Ken Foldes, Hegel and The Solution to Our Postmodern World Crisis. From Nihilism to Kingdom Come. Essays, Xlibris Corporation, Philadelphia (PA) 2003, pp. xx-592.

 

 

This volume is articulated into an “Introductory Essay”, three main Parts and a “Concluding Essay”. In the introductory essay (“The Solution to Our Postmodern World Crisis”, pp. 1-83) the author outlines the unitary philosophical topic developed in the essays that follow, which consists in the attempt to understand in the light and the form of the “concept” (i.e., of speculative thought) the essence of, and the grounds for, the “nihilism” pervading the consciousness and praxis of the “postmodern world” – namely, of the Contemporary Age – and moreover to put forward a theoretical and practical overcoming of it based on a reappropriation of the fundamental epistemological and metaphysical conceptions originally worked out by modern philosophical Rationalism (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz), and then fully developed by German Idealism (Kant, Fichte, Schelling) and especially by Hegel’s system. In the five essays collected in Part I (“Hegel, Postmodernity, and God”, pp. 85-208) the author discusses some well-known theses by Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Nietzsche concerning those topics of the philosophy of history, of politics, and of religion, which are more closely connected with his attempt to understand and solve the crisis of the postmodern world. Part II (“Hegel’s System of Science”, pp. 209-334) consists of six essays (certainly the best of the volume), which analyse with subtle logical perspicacity and admirable speculative vigor the crucial theoretical kernels of Hegel’s system (i.e., Logic, Phenomenology, Philosophy of nature, and Philosophy of history). In Part III (“Before and After Hegel”, pp. 335-473), finally, we find five essays devoted, respectively, to the vindication of a consistent idealistic interpretation of Kant’s epistemology (in polemic against the opposite readings by P. F. Strawson, H. E. Allison, etc.), to a close and convincing critique of Kant’s moral theology, to the analysis of the logical structure of the 1794 Doctrine of Science and of the “secret” of the 1804 Doctrine of Science, and finally to the discussion of a crucial epistemological problem raised, but never satisfactorily solved, by today’s logical empiricism and pragmatism, that of the conditions for the possible reference of scientific concepts to the (alleged) objective reality of the external world. The concluding essay (“Manifesto of The New World Order”, pp. 475-545) betrays only in its Preface the historical occasion that prompted its composition – namely, the enthusiasm aroused in the western world by the news of the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. What it actually offers to its readers is, rather, a compact reconstruction of the development of the fundamental epistemological problem of the thought-being relationship in the history of modern philosophy, culminating in a careful analysis of the solution worked out by Hegel, whose substantial validity and up-to-dateness the author intends to repropose today, on a series of grounds he lucidly expounds in the introductory essay (cf. pp. 12-13).

The first ground is that Hegel’s philosophy, and no other, as an attempt to understand the Absolute in the form of the concept, can provide us with the indispensable antidote to the pernicious nihilistic relativism characterizing, in his opinion, both contemporary historical reality as a whole and its reflexive self-consciousness in the thought of postmodernity. The second ground is that no other philosophy has so far succeeded in developing in such a perfect and systematic manner a rigorously theoretical conception of reality and knowledge, and at the same time in incorporating into it the most significant philosophical achievements worked out by the whole history of western philosophy. The third ground is that, although Hegel’s philosophy is undeniably “metaphysical” in character, as it fundamentally consists in “the study/knowledge of Being as such, as the Whole of What is” (p. 80, n. 1), and the author consequently polemicizes against the opposite “anti-metaphysical” Hegel interpretations upheld by R. D. Winfield and W. Maker (cf. esp. pp. 214 ff.), yet it radically differs from all previous metaphysical systems because it is grounded on a principle – that of the Absolute Idea – which can be proved through logically close and indisputable arguments (cf. esp. pp. 47-55), thus warranting the objective validity of all determinate categories that by virtue of the dialectical method can be deductively drawn from its concept. The fourth reason is that thanks to the working out of a fully-fledged philosophy of history it also allows us to successfully state and solve the problem of understanding the meaning of historicality, and then the character of, and the grounds for, the postmodern world crisis. Finally, Hegel’s identification of religion’s content with that of philosophy renders possible a critical, and consequently anti-dogmatic and non-fideistic, comprehension of the essence and “fate” of such a fundamental constitutive element of western civilization as Christianity.

