent to the accumulation of knowledge through experience is excluded
a priori from the processes that govern the way nature functions.
The reasoning that lies behind his position is indicated in the previous
paragraph (Enc. § / GW ). Nature lacks freedom, and therefore
is a realm of only contingency and necessity. Necessity lies in the structure
of natural law, through which everything is causally determined.
Contingency stems from the fact that, whenever those causal forces
happen to intersect, the unique conditions of that intersection influence
what actually emerges. There is no space between those two features where
natural forces themselves initiate significant novelties. Because he has
shown, in the Phenomenology of Spirit, that conceptual thought is
grounded in conscious experience, Hegel assumes that whatever is not
governed by consciousness does not have a genuine history.
A second example comes from his discussion of the various kinds of
substance that chemistry was isolating during his lifetime. When he was
born, Carl Scheele and Joseph Priestley were in the process of capturing
pure oxygen. When he died, Humphrey Davy was using electrolysis to
isolate sodium, potassium, chlorine, and iodine. A scientific consensus was
gradually forming: All substances that cannot be further broken up into
components by chemical means should be called elements. They are the
fundamental constituents of matter, ranging from hydrogen and oxygen
through sulfur and phosphorous to silver and gold. Each of these elements
was composed of atoms: unchangeable units of matter which, as their
name implies, were themselves indivisible. This latter claim was based on
the figures that emerge when chemicals are combined. In stable
Is There a Future for the Philosophy of Nature?
compounds, the constituent “elements” are always found in discrete
ratios – :, :, :, and so on – never as a varying continuum. That
implied that something like Democritus’ theory of atoms underlies the
material world.
Hegel took issue with both parts of that consensus. In the first place, he
insisted that the basic substances needed to be distinguished not by what
they are but by the role they play in nature. The term “elements” he
limited to the basic components of water and air – oxygen, hydrogen,
nitrogen, and carbon – which seem central to all chemical processes. The
rest were separated into four kinds of other substances, distinguished by
the specific roles they played in those chemical changes: metals, metallic
oxides (or, as they had been traditionally called, earths), combustibles such
as sulfur, and salts. Hegel knew that oxides and salts could be decomposed
into simpler substances, but these seldom surface as such in nature. They
are isolated only through the intervention of controlled experiments.
In the second place, while he acknowledged that the role of definite
proportions in compounds suggested that basic substances existed as
specific units and, in his Logic, had identified the concept of a unit (or
“one”) of self-contained being, Hegel refused to call them atoms. For that,
following Democritus, meant that they were indivisible spheres moving
mechanically in space. And his Logic had shown that the concept of a self-
contained unit was not primordial but emerged from a reciprocal inter-
action between finite and infinite.
Hegel’s disagreement with the developing consensus emerged from his
Logic. He held that the concepts that result from our cumulative
experience establish the framework for any reliable explanation of natural
phenomena. And the basic determinate concept is “becoming,” which
then collapses into “determinate being.” When chemistry isolated more
and more simple substances, it was interested in what they are. They opted
for the term “element,” which had traditionally been used for earth, air,
fire, and water. Hegel, more interested in what things do, restricted that
term to just hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. Similarly, when
evidence emerged that chemicals combine in determinate proportions,
the chemistry of the day opted for Democritus’ term, “atom,” because
the units involved could not be reduced to smaller constituents by
chemical means. For Hegel, on the other hand, an ultimately indivisible
unit was simply prey to the external forces of attraction and repulsion; it
could not initiate any chemical process on its own.
(Events would eventually show that Hegel’s intuitions on the latter
point were justified. In , Ernest Rutherford established that the mass
.
of a gold atom lies in a much smaller central core, later identified as its
nucleus, formed of protons and neutrons, with electrons fleshing out the
space around it. Eventually it was shown that, in chemical compounds,
some electrons perform functions for two different nuclei at the
same time.)
A related controversy suggests the problem with Hegel’s approach.
Chemistry, led by Humphrey Davy, had exploited the process of
electrolysis: When metals of different types (copper or silver on one side,
tin or zinc on the other) were connected by a wire and put into a solution,
an electric current resulted. Using this procedure scientists were successful
in isolating and discovering new elements. An active debate emerged about
whether that process was primarily chemical, based on the different natures
of copper and tin, or electrical, based on the difference between positive
and negative poles. Davy claimed that it was primarily electrical with
chemical results. Hegel opted for the contrary claim, and moved his
discussion of galvanism (as the process was called) from the paragraph on
electromagnetism to the section on chemistry. He based his decision on
experiments conducted by a colleague in Berlin, Georg Friedrich Pohl,
who had become a convert to the natural philosophy of Schelling and
Hegel. In this case, the debate was not simply a question of finding the
right concept, but choosing which experiments to believe. Within a few
years of Hegel’s death, Michael Faraday would establish that galvanism was
an electrical process, proving that Davy had been correct.
