The focus of this study, now appearing in English thirty years after the original, is the always provocative claim of philosophy to autopoiesis of philosophical thought, to a knowledge that encompasses its own mediation completely within itself, to the self-contained and self-fulfilling concept. From this standpoint philosophy is never merely a manner of “thinking of something”, never merely an external form of something thought like common or garden thoughts, which includes the kinds of thinking usual in the natural and social sciences. Philosophical thinking is always thinking of itself–and that precisely then when it is a matter of thinking with well-defined, determinate content. Philosophical thinking is radically autonomous. It is the implementation, the performance, the embodiment of absolute form.
Awareness of the claim of absolute form was achieved early on in the history of philosophy. It finds expression–as one could say, in archaic simplicity–in Parmenides’ principle of the unity of thinking and being. It is also found–including initial steps to systematic development–in Plato’s dialectic of ideas, and it is there in the vanishing point of Aristotle’s metaphysics. Absolute form constitutes one of the fundamental motifs of Descartes’ re-establishment of philosophy in the medium of self-sustaining certainty, just as it was essential to Leibniz’s initiative proceeding from infinity.
This study defends the thesis that the claim to self-determination based on pure thinking attained its maximal development in Hegel’s philosophy. A comparative study of the fundamental forms of philosophy in Kant and Hegel establishes a foundation for the study fully acknowledging the contribution of transcendental logic to the emancipation of thinking from heteronomous thought forms. These opening moves include a demonstration of the immanent limitations of Kant’s own form of thinking, which Hegel’s speculative logic undertook to overcome. As is well known Hegel always saw in Kant a new beginning in philosophy, and he regarded him as a genuine pioneer in speculative thinking too. For Hegel it was Kant’s speculation that made it possible precisely to identify and name the logical form moments from which a repulsion to genuine absolute form had to happen.
For this new preface it may suffice initially to explain the intention behind the leading terms in the title of modality and individuality in relation to the principle of philosophy in Kant and Hegel. This will be followed by a statement of the systematic premisses and implications of the theses developed here, especially in their relation to the problem of universals, as a way of briefly outlining the new “conceptual realism” tied to the claim to a self-determined thinking, to an autonomous language of philosophy. These preliminary remarks are intended as an introductory plea for a form of doing philosophy which today is no longer necessarily the usual procedure, but which nevertheless remains consistently committed to the heritage of the tradition of the science of reason. There is no future for philosophy without the science of reason.
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In common understanding, thinking and knowing refer to “something”, thinking is “intending” thinking and knowing finds its truth in dependence on a “reference”, an external object. Thinking, knowing is “true” when it is “adequate” to the external object–it matters little here whether “adequacy” is meant as formal (in the sense of contradiction-free modelling), pragmatic (in the sense of attainability of subjective goals), or in its genuine meaning of material (in the sense of a real determination of thinking by the matter through its “duplication” in thought). Philosophical thinking and knowing is in its kernel a thinking and knowing that fulfils and confirms itself by itself–as such in terms of form it is reflexive knowing, in terms of content “self-verifying”, such1 that it has its own function for its content, it has itself for its own content. What appears at first quite alien, if it does not already sound suspiciously like a solipsistic circulus vitiosus, is in fact nothing other than the reference to Plato’s ἀνάμνησις, to Aristotle’s νόησις νοήσεως and even (a very famous example indeed) to the ontological proof of God’s existence, whose main (or at least speculative) point lies precisely in demonstrating the knowledge of God as self-realising and in this sense absolute knowing.
All three of these examples belong to the metaphysical tradition, which ultimately does not mean that they refer to mediating instances assumed to be objective–the soul, the ideas, God–themselves requiring liberation from the form of external objectivity in order to open them up to the pure self-determination of thinking and knowing, to the true λόγος. Plato conceived of this “liberation” of the λόγος to self-determination in the supraobjectivity (ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας) of the good as ultimate ground of the λόγος. The Neoplatonist dialectical tradition similarly found this supraobjective ground in the concept of the unattainable transcendence of the vanishing point of all mediation–the one in Plotinus and infinity for Nicholas of Cusa. The ground of the λόγος remains external to this in its immediate self-expressing, i.e. the language of philosophy relates to its “matter” contingently. Philosophising still “refers” to something which it is not itself; philosophy is not yet the self-consciousness of its own matter.
