Hegel and Schopenhauer

G.W.F. Hegel and Arthur Schopenhauer are the two most famous of Immanuel Kant's successors. There is am old saying in philosophy that: "Kant said two things, that there is a real world and that we cannot know the real world. Hegel said the first was false and Schopenhauer said the second was false." There is some truth to this statement, but there is much that is more complex than the above statement. Hegel and Schopenhauer accentuated different aspects of Kant's philosophy. Schopengauer was the closer to Kant, but Kant would have disapproved to both the philosophy of Hegel and Schopenhauer. Both Hegel and Schopenhauer had many influences outside of Kant, but many many of these influences were the same for both. Both were products of eighteenth century Germany. Jacob Bohme was a huge influence on not only Hegel and Schopenhauer, but also on Kant. Bohme is outside the scope of this essay. Both Hegel and Schopenhauer were also perceptive critics of Kant. Some of the best criticisms of Kant's philosophy are found in the writings of Schopenhauer. So let us move to Kant's critical philosophy. Kant continues the Cartesian paradigm. The Cartesian paradigm is a double theory of truth. The double theory of truth was adopted to keep religion and science seperate from each other. That science and religion are both true in their respective spheres. This is part of the Kantian philosophy that Hegel and Schopenhauer would reject. Kant not only keeps the double theory of truth; he also strengthens the theory. Kant does this by setting up a duality of what can be known, and what cannot be known. These two realms are the phenomenal and the noumenal realms: the world of appearances and the intelligible realm in Platonic language. The intelligible world is the real world, the thing in itself,or the noumenal in Kant's terminology. Kant uses all three ways of referring to the real world, although he generally calls the real world the thing in itself.This is the realm of religion. Kant then asserts that we cannot ever really know the thing in itself or the real world. To understand why we cannot know the real world, we must go to the heart of Kant's philosophy: the transcendental schema. The term " transcendental" may seem scary, but it is not. It is only Kant's colorful flair for coinages. The term "transcendental" means that it is put in by the subject, and is not in the object. The subject puts the categories into the object. This is how the phenomenal world is created. The categories in the subjects mind creates the phenomenal world or the everyday world we live in. So let us move to the first of the stages of the transcendental schema. The first stage of the transcendental schema is the transcendental aesthetic. In the transcendental aesthetic, space and time are put into the phenomenal world. The real world or thing in itself is not subject to space and time. It is the subject (humans) that put space and time into the world of appearances. We must now move to what Kant means by intuitions. By the term intuitions Kant means the same as John Locke's simple ideas. That data has a spatial-temporal position. An example should help to illustrate: we see an apple on the tree; the color red would be a simple idea that makes up the complex idea of an apple. The color red has both a place and a duration: space and time. These intuitions then go into the manifold of the transcendental analytic. The manifold is Kant's famous categories of the transcendental analytic. The categories include such things as causality, possibility, plurality, etc. This is how the objective world is created. Of course,for Kant the objective world is created by the subject; the thing is itself does not contain the categories, We must now examine how the transcendental aesthetic and the transcendental analytic also create the subjective and objective. An example from Kant should illustrate. A man is walking in the woods and there is snow on the ground. He sees a cabin, and the door is open. The man enters the cabin. He feels the cabin is warm, he looks around and sees a wood burning stove. This example is meant illustrate the category of causality, and the change from the transcendental aesthetic to the transcendental analytic.The heat or the warmth the man feels does not cause the stove, the stove causes the warmth, even though the man experienced the warmth before the stove. Feeling the the warmth is of course the transcendental aesthetic. The heat is a simple idea or intuition it has both a duration and location. Then the transcendental analytic takes over and changes the subjective to the objective. The category of causality means the cabin is not warm for no reason or the heat did not cause the stove, even though the warmth was felt before the man observed the stove. Here we observe the transition between the subjective and objective.The feeling the heat before observing the stove is the subjective; realizing that the stove causes the heat is the objective. Kant has one more transcendental stage: the transcendental dialectic. The transcendental dialectic is the realm of illusion. It is when we try to take the logic of the categories beyond experience. When we speculate using logic on matters that we have no observations or experience of; when we try to discover new truths with the use of logic alone. Kant illustrates this with his famous antinomies. Kant posits four antinomies. The antinomies are contradictory propositions that can be proved through the use of logic; that space and time had a beginning, and we can also prove through the use of logic that space and time are eternal, that there are simple parts, and that there are no simple parts,etc. In other words through the use of logic we can prove contradictory positions. This is why Kant said that:"categories without intuitions are empty and intuitions without categories are blind" In other words logic and categories only cannot give us new knowledge; logic and categories only cut experience into subjective and objective experience. Logic cannot take the place of experience. The transcendental analytic creates the objective world, and the transcendental aesthetic creates the subjective world, but they are not the real world. The real world cannot be known through the use of reason and logic. The only approach to the real world is through the sentiments and emotions. Kant is quite adamant that people should not try to speculate about the nature of the real world. This of course, leaves a big hole in his system. A hole both Hegel and Schopenhauer are going to try to fill in