Book Reviews, Intellectual History

Review: Hegel: A Very Short Introduction

by Dave Seng

I am a fan of the Very Short Introduction series published by Oxford University Press. The series covers topics of history, literature, philosophy, and the sciences among others. Almost any academic subject is treated and the books are easily digestible and comprehended. I often recommend the series to those who ask me for an introduction to a philosopher or topic but do not want to immediately dive into a dense textbook. These books are great for anyone who wants a basic understanding of a topic, looking for a source that will aide their reading in the subject, or is beginning to read in a particular field and looking for a solid point of departure for further study. I have read several of these short introductions and gained valuable insight from them. I use one chapter from Floridi’s Information: A Very Short Introduction as required reading in one of my classes.

As I am currently reading through the works of Georg W. F. Hegel (primarily his Philosophy of Right, and Philosophy of History), I took a small detour and picked up Peter Singer’s Hegel: A Very Short Introduction. Hegel is an important thinker, but he not easily discernable. I found Singer’s short introduction to by helpful and what I needed to get back on track with my Hegel reading. So if you are interested in finding a “quick-start” guide to understanding Hegel, at least at the basic level, I recommend Singer’s Hegel: A Very Short Introduction. For me, Singer provides all the necessary explication of Hegel’s main ideas that I needed to make my reading of Philosophy of Right much more meaningful.

Singer divides this introduction into six chapters: Hegel’s Life and Times, History With a Purpose, Freedom and Community, The Odyssey of Mind, Logic and Dialectics, Aftermath. It would be beyond the scope of this review to break down each chapter. However, I will try to demonstrate why this introduction is worth reading, especially if you are interested in understanding the thought of Hegel. The two most important concepts to understand in Hegel’s philosophy is his idea of Geist and his conceptual theme of dialectic.

After situating Hegel in his historical context, Singer highlights and explains the most important aspects of Hegel’s philosophy. This is really helpful because Hegel was one of the last great system builders of the Western intellectual tradition. In other words, Hegel was among the last to attempt to make sense out of such perennial questions as (What is reality? What is the ultimate good? What is the total meaning of things?) and answer these questions in a complete and systematic way which makes sense out of reality and experience as a whole. Today, due to postmodernism, grand narratives of reality have fallen out of fashion. Hegel’s great interpretive scheme of the world is a cosmic one—a spiritual one really—grounded in mind or what he calls Geist (the German word for mind or spirit) it is where the English word for ghost comes from and also, interestingly, the word geyser. Hegel’s conception of Geist, then, is something like an immaterial life force or purposeful spiritual ‘world-mind’ that encompasses all reality (some translations of Hegel’s works use the term ‘world-mind’ for Geist). For Hegel, Geist, is the complete totality of all reality, including being and becoming, the mental and external, finite and infinite—everything is grounded in Geist. (As we sill see below, much of Hegel’s philosophy seeks to bring unity out of conflicting paradigms or opposing forces, for now it is enough to know that everything is grounded in Geist and the dialectic is the process that Geist uses to bring about unity from opposites). Singer explains that Geist is both a spiritual or mental force in the world and it is central to Hegel’s philosophical system. Singer puts it this way, “So crucial is this idea that Hegel actually says that the whole object of the Philosophy of History is to become acquainted with Geist in its guiding role in history” (60). So when reading Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, or his Philosophy of History, it is helpful to understand that Hegel is trying to explain how the world-mind, or Geist is driving society, nations, ethics, law and history.

The concept of dialectic is also important to Hegel. In Philosophy of Right, Hegel is careful to distinguish his method of dialectic from that of Socrates and Plato. Dialectic, means ‘conversation’ and in philosophy, in the classical sense, dialectic means the rational and analytical investigation of truth through conversation and dialogue. According to Hegel, however, Plato’s dialectical method does not go far enough. Hegel thought that coming to greater clarity about something through conversation did not serve a greater historical purpose. For Hegel, dialectic is the process which Geist reconciles conflicting ideological forces in history. Singer explains that there is nothing mysterious about Hegel’s line of thought. He further points out that Hegel developed this formula in his work on logic. The dialectic starts with an assertion or proposition, the thesis, moves to a second stage which is the opposite of the thesis, the antithesis, and is unified in what Hegel calls the synthesis. Hegel applies this line of thinking to various movements in history from classical Greece, the Reformation, and the French revolution to name a few. A really quick example might help. In political economics a Hegelian dialectic could look like this—Thesis: Capitalism (private property is allowed) Antithesis: Communism (private property is not allowed), Synthesis: Fascism (private property and enterprise is allowed as long as the producers obey the dictates of the totalitarian State) this is oversimplified, of course, but Hegel’s dialectic is an attempt to show the unification of opposing ideas in a new idea. The thesis would be the first stage in history, the antithesis would be the second state in history, the historical working out of the opposite idea, and the synthesis would be the final stage of some kind of new intellectual or historical unity. For Hegel, however, the dialectic does not stop at the synthesis. The synthesis becomes the foundation of a new thesis and the dialectic moves on to greater and grander abstraction.

Some scholars have doubted the importance and significance of Hegel’s dialectic. To Hegel, it was very significant. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with it in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. It was also an influence on Marx, who modified the formula to what he called dialectical materialism. Marx made the dialectic a purely material phenomenon. Singer’s introduction does a great job explaining these ideas and he clearly demonstrates the influence of Hegelian philosophy on other thinkers such as Marx and how those ideas have influenced the world around us. Singer’s short book Hegel: A Very Short Introduction is very helpful for those who want to gain a better understanding of Hegel and his importance in intellectual history.

Works Cited

Singer, Peter. Hegel: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2001.

Classical Apologetics, Intellectual History, Natural Theology, Philosophical Theology

Spinoza’s Philosophical Method and Augustine’s Natural Theology: Part One

by Dave Seng

[Note some of this is a further development of the post about Descartes’ rational presuppositionalism. You can find that post here. This series will move on to explore a similar version of presuppositionalism as it is found in the theoretical thought of Baruch Spinoza.]

One of the human race’s great metaphysical questions is whether or not God exists. This question divides many authors in the Western intellectual tradition. Some think that God does not exist. Nietzsche, Hobbes, and Hume, for example, fall into this category, while others such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Spinoza think that a god or the Christian God does exist. Among those who believe that God exists, there is a division between them about how to correctly reason or argue for the existence of God. On one side, Descartes and Spinoza think that God should rationally be assumed or presupposed in any argument for God’s existence. Others, such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas think that arguing from the nature of existence, or being itself, is the best way to make a case for God’s existence. The difference between these two groups is one of methodology. Descartes’s and Spinoza’s position can be called rational presuppositionalism, while thinkers such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas hold the position known as natural theology (or natural philosophical theology). The next couple of posts will critically explore the philosophical differences between the approach of Descartes and Spinoza (rational presuppositionalism) and the natural theology of Augustine and Aquinas.

The concept of natural theology will be developed further in the upcoming posts. However, in brief, natural theology is a philosophical and theological way of reasoning to the existence of God which starts with the reality of being and becoming, or the fact of reality as it is, and uses the natural laws of logic, which are properties of being, including the principle of causality to conclude that God exists necessarily, eternally, and transcendently. Both Augustine and Aquinas utilize this general form of natural theology. Presuppositional rationalism, on the other hand, is the position that God’s existence must be presupposed and reasons from that point. With presuppositional rationalism—primarily in regards to Descartes’s and Spinoza’s position—God is presupposed because God is conceived as a “Perfect Being” and existence necessarily applies to a Perfect Being. It is also a form of rationalism because it holds that all genuine knowledge comes from rational thought apart from sense experience, or any appeal to concrete reality or Being. In this context, Spinoza puts forward three ideas worthy of careful reflection. They are his philosophical presupposition that God exists (that is, God must be presupposed in any argument about God’s existence), pantheism (God and the universe are the same thing), and his conception that the universe is the cause of itself (self-creation or self-causation).

Spinoza’s description of God is helpful at this point. In rational geometric fashion, Spinoza presents definitions and axioms which he uses to explain his conception of God. He defines God as “Being”—not the transcendent cause of Being—but an imminent Being with infinite substance, “By God, I understand Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence” (589). God, as a kind of substance, is “that which is in itself and conceived through itself,” (591), and is the “cause of itself” (590). For Spinoza, God and natural substance are one. God is a self-caused substance.

In many ways, Spinoza follows Descartes’s presuppositional rational methodology, so it is helpful to briefly understand Descartes’s line of reasoning. Both Descartes and Spinoza believe that God exists because God is a “Perfect Being.” Perfection must be a property of existence and because God is thought, or conceived to be, perfect, God necessarily exists. This is a form of thinking which argues that if God is the greatest being that can be conceived, God necessarily exists because existence is a property of Being (what is called the ontological argument for God’s existence). Both Spinoza and Descartes hold to this conceptual scheme of God’s existence. Descartes explicitly connects his presuppositional approach with God as a “Perfect Being.” When trying to overcome the question of how to prove external reality or whether or not one can trust their thoughts, Descartes offers this line of reasoning,

And though the wisest minds may study the matter as much as they will, I do not believe that they will be able to give any sufficient reason for removing this doubt, unless they presuppose the existence of God. For to begin with, that which I have just taken as a rule that is to say, that all the things that we very clearly and very distinctly conceive of are true, is certain only because God is or exists and that He is a Perfect Being, and that all that is in us issues from Him. (277, emphasis added)

Notice what Descartes says here—one must presuppose God exists because God is a Perfect Being which must include existence. God exists because existence is a property of Being, and in order to be the most Perfect Being, such a Being must have the property of existence. Descartes calls this a “metaphysical certainty” (277). When thinking of God, according to presuppositional rationalism, one is simply presupposing God’s existence. In other words, according to this Cartesian approach, God is the perfect Being which must be assumed when arguing for the existence of God. The presuppositional character of Descartes’s argument further reasons that if our thoughts and things we conceive of are true, they are true because God exists.

Next time, we will go into the presuppositional method of Spinoza as he follows much, though not all, of Descartes’ approach. Finally, it is worth noting that presuppositional rational reasoning is not new and does not begin with Van Til, Bahnsen, or Frame. In fact, presuppositional thinking does have significant similarities to the approach of Descartes’, Kant, and Spinoza and includes the usual errors.

Works Cited

Descartes. Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 28. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Intellectual History, Metaphysics, Philosophy

Berkeley, Classical Realism, and the Metaphysical First Principles of Being, Part Two

by Dave Seng
St. Thomas Aquinas, also called Doctor Angelicus (Latin: “Angelic Doctor”),  born 1224/25,—died March 7, 1274.

Part one can be found here. This is part two of a three part series which reflects on Berkeleyan idealism in light of classical realism.

A foundational concept in Berkeley’s philosophy is that reality depends on a perceiver in order for it to be (the esse in his famous dictum). And this is the point of contention for classical realists. Is it correct to say that reality is structured in such a way that it must be perceived to exist? (Additionally, an outright denial of the existence of matter seems problematic and is, in fact, Gnostic.) Classical realism takes both perception and objective reality seriously because sense experience is the only connection one has to the world. The realist finds the entire project of proving an external world to be supremely uninteresting and quite unnecessary. Regarding the faculties of the mind, the act of perception is different from other cognitive abilities like thought, memory, or imagination. Thinking is not the same as having a sense perception. One can think through an issue or problem, recall a memory, or use one’s imagination (such as reading a work of fiction or pondering the existence of centaurs). When these faculties, or acts of the mind, are engaged one can always ask the additional reflective question of whether or not they exist in external reality. When it comes to the faculty of perception, however, one cannot separate one’s perception of an object from its actual existence in reality. Normal perception is always the perception of an external object. If that were not the case, there would be no difference between reality and hallucination. When one asks about hallucinations, external objective reality is assumed in the question, or it would not be a question.1 Perception is what gives human beings the ability to distinguish between appearance and reality (in order to correct a faulty sense appearance, one simply has another sense experience). The faculty of imagination, however, consists of the ability to think of objects that do not exist in reality. In contrast, the faculty of perception is always of something, an external object. Classical realists hold that humans are cognitively structured to be of, about, and oriented towards reality. It makes little sense to say one has a physical perception of a tree and, at the same time, that the tree does not exist. The logical laws of non-contradiction, identity, and excluded middle still hold with sense perception. It does no good to deny external reality. When the mind works correctly, there is no need to prove an external world. Human perception is always of something. In metaphysical terms, that which is cannot be denied.

Berkeley’s conflation of thinking with perception utterly confuses the most important aspects of reality itself—the subjective and objective, appearance and reality, being and becoming, the one with the many, and ultimately equates thought, or mind, with Being. Instead of clarifying reality or explicating the nature of reality, Berkeley only adds more confusion to these ultimate questions. If Berkeley’s interpretive scheme of reality is correct, there is no way to explore the metaphysical nature of reality. The field of metaphysics, itself, would be impossible. The rejection of any reality external to one’s mind undermines the task of metaphysics which is to discover the objective first principles of being as being, at least according to the Aristotelian definition of metaphysics.

Further, classical realists hold to compresence—the idea that minds and objects are both part of reality and co-related. Because human beings live in a common world of sense, they can also share a common world of thought and intellectual engagement. As Alfred North Whitehead explains, “I do not understand how a common world of thought can be established in the absence of a common world of sense” (178). Human beings share the same basic reality and the mind is tuned to the concrete requirements of objective existence. Reality has its own intractable way of being and it is objectively intelligible, discoverable, and shareable with others through the tools of reason—sometimes by way of induction, other times by deduction, and sometimes both working together. Being itself is the unifying standard of all thought and physical activity. The realist, therefore, maintains that all thought and human action takes place in objective time and space.

As extreme as Berkeley appears to be, it is important to take a closer examination of his perspective, and we will explore this further in upcoming posts. For now, keep in mind that no great philosopher or author is completely wrong. Berkeley’s idealism forces one to think about the nature of reality at a deeper level. Perhaps one reason for including Berkeley as one of the great Western philosophers that (although epistemically wrong), he forces one to think more carefully, rationally, and critically about the most fundamental questions of reality. Even when a thinker is wrong, an examination of the position is still instructive. Berkeley raises several questions that the realist wisely takes seriously. How should one think about reality or being? What role does the mind have in knowing reality? And what are the ultimate principles of reality, if any?

While idealists such as Berkeley insist that reality is determined by the mind, or immaterial spirit, realists like Aristotle and Aquinas pose a different strategy for understanding reality and offer a way to think about being that neither denies the role of the mind, nor rejects external reality. When it comes to epistemology, realists believe that there must be first principles of knowledge. An examination of these first principles will demonstrate the role that the intellect plays in knowing reality. The first principles of knowledge are self-evident and foundational to all other knowledge.

All the sciences are derived from basic self-evident first principles. Aquinas puts it this way, “The principles of any science are either in themselves self-evident, or reducible to the knowledge of a higher science” (Ia, q. 1, a. 2 ). And, “The word ‘principle’ signifies only that from which another proceeds: For anything from which something proceeds in any way we call a principle” (Ia, q. 33, a. 1). Self-evident truths are principles that are foundational to all knowledge, and are impossible to deny (such as logical truth, the law of noncontradiction, mathematical truth such as the axioms of geometry, and moral truths such as the proposition that it is always wrong to rape women)2. Self-evident truths are the starting points for any scientific or philosophical inquiry. First principles do not provide the content of reality, rather, they are what make knowledge of reality possible. Classical realists do not deny that the mind has a role when it comes to understanding reality.

Aquinas also refers to first principles that are reducible to the knowledge of a higher science. This occurs when, for example, one understands that music relies on mathematical formulas, or the scientific method rests on the ultimate metaphysical principles of the law of causality, law of predictive uniformity, law of noncontradiction, and others. In fact, it was Aristotle who claimed that it was the mark of an uneducated person not to realize that there must be certain first principles of reality such as the foundational law of noncontradiction (Aristotle, Vol. 7, 525).

In our next post, we will discuss the first principles of being, which are properties of reality and through which we come to understand what is. The first principles of reality are both ontological and epistemic in nature.

1Hallucination is pathological. When the mind is functioning correctly, perception is not pathological, it is normative. When determining between reality and hallucination, external objective existence is assumed.

2Self-evident truths, or first principles, are often intuitive but they can become explicit, usually through education. They are impossible to deny because they must be assumed in any attempt to deny them.

Works Cited

Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theologica: 1. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 17. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle: 1. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 7. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Berkeley, George. The Principles of Human Knowledge. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 55. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 55. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.