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Negating Hegel must be read in conjunction with the first chapter of Hegel’s own Encyclopaedia. Both texts try to explain what Philosophy is and how it is developing, and both introduce the reader to something else; for just as Hegel's first chapter introduces the rest of his Encyclopaedia, so Negating Hegel introduces the work Regenerating Philosophy. And the connection is much deeper than this since Negating Hegel has evolved out of the introduction of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia. But in coming to be written, Negating Hegel had to explain itself, demonstrating how it relates to Hegel. Thus, not only may your understanding of Hegel’s philosophy be challenged, but your initial understanding of Negating Hegel itself. Nothing can be accepted only at face value, and everything stands in need of reinterpretation.
Wallace, W. (trans.) Hegel’s Logic, Oxford University Press, third edition 1975. (First edition was in 1873). All quotations of Hegel are taken from this translation, and their references are specifically to its third edition. Its first chapter should be treated as being the first chapter of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia mentioned in the abstract.
(Regenerating Philosophy, edited by the author of Negating Hegel, is unpublished.)
Philosophy must be as it is understood from within Philosophy, and its nature is not something which it can accept as given externally to it. In this self-defining characteristic it is like a religion. Hence some involvement in Philosophy must be presumed in any explanation of it, since the explanation must itself be taken to be philosophical.
But any explanation of what Philosophy is must be unsatisfactory unless it explains its own relation to Philosophy as a whole, so that we can see why it is correct. Hence our initial involvement in Philosophy must widen out to embrace all Philosophy. Any explanation of what Philosophy is must begin in a way that appears arbitrary, but if you read on you may be led on to see how this work is already relating you to Philosophy as a whole.
Philosophy, then, may be described as a particular mode of communication or discourse in which the very act of communicating becomes what is explained, explained through the communication itself. However great the unity of philosophical activity with all other communication, we must differentiate, for communication generally is not primarily concerned with explaining and justifying itself.
But once a particular mode of communication is established as a specialized discourse, there is a tendency to oppose it to ordinary, unspecialized modes of discussing and thinking about things, so that the former mode is considered contaminated, perverted, and even annihilated by being made more generally accessible, through a fear of being misunderstood or distorted. (A laudable example of this would be the public censorship on matters which are sub judice. But notice that this has only a temporary nature.) It is claimed that, as a social phenomenon, the particular specialized discourse grows out of, and rests upon, something else, and not ordinary conversation nor general reasoning. But those who make this separation forget meanwhile that the particular mode of communication arose through a process of differentiation, and still arises through such a process for each new participant.
Those who insist on this separation of a specialized mode of communication from general conversation and ways of thinking usually have in mind the sort of utterances which are taken as explaining away what makes it special, making it appear redundant. They mean explanations which pose as being reflective but are only ulterior to the ones offered in the particular mode of communication. By an ulterior explanation I mean one which retraces and reproduces the original, but only in a submerged way (in quotation marks) and not simply accepting the original as it purports to be. A genuinely reflective explanation is one which is ulterior, but which also re-affirms the original, which in this case means re-affirming it as a specialized mode of discourse.
Slowness in perceiving and keeping in view this distinction which should be drawn in the development of explanations out of one another is the source of many reproaches against Philosophy and religious authorities. From the fact of being persons flows law, morality, etc.. In these various spheres, therefore, language and thought take corresponding forms. But it is one thing to think and talk in a certain way, and another thing to consider that way of thinking and talking. The thoughts and discussions, to which the elaboration and development of a particular way of thinking and talking gives rise, are what is comprised under general reasoning, and the like, as well as under Philosophy and Theology.
This neglect of the distinction between an ulterior explanation and a genuine reflection leads also to misunderstandings between specialized modes of communication. Philosophic or theological interpretation may seem to be the only way of making progress in our understanding or knowledge. It is not common now to claim this about the philosophic or theological interpretation of theories in Physics – as if an adequate philosophic or theological understanding was necessary for making a contribution to Physics (tending to replace observation by a priori reasoning) – but it is the reason behind the belief that Philosophy should be subservient to Theology, or vice versa. Or that both should be subservient to Physics, a political ideology, or whatever.