This cluster of disagreements makes explicit a particular problem with
Hegel’s systematic model. The concepts that are explored and developed in
his Logic have emerged in human thought through centuries of cumulative
experience. But chemistry was in the process of finding new entities and
functions that had been hidden from the past but were becoming evident
as more precise measurements were being made. Those discoveries did not
fit easily into conceptual frameworks that were inherited. And the scientific
community, trying to capture the significance of what was going on, had
to try out familiar terms that could serve as metaphors. Familiar concepts,
which matched some features of a term but not all, became stretched and
transformed. For it is not just human society that has a history; so does the
process of formulating scientific explanations. Since absolute knowing is a
process of always learning new things about the world, none of the specific
conclusions that emerge over time are absolute. Relying on a single
systematic thread that leads through a sequence of concepts has become
See Enc., the end of GW §R (compare, Enc. / GW §R and §).
Is There a Future for the Philosophy of Nature?
problematic; one cannot assume, before taking into account the way our
knowledge of the world changes, that our thoughts from the past set the
standard for how we should interpret the present.
.. How Nature Has Reshaped Our Concepts
Developments in science over the past years have continued to
transform the context for any philosophy of nature. Several are sufficiently
critical to put Hegel’s whole systematic project into question. For nature is
now understood to have a history; space and time are no longer primitive
absolutes; and our human ability to think rationally has itself emerged as
the result of natural processes.
In the first place, geology, biology, and now physics have taught us that
nature has a history. For Hegel, the necessity that characterized nature
meant that, while contingent variations could occur, there were no genu-
ine novelties, for that required freedom. But Darwin proposed that
accumulated variations, together with the process of natural selection
(through which only those organisms with beneficial variations survive)
could produce new species. Recent biological research, using the evi-
dence provided by DNA, has established that life emerged just once,
when the first proto-bacterium developed a sequence of chemical
processes that was sustainable and could be reproduced. Similarly
unique initiatives occurred when one primitive cell, likely an archaeon,
acquired a nucleus; when one of its descendants absorbed another kind
of primitive cell that promoted the cell’s ability to generate energy,
initiating mitochondria; when the original ancestor of plants consumed
another kind of bacterium that enabled it to process sunlight and carbon
dioxide; and whenever organisms developed new capabilities (see
Kirschner and Gerhart ; Nurse ). Physics, too, identifies
uniquely creative moments: In the first milliseconds after the big bang,
when protons and neutrons were formed out of gluons and quarks; three
minutes later, when they developed into what would become the nuclei
of atoms; much later, when negative electrons were able to sustain a
relation with positive protons without losing their contrary charges,
forming hydrogen, helium, and lithium (see Gribbin ). While
none of these processes can be described as free, they nonetheless suggest
that, out of an original indeterminate context, conditions can emerge in
nature that introduce genuinely novel kinds of entities and processes.
Like critical events in human history, they transform the range
of possibilities.
.
In the second place, our conceptions of time and space have been
transformed. While geology and biology initially made us aware that the
earth and life on earth could be traced back through millions of years, it
was physics, once it realized that some apparent stars are in fact galaxies
and that those galaxies are moving apart from each other, that placed the
origins of the cosmos nearly fourteen billion years ago, and realized that
space extends well beyond anything we can now receive information
about, and continues to expand. In addition, Einstein’s theories of relativ-
ity established that the flow of time is not a constant but depends on the
relative velocity of moving objects; and that space is not Euclidean but
bends to take account of the presence of massive objects. Neither are
absolutes that provide the context for all nature but emerge from a more
fundamental absolute: the speed of light.
In the third place, given that spatio-temporal context, we now know
that humans have occupied a very minuscule portion of the full range of
space and time and are unlikely to last long as a species. The ability to reason
is not inherent in the cosmos but has emerged within the history of life on
earth. So there is no guarantee that the concepts we use provide a fully
reliable insight into the nature of things. For concepts, as Hegel realized, are
shaped through our experience of failed predictions and our ability to focus
consciousness on the details of their significance, and that is contingent on
changing conditions. As well, whenever we focus our attention, we ignore
much else; and that means we fail to notice those anomalies and inconsist-
encies that reveal the limitations of our achievements. In other words,
human reasoning does not have the resources for developing the realm of
“the unvarnished truth as it is in and of itself, without veil” or an “exposition
of God as he is in his eternal essence, before the creation of nature and any
finite spirit” (SL / GW : , my translation).
In the time since Hegel lived, then, we have discovered that nature has a
history and that human reasoning has emerged as a product of the natural
world. Nature is no longer the contingent expression of a primordial
rational structure to which we have an unambiguous access.
