Hegelian philosophy underwent a very complex evolution during the 19th and 20th centuries. Few of Hegel’s followers fully agreed with the philosopher, and most Hegelians preferred an independent way of thinking, which is why we cannot equate Hegel’s philosophy with Hegelianism. An exception is the so-called Hegelian school, which arose during the philosopher’s lifetime and included mainly his students and friends who tried to create an orthodox image of Hegelian philosophy. It was thanks to their efforts that shortly after Hegel’s death a collection of his works was published, the so-called “edition of friends” (1832-1840), which included both works published during his lifetime and recordings of his lecture courses.
Hegel’s philosophy appeared as a complete and comprehensive system of absolute idealism. The desire to preserve the teacher’s legacy in its entirety and inviolability and to consolidate the positions that Hegel’s philosophy occupied during the life of its founder led Gabler, Heschel, Hinrichs, Daub, the so-called right Hegelians, to more conservative positions in the field of religion and politics than was originally characteristic of Hegel’s thought. This caused a response from the left Hegelians, or Young Hegelians, young German thinkers who, on the contrary, sought to give Hegel’s philosophy a critical and even revolutionary meaning (Strauss, Bauer, Stirner). From their point of view, Hegel’s philosophy allowed a critically thinking individual to defend personal freedom in the struggle against religion and the state that oppressed man. L. Feuerbach occupied positions close to the Young Hegelians (see the chapter Feuerbach). The activities of the Young Hegelians caused a split among Hegel’s supporters and created the image of the Hegelian system as an internally contradictory teaching. The most significant critical blow to the Hegelian system was dealt by the teachings of Marx (see the chapter Marxism), who turned the dialectical method against Hegel himself, for which he is sometimes deservedly called “the best Hegelian”. This leads to the fact that by the middle of the 19th century, Hegelian philosophy gradually loses its positions, giving way to Schellingism and Kantianism. Nevertheless, we continue to find followers of Hegelian thought in virtually all the leading “philosophical” countries of Europe. Along with Kant, Hegel becomes one of the most influential German philosophers, and his teachings become classics of philosophical thought, inspiring many philosophers to create their own original concepts. The most outstanding supporter of absolute idealism in Great Britain can be considered Francis Bradley, in the USA the greatest absolute idealist was Josiah Royce, in France one of the most original and influential interpreters of Hegel is considered Alexandre Kojève. We will consider the teachings of these thinkers in this chapter.
Francis Herbert Bradley was born in 1846 in a London suburb to an evangelical minister. After graduating from Oxford University in 1870, Bradley became a fellow at Merton College, Oxford. He became famous for his first major work on ethical issues, Ethical Investigations (1876), where he set out his views on morality in polemics with other ethical positions. The influence of Hegelian thought is clearly visible in this work. The philosopher defends an approach to morality from the position of the social whole in contrast to utilitarianism, individualism and Kantian formalism. Bradley’s main work is a voluminous essay entitled Appearance and Reality (1893), where he presented the position of absolute idealism in an expanded form. Bradley died in 1924.
Metaphysics, according to Bradley, is “an attempt to understand reality as distinct from appearance,” it is “an investigation of first principles or absolute truths,” and also “an attempt to understand the universe as a whole, and not in a fragmentary and limited way” (7: 1).
The limitations of our knowledge cannot be considered an absolute obstacle, but only a relative one, since our knowledge includes knowledge of this limitation. Bradley initially rejects the positions of agnosticism and skepticism in philosophy; his conviction in the absolute nature of human knowledge immediately orients him in the direction of classical philosophical idealism. However, unlike Hegel, Bradley’s main means of comprehending the Absolute is not logic, but metaphysics based on experience. Logic is only one of the methods on which our knowledge is built, but logic cannot claim to be the final and only criterion of absolute truths. According to Bradley, in full accordance with the British empirical tradition, experience is more suitable for this role. However, this experience must correspond to the nature of absolute reality and be a complete, all-encompassing, holistic experience, combining ordinary knowledge with metaphysical knowledge in its fundamentality.