To maintain that the Absolute Idea is the principle of philosophy does not mean in truth anything else, the author appropriately remarks (cf. pp. 34, 205, n. 85, 215-217), than to show that it is possible to think of any reality or objectivity whatsoever, however shaped (be it natural, historical, or transcendent), only insofar as its negative abstractness turns without residue into the concreteness of the act of thinking that thinks of it. To know something, therefore, means in the last resort to resolve its immediate otherness into the originality of the pure “I” (or I = I): the truth and the foundation of any possible immediate being or empirical consciousness, then, is knowing’s process of pure self-consciousness. From such a viewpoint Hegel’s whole system comes to assume the shape of an original and unitary philosophy of absolute self-consciousness, for the only true problem it states and solves in all its most multifarious ramifications is, in the last resort, the epistemological one of the possibility of knowledge – i.e., of the relationship between subject and object, thought and being, consciousness and the external world. Consequently, the sharp separation between the epistemological and the metaphysical problem, which with greater or lesser consistency was upheld by all traditional philosophy (including that of Kant), and was grounded, in the last resort, in a dualistic contraposition between the finite human intellect and the infinite divine one, vanishes in the philosophical perspective of “Absolute Idealism”, and the author does not fail to grasp with great historical and philosophical perspicacity the concrete implications and consequences of Hegel’s rigorous epistemological monism. By holding true, on the one hand, to the objective reality of the Absolute (and then of the eternal and the divine), but by maintaining, on the other, its absolute identity with the act of the human thought that thinks of it, and, by thinking of it, “constructs” it in and through itself, so that it does not precede, but follows, philosophical thought’s historical development (this would be, according to the author’s insightful interpretation, the true meaning of Hegel’s puzzling assertion that “the Absolute is a result”: cf. pp. 170, 491), Hegel’s idealism, first of all, allows a systematic philosophical understanding of religion (and of Christianity in particular), which, although proving its necessity and historical significance, yet peremptorily denies its fundamental ontological presupposition – namely, God’s absolute objectivity and transcendence – setting over against it the alternative principle of the originary, absolute identity of man and God (cf. pp. 111-112 and 248, n. 14). Now, the author rightly sees in this presupposition the last cause of man’s “alienation” in the world he himself has nevertheless created from himself, and then also of that ontological and moral “nihilism” which, while being already present in an implicit and unconscious way in the historical epochs dominated by the faith in the transcendent God, has finally become fully explicit and self-conscious in the atheistic and materialistic humanism by now holding sway over the Contemporary Age. As a consequence, insofar as Hegel’s philosophy denies the adequacy of religion’s “pictorial” (i.e., mythological) form, and then the nihilism involved in the affirmation of the transcendent God, and, on the other hand, by virtue of the self-grounding principle of the Absolute Idea proves the (mediated and dialectical) identity of God and man, subject and object, consciousness and self-consciousness, it, and only it, can allow a rational understanding of the reasons for religion’s decay in the contemporary world, and its likely extinction in the near future, thus obviating at the same time the loss of human existence’s meaning and value which the “death of religion” inescapably carries with itself. In this connection he does not hesitate to establish attractive (although sometimes disputable) analogies between the results of Hegel’s Christology and some influential contemporary theological conceptions such as the later Schelling’s tripartition of the history of Christianity into the “Age of Peter” (Catholicism), the “Age of Paul” (Protestantism) and the final and culminating “Age of John” or “Kingdom Come” (religion of the future, God’s humanization: cf. pp. 90-92); Nietzsche’s announcement of the “death of God” and of Superman (cf. pp. 92-98); and the “demystification” or “demythologization” (cf. p. 8) of traditional Christianity’s dogmas carried out by today’s upholders of “radical theology” or “Christian atheism” (T. J. J. Altizer, P. Tillich, D. G. Leahy, T. de Chardin, etc: cf. pp. 130-131).

A further merit of the author’s interpretation of Hegel is certainly that of showing with indisputable evidence how the global articulation of Hegel’s system into a Logic, a Philosophy of nature and a Philosophy of spirit is necessarily grounded on the very principle of the Absolute Idea, and of thus offering a convincing reply to Schelling’s famous objection (reiterated by Croce and Gentile among others) against the alleged “weak point” of the system, namely the so-called transition of the Idea into nature. The Absolute Idea, the author maintains, (cf. pp. 123-126, 223-226) is no static or inert entity, but infinite creative activity unfolding in a “circular” process, whose fundamental moments are: a) its self-positing in and through itself; b) its self-alienation, or the positing of an “other”; c) the other’s reflection or “return” into itself. The third moment distinguishes and at the same time identifies itself with the first: for the content posited in them is identical – namely, the self’s infinite reality (otherwise the process would not be circular) – but their form is different: for in the first it is a potential, virtual or abstract reality, whereas in the third it is fully actual and concrete. Now, the fundamental triad into which the Idea’s infinite creative activity objectifies itself is that whose elements are the Logical Idea (i.e., the Absolute Idea in thought’s abstract element), nature (i.e., the Idea in the form of otherness), and spirit (i.e., the Idea returning into itself from otherness, culminating in the Begriffsbestimmung of Absolute Spirit, more precisely in Philosophy). The Logic thus presents itself of necessity in two different forms in the system: as the “first science”, dealing with a still (relatively) abstract object, and as the “last science”, coincident with Philosophy, in which the Absolute’s actual reality itself comes to full, concrete self-consciousness. As the “first science”, the abstractness of its object needs to be integrated through the explication of what it abstracts from, namely the contingency of immediate being, whose concrete totality coincides with what one generally means by the term “nature”. The Logic (in the first meaning) is then in principle impossible and unthinkable without the construction of a subsequent philosophical science such as the Philosophy of nature: this is the rational solution to, and ultimate legitimation of, that transition of the Idea into nature which Schelling wrongly held to be impossible. As the “last science”, however, the Logic by all means transcends the peculiar abstractness characterizing its traditional conception in terms of formal (or also symbolic or mathematical: cf. pp. 506-507) logic, rather constituting itself as the science of the ultimate foundation and truth both of nature and of (finite) spirit, and therefore identifying itself without residue with metaphysics itself – a point rightly stressed by the author in polemic with Winfield, Maker and J. Flay (cf. pp. 161, n. 21, 203, n. 72, 216-217, 468). It seems to me that the brilliant arguments developed by him on this subject repropose in substance the plausibility of that interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy which, starting with J. E. Erdmann, one is used to naming “panlogistic”.

On the other hand, he also points out that Hegel’s “speculative” assertion of the identity of subject and object, of man and God, cannot and must not be misconstrued in the sense of an absurd immediate identification of the particular, empirical, natural and finite I with the Absolute itself, and then of a radical egoistic solipsism. According to Hegel, this would rather be “the standpoint of absolute evil” (p. 65), for the finite as such is in itself nothing but negative appearance, which in the sphere of self-consciousness can be transcended only by virtue of the mutual recognition of two I’s, thanks to which each of them denies his immediate natural isolation, and posits himself, rather, as a non-independent moment of a wider universal self-consciousness. The universal dialectical law of the Aufhebung of any otherness into self-consciousness’s unity thus meets an “exception” in the reality of the alter-Ego, whose “integrity and independence” (p. 309) must be acknowledged as an unavoidable condition for the constitution of any possible objectivity in consciousness. In this connection the author suitably focuses on one of the most arduous difficulties in which all attempts (starting with Fichte’s) to work out a consistent transcendental theory of intersubjectivity have become entangled – namely, the implicit or explicit positing of a plurality of “absolutes”, which plainly contradicts the fundamental rational exigency for the Absolute’s rigorous unity. He puts forward a plausible solution to it by remarking that “[o]n the Pure level we are One, sharing the same Universal Consciousness (cf. Fichte’s “Absolute I”), whereas on the Empirical level we remain and function as discrete individuals” (p. 64). The absolute ontological originality he recognizes to the alter-Ego, however, does not hold good for the State’s ethicality as well, in which – in the wake of A. Peperzak, and in polemic with L. Siep and Winfield (cf. pp. 293-294) – he does not seem to see anything more than a “finite condition” (substantially not dissimilar to those expressed by the categories of Abstract Right and Morality) of Absolute Spirit’s pure self-comprehension (in the philosopher’s consciousness that actually states and solves the problem of the essence of the State, thus bestowing upon it the only objective validity that can be rightfully granted to it). In this regard he does not hesitate to distance himself from the Hegelian thesis, set out in the famous §§ 257-260 of the Philosophy of Right, that the State (or rather its idea or Begriffsbestimmung) is the embodiment of absolute freedom, and then of the infinitum actu in the form of the will. To this, one could reply, first of all, that if the State were in truth nothing more than a “finite condition” of Absolute Spirit, one could not understand how and why it can nevertheless constitute the required solution to Morality’s dialectic, seeing that this is, in the last resort, nothing but the peculiar expression in the will’s process of that progressus in infinitum whose radical contradictoriness is solved just by the concept of the infinitum actu.[1] On the other hand, since the Absolute Idea constitutes itself as the substantial unity of thought and of the will, one does not see how and why its original actual infinity cannot and must not be explicated in both of these categories,[2] nor to what other objectification of the will one should recognize that dignity of the infinitum actu which is instead denied to the State’s ethicality. The author’s “Fichtean” emphasis on the ontological primacy of intersubjectivity over the State, however, does in fact turn out to be fully consistent with his interpretation of Hegelianism as a metaphysics of absolute self-consciousness.      

