Four and Twenty Minds/Chapter 8

by Giovanni Papini

VIII

HEGEL^[1]

When one reads Croce's latest book—as indeed when one reads any book by Hegel or by a Hegelian—one is confronted with a problem which is not so much philosophical as psychological. How can it be that men whom I must recognize on other grounds as being intelligent, even as being men of genius, seem to have no difficulty in understanding certain statements which to other persons who are intelligent, and are even men of genius, appear to be absolutely devoid of sense?

Consider the case which naturally comes at this moment to my mind.

Benedetto Croce is a man of great genius, and of vast and well assimilated culture. One reads his books rapidly, with pleasure, with deep interest, even when they treat of the loftiest and most difficult questions that human thought can set before itself. His critical essays are delightful: witty, frank, and erudite. Many of his incidental remarks and some of his theories compel us to recognize in him one of the broadest and most penetrating of recent Italian thinkers.

On the other hand, in view of the fact that people pay heed to what I write, I cannot deny that I am myself an intelligent man. And if I cannot go so far as to say as much of myself as I have said of Croce, the fact remains that Croce, both in public and in private, has expressed opinions of my work which do me much honor, and that in the Leonardo some time ago he referred to me as "a keen mind, quick to perceive the essential point of a problem."

How then can you explain the fact that when I read and reread Croce's book on the persistent and the transitory elements in the philosophy of Hegel, I constantly come across phrases the significance of which appears to be perfectly and immediately clear to Croce, while I on the contrary receive from them merely the impression of more or less elegant and symmetrical combinations of words which might have a certain sense if they were taken singly, but lose that sense completely when they are put together in just this way?

I am well aware of the answer that Hegelians give to those who criticize their books on this score: to understand Hegel, they say, you must read him and then reread him and then meditate on him and then consider him in relation with all his predecessors and then consider him in relation with all his followers—in short, that you must steep yourself in that atmosphere of idealistic culture in which the Hegelian philosophy was formed and developed.

But in the case of Croce's book this reply is not in point, for this book cannot demand on the part of its critics any such preparation—a preparation which, in the last analysis, would immobilize the critic for so long a period that at its close he would have to admit—either in order to avoid confessing that he had wasted his time or as a result of slow intoxication or auto-suggestion—that Hegel was a great man and that his philosophy, though perhaps in need of still further development, will remain the best of all possible philosophies. For Croce's book is intended to serve as an introduction to the Hegelian system, as the indispensable means by which one may prepare himself to read Croce's translations of the works of Hegel. In other words, his book must stand or fall on its own merits; and if it is to attain the purpose for which it was written, it must be intelligible even to one who has not seen the title-pages of the Phenomenology of the Spirit and the Logic.

I know that Croce and his parrots are fond of saying that men who do not or will not read Hegel are intellectually lazy. The accusation would be in point if the men in question, while not studying Hegel, did not study any one else either. But Croce knows that the men in question spend the time saved by neglecting the Encyclopedia of Philosophic Science not at the billiard table, but in reading and in studying other books which may be as difficult and exhausting as those of Hegel—and more fruitful.

Indeed, we may well apply to philosophers what Jesus said of trees: "By their fruits ye shall know them." There are men who have spent a great part of their lives in the endeavor to read and understand Hegel. And if the writings of these men appear, as they usually do appear, to be pedantic, obscure, and meaningless, then I have reason to suspect that the reading of Hegel is no such elixir of philosophic life as it is claimed to be, and I may well prefer to study the malady in others rather than to expose myself to the infection.

William James compared Hegehanism to a mouse-trap. It reminds me rather of the fable of the sick lion who could not leave his tent to hunt other beasts, and had therefore commissioned the fox to bring the other beasts to see him, so that he might devour them at his convenience. The gracious invitation was given to the ass, among others; but when that wise creature came to the threshold of the lion's den he observed that the ground bore many prints of feet that had entered in, but none of feet that had come out—and he turned back. The ass was always a philosophic beast: witness Buridan and Bruno!

