Human action Hegel legacy

Human action: Hegel’s legacy I will begin by examining one fundamental issue that contemporary thought has left open with respect to “action”. This issue was not one that was addressed in the precise way we do today in the 17th or 18th centuries but it is central to our contemporary debate about the nature of action. In short, this issue can be addressed by the question “what is the nature of action?” Or, “what distinguishes action events from other non-action events?” Usually in Psychology we distinguish action by the kind of cause that brings it about. That is, actions are (physical) events that are caused by desires/beliefs whereas other events are not so caused. Of course, simply as events actions can be described as physical movements (behavior) although even here we need to be generous since presumably “standing still” is also an action. That is, action is brought about by a psychological cause (desire/belief) even as this cause can presumably be reduced, at some time in the future, to a neuropsychological explanation. [This has been in vogue in Psychology, namely that behavior is caused by events of a hypothetical physical nature usually in the genes, brain, or environment – obviously this requires that we understand these events from a third-person perspective – and so avoids explicit reference to mind although obviously such physical events as causes can be identified only with reference their meaning (mind) as a social practice. Thus, for example, Behavior = f(environment/situation + genetics/organism) or in by-passing the organism altogether Behavior = f(environment).] This conception as to the nature of action goes back to the 17th c. and was common among the dualist rationalist and empiricist philosophies alike. Qua bodily movement, actions were like other events and what distinguished them from other events is their mental background. Thus, there is a distinction between the inner mental cause and the outer physical event. There is also another view of action one that sees action as qualitatively different from not-action. That is, actions unlike other events are intrinsically directed, or are inhabited by purposes which direct action events so that action and purpose are ontologically inseparable. While this view is difficult to get just right, it clearly opposes the first view of action which is prevalent today. That is, this view rejects the idea that an action is an event like other events except that action as an event has a peculiar cause. Instead it argues that action is qualitatively different from all events that are non-actions. To the extend that action can be further explicated in terms of purpose this turns out to be not independent of action. That is, purpose is explicated with reference to action and action is explicated with reference to purpose. The qualitative view of action rejects the view that actions can be understood by first by identifying the undifferentiated event (because it is qualitatively different from non-action events) and then identifying its cause (because purpose is not identifiable independently of the action). This view reaches back to Aristotle’s inseparability of form and matter and we can plainly see that this is not a dualist position (the proponents of the first view are not necessarily dualist either, of course). One issue bound up with the question about the nature of action is dualism; another issue is the place of the “subject”/person. It is clear that a qualitative view of action is one that relies on a conception of agency. Indeed, one can argue that a qualitative view of action is one that necessarily appeals to our self-understanding as agents of action. That is, it is impossible to function as an agent unless one can distinguish between actions and other events. But now we understand why the first causal view of action is so popular because it attempts to move beyond agency (subjective understanding) in an effort to achievement objective understanding. An objective understanding is one that is not longer tied to a particular viewpoint. Since the qualitative view of action seems to impose a qualitative conception of action, then a causal analysis concerns the way thing really are objectively. The drive to objectivity (absolute descriptions, or certainty) was of course one of the motivating factors in both Descartes and the empiricists. Hegel was a proponent of the qualitative view of action. After Kant’s reformulation of rationalist and empiricist philosophy in a recovery of the subject (transcendental ego), Hegel, in some way harking back to Leibnitz, reacts against the dualism within the subject as well as against Kant’s dualism between the phenomenal and noumenal worlds. Let’s turn to an explication of the qualitative view of action. As we have seen it allows for what we may call the agent’s knowledge. We are capable of grasping our own action in a way that we cannot grasp other events. In other words, we a kind of knowledge about our actions we which solely in virtue of being the agents of action, and this is different from the kind of knowledge we may gain about non-action events. This qualitative distinction between kinds of knowledge is in turn grounded in a qualitative view of action. Action is distinctive in that it is directed to a certain end or purpose. This notion of directness is part of what I mean by agency. An agent is one who is responsible for directing his/her action. Now if we think of agency as identical with the subject of knowledge, then we can see that there may be different kinds of knowledge: (a) one kind is gained by making articulate what we are doing – the direction we are already imprinting (however dimply) on our actions. Articulation will then be a matter of giving shape to that which we already have an inarticulate sense of. (b) this contrasts with knowledge we have of the things/events we observe external to our action which we may act on but which stand over against action. Obviously the causal view of action cannot draw this distinction and it is not one it is concerned to make for it assumes the agent’s standpoint and the causal view of action wants an absolute standpoint. From a causal view perspective my action is an external event like any other (only in being distinct in having a certain kind of cause). Of course, the causal theory can claim privileged access to my desires and belief and here we come closest to an analogous distinction within the causal view between the agent’s and the observer’s knowledge. Thus, the causal view can claim and has (in both the empiricist and rationalist traditions) that I can be incorrigibly (immediately) aware of my beliefs/desires but I only mediately aware of (I observe) the meaning (nature) of my action. We see then that the causal view also recognizes two kinds of knowledge but it draws the boundaries quite differently, between inner and outer reality. But note that this difference in the location of the boundary goes along with quite a different view of what