. How to Move Forward
Those changes challenge the fundamental convictions that determine
Hegel’s philosophy: that human experience has led us to reliable insights
into the nature of reason; and that philosophical thought already has all the
resources it needs to organize its understanding of nature. Without those
presuppositions, it becomes impossible to construct an integrated system.
Is There a Future for the Philosophy of Nature?
But that does not mean that one has to abandon any thought of a
philosophy of nature. For there are several features of Hegel’s endeavor
that can still contribute to a comprehensive grasp of the natural world.
First, in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit it is by learning from the
experience of failure that we humans improve our claims to knowledge.
Ventures fail because we assume that we already know enough to master all
truth. And we are constantly being forced to take into account features of
the world we have previously overlooked. But that work ends with a
chapter on Absolute Knowledge, which suggests that that process has, in
principle, come to an end. Once we recognize, however, that nature has a
history, and, over time and with new combinations of causal conditions,
genuine novelties appear and become stabilized, the virtue of humility is
reinforced. We no longer assume that we already have all essential answers,
which can be enshrined in a metaphysical logic. The process of learning
from our failures, central to the Phenomenology, continues to reorganize
our fundamental concepts. A contemporary philosophy of nature needs to
regularly take note of those features in our collective experience where
events have not turned out in the way we expect and initiate investigations
into why they failed.
Second, Hegel’s analysis, in the Science of Logic, of the way concepts are
linked together through tendrils of thought that explore contraries, condi-
tions, and implications provides a valuable resource for honing skills in
disciplined thinking. Nurtured by his perceptive and detailed analyses, we
are better prepared for seeing what is missing in what has already been
achieved and for exploring alternatives. It may no longer be appropriate to
expect a single itinerary that traces a systematic path toward a final
discussion of method. Indeed, in the second edition of Book (SL / GW
), Hegel himself rewrote a number of key transitions, suggesting one can
always discover other paths to follow. Nonetheless, in the history of
philosophy it is hard to find anyone else who has explored so effectively
the way systematic and well-regulated thought sets aside the casual associ-
ations of subjective streams of consciousness and focuses on the ways
reflective thought moves from concept to concept.
Concepts are to be distinguished from our sensory experiences – what
Locke and Hume called our ideas and Kant and Hegel called our
representations. The latter tell us both what things are and what they do;
in contrast, concepts capture why they do so: the conditions that lead to
those kinds of things, the results that follow, and what is explicitly avoided.
In other words, when experience teaches us that things do not work out as
we expected, we rely on conceptual thinking to find an explanation.
.
Hegel’s Logic has explored in intricate detail the tendrils of thought
incorporated into those general meanings.
Third, Hegel challenges us to broaden the focus of our attention to
incorporate as much detail about the way the world functions as possible.
When one considers the range of topics he discussed in his lectures, one
is amazed that he found the time to keep up with the literature. Reports
on religious traditions from the far reaches of the world, works of art
throughout the ages, and political developments in Europe and the new
world, as well as recent discoveries in mechanics, physics, chemistry,
geology, and biology, all provide material to flesh out the conceptual
bones of his system.
Such a breadth of understanding was unusual, even in his own day.
Since then, the exponential expansion in our knowledge of both the
natural and the social world makes it now impossible to replicate.
Scientific disciplines have become subdivided into specialties, each
one of which requires a lifetime to master. Developments in anthropol-
ogy, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology have
enriched our understanding of the way humans function. Explanatory
theories are continually being put into question by new discoveries,
both in the sciences and in our social and political lives. It is impossible,
in our day, to even approximate the comprehensiveness of
Hegel’s perspective.
Indeed, a critical factor in the way we humans interact with the world
complicates even Hegel’s attempt to be exhaustive. Whenever we focus our
attention, we ignore a wide range of events that are going on around us.
By concentrating on specific areas, we easily miss much else that could
easily have bearing on our immediate concern. The challenge, then, is to
expand that focus: to increase our understanding of what is currently going
on in the rich multitude of scientific disciplines and social arenas, to take
note of anomalies that confound our confident expectations, to explore the
reasons why causal patterns in different spheres are both similar and
different from each other, and to develop broad explanatory theories that
throw light on why things develop the way they do. Precisely because we
tend to assume, like many readers of Hegel’s Phenomenology, that we have
already discovered all that is critically necessary for understanding the
world, we are prone to forget the limitations inherent in our species.
We are fallible beings. There is, then, a role for something rather like
Hegel’s philosophy of nature, which not only takes account of as many
details as possible and endeavors to set them within a broad perspective,
but which is also, with conscious humility, open to the possibility that
Is There a Future for the Philosophy of Nature?
“there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be
dreamed of, in any philosophy” (Haldane , ).
