On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law by Hegel 1803
With regard to that way of treating natural law which we have called empirical, it must first be said that we cannot materially concern ourselves with those determinacies and concepts of relation which it fastens upon and affirms under the name of principles; on the contrary, it is precisely this separating out and fixing of determinacies which must be negated.[2] The nature of this separation presupposes that the scientific aspect consists solely in the form of unity; and if, in an organic relationship between the manifold qualities into which such a relationship can be divided, a unity is to be found within thus multiplicity (and the qualities are not just to be enumerated), some determinacy must be singled out and regarded as [constituting] the essence of the relation. But the totality of the organic is precisely what this procedure fails to grasp, and its remaining aspects, which were excluded from the determinacy already selected, are subordinated to the latter, which is elevated to the essence and end [Zweck] of the relation. Thus, in order to define [erkennen] the relation of marriage, for example, reproduction, the sharing of goods in common, etc. are adduced, and the whole organic relation is defined and contaminated by [exclusive insistence on] this determinacy, which is elevated into a law as the [supposed] essence [of the relation]. Or in the case of punishment, one determinacy is seized upon – be it the moral improvement of the criminal, the damage caused, the awareness of the punishment among others, the criminal’s own awareness of the punishment before the crime was committed, or the need to give this awareness reality by carrying out the threat, etc. – and the detail in question is made the end and essence of the whole. It naturally follows that, since this determinacy has no necessary connection with the other determinacies which can also be brought to light and distinguished, endless agonizing takes place to discover their necessary relationship or the dominance of one over the others; and since inner necessity, which is not present in individual detail [in der Einzelheit], is lacking, each [determinacy] can very well justify its independence of the others. – Such qualities, picked out form the multiplicity of relations into which the organic is broken up by empirical or imperfectly reflected intuition and then given the form of conceptual unity, are what knowledge of the kind described calls the essence and ends [of the organic whole in question]. And since their conceptual form is expressed as the absolute being of the determinacy which constitutes the content of the concept, they are set up as principles, laws, duties, etc. Of this transformation of the absoluteness of pure form – which, however, is negative absoluteness or pure identity, the pure concept, or infinity – into an absoluteness of the content and of the determinacy which is elevated to [aufgenommen in] the form, more will be said in connection with the principle of the critical philosophy; for that transformation which takes place unconsciously in the empirical knowledge presently under discussion is accomplished by the critical philosophy with reflection and as absolute reason and duty[3]
This formal unity into which thoughts converts determinacy is also what provides the semblance of that necessity which science seeks; for the unity of opposites, regarded as a real unity in the context of science, is a necessity for the latter. But since the material of the formal unity in question is not the [two] opposites as a whole but only one of them (i.e. one determinacy), the necessity is likewise merely a formal, analytic necessity which pertains only to the form of an identical or analytical proposition in which the determinacy may be presented. On the strength of the absoluteness of this proposition, however, an absoluteness of content is likewise falsely claimed, so that laws and principles are [thereby] constituted.
But since this empirical science finds itself [immersed] in a multiplicity of such principles, laws, ends, duties, and rights, none of which is absolute, it must also have before it the image of, and need for, [both] the absolute unity of all these unconnected determinacies and an original simple necessity; and we shall consider how it will satisfy this demand, which is derived from reason, or how the absolute Idea of reason will be presented in its [different] moments [while] under the domination of the one and the many which this empirical knowledge cannot overcome.[4] On the one hand, it is inherently interesting to perceive how, even in this scientific endeavor and its turbid medium, the reflection and domination of the absolute are still present (though at the same time distorted). And on the other, the forms which the moments of the absolute have here assumed have turned into a kind of prejudice and of unquestioning, universally valid thoughts whose nullity criticism must point out in order to justify science in ignoring them. This proof of their nullity is accomplished most effectively by showing the unreality of the whole ground from which they have sprung, and whose flavor and nature are implemented in them.