For Hegel this is where Kant’s critique of metaphysics reached the decisive breakthrough. Although for Kant there remains an other than self-mediating thinking in general, this other external to thinking can clearly no longer constitute an instance against the self-determination of thinking as such. The “reality” of the object no longer hangs on an external instance as such–and certainly not on a “thing-in-itself”. Cognition no longer consists in the “mental” reproduction of something, of matter independent of the cognition, but instead in the constitution of a self-referential form of “experience”, of a knowing that may indeed satiate itself on a material of perception outside of it, but which is never simply occasioned by that. To this extent Kant already took the step towards an at least partial self-grounding of cognition. The objects of objective cognition are in terms of form already functions of the self-relation, the kernel of which is the at least formally absolute knowing lying in the performance of transcendental apperception. Hegel’s step beyond Kant then consists in the insight that what is for Kant the self-referential form of experience contained in transcendental apperception relates to the content of experience and in general of all knowing not by any means only as (external) form. As long as this (as in Kant) essentially remains the case, then cognition remains immediately forced into the form of the judgment, the proposition. Cognition is only the self-execution of the concept refracted through the form of the judgment, not the concept reconstituting itself in the form of the syllogism: it is not the concept that in its self-relation already immediately repels itself from itself in order to set itself as the other and be able to know itself in the other. Kant does indeed offer several points of contact for speculative moves beyond his characteristic form of thinking, and indeed the impulse lies there in Kant’s work itself. Examples include constitution theory and the concept of the category adequate to that;2 the syllogism, the function favoured for the form of experience; and the transcendental ideal. Hegel’s overall assessment here is that Kant was on his way to a structure of the self-presenting of reason that ultimately supersedes the distinction made by the transcendental philosophy itself between self- and other-mediation. This study pursues the same goal, initially restricted to the Kantian theory of modality.
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In the field of the modalities, Kant introduced some decisive innovations affecting formal logic and their use in the logic of experience. Confining ourselves here to the logic of experience or transcendental logic, Kant understands the modal terms as reflexive, indeed as reflections of every determinate (objective) experience via the unity of (formal) experience. In this way the modal terms “contextualise” single experience within the “idea” of experience or indeed within its concept. As Kant puts it they add no “objective” term to the object of experience, but “format” it as it were for integration into the whole of experience and to that extent to the objectivity of experience in general. Now the unity of experience is itself always a function of the unity of (transcendental) subjectivity. This is precisely what the transcendental deduction in the second edition of the first critique showed. This means that the self-implementation of subjectivity generates “objectivity”, comprehending (conceptual understanding) gives itself reality, which indeed initially is still bound to the form of consciousness and as such is the appearance of reality. Nevertheless it includes the reference from the logic of autopoietic, continuously self-extending experience to a focus imaginarius of all experiencing that transcends experience itself. In Kant this focus imaginarius lies in the limit concept of an idea in individuo, in which the motion of the self-realisation of transcendental subjectivity would come to a conclusion and Kant’s hypothetical form of the mediation of cognition would imagine the absolute form. From Hegel’s point of view this corresponds to the question of the individual locus of cognition, which is one of the central critical questions that have to be directed to Kant.
an expression or externalisation, but one which vanishes as something external simply by virtue of being; the idea is thus only in this self-determination of hearing itself, it is in this pure thinking in which the difference is not yet an alterity but is completely transparent to itself and remains so.3
Logical absolute form includes within it the logical “anchor” of language as language in general, even if this is in its empirical unfolding always a reference back from out of natural “alterity”, while, especially as a particular language, it cannot be adequately determined by logic alone. It is obviously of vital importance, especially in times when language is only understood semiotically, if not mechanically, to hold on to Hegel’s insight that language is absolute form, autopoietic manifestation, the clarity of the pure self-mediation of cognition.