By continually learning from experience, by developing skills in con-
ceptual analysis, and by recognizing that any comprehensive perspective
will always be partial and open to unexpected developments, we can build
on Hegel’s initiative and develop a contemporary philosophy of nature.
Central to Hegel’s philosophy, enshrined in the transition from Book
to Book in the Science of Logic, is the conviction that reciprocal
interaction is the critical condition, necessary for achieving conceptual
understanding (GW : –). What is emerging from our discussion
is that there is just such a reciprocal interaction between the way the
experimental sciences investigate the causal patterns that determine how
nature functions and the way reflective thought sets those discoveries into
conceptual structures that reveal how and why things function as they do.
Our concepts direct the focus of our attention to particular sets of facts;
unexpected facts force us to reevaluate and reconfigure our concepts.
So, a contemporary philosophy of nature will involve a double process.
On the one hand, new discoveries in science may lead to major revisions in
our concepts; on the other hand, careful thought may open new ways of
understanding the phenomena science investigates.
We find indications of that first process in Hegel’s revisions to the
second edition of Book of the Science of Logic. The chapter on
Measure explores the logic involved when we use quantities to define
qualities. In the course of that chapter he moves from a discussion of
elective affinity (the way two salts in a solution exchange constituents and
become different salts) to what he calls “The Nodal Line of Measured
Relations” (where continuous quantitative changes in the proportions of
two elements trigger significantly different qualities). In the first edition of
, written while Hegel was Rector of the gymnasium in Nürnberg, the
first paragraphs of the second section offer an obscure and complicated
discussion of the relationship between the quantitative and the qualitative
(GW : –). In the second edition, published after he died in ,
he took advantage of the recent discoveries that had led chemists to adopt
atomism: that chemicals combine in very specific ratios. To be sure, in
, he referred to those discoveries in his Remark, and the account of
those discoveries remain in his Remark. But in , by talking about
“combining” and “determining ratios,” he introduced into his primary
An amendment of Shakespeare: Hamlet, act , scene , line .
.
argument conceptual language, which picked up on what the chemists had
discovered, to both clarify the concept of “nodal line” and show how it
leads to the concept of “the measureless” (GW : –). With this shift
in vocabulary, the sciences were not simply instantiating the logic; rather
logic explored new conceptual relationships based on what it was learning
from the sciences (see Burbidge , –).
When one considers changes in the way the sciences now measure
phenomena to determine what is actually going on, one would anticipate
the need to rethink radically the whole discussion of measurement.
Physics, for example, measures the red shift in the light emitted by distant
galaxies to determine how fast they are moving away from us, and
measures the elements that make up stars by putting their light through
a prism and noticing which particular bands of color are missing.
In biology, counting bodies in a sample of blood determines the risk of
cancer or stroke. What are the significant concepts critical to these
processes, and how do those concepts relate to each other? Those are the
kinds of question contemporary philosophers of nature would pose as they
incorporate into their logical arsenal the discoveries that science is continu-
ally contributing to our accumulated experience.
But it is not simply that philosophy can improve its ability to interpret
what goes on in the world by noticing what science is discovering. Science
can also improve the theories and explanations it develops by becoming
more adept in employing the tools of conceptual thought.
Two critical functions characterize scientific developments. The first
involves developing more and better ways of isolating particular character-
istics and functions in the world through the use of rigorously controlled
experiments and sampling techniques. The second involves taking the
information thereby discovered and developing conceptual explanations
sufficiently robust to make successful, but previously unexpected, predic-
tions. The first isolates more and more aspects of our complex and
confusing world. The second proposes more and more comprehensive
pictures that explain why the world functions as it does.
By finding ways of isolating particular causal processes from interfering
conditions, science has been able to identify specific ways our world
functions. Galileo developed techniques for measuring the way bodies
move in space; Lavoisier established that oxygen is required for combus-
tion; Edwin Hubble realized that the “red shift” in the light from distant
galaxies provides evidence of the speed with which they are moving away
from us; François Jacob and Jacques Monod determined that active
proteins in the cell are turned on and off by other proteins in response
Is There a Future for the Philosophy of Nature?
to environmental conditions. The precision in detail achieved by successful
experiments has led to profound changes that have transformed our world.
On the other hand, the need for an explanation arises when things do
not turn out as we expect. Familiar and well-known initiatives no longer
work as planned. As we continually discover the complicated way causes
interact, we explore more comprehensive frameworks to explain those
anomalies. We expand our focus from what causes do in isolation to what
happens when they intersect and converge. Major advances in scientific
knowledge emerge from combining into a single framework a multiplicity
of discordant facts.