In the first place, empirical science conceives of scientific totality as a totality of the manifold or as completeness, whereas true formalism conceives of it as consistency. The former can raise its experiences to universality as it pleases, and pursue consistency in its thought determinacies [gedachten Bestimmungen] until it reaches the point where further empirical material which contradicts the previous material, but has an equal right to be thought and expressed as a principle, no longer sustains the consistency of the previous determinacy but forces it to be abandoned. Formalism can extend its consistency as far as the vacuity of its principle – or a content to which it has falsely laid claim – will at all permit; but it is at the same time justified in proudly excluding whatever lacks completeness from its apriorism and its science and in denigrating it as ‘the empirical’.[5] For it asserts its formal principles as the a priori and the absolute, thereby implying that whatever it cannot master by means of these principles is non-absolute and contingent – unless it can get out of the difficulty by finding, in the empirical realm at large and between one determinacy and the next, the formal transition of a progression from the conditioned to the condition [itself] and, since the latter is in turn conditioned, so on in an infinite sequence. But in so doing, formalism not only renounces all the advantages it has over what it calls empiricism; in addition, since the conditioned and the condition, as interconnected opposites, are posited as subsisting absolutely, formalism itself sinks totally into empirical necessity and lends the latter a semblance of genuine absoluteness by means of the formal identity, or negative absolute, with which it holds the opposites together.
But this combination of consistency with completeness of picture – whether the consistency in question is the latter (more complete) formal and empty consistency or the former consistency which, with determinate concepts as principles, passes from one of these to the others and is consistent only in its inconsistency – immediately alters the position of multiplicity in relation to pure empiricism. For pure empiricism, everything has equal rights with everything else, and it gives no precedence to any [one] determinacy, since each is a real as the other. We shall return to this topic later in comparing pure empiricism with the scientific empiricism with which we are at present concerned.
After this formal totality, we must consider how absolute unity makes its appearance both as simple unity – which we may call the original unity – and as totality reflected in empirical knowledge [Wissen]. Both unities, which are one [and the same] in the absolute and whose identity is the absolute, must appear separate and distinct within this knowledge.
As for the former [absolute] unity, it must first be said that empiricism can have nothing to do with it as that essence of necessity which, for appearance, is an external bond of this unity. For in the essential [kind of] unity, the manifold is immediately annihilated and nullified; and because manifold being is the principle of empiricism, the latter is denied [the possibility of] pressing on to the absolute nullity of its qualities, which for it are absolute and (by virtue of the concept according to which they are purely and simply many) infinitely many. Consequently, this original unity can only signify – as far as is possible – a simple and small number of qualities, which it believes are sufficient for it to attain knowledge [Erkenntnis] of the rest. For empiricism, this ideal, in which what counts roughly speaking as arbitrary and contingent is effaced and the smallest necessary quantity of the manifold is posited, is chaos, both in the physical and in the ethical realm.[6] In the latter, chaos is sometimes represented by the imagination rather in the image of being – as the state of nature; and at other times, it is represented by empirical psychology rather in the form of possibility and abstraction, as an enumeration of the capacities encountered in man – i.e. as the nature and destiny of man. In this way, what is declared on the one hand to be utterly necessary, in itself, and absolute, is simultaneously acknowledged on the other to be something unreal, purely imaginary, and a product of thought; in the first case, it is treated as a fiction, in the second, as a mere possibility – which is a blatant contradiction.
