The Concept and its Double: Power and Powerlessness in Hegels Subjective Logic

• Author: Iain Macdonald
• Position: Professor of Philosophy, Universite de Montreal
• Pages: 95-107

Page 95

Introduction

In a well-known passage from the end of the Science of Logic ("Logic"), Hegel writes that the dialectical method is to be recognized "as the absolutely infinite force [die schlechthin unendliche Kraft], to which no object, presenting itself as something external, remote from and independent of reason, could offer resistance or be of a particular nature in opposition to it, or could not be penetrated by it."¹ The power of reason is infinite and irresistible or, in a word, absolute- which means first and foremost that reason understood as the movement of the concept reveals the "soul and substance" of things in such a way that, in principle, they are in themselves completely given over to and unraveled by the Concept.² The method "is therefore not only the highest force, or rather the sole and absolute force of reason," says Hegel, "but also its supreme and sole urge to find and cognize itself by means of itself in everything"³ The dialectical method, understood as absolute power, entitles us to adopt an attitude of logical optimism in respect of anything that presents itself as resistant to reason.

What is sometimes overlooked, and which may seem strange at first blush, is that the many mentions of force and power (absolute power, absolute force, infinite power, the power of the negative, the power of the Concept, etc.) that are scattered throughout the works are doubled by other passages where Hegel speaks of various forms of impotence or powerlessness (Ohnmacht). What is powerlessness? In effect, for Hegel, powerlessness generally designates a defect or a deficiency, or a kind of laziness or contingent immaturity that prevents the Concept from fully realizing itself, even though its power is, on another level,Page 96 absolute. Powerlessness is a lack of power (Macht). But it remains to be determined exactly how something that is, on one level, absolute power, can on another level, be related to a relative lack of power. If power is absolute power, then why is it that a little power is not always enough? Or alternatively, why does powerlessness have a role to play at all in a system where the power of the Concept determines everything inexorably? How do these two terms relate to each other in Hegel's thought, especially in the context of the Subjective Logic?

At the outset, it is important to note that there are two main forms of powerlessness in Hegel's thought, both of which are mentioned in the Subjective Logic, in the section on "The Concept in General." Of the two, the so-called "powerlessness of nature" (die Ohnmacht der Natur) is the better known form, but Hegel also mentions a strange "subjective powerlessness of reason" (eine subjective Ohnmacht der Vernunft). This second form of powerlessness is quite enigmatic, especially given the strong claims made in relation to the "absolute power" of reason elsewhere in the Logic and in the works. My aim here is to explore this second form of powerlessness; but in order to do so, it will be necessary to lay out what Hegel means by the powerlessness of nature and, correspondingly, what he means by the absolute power of the concept.

I The Powerlessness of Nature

As regards the powerlessness of nature, Hegel first notes that "[t]he universal determines itself, and so is itself the particular,"⁴ by which he means that the universal contains difference within itself; the universal as Concept is a principle of negative unity (negative Einheit) or "the totality and principle of its diversity, which is determined wholly and solely by the universal itself."⁵ A simple illustration of this relation between universality and particularity, though too determinate and representational, could be given by the set of all prime numbers, whereby the concept "prime number" gives the principle of inclusion whereby a great diversity of particulars are assembled and unified. The ostensible differences between 2, 17, 31, and so on, are negated (or suspended) by the concept of "prime number," which sees in this diversity a unity that sublates difference in articulating a principle of totality.

The particular Concept in its pure form is then nothing but self-determined universality or, what amounts to the same thing, the princi-Page 97pie of sublated diversity. Consequently, Hegel will say that the universal contains both the universal itself (understood as a negative unity of determinate diversity), and the particular (understood as the negative unity of determinate diversity). Or as he puts it, the genus universal has only two species: the universal itself and the particular. It is at this point that he introduces the powerlessness of nature. He writes,

In nature, of course, there are to be found more than two species in a genus, just as between these many species there cannot exist [the relational difference between universal and particular]. This is the powerlessness of nature, that it cannot adhere to and exhibit the strictness of the Concept and runs wild in this blind irrational [begrifflos] multiplicity.⁶

Hegel clarifies this thought in the Encyclopedia, where he writes that the sheer diversity of species and of often bizarre, utterly contingent natural forms presents us, at best, with only abstract "traces of determination by the Concept" (Spuren der Begriffsbestimmung).⁷ Nature cannot itself provide us with the principle of its organization, the self-determining universal that allows us to understand how genus, species, and seeming exceptions relate to each other.⁸ Quite simply, nature fails "to remain true to the Concept and to adhere to thought-determinations in their purity."⁹ In other words, the reflective specification of its own conceptual determination is not something that nature itself does or can do. Hence, the goal of nature is "to consume itself like the phoenix," as Hegel puts it, "in order to come forth from this externality rejuvenated as spirit."¹⁰ The powerlessness of nature is therefore an objective inability to articulate the principle of its own articulation; nature is a mere blind, idealess multiplicity until thought surges up from within it to grasp what otherwise remains implicit. The concept that is only a trace or a potentiality (an sich) in nature becomes explicit in spirit.Page 98

II Absolute Power

In the Encyclopedia, the powerlessness of nature is remedied by what Hegel calls "the power of free spirit which sublates [nature's] negativity."¹¹ This marks the passage to the philosophy of spirit. In the Logic, however, this power of free spirit is treated in its pure logical form as the absolute foundation¹² (absolute Grundlage), which has to be distinguished from spirit as such in its various determinate shapes. And so Hegel remarks that "the logical form of the Concept is independent of its non-spiritual [i.e., natural], and also of its spiritual, shapes."¹³ The Concept's concrete forms (concreten Gestalten) are of no interest here, because "the Concept is to be regarded not as the act [Actus] of the self-conscious understanding, not as the subjective understanding, but as the Concept in its own absolute character which constitutes a stage of nature as well as of spirit."¹⁴ In the Logic, therefore, the discussion of power and powerlessness takes on a particular cast; it is aimed at making the Concept as Concept manifest in all its necessity, liberated from representational thinking and subjective determinations. But even here we find that the Concept can be conceived differently, according to the various moments of its presuppositionless development from the un-tenability of pure being through to the absolute Idea.

At the end of the Doctrine of Essence, Hegel already embarks on an exploration of the absolute character of the Concept as power. In that context, he says that the concept of substance, when looked at from the standpoint of the form-unity (Formeinheit) of accidentality, must be regarded as absolute power (absolute Macht)"¹⁵ More specifically, he says: "[w]hen substance, as self-identical being-in-and-for-self is distinguished from itself as a totality of accidents, that which mediates is substance as power. This is necessity, he adds, "the positive persistence of the accidents in their negativity and their mere positedness in their subsistence; this middle term is thus the unity of substantiality and accidentality themselves and its extremes have no subsistence of their own."¹⁶ In this passage, power is understood as that which binds a plurality of accidents together in the unity of substance; it is the mutual mediation ofPage 99 substantiality and accidentality in general. Substance is, for this reason, characterized as "purely self-related negativity."¹⁷ It gathers up a diversity of mutually indifferent differences, negates these differences as differences, and binds them together in a unity. The unity in question is not an aggregate unity, of course, because the relation of substance to accidents is not a relation of conjunction or collection, but rather the very principle of negation by which a unification of difference is possible. In other words, substantiality is a way of describing purely self-determining universality; it is at once absolute determinateness and simple identity.

But substantiality is only formally or implicitly related to the absolute and independent foundation of the Concept. Substantiality needs to undergo an unveiling (Enthullung), by which the Concept in its purity is made explicit.¹⁸ This is why...