But unlike experiments, the generation of successful explanatory theor-
ies is not a process that can be strategically planned in advance. To be sure,
it starts from curiosity: about unexpected anomalies (mold inhibits the
formation of a bacterial culture) or about why different events share a
peculiar pattern (the falling of an apple strangely resembles the way planets
revolve around the sun). And it ends with explanations that make effective
predictions that would not otherwise have been successful and result in
technical strategies that change the way the world functions. There is,
however, no single, straightforward route from that kind of beginning to
that kind of result. Puzzles are puzzles because they do not conform to the
familiar and reliable expectations we have inherited from our past. Likely
solutions range over an indefinite multiplicity of possibilities. And while
some of those possibilities can be easily ruled out because of what we have
already discovered, there are no criteria we can apply in advance to isolate
from the plausible remainder the one or two that will turn out to
be effective.
It is at this point where the three features we have retained from Hegel’s
Philosophy of Nature have a role to play. For they identify skills that can
expedite the reflective move from puzzle to effective explanation:
. We start with Hegel’s insight that the reliable concepts we use in our
thinking about the world have emerged from the experience of failure.
A significant shift has occurred in what we mean by “rational.” For
Hegel (and other logicians), human thought, having been adequately
disciplined through experience and reflection, gains access to the
essential structure of the universe. But we are now aware that we are
simply one species, with particular faculties, that has recently emerged
within the vast range of expanding space and time and is continually
discovering new features of the world. Since our experience is
fundamentally limited by our position in the universe, we need to
.
focus, not on what we already know, but on links and connections we
have previously ignored. It is the experience of failure that awakens us
from our lethargy. In other words, we only discover whether our
concepts are reliable once experience has separated what works from
what does not. Unlike Hegel, we can no longer use reason to tell us
how nature is to be understood; we discover what is rational through
the experience of failure.
. Hegel’s Science of Logic explores the implications inherent in those
concepts that have emerged from our cumulative experience. When
confident expectations fail, reflective thought still has to rely on
concepts when exploring why things went wrong. The more we
become aware of the causal patterns that lead to failure, the more
effective are the explanations that shape our initiatives. It is this
network of causal relations – both those that frustrate and those that
bring about particular results – that constitutes the meaning of our
concepts and distinguishes them from our casual ideas or
representations. And it is this network that becomes explicit as
disciplined thought works out the significance of those concepts.
By reflecting, then, on what is involved in both failed and successful
predictions, we become aware of the connections and implications
that tie thought to thought. In other words, using the kind of careful
analysis that Hegel undertook in his major work, we are able to set
aside impractical hypotheses and concentrate on predictions that
make a difference.
Proposed explanations are of little value if they have no influence
on what happens in the actual world. We need to make predictions
precise enough to discriminate among various alternatives and take
note of whether and why they succeed or fail in capturing what
happens in the future. We need to be disinterested: to refrain from
using our interests and preferences to direct the movement of both
our thinking and our observations. And we need to venture tentatively
and with care until the confirmation of experience accumulates over
time and through varying conditions and circumstances. It is as our
proposals survive rigorous assessment – both in their formulation and
in their application – that we develop confidence in their reliability.
. We need to expand the focus of our attention. Reflective scientists are
able to propose and establish new ways of understanding the world
Being disinterested does not mean that we are apathetic. Rather, we exercise discipline to prevent our
interests from distorting the investigation.
Is There a Future for the Philosophy of Nature?
because they are familiar with what is going on in their specialty. But
they are also prone to assume that the world generally must fit within
that familiar framework. While philosophers cannot match their
familiarity with detail, they can broaden the range of experience taken
into account. They can explore what is being discovered in a diversity
of fields; they can draw attention to inconsistencies that surface when
disciplines are compared; and they can incorporate anomalies that
have emerged elsewhere that do not fit the assumptions of a particular
discipline. We can never hope to be completely comprehensive. But
the wider the range of human experience we take into account, the
more resources we draw on when searching for explanations.
Any reasoning that leads to the discovery of new truths about the world
has to integrate various entities and functions into an explanatory frame-
work. That quest can benefit from an appeal to analogy. For analogies
point to similarities shared by quite different kinds of activity. For pure
logicians, analogies have a bad reputation, since they cannot establish the
truth of their conclusion; the differences between the patterns being
compared may be more significant than their similarities. On the other
hand, by taking those differences into account and working out how they
intersect with the functions that are similar, an argument from analogy
provides an effective way of improving our reasoning. For we then do not
simply isolate a shared pattern; we notice the way differing conditions
transform the way similar processes work and widen the range of
possible explanations.
Analogies, for all their problems, have one feature that makes them
singularly useful when looking for new explanatory theories. Unlike the
statements of Aristotelian logic, where subjects and predicates are simply
linked with a copula, and unlike the propositions of formal logic, where
individuals simply instantiate functions or concepts, they easily incorporate
complex sentences that are built around active verbs – sentences that relate a
diverse range of agents to one particular dynamic process or integrate a
number of processes through the effective use of participles and subordinate
clauses. Each constituent relation contributes its distinctive characteristic to
the total network; when combined into a single sentence, the picture can
become quite complex. Analogies based on verbal sentences, then, provide
the logical means for working out conceptual explanations.
The process the philosophy of nature adopts for discovering new
insights into the way nature functions are versions of this same process,
used in the sciences, for formulating hypothetical explanations. It notices
.
significant anomalies; it explores ways of fitting those anomalies into what
we already know about the world; and it turns back to experience to see
whether that understanding improves our ability to act effectively in the
world. But it incorporates a broader range of information. It notices how
the various sciences differ in the way they function; it takes into account
not only the results of disciplined research through controlled experiments
but also the dynamics of concrete existence, where it is frequently impos-
sible to isolate the influence of individual causal initiatives; and it tests its
explanatory hypotheses by taking careful note of what happens whenever
people rely on carefully worked out predictions when making decisions.
Consider, for example, the term “cause,” which plays such a central role
in all explanations. In the seventeenth century, science assumed that all
causation involved matter in motion. When moving things met, things
happened. Gravitation, however, did not fit that mechanical model.
It turned out that other forces, like magnetism and electricity, also do not
involve direct contact, and light can move through a vacuum. In neither case
is matter involved. Relativity changed things further by introducing the
concept of the field. And quantum mechanics talks about causal patterns
involving crowds, not individuals (see Einstein and Infeld ).
When we move beyond physics, we find other variations on the theme:
Elements combine and recombine through chemical processes; species
originate by means of natural selection; and living cells involve a complex
network of chemical interactions to maintain their individual integrity.
This rich complexity suggests a possible domain for the philosophy of
nature. By taking note of the various ways causal processes actually bring
about change it can use analogy to establish a basic concept of cause that
covers not only all natural cause but social action as well, and then spell out
the significant differences that determine why each kind functions in its
own way.
No longer can philosophers expect to be knowledgeable in as many
areas as Hegel. But as members of the community of reflective thought
that is constantly seeking to broaden the focus of attention, they can bring
their skills in exploring the links between concepts to the task of under-
standing the complex world in which we live.
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. Hegel’s Epistemology: A Philosophical Introduction to the Phenomenology of
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John Protevi, –. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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. From Concept to Objectivity: Thinking through Hegel’s Subjective Logic.
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University Press.
Index
Absolute Idea, , , , , –, , celestial, , –, , , , , ,
–, – , –, , , ,
Absolute, the, , , , , , , –, mechanics, , , ,
, , –, , space,
“concretization” of, chemical, –, , , , –, –,
nature and, , , , , , ,
Spirit (Geist) and, –, –, , , –,
Adorno, Theodor, –, , , , , –, ,
analogy, , , –, –, , , Concept, the (Begriff), , –, –, ,
, , , – , , , ,
animal, –, , –, , , –, , doctrine of,
, , , , –, , in nature and spirit,
–, , –, –, conception, , , , , , , , , , ,
–, –, –, , , , , , , ,
apriorism, , –, , , –, , , , ,
charge of, , –, , , , ,
Aristotle, , , , , , –, –, ,
consciousness, –, –, , –, –, ,
syllogisms and, , , , , , , –, ,
assimilation, , , , , –, , , , , , –
, – nature and,
astronomy, , , , , contingency, , , –, , , , ,
, –, ,
Baader, Franz von, –, copulation, –, –
beauty, , –, , , Cuvier, George, –, –
biology, , , , , , , , , ,
–, , Darstellung, –
Hegel’s conception of, speculative,
Bowman, Brady, , , death, , –, , –, , ,
Burbidge, John W., , , , , , , , –, –, , , , ,
, , , , ,
Butler, Clark, deduction, transcendental,
Descartes, René, ,
Cassirer, Ernst, epistemology of,
categories, , , , , –, –, , , determinacy, , , ,
, , –, , , –, development, –, –, , , , –, , ,
–, , , –, –, –, –, –, ,