Experience is the foundation of knowledge. It is based on immediate feeling, present even before the division into subject and object, into things and qualities. Only such experience, uniting knowledge as a whole, can raise knowledge to that absolute reality, which sets for Bradley the goal and unity of all our knowledge. Thus, the foundations of his metaphysics are: on the one hand, the idea of reality in itself, which is absolute in nature, and on the other hand, the primacy in the knowledge of the same absolute experience. Faced with the traditional dilemma of idealism and realism, Bradley makes an unambiguous choice in favor of idealism. Reality is something akin to ideas, consciousness, spirit, the identity of true knowledge and reality is definitely asserted. Idealism must be not only absolute, but also critical. Bradley bases this critical character of his own metaphysics on the fundamental, from his point of view, division between phenomenon and reality.
According to Bradley, the criteria that correspond to absolute reality are immediacy, comprehensiveness, integrity, and non-contradiction. “Absolute reality is such that it does not contradict itself” (7: 120). This whole does not presuppose internal contradictions and external relations. For the Absolute, all relations are internal and inessential, and all contradictions are removed in advance. He undertakes a critique of the basic philosophical categories of the previous metaphysics: substance, quality, relation, thing, space and time, movement and change, activity and causality, subjectivity and objectivity – all of them reveal their internal contradictions and all must be attributed to the level of cognition of the phenomenon, but not absolute reality. The concept of personality must also be attributed to the level of the phenomenon. However, Bradley nevertheless asserts that “each soul exists on some level where there is no division into subjective and objective, into I and object in any sense” (7: 89). Bradley’s final conclusion is: “Personality is undoubtedly the highest form of experience we have, but even so it is not the true form. It does not give us the facts as they really are, and the way it gives us the facts is merely an appearance and a mistake” (7:119).
Despite the fluidity of the boundary between the subjective and the objective, the external and the internal, we always have some remainder, as Bradley puts it. “The main thing is our ability to feel the difference between our sensed self and the object” (7: 93). This creates in us “the idea of an irremovable remainder”, which cannot be reduced to either the subject or the object (7: 93). Thus, the concept of personality brings Bradley to the very boundary that separates reality and phenomenon in his own concept. Personality as something that really exists, as, we emphasize, the totality of phenomena as a whole, in one way or another “belongs to reality” (7: 104). Bradley’s position is that reality contains both itself and phenomenon. “Phenomena exist. Even if we declare a certain fact to be a phenomenon, it has no other possibility of existing except in reality. And reality, taken only from one side or in isolation from the phenomenon, would turn into nothing” (7: 132).
The second fundamental component of Bradley’s concept is experience. The rejection of purely rationalistic reasoning and the preference for empirical knowledge reveals in Bradley a representative of the British philosophical tradition. Bradley understands experience primarily through its relationship with the Absolute. Experience is what unites knowledge and reality and forms the space where the contradictions of finite existence and knowledge of phenomena are resolved. “Being and reality are inseparably united with sensitivity” (7; 146). “The Absolute itself is a single system and … its content is nothing other than sensory experience. This is a single and all-encompassing experience that contains all isolated parts in harmony” (7: 146 – 7). With this interpretation of experience, Bradley is forced to characterize it as primarily “intuitive experience” (7: 278), where ideas and facts merge. Bradley insists that “experience is in advance in both worlds and in unity with reality” (7: 525), but this does not allow him to overcome his own fundamental division between the Absolute and the phenomenon and forces him, turning away from the Absolute, to turn in more detail to the contradictions of the process of cognition in order to bring the process of cognition closer to absolute reality.
Using the classical formula of empiricism, Bradley emphasizes that “there is nothing in thought, either matter or relations, except those which follow from perception” (7: 380). The idea of existence without thought is as one-sided as thinking divorced from reality. However, any facts concerning the physical and mental worlds appear to us exclusively “in the form of thoughts” (7: 383). “There is no natural world, nor any other world at all, outside our finite experience” (7: 379). Therefore, as a criterion of truth, Bradley chooses not correspondence to reality outside of cognition, but the reality of cognition itself, which he defines as “validity”. “Any truth that cannot demonstrate how it works is mostly untrue” (7: 400).
At the same time, Bradley the metaphysician emphasizes that this criterion of suitability is not limited to a simple presentation of knowledge as a set of “working means of cognition” regardless of their connection with reality in itself. Each step of our cognition contains something of the “character of absolute reality” (7: 362). Thought must not only rely on the empirical material of reality, but also overcome it, thereby overcoming both itself and its own limitations. Thus, the positive criterion of science (suitability) is supplemented by Bradley with a metaphysical criterion that orients cognition toward penetrating deep into reality. Thus, the process of cognition is presented by Bradley as a compromise between empirical, concrete scientific cognition and metaphysical cognition. The metaphysics of the Absolute is called upon to unite the process of cognition into a single whole and orient it toward ever deeper penetration into absolute reality.
Josiah Royce was born in 1855 in Grass Valley, California. From 1871 to 1875 he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, then spent a year studying in Germany, attending lectures by Windelband and Lotze. Upon returning to America, Royce received his Ph.D. in 1878. From 1882 until his death in 1914, Royce worked in the philosophy department of Harvard University.
Royce was a strong supporter of idealism throughout his life, and he recognized Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel as the main reference points for philosophy. At the same time, he acutely felt the need to modernize philosophical idealism, taking into account the latest changes in the worldview and science of Western civilization, changes in the area of moral and religious consciousness, and the way of life of his contemporaries.
Royce believes that in modern conditions idealism needs to be given a new form. Hegelian logic seems to him to be too formal and technical a discipline, incapable of returning philosophy to a leading position in culture as a whole. Royce is more committed to the general spirit of idealism than to the very “letter” of Hegelian philosophy. “The only demonstrative truth of philosophy in the proper sense lies in the area of the construction of experience as a whole, insofar as this construction of experience cannot be denied without contradiction. We philosophize when we try to find out what experience as a whole is and what its significance is” (8: 1, XVIII). Apparently, Royce strives to combine scientific empirical knowledge with philosophical methodology.
The philosopher strives to connect the intellectual activity of man and objective reality, introducing practical, volitional moments into cognition. The object of the idea is a certain reality, the connection with which is determined by the practical orientation of the idea. The idea acquires its object only through practical implementation, the realization of the intention that was embedded in the idea. Moreover, this intention or goal of the idea is determined by the idea itself. “An idea is true if it has such a correspondence to the object that the idea itself wants to have” (8: 1, 306). Royce speaks even more categorically about the self-determination of the idea: “The idea itself decides its own meaning for itself” (8: 1, 310). The idea is the development and implementation of its own internal meaning or definition, and it contains the only “other” of the idea that it needs. In search of a place for this other, Royce is again forced to return to the realm of experience. And here the concept of life is actively used, the fullness of experience in the activity of the individual, which are called upon to finally connect the theoretical and practical aspects of human activity.
The reality of “constructive idealism” is characterized by Royce as “the final and complete embodiment in individual form and final realization of the inner meaning of our finite ideas” (8: 1, 339). In other words, reality is “an idea concretely embodied in life” (8: 1, 359). The world as a whole is not an absolute idea, but an individual fact and at the same time represents an individual Absolute. The Absolute itself necessarily has the form of a personality, since in this way the determining factor in the relationship between man and the Absolute is the concrete experience of knowledge. In this absolute experience, everything is experienced in a double way: as the experience of the personality and as the experience of the Absolute itself. “The absolute self (I), in order to be a Self, must first of all express itself in an infinite series of individual acts, so that it expresses itself as an Individual and includes individual elements” (8: 1, 588). These conclusions make Royce’s concept waver on the verge of absolute idealism and personalism.
Alexander Kojève (Kozhevnikov) was born in Moscow in 1902. At the age of 18, he left Soviet Russia to study in Germany (Heidelberg and Berlin). He received his doctorate in 1926, and in 1930 he began teaching at the Higher Practical School in Paris. His lectures on Hegel’s philosophy, which he gave from 1933 to 1939, were a great success and were attended by such subsequently famous thinkers as J.-P. Sartre, R. Aron, J. Lacan, M. Merleau-Ponty, and A. Koyre. Kojève died in 1968 in Brussels, having gone down in the history of philosophy as one of the most original, albeit in many ways controversial, interpreters of Hegelian thought, who attempted to make Hegelian thought consonant with the 20th century.
In his interpretation of Hegel, Kojève drew on the most popular concepts of that time: Heidegger, Husserl, and Marxism. In turn, Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel had a significant influence on subsequent French philosophy: Sartre’s existentialism, Lacan’s psychoanalysis, and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology.
It should be emphasized that Kojève has a selective attitude towards Hegel’s position on many issues, which often leads to a coarsening of Hegel’s views. Kojève also resolves the very complex question of Hegel’s method of philosophy one-sidedly, rejecting dialectics as a method, he asserts that the position of the philosopher, which, according to Hegel, allows the subject to unfold its own truth, means the identity of Hegel’s methods and Husserl’s phenomenology, which presupposes contemplation and simple description on the part of the philosopher.
The most serious distortion he introduces into Hegelian philosophy is the assertion that the main subject of Hegelian philosophical constructions is man and that, consequently, his philosophy as a whole should be considered as anthropology. At the same time, this anthropological approach in Kojève coincides with the existential one: he prefers “reading Hegel in an anthropological or existential key” (3: 382). The existentiality of Hegelian phenomenology, according to Kojève, consists primarily in the emphasis on the finitude and mortality of man, which stem from the natural limitations of human existence, and in this sense, nature in general represents a limitation for human life, for human aspiration and desire. This negative attitude towards nature is expressed in the fundamental property of consciousness, which presupposes an endless desire to overcome contradiction and realize one’s desires both in action and in thinking. In essence, man himself is this absolute Hegelian negativity. “For Hegel there is no ‘human nature’: man is what he does; he creates himself through action” (3: 108). “Man, the actual presence of nothing in being (time), is action, that is, struggle and labor, and nothing else. His immediate original essence, which is also his goal, is desire, which gives rise to action, and therefore destruction, the negation of existence” (3: PO). Action and thought go hand in hand in human destiny and constitute the material of human history.
The second component of Kozhev’s approach is historical: he expresses the conviction that phenomenology must be understood in connection with historical events contemporary to Hegel, and in general with the historical dimension of man. In history, man no longer confronts nature, but another man, and first of all, self-consciousness seeks recognition from another, as is said in Hegel’s fragment from the Phenomenology about the dialectic of slave and master.
The historical movement of humanity is accompanied by the development of various spiritual positions on the part of the individual and the creation of various kinds of social associations in which man realizes himself. However, all of them, as Hegel demonstrates to us with his phenomenology, are nothing more than ideologies, that is, limited and transient forms of expression of human activity. For man himself, ideology is revealed in his history when man becomes convinced that everything around him is his own creation. This discovery entails, first of all, the inevitable historical crisis of religious ideas. The Christian religion as a creation of man must sooner or later expose itself and turn into its opposite – atheism. Here we encounter a significant simplification of Hegel’s position on religion. Kojève is sure that Hegel himself rejects the idea of an otherworldly God. And for him this means that Hegel’s philosophy stands on the positions of atheism or, with reservations, on the position of “anthropotheism”. “Hegel’s anthropotheism grows out of the Christian death of God” (3: 375-6). Christianity had already brought the concept of God closer to man, but did not go further than affirming the death of God in Jesus Christ. The Christian concept of universal love is, according to Kojève, the ideal of mutual recognition of people by each other, transferred by religion to the other world, just as the ideal community received its imperfect embodiment in the church organization. Man’s further struggle for recognition and full realization of human self-consciousness presupposed an inevitable struggle on the scale of the entire society, which was expressed in the events of the French Revolution and in its completion in the Napoleonic Empire. Napoleon’s Empire established man as a citizen of, as Kojève puts it, a “perfect and homogeneous” state, where all differences disappeared and everyone received the opportunity to achieve satisfaction in their activities, since they now initially combined Struggle and Labor, master and slave. Thus, man’s self-consciousness could be considered completely satisfied.
Kojève gave Hegel’s concept of the “end of history” a concrete historical form, since, in his opinion, Hegel himself could observe the “end of history” as a contemporary of the Napoleonic state. In it, the final goal of man’s historical struggle for recognition was achieved, and in the citizen of the Napoleonic state
states, two sides of human existence were united in their fullness: thinking and action. The activist Napoleon and the thinker Hegel complete the historical development of humanity. The end of history and the end of philosophy coincide, now giving everyone the opportunity to achieve a complete understanding of reality and full recognition from others. Therefore, in a universal and homogeneous state there are no conflicts between people, but at the same time “everyone is a snob.”
Literature
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