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This work, completed in 1990, was produced in a time when the fronts had already begun to harden between historical, hermeneutical and increasingly also analytical interpretations of Kant and Hegel from the philosophy of the understanding. It took issue with protagonists of the various tendencies, most often critically, because it was throughout concerned to do justice to the wider horizons of genuinely speculative thinking. It constantly sought the conversation with the philosophical tradition as a whole, as it often addressed authors who did not stand at the centre of interest in philosophy. In that spirit the fortunate circumstance can be recorded that the author was enabled to conduct his investigation with the advantage of access to the unpublished habilitation thesis of Franz Ungler (1945–2003) in the typescript in the Austrian National Library.4 As difficult as Ungler’s magnum opus is to understand, it possesses the far from common virtue of referencing and being developed by consistently posing one of the fundamental questions of philosophy, namely the problem of universals, to Hegel’s, and indeed also to Kant’s, entire philosophy. Ungler’s position is not without relevance for understanding “absolute form” and can be briefly stated as follows:
In a certain sense–to that extent setting a counterpoint to modernity–Hegel’s philosophy re-established conceptual realism. The foundation of both metaphysical ontology and its form of conceptual realism, as well as that of nominalistic thinking all the way to post-Frege formal logic, is a subsumption logic that is in many respects aporetic. Hegel’s conceptual realism works by replacing that foundation with a logic of the dialectical coincidence of universal and singular in the performance of cognition as well as of being. For Hegel the individual is no longer what cannot be reached by the concept, the ineffabile. It is much more the genuine location of self-realising reason that knows itself as actually knowing and asserting itself as such.
Obviously this thesis is highly controversial in its systematic aspect and indeed at first sight not necessarily easy to make plausible. It means that Hegel stands obliquely to most other modern philosophers; already in such a fundamental sense as well as with the concept of the concept his thinking is not compatible with those other philosophies. This relates by no means only to philosophers before Kant; it refers to most of those following Hegel: for it makes no difference whether one is a Nietzschean or a Fregean, a follower of Heidegger or of Wittgenstein, of Luhmann or a post-structuralist–Hegel does not share the firm commitment common to all these positions (and in a certain sense also even to Kant’s transcendental logic) of the mere formality of our concepts. Interpretationists and hermeneuticists, formal logicians, language pragmatists, system theoreticians and even representatives of critical theory: all of them proceed on the assumption of a position–which for Hegel has to be called fundamentally naive–of the character of concepts as abstractions and tools. On this view our concepts are “media” we insert between us and “the world”, with which however we do not really grasp that “world”. Instead all we do is isolate certain general aspects gained precisely through logical or pragmatic abstraction–aspects which on closer observation conceal within them theoretical or practical intentions. It should be noted in passing that it is only a derivative or secondary realism problem that can arise here, in which the real question is: how exactly do our concepts or representations relate to the contents whose “media” they are supposed to be? It soon becomes clear in this context that only those who are convinced that our concepts ultimately are due to these contents, or that they in ideal manner are “isomorph” to them, are to be called “realist”. On the other hand those who deny that there is any sense to the search for a reality independent of our concepts are to be dubbed “idealist” or “phenomenalist”–already Kant determined that we have nothing other to compare our representations with than other representations, and that for this reason it is indeed difficult for us to make the naive demand that we should tailor our representations to “reality”. Of course realism has experienced varying levels of acceptance and rejection over the last several centuries. The claim is essentially that the concept is not a form looking for content and reality is not something external to the concept but that this latter is nothing other than active reason in the context of actual reason in general. For Hegel too the concept is not a “medium”, not a means serving intentions and goals external to it, least of all a mere sign that (as in the late Wittgenstein) only in its “use” gains “meaning”. Instead actual cognition organises itself in the concept; as such its being lies in its function as a focus of I and world, which in a certain sense both are each other’s functions, not each other’s other. In Ungler’s work it quickly becomes clear that Hegel’s approach is not a falling back to pre-critical positions, such as into an abstract Platonism, an Aristotelian essence philosophy or an ontology of things. Hegel’s realism (his conception of a thinking fulfilling itself in its own performance) enables him to think Kant through to the end: the transformation of transcendental logic into a speculative one includes the overcoming of formal logic and of the nominalism it entails because it (speculative logic) precisely does not, like metaphysics, stop at the “thing-in-itself”, being rather as already stated based on the performance of thinking. Kant’s “I think” becomes the fundamental schema of the concept in Hegel as comprehending thought–“concept” is for Hegel “comprehending”–as actuality coming to itself here and now. It is precisely in Hegel’s words only “absolute form” lets determinate thing and determinate subject respectively free by itself.
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Several issues the book deals with have been subsequently addressed again or further developed by the author; other topics–such as the question as to a sustainable speculative interpretation of nature or the foundations of a practical philosophy on the basis of the logic of absolute form–remain still to be addressed. This selection of publications may suffice to indicate his approach to such issues:
- 1)The following collections edited by the author deal with the relation between Kant and Hegel:
- 1.1.Thomas Sören Hoffmann and Franz Ungler eds., Aufhebung der Transzendentalphilosophie? Systematische Beiträge zur Würdigung, Fortentwicklung und Kritik des transzendentalen Ansatzes zwischen Kant und Hegel, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1994.