For the common understanding, which sticks to the obscure mixture of what is in itself [was an sich ist] and what is transient, nothing is more plausible than that it should be able to discover the former by removing all arbitrary and contingent elements from the composite image of the state of law [des Rehctszustandes], and that by means of this abstraction, it should at once be left with the absolutely necessary. If [, it imagines,] one mentally subtracts everything that it dimly suspects may belong to the particular and transient, as pertaining to particular customs, to history, culture [Bildung], or even the state, we are left with the human being in the image of the bare state of nature, or the abstraction of the human being with his essential capacities, and we have only to glance at it to discover what is necessary. What is recognized as having a connection with the state must therefore also be separated out, because the chaotic image of the necessary cannot contain absolute unity, but only simple multiplicity [Mannigfaltigkeit], or atoms with the fewest possible properties.[7] Thus, whatever may come under the concept of a linking and ordering of these [atoms] as the weakest unity of which the principles of multiplicity [Vielheit] is capable, is excluded from this multiplicity as an adventitious and later accretion.[8] Now in making this distinction [between unity and multiplicity], empiricism in the first places lacks any criterion whatsoever for drawing the boundary between the contingent and the necessary, between what must be retained and what must be left out in the chaos of the state of nature or the abstraction of the human being. The determining factors here can only be that it [i.e. the required definition] must contain as much as is needed to represent what is encountered in actuality; the guiding principle for this a priori is the a posteriori. If a point is to be made regarding the representation [Vorstellung] of the state of law [des Rechtszustandes], all that is required in order to demonstrate its connection with the original and necessary – and hence also its own necessity – is to project a distinct [eigene] quality or capacity into the chaos, and, in the manner of the empirically based sciences in general, to construct hypotheses for the so-called explanation of actuality, hypotheses in which this actuality is posited in the same determinate character [Bestimmlheit], but in a purely formal and ideal shape – as force, matter, or capacity – so that one thing can very readily be grasped and explained in terms of the other.[9]
On the one hand, this dim inkling of an original and absolute unity, a unity which is expressed in the chaos of the state of nature and in the abstraction of capacities and inclinations, does not get as far as absolute negative unity, but seeks only to eliminate a large mass of particularities and oppositions. But there still remains an indefinable mass of qualitative determinacies which likewise have only an empirical necessity for themselves and have no inner necessity for one another.[10] Their only relationship consists in being many, and since this many is for one another and yet is devoid of unity, they are destined to be mutually opposed and in absolute conflict with one another. In the state of nature or the abstraction of man, the isolated energies of the ethical realm must be thought of as embroiled in a war of mutual annihilation.[11] For precisely this reason, however, it is easy to show that, since these qualities are purely and simply opposed to each other and consequently purely ideal, they cannot survive in this ideality and separation as they are supposed to do, but cancel each other out [sich aufheben] and reduce each other to nothing. But empiricism cannot attain to this absolute reflection, or to an insight into the nullity of [all] determinacies in the absolutely simple; instead, the many nullities remain for it a mass of realities. But the positive unity, expressing itself as absolute totality, must, for empiricism, be added on to this multiplicity as a further and alien factor; and it is inherent even in this form of linkage between the two aspects of absolute identity that their totality will present itself just as dimly and impurely as that of the original unity. It is easy for empiricism to supply a reason why one of these separated unities exists for the other, or a reason for the transition from the first to the second, for [the activity of] giving reasons in general comes easily to it, According to the fiction of the state of nature, this state is abandoned because of the evils it entails – which simply means that the desired end is assumed in advance, namely that a reconciliation of the elements which, as chaos, are in mutual conflict is the good or the end which must be reached; or a similar reason for change, such as the social instinct, is introduced directly into the notion [Vorstellung] of original qualities as potentialities; or the conceptual form of the [human] capacity is dispensed with altogether, so that one can proceed at once to the purely particular qualities of the second unity’s appearance, i.e. to the historical as the subjugation of the weak by the strong, etc. The unity itself, however, can only follow the principle of absolute qualitative multiplicity, as in empirical physics, representing a multiplicity of divisions or relations; that is, it merely replaces the many atomic qualities with further manifold complications of the simple isolated [elements of a] multiplicity which was assumed to be original, i.e. with superficial contacts between these qualities which, for themselves, are indestructible in their particularity and capable of entering into only simple [leichte] and partial combinations and mixtures. And in so far as the unity if posited as a whole, it is given the empty name of a formless external harmony called ‘society’ and ‘the state.’ Even if this unity – whether it is considered in itself [für sich] or, in a more empirical sense, in relation to its emergence – is represented as absolute, i.e. as originating directly from God, and even if the center and inner essence of its subsistence are represented as divine, this representation [Vorstellung] nevertheless again remains something formal, which merely hovers above the multiplicity without penetrating it. God may certainly be recognized not only as the founder of the association, but also as its preserver, and in the latter connection, the majesty of the supreme authority may well be recognized as his reflection and as in itself divine; nevertheless, the divine aspect of the association is an external quality for the associated many, whose relationship with it can only be that between ruler and ruled, because the principle of this empiricism excludes the absolute unity of the one and the many. At this point of the relation, empiricism coincides directly with its opposite principle, for which abstract unity is primary, except that empiricism is not embarrassed by its inconsistencies, which arise out of mixing together things posited as so specifically different as abstract unity and absolute multiplicity; and for precisely this reason, it also has the advantage of not closing the door on views which, apart from their purely material aspect, are manifestations [Erscheinungen] of a purer and more divine inwardness [Innern] that can arise under the principle of opposition, within which only domination and obedience are possible.
