Hegel's Naturalism: Teleology, Life, Self-Consciousness and the Depiction of the Human Mind

While Hegel’s concept of second nature has now received substantial attention from commentators, relatively little has been said about the place of this concept in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This neglect is understandable, since Hegel does not explicitly use the phrase “second nature” in this text. Nonetheless, several closely related phrases reveal the centrality of this concept to the Phenomenology’s structure. In this paper, I develop new interpretations of the figures “natural consciousness,” “natural notion,” and “inorganic nature,” in order to elucidate the distinctive concept of second nature at work in the Phenomenology. I will argue that this concept of second nature supplements the “official” version, developed in the Encyclopedia, with an “unofficial” version that prefigures its use in critical theory. At the same time, this reconstruction will allow us to see how the Phenomenology essentially documents spirit’s acquisition of a “second nature.”

I. Introduction. The works of Karl Marx are among the most influential works in the history of social sciences. Despite the fact that they were written in the 19th century and ailing communist regimes in the 20th century claimed that there political systems and ideology were based on his theories, Marx’s works are still today widely read and quoted by social scientists and philosophers. Following the increased polarisation of Western societies since the 1980s, particularly in the last decade, interest in Marx is rising and the number of university courses that deal with his thought is increasing. The works of Marx are wide ranging in scope. He wrote poems, studied mathematics, published philosophical and political articles and books that dealt with political economy. In this book, we will concentrate on those aspects of Marx's texts that relate to what we prefer to call theories of science or ‘metascience’, i.e. the epistemics (ontology and epistemology) of the texts in question and the historiography of science which we will find in the texts. Concerning epistemics we will highlight problems such as: a) the dialectical world view of Marx and his inversion of Hegel's philosophy (the relationship between humanity and nature, human essence, determinism and process-ontology); b) Marx's 'project' or disciplinary aims, referring to the motives of his theoretical practice and its relation to political activity; c) Marx's critique of the dominant philosophy (i.e. in Germany Hegelianism) and political economy; d) Marx's view of the existing sciences, referring to their philosophical premises as well as the relationship between science and society; e) Marx's criteria of science and his view of 'ideal' science. We will approach these five main topics by looking at some of his main works as they appear chronologically and we will do it in two main steps. In the following second chapter we will highlight Marx's early writings and at the end of it we will concentrate on his and F. Engels's work German Ideology. The works that we concentrate on in that chapter are to be characterized as a metacritique of the political philosophy of Hegel, the Young Hegelians and political economy. The third chapter covers, with reference to German Ideology, the Works which Marx wrote in 1857/58 and after. Interpretation of Marx's writings is a hermeneutical and practical problem. Objectivist (R.J. Bernstein 1983, pp. 8-16) interpretations tend to claim to understand what Marx "really meant". Two approaches of this kind are quite usual. On the one side, we have internalist approaches which either attempt to find the origin of Marx's theories within the sphere of theoretical practice (i.e. his work is seen as a transformation or synthesis of some other theoretical systems, c.f. the philosophy of Aristotle, Hegel, Young Hegelians and political economy) - or we have internalist approaches in the form of teleological interpretations that see Marx's academic career and works inevitably ending and aiming at particular works (c.f. Althusser's and Balibar’s (1998) 'reading' of Marx's works through Capital). On the other side, we have externalist interpretations that reduce his work to external factors such as political practice or the 'world view' of certain social group or classes (c.f. G. Lukács) that Marx came into contact with or worked with. We do not adhere to these methodological canons. Our point of departure is that Marx's work must be seen as a result of his practical context in which his political 'project' (in the wider existential sense) is most interesting. His political 'project' (i.e. his act of relating himself to interests of social groups and contexts etc.), must however be understood as nothing more than our abstraction and does not imply any theory of its inner structure of necessity. Marx's 'project' and theoretical problematique at particular time in his development is an 'open' project and an open problematique that has the potential of being formed differently according to his active interiorization of his practical situation and shifting contexts. The practical situation consists both of theoretical and philosophical traditions that he in an active way bases his thought on - and social interests and forces which he attempts to join. Accordingly, we would like to approach the development of his thought as a process of ‘structuration’ in which he actively structures his thought (see A. Giddens (1993) for a discussion of the concept of structuration and J. Coopley et.al. (2001) and R. Bhaskar (1978 and 1979) for arguments for critical realist methodology). Furthermore, as Marx's work is a result of an open project our own understanding is only a 'fusion' of our horizons and interests on the one side and Marx's horizons on the other side, as they appear to us. This does not mean that we claim to impute meaning in Marx's work. We are only sticking to Our hermenutical position which is dialogical (see H.-G. Gadamer 1977). Knowledge and understanding is a matter of praxis.