the knowledge consist in. The immediate incorrigible knowledge is of the inner mental domain (esse entails percipi) while the mediate corrigible knowledge is of the outer physical domain. But the way the qualitative view of action draws the boundary there is no question of incorrigible knowledge. We are never without some (inarticulate) sense of what we are doing, but coming to know precisely what we are doing requires that we articulate what we are doing and we may do so in a partial or distorted manner. Nor is this knowledge ever immediate, on the contrary it is always mediated by our efforts at articulation. We have then on the qualitative view of action a different a mode of access to what we are doing and this mode of access in never privileged. So that neither immediacy nor incorrigibility is characteristic of the qualitative view of action. This idea of the agent’s knowledge (which is never immediate and never incorrigible) originates with Vico but since his work did not much influence the 18th c., we can turn to Kant as the seminal figure. Not that Kant had a full-blooded notion off the agent (he does not as I have emphasized) and in fact, Kant shied away from using the word “knowledge” in this context at all. But he distinguished between our empirical knowledge of objects on the one hand, and the synthetic apriori truth which we can establish about the mathematical and physical structure of things on the other. In Kant’s mind it is clear that we can only establish the latter with certainty because they are in an important sense our own doing. Perceiving the world is not just the reception of information but our own conceptual activity, and we can know the empirical world only because we ourselves provide it. Kant’s proof of the synthetic apriori truths he showed them to be the essential conditions of the undeniable features of experience (such a marking the subjective and objective in experience) or that the “I think” must be able to accompany all our representations. Later he shows that freedom, God and immortality are essential conditions of the practice of determining our actions by moral precepts. If we ask what makes these starting points allegedly undeniable, we can only answer that they are because they are what we are doing (acting) when we perceive the world or act morally. Hence, Kant brings the notion of activity back into the modern debate about knowledge. Descartes certainty, the immediate knowledge I have of myself, is set aside and in its place come the certainties that are not immediate but come by way of the structures of our own activity (understanding and reason) and what we learn this way is only accessible by way of this activity which is very different from the knowledge of objects (i.e., the phenomenal world). This influential idea in modern philosophy comes to the present through Schopenhauer (who distinguished the grasp we have of ourselves in “representation” or “will”, and from this through Wittgenstein and analytical philosophy in the notion of non-observational knowledge. But it also comes through idealism, Fichte (who attempted to define subject and object identity in the view that the agent’s knowledge is the only genuine form of knowledge) and Schelling who take up Kant’s notion of “intellectual intuition” (which for Kant was reserved for God’s agency who brings the object itself into existence through His “reason”) and make this the basis for genuine self-knowledge by the ego, and then of all genuine knowledge insofar as the object and subject are identical in the absolute. Thus the category of agent’s knowledge was given a central role, one way beyond the limits Kant set for it; in fact, the agent for the idealists became the principle instrument by which Kant’s limits are breached and the realm of the inaccessible noumenal world is denied. But this extension of the agent’s knowledge also goes a long way to redefining the subject. Not longer the “transcendental ego” (the finite subject) but now the infinite cosmic subject. Hegel inherited this development by Fichte and Schelling in their critique of Kant’s theory of knowledge. Hegel takes up the task of demonstrating the identity of subject and object, and he believes that he alone is capable of properly demonstrating this. What is first seen as “other” is shown to be identical with the self – the self is no longer finite but is part of Spirit. But the recognition of identity takes the form of grasping that everything emanates from the spirit’s activity. To understand reality is to understand it as “actuality” (Wirklichkeit) that is as what has been actualized (cf. activity). This is the crucial prerequisite of the final stage which comes when the agent of this activity is not foreign to us but that we are identical to (in our non-identity with) spirit. The highest categories of logic (= metaphysics), those that provide for entry into the absolute Idea are thus linked with agency and activity. We move from teleology into the categories (knowledge) of life, and then from this knowledge of life to the good. The recognition of identity requires that we understand reality as activity and it also requires that we come to understand what we are doing when we see what the spirit is doing through us. Coming to this point, we see the identity of world-activity with our own activity…. Thought (as activity) thus culminates in a form of agent’s knowledge. But agent’s knowledge is not just a compartment alongside observer’s knowledge (as it is for our ordinary understanding). So while the distinction between agent’s knowledge and observer’s knowledge is important to Hegel’s system, observer’s knowledge is ultimate superseded and this superseding of observer’s knowledge by agent’s knowledge is therefore of a higher kind of knowledge. [Or, empirical (observer’s) knowledge of the world is superseded by my (agent’s) knowledge of my activity (including that of observing)]. This higher knowledge is far from immediate; rather it is mediated through expression among which the only adequate form of expression (for philosophy) is conceptual thought. This brings us to another implication of the qualitative view of action, namely that action may be totally unreflective and hence it is something we carry out without awareness of what we are doing. Of course, we may become aware of what we are doing in formulating our ends explicitly. So that action does not necessarily follow on conscious intent/desire; on the contrary, this conscious intent/desire is something we come to achieve in activity of formulating/articulating what we are doing. But in achieving this consciousness about our action we also change the quality of our actions. For if action is qualitatively different from non-action events, and this difference consist in the fact that action is directed, then action is also different when we move from un-reflected action to the conscious formulation of our purposes in acting. Our action becomes directed in a new way; to be conscious is to be able to act in a