“Phenomenology of Spirit” as Philosophical Event — Cadell Last

This article is Part 2 of a series.
See Part 1: What is the “Phenomenology of Spirit”?
See Part 3: Death in Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit”

The official narrative of philosophy emerges and becomes structured around a great thinker as an event.  Consequently, when we think about philosophy we often think about a lineage of great thinkers who follow one after another in a logical sequence.  We have the pre-Socratics (Thales, Parmenides, Heraclitus and so forth), we have the Socratic triad (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), and we can make similar conceptual groupings whether by time (Medieval, Modern, Post-Modern) or space (Indian, Chinese, American, etc.).

But all philosophical events are not the same.  And measuring the impact of a certain philosophical event can only really be achieved in retrospect, after we see the historical consequences of a certain form of thinking on the real of human process.  In this article, I want to make a specific argument that follows a chain of three specific “cataclysmic events” in the works of Plato, Descartes and Hegel.  This argument follows or echos the claim of Slavoj Žižek that this triad stands out as representing three unique singularities in the history of Western metaphysics (2014); precisely because of the break they represent with a certain historical form, and also a shadow that they cast on all later thinkers (whether positive or negative).

In order to make this argument I want to identify what captures the “metaphysical essence” of the break and shadow of Plato, Descartes and Hegel.  The first break and shadow is the Platonic Ideals, which breaks from the pre-Socratic world of symmetrical harmonies (e.g. yin-yang, day-night, man-woman), and casts the shadow of monotheistic religious order.  In other words, it is Plato and his Ideal Forms that casts the metaphysical shadow of a meaningful hierarchy set in relation to higher truths.

The second break and shadow is the Cartesian Cogito, which breaks with the Platonic world of higher truths, and replaces it with a universe of meaningless mechanistic substance (what we think of as physics, chemistry, biology, and so forth), set in relation to a transparent res cogitans (thinking substance).  In other words, it is Descartes and his Cogito that casts the metaphysical shadow of naturalistic science, based on the presupposition that we can trust our own thinking and know external nature.

Finally, the third break and shadow is the Hegelian absolute “as substance, but also subject”.  That is the absolute as a dialectical process set loose in a feedback destined to become other or different to itself.  In other words, it is Hegel, and specifically his work in the Phenomenology of Spirit, which introduces the idea that all substance and subjectivity is processual, and that if one studies the immanent logical sequence of this process (the Idea or Concept itself), one finds that both substance and subject disappear into themselves.

Thus, far from allowing for a monotheistic religious order based on higher forms (as in Plato), or allowing for a naturalistic science confident in its own thinking (as in Descartes), the Hegelian break and shadow opens us to a terrifying negativity: that everything, all substance-subjectivity, is destined to become other to itself (and yet somehow, paradoxically, remain self-similar as this very same otherness).

What are we to make of this break and shadow?

In the first part of this series, I suggested that making sense of this otherness had something to do, not with science, but with scientific fantasy.  One could also say, making sense of this otherness has to do with the way our contemporary fantasies are conditioned within a scientific universe producing an endless stream and variety of new technological gadgets and possibilities.  In the dialectical relation between substance and subject, what this realm of scientific-technological gadgets opens, is the very transformation of the conditions of possibility for subjective experience of fantasy.

Perhaps, if we start retroactively with an analysis of what this may mean for Plato and Descartes, taken up into the Hegelian absolute, we will be on more stable footing.  From the ‘Hegelianized’ Platonic view, it would not be that there is a higher realm of ideal truths.  In this universe we human subjects must strive to embody already existing ideals in a meaningful hierarchical arrangement.  Rather, it is that reality is not-all (there are no higher ideal forms), and in the very gap where reality is not-all, ideal forms appear as pure appearance, conditioned by the very libidinal drive of our bodies.

For the ‘Hegelianized’ Descartes, it is not that there is a thinking substance (cogito) that is already transparent and clear to itself as a subjectivity.  In this universe we merely need to trust our own thinking in the process of reflecting substance to establish a science certain of itself.  Rather, it is that thinking is insubstantial, appearing in a gap where reality is not-all, and that in the process of reflecting substance, we will discover aspects of our subjectivity that take us by surprise (Oh!  Do I really think that?  Do I really desire that?).

In both cases, the Platonic Ideal Forms and the Cartesian Cogito, we are dealing with the introduction of a gap in substance and subjectivity, where an irreducible incompletion and uncertainty must be thought, on both the sides of substance and subject.  That is where the Hegelian absolute, and the dialectic of substance and subject, can be properly understood.

In relation to our contemporary scientific universe, we must think the way in which technological substance is constantly transforming the conditions of possibility for subjective experience of fantasy.  Here think of Facebook’s idea for a “Metaverse”, or the development of an “Unreal Engine” for 3D creation, or the various possibilities for social networks of “Web3”.  There are many examples and possibilities, but in all cases we are confronted with the terrifying fact of incomplete substance and subject; in all cases we are confronted with ideal forms which do not pre-exist some higher reality allowing for the re-instantiation of meaningful hierarchy in the traditional sense; and we are confronted with thinking subjectivity which by necessity will be thrown into a radical incompletion and uncertainty.

What this amounts to is an abyssal absolute, an absolute forced to find itself in the otherness of surprise and adventure.

The Hegelian conclusion to be drawn from this situation is that ideals condition materiality, but these ideals should be understood as radically emergent, as forms that came-to-be-what-they-are in a process of self-relating negativity; and that the thinking subject does not find certainty in transparency of its own thought, but rather, and paradoxically, the thinking subject finds certainty in its capacity to become other to itself, in its capacity to be surprised by its own self.

The Phenomenology of Spirit as a philosophical event thus invites us, not to re-identify with the old order of metaphysical ideals, nor to align with a natural science of external substance, but to see how the metaphysical ideals of science, and their externalization in technological substance, allows for a totally new relation to both our ideality (fantasy) and our subjectivity (the possibility of becoming other to what we are now).  This is absolute knowledge, or rather, from this “standpoint” of absolute knowing, it becomes possible to walk into unknown otherness, with the weird knowledge that we may find ourselves as if for the first time.

It is hard not to overemphasize, not only how radically different Hegel’s absolute is from the Platonic and Cartesian absolute, but also how deeply and intensely his shadow of otherness overdetermines our world.

Cadell Last is a philosopher with a background in anthropology, history, and psychoanalysis.  He is leading and offering a course on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit starting January 15th 2022.  For more, see: Philosophy Portal.

Works Cited:

Žižek, S.  2014.  Plato, Descartes, Hegel: Three Philosophers of Event.  In: The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism, pg. 575-602.

For an extended version of this basic argument, see my introduction to the Foreword of the Phenomenology of Spirit at The Stoa.