Croce's book makes it unnecessary for us—for the moment at least—to enter the trap, or the den, since it is supposed, as I have said, to be intelligible without previous reading of Hegel, and since it is at the same time a select sample of the products of the Neapolitan branch of Hegel & Co.

Let us see, then, what there is that we may regard as significant and as valid in those elements of Hegel's philosophy which, according to Croce, still persist. Some time ago, in an article in the Critica entitled Are We Hegelians? Croce besought for his favorite philosopher at least a definitive burial, a first-class funeral. For my part, I am quite willing to drive a few more nails into the coffin.

I

The two great merits of Hegel, according to his latest champion, are these: that he demonstrated the existence of a method peculiar to philosophy and different from the methods of art or the physical and mathematical sciences; and that he formulated that dialectic (the co-existence of contraries or the identity of opposites) which was already implicit in certain earlier philosophers, and was indeed foretokened in a general way by the whole course of philosophy.

Philosophy, then, differs from all other products of the human mind in that it concerns itself with concepts which are universal and concrete, unlike the intuitions of art, the ecstasies of mysticism, or the representative generalities of science.

Certain objections are, however, to be brought against Croce's thesis that philosophy must perforce have a method of its own since the other activities of the human spirit (mathematics, natural science, history, art, economics, ethics) have each its own method. In the first place, the methods of the several other activities which he enumerates are not entirely distinct, since mathematical methods are employed in natural science, artistic methods in history, naturalistic or mathematical methods in economics, and so on. Clearly, then, it is by no means true that each particular discipline has always its own specific method.

Furthermore, Croce does not discuss, and apparently has not even considered, a hypothesis which is perfectly possible and in my opinion altogether probable: the hypothesis that philosophy may fairly be considered as consisting of those problems which concern several sciences at the same time, which are, as it were, crossroads or neutral zones of two or three or more sciences—in which case philosophy might well be content with the methods employed in mathematics and in the natural sciences.

But I prefer to turn to the question whether the method which Hegel and Croce attribute to philosophy has any real value in itself, and whether, if so, it is really unlike the other methods.

We must try, then, to understand this "philosophic thinking" which is different from all other activities of the mind, and which is one of those things against which—so Croce writes—"rebellion seems to me impossible, though I recognize that they should be taught more and more widely, since they constitute, as it were, the neglected a b c oi philosophy." But this a b c is by no means easy to understand, even when one brings to the task, as I have done, the utmost resolution and good will.

When I am told that philosophy is concerned with concepts, that is to say, with abstract notions and not with particular representations or personal sentiments, I can understand perfectly well; but when I am told that these concepts are not general concepts like those of science, but universal concepts, then I am lost. For if the term "universal concept" does not indicate, just as the term "general concept" does, certain qualities common to a definite and limited class of objects, what then can it indicate? The most probable explanation, to my mind, is that Croce gives the name "universal" to a certain number of general concepts which are distinguished from the concepts of the experimental sciences merely in that they have frequently been the object of study of certain men called philosophers. In this case the distinction would be merely apparent, or rather, would be historical rather than logical. But Croce certainly would not admit this interpretation, which, I must confess, reveals a lack of confidence in his analytical ability. I am compelled, therefore, to seek for some interpretation which might justify, at least to Croce's eyes, the establishment of a distinction between general concepts and universal concepts.

Croce's method, as all who have read his books are well aware, is primarily a process of elimination. He is careful to tell us that x is neither a nor b nor c, but he does not take the trouble to tell us what x really is. In the case in question he asserts that the universal concept is not the general concept—that is all. Since he does not even go on to say what a general concept is, we are justified in assuming that he is using the term "general concept" in its ordinary sense, that is, as a term indicating one or more characteristics common to a certain class of objects.

Now since Croce is endeavoring to establish a contrast between the universal concept and the general concept, the question naturally arises whether the term "universal concept" is intended to indicate one or more characteristics common to all objects. Croce does not explicitly state that this is his meaning; but this appears nevertheless to be the only interpretation that could justify the distinction.