Dewey’s notion of second nature is strictly connected with that of habit. I reconstruct the Hegelian heritage of this model and argue that habit qua second nature is understood by Dewey as a something which encompasses both the subjective and the objective dimension – individual dispositions and features of the objective natural and social environment.. Secondly, the notion of habit qua second nature is used by Dewey both in a descriptive and in a critical sense and is as such a dialectical concept which connects ‘impulse’ and ‘habit’, ‘original’ or ‘native’ and ‘acquired’ nature, ‘first’ and ‘second nature’. Thirdly, the ethical model of second nature as habituation and the aesthetic model of second nature as art are for Dewey not opposed to one another, since by distinguishing ‘routine’ and ‘art’ as two modes of habit, he makes space for an expressive and creative notion of second nature. Finally, I argue that the expressive dialectics of habit formation plays a crucial role in Dewey’s critical social philosophy and that first and second nature operate as benchmark concepts for his diagnosis of social pathologies.

This paper lays out two recent accounts of Hegel’s practical philosophy in order to present a challenge. According to Robert Stern and Mark Alznauer, Hegel attempts to ground our ethical practices in ontological norms. I argue that we cannot ground our ethical practices in this way. However, I also contend that Stern’s and Alznauer’s conception of reality as both conceptual and normative can still play a useful role in practical philosophy, namely, to help defuse a sceptical worry about a threat to ethics

Transcendental materialism is a philosophical perspective that uses German Idealism, Marxism, psychoanalysis and natural science to offer a materialist account of subjectivity and culture. This essay compares this philosophical framework with recent work in the study of religion (Manuel Vásquez) and philosophy of religion (Kevin Schilbrack and Thomas A. Lewis). While transcendental materialism has until now been unconcerned with religion, it offers parallels with this recent work. It differs, however, in its specific understanding of the material dimension of the dialectical relationship between abstraction/conceptuality and practice/embodiment.

Full text: http://ojs.hegelbrasil.org/index.php/reh/article/view/166 ""Abstract: The recent tendency to detect naturalism in Hegel’s epistemology is more than just a phenomenon within contemporary Anglophone scholarship, insofar as it mirrors a questionable state of the art at the intersection between philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. According to the naturalist reading, Hegel maintains that the natural world is the only presupposition for satisfying the needs of self-consciousness. Such reading considers the essence of self-consciousness as naturally embodied in its essence, while downplaying the intersubjective dimension of reciprocal recognition needed for self-consciousness. Self-consciousness, as the thinking subject or the mind, is then lead to allegedly unavoidable delimitation of any knowledge-claims. On this reading, the natural is an insurmountable obstacle to the mind. Hegel, on his side, evidently offers an ongoing multifaceted dialogue with divergent streams of naturalism. Yet, the question arises: in which sense can we appropriately speak of Hegel’s naturalism? This paper presents the recent naturalistic approaches to Hegel, along with deliberations on Hegel’s possible response to them, namely his concept of the transsubjective thinking mind, the Geist."

The paper proposes a reconstruction of some fragments of Hegel’s Jena manuscripts concerning the natural genesis of recognitive spiritual consciousness. On this basis it will be argued that recognition has a foothold in nature. Such a reading of recognition will be contrasted with contemporary constructivist interpretations such as those offered by Robert Pippin and Terry Pinkard. As a consequence of our reconstruction of its emergence from nature, recognition should not be understood as a bootstrapping process, that is, as a self-positing and self-justifying normative social phenomenon, intelligible within itself and independently of anything external to it.

This article appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the author and is the introduction to The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism, 2nd ed. revised (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1995). Just an upload for more readers, to spread the word of Murray Bookchin.

After a period of neglect, the idealist and romantic philosophies that emerged in the wake of Kant’s revolutionary writings have once more become important foci of philosophical interest, especially in relation to the question of the role of religion in human life. By developing and reinterpreting basic Kantian ideas, an array of thinkers including Schelling, Hegel, Friedrich Schlegel, Hölderlin and Novalis transformed the conceptual framework within which the nature of religion could be considered. Furthermore, in doing so they significantly shaped the philosophical perspectives from within which later thinkers such as Feuerbach, Kierkegaard, Wagner and Nietzsche could re-pose the question of religion. This volume explores the spaces opened during this extended period of post-Kantian thinking for a reconsideration of the place of religion within the project of human self-fashioning.