The most original, and in many regards stimulating, aspect of the author’s interpretation of Hegel is the solution put forward by him to the problem of the “end of history” (and of the history of philosophy: cf. pp. 32-34, 112-115, 165-208), which is currently much debated in the U.S.A. after the success of Fukuyama’s book. Sharply distancing himself from the communis opinio generally shared by today’s Hegel scholars (from V. Hösle and H.-P. Kainz to C. Taylor, T. Rockmore and P.T. Grier), he emphasizes the fact that a) there are not only historical-factual, but also theoretical-systematic reasons for maintaining that the history of philosophy has ended with Hegel; b) since philosophy is nothing but the adequate self-consciousness of historical reality, from the idealistic principle of the identity of thought and being, it necessarily follows that the very world-history has come to its completion in the Contemporary Age, in correspondence with the historical formation of Hegel’s philosophy; and c) contrary to what is generally held by contemporary anti-metaphysical thought, such a completion by no means amounts to the dissolution of Western metaphysics (and of the civilization founded on it), but rather to the affirmation of its full and definitive validity, and to the consequent opening of a new historical epoch – that of the “postmodern world”. In this connection he first of all points out (cf. pp. 189-191) that a truly “scientific” treatment of the history of philosophy is impossible if one does not possess in advance an adequate concept of philosophy, which, owing to its peculiar wholeness, can plainly be achieved in the concrete by philosophical thought only when the very totality of philosophy’s historical development has come to an end. Moreover, since the act of thinking is a process that returns into itself, the history of philosophy, which is its necessary manifestation in time, can reflect it adequately only if and when it comes to its completion. Thirdly, if the thesis of the end of history should be rejected, one should obviously conclude that the logical structure of philosophical thought’s history is the progressus in infinitum, whose insuperable logical inconsistency, however, was demonstrated, as is well known, ad abundantiam by the “Doctrine of Being” in the Science of Logic. Finally, since the “spring” of historical becoming is contradiction, and since, in the idea of Absolute Knowing, any possible contradiction – be it epistemological or ontological – is actually solved, the statement of the theory of Absolute Knowing at the conclusion of the Phenomenology of spirit eo ipso amounts to a proof of the fact that history has come to an end.

The theory of the end of history (in Hegel’s System) provides the author with the leading thread also for a striking interpretation of the meaning of contemporary history, and of the peculiar task, both theoretical and practical, assigned in it to philosophy. The Postmodern Age, he maintains (cf. esp. pp. 36-42, 72-73), first of all presents itself in a negative form, namely as “negative postmodernity”, because the overcoming of the religious Vorstellungen (i.e., myths and dogmas) in and by speculative thought inevitably appears to non-philosophical consciousness as the mere negation of God’s reality, and then of the meaning of history and human existence rendered possible by it. Negative postmodernity, then, is in the first place the epoch of explicit and self-conscious nihilism: axiological relativism, existentialistic pessimism, the ingenuous faith in the truth of the positive sciences, and the uncritical cult of technology, are nothing but its particular manifestations. Yet the immediate negativity of the postmodern epoch can and must be overcome, in the subsequent phase of “positive postmodernity”, by a reappropriation of Hegel’s system that should promote its diffusion on a global scale. The country to which the implementation of such “post-historical” task would be entrusted, is not to be found, in his opinion, in Europe (which in fact would have exhausted its cultural mission just with the end of history), but – he maintains in the wake of the famous Hegelian hint at the “land of the future” in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History[3] – the United States of America, which, having already gone through the more elementary phases of its historical evolution (the “Agrarian” one, that of civil unification, and the “Military” one), would now be entering the culminating and conclusive “Intellectual or knowledge-seeking period” (p. 40). The primary cultural finality to be achieved in it would be a reform of the academic system and of national education inspired by the principles of idealistic philosophy (he quotes on this subject the pedagogical ideal sketched by Schelling in his Lectures on Academic Method), and, on a more strictly theoretical level, the elaboration of “a new, updated ‘introduction to science’ or ‘phenomenology of Spirit’, containing the current ruling one-sided perspectives on reality […] and their resolution into Absolute Knowing” (p. 72. Cf. also pp. 195-197).   

The essays collected in this volume have the merit of sketching with undeniable theoretical vigor and eloquent persuasiveness the main lines of an interpretation, which appears adequate and convincing, of modern and contemporary philosophy in general, and of Hegel’s philosophy in particular. Its reading is by all means a “must” for all those who are interested in the problems of idealistic thought, and who, moreover, hold that neither the dead theological schemes of the Right, nor the abstractly humanistic ones of the Left, have truly succeeded in understanding and unfolding the innermost meaning and value of Hegel’s philosophy.

 

Giacomo Rinaldi            

(University of Urbino)       

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