But are there really characteristics common to all objects? There would seem to be two, and only two: first, the fact that these objects are known by us; second, the fact that these objects differ from each other. But these two characteristics may evidently be reduced to one single characteristic, namely, the fact of "being." For we predicate being of those things which we know, directly or indirectly; and we know things only in so far as they differ from each other, since complete and homogeneous unity would be tantamount to unknowability—that is, so far as we are concerned, to non-existence, or "not-being."

The diversity of objects and their resultant knowability mean then only this: that the objects exist. "Being" would then seem to be the only "universal concept" in the supposedly Crocean sense. And its very uniqueness deprives it of real value: for a concept has meaning only in so far as it may be distinguished from other concepts, whereas in this case we cannot conceive of anything which, through the very fact of being conceived, is non-existent. "Not-being" is unthinkable, and cannot serve therefore to help us to understand "being"—which is itself unthinkable, since there is nothing with which we can contrast it.

Now Hegel, according to Croce, admits that the concepts of "being" and "not-being" have no meaning if taken separately, and asserts that they acquire significance when they are united in the concept of "becoming." But even when the two concepts are brought together they do not succeed in throwing light on each other, since a condition precedent to their having a joint meaning would be the previous and independent possession of meaning by one or the other. The blind cannot lead the blind.

Even the concept of "becoming," the delight of the Hegelians, the reflector (to their minds) which illumines those two poor concepts of "being" and "not-being" which remain obscure until they are transcended—even the concept of "becoming" appears on careful examination to be merely a disguise for the concept of "being." "Becoming" implies motion, change, diversity in time. To say that the world becomes amounts to saying that changes take place in the world (regularly or sporadically), and that in consequence things which had certain characteristics at a certain moment have different characteristics at a later moment. We are therefore dealing with diversity—that is to say, with the fundamental condition of knowability, which, as we have seen, is nothing other than "being."

Nor does the idea of "not-being" help us out, for in all changes nothing is really lost. We simply have different impressions, one after the other. There is no reason to think that something has been annihilated merely because my sensations change from moment to moment while my attention is fixed on a given point in space, any more than there is reason to think that something has been annihilated merely because I receive different impressions from moment to moment when looking through a window of a moving train.

The only difference is that in the case of concepts we may turn back and see again just what we saw before—which we cannot do in the case of time. But the fact that you can't buy return tickets in time is no reason for believing that annihilation has taken place. Chemistry, moreover, offers us plenty of cases in which the union of elements produces a substance which differs from any one of the component elements, and will yield those elements again through analysis.

The concept of "becoming" is then an element of the concept of "being," and is not something which transcends that concept by uniting to it the concept of "not-being." And if, as I believe, the concept of "being" is the only "universal" concept, then philosophy is in a sorry plight indeed, since it has as the field of its labors just one concept. A single concept would not in any case suffice for the building of a system—and this particular concept is meaningless.

For Hegel himself, after saying that the concept must be universal, proceeds, even when he claims to be writing philosophy, to deal with concepts which are not in the least universal. In the Logic, for instance, he speaks of quality, measure, force, and matter—of concepts, that is, which evidently are not universal concepts, since according to Hegel himself they do not concern all reality or any characteristic of all reality. Even philosophers, then, must have recourse to the "general" concepts that obtain in the experimental sciences.

And Croce himself, when he draws up a list of opposites, is compelled to cite the "good" and the "evil," the "true" and the "false," the "beautiful" and the "ugly," which are certainly not universal concepts, since not all things are beautiful, nor are all affirmations false, nor all actions good. Philosophers then, even when they have had the privilege of reading Hegel, use either words which are devoid of sense, or concepts as general as those of the poor everyday scientist.

But the philosophic concept, as we have seen, is to be distinguished from the pseudo-concepts of science not only by its universality, but also by its concreteness. It is concrete: that is to say, "it does not consist of arbitrary abstractions: it is not a petrifaction of reality, but a summary of reality in all its richness and fullness. Philosophical abstractions are necessary, and are therefore adequate to reality, and do not mutilate or falsify it."