Despite having philosophy been modernly addressed to mind rather than to brain (or to metaphysics rather than to physics), the field of neurophilosophy could represent the reoccurrence of the pretension to embrace totality. By overcoming the traditional opposition between undifferentiated monism and mind-brain dualism, Pereira Jr.'s Triple-Aspect Monism (TAM) would be more than just a conciliation or an insertion of dualism into a physicalist regard of biology. In this essay, TAM is, then, correlated to the Hegelian philosophy, in order to identify its elements as a means of reaction to mind-brain dualism, as Hegel opposed to dualism in modern philosophy. There are, thus, mainly four topics discussed in this essay that summarize the correlation between Hegelian dialectics and TAM: (1) The triadic structure of being, nothing and becoming, – also in the form of the universal, the particular and the singular – connected to the three layers of physiological, unconscious/informational and conscious processes; (2) the idea of morality and ethical life as a result from physical interactions, which include intentionality, exchange of information waves and physical-chemical-biological exchanges; (3) the forms of Aristotle incorporated in Hegel's idea of the Absolute's movement, which overcomes the modern opposition between nature and spirit as different entities; and (4) Hegel's considerations of the game of forces, compatible to TAM's contemporary scientific approach.

The apparent force of the Placement Problem appears to lend considerable weight to philosophical projects such as reductionism, eliminativism, instrumentalism, and nonfactualism. These theories, it is thought, are united by vocabularies and conceptual schemes better suited than their more metaphysically-inclined rivals to make sense of things, since reductionism and eliminativism are thought to be prices very much worth paying to avoid supernaturalism. However, rather than solve the Placement Problem by arguing in favour of either reductionism or supernaturalism, I think we should dissolve the Placement Problem in an Hegelian manner: I argue that the explanation for why the Placement Problem grips the philosophic imagination with such force is that rational activity is exclusively articulated in terms of the kind of inferential patterns definitive of analytical thinking, namely the kind of thinking symptomatic of Verstand. This, in turn, leads to conceiving of the space of reasons and the space of nature as fundamentally in tension with another, and to regarding the manifest image and scientific image as metaphilosophical antagonists. However, central to Hegelianism is a committed opposition to treating the nomothetic qualities of the Laplacian model of rationality which Verstand instantiates most explicitly as exhaustive of critical thinking. This is because Hegel places significant emphasis on the dialectical function of Vernunft, which does not conceive of rational activity as a detached, voyeuristic critical reason. Why Vernunft is favoured here over analytical reflection is that Verstand fails to be completely illustrative of our phenomenology, our Erlebnis, and our sense of ourselves as self-interpreting rational agents engaging in multifaceted forms of enquiry. For Hegel, one must go beyond a particular kind of naturalism, namely a narrow naturalism which alienates us from ourselves. The ultimate advantage of this broader naturalism is that it is a remarkable improvement over the emaciated empiricism of reductionism and eliminativism, as it is defended as part of a properly scientific understanding of the world. Conceived in this way, the game played by narrow naturalism turns on itself: reductionism and eliminativism, rather than serve science, are in fact anti-scientific.

Charles Taylor's opposition to representationalist conceptions of the tasks of philosophy is shared by several other philosophical movements, most notably pragmatism and contemporary advocates of Hegelian Idealism strongly influenced by pragmatism (eg Robert Pippin, Robert Brandom).The article considers what, if anything, the particular anti-representationalist strategy adopted by Taylor adds to these other forms of non-representationalism. In this way it attempts to throw new light on the significance of Taylor's project today.

A Festschrift for H.S. Harris.

Sample chapters: "Introduction", Arto Laitinen, Nicholas H. Smith, pp. 5-9. http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/fil/armala/INTRO.pdf "On Identity, Alienation and Consequences of September 11th. An Interview with Charles Taylor", Arto Laitinen, Hartmut Rosa. pp.165-195. http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/fil/armala/texts/Part%20Four%201112.pdf "Culturalist Moral Realism", Arto Laitinen, p.115-131. http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/fil/armala/texts/2002c.pdf See the series: http://www.helsinki.fi/filosofia/acta.htm