new way. Note that the causal view of action does not allow for this qualitative shift resulting from reflecting on action. In fact, the original dualistic variant could not even allow for unreflecting action. Since action is essentially caused by desire/belief, the latter were essentially features of inner experience. Top have a desire was to (immediately) feel desire (as Hume would have it). On this view action was always preceded by a cause of which the agent was totally aware or conscious. This resulted in making all action always conscious action. It left no place for unconscious action – the sort of action animals and we engage in most of the time. [One objection that psychologists sometimes raise at this point is that surely reflexes are actions and they are actions of which we are unaware by definition. But are reflexes actions? Are they even on the causal account preceded by mental causes? Are they not rather “reflexes” controlled by stimuli…not agents?] But even when the causal view of action is not dualistic and where causes are not seen as mental but physical (and hence unconscious, as in contemporary cognitive perspectives), there is still no place for the notion that action is qualitatively changed/transformed when it becomes conscious. Assuming we do become conscious of our actions, the action still remain undifferentiated external events (i.e., behavior) having a certain kind of cause. Bu this notion that action is not essentially conscious ands that to make it so is an achievement that also transform or changes it is crucial to the central doctrine of Hegel’s philosophy. I want examine two of these. 1. Principle of embodiment That is, the subject in all his/her function, however spiritual, is inescapably embodied. This embodiment is in two related dimensions: (a) as a rational animal, or as a living being who thinks, and (b) as an expressive being, or as a being whose thinking is always tied to a medium of expression. The basic notion here is that what passes in modern thought for the mental is inward reflection on what was originally external activity. Self-conscious understanding is the interiorization of what was originally external (cf. Vygotsky). Thus, the idea that I am immediately aware of my desires/beliefs (characteristic of Cartesian-empiricist philosophy) is rather an achievement in overcoming the externality of an unconscious, instinctive life. [For Hegel this immediacy of desire/belief is the result of a negation (of action) of what negates thought (namely, action).] In other words, it not a “positive datum” (say of introspection) but it involves seeing our mental life (desires/beliefs) in terms of the category of action. If we think of all the constituents of mental life as merely “given” (say in introspection or in inner observation, just as we observe the given of the world of objects), then obviously we can think that our knowledge of inner life is privileged (immediate). The constituents of inner life then appear as objects which we cannot but help be aware of, if we are aware at all. Awareness or consciousness is then something just “given” in our observation of the inner and outer. But if we understand inner, mental, life as something we need to achieve an understanding of, then self-transparency is something we have to work towards (it is not simply “given” along with the constituents of inner or the objects of outer life). We have to understand this achievement as the activity of mental life on two levels. First, we have to come to see self-perception as something we do, as something we can bring off but may not. That means we have to see it as an activity of formulating things, what we desire, feel, think. Etc. We may formulate it badly, in a distorted way, in a censored fashion, or we fail to do it altogether. Moreover, this formulation is done in a medium of symbols or concepts, and doing so is one of our fundamental activities (e.g., speaking). For example, psychoanalysis claims that all our self-understanding is mediated through symbols resulting in the more or less distorted screening of our desires as something we do through condensation or displacement. Second, we have to come to see that when self-perception grasps features of ourselves it does so not as simple “givens” but bound up with activity. Our feelings, thoughts, and desires are not simply to be understood as mental “givens” but as inner reflection of the life process that we are. Our ideas are not simple mental contents but precipitates of thinking etc. Hegel understands mental life as activity on both these levels. In a sense, the first is Kant’s influence who maintained that all perception is driven by conceptual activity (the “I think”). It was the idealism after Kant which saw that constitutive thought requires a medium. Freud, for example, is the inheritor, via Schopenhauer, of both the Kantian doctrine and the idealist notion of medium in “expression”, and hence also that our self-understanding can be very different in different media, and of course that it may be distorted in the interests of even deeper impulses we barely comprehend. Making activity central on the second level is also due to the expressivist climate of thought which refuses to distinguish between mind and body, reason and instinct, intellect and feeling, which earlier empiricist/rationalist thought made all important. Thought and reason were to be understood as having their seat in the single life process from which feeling also arose (hence a return to Aristotle’s inseparability of matter and form, thought and expression, soul and body. Hegel’s theory of mind is built upon both these streams. Our self-understanding is conceived of as the inner reflection of a life process which at the outset fails to grasp what it is about (just “activity” in Fichte sense). Only slowly do we learn to formulate ourselves less and less inadequately. At the beginning desire is unreflected and in that condition simple aims to incorporate the desired object. But this is inherently unsatisfactory because the aims of spirit are to recognize the self in other and not simply to abolish “otherness” (identity-in-difference). So we proceed to a higher form of desire, a desire for desire (of the other for me); that is, the demand for recognition. This too starts off in barely self-conscious form which needs to be transformed. In this theory of mind, Hegel avails himself himself of “activity” on both levels (a) at the second level, desire is not just a “given” of mental life; rather, it is a reflection (at first perhaps inadequate) on the goals of the life process which is now embodied in the world. For Hegel this is properly to be understood as the life process of spirit but at the outset we are far from seeing that. (b) On the first level, the achievement of more and more adequate understanding is something that comes about through our activity of formulating/articulating. This takes place in symbols/concepts but also in institutions and social-cultural practices (in history). For