The state of nature, and that majesty and divinity of the whole state of law [Rechtszustand] which is alien to individuals and is consequently itself individual and particular, as well as the relation whereby the subjects [Subjekte] are absolutely subordinated to this supreme authority,[12 ]are the forms in which the fragmented moments of organic ethical life are fixed as particular essences and, like the Idea, thereby distorted [verkehrt];[13] these moments are that of absolute unity (and of unity in so far as it encompasses the opposition of unity and multiplicity and is absolute totality), and the moment of infinity (or of the nullity of the realities of the opposition in question). The absolute Idea of ethical life, on the other hand, contains both majesty and the state of nature as altogether identical, for majesty itself is nothing other than absolute ethical nature;[14] and there can be no thought, in the real existence [Reellsein] of majesty, of any loss of absolute freedom (which is what we should understand by ‘natural freedom’) or of any abandonment of ethical nature. But the natural, which in an ethical context must be thought of as something to be abandoned, would not itself be ethical and therefore could not remotely represent the latter in its original form. Nor is infinity, or the nullity of the individuals and subjects, in any way fixed in the absolute Idea, or relatively identical with majesty as a relation of subjugation in which individuality [Einzelheit] would also be something purely and simply posited. On the contrary, infinity in the Idea is genuine, and individuality as such is nothing and completely at one with absolute ethical majesty; and this genuine, living, non-subjugated oneness is the only genuine ethical life of the individual.[14]
We have accused scientific empiricism – in so far as it is scientific – of positive nullity and untruth in respect of its principles, laws, etc., because it endows determinacies with the negative absoluteness of the concept by means of the formal unity in which it places them, and expresses them as positively absolute, having being in themselves [an sich seiend], as end and destiny, principle, law, duty, and right – [all of] which forms signify something absolute. But in order to preserve the unity of an organic relationship which presents this qualitative determination with a mass of such concepts, one of the determinacies – expresses as end, destiny, or law – must be given supremacy over the other determinacies within the manifold, and these others must be posited as unreal and as nothing in comparison with it. It is by this application [of reasoning] and its consistency that intuition is nullified as an inner totality; it is therefore by inconsistency that this incorporation [Aufnahme] of determinacies into the concept can be corrected and the violence done to intuition overcome, for inconsistency immediately nullifies the absoluteness previously attributed to a single determinacy.[15] From this point of view, the old and utterly inconsistent [kind of[ empiricism must be vindicated, not in relation to absolute science as such, but in relation to the consistency of that empirical scientific procedure which we have hitherto been discussing. A great and pure intuition can in this way express the genuinely ethical in the purely architectonic qualities of its exposition, in which the context of necessity and the dominance of form do not become visible – just as in a building which mutely reveals the spirit of its originator throughout its diversified mass, without setting up his actual image concentrated into a single shape within it. In an exposition of this kind, presented with the help of concepts, it is only through ineptitude that reason fails to elevate what it encompasses and penetrates to the ideal form, and so to become conscious of it as Idea. If only intuition remains true to itself and does not allow the understanding to confuse it,[17] it will [admittedly] be inept in its use of concepts (inasmuch as it cannot dispense with these in order to express itself); it will assume distorted shapes in its passage through the consciousness; and it will be both incoherent and contradictory with regard to the concept; but the disposition of the parts and of the determinacies in their modifications does give an indication of the invisible but rational spirit within,[18] and in so far as this manifestation [Erscheinung] of the spirit is regarded as a product and result, it will, as a product, correspond perfectly with the Idea.
