Dear list,

I was intrigued by Ioannis Trisokkas' summary of the ongoing (and sterile)
debate on "the problem of metaphysics".

So much so that, also having a certain esteem for Frederick Beiser's
insights on the evolution and development of German idealism (which he
studied deeply and popularised in more than a highly recommendable
publications), I reached for my copy of "The Cambridge Companion to Hegel",
to compare Beiser's actual words with the ones in John Bardis' first
posting.

I must say, I wasn't surprised at all.

I realised that Bardis' summary of Beiser's arguments was not only
profoundly partial, but also totally inaccurate. Without indicating the
number of pages he was taking his quotes from, nor the passages that he
decided to omit (actually, more than two thirds of the entire essay) or to
summarize, it was easy for John to portray his own interpretation of Beiser
as Beiser himself.

If you actually read Beiser, you will be surprised to realise that his
essay, far from being a conclusive analysis of its own subject ("Hegel and
the problem of metaphysics"), and despite some misunderstandings and
objectively debatable opinions, is also a fair introduction to a crucial
point when it comes to discussing Hegel. Moreover, it is the almost perfect
"introduction" (this is the position it occupies in the ovarall book) to a
collection of critical essays on Hegel, some of them good, some of them
ss -- as it often happens in a scholarly publication devoted to
specialists.

Because we all have now a certain experience on how superficial debates have
become on this list (and, being part of the list, I am not trying to calling
me off, knowing that I am guilty too), we should be at least very careful on
how we refer to books/ articles, if we wish to keep our discussions in the
framework of a scholarly (or scientifically responsible) debate.

For those who are interested, I am posting a brief commentary of Beiser's
real arguments -- by the way, you will find his essay from page 1 to page 20
of "The Cambridge Companion to Hegel" (edition 1993), "TCCTH" from now on .

***

Beiser's aim is to introduce a discussion on Hegel's philosophy. Aware of
the harsh debates that Hegel has always stirred among interpreters,
particularly on his approach to philosophy and particulalry to metaphysics,
our author wishes to clarify in what sense we can say that Hegel's
philosophy "redeems" metaphysics, and by doing so rectify some false
impressions we could have gathered from the reading of misleading
interpretations by the kind of Russell, Popper, and so on.

First observation:
the polemics Paul Trejo unleashed against "non-metaphysical" readings of
Hegel misses its target completely, if it has to be referred to Beiser.
Actually, Beiser acknowledges that Hegel's philosophy has an undeniable
metaphysical character, only it is necessary to better define what this term
"metaphysics" means.

For instance, Beiser inequivocally says:

>>

[...] Hegel himself regarded metaphysics as a very problematic undertaking
in need of legitimation, [...] he accepted the Kantian challenge to
metaphysics, insisting that "any future metaphysics that is to come forward
as a science" must be based upon a critique of knowledge.
The main task of this introduction is to address the chief problem
confronting the understanding and evaluation of Hegel's philosophy, the
problem of metaphysics. [...] The chief advantage of this approach is that
we should be able to produce an interpretation of Hegel that is neither
obscurantist nor reductivist, that neither regards *his metaphysics* as
speculation about the supernatural nor reduces it to mere categorical
analysis. (TCCTH, page 3, emphasis mine)
<<

>><<

Beiser goes on articulating his essay as constituting of 4 answers to 4
major questions, i.e.: what does Hegel mean by "metaphysics"? What does he
mean by "the absolute"? Why does he postulate the existence of the absolute?
How does he responds to Kant's critique that the absolute is not knowable,
endorsing the opposite view?

Second observation:
one crucial fault in Beiser's following argument is to deal Hegel's and
Schelling's position as if they were the same or at least analogical. It is
true that Hegel shared Shelling's position during his Jena first years, when
they were very close and collaborated to the redaction of the 'Critical
Journal of Philosophy', and when (we could say) Hegel was completing his
philosophical "Bildung" with the help of his famous friend. However, at
least beginning from 1804, Hegel's position started to evolve,
differentiating itself completely from the one of Schelling.

Not that Beiser completely fails to recognise those developments -- on the
contrary he seems to be fully aware of the profound differences. However, he
seems to be of the opinion that Hegel's philosophy is *only* a successful
attempt to render Schelling's thought more founded from a strictly
epistemological point of view.
What Beiser fails to take into account is the revolutionary scope and power
of Hegel's major accomplishment vis-a-vis Schelling, that is the
introduction of the method of dialectic. Of course, without dialectic, Hegel
would only have been a brilliant disciple of Schelling; but to downplay the
role of dialectic in Hegel's philosophy in the way Beiser does, is a serious
mistake, even though it derives from Beiser's (alleged) doubts on the actual
validity of dialectic as a solution to the problems Hegel was facing (see
TCCTH, page 20).