example, the institution of the master-slave relationship is one of formulating (however inadequate) the search for recognition. Grasping things through symbols, practices, and institutions is something we do – as activity. And so we have two related activities. There the fundamental activity of Spirit which Hegel’s theory tries to grasp through various levels of self-formulation. These two mutually conditional activities are at first out of phase, but they are destined in the end to coincide perfectly. That is because it will become clear at the end that the end of the whole life-process was that Spirit come to understand itself and at the same time the life-process itself will become entirely transparent as an embodiment of this purpose. But of course this perfect coincidence comes only at the end. And it only comes through the overcoming of non-coincidence, where what the pattern of activity is differs from what this pattern says. And so the distinction between these two dimensions is essential for Hegel’s philosophy: we could them the effective and the expressive. Each life-form in history is both the effective realization of a certain pattern, and at the same time the expression of a certain understanding of human being and hence also Spirit. The gap between these two (effective and expressive) is the historical contradiction which moves us on. And so for Hegel the principle of embodiment is central. What we focus on as the mental can only be understood in the first place as the inner reflection of an embodied life-process; and this inner reflection is itself mediated by our formulations in an expressive medium. So that all spiritual life is embodied in the two dimensions just described: it is the life of a living being who thinks, and his thinking is essentially expression. This double shift from a psychology if immediate self-transparency (in both rationalism and empiricism) to one of achieved interiority (i.e., of the negation of the negation) is obviously grounded on the qualitative understanding of action and the central role it plays in Hegel’s theory. Mental life has depth that defies all immediate transparency, just because it is not merely self-contained but is the reflection of a larger life-process; while plumbing this depth is in turn seen as something we do, as the result of self-formulation. 2. Self-consciousness transforms action This offshoot of the qualitative view, which sees action at first as unreflecting, and reflective understanding as an achievement, underlies the “principle of embodiment” in Hegel’s thought. But we saw above that this conception of reflective consciousness also transforms activity (action), and this too is crucial to Hegel’s theory. For Hegel, activity is at first uncertain because its purposes are barely understood. The search for recognition, properly understood, demands reciprocal recognition within the life of a community. That is what in fact activity is groping towards, but at first we do not understand it this way. In a still confused and inarticulate manner, we identify the goal as attaining one-sided recognition for ourselves from others. It follows that our practices will be also confused and self-defeating. The reason is that our activity is not changed by an inadequate understanding of it and out action is itself confused and that means the quality of the directed activity is impaired. For the true goal of the search for recognition remains community. We can see this confusion where we seek recognition through say the institution of slavery – where the relation of domination (ownership of one by the other) contradicts the basic nature of law insofar as even the master-slave relationship is mediated by law, one which binds all parties and implicitly recognizes them as subjects of rights. If as Hegel thinks the building and maintaining such an institution as an activity we are engaged in together, then our activity is confused and contradictory, and self-defeating which is why the institution of slavery will eventually undermine and destroy itself. A new society will eventually emerge out of the ruins of the old one but the practices of this new society will only be higher than the previous one to the extent that we have learned from previous error. Indeed, it is only possible accede to a practice which has fully overcome confusion and is no longer self-defeating if we finally come to an adequate understanding. Throughout this whole development we see a close relation between the level of understanding and the level of practice. On this view action can be more or less firmly guided, more or less coherent and self-consistent, and it being one or the other is related to our level of understanding. We see here that coherent action is either totally unreflecting or the fruit of full understanding. Self-consciousness disrupts our activity and we can only compensate for this disruption by self-consciousness which is total. For Hegel this means that the crucial activity is that of Spirit which aims for self-recognition and hence there is no such stage as totally unreflecting activity – since at the earliest stages the contradiction is present between consciousness and what is implicitly sought. We can therefore see the ramifications of the qualitative view of action. It involves a basic reversal in the order of explanation compared to the causal view of action (as is the legacy of rationalism-empiricism, cum behaviorism). It amounts to another one of those shifts as to what is taken as basic (primitive) in explanation. Thus the causal view takes the explanation of action as consisting in an undifferentiated event and a certain kind of cause where the cause is primitive or given (and transparent) mental occurrence of the undifferentiated physical event in order to yield an action. The qualitative view of action reverses this order. Here the mental is not a primitive occurrence but rather something to be achieved. Moreover this achievement itself finds its origin in action as the eventual reflective understanding of what we are doing. The causal view explains action in terms of a more basic datum of the mental (or in case of reductionism, another undifferentiated even of the brain), the qualitative view accounts for the mental as a development out of our primitive capacity for action. Meaning The qualitative view also brings about another reversal; this time in the theory of meaning. As we have seen becoming self-conscious is something we do – we come to formulate properly what we are doing. But this notion of formulation refers us to an expressive medium. If we think of self-consciousness as the result of action (where action is first of all unreflective practice and only later becomes self-understood), then the activity of formulating must itself conform to this model and formulating would at first be a relatively unreflective bodily practice and only later come to self-clarity in full consciousness. This is precisely what the new expressive theories of meaning in the late 18th c proposed (e.g., Herder) and Hegel took over. The notion of expression is itself that of self-revelation as a special bodily practice. The Enlightenment theory of signs (born of epistemology in the 17th c. e.g., the empiricists) did not distinguish between expressive and other forms of self-revelation. For example, you can see that I am afraid of a recession because I am selling short, you can see that I am afraid because of the expression on my face, and you can see that it will rain because the barometer is falling, etc. Each of these is a sign which points beyond itself, or designates, and so reveals something else. The Enlightenment made a distinction between natural and conventional signs as, for example, Condillac distinguished between accidental signs, natural signs and conventional or institutional signs. But what is overlooked here is and what is crucial for the expressivist, namely that the relation between signs which allows the inference to a designatum (the thing it names or is about) and true signs which express. Thus when we express, we make something plain in a public way which has no equivalent in cases of inference to the designatum. Thus, the barometer “reveals” rain indirectly in that its reading is indicative of an event (rain which we see directly) which we now infer on the basis of the barometer reading. But when I make plain my anger or joy, in facial or verbal expression, there is no such contrast between indirect. That is, in my face or words I directly express (make public) my anger or joy which are not evident not by or through the face or word but rather in the expression of the face and words. Herder criticized Condillac precisely on this point (see Ch. 5). Expressions as bodily activities involve the use of a medium (words, sings, gestures, etc.) which is at first relatively unreflecting in making plain in public space just how we feel or how we stand in relation to each other, or how things are for us. Slowly we are able to get clearer focus on these in the process of becoming more knowledgeable about ourselves. To do this requires that we develop more discerning and discriminating media. We can speak here of an embodiment which reveals in this expressive way as a medium. We can then see a struggle for deeper and more accurate self-understanding as an attempt to discover or amore adequate medium. Thus while facial expressions are important to us in making us present to another, if we want genuine self-understanding we need a more subtle vocabulary (e.g., a facial expression may manifest my anger but how do I manifest my indignation?). This amounts to another reversal in theory. In the Enlightenment tradition the relation between word and thing was mediated by way of the “idea” (thought) where the word designated the idea and the idea represented the thing. Meaning of words is therefore explained by thought (idea) which is deemed to be primitive as in John Locke. Expression therefore becomes a signifying relation between sound (word) and, by way of designating a primitive idea, and thing/object/world. But for expression theory (of Herder and Hegel) it is the expression that is primitive and thought, clear thought needed to coin new relations of signifying, is explained in terms of expression. Both ontogenetically and historically, our first expressions are in public space and vehicles of unreflecting awareness. Later we develop more adequate media, in concepts and images, and become more capable of carrying out the expressive activity monologically (formulating things for ourselves and hence thinking privately). When develop this capacity to spell-out things for ourselves we also coin new expression for our own use. But this capacity (which the Enlightenment took as primitive) comes about only much later when our expressive capacity is self-conscious. Hence, the explanation of meaning is reversed in expressivism; beginning not from individual/monological acts of meaning as primitive but beginning from unreflecting expression (already in public space) to the refined expression in enhanced media. The crucial notion here is that of media. In Hegel’s terms the goal of spirit is clearly self-conscious understanding but the struggle to attain this (self-conscious understanding) is one of trying to formulate it (self-conscious understanding) in an adequate medium. Thus, Hegel distinguishes art, religion, and philosophy as ascending media of adequacy. Thus, the perception of the absolute embodied in a work of art remains relatively unreflecting; religion brings us closer to adequacy of expression but it remain clouded in representation (images). Adequacy of expression is achieved in conceptual thought which transparent and fully self-conscious. But to get there is a long struggle (exemplified in the historical course of art and religion and finally in speculative philosophy). Thus, for Hegel thought is an achievement whereby our expression becomes more inward and clear. The attainment of self-understanding is the result of activity which conforms itself to the basic model of action, first as unreflecting bodily practice and only later in self-clarity. This is the activity of expressing. Making sense of Hegel on a qualitative view of action All action is not in the last analysis of individuals; there are irreducible forms of collective action. The causal view is inherently atomist: an action is an action because it has a certain cause in some inner mental state of the individual. On this view collective action is the convergent actions of many individuals (ontological or methodological individualism). In contrast, the qualitative view of action does not tie action to the individual agent. The nature of agency becomes clear only when we have a clear understanding of action. This can be individual but it can also be communal (e.g., parliament decided). Hegel avails himself of both. Moreover, there is for Hegel a crucial level of activity which is no only more than individual but also more than merely human. It is the Spirit acting through us. In order to arrive at this understanding we have to make two big transitions: (a) we have to come to see that our individual actions are in some sense communal ones, and (b) we have to come to see that some are the work of spirit. See Hegel’s Phenomenology of spirit. I suggested that action is to be understood in terms of two dimensions: the effective and the expressive. The expressive dimension makes clearer that action is not necessarily that of the individual. An expression in public space is one of common sentiment or purpose in that it is shared – and the expression is a vehicle of sharing. The idea that action can be of a community (e.g., parliament as agency) and that it is also expressive is crucial to Hegel’s philosophy of society and history. The “moral” (Sittlichkeit) status/nature of a society is not only seen as the action of a community or of individuals insofar as they identify themselves as members of a community (the “I” that is “we” and the “we” that is “I”), it also embodies and gives expression to an understanding of the agent, community, and their relation to the divine. It is the latter which is the key to the fate of society. For it is in relation to the divine that the basic incoherence underlying social practices will appear contradictory (as in the master-slave institution). Hegel’s notion of historical development can only be properly understood if we understand social institutions in this way as trans-individual action which nevertheless has an expressive dimension. [This contrasts to the causal view of action which explains institutions solely in instrumental terms – people ban together for their individual survival.] But in this way we cannot even begin to formulate what Hegel’s theory is all about. Historical development is not a matter of instrument individual survival (history is not a defense against fear of death) rather in historical development is the expression of the Absolute coming to self-understanding through individual self-understanding in conceptually understanding the Absolute. Summary I tried to show the importance of the qualitative view of action for understanding Hegel’s thought. I began with the notion of the agent’s knowledge and we saw that the system of philosophy itself can be seen as the integration of everything into a form of all embracing agent’s knowledge. I then suggested that the qualitative view of action shows that action is primordially unreflecting bodily activity (practices) which can later be transformed by the agent’s achievement of reflective awareness. We saw that Hegel’s conception of subjectivity and its development are rooted in this understanding. I then argued that the expressive revolution (of the late 18th c.) in the theory of meaning is an offshoot of this same qualitative view of action, and that Hegel was operating within an expressive conception. Finally, we saw that Hegel’s theory of history supposes not only the expressive dimension but also the idea of irreducible common actions which only a qualitative view action can accommodate. One part of this thesis is then that Hegel’s philosophy of mind can be clarified by making explicit all its implications. My claim is that Hegel’s qualitative theory of action is basic and all-pervasive. Another part is that we should gain some insight into the debate surrounding the nature of action by situating Hegel in it. What emerges is that Hegel is a seminal and most important figure in combating the long held Enlightenment dominant view of epistemology. But it is then a problem as to why he has been ignored, even by Heidegger who while he starts out with an unreflecting view of action asserts that we can never gain clarity and authentic self-understanding since disclosure is always accompanied by the hidden: that is, the explicit always reposes on an horizon that is implicit. In any case, the latter can also be addressed if we but carry through on the implications of the qualitative view of action. Department of Psychology Psychology examination questions I request that you select two (2) questions from among the following to answer on your mid-term examination. Please restrict your answers to one-page or so. I decided this summer to orient this course in accord with a particular theme. The theme I chose can be formulated as a question: “why do we have this strange fear of consciousness?” After all, we are mindful of ourselves and others, we are a vital part of the flow of life that surrounds and sustains us, and we are surrounded by a life larger than ourselves (languages, societies, cultures). Yet what characterizes our modern age is a kind of ‘theoretical austerity” which commits us to a minimal theory “as if” we had no mind and we were not conscious, resulting in a gap between life and theory (knowledge) or between life and reason which haunts us to the present. Comment. I suggested that the 17th c transformation of human life in the systematization of the “new science” (e.g., Descartes) was above all made possible by the power of the human mind (e.g., a mathematical vision of the universe). Not only do we discover a renewed vision of human freedom but we engaged in formulating original concepts that were not merely passively found in nature but were constructed in order to organize our experience of nature. I also suggested that the emergence of this scientific view of the world quickly gave rise to a paradox: science versus the ideology of science, or “scientism”. In what is the course of a remarkable development spanning some 300 years, the dazzling new science/technology of nature was extended to include the human mind/consciousness itself reaching the bizarre point, today, where we are in danger of losing any intelligent grasp on the human mind/consciousness altogether. Comment. I noted that the founders of the “new science” (e.g., Kepler, Galileo, Newton) felt little unease with their brilliantly formulated mathematical and mechanistic vision of the universe. In fact, they deemed this mechanistic view of nature as the way God managed this universe! But the far-reaching implications of their vision were noted by philosophers, in an implied metaphysics and epistemology that Whitehead in the 20th c. called “scientific materialism”: Nature as machine! Scientific materialism as an epistemology (theory of how we know) held that nature is not what is appears to be and as a metaphysics (theory of what there is, “primary qualities”) the mind was not really free but fully determined as part of the machine of nature. This left the soul sitting precariously on the edge of Nature as machine, on the edge of matter. Comment. The new science opened a universe so unimaginably vast, dislodging the earth, and humanity, from its privileged position in the cosmos, that it led Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), considered on of the greatest minds of the 17th c. and a mean mathematician and believing Christian, to utter “the eternal silence of those infinite spaces frightens me”. This cosmic alienation is also paradoxical insofar as Pascal in giving expression to his consciousness of this vastness also recognized that we are but an infinitesimally small part of this vastness of the universe. The question that arises is whether human reason can embrace this paradox (undo it), as, say in Leibnitz’ metaphysics, and so heal our alienation. Comment. The 17th c is often seen as the century of reason (Enlightenment) bringing to fruition Francis Bacon’ glorious vision of the betterment of humankind. Of course, in a way this vision of the “new science” would eventually bring about such “betterment” during the next three centuries. Yet this 17th c ideal was quickly turned into a telos or ideology of the promise of “endless progress” which even now has not been fulfilled as is evident in all the tensions, uncertainties, and malaise of our modern age (or what Psychology has termed the age of “anxiety”). Indeed, I have alluded to the possibility that perhaps at some time in the