In these circumstances, nothing is easier for the understanding than to mount an attack on this empiricism, to oppose its inept reasons with alternative ones, to expose the confusion and contradiction of its concepts, to draw consequences of the most extreme and irrational kind from its individual propositions, and in numerous ways to demonstrate its unscientific character.[19] Empiricism justly deserves this treatment, especially if it has scientific pretensions or adopts a polemical stance in relation to science as such. Conversely, if determinacies are fixed and their law is consistently applied to all the aspects which empiricism has brought to light, if intuition is subordinated to them, and if in general what is commonly called a theory is constructed, empiricism can rightly accuse this of one-sidedness; and by virtue of the complete range of determinacies which it brings into play, it is within its power, by [citing individual] instances, to force this theory to adopt a [level of] generality which becomes totally empty. This conceptual limitation, the fixing of determinacies and the elevation of one selected aspect of appearance to universality so as to give it precedence over others, is what in recent times has described itself not just as theory, but as philosophy and – since it has ascended to more vacuous abstractions and got hold of purer negations such as freedom, pure will, humanity, etc. – as metaphysics. It believed it had accomplished philosophical revolutions in natural law, and especially in constitutional and criminal law, when it dragged these sciences in one direction or another with such insubstantial abstractions and positively expressed negations as freedom, equality, the pure state, etc., or with equally insubstantial determinacies picked up from ordinary empiricism such as coercion (especially psychological coercion, with its whole paraphernalia of opposition between practical reason and sensuous motives, and whatever else is at home in this psychology); and with greater or lesser consistency, it likewise compelled the science in question to incorporate insignificant [nichtige] concepts of this kind as absolute ends of reason, rational principles, or laws. Empiricism rightly demands that such philosophizing should take its directions from experience. It rightly insists on stubbornly opposed such a contrived framework of principles. It rightly prefers its own empirical inconsistency – based as it is on an (albeit dim) intuition of the whole – to the consistency of such philosophizing; and it prefers its own confusion – for example, of ethical life, morality, and legality, or, in the more specific case of punishment, its confusion of revenge, national security, reform [of the criminal], the carrying out of a threat, deterrence, prevention, etc. (whether in a scientific context or in practical life) – to the absolute separation of these various aspects of one and the same intuition, and to the definition of the latter as a whole in terms of a single one of these qualities. It rightly maintains that the theory, and what calls itself philosophy and metaphysics, has no application and contradicts practical necessity (although this non-applicability would be better expressed if one were to say that there is nothing absolute, no reality, and no truth in the theory and philosophy in question). Finally, empiricism rightly reproaches such philosophizing with ingratitude, because it is empiricism which furnishes it with the content of its concepts and must then see this content corrupted and distorted by this philosophizing; for the determinacy of the content, as supplied by empiricism, forms, with other determinacies, a complex combination which is essentially an organic and living whole, and this is killed by such fragmentation and such elevation of insubstantial abstractions and details to absolute status.[20]
If empiricism were itself pure and remained so, it would be fully justified in asserting itself against such theory and philosophy, and in regarding the mass of principles, ends, laws, duties, and rights not as something absolute, but as distinctions of importance for that [process of] education [Bildung] through which its own intuition becomes clearer to it. But when empiricism appears to seek a conflict with theory, it usually emerges that both of them embody an intuition which is already contaminated and superseded by reflection and a distorted reason; and what professes to be empiricism is merely weaker in abstraction and shows less initiative, in that it has not itself selected, distinguished, and fixed its own limited concepts [Beschränktheiten], but is tied to concepts which have become firmly entrenched in general culture [Bildung] as ‘sound common sense’ and hence appear to have been derived directly from experience. The conflict between such entrenched distortions of intuition and the newly fixed abstractions offers a spectacle which is necessarily as motley as the combatants themselves. Each side deploys against the other at one moment an abstraction, at another some so-called experience; and on both sides, empiricism is destroyed by empiricism, and [conceptual] limitation by [conceptual] limitation. At one moment principles and laws are vaunted against philosophy, which is ruled out as an incompetent judge of those [supposedly] absolute truths with which the understanding has become obsessed, at another philosophy is misused for ratiocination in the name of philosophy.
This relative right which was conceded to empiricism – [at least] when intuition is the dominant factor within it – against the combining of empirical and reflective elements, refers, it will be recalled, to its unconscious inner nature. But the intermediate term between this inner nature and its external expression – i.e. consciousness – is the area where its deficiency (and hence its one-sidedness) lies; and its tendency to go against the scientific, its incomplete link with the concept (with which it only just makes contact and is merely contaminated in the process), derives from the necessity that multiplicity and finitude should be absolutely submerged in infinity or universality.
1. The section numbers follow those in Werke. They are not in the original text.
2. Throughout this essay, Hegel associates the ‘fixing of determinacies’ with a science of society that organizes social wholes around aggregations of individual entities (e.g. atoms or individuals). Against those who claim that such aggregations constitute unity in multiplicity, Hegel contends that the unity achieved by aggregation is a fiction. Later in this paragraph, when he says ‘the organic is broken up by empirical or imperfectly reflected intuition’, he is reiterating a point he had made in Faith and Knowledge about how Lockaen empiricism and Kantian philosophy have contributed equally to the ascendancy of subjectivism in modern culture.