>><<

John Bardis' disparate quotes from Beiser are essentially drawn from the
first part of his essay, the one where he responds to the first two
questions he raised (see above). There, Beiser compares Schelling's concept
of "absolute" as vitalistic organism -- as "living force", to the one of
Hegel, surprisingly finding that their concepts are the same, only Hegel
manifests more attention to the evident conclusion that an absolute, to be
really so, must be conceived as the unity of finite and infinite (TCCTH,
page 7).

It is clear that this is not (or better, not *the all of*) Hegel's
conception of the "absolute". What it lacks, is definitely dialectic. Beiser
will somehow recover this lost dimension in the fourth and final part of his
contribution, but it will be too little, too late. For now, Beiser insists
on the *immanent* aspect of Schelling's-Hegel's conception of this
"absolute", an absolute that (because it entails the "finite" within itself)
has some strong "naturalist attributes". It is evident to me that all this
stress on "nature", on the taumaturgical powers of this "living force" fits
much more to Schelling's vantage point than to Hegel. It is less evident
from Beiser's argument, but as I said, he tends to downplay the obvious
difference.

However, for all these shortcomings, I cannot but agree with Beiser when he
draws our attention to the undeniably materialist consequences and intrinsic
aspects of Hegelianism. He says (and John Bardis quoted him right):

>>

If it seems strange to regard Hegel as a materialist, given all his talk
about 'spirit', then we must lay aside the usual mechanistic picture of
materialism. We also must not forget that for Hegel, spirit is only the
highest degree of organization and development of the organic powers within
nature. (TCCTH, page 9)
<<

I agree with Beat Greuter (01/25 post) that the last sentence is completely
wrong and does not portray Hegel's philosophy accurately. It is probably the
worst way to organise an argument on the materialist aspects of Hegel's
thought.

However, I cannot but underscore that every philosophy with an immanent
point of view is also somehow materialist. It is of course not the
"mechanistic picture of materialism", the naive materialism of a D'Holbach,
to say the least. As Hegel himself once said, "The True is the Whole". It is
a pity that, when Paul Trejo (see 01/23 post) mentions Lenin, he does so
without actually analysing the merit of Lenin's own observations. Had he
done so, he would have probably been surprised to discover that his
subsequent (but only sketched) analysis of Hegel's dialectical method as
*the "truth" of naive idealism and naive materialism* is actually very
similar to what Lenin had in mind while speaking of mechanical materialism.

>><<

Beiser continues replying to the last two questions he raised.

This is probably the best part of his essay, the one which partly "redeems"
the previous gross simplifications and mistakes. Displaying his best
qualities and showing his competence and profound knowledge of the
development of idealism from Kant through Fichte, he illustrates how
Schelling's - first - and Hegel's - eventually - philosophies respond to
Fichte's first unsatisfactory attempt to solve Kant's dualism. In the end,
he will finally make Hegel's difference vis-a-vis Schelling completely
explicit, by analysing the opposition "in-kind" between the latter's
"intellectual intuition" and Hegel's dialectical approach.

It is offensive and insulting (to use two terms that have already been used,
see 01/23 posts) that John Bardis omitted to quote this final part of
Beiser's essay. He gave of Beiser's essay a false impression, as if all what
Beiser was trying to do was to interpret Hegel as a "non-metaphysical"
thinker. This is false. Let's see:

>>

Yet there can be no doubt that the dialectic presented an original and
ingenious solution to the problem facing Hegel: how to legitimate
metaphysics in the face of the Kantian critique of knowledge. Even if
Hegel's dialectic fails, we cannot accuse him of an uncritical indulgence in
metaphysics. It should be clear by now that this would be only to beg
important philosophical questions. (TCCTH, page 20)
<<
and also:

>>

It should now be clear that Schelling's and Hegel's idea of the absolute was
anything but an uncritical leap into metaphysics. Rather than ignoring the
challenge of Kant's philosophy, *their metaphysics* was the only means to
resolve its fundamental problem, namely, to explain how our a priori
concepts apply to experience. (TCCTH, page 15, emphasis mine)
<<

>><<

Next time, it would be much more productive for all the members of this list
to actually pay attention to what a secondary source has to tell us, rather
than to indulge in trivial and ideological discussions on how we would like
Hegel (or Beiser) to suit our own ideas of their thought.


Kind regards,
Maurizio Canfora