natural-logical, , –, –, –, , , , , ,
causality, , –, – –, –, , , , , ,
chemical, – , , , , , ,
mechanical, – organic,
Index
DeVries, Willem, geology, , –, –, –, –,
dialectics, , , , , , , –,
and nature, Hegelian, –, ,
Divine, the, , See also God geometry, –, , , ,
dynamic, , , –, –, , , –, analytic,
, , , –, , , Gestalt, , , , , , ,
–, , God, , , –, , –, , ,
and nature, , , ,
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, , , , ,
Earth, the, , , , , , –, , , , ,
Einstein, Albert, , , gravity, , , , , , –, –,
elasticity, , , , , , –, , ,
electrolysis, ,
emergentism, , – Greek, ,
ether, geometry,
Euclidean, , , ground (Grund), , –, –, , , ,
space, , , , , –, , , ,
experience, , , , , , , , –, , , , , ,
–, –, , –, ,
, –, –, –, habit (Habitus),
externality, , , –, , , , –, , Harris, Henry S., ,
–, –, , , , heat, , , , , , ,
–, , , , –, and matter,
–, , , , , –, Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, –, –,
, , –, , , –, –, –, –, –, –,
– –, –, , –,
–, –, –, –,
facts, , , , , , , , , –, , , –, –,
non-physical, –,
physical, Dissertatio philosophica de orbitis planetarum
Ferrini, Cinzia, –, –, , , , –, (), ,
, –, , , , , Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences
, , , , , , (, , ), –, , –, ,
–, , , –, , , ,
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, –, , , – –
Findlay, John N., , Encyclopaedia Logic,
finite, the, , , , Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Nature,
force (Kraft), “Mechanics”,
form, , , , , –, –, , –, , Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Spirit,
–, , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , ,
–, –, , , , , , –, –,
–, –, –, –, First Systematic Draft of Naturphilosophie
, –, –, , –, (–),
, , –, , –, , Jenaer Realphilosophie (–), ,
, –, –, –, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, ,
–, –, , , , Lectures on the Philosophy of Nature, ,
fossils, Phenomenology of Spirit (), , , , ,
freedom, , , , , , , , , –, , –, ,
, , , , , , , “Force and Understanding, Appearance and
, , , , , , , the Supersensible World”,
–, , , , “Observing Reason”, ,
Frege, Gottlob, Science of Logic (, , ), , ,
–, , –, –, ,
Galileo Galilei, , , –, , , –, , ,
genera, , , , , –, , , , , ,
Index
history, , , , , , , –, , language, , –, , , , ,
, , , , –, , law(s), , –, –, , –, , , ,
–, – , –, , , , ,
of philosophy, , , –, , , , ,
of science, , , – , –, –,
Hobson, Art, , – causal,
Houlgate, Stephen, , , , , , , , natural,
, –, , , , , Titius–Bode, , ,
–, , , Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, , ,
human, , , , , , , , , , –, life, –, , –, –, , –, –, ,
, –, , , –, , , –, , , –, , ,
, , –, –, –, –, , –, –, –,
–, –, , , , –, , –, , , ,
–, , , –, , , , , ,
beings, , –, –, , –, , , , , –, –,
, –, , –, –, –, ,
Humboldt, Alexander von, – –, –, , , –
animal, , , –, , , ,
I, the, geological,
idealism, , , –, –, –, , , , organic, , –, , , –,
German, plant,
immediacy, , –, , , , , , light, , –, ,
, –, , Hegel’s account of,
individual, the, , , , , , –, , waves,
–, , , , , , Lindquist, Daniel, , –,
–, , –, –, , Linné, Karl von, –
, , , –, and taxonomy,
individuality, –, –, –, , , , logic, , , –, , , , –, –,
, , , –, , , , –, , –, –, ,
, , , –, – , –, –, , , ,
intelligence, , , –, , , ,
intelligibility, –, , , , – , –, –, , ,
of nature,
of the real, magnitude(s), –, , –, ,
intuition, , , , , , , , , continuous and discrete,
–, , infinitesimal,
mathematical,
Kant, Immanuel, –, –, , , , , manifoldness, , ,
, –, –, , , –, materialism, ,
, , , , –, , mathematics, , , , , , , ,
, –, , , , , , , ,
, , , , matter, , –, , –, , , , , –,
Kepler, Johannes, –, , –, , , , , , –, , , ,
–, –, , , –, –, –, –, –,
, –, , , , , –,
three laws of planetary motion, –, –, –, –, –,
Knappik, Franz, , – , , –, , –,
knowledge, , –, , , , , , –, , –, –,
, –, , , , , absolute, –,
–, , , , , , and life, , See also life
, , –, Maxwell, James Clerk, –
empirical, , McTaggart, John M. E.,
system of, mechanics, , , –, , , , –,
theoretical, –, , , –, –,
Kreines, James, –, , , –, , , , , , ,
Index
mechanism, , , , –, –, , negativity, , –, , ,
, –, Newton, Isaac, –, , , , –, ,
mental, , , , –, –, ,
metaphysics, , , ,
method(s), , , , , , –, , Newtonian, , , , , , –, ,
–, , , –, , , ,
, mechanics,
mind, the, –, , , –, –, , post-,
, , nominalists, ,
modern science, ,
