Date: Sat, 05 Jul 1997

From: Lau Kam To

Subject: Hegel's Idealism - thanks

To Andy and Mustafa,

Thanks for your replies which have clarified my question.

Andy,

1) Your science students in your reply and your comments ("just beyond the bounds of knowledge lies God, Allah, Spirit, Gaia, the next chapter in the textbook or the advice of the Comrade Branch Secretary, is idealism") reminds me of of Kant. According to Kant, experience is the only source of knowledge, God, Soul, etc. are transcendental Ideas of Reason not given in experience and any claims of knowledge concerning these Ideas would result in antimonies. These Ideas could only serve a regulative role in providing principles for systematic arrangement of our cognitions. A building implies an architect who designs it but does not imply the architect created the building out of nothing. Hegel argued that Kant restricted himself in Understanding only, but human mind is more than that, it is Spirit, and it is by the dialectics of consciousness that Understanding as one form of consciousness to be sublated and attains finally the absolute identity of subject and object. The infinite (God/Nature) can be known because human consciousness is not finite, it is infinite, there is no limit to its capability if it is brought to the Absolute Idea. Whether subjective intuition of God in revelation (Jacobi) or relegating God to a realm beyond Reason (Kant) is a position trapped in the finite. However, in the Absolute Idea, we find no content of God except the recollection of all the determinations of objects as experienced by consciousness along the path it has taken and then grasped by Spirit as it's self-determination. In this respect, it seems that God in Hegel's philosophy could at best only serve a regulative role or if Hegel did want to introduce God, then he has failed to locate Him and fall back to a pre-Kantian position. One the other hand, one might agrue that Hegel is an idealist precisely because there is nothing in the world which is not knowable. But Marx point is not simply to comprehend the world, to reconcile with it, but to change it. So your emphasis on distinguishing matter as concept and matter as it is outside and prior to consciousness is important.

2) In one of your reply to Mustafa, you said "the notion is the truth of substance" is not clear. I think you are referring to The Doctrine of Notion in Part 3 of Hegel's Logic, the Chinese translation has it as concept (Begriff). Notion in English has the conotation of vague idea or general idea, something not yet definitive, but in Logic, Hegel's deduction is from abstract to concrete, so substance is not a simple idea like Being.

Mustafa,

It seems to me you must have spent a lot of time on Hegel and Marx.

I agree with your elaborations and to supplement what you've said, here I describe briefly my understanding on the difference between Hegel's idealism and Marx's historical materialism: That man is part of nature is a position that Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx all shared. To Hegel, the defining characteristic of man is consciousness, the relation between man and nature is one of comprehension by thought, an activity of thinking. Nature, as experienced as externality, as something outside and over consciousness (in lower forms of consciousness such as sensation) is to be sublated in Spirit which is the unity of subject and object. To Feuerbach, in opposition to Hegel, the nature of man is to be found in his emotional needs, lacks and drives (sensory experience) asserts that there is an immediate unity between man and nature. To Marx, who although influenced by Feuerbach, objected such immediate unity, instead, the unity of man and nature is one mediated by labour which is the defining characteristic of man. This unity changes with forms of labour, mode of production and incurs, as you say, both the transformation of nature and society. This involves historical development which is not found in Feuerbach but in Hegel who has developed it only philosophically, in abstraction.

Regards,

Alex Lau