- –: Thomas Sören Hoffmann, “Der Begriff des Erkennens beim Jenenser Hegel und die Überwindung der Gnoseologie”, 95–123.
- 1.2.Héctor Ferreiro and Thomas Sören Hoffmann eds., Metaphysik–Metaphysikkritik—Neubegründung der Erkenntnis: Der Ertrag der Denkbewegung von Kant bis Hegel, Duncker und Humblot, Berlin 2017 (Begriff und Konkretion. Beiträge zur Gegenwart der klassischen deutschen Philosophie vol. 5).
- –: Thomas Sören Hoffmann, “Die logische Reduktion der Metaphysik. Zu Hegels Begriff der absoluten Idee”, 11–26.
- 2)The following book offers a comprehensive introduction to Hegel’s philosophy:
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Eine Propädeutik, Marix, Wiesbaden 2004; second edition revised and updated 2012; fourth reprint 2020 (E-book 2013).
- Spanish translation: Hegel. Una propedéutica. Traducción del alemán Max Maureira y Klaus Wrehde, Editorial Biblos, Buenos Aires 2014.
- English translation: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. A Propaedeutic. Translated by David Healan, Brill, Leiden and Boston 2015 (Critical Studies in German Idealism, vol. 14).
- 3)This study addresses the problem of a speculative concept of nature:
- Thomas Sören Hoffmann, Philosophische Physiologie. Eine Systematik des Begriffs der Natur im Spiegel der Geschichte der Philosophie, Frommann-Holzboog: Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2003 (Quaestiones vol. 14).
- 4)These works deal with the interpretation of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit:
- 4.1.Thomas Sören Hoffmann ed., 200 Jahre Phänomenologie des Geistes. Neue Beiträge zur Würdigung eines Klassikers der neueren Dialektik–Zur Einführung, Themenheft der Zeitschrift Synthesis Philosophica 43, Zagreb 2007.
- –: Thomas Sören Hoffmann, “‘Unsere Zutat’. Zum näheren Verständnis eines methodologischen Motivs aus der ‘Einleitung’ zu Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes”, 87–105.
- 4.2.Thomas Sören Hoffmann ed., Hegel als Schlüsseldenker der modernen Welt. Beiträge zur Deutung der Phänomenologie des Geistes aus Anlaß ihres 200-Jahr-Jubiläums, Meiner, Hamburg 2009 (Hegel-Studien suppl. 50) (E-book 2009).
- –: Thomas Sören Hoffmann, “‘Hegels phänomenologische Dialektik. Darstellung, Zeitbezug und Wahrheit des erscheinenden Wissens–Thesen zur ‘Vorrede’”, 31–52.
- –: “Präsenzformen der Religion in Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes”, 308–324.
- 5)This collection of essays is devoted to Hegel’s Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline, especially to its first edition:
- Thomas Sören Hoffmann and Hardy Neumann eds., Hegel und das Programm einer philosophischen Enzyklopädie, Duncker und Humblot, Berlin 2019 (Begriff und Konkretion. Beiträge zur Gegenwart der klassischen deutschen Philosophie vol. 8).
- –: Thomas Sören Hoffmann, “‘Die Philosophie ist wie das Universum rund in sich’. Enzyklopädisches Wissen und Selbstbegründung der Philosophie bei Hegel”, 13–28.
- 6)Some articles on Kant that relate to the content of this study:
- 6.1.Thomas Sören Hoffmann, “Der Begriff der Bewegung bei Kant. Über den Grundbegriff der Empirie und die empirischen Begriffe” in Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 45 (1991), 38–59.
- 6.2.–: “Kants transzendentale Deduktion der Verstandesbegriffe–ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln?” in Kirsten Schmidt, Klaus Steigleder and Burkhard Mojsisch eds., Die Aktualität der Philosophie Kants. Bochumer Ringvorlesung Sommersemester 2004, Amsterdam and Philadelphia 2005, 58–79.
- 6.3.–: “‘Darstellung des Begriffs’. Zu einem Grundmotiv neueren Philosophierens im Ausgang von Kant” in Hubertus Busche and Anton Schmitt eds., Kant als Bezugspunkt philosophischen Denkens. Festschrift für Peter Baumanns zum 75. Geburtstag, Würzburg 2010, 101–118.
- 6.4.–: “Kants ‘Kontextualismus’. Zur Logik des Machens der Erfahrung nach Kant” in Lois Marie Redl and Robert König eds., Schlusslogische Letztbegründung. fs Kurt Walter Zeidler zum 65. Geburtstag, Vienna 2020, 345–362.
- 7)Further articles on Hegel that relate to the content of this study:
- 7.1.Thomas Sören Hoffmann, “G.W.F. Hegel” in Klassiker der Sprachphilosophie, ed. Tilman Borsche, Munich 1996, 257–273.
- 7.2.–: “Hegels Urteilstafel” in Max Gottschlich and Michael Wladika eds., Dialektische Logik. Hegels ‘Wissenschaft der Logik’ und ihre realphilosophischen Wirklichkeitsweisen, Würzburg 2005, 72–89.
- 7.3.–: “Reflexion, Begriff und spekulative Erkenntnis. Über Weisen des Wissens im Blick auf Hegels Logik” in Rüdiger Bubner ed., Von der Logik zur Sprache, Stuttgart 2006, 88–108.
- 7.4.–: “Bildung, Entzweiung, Sprache. Zur Dialektik des Bildungsgeschehens nach Hegel” in Axel Hutter and Markus Kartheininger eds., Bildung als Mittel und Selbstzweck. Korrektive Erinnerung wider die Erinnerung des Bildungsbegriffs, Freiburg and Munich 2009, 82–104.
- 7.5.–: “Totalität und Prädikation. Zur ersten ‘Stellung des Gedankens zur Objektivität’ im enzyklopädischen ‘Vorbegriff’ der spekulativen Logik” in Alfred Denker, Annette Sell and Holger Zaborowski eds., Der “Vorbegriff” der Hegelschen Enzyklopädie, Freiburg and Munich 2010, 114–143.
- 7.6.–: “‘Absoluter Geist’. Zur Aktualität eines Hegelschen Theorems” in Philotheos 11 (2011), 152–161.
- 7.7.–: “Hegel oder die Provokation der spekulativen Logik” in Hans Feger and Gloria Dell’ Eva (eds.), Die Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus, Würzburg 2016, 243–262.
- 7.8.–: “Variationen über Sittlichkeit. Zum Gehalt und zur Rezeption eines hegelschen Theorems” in Michael Spieker, Sebastian Schwenzfeuer and Benno Zabel eds., Sittlichkeit. Eine Kategorie moderner Staatlichkeit? Baden-Baden 2019, 145–161.
All that remains is for me to express my deep appreciation to David Healan in Berlin. Not only did he propose the translation of my dissertation, he also undertook the great exertions required to complete the project. The task was not to be accomplished except by one who managed to share in the thinking of every part of the text. Thanks are also due to the publisher, Brill, for accepting a second book into their programme.
Thomas Sören Hoffmann Vienna, in the year of Hegel’s 250th birthday
Cf. the author’s “‘Die Philosophie ist wie das Universum rund in sich’. Enzyklopädisches Wissen und Selbstbegründung der Philosophie bei Hegel” in T.S. Hoffmann and Hardy Neumann eds. Hegel und das Programm einer philosophischen Enzyklopädie, Berlin 2019, esp. 18–23.
It is not the least aim of the deduction of the completeness of the Kantian table of categories presented here (cf. 136 ff. below) to demonstrate that the category is the form of mediation of the external–internal opposition in the logic of essence, and that as such it constitutes the procedure for implementing the concept. It has to be stressed however that the category in Kant only immanently bridges the opposition of appearance and does not itself supersede the logic of appearing.
Hegel, Science of Logic (SoL) 825; Wissenschaft der Logik (WdL) iii, gw xii, 237.
This principal work of the Vienna philosopher Ungler was only published several years after his untimely death: Franz Ungler, Individuelles und Individuationsprinzip in Hegels “Wissenschaft der Logik”, eds. Max Gottschlich and Thomas Sören Hoffmann, Freiburg and Munich 2017. Ungler’s systematic study represents one of the most important contributions to the appreciation of the epochal significance of Hegel’s philosophy; it is also an excellent demonstration of the enormous fertility of the work of Bruno Liebrucks (1911–1986) as one attempt to penetrate Hegel’s philosophy. Another alumnus of the Liebrucks school was Josef Simon (1930–2016), who supervised this dissertation and to whom I express my gratitude here. It is to Simon that the work owes among other things the insight that as philosopher, one should never discuss philosophical texts of which one has not already attained complete mastery, a principle that protects against both dull literalness and the embarrassing gesticulations of those who assume they know better simply for having been born later.