3. Here and later in the essay, Hegel implies that, despite its declared hostility to empiricism, critical philosophy develops a view of knowledge that in the final analysis is quite similar to what is condemns.
4. Empirical knowledge is inadequate here because it operates with a false concept of infinity. That is, it cannot united ‘unconnected determinacies’ because it privileges each determinacy itself rather than the ‘original unity’ to which each determinacy belonged before it was analytically separated from the whole. This give rise to what Hegel, perhaps following Schelling (1978: pp. 92-3), calls an ‘atomistic’ social system (Faith and Knowledge, p. 152). As early as 1801 (Gesammelte Werke, vol iv. p. 58), Hegel depicts Fichte as a philosopher of atomism.
5. Compare Hegel’s discussion here of formalism in philosophy with the way in which he discusses formalism in political thinking in Gesammelte Werke.
6. Just as atomism cannot explain the power of gravity in the physical world, so empiricism and critical philosophy cannot explain the need for community in the ethical world. If we substitute the word ‘anarchy’ for ‘chaos’ in this passage, it is easy to predict what social and political consequences will follow. Hegel defines these consequences in the next paragraph. In his Berlin period, atomism in fact becomes for him a defining feature of civil society.
7. The ‘chaotic image of the necessary,’ which can only ‘contain’ multiplicity but not transform it, becomes the organizational principle of civil society in Hegel’s later writings.
8. This marks the point at which Hegel makes metaphysics essential to his emerging conception of the state.
9.An example of what Hegel is referring to here would be the relation between private property on the one hand and the right to private property guaranteed by law on the other. Both recognize what is empirical, but each does so from its own separate sphere – respectively, from the political domain of the law and the economic domain of property. Later in the essay, Hegel will organize his discussion of the bourgeoisie as a social class around this intersection.
10. ‘Inner necessity for one another’ is what Hegel finds lacking in civil society as a form of human association. It yields only ‘negative unity.’ Sittlichkeit, by contrast, is a form of association that recognizes and subsequently grows out of that inner necessity. It is not just something that is ‘added on’ to multiplicity, as he points out later in the paragraph.
11. Hobbes is no doubt alluded to here.
12. Some scholars detect a reference to Napoleon here.
13. When ‘fixed as particular essences,’ the ‘fragmented moments of organic ethical life’ correspond to what Hegel will later define as the essence of civil society.
14. The relation Hegel sketches here between ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit) and ‘ethical nature’ (sittliche Natur) reveals how he grounded Sittlichkeit in the idea of a subject who has other-regarding as well as self-regarding dispositions. Similarly, in the next sentence, he separates ‘the natural’ from the ethical in order to avoid having to argue that human beings are ‘by nature’ what they ought to be. For elaboration of the latter point, see note 19 to Lectures on the Philosophy of History
15. The phrase ‘non-subjugated oneness’ clearly shows that Hegel is not an anti-individual collectivist.
16. What is ‘nullified’ (vernichtet) is not so much intuition per se as the intuition human beings have of their need to belong to a whole in order to be truly human. That becomes clear in the next few sentences, when Hegel derives the ethical architectonic from ‘intuition [which] remains true to itself.’
17. Understanding confuses intuition by orienting individuals to Moralität rather than Sittlichkeit.
18. Hegel seems to be equating intuition with ‘rational spirit’ here. The fact that he also says that this spirit is ‘invisible’ (i.e. latent) may related to what Schiller (1967: p. 15) says about ‘invisible Sittlichkeit.’ Later Hegel will identify intuition with ‘ethical reason’ (sittliche Vernunft) – which is why his concept of Sittlichkeit is sometimes referred to as ‘social Geist’.
19. In the remainder of this paragraph, Hegel not only develops the opposition in philosophy between empiricism and formalism but also relates the latter to political tendencies which grew out of the French Revolution.
20. In the last two sentences, Hegel’s criticism of metaphysical politics aims less at demystifying metaphysics than at ensuring that philosophy applies the right kind of metaphysics to politics.