Outline of Hegel and Modern Society

Analytical outline of Charles Taylor's Hegel and Modern Society.

Cambridge Press, 1979.

1. Freedom, Reason, and Nature
1. Expression and Freedom.  Hegel sought to synthesize the Romantic desire for freedom and expression with the Rationalist desire for Reason.  The Romantics saw Enlightenment science severing man’s unity.  
2. Man can only be self-conscious when he abstracts himself from the world.  But when he does that, he severs himself from the organic unity of life.  Reason and Life are thus opposites.  But they are opposites which can’t exist without the other.
3. The Embodied Subject
1. each term (subject/object; nature/freedom; God/man) is identical with its opposite.
2. Opposition arises out of circular identity.  
3. Hegel and the Subject
1. Followed Herder in seeing the subject as an expressive unity.
2. All of a subject’s functions are necessarily embodied.  On a human level this makes sense.  You usually can’t have a thought without a mind thinking it.  
3. Man is not an animal with rationality added, but a new kind of totality.  
4. There is a hierarchy of consciousness. The higher enfolds and negates the lower.
4. There is a hierarchy of forms of life and a hierarchy of modes of consciousness.  Each negates and gives rise to a new one.  This is why man progresses from art to religion to philosophy.  As his rational self-consciousness grows, so does his mode of that self-consciousness.
5. A rational subject must be embodied because their must be an opposite pole in which it may flourish
4. The Absolute as Subject
1. The universe is the embodiment of the totality of the life-functions of God (24).
2. Geist is understood teleologically.  
3. If Geist, then there are also finite spirits.  
4. There is a limit between Geist and not-itself.  
1. If Geist is somewhere, it is not somewhere else.
2. Thus, there must be many finite spirits.
5. With Kant and Fichte, Hegel agreed that consciousness is bi-polar within the individual.
1. The ego posits the non-ego.
2. The subject must be set against the object.
5. Rational Necessity
1. A conceptual necessity.  We are not speaking with causal im/possibilities, but with conceptual limits.  
2. Analytical necessity deals more with the meaning of terms.  Conceptual with the structure of things.
3. I think Hegel runs into a contradiction.  He says every subject must have an object, which means Geist must necessarily posit finite objects to inhabit.  So far, consistent.  He then says Geist is pure rationality (perhaps), but Geist is not determined.  Its rationality is pure rationality because….--I don’t follow.  
1. Perhaps we can try this way:  finite things are necessarily dependent on God/Geist.  So far, so good.
6. A Self-Positing God
1. Hegel rejects both Christian theism (God independent of the world) and naturalism (God as not absolute).
2. Self-positing:  God eternally creates the conditions of his existence.  Hegel is not so much arguing for an existent reality, but for the conditions that Geist be.
3. He isn’t identical to Plotinus, since everything else is a falling away from the One and not necessary to the One’s existence; whereas, for Hegel it is necessary.
7. Division
1. The cosmic Subject (Geist) is identical and not-identical to the world
1. identical: Geist cannot exist without the world.
2. not-identical: the world’s externality represents a dispersal which Geist must overcome.
3. Geist exists by overcoming its opposite.  By negating its own negation.
8. The oppositions overcome
1. Undoes Kant’s ding an sich because there is no gap between phenomena and noumena, since we are all vehicles of Geist.
2. Our knowledge of the world turns out to be Geist’s self-knowledge.
3. Aufhebung: dialectical transition in which a lower stage is both annulled and preserved in a higher stage
4. Versohnung: reconciliation; overcoming dualities.
9. Dialectical ways
1. we start with the most elementary notion of what consciousness is, “to show that this cannot stand up, that it is riven with inner contradiction and must give way to a higher one, which is also in turn shown to be contradictory” (55).
2. “dialectical” is not a method or approach, but a descriptive fact.
3. Being and Nothing: the concept of being without any determination, turns out to be empty, nothing.  Being thus reveals a contradiction.
10. A faulty proof
2. Politics and Alienation
1. The continuing conflict
1. Modern society has seen the proliferation of Romantic views of life along with the rationalization and bureaucratization of collective structures and an exploitive stance toward nature (71).
2. The New Left reaction: 1968 Paris was decloisonnement; an expressivist reaction against late capitalism.  
2. The demands of reason
1. The adequate form of Spirit (remember, Spirit must be embodied) is social.  Man has to be part of something larger than himself, since man cannot exist by himself.
2. the state is the real expression of this life.
3. The fully adequate State must be the rational one.
4. The problem with Kant’s ethics: he purchased radical autonomy at the price of emptiness.
5. The problem of politics is to limit negative freedom. Hegel’s problem with Rousseau and Kant is both defined freedom as human freedom, the will as human will.  If we define freedom as thought or reason, then the question of freedom doesn’t reduce to man alone, but to all of us.
6. Sittlichkeit:  the moral obligations I have to an ongoing community of which I am a part.
3. Ethical Substance
1. alienation: this happens whenever the public existence no longer has meaning for me.
1. e.g., the perceived futility of voting; nominal religious belief in Church-States.
2. Individuals then strike out on their own to define their individuality
4. The Goals of History
1. The march of history is the succession of rational communities, the earlier ones embodying imperfect expressions of the later ones.
5. Absolute History
1. The French Revolution was the attempt to remake society according to reason and negative freedom.
2. (Taylor is somewhat reticent about Hegel’s criticisms of the French Revolution).
3. How to move forward
1. everything in society (however that term is defined) must be the fruit of all.  
2. In other words, all must share in ruling (cf. John Wyclif, John Milbank, John Ruskin).
3. His society must be different from traditionalism because there cannot be structures insulated from the reach of decision.  On the other hand, it can’t be a liberal society, since the Form of Government will permeate everything.
4. Negative freedom would require that the whole outcome be decided by me.  Yet, the whole outcome is a social one, so it cannot be decided by me alone.  Thus, negative freedom is impossible.  
5. The society must be a homogenous one.  This might seem unfortunate, but it does have echoes in Augustine’s Book 19.  
6. Social Estates and Differentiation
1. the modern state aims at universal citizenship.
2. The practical problem is universal participation is impossible in a state of any real size.  This leads to representation.  
6. The Modern Dilemma
1. Taylor appears somewhat concerned that Hegel’s politics would reject modern democracy.  
2. However, it does raise the important question:  what kind of differentiation can modern society admit of (111)?  
1. Ancient man knew he could only be himself in light of some cosmic order.
2. the revolution of modern subjectivity justified society in what it achieved for man’s needs.   Utilitarianism.
1. Utilitarianism, ironically, leaves no place for myth, myth of the new beginning, and so cannot justify the vision of its society (112-113).
2. Absolute freedom, therefore, is seen to fill this “gap.”
3. Here is why modern liberal society is doomed: radical participation in civic structures is only possible if there is a ground of agreement, or underlying common purpose (Augustine’s common objects of love).  Democracy and participation cannot create this; they merely presuppose it.  The demand for absolute freedom by itself is empty.
4. Modern ideology and equality leads to homogenization of society.  It is an acid drip on traditional structures, yet it cannot replace them.
3. Hegel Today
1. Marx’s take on reconciliation is that it will come via social transformation.
2. Weakness in Marx’s synthesis
1. The Soviet view sees the proletarian party as “engineers of building in conformity with the laws of history…[combining] two opposed pictures of the human predicament.  It shows us man,  on one hand, imposing his will on the course of history...On the other hand dialectical materialism sets out the laws which govern man and history with an iron necessity” (151).  
2. “The laws of history cannot be the basis of social engineering and reveal the inevitable trend of events” (152).
3. Situating Freedom
4. Hegel Today

