confines itself to main principles. But philosophy in Hegel's view is the notion of the whole, and its content is the principle of which nature and mind are the embodiment.[1] There are two attitudes to objects which Hegel definitely repudiates as inadequate to philosophy.[2] The first of these we may call intellectualism, the purely theoretical standpoint. From this point of view the task of knowledge is to conform to the real; we have to leave things unaltered, to refrain from imposing our subjective ends upon them: we must simply accept them as they are in themselves. This, of course, is the basis of all empiricism; and it is not without justice that empiricists, such as the English school, are charged with intellectualism.
Hegel points out, however, that we cannot rest in this attitude; the passivity which it enjoins is incompatible with the proper activity of thought. Thought is essentially universal; it cannot accept a mere datum, but must think it, and discover law and coherence in its object. We may seek earnestly to examine things disinterestedly and try to adopt a purely objective attitude to them, but thought will not permit us. Thought itself has a determinate structure and mode of functioning: we may intend to take each particular fact merely as it is and by itself, but thought insists on taking its objects not as mere particulars but as instances, and apprehends the minutest detail not merely as 'this' or 'that' but as 'such'.[3] Whether we will or not, thought leads us to centre our attention on the universal, on the law, and to put the bare fact into the background as the mere vehicle of the law. Hegel does not need to be told that reality (or experience) is richer than thought. 'The more thinking enters into imagination', he says, 'the more the particularity and immediacy of things disappears from nature. By the invasion of thought the wealth of the infinite variety of nature is depleted, its vernal growth blighted, and its colours blanched. The sound of noisy life in nature is stilled in the silence of
- ↑ V. Phenomenology, WW. II. 'Das absolute Wissen', pp. 610–12, trans, pp. 820–3.
- ↑ Of course the division may be carried much farther—the entire Phenomenology is an analysis of attitudes of which only the last is adequate. But the division indicated in the text is also Hegel's own, and is sufficiently representative for present purposes.
- ↑ V. Phenomenology, WW. II, 'Die Sinnliche Gewissheit oder das Dieses und das Meines', p. 73 ff., trans, p. 90 ff.