But in this case the word concrete is evidently to be taken in some sense other than the ordinary sense, and cannot mean "something tangible and existent," for if it did, then the individual sciences would also be concrete. It must then indicate something complete and adequate to reality. Scientific concepts impoverish reality, and the philosopher, it would seem, represents reality entire.

Supposing that he does, how does he do it? By means of words so general and so vague ("becoming," for example) that whatsoever occurs and whatsoever exists is of necessity comprised therein. If to be complete is to find words which have so vast an extension as to comprise everything, then the most complete description of the world would be: "Things exist." Such a formula omits nothing—but at the same time it tells us nothing. A reporter describing a crowd at the races cites the names of only a few of those present, and thereby impoverishes reality. If a philosopher referring to the same scene should state that at a given point there were a certain number of men and women, his statement would be more complete, but at the same time more indefinite. The highest completeness is then equal to the highest indefiniteness. And we naturally prefer to be told a few specific facts rather than listen to a man who pretends to tell us everything, but gives us no information. Completeness may be achieved with a single word, but where then is the richness and the fullness we were promised?

Nor can I make out what Croce means by indicating that the philosophic concept is adequate to reality. Certainly not that it is identical with or similar to the reality with which it deals, for a book on botany is not a forest, and a book on philosophy is not the world. Perhaps then knowledge "adequate to reality" is such knowledge as will enable me to recognize things of which I have been told, to foresee them and thus to control them.

Upon this basis chemistry may fairly be called a science adequate to reality. For if I read a description of platinum, and thereafter find myself in possession of a piece of platinum, I am able to determine that it is platinum; and I know that if I fuse a certain quantity of chloride with a certain quantity of mercury, I shall obtain another substance which will have characteristics more or less similar to those of chloride and mercury, and may serve for certain definite purposes.

In philosophy, however, we find no such conditions. No one has ever met a concept on the street—though Hegel says that ideas have legs. A concept must be derived, by thought, from a particular object, or particular objects; and it has often happened, as the whole history of science and philosophy bears witness, that a single object has given rise to very different concepts. Furthermore, the concepts of philosophy do not even enable us to foresee. If I should be converted tomorrow to Hegelianism, none of my anticipations would be changed; I should merely experience certain intellectual emotions somewhat different in character from those I now experience. It has been said many a time that the rabid Berkeleyite, even though he believes that the world is composed exclusively of spiritual phenomena, is just as careful as any materialist to avoid running into a wall.

This first analysis, then, has served to show that the "philosophic concept" is either unthinkable or is a general concept like the rest; that it is complete only by virtue of giving no information; and that it is in no sense adequate to reality.

There remains the famous dialectic of Hegel—but to this I shall return later on, attempting to give it a sense which is certainly not that desired by Hegel nor that intended by Croce. For the moment I wish to turn to the problem which I suggested at the start. We have seen that Hegelianism has no comprehensible intellectual content: what then is its emotional content, what is its moral significance?

II

The phenomenon of Hegelianism will constitute one of the most important problems in that study of the comparative psychology of philosophers which some one will eventually initiate.

What are the states of consciousness of those who read or write Hegelian phrases? What are the sentiments or the needs which have caused the rise and development of philosophies of the Hegelian type? For it does not suffice to say that the books of Hegel and his disciples are for the most part composed of meaningless phrases which many persons, through habit, through imitation, or through lack of analytical ability, think that they comprehend. If, as I believe, those phrases have no valid theoretical significance, they must have an emotional or an æsthetic or a moral significance, and it must be possible to determine and describe this significance at least approximately.

Among the non-philosophic elements which enter into Hegelian philosophy, the æsthetic element certainly holds the first place. I am convinced that there is a rhetoric of conceits as well as a rhetoric of imagery, and that philosophy, like poetry, has its préciosité and its Symbolism. Just as there are orators who attain astonishing popularity by dint of putting together bombastic and resonant phrases in which heterogeneous words—mingled more or less at random and strained beyond their ordinary meaning—serve to lead up to impressive moral or patriