Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
F. ANAXAGORAS.
This is a good example for showing that we miss the end in such modes of explanation. On the other hand, it is not a good example, because it is taken from the kingdom of the self-conscious will, where deliberate and not unconscious end reigns. In this criticism of the Anaxagorean _νοῦς_ we can certainly see it generally expressed that Anaxagoras made no application of his _νοῦς_ to reality. But the positive element in the conclusion of Socrates seems, on the other hand, to be unsatisfying, because it goes to the other extreme, namely, to desire causes for nature which do not appear to be in it, but which fall outside of it in consciousness. For what is good and beautiful is partly due to the thought of consciousness as such; end or purposive action is mainly an act of consciousness and not of nature. But in so far as ends become posited in nature, the end, as end, on the other hand, falls outside of it in our judgment only; as such it is not in nature itself, for in it there are only what we call natural causes, and for its comprehension we have only to seek and show causes that are immanent.
According to this, we distinguish, for instance, in Socrates the end and ground of his action as consciousness, and the causes of his actual action: and the latter we would undoubtedly seek in his bones, muscles, nerves, &c. Since we banish the consideration of nature in relation to ends—as present in our thought and not existent in nature—we also banish from our consideration teleological explanations in nature formerly admired, _e.g._ that grass grows that animals may eat it, and that these last exist and eat grass, so that we may eat them. The end of trees is said to be that their fruit may be consumed and that they should give us wood for heat; many animals have skins for warm clothing; the sea in northern climates floats timber to the shores because on these shores themselves no wood grows, and the inhabitants can hence obtain it, and so on. Thus presented, the end, the Good, lies outside of the thing itself: the nature of a thing then becomes considered, not in and for itself, but only in relation to another which is nothing to it. Thus, because things are only useful for an end, this determination is not their own but one foreign to them.
The tree, the grass, is as natural existence, independent, and this adaptation of it to an end, such as making grass that which is to be eaten, does not concern the grass as grass, just as it does not concern the animal that man should clothe himself in his skin; Socrates may hence seem to miss in Anaxagoras this mode of looking at nature. But this to us familiar way of regarding the good and expedient is on the one hand not the only one, and does not represent Plato’s meaning, while, on the other, it is likewise necessary. We have not to represent the good or the end in so one-sided a manner that we think of it existing as such in the perceiving mind, and in opposition to what is; but set free from this form, we must take it in its essence as the Idea of all existence. The nature of things must be recognized in accordance with the Notion, which is the independent, unfettered consideration of things; and because it is that which things are in and for themselves, it controls the relationship of natural causes.
This Notion is the end, the true cause, but that which recedes into itself; it is the implicitly existent first from which movement proceeds and which becomes result; it is not only an end present in the imagination before its actuality exists, but is also present in reality. Becoming is the movement through which a reality or totality becomes; in the animal or plant its essence as universal genus, is that which begins its movement and brings it forth. But this whole is not the product of something foreign, but its own product, what is already present as germ or seed; thus it is called end, the self-producing, that which in its Becoming is already implicitly existent. The Idea is not a particular thing, which might have another content than reality or appear quite different. The opposition is the merely formal opposition of possibility and actuality; the active impelling substance and the product are the same. This realization goes right through the opposition; the negative in the universal is just this process. The genus sets itself in a state of opposition as individual and universal, and thus, in what lives, the genus realizes itself in the opposition of races which are opposed, but whose principle is the universal genus. They, as individuals, aim at their own self-preservation as individuals in eating, drinking, &c., but what they thereby bring to pass is genus. Individuals sublate themselves, but genus is that which is ever brought forth; plants bring forth only the same plants whose ground is the universal.
In accordance with this, the distinction between what have been badly named natural causes and the final causes has to be determined. Now if I isolate individuality and merely regard it as movement and the moments of the same, I show what are natural causes. For example, where has this life taken its origin? Through the generation of this its father and mother. What is the cause of these fruits? The tree whose juices so distil themselves that the fruit forthwith arises. Answers of this kind give the causes, _i.e._ the individuality opposed to an individuality; but their principle is the genus. Now nature cannot represent essence as such. The end of generation is the sublation of the individuality of Being; but nature which in existence certainly brings about this sublation of individuality, does not set the universal in its place, but another individual. Bones, muscles, &c., bring forth a movement; they are causes, but they themselves are so through other causes, and so on into infinitude. The universal, however, takes them up into itself as moments which undoubtedly appear in movement as causes, though the fundamental ground of these parts actually is the whole. It is not they which come first, but the result into which the juices of the plants, &c., pass, is the first, just as in origination it appears only as product, as seed, that which constitutes the beginning and the end, even though they be in different individuals. Their real nature is the same.
But such a genus is itself a particular genus and is essentially related to another, _e.g._ the Idea of the plant to that of the animal; the universal moves on. This looks like external teleology—that plants are eaten by animals, &c., in which their limitation as genus lies. The genus of the plant has the absolute totality of its realization in the animal, the animal in the conscious existence, just as the earth has it in the plant. This is the system of the whole in which each moment is transitory. The double method of considering the matter thus is that each Idea is a circle within itself, the plant or the animal the Good of its kind; and, on the other hand, each is a moment in the universal Good. If I consider the animal merely as externally adapted to an end, as created for something else, I consider it in a one-sided way; it is real existence, in and for itself universal. But it is just as one-sided to say that the plant, for instance, is only in and for itself, only end to itself, only shut up within itself and going back into itself. For each idea is a circle which is complete in itself, but whose completion is likewise a passing into another circle; it is a vortex whose middle point, that into which it returns, is found directly in the periphery of a higher circle which swallows it up. Thus, for the first time, we reach the determination of an end in the world which is immanent within it.
These explanations are necessary here, since hereafter we see the speculative Idea coming more into the universal; it was formerly expressed as Being and the moments and movements were called existent. What has to be avoided in this transition is that we should thereby think that Being is given up and that we pass into consciousness as opposed to Being (in so doing the universal would lose all its speculative significance); the universal is immanent in nature. This is the meaning which is present when we represent to ourselves that thought constitutes, orders, &c., the world. It is not, so to speak, the activity of the individual consciousness, in which I stand here on one side and, opposite to me, an actuality, matter, which I form, dispose and order as I will; for the universal, Thought, must abide in Philosophy without this opposition. Being, pure Being, is universal when we thereby keep in mind that Being is absolute abstraction, pure thought; but Being as it is thus set forth as Being, has the significance of the opposite to this Being-reflected-into-itself, to thought and recollection; the universal, on the contrary, has reflection immediately in itself. So far, the ancients really got: it does not seem far. “Universal” is a dry determination; everyone knows about the universal, but not of it as real existence. Thought, indeed, reaches to the invisibility of the sensuous; not to the positive determinateness of thinking it as universal, but only to the predicateless absolute as to the merely negative; and that is as far as the common ideas of the present day have come. With this discovery of thought we conclude the first Section and enter upon the second period. The profit to be derived from the first period is not very great. Some, indeed, think that there is still some special wisdom in it, but thought is still young, the determinations are thus still poor, abstract and arid. Thought here has but few determinations—water, Being, number, &c.—and these cannot endure; the universal must go forth on its own account as the self-determining activity, and this we find it doing in Anaxagoras alone.
We have still to consider the relationship of the universal as opposed to Being, or consciousness as such in its relation to what is. By Anaxagoras’ determination of real existence, this relationship of consciousness is also determined. In this regard nothing satisfactory can be found; for he recognized, on the one hand, thought as real existence, without, however, bringing this thought to bear on ordinary reality. Thus, on the other hand, this is destitute of thought and independent, an infinite number of homœomeriæ, _i.e._ an infinite amount of a sensuous implicit existence, which now, however, is sensuous Being; for existent Being is an accumulation of homœomeriæ. The relationship borne by consciousness to real existence may likewise be various. Anaxagoras could thus either say that the truth is only in thought and in rational knowledge, or that it is sensuous perception; for in this we have the homœomeriæ which are themselves implicit. Thus, in the first place, we find from him—as Sextus tells us, (adv. Math. VII., 89-91) “that the understanding (_λόγος_) is the criterion of the truth; the senses cannot judge of the truth on account of their weakness”—weakness for the homœomeriæ are the infinitely small; the senses could not grasp them, do not know that they have to be something ideal and thought.
A celebrated example of this is given by him according to Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 13, §. 33), in the assertion that “the snow is black, for it is water, and water is black.” He here asserts the truth in a reason. In the second place, according to Aristotle (Met. III. 7), Anaxagoras is said to have asserted that, “there is a medium between contradiction (_ἀντιφάσεως_); so that everything is untrue. For because the two sides of the opposition are mingled, what is mingled is neither good nor not good, and thus not true.” Aristotle also quotes another time from him (Met. III. 5): “That one of his apothegms to his disciples was that to them things were as they supposed them.” This may relate to the fact that because existent Being is an accumulation of homœomeriæ which are what really exists, sensuous perception takes things as they are in truth.
There is little more to be made of this. But here we have the beginning of a more distinct development of the relationship of consciousness to Being, the development of the nature of knowledge as a knowledge of the true. The mind has gone forth to express real existence as Thought; and thus real existence as existent, is in consciousness as such; it is implicit but likewise in consciousness. This Being is such only in so far as consciousness recognizes it, and real existence is only the knowledge of it. The mind has no longer to seek existence in something foreign, since it is in itself; for what formerly appeared foreign is Thought, _i.e._ consciousness has this real existence in itself. But this consciousness in opposition is an individual consciousness; thereby in fact, implicit Being is sublated, for the implicit is what is not opposed, not singled out, but universal. It is, indeed, known, but what is, only is in knowledge, or it is no other Being than that of the knowledge of consciousness. We see this development of the universal in which real existence goes right over to the side of consciousness, in the so much decried worldly wisdom of the Sophists; we may view this as indicating that the negative nature of the universal is now developing.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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