This paper argues from the assumption that both Pragmatism and Critical Theory belong to the Kantian/left-Hegelian tradition, with the former the narrower interpretation of the two. Starting from the metaproblematic of pragmatism (and Critical Theory), namely the concern with human activities and their form, it surveys the classical, neo-classical and contemporary debate about Pragmatism and finds that the question of form rather than the question of human activities is at its centre. Form is then linked to spirit-mind (Geist) and, while a metaphysical interpretation as is suggested by the English word ‘spirit’ is avoided, argued to be a sociocultural phenomenon that is rooted in the human organic endowment in order to eliminate the dangers of sociologism and culturalism by including a weak naturalistic stance. Recalling sociocultural thinking’s historical philosophical and mathematical background, the argument is that spirit/mind-based form can be understood as limit concepts that punctuate the infinite objective, sociocultural and subjective processes constituting the human world. From a social scientific viewpoint, such limit concepts can be conceptualized as context-transcendent cognitive order principles, such as truth, right, and authenticity, and a great variety of context-immanent cultural models. Assuming that the relation of limit concepts to the infinite processes they punctuate has important implications, finally, the cognitive order’s linguistic, logical, mathematical and informational nature is probed in order to reveal the vast presupposed expanse of inexhaustible potentialities. From this it is concluded that the realization of the form-giving force of the human spirit/mind in, for example, contributions to problem-solving and especially to transformative world-creation, depends on our ability to work on the presupposed limit concepts of our time so as to disclose their potentials and to reinterpret and reconfigure them.

A critical overview of the recent trends of scholarship and translation work in early German Romanticism from 2000-2005.

This dissertation is a reconstruction of Hegel’s 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit that establishes its underlying continuity with “Frankfurt School” thought. In three parts, it shows how Hegel’s early text expounds the “inner cells” of a unified and defensible critical theory. Part I shows that the Phenomenology obeys an exacting model of “immanent critique” – a philosophical method that promotes a self-reflexive transformation in “spirit.” I additionally connect Hegel’s discussion of “speculative sentences” to this immanent method. Part II develops an interpretation of the “object” corresponding to this method, so-called “natural consciousness.” I claim that the Phenomenology exhibits natural consciousness as the bearer of a “second nature” that must be “defetishized” through Hegel’s critical procedure. Further, I show that, in the “blindness” suffered by natural consciousness, Hegel has constructed an early model of “ideological delusion.” Part III advances the view that the entire Phenomenology can be read as a derivation of the immanent-critical standpoint, as it subverts all standpoints that remain “external” to their objects. The Phenomenology suggests, in fact, that this structure of “externality” is at the core of three modern “rational pathologies”: namely, “instrumental reason,” “nihilistic disenchantment,” and “moralizing criticism.” The Conclusion recollects the various “cells” isolated in the preceding discussion and integrates them into a Hegelian Critical Theory. The dissertation ends by contemplating several intellectual-historical questions regarding Hegel’s own intentions for such a critically transformative philosophy.

John Dewey once wrote: “Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.” For him communication is the highest of the “arts of life,” for it is in communication that society is born and nurtured. It is by communication that we discover the possibilities of nature. And it is through communication that we make our shared experience meaningful. It is no wonder, then, that Dewey would conclude The Public and Its Problems with this provocative statement: Democracy “will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication.” Dewey, however, does not adequately explain what he understands by “the art of full and moving communication” and never tells us how “communication” functions in the varied contexts of practical life. Despite, then, his obvious affection for communication, he leaves many questions about it unanswered. For instance, what makes communication possible? In what kind of situations is communication called for and why? How does an inchoate feeling or idea find concrete embodiment in language? What are the connections among language, communication, thought, feeling, and action? Most importantly, what is the process by which one employs the art of communication to influence the beliefs and behaviors of others? This dissertation addresses these questions by approaching Dewey’s thinking on communication from a distinctly rhetorical perspective. Even though Dewey almost never mentions “rhetoric” in his entire corpus, I argue that it is precisely the absence of the term from his writings that makes a rhetorical reading of his work all the more imperative. Such a reading permits us to understand the practical importance of the “art of communication” in the larger context of his social thought. If, then, the problem with Dewey’s writing on communication is that it often drifts into abstractions, one remedy is take those abstractions and place them into concrete situations, where communication is required to transform some part of the environment through transaction with human thought and action. Because this kind of activity has been the specific domain of rhetoric since the time of the sophists, it is only appropriate to read Dewey’s work through that tradition. In effect, the goal of this dissertation is to explicate Dewey’s theory of communication in the terms of a rhetorical theory. But insofar as his thought went through three distinct “periods” in his lifetime, beginning with his Idealistic period in 1880, moving into his Experimental period in 1903, and culminating in his Naturalistic period in 1925, Dewey can be said to have had three implicit rhetorical theories. To articulate and explain each of these theories, I trace Dewey’s theoretical development through time and construct, through published works, private correspondence, and biographical material. I show that the first theory envisioned rhetoric as a form of eros that helps us grow towards Absolute self consciousness. The second theory views rhetoric as a form of critical inquiry whose goal is the development of phronēsis, or practical wisdom. The third theory treats rhetoric as a productive technē, or a naturalistic form of art that has the power to transform experience, nature, and society through its transactional character. By tracing Dewey’s theoretical development and explicating three implicit theories of rhetoric in his writings, this dissertation not only provides a unique perspective on Dewey’s changing views on language, ontology, and social practice, but also demonstrates how each theory can still be effectively used to interpret and guide the art of rhetoric. This kind of work enables us to grasp different facets of this diverse and vibrant art. At the same time, it shows how Dewey’s work remains an important resource for those who wish to promote and sustain a democratic way of life by educating citizens in the art of full and moving communication.

In his most recent work, McDowell argues that the oscillation between the Myth of the Given and coherentism can be avoided only by an ‘equipoise’ between the objective and the subjective. However, I argue that Adorno’s ‘cognitive utopia’ is a genuine 4th option distinct from equipoise and from the oscillation between the Myth of the Given and coherentism. McDowell’s inability to acknowledge the cognitive utopia is traced to his overly abstract conception of the disenchantment of nature, in contrast to Adorno’s emphasis on the domination of nature. This difference is traced to their different interpretations of Hegel.

This paper recounts a dramatic paradigm shift in the debate on the value and significance of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, from the harsh criticism it faced over the past two centuries to its reappraisal, in the last three decades, through both the vindication of Hegel’s competence in the empirical sciences and the appreciation of his assessment of organic life and habitat, at the intersection with anthropology. The paper concludes with the most recent trends in scholarship, which focus on the problem of the naturality of man in respect to culture and to democratic societies and on the systematic transition from Hegel’s philosophy of nature to the philosophy of spirit.

Kant's interpretation of space and time as a response to Newton's theologically based spatio-temporal realism is taken as a model of what it is to be a Kantian idealist about God and the self. In turn, Hegel's philosophy is taken as a development of this approach that ...

This contribution aims to address the nature of the normative in Hegel's theory of habits and to highlight that social practices are the outcome of natural and biological characteristics related to the homeostasis of the organism and to the common biological features of the individuals of the same species. This should point out that habits and human practices have a concrete biological background and are the outcome of humans' eagerness to inhabit the world through socially codified activities. The contribution deals also with the relation habits have with the self-conscious life and human world history. Hegel's conception of mind in the Encyclopedia represents an exceptional contribution for understanding the mind-body relation and, particularly, the organic character of the cognitive functions. What Hegel proposes is to conceive of the human mind as a faculty that is developed within the biological evolution of the organism and as a function integrated in the organic living whole of the subject. He deals, therefore, with a soft version of naturalism as he claims that cognitive capacities are strictly connected with natural requisites and maintain a permanent relation with the natural dimension of the organic. Mind is the outcome of a crossed stratification of nature and cognitive dispositions because there is no stage of cognitive activities that can be considered as separated or totally emergent from their natural premises. The rational criterion of Hegel's naturalism is the idea that nature is a system of grades (System von Stufen) (Hegel, 1830, § 249) in which the idea and freedom represent the last step. However, this step can only be achieved by a natural organism having developed an organization of its own life based on self-consciousness and on the " Notion " [der Begriff]. Mind is, hence, an embodied faculty, determined by this embodiment and permanently related to this condition. In the Encyclopedia Hegel undertakes an analysis of the different levels of the cognitive disposition by starting with those that are mostly connected to the organic dimension of life in order to highlight that the highest level of life is freedom, which is attained by a dialectics between the organic requisites and the very pursuit of the mind. In this narrative, habit occupies a very important position for it is placed after the sentient faculty of the body and introduces the actual soul, i.e. the condition in which the soul conceives of its body as its own other and distinguishes itself from the outside environment, becoming an individual subject (Hegel, 1830, § 411). The notion of soul in the Hegelian conception of the mindful disposition is intended to correspond to the classical notions of anima and ψυχή in the ancient philosophy. Therefore, it is not a fully rational and self-conscious disposition because it is not based on a conceptual activity; it is rather much closer to sensibility and to what animates individual agency and behaviour. The