future we may well regret that our minds are not preoccupied with the larger (religious) questions of “being and meaning”. Comment. It was Descartes (1595-1650) who appreciated that the “new science” brought not only certainty (of reason/mathematics, e.g., in a Copernican vision of the universe) but also doubt (of the senses – the universe is not as it appears to be). If the senses cannot offer certainty, then it must be the “thinking I” that gives us certainty. However, Descartes’ “I think” was merely a starting point for his method of systematic doubt which would isolate an absolute starting point for thinking (“I cannot doubt the I that doubt’s – thinks”). In my criticism of Descartes, I did not so much criticize his effort to ground certainty in the “subjective” as I criticized his conception of the subjective “I” as an abstraction. For Descartes’ “I think” is a “logical move”; it is not the “I” as the embodiment of our memories, hopes, emotions, etc., living with others in community. Hence, Descartes’ split within the self between reason (soul-stuff) and body (matter-stuff) is paradoxically one between the self as reason (subject) and the self as lived (object) in which both are abstractions. Comment. Leibnitz (1646-1716) clearly saw the problems surrounded Newton’s picture of the universe-as-machine and he also understood that Descartes’ striving after certainty in splitting reason off from the body was because Descartes held to the view of body as extension (mere matter). While Leibnitz’ view of monads (in place of “bits of moving matter”) may seem far fetched (perhaps less so today than back then), this radical new metaphysics in spiritualizing the body and soul in a psychophysical harmony, no longer leaves the soul precariously perched on the edge of matter, as the body is now spiritualized as a center of energy and destiny. Remarkably, while we today criticize Descartes mind–body dualism, it was Leibnitz who reminded us that it was not Descartes’ view of mind that is a problem but especially our view of the body-as-matter that precludes the integrity of the self. Comment. Leibnitz principle of “sufficient reason” in reply to his question “why is there anything at all rather than nothing?” reflects two persistent themes that are still troubling us today: (1) the separation of the self between soul (mind) and body, (to which Leibnitz’ “monadology” was an answer but which, of course, we longer accept) and (2) the mind and body as a psychophysical unit or monad in relation to the Divine (“sufficient reason”). It was Nietzsche who, in the 19th c. settled the latter when he asserted that “God is dead” leaving us with either an abstract mind-body dualism or materialism. Comment. John Locke (1632-1704) aspires to follow the “plain historical method” in attempting to understand the mind – how do we and what can we know - in tracing the operations of the mind from sensations to ideas. Yet Locke also echoes Galileo’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities and maintains that only primary qualities are metaphysically real. This distinction results in empiricism’s bifurcation between the experiential world of life and the empirical world of science. This bifurcation which implies that the experiential world is always subordinate to the empirical world and that empiricism (the ideology of what is metaphysically real) is always an abstraction from experience (as Descartes’ “I” was an abstraction from the lived self). Comment. Locke’s empiricism led Bishop Berkeley to his audacious claim, in an effort to recover the genuine experiential that was lost by Locke, that “esse est percipi” (being is perceiving). But surely reality is not so fickle as to depend on “perceiving it” (or reality cannot be so fickle as to depend on psychology). We have here in Berkeley’s opposition to, or better, in drawing out the conclusions of, Locke’s thesis, another contemporary tension between “experience” and “empirical” in psychology. Berkeley held that Locke, notwithstanding his claim that he started in the “plain historical method”, was not truly experiential but let his empiricism be guided by what was assumed to be real (sensations or “scientific materialism”) and proposed, instead, that whatever is real is ever only in the mind. Comment. The atheist David Hume takes theist Berkeley seriously and suggests that the world is simply given as a set of impression out of which then reconstruct the world. That is, Hume maintains that knowledge, including knowledge of the “new science”, is grounded in the co-occurrences (associations) of impressions and that these, as “habits of mind”, are the basis of our knowing the world. Thus, for example, cause and effect are nothing but the contiguity of impressions and hence we are never logically justified in speaking of the world or its explanations as more than psychological habits. On this view, not only does Hume invite skepticism (our knowledge can never be certain but only psychological) but he also rids us of the mind as a mere “ghost in the machine” (there are only impressions and their combinations). I suggested that this is a spectator (3rd person) view of the world (since obviously none of this is “experienced”) but it is one that was enormously influential in the 19th and the founding of psychology. Comment. Immanuel Kant sought to rescue the “new science” from the skeptical consequences of Hume’s empiricist theory of knowledge. Kant begins from within, and hence accepts, the certainty of knowledge of the “new science”. He then separates himself from the dogmatic metaphysics, and theology, of Leibnitz. We have neither privileged access to what is real (metaphysics) beyond the phenomenal world nor can we simply leave scientific knowledge with the skeptical consequences of David Hume’s empiricism. Instead, Kant begins with the question of what role the mind plays in human life, including scientific knowledge (assuming that we do lead moral, religious, and scientific lives). In this way Kant confronts scientific materialism in rationalist metaphysical thinkers such as Descartes and Leibnitz but also in empiricist thinkers such as Locke and Hume who would extent the role of reason beyond the limit where Kant thought reason could possibly be valid (such as to attain knowledge). This is Kant’s “immanent critique”, namely, given that we do know and that we do act morally what apriori conditions of possibility must we assume “reason” gives to itself such that we can justify our knowledge of the world and what is moral. Comment. One consequence of Kant’s critical philosophy is that he distinguishes between practical knowledge (reason in its practical use) and theoretical knowledge (reason in its theoretical use) giving priority to practical knowledge. In both kinds of knowledge Kant held that the subject or self essentially contributes to what is known, either theoretically or practically. In other words, unlike Descartes who splits the mind off from the body, Kant splits the human mind itself between our knowledge of the natural world (“the starry heavens above” in which I function just as part of the machine of nature) and the moral world (the “moral law within” in which I function as a free and responsible moral agent). Or, he claims that I am phenomenally determined but noumenally free (where, as you will recall, I cannot “know” the noumena but must presuppose it). Or, “what I ought to do” can never be derived or defined in terms of what “is”. These different ways of formulating the split with us is never adequately resolved by Kant but his efforts to limit reason, especially in his rejection of metaphysics, at least made room for the autonomy of morality (human freedom, and faith) in a world threatened by scientific materialism. Comment. I suggested that Kant’s critical philosophy was a turning point in modernity, deeply affecting the course of the next two centuries. Yet Kant’s analysis remains formalistic and transcendental (apriori conditions of possibility of knowledge) and so he never comes to grips with the concrete embodied self that underlies the will that gives itself reason (or reason that gives itself the will). While there are no free-floating impressions or ideas in Kant (consciousness is always consciousness of the “transcendental ego”), neither is Kant’s ego “substantial” in the sense that his transcendental ego adheres to the minimalist empiricist assertion that the “I” must be capable of accompanying reason. The reason is obvious because for Kant we can never know the thing-in-itself, including the self (it belongs to the noumenal world), and hence the mind or self cannot be known. Perhaps Kant pushed the requirements for knowledge too far (giving too much to Hume’s skepticism) thereby blurring the epistemological demands of knowledge and the existential demands of life. He tried to heed both but he also fell into the trap of believing that knowledge must be certain and complete (explanation) or else it is not knowledge. This either/or position in the 19th century would lead either the abandonment of mind altogether (scientific materialism or “positivism”) or else to idealism (Hegel). Comment. Besides our ordinary and scientific knowledge of the world, Kant also claims that there is practical moral knowledge. But when, for example, we say that “one ought to tell the truth” we can ask what kind of knowledge this “ought” is especially as Kant maintains that even if it is an empirical fact that everybody lies we would still know that we ought to tell the truth. For Kant uncovering what this knowledge is implies that we must uncover the apriori element of moral law in making a moral judgment. This moral law which is universal must be grounded in reason alone, meaning that it must not consider empirical circumstances or derived from theology. This moral law (“categorical imperative”) is an end in itself – the objective ground of self-determination – and binding on all rational beings in willing the good. Hence, the will of every rational being is to make universal law (in making moral choice) and doing so demonstrates the autonomy of the will and the sole principle of all morality and duty. In short we should always act, as rational beings, such that our action could be valid as a principle making universal law. Comment. Franz Joseph Gall, the discoverer of “organology”, was critical of the empiricist reliance on sensation and introspection and sought to bring objectivity to our understanding of the relation between mind and brain. He argued that since the brain was “organized” (as evidenced by his comparative studies of brains) so indeed should the mind be organized. Accordingly, he suggested that the faculties of mind which distinguished people (individual differences) were innate and corresponded to the developed “organs of the brain”. Thus while the faculties were common to all people, through individual differences in their use these faculties would develop very differently and this was evident in the structure of the organs of the brain as revealed by their appearance on the skull. In this way, Gall was not interested in the general nature of the mind (as were the empiricists in their focus on sensation, ideas, attention, and memory) but in individual differences in conduct, and he was objective in that everyone had these faculties and they were grounded in the brain. In this way Gall argued for the localization of function of the brain against the then fashionable “mass action” of brain function. Comment. Electricity was as yet not well understood in the middle of the 18th c when Benjamin Franklin would begin to use the newly invented Leyden jars to deliver electrical sparks in service of healing various disorders. Franklin encouraged the experimental use of medical electricity and found that he was able to eliminate symptoms of hysteria, melancholia, and general nervous disorders (“lunacy”) by exiting sluggish nerves juices. Yet in his criticism of Franz Anton Mesmer’s claim about the existence of “animal gravity”, Franklin remained skeptical and indicated that perhaps Mesmer’s cures were brought about by “suggestion”. It is interesting to speculate that just perhaps the efficacy of electricity also had a suggestibility component. But in the light the Ugo Cerletti (1877-1963) and Lucio Bini (1908-1964) pioneering efforts with electro-convulsive hock therapy 150 years later, the efficacy of medical electricity seems to be confirmed. But then who is to say that “suggestibility” is not a form of medical treatment? “Comment. Hegel radically eliminates Kant’s effort of limit the scope of reason such that Reason becomes Absolute and manifests itself in the realms of nature and spirit (mind, society, history). He then suggests that the human mind or spirit participates in the Absolute’s self-knowledge and that this process is a historical one wherein we can distinguish among different levels of consciousness, or Spirit: (a) consciousness as standing over and against the sensible object (nature), (b) self-consciousness as social consciousness (master-slave, or “other consciousness”), and (c) consciousness as the unity of consciousness and self-consciousness in Reason. I suggested that it was Hegel’s brilliant insight to understand social consciousness which is the tension of two consciousnesses that would threaten to annihilate each other were it not for the fact that freedom requires recognition of and recognition by the “other”. Hegel notes that we can escape this dialectic only if we withdraw inwardly in what will become a divided (unhappy) consciousness. If we are to avoid the latter divided or Stoic consciousness, then we must overcome the contradiction of self-consciousness such that we come to recognize freedom both within ourselves and in others. This recognition is also consciousness of the infinite Spirit (Absolute) wherein we are bound as finite beings without our differences being annulled. This moral consciousness is one wherein the will expresses itself in an awareness of difference. Comment.