Hegel almost stumbled upon a correct anthropology

Hegel rejects Greek dualism and almost stumbles upon a biblical Hebraism.  He sees the Cartesian project as inherently mechanistic and incoherent (what connects mind and matter?  Cartesians have never really answered this).

Unfortunately, Hegel still sees the idea of a mind/soul in a body as a “dualist temptation.”  He does admit, though, that it is foreign to Greek thought (Taylor 81).  

Hegel is drawing upon Herder’s expressivism.  Thought, language, etc does not exist without a medium.  Thus for Hegel, the subject, no matter how spiritual, is necessarily embodied.  This is true up to a point, but runs into problems in two areas:  God/Geist is not embodied (at least not God the Father and the Holy Spirit, though Hegel gets around that) and the soul exists in a disembodied state after death.

Tongues-Speak as Rebellion: Review of James Smith's Thinking in Tongues

Thesis: Pentecostal worldview offers a distinct way of being-in-the-world (Smith 25). Embodied practices carry within them a “tacit understanding” (27).

Is a Pentecostal Philosophy Possible?

Much of the chapter deals with the relationship between theology and philosophy. The difference is one of field, not “faith basis” (Smith 4). Smith gives us Five Aspects of a Pentecostal Philosophy:
1. radical openness to God, or God’s doing something fresh. 
2. An “enchanted” theology of creation and culture. Smith means that we see reality not as self-enclosed monads, but realizing that principalities and powers are often behind these. this entails spiritual warfare. I cringe at terms like “enchanted” because it’s more postmodern non-speak, but Smith (likely inadvertently) connected “enchanted” with demons, which is correct.
3. A nondualistic affirmation of embodiment and spirituality. Smith defines “dualism” as not denigrating materiality. Fewer and fewer Christians today do this, so I am not sure whom his target is. Even chain-of-being communions like Rome that officially denigrate embodiment say they really don’t mean it.
4. Affective, narrative epistemology. 
5. Eschatological orientation towards mission and justice.


God’s Surprise

Some hermeneutics: Smith rightly notes that “The Last Days” (per Acts 2) is connected with “today” ( 22; we accept this model in eschatology but abandon it in pneumatology). Smith wryly notes that Acts 2:13 is the first proto-Daniel Dennett hermeneutics: offering a naturalistic explanation for inexplicable phenomena (23). 

Following Martin Heidegger, Smith suggests two kinds of knowing: wissen and verstehen, justified, true belief and understanding. The latter is tacit and is at the edges of conscious action.

Per the dis-enchanted cosmos, Smith astutely points out that “There is a deep sense that multiple modes of oppression--from illness to poverty--are in some way the work of forces that are not just natural” (41). In other words, spiritual warfare assumes a specific, non-reductionist cosmology.

Promising Suggestions

“What characterizes narrative knowledge?” (65) 
a connection between narrative and emotions
Narratives work in an affective manner
The emotions worked are themselves already construals of the world
There is a “fit” between narrative and emotion
There is a good section on Pauline-pneumatological accounts of knowing (68ff). Anticipating Dooyeweerd, Paul critiques the pretended autonomy of theoretical thought (Rom. 1:21-31; 1 Cor. 1:18-2:16) and that the Spirit grants access to the message as “true.” 

While I found his chapter on epistemology inadequate, he does say that we know from the “heart” as embodied, rational beings (58). This isn’t new to postmodernism, but is standard Patristic epistemology. 

A Pentecostal Ontology
This section could have been interesting. Smith wants to argue that pentecostalism sees an open ontology that allows the Spirit to move from within nature, rather than a miracle that is “tacked on” to nature from the outside. He makes this argument because he wants pentecostalism to line up with the insights from Radical Orthodoxy.

I have between 50-75 pentecostal relatives who “embody pentecostal spirituality.” I promise you that none of them think like this or are even capable of thinking like that. I do not disparge them, simply because I am not to sure Smith’s project at this point is really coherent. He wants to reject methodological naturalism (rightly) but argues for his own version of supernatural naturalism.

If Smith is successful, then he can show that pentecostalism lines up with quantum mechanics. Okay. Thus, nature is “en-Spirited” (103). While I have problems with his “suspended materiality” ontology, Smith makes some interesting points: miracles are not “add-ons.” They are not anti-nature, since “nature is not a discrete, autonomous entity” (104). 

Tongues 

We are considering “tongue-speech” as a liminal case in the philosophy of language (122). Exegetical discussions are important (and ultimately determinative), but we can’t enter them here. Smith wants to argue that tongues (T₁) resists our current categories of language and emerges as resistance to cultural norms. I think there is something to that.

T₁ as Phenomenology
There is a difference between signs as expression (Ausdruck) and those that do not mean anything (indications, Anzeigen). Ausdruck is important as it means something, whereas Anzeigen serves as a pointer (127, Smith is following E. Husserl). Husserl even notes that there can be signs that are not Ausdrucken nor Anzeigen. This turns on the question: can signs which do not express anything nor point to anything be modes of communication? 

As many critics of Husserl note, his account of speech links communication with intention, so he has to answer “no” to the above question. Or maybe so. What kind of speech can there be that is not bound up with inter-subjective indication? Husserl (and Augustine!) suggest the interior mental life. Thus, signs in this case would not point to what is absent. 

Tongues as Speech-Act Attack
Utterances (of any sort) are performative. While such utterance-acts do convey thoughts, sometimes their intent is far more. Let’s take tongues-speak as ecstatic, private language. What does the pray-er mean to do? We can easily point to an illocutionary act of praying in groans too deep for words. We can also see a perlocutionary act: God should act in response.

Tongues as Politics
Oh boy. Smith wants to say that tongues is a speech-act against the powers that be. I like that. I really do. I just fear that Smith is going to mislocate the powers. He begins by drawing upon neo-Marxist insights (147). However, without kowtowing fully to Marx, he does point out that Marx has yielded the historical stage to the Holy Ghost.

Tongues-speech begins as “the language of the dispossessed” (149). This, too, is a valid sociological insight. The chapter ends without Smith endorsing Marxism, which I expected him to do. While we are on a charismatic high, I will exercise my spiritual gift of Discerning the Spirits.” The reason that many 3rd World Pentecostals are “dispossessed” is because they are in countries whose leaders serve the demonic principality of Marxist-Socialism. Let’s attack that first before we get on the fashionable anti-capitalism bandwagon.

Possible Criticisms

*Smith, as is usual with most postmodernists, gets on the “narrative” bandwagon. There’s a place for that, but I think narrative is asked to carry more than it can bear. In any case, it is undeniable that Pentecostals are good storytellers. Smith wants to tie this in with epistemology, but he omits any discussion from Thomas Reid concerning testimony as basic belief, which would have strengthened his case.

Smith (rightly) applauds J. P. Moreland’s recent embrace of kingdom power, but accuses Moreland of still being a “rationalist” (6 n14, 13n26). Precisely how is Moreland wrong and what is the concrete alternative? Smith criticizes the rationalist project as “‘thinking’ on a narrow register of calculation and deduction” (54). Whom is he criticizing: Christians or non-Christians? It’s not clear, and in any case Moreland has come under fire for saying there are extra-biblical, non-empirical sources of knowledge and reality (angels, demons, etc). 

Smith then argues that all rationalities are em-bodied rationalities. That’s fine. I don’t think this threatens a Reidian/Warrant view of knowledge. Perhaps it does threaten K=JTB. I don’t know, since Smith doesn’t actually make the argument. Smith makes a good argument on the “heart’s role” in knowing, yet Moreland himself has a whole chapter on knowing and healing from the heart in The Lost Virtue of Happiness (Moreland 2006).

Smith elsewhere identifies aspects of rationality as the logics of “power, scarcity, and consumption,” (84) but I can’t think of a serious philosopher who actually espouses this. 

Elsewhere, Smith says Christian philosophy should be “Incarnational” and not simply theistic (11). What does that even mean? Does it simply mean “Begin with Jesus”? Does it mean undergirding ontology with the Incarnation, per Col. 1:17? That’s actually quite promising, but I don’t think Smith means that, either. So what does he mean?

Is Smith a coherentist? I think he is. He hints at good criticisms of secularism, but points out “that the practices and plausibility structures that sustain pentecostal (or Reformed or Catholic or Baptist or Moonie--JBA) have their own sort of ‘logic’,” a logic that allows Christians to play, too (35). But even if coherentism holds--and I grant that Smith’s account is likely true, it doesn’t prove coherentism is true. All coherentism can prove is doxastic relations among internal beliefs, but not whether these beliefs are true. Of course, Smith would probably say I am a rationalist.

In his desire to affirm materiality, Smith seems to say that any religious materiality is a good materiality. Smith approvingly notes of Felicite’s clinging to feasts and relics (36). It’s hard to see how any one “Materiality” could be bad on Smith’s account. But this bad account is juxtaposed with some good observations on the book of Acts (38) and tries to connect the two.

*Smith says that “postmodernism takes race, class, and gender seriously” because it takes the body seriously (60). This is 100% false. If facebook is a true incarnation (!) of postmodernity, may I ask how many “gender/sexual preference” options facebook has? I rest my case.

*Smith waxes eloquently on the Pentecostal “aesthetic” (80ff), which is basically a repeat of his other works, but one must ask, “How does faith come per Romans 10?”

*Smith doesn’t miss an opportunity to criticize “rationalism” for separating beliefs and faith/practice, yet Smith himself seems mighty critical of those who focus on “beliefs” in their philosophy of religion (111). Smith's attack seems ironically dualistic. Sure, most post-Descartes philosophy of religion is overly intellectual, but I do think the Reidian/Reformed Epistemology model, if wedded to Dabney’s Practical Philosophy, integrates belief and faith-practice.

It goes back to our doctrine of the soul. The soul includes both mind and will. You really can’t isolate them. Unmasking this was Dabney’s genius in Practical Philosophy (Sprinkle Publishing), pp. 3ff.