monism, , object (Objekt), , , –, –, , ,
substance, , See also substance, monism –, , , , –, ,
motion, , , , , , , , –, , , –, , –, ,
–, –, , , , , –, , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , –, –,
movement, , , , , –, –, –
–, , , –, , basic, –
–, , , –, –, objectivity, , , , , –, , , ,
–, , , , , , , , , , , ,
–, , –, , ,
, ontology, , , ,
organics, , , –, –, , , ,
Natura naturans, , , See also Spinoza, Baruch , ,
Natura naturata, , See also Spinoza, Baruch otherness, , , , –, –, ,
natural, –, –, , , , ,
forms, , , –
phenomena, , , , , , , , –, form of,
, , –, , , , , of the idea,
of nature,
philosophy, –, –, –, , –,
–, , , particularity, –, , , –, –,
science(s), , , , , , , , –, –, –, , ,
naturalism, , –, , , –, , , –, , , , , ,
, –, –, , , –,
Hegel’s discussion of, Peirce, Charles Sanders, ,
nature, perception, , , , ,
account of, , , , –, –, –, Petry, Michael John, , ,
–, , phenomenology, ,
animalistic, philosophical,
impotence of, , –, , , , – development,
metaphysics of, science,
organic, , , , , , , system, , , , , , , , , ,
reality of, , – philosophical thought,
science of, , philosophy,
stages of, as organic totality,
state of, photons, –
Naturphilosophie, –, –, –, , –, physicalism, , –, –, , ,
, , , , , , , Pinkard, Terry, , , , , , ,
pseudo-versions of, Pippin, Robert, , , ,
Schelling’s, , , , place, , ,
necessity, , –, , , , , , , –, planet(s), , –, , –, –, ,
, , , , –, , , , ,
, , , , , Plato, , , , –, , –, ,
negation, , –, , , , , ,
–, , , , Ploucquet, Gottfried,
Index
Popper, Karl, , , , , –, , –,
process(es), , , , –, , , , , –, –, –, , ,
, , , , –, –, , , , –, , –,
, , , –, , , , , –, , –, –
, –, –, –, space-time, , , , , –, ,
–, , –, , , , –, , See also space; time
–, , –, , , species, –,
– Spinoza, Baruch, ,
chemical, –, , –, , , Hegel and,
Spirit (Geist), –, , –, –, , ,
of internalization, –, , , , , , ,
oscillatory,
psychology, , , Stern, Robert A., –, , ,
purposiveness, , , , , , , , subjectivity, –, –, –, , , ,
, –, –, , , ,
Pythagorean, – , , , –, , ,
mathematics, , ,
substance, , , , , –, , , ,
quality, , , , , , , , , , , ,
, syllogism, , , –, –,
quantity, , , , , , , , of allness,
– system,
circularity, ,
Rand, Sebastian, , –, , –, , , digestive,
, nervous, ,
realism, , –, –, , , , , , of philosophy, ,
, of stages, , , , , , , ,
reason, speculative,
in history,
in nature, taxonomy, , , , ,
pure, , , Taylor, Charles, ,
reciprocity, , , , teleology, , , , , , , , ,
representation, , –, , , ,
reproduction, –, , –, , , telos, –
, –, – temporality, , , ,
Romantic science, theory,
thinking (Denken),
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, –, , , thought(s) (Gedanken), , , , , ,
–, –, –, , , , , ,
, , , –, , , pure, , , , –, , , –
Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich, –, time,
–, , , totality, , , , , –, –, , ,
science(s) (Wissenschaft), –, , , , , , , –, , , ,
–, –, , –, , , , , , , , –, , ,
, , , , –, , , , , , –, –, ,
, , , , , , , , –
, , , –, –, transcendental, , –,
self-consciousness, , logic,
sexual difference, , , philosophy, ,
singularity, –, , , –, , transition,
–, –, , , truth, , , , , , –, , , , ,
soul, the, , , –, , –, –,
space, , , , , –, , , –, –, , , , –, ,
, –, , , , –, , , –,
–, –, –, –, universal,
Index
understanding (Verstand/noesis), Whitehead, Alfred North,
unity, , , –, –, –, –, –, whole, the, , , , , , , , , ,
–, –, , –, –, , –, , , , , ,
, , , , , –, , –, , , , –,
–, , –, , , , ,
, –, –, , , Wolf, Clark, , , ,
–, , –, –, , Wolff, Michael,
, , , , , –, world, the, , –, –, –, –, ,
, , , , , , , , , , ,
of moments, , –, , , –, ,
of nature, , , –, , , –,
universal(s), the, , –, , –, –,
universality, , –, –, –, , , , as a dynamic whole,
–, –, –, , , , dynamism of,
, –, , , –, , natural, , –, , , , –, , ,
, , , –, –, , –, , , , , , ,
Titles published in this series (continued):
Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals
Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise
. .
Plato’s Laws
Plato’s Republic
.
Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations
Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason
Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim
Mill’s On Liberty
. .
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
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