radically different ways. Let us move to Hegel. Hegel taking a cue from F.W.v. Schelling believed there is only one self that includes mind and body. Hegel is a monopsychist; he believes that all finite consciousnesses are parts of one consciousness. In other words, all of our individual minds are manifestations of one greater mind. This self and supreme consciousness are of course, God. The is why Hegel titled his first important book "Phenomenology of Spirit" Which could be rendered as the appearance or manifestation of God in human history. Spirit is of course God. Hegel's God is not the God of traditional God of religion. Hegel's God is not transcendent is not separate from creation. Nor is Hegel's God an unqualified pantheism. In Hegel's system, God needs humans to achieve self-consciousness in order to know himself. Hegel says this in his usual oracular way:"God is God only so far as he knows himself: his self-knowledge is, further, a self-consciousness in man and man's knowledge of God, which proceeds to man's self-knowledge in God." In simpler words, humans complete God. How is it that God needs humans? We must get a greater understanding of this single self that manifests in in human history. To begin with Hegel rejects apophatic theology. For Hegel God is knowable; not just in part. There is no hidden part to God. God is exhausted by his manifestations; there is no hidden part to God. God and hes manifestations are equal; God and hes parts have equality. For Hegel, God is logic.The terms of Hegel's are intelligences or shades(source-spirits or natural properties in J. Bohme's terms) that are moments of God's self-awareness. Here we can wbserve Hegel's debt to Kant. Hegel takes Kant's categories and judgement and makes them terms or moments of God's developing self-awareness. The categories are no longer part of the subject as in Kant's philosophy. Instead they are the ultimate reality; the terms of God's manifestations in history. So there is no need in Hegel's philosophy for a thing in itself, or unknowable real world. Like some first of second century Gnostic, Hegel believes God has fallen asleep in matter. It is humans, being part of God's mind that rescue God from matter by thinking and grasping the terms or shades of the logic, humans energize these terms and manifest God. This is why Hegel says God is manifest in the human community, God is reason. God is objective reason that is energized by humans grasping the terms or shades of the moments of his manifestations. The human community manifests God when it grasps the terms of the logic. It is interesting to note, that one of Kierkegaard's criticisms of Hegel was that logic does not provide dynamism or movement. In this case Kierkegaard is wrong as I have shown elsewhere (Intellect and Abstraction) that the term of an abstraction is an image-trigger that triggers either a mental or physical scenario. If one believes abstractions to be real independent existing entities then they would possess power, movement, and intelligence. So each term of Hegel's logic is a moment of God manifesting in the human community.We know from Kant that logic and the categories create the objective and subjective world, but in Hegel the terms of the logic are not in the subject, but in God so they are the way God creates the cosmos. Now we can understand Hegel's theory of sublation. The term "sublation is hard to define; it has been defined as transcend and integrate, and as cancel and preserve. As one can observe from the above two definitions "sublation" is a hard term to define. So let us look at two examples used by Hegel. First example: if we think of a tree we are picture thinking when we sublate the thought of a tree into a universal it cancels out the thought of a particular tree, and yet preserves the particular tree in the abstract universal "trees" the second example: is when we eat and digest food we are breaking the food down into constituent parts. So for Hegel sublation means reaching a higher state of abstraction. Hegel is very much a top-down thinker; abstractions are more real than material particulars. This is how the Absolute or God attains self-awareness. The Absolute of God is freed from matter when thinking grasps the higher universals of particular entities. There is still one more problem for Hegel that he inherited from Kant. Which is the antinomies. How can Hegel say that logic gives us higher or new knowledge, if Kant is right about logic giving no new knowledge? To get around Kant's critique Hegel restores the ancient doctrine of recollection. That human being part of God, so we have all knowledge within us, it is just confused. Hegel very much follows in the tradition to the microcosm and macrocosm of ancient philosophy. Since Hegel is a monopsychist this cause him no problems. So now we can observe Hegel's debt to Kant. That he accentuated the logic and categories, and denied that there was any unknowable thing is itself , or real world. So let us move to Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's philosophy is closer to Kant than Hegel. In many ways Schopenhauer's philosophy is a simplified or revised version of Kant's philosophy. Schopenhauer keeps Kant's two realms of the phenemonal and the noumenal. He also keeps some of Kant's categories. He keeps space, time, and causality. He believes this is all that is needed to create the world of appearances. To use Schopenhauer's language the categories of space, time, and causality create our representation of the external world. Like Kant, Schopenhauer does not regard the external would as the real would. Where Hegel is a monopsychist, Schopenhauer is a monothelite. He holds that there is only one will, or energy that animates the all of existence. One will that appears as many objects, and entities. When we turn to the internal realm there is nothing but will (desire) and this is the ultimate reality.In this way Schopenhauer is more radical than Hegel. Schopenhauer has broken with the top-down paradigm. Instead of abstractions being higher and creating the cosmos, it is will(emotion) that creates the cosmos. Schopenhauer's vision is very much of inside and outside. The internal or inside is the real, the outside is appearance. It must be said Schopenhauer has not completely broken with the top-down theory, but it is the start. Through the influence of Schopenhauer philosophy shall get Nietzsche and existentialism. So to sum up Hegel uses Kant's categories and logic, but denies any unknowable thing in itself. Schopenhauer says there is a thing in itself, but i can be known.