Such claims have a parallel in the claim that eating is impossible before we have acquired a knowledge of the chemical, botanical, and zoological characters of our food; and that we must delay digestion till we have finished the study of anatomy and physiology. If that was so, these sciences in their fields, like Philosophy in its field, would gain greatly in importance; in fact, they would become absolutely necessary. Or rather, instead of being indispensable, they would not exist at all.
The context of a communication may be distinguished from the form as that which remains constant through changing attitudes to the communication (not constant in any absolute sense – only constant at the particular instant being considered) and confronts us as the object communicated. But while the content is the object of a particular communication, the form allies itself with the content; and therefore each form appears to give rise to a special object. Thus what is the same at bottom may look like a different sort of fact.
Any mode of discourse replaces our ordinary notions and usages by categories and concepts more adequate for the purpose in hand. The former may be regarded as metaphors for the latter. To describe them as such is to suggest that they can mislead us in our understanding of the specialized discourse. Conversely, it is one thing to understand something in the jargon of a particular branch of knowledge, and another to be able to explain it to any illuminating extent in layman's terms.
This difficulty faces Philosophy like any other mode of discourse. Hence people have difficulty with Philosophy through lack of familiarity with it. They are unable to get hold of philosophical concepts and move freely among them. In ordinary discourse, what we say is coloured by the context in which it is said, and embedded in the pre-occupations of the moment; and in reflection, meditation, and general reasoning, we relate what we are saying more explicitly to that wider context so that our words have more lasting significance. But it is a very different thing to draw that wider context into our words so as to transcend it completely.
But this problem of intelligibility in Philosophy is much worse than in any other mode of discourse because the objects of Philosophy can only be known through the philosophical works which present them. This follows from Philosophy being primarily concerned with the act of communication itself. The only way to understand a particular philosophical concept is to read the particular philosophers who have used it. In Physics, for instance, one can appeal to a common set of observations explained or failing to be explained, by two distinct theories, but this is not possible in Philosophy. Thus people tend to have a hankering after particular philosophers with whom they are already familiar. When faced with a philosophy that is new to them they feel the ground, where they once stood firm and at home, taken away from beneath them, and, feeling lost, dismiss the alien philosophy as nonsense and return to their familiar haunts.
Not having a common ground on which to relate theories, Philosophy tends to split into rival camps unable even to understand each other’s language, just as happened after the building of the Tower of Babel. One consequence of this is that writers and lecturers in Philosophy tend to avoid expressing anything new for fear of merely isolating themselves, or of adding to the confusion instead of dispelling it.
A philosophy, then, has to reckon with ordinary language, i.e. unspecialized modes of discourse, and with other specialized modes (e.g. the sciences, political ideologies, religions, and other philosophies). In dealing with all these a philosophy has to prove and almost to awaken the need for its particular jargon and way of doing things. In dealing with other specialized modes of discourse, it will have to show that it is capable of explaining them from its own resources, while justifying its comments within the terms of those modes, and so often actually re-affirming the independence of those modes from itself.
We will being by differentiating Philosophy from Religion and Theology. Religion, like Philosophy, is self-defining and must take account of all the ways in which something can be meaningful, but it must be distinguished from Theology, which is Religion qua mode of verbal communication. Religion is to be distinguished from Philosophy in not trying to express itself in the particular utterance or verbal argument or written work, but in personal and social life. Although a religious community, even if loosely bound together, must be self-defining, a theological work is not, but is simply an element, albeit indispensable, in the life of the religious community. To avoid confusion between Theology and Philosophy, the objects of Theology are usually termed ‘God’ or ‘the gods’, whereas the objects of Philosophy are philosophic theories and concepts. But in so far as the theology of a religion succeeds in putting that religion into words, then that religion is seen to become a philosophy.
To help you to understand the distinction being made between Philosophy and other modes of discourse, and to see at the same time that the real import of some idea can be retained, and even for the first time shown in its proper light, when interpreted philosophically, it may be well to recall a piece of conventional wisdom: that to understand anything, whether religious, scientific, political or philosophical, we must be able to put it into our own words. To do this is at least to transform the experiences, intuitions, desires, etc., into a verbal form.
Everyone has a faculty of using words. But words are all that Philosophy can properly be concerned with: and hence arises the tendency to ignore the specialized character of Philosophy, a tendency which leads to another delusion, the reverse of that difficulty mentioned in §3, that of intelligibility in Philosophy. In other words, Philosophy is particularly vulnerable to being discussed by people who have not studied it properly but who can give all the appearance of understanding it thoroughly. Jargon developed in Philosophy often enters general parlance, and the use or absence of philosophical jargon is not a reliable indicator of the degree to which Philosophy is being engaged in. Thus, with no preparation beyond an ordinary education, or an education in some very narrow field, people often do not hesitate to philosophize and criticize Philosophy, particularly when they are under the influence of some strong enthusiasm, whether religious or political fanaticism, some form of scientism, or whatever is the latest intellectual fashion. Everybody agrees that to know any other branch of knowledge one must first have studied it, and that one can only claim to express a judgement upon it in virtue of such study. Everybody agrees that to make a shoe you must have learned and practised the craft of shoemaker, though nearly every person has a model in his or her own foot, and possesses in his or her hands the natural endowments for the operations required. But for Philosophy it is imagined by these critics and populists that such study, care, and application are not required at all. (This argument also applies to the ease with which one philosophic tradition can completely dismiss another.)
So much for the form that Philosophy must take. But it is just as important to point out that the content of Philosophy is nothing other than what it is to be a person, that core of meaning which, originally produced and producing itself within our social life, has become what we are. At first we become aware of what other people are through living with them. But even as we share our lives with one another, we learn to distinguish the mere outward show, accidents of birth, etc., from what really belongs to a person's character. As it is only in form that Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of understanding what it is to be a person, it must be in harmony with our experience of each other. In fact this harmony may be viewed as an extrinsic means of testing the truth of a philosophy. Similarly, it may be held the highest and final aim of Philosophy to bring about, through the achievement of this harmony, a reconciliation of our words with the source of their meaning – in other words, with what we are, persons.
and
What it is to be a person is being put into words.
The first statement may be thought particularly puzzling, since although we may talk about the living word as opposed to the dead letter, this is never meant to be more than a metaphor, and we are never tempted to credit the spoken word, let alone the written word, as so much alive as to be a person in its own right.
But a philosophic theory must clearly be its own source of meaning, and not be dependent on whoever happened to write its exposition, and so it must be credited with being the person who is communicating it. Indeed, since any philosophical theory must explain the act of being communicated, it must explain what it is to be a person (it cannot restrict itself to a particular class of person because that would be to step out of its rootedness in the act of communication) and so the archetypal person.
A science is a systematic branch of enquiry. A science seeks explanations that are there to be found for our experiences and the pattern of connections between them. It would seem that any science must derive its materials from our particular perceptions of the world, from our experiences and our ideas of them when both stand in the immediate presence of the observer.
This general character common to all sciences (provided we generalize notions such as of perception and experience carefully) carries with it the important condition that, in order to accept and believe any fact, we must find the fact to be a union formed in us, where the explanation is conjoined through us with that which is explained. So we must be in touch with our subject matter in some way, whether through our external senses, through empathy, or whatever.
The many sciences spring up in an ad hoc way, according to the phenomena (things to be explained) that have provoked interest and the measure of success that types of explanations attain. A popular division among them has been between the natural sciences (for which I shall use Physics as the exemplar), which aim at and provide laws of nature, general propositions, mathematical models; and the human sciences (for which I shall use Historiology, i.e. the study of history, as the exemplar), which seek other kinds of explanation, ones which do not relinquish explicit relation to the phenomena explained in the explanations.
In their own fields these sciences present themselves as if adequate; but they all fall short in both content and form. With regard to content they never even begin to explain such things as freedom, personality (i.e. what we are, including, e.g., the body/mind problem), or Being. These things belong to a different sphere, not because it can be said that they have nothing to do with experience; for although they are not experiences of the senses, we experience being able to talk about them. The real argument for excluding explanation of them from these sciences is that in their scope and content these things defy finite exposition.
‘There is no explanation that does not have meaning.’ This statement is clearly true, but the converse is equally true: ‘There is no meaning that does not have an explanation.’ And this may be taken in two senses. In the general sense it asserts that there is no hidden meaning that will not be brought to light. In its special sense it asserts that all modes of communication (see §2 above), e.g. Politics, Art, and Religion, must ultimately come to spring from, and rest upon, the written word alone. (No understanding can be sustained which will not be put into words.)
With regard to form also Philosophy requires something more than other sciences can give; viz., an explanation of the very same act of explaining. The methods of Physics must fail to do this because a theory cannot, in Physics, specify how it is to be related to a particular fact or detail which it is to explain. In applying the theory one makes the connection, but this connection is not something that a theory in Physics could explain for itself. All that a theory does in Physics is to relate the particular facts to each other when they have been mapped into the theory. This weakness of every theory in Physics is hidden by regarding the theory as being simply what it explains. Hence Philosophy differs from Physics in the attempt to speculate, to explain in its theories how the theories relate to the things they explain.
Similar reasoning applies to Historiology, because, although a historical narrative names the particular events it is explaining, the sources used, and the argumentation based on them, do not properly belong to the narrative itself.
In being speculative, one need not in the least neglect the empirical facts in the sciences, nor the evidence of historical sources, one recognizes and adopts them: one can appreciate and apply towards philosophical ideas the universal elements in the sciences, for instance, in Physics its laws of nature and classifications: but at the same time they must be interpreted, a new meaning must be seen in them.
Hence the form proposed for Philosophy, the written word, itself requires further explanation. We must understand in what way a philosophical exposition may demonstrate its truth, i.e. explain such things as freedom, personality, and Being, that claim must be substantiated. Such an explanation about philosophical expositions itself falls within the scope of Philosophy. But it cannot precede the philosophic exposition without putting the theory to be expounded into a straitjacket, as if the content was already fixed though not yet articulated. The example of Linguistic Philosophy demonstrates this.
A possible line of argument in Linguistic Philosophy may proceed as follows: pause before proceeding to inquire into personality or ontology, and examine first the ability to use words and see whether our words are equal to the task. We ought to become acquainted with the instrument before we undertake the work for which it is to be employed; for if the instrument is insufficient, all our trouble will be in vain.
The result of this argument is that in Philosophy we withdraw our attention from considering its subject matter and absorption in the study of particular issues, and direct our attention back upon the activity of philosophizing itself, in such a way as to turn every philosophic issue into a question of language. In the case of other instruments, we can try to criticize them in other ways than by setting about the special work for which they are designed. But the examination of language can only be carried out by using it. To try to understand language before using it is as absurd as to try to learn how to swim before daring to enter the water.
The special conditions which call for the existence of Philosophy may now be described. When people want to know things, they find their way about through Physics, Historiology, and so on; for inspiration and entertainment there are numerous fictional forms; for moral, legal and religious matters there are various social institutions. But people also have to gratify the craving to put themselves into their own words. In striving to explain themselves people come to explain the fact of explanation itself, and seek an explanation that generates itself. But while thus occupied, Philosophy entangles itself in inconsistencies, i.e. loses itself in the multiplicity of theories that appear irreconcilable with one another, and so, instead of reaching an explanation of itself, Philosophy remains a mere collection of unrelated theories. But the perseverance of Philosophy witnesses to the craving to explain itself which continues unabated despite the consciousness of disintegration and transience, that it may overcome and work out in itself the solution of its own contradictions.
Any philosophical explanation by its very nature must be dialectical, and that, even when it anticipates critical re-appraisal, being put as one among other conflicting explanations. When people grow hopeless of ever achieving through philosophical methods the solution of a philosophical quandary, it is natural that they should turn back to those solutions of the question with which people have learned to pacify themselves in other modes of discourse. Unfortunately, however, this retreat tends not to be a merely strategic one, but to become accompanied with contempt for Philosophy, as Plato noted in his time.
Philosophy arises as particular ways of explaining manifest their need to be self-explanatory. In this way Philosophy is differentiated from other sciences by its special concern with the nature of explanation, and this emphasis tends to abstract the explanations from the particular subject matter being explained, making it seem possible to have a single over-riding theory about the organization of all the sciences. Meanwhile the sciences, being affected by the explanations which they themselves come up with, continually break out of the forms which such philosophical theories allot to them, and tend to elevate their contents to the rank of necessary truth as a result. This is because the defects in their forms already mentioned (see §9 above) propel them towards ever deeper explanations. Not only do these changes in content change the forms of these sciences, forcing re-adjustments to philosophical schemes of the sciences, but the underlying craving to explain can only find fulfilment in the forms of Philosophy. On the one hand a philosophy must take account of the explanations they give, nominally taking on board all their speciality of detail as submitted. On the other hand, it must make these contents present the aspect of a free evolution determined by the logic of itself alone.
One way of understanding this transformation is to see the same explanation, which is presented as being mediated by the evidence for it, come to be presented as immediate, self-evident in Philosophy. Now these two moments of immediacy and mediation oppose one another, but neither can be absent, nor can one exist apart from the other. Thus a philosophic theory requires to be expounded in words in order to be known, and it cannot be known directly by sensing or perceiving something, not even by seeing the marks on the page, but only by reading its exposition. As such, therefore, it needs the mediation of its exposition. For mediation is to start with one thing, in this case the exposition, and proceed to a second thing, in this case the theory; so that the existence of this second thing depends on our having reached it from something else distinct from it. In spite of this, after reading the exposition our understanding of the theory is not still dependent on what we have read; in fact, the independence of the theory from how it is expounded is secured through our reading the exposition and so becoming able to put the theory into our own words. To illustrate, consider the activity of eating as something which is only made possible by the existence of food. Thus eating is in a sense ungrateful because it devours that which makes it possible. Understanding of the theory, in this same sense, is ungrateful towards the exposition which yields it.
Thus a philosophic theory, as something coming to be expounded, may be said to arise out of experience as an a posteriori explanation. But there is also an a priori aspect of the same explanation, where, through a mediation not made by anything external but by a reflection of the explanation on itself, it has that immediacy which requires no explanation of a link between the explanation and that which is explained. It is this characteristic which can enable a theory to weather the storms of potentially embarrassing details, and so look to the future with rational hope. However, if this a priori aspect is over-emphasized, then the theory becomes an empty abstraction, something that may be talked about as being a theory but which is not anywhere expounded, nor ever going to be expounded.
Physics contributes to Philosophy in two ways. Firstly, Physics does not stop short at the mere observation of the individual features of a phenomenon. In relating them it brings materials to Philosophy in the shape of general uniformities, i.e. laws and classifications of the phenomena. Thus particular facts are taken on board by a philosophy through the mediation of Physics. Secondly, these general uniformities must be applied to the philosophical exposition itself, if the theory is to explain how it is being expounded. The particular circumstances and characteristics of the exposition, through the mediation of Physics, cease to be merely mediating the theory, and the theory loses its immediacy. Thus Physics has a necessary part to play in mediating between a philosophy and its exposition.
Philosophy, then, needs Physics for its own development. In return it explains what Physics is, justifying it as an enterprise, and so leaving Physics free to turn its energies outward onto the vast range of phenomena each wanting attention. Similar things may be said about Historiology, when we come to consider the interpretation of the works of past philosophers. For instance, I do not have to spend much time on the intricacies of the German language and Prussian history in order to get a lot out of Hegel’s philosophy – I can stand on the shoulders of eminent scholars and translators of German, such as William Wallace.
In the history of Philosophy we appear to have merely a number of different, and only accidentally connected, theories and principles. But all these theories, including Hegel’s, are to be interpreted as being all one and the same theory, so that every philosophical work is an imperfect exposition of this theory, prefiguring the infinite work entitled Regenerating Philosophy (henceforth to be abbreviated to RP) where it is expounded in full. This theory explains its own nature and, since it must be explained as something still being expounded, it must anticipate further development of its exposition. The different systems presented in the history of Philosophy are therefore to be reconciled. A philosophical system must try to be the result of all the systems which have preceded it and include their principles. It must also try to anticipate all future developments of itself, and Philosophy in general.
Philosophies are so varied that it may appear strange to claim that any one philosophy is the philosophy. And it is true that RP, as a finite work, is no more complete than any other philosophic work, but by anticipating its completion as an infinite work and the reconciliation of all philosophies, it lays hold of the theory.
Our concern here is with the interpretation of Hegel, as the title ‘Negating Hegel’ suggests, so as to reconcile his philosophy with RP. The same evolution of thought which is exhibited in the first chapter of his Encyclopaedia is presented here in this work. Instead of simply reading him, immersing ourselves in his jargon, we can try to put the movement of his thought into a better idiom. Thus although the text which this work is an interpretation of is clearly structured according to the history of Philosophy from the Presocratics to Hegel’s own philosophy, all historical references and allusions have been removed since we, like Hegel, are not concerned with "surveying the process, as we do in history, from the outside" (quoting Hegel, §14 p. 19), but to present the movement of thought itself. His philosophy, which is genuine and well-argued, must nevertheless be made explicitly to refer to its own exposition. Such references must be found implicitly within his abstract terminology. Furthermore, since, in finding these new meanings we must find also an explanation of what we are doing, we must find it being explicitly related to the theory, and so to RP viewed as an infinite work. And all this is possible without doing violence to his philosophy because, as Hegel himself argues, and I quote, "... while it gives a bond and principle of unity, it also possesses an internal source of development." (§14 pp. 19-20). So long as the new meanings are in accordance with his philosophy’s internal principles (sources) of development, then this work remains a self-transformation of his philosophy. His philosophy explicitly seeks the totality of thought, which is the same as the theory of RP, although it does not explicitly envisage an infinite exposition for this totality as RP does.
Unless a philosophical exposition has an internal principle of development, enabling it to undergo this kind of self-transformation, leading eventually to reconciliation with RP, then it cannot explain how its own exposition came into being. Words, apart from their dynamic interaction with one another and the context in which they are written, are meaningless.
Hegel's Encyclopaedia, and RP, are both philosophical wholes, each is a circle rounded and complete in itself. But each, as a finite work, can only claim to be complete in so far as it anticipates the transformation of itself into a wider circle, and so on ad infinitum, therefore each must anticipate an infinite sequence of transformations into ever widening circles. Also each must embrace the whole of Philosophy, and therefore each other. In so far as they remain distinct, each must explain its relation to the other. This is possible because each explains about its own process of self-transformation and hence how, though distinct, they are becoming one. But while they are quite different, the fullest explanation of their relation must be found in something which relates them in itself, a work such as this. This is because the explanation must, as the saying goes, "get inside the skin" of both philosophies, rather than discuss either of them purely from the outside. Thus this work may be described as being equally a part of Hegel’s philosophy, a natural development of the first chapter of the Encyclopaedia, and a part of RP geared towards the rewriting of RP. It reconciles the two by being integral to each. Moreover, this work forms a circle with those two other works, in so far as this work too is to be re-written.
This work has no room for the detailed exposition of how to interpret Hegel, and it must be limited to general remarks about how his philosophy is to be incorporated into RP, and filling out such remarks by being itself a beginning to such a process.
How much of a work of Hegel is appropriate for a single coherent interpretation is a compromise between two considerations. First, since we must suppose the original text to be transforming itself while it stands alone, it must form an organic whole – thus the complete Encyclopaedia is an obvious candidate. And the second consideration is that the original material should be such that the interpretation brings the parts, if anything, closer together rather than push them further apart. An unlimited number of interpretations can be tried out on each short passage, but to be worthwhile to consider, an interpretation must link up with the interpretation of adjacent passages, and even the text as a whole, as well as preserving as effectively as possible what was worth preserving of the original meaning (i.e. translating naturally from the idiomatic point of view). But the main principle to bear in mind here is that the fact of being an interpretation must not intrude directly into the process of reading the work, i.e. passages must have an immediate meaning prior to being considered as interpretations of Hegelian passages. To take this very section as an example of an interpretation of Hegel, a more natural interpretation would seem to be one which presented a survey of the various sciences and how they may be related to RP. But instead I have chosen a much more radical transformation where the original structure within §16 is barely discernible. But even as I make this point, you are not prevented from taking it at face value prior to any understanding of it as a result of interpreting a passage of Hegel’s.
We do not have to insist on the full integrity of the original material, e.g. we may consider interpreting the Philosophy of Right. Although a transformation of the latter work might not be strictly according to any internal principles in that work, the interpretation may be justified in terms of a self-transformation of his philosophy as a whole, the internal principles of which, indeed, may be brought out from within the Philosophy of Right by the transformation itself. After all, Hegel himself does not discuss such textual transformations of his own works anywhere in them, nor identify the Absolute Geist with his own philosophy, however much he may hint and allude to such matters.
In regard to changing Hegelian terms, we are concerned: (1) to maintain associations with other philosophers (such as Kant) and other Hegelian terms, German puns, etc.; (2) to cut out the trappings which can be distracting – e.g. reduce the number of personifications in Hegel’s style, yet tie the subject matter down so that the reader is not put to unnecessary trouble to grasp it (just as the Absolute Idea was tied down to being the theory of RP); and (3), to align the terminology with RP where possible.
The incorporation of terms into RP must be done with care for three main reasons. (i) Even a word such as ‘person’ yields to the influence of fortuitousness, e.g. being coupled with the notion of a human being, when we relate the theory to what it is an explanation of. (ii) Terms may appear to have a definite meaning in Hegel’s philosophy, but the incorporation of them into RP is bound to have repercussions on their meaning. (iii) Terms in Hegel’s philosophy often arise from Hegel’s own attempts to interpret others and yet still allude to them by keeping their jargon. But such allusions must be taken as commentary rather than as part of the body of the text itself. We must use the allusions in interpreting Hegel, but, in re-doing the interpretations he has done, we should expect some reduction in the number of terms. We must not be too hasty in using Ockham’s razor, but the ultimate focus on the single text of RP makes a sifting process necessary.
It may seem as if a philosophical exposition must start by presupposing an appropriate background in the reader. Thus Hegel begins his Introduction by supposing that the reader already knows something of the history of Philosophy. In interpreting him here we have cut out the historical allusions that depend on such knowledge, but this work still presupposes that the reader accepts the validity of Philosophy as a branch of knowledge (i.e. not just an accidental mode of communication, but playing an essential role for all). This work freely defines its own subject matter without even depending on reference to Hegel, for Hegel’s Introduction becomes merely a shadow of this work, merely illustrating the notion of interpretation and self-transformation of a philosophy. Nor is this all. The present work, which originally is taken on its own evidence only, must now in the course of its own discussion come to see itself as a result – a result in which Hegel’s philosophy returns into itself and reaches the point with which its systematic exposition began in the Encyclopaedia. In this manner Philosophy exhibits more clearly than any specialized science the appearance of a circle in that its data, that which is being given to it, and its results, that which it is producing, are the same text.
As only the complete, and therefore infinite, exposition can exhibit what the theory is in itself, it is impossible to give here a summary which is itself strictly philosophic – a work such as this can only become philosophic by seeing itself participating in, and hence anticipating, that completion. Nor can the division of RP into seven chapters, and those chapters into sections, be made intelligible except in connection with what is expounded in them. We can only make anticipations of how it may have to be altered in being reconciled with Hegel’s philosophy. Here we simply take it as premised that the theory is completely explained in itself, not simply as some abstraction, but as something being expounded in a particular work, RP, so that it is a theory that exists for us.
Thus the theory is found in three forms:
I That which is already expounded in what has been written of RP so far and directly incorporated into the theory.
II Hegel’s philosophy, together with all other material that expounds the theory only implicitly.
III Works such as this which deal explicitly with RP and its theory but which are only included in RP in its sixth chapter (which is a mere collection of notes geared towards RP being re-written).
As observed in §15, although these forms appear as separate works, each, in its infinite completion, incorporates the other two.
In Hegel’s philosophy nothing else has to be discerned except the theory of RP; but the theory does not have in Hegel’s works an exposition proper to itself. In this work the theory is being found in Hegel’s philosophy and is on the way to being expounded in RP. Every such form in which the theory is to be found is at the same time a passing or fleeting stage; and hence each has not simply to express how things are, but in doing so also to express how it is to be transformed so as to enter the wider circle. Thus the three forms do not relate simply as several works, one beside another, as if they are radically separable, because each anticipates its development towards encompassing the other two.