Hegel on the Dialectic of Kant, Fichte and Schelling

Hegel on the dialectic of
Kant, Fichte and Schelling

Nirmala Devi, Batta

The term dialectic is derived from the Greek terms ‘dia’ and ‘logos’ which mean dialogue or a conversation between two persons. For many thinkers, it is a technique of questioning by which truth is arrived at. At times it is also understand as the critical analysis of a ‘given’. Since pre-Socratic thought, in the history of Western Philosophy, it has been used variously by different thinkers. Aristotle says that Zeno of Elea is considered to be the inventor of dialectic as a method. ¹

Apart from Greek thinkers, German thinkers also used dialectic in analysing their thought. Among them Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel are important thinkers, who used dialectic in their Philosophy. This paper is aimed at analyzing the dialectic of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling in the perspective of Hegel. As every one knows, Hegel is known very much for his dialectical thinking. The term dialectic is so much identified with the name of Hegel that it is not possible to think one without the other. In his work Lecturers on the History of Philosophy and in other works also analysed his predecessors ² philosophies critically. This paper is divided into three parts viz., Kant, Fichte and Schelling.

I

Immanual Kant used the term dialectics in his Critique of Pure Reason in the sense of criticism or critique. His dialectic is the outcome of his contention that the transcendental metaphysics as a natural disposition and as a science is impossible. Kant is of the view that ‘reason’ or ‘intellect’ is incompetent to understand noumena or supersensible which includes the problems like God, freedom, soul immortality, substance and so on. Reason can only know the sensible world or phenomena or things as they appear to it. Reason can never transcend the world of experience and have a priori knowledge of the supersensible. The noumena can neither be perceived by the senses nor intended by the intellect. The perception and understanding are possible only in the realm of the phenomena but not in the sphere of noumena.

Kant is of the view in the metaphysics of the transcendent, rea­son deceives itself in trying to understand the transphenomenal in terms of the phenomena. It mistakenly applies to transphenomenal such categories like cause and effect, substance and accident which can be legitimately applied only to the phenomena. Thus reason falls into the illusion of mistaking phenomena for noumena. Kant calls such an illusion ‘transcendental illusion’² and the criticism of this illusion the transcendental dialectic. In fact, the transcendental dialectic, according to Kant, is not a method of reasoning as such but an exposition of the antinomies of reason when employed in the transcendental realm. Let us now observe how Kant takes the prob­lems like the origin of the world, the parts and the whole, causality and substance and shows how each argument (thesis) in their favour entails a counter argument (antithesis) which goes against it.

1.      Thesis: The world has a beginning in time and is limited in space.

Antithesis: The world has no beginning and no limitations in space, but it is infinite in time and space.
2.      Thesis: Every composite substance in the world consists of simple parts and there exists everywhere nothing but the simple and everything that is composed of it.
Anthithesis: No composite thing in the world consists of simple parts and there does not exist anything single in the world.
3.      Thesis: The causality according to laws of nature is not the only thing from which the phenomena of the world can be wholly explained. There is still another causality through freedom, which is as necessary to explain the phenomena.
Antithesis: There is no freedom, but everything occurs merely according to laws of nature.
4.      Thesis: There is an absolutely necessary substance, which be­longs to the world as its part or its cause.
Antithesis: There does not exist anywhere any necessary sub­stance, neither in the world nor outside the world as its cause.

Thus Kant demonstrates how speculative reason, in the realm of metaphysics, goes dialectical and contradicts itself. For Kant dialectic means the negation of reason by itself by inventing the antinomy of its own initial position.

However, Kant does not claim that the transcendental dialectic can put an end to the tendencies of reasons to fall into its traps. He admits the limitation of transcendental dialectic. He says that it can only discover the transcendental illusion is natural and inevitable. The transcendental illusion does not cease to be even after it has been detected. It continues to play tricks with reason even after its deceptiveness is exposed. It will entrap reason into momentary observations and the function of the dialectic is only to discover such entrapings. Kant says “The transcendental dialectic will therefore content itself with exposing the illusion of transcendent judgements, and at the same time taking precautions that we be not deceived by it. That the illusion should, like logical illusion actually disappear and cease to be an illusion, is something which transcendental dialectic can never be in a position to acheve” ³.

Hegel accepts Kant as having given dialectic a higher place in his critical philosophy. The greatest merit of Kant, according to Hegel, is that he has freed dialectic from the arbitrariness of ordinary thought. He has exhibited dialectic as a necessary function of reason. He has also shown dialectic on the contradiction of reason as being objective and necessary which belong to thought determinations applied to things in themselves. Kant, in his exposition of the antinomies of reason, has shown the spurious game of reason in producting illusions. At the same time Hegel holds that Kant’s dialectical exposition of the antinomies of pure reason is not praise worthy.

Hegel holds that though Kant has characterized the dialectic of reason as belonging to the intrinsic negativity of self-moving soul, which is the principle of all nature and spirit, but he has stopped short at the negative aspect of dialectic, and failed to go beyond the phenomena or finite. Kant has stiffed reason of its potentiality to know the reasonable which is universe. Hegel says “If no advance is made beyond the abstract negative aspect of dialectic, the result is only the, familiar one that reason is incapable of knowing the infinite; a strange result for-since the infinite is the Reasonable it asserts that reason is incapable of knowing Reasonable” ⁴.

II

Next thinker, in the dialectical development, is Fichte. Fichte’s Philosophy takes into account the diverse currents of thought and seeks to direct them into a common stream. He has given a rational explanation of the world. For him mind is principle of knowledge and all philosophy is ultimately a Philosophy of mind or spirit in which forms and categories play a significant role. He has employed the logical method in order to comprehend the living process of the reality. It is Fichte, who has laid foundations for the idealistic world­view. His aim was to solve the problems of Philosophy with the self-­determining spiritual principle. He called it the ego or the will or the freedom.⁵ For him ego alone is truely real and all else is dead and false. He held that the ego, which is not a thing among things, is a rational and organic system, the different functions of which are not disconnected and without purpose. Infact the various acts of the ego contribute to the evolution of self-consciousness.

Fichte expounds the evolution of ego in a dialectical manner. There are three moments in the dynamic evolution of reason. They are (1) the ego, (2) the non-ego and (3) the positing or setting the two in opposition. He calls the first, the thesis, the second antithesis and the third synthesis. As already mentioned, the ego, the first principle, is self-consciousness, which is absolutely free and identical with itself⁶. The non-ego, the second principle, is equally independent of the ego and unlimited⁷. It is the other, which is the negation of the former. The antithesis is assertion of a non-ego in opposition to the ego. The non-ego, being entirely something other than the ego, contains an entirely different content. The synthesis being the third principle is the determination of the first two through one another, in such a way that the ego and the non-ego mutually limit each other. The reality of the one abrogates the reality of the other⁸.

Hegel appreciates Fichte for removing the short coming in the Kantian Philosophy wherein there is no speculative unity to the whole system. Hegel says that Fichte is the first thinker who maintained the ego or reason to be the absolute principle out of which all the matter in the universe is represented and produced. It is Fichte, who has comprehended reason as in itself a synthesis of Notion and actually. Hegel says, “The Fichtean Philosophy has the great advantage of having set forth the fact that philosophy must be a science derived from one supreme principle, form which all determinations are necessarily derived” ⁹.

Hegel holds that, Fichte has seen the great necessity in Philoso­phy of beginning with one living idea out of which the world is eternally produced as a flower. The important point in his philosophy is the attempt to construct the whole world and the whole content of con­sciousness in a scientifically consistent way. “Thus Fichte does not”, says Hegel, “like Kant through his work into narrative form because he begins with the ego; but he has produced further, in as much as he sought to bring about a construction of determinations of knowl­edge from the ego” ¹⁰.

However, Hegel contents that Fichte’s first principle, viz., the ego, is not grasped as the idea. He says that Fichte’s notion of ego is purely subjective which is an abstract undetermined identity. Hegel objects to Fichte’s deduction of the ego for it is grasped, “solely in the consciousness of the activity which we exercise in knowing and consequently it is still laid hold of in the form of subjectivity”¹¹! It is fixed in its one sidedness. It does not have the differentiated content within it. Hegel says that the ego does not have truth in it “for the very reason that the certainty of itself possessed by the ego has no objectivity”¹².

As regards Fichte’s notion of non-ego, Hegel maintains that it is not a necessary derivation from the first principle, but only an assertion in opposition to the ego. Hegel is of the view that although the derivation of opposite from the first principle is necessary, Fichte has merely added the same as something new to the first principle. The non-ego is merely set forth instead of being deduced¹³.

Further, Hegel is of the view that Fichte’s notion of synthesis is defective. He holds that the synthesis is not derived but postulated, since the ego (thesis) and the non-ego (antithesis) are entirely different and separate from each other. The return of the non-ego to the ego is not made possible as non-ego is regarded as unconditioned and implicit within itself. Moreover, since synthesis implies the mutual limitation of the thesis and the antithesis, it hardly contains anything of them. It does not signify a category which is the result of the negation and the retention of the thesis and the antithesis. Instead, it only stands for a mere alternation between them. Hegel says “What we find is merely an alternation between self-consciousness and the consciousness of the another and the constant progression of this alternation, which never reaches any end” ¹⁴.

Hegel admits that it is Fichte, who has for the first time made a rational attempt to deduce and demonstrate the categories - thought determinations of the manifold relationships between the ego and the non-ego in their in their necessity. But Hegel at the same time maintains that Fichte’s “Progress from one determination to another is, however, only an analysis from the stand point of consciousness, and not in and for-itself”¹⁵.

Above all, Hegel’s objection against Fichte’s philosophy is that it lacks an absolute point of view and content. That is, it contains neither the speculative element nor the Absolute Spirit, which is the unity of the subjective and the objective. Fichte’s philosophy is significant only when philosophy is considered in its outward form. It has worked out the spirit and the world in an unphilosophical way.

III

Schelling has attempted to construct nature or world a priori. His main aim has to reason out the necessary stages in the evaluation of nature¹⁶. That is he found a dialectical process working through the world. He has comprehended the two opposing activities viz., thesis, and antithesis, which get united in a synthesis. He called this process the law of triplicity, wherein the thesis is action, antithesis is reaction and synthesis is the harmony between the two. Schelling applies the triadic dialectic to every phase of organic and inorganic realms, to individual and social life, to history science and art¹⁷. Thus it is evident that Schelling regarded nature as a dynamic evolutionary process of reason moving towards the self-conscious reason of man. He has equated the necessary forms of thought with the necessary forms of being.

Hegel has built his system on the foundations laid by Schelling. Like Schelling Hegel also has conceived to reality as a living and de­veloping process. Hegel appreciates Schelling for comprehending the World-spirit as evolving in the dialectic. Hegel accepts and bor­rowed Schelling’s concept of the Absolute knowledge as the harmony of the objective with the subjective. Hegel appreciates Schelling’s Philosophy as being truly transcendental and speculative in charac­ter. But at the same time he has objected that Schelling begins his philosophy or dialectic with the Idea of the absolute as identical of the subjective and objective as “absolutely presupposed without any attempt being made at showing that this is the truth”¹⁸.

The great difficulty in the Philosophy of Schelling, according to Hegel, is that the conception of mediation between the thesis and the antithesis is done in a general way. Hegel opines that Schelling did not comprehend mediation in a definite logical method, for with him it remained an immediate truth, which can only be verified by means of intellectual intuition”¹⁹.

As we have already seen, Hegel was completely dissatisfied with the dialectic of his predecessors. He contended that the dialectic of Kant, Fichte and Schelling failed to deduce the universe necessarily and rationally. He held that their dialectic was only an external reflection but not internal. It is imperfect and also incomplete since the contradictions, in dialectic, did not reconcile logically in a proper synthesis. Therefore, Hegel rejects the preceding methods and established his own dialectic method of dialectic as false and regards it as “the only true method”²⁰. Whereas for Hegel dialectic is an inalienable spiritual attitude which can discriminate between truth and false hood, “Basically”, says Hegel, “it is nothing more than the regulated and methodical cultivation of the spirit of contradiction, which is a gift common to everyone, and particularly valuable for distinguishing the true from the false”. ²¹

¹ Edward Zeller, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, trans­lated by L.R. Palmer, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., London, XIII edition. 1950. P .52.
² Immanual Kant, Critique of pure Reason, Translated by Norman Kemp Smith, Mac Millan & Co., Ltd., London, 1963. P. 161.
³ Ibid, P.162.
⁴ Hegel, Science of Logic, Translated by A. V. Miller, George Allen and unwin Ltd., London, 1969. P. 56.
⁵ Copleston Frederick S.J. A history of Philosophy Vol. VII, modern philosophy part I, Fichte to Hegel, Image Books, New York, 1965, P. 59.
⁶ Ibid, P .61.
⁷ Ibid, P.65.
⁸ Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol. II, Translated by E. S. Haldane and Frances H. Simson, Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., London, 1955, P. 489.
⁹ Ibid, P. 483.
¹⁰ Ibid, P. 483.
¹¹ Ibid, P. 484
¹² Ibid, P. 488
¹³ Ibid, PP. 488 - 9.
¹⁴ Ibid, P. 492.
¹⁵ Ibid, P. 492.
¹⁶ Copleston Frederick, S. J. A History of Philosophy, Oppcit, PP - 135-6.
¹⁷ Ibid, P. 142.
¹⁸ Hegel, Lectures on the history of philosophy, oppcit, P. 525.
¹⁹ Ibid, PP. 526-7.
²⁰ Hegel, Science of logic, Tr. A.V. Miller, Oppcit, P. 54.
²¹ Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, Vol. I. Tr. M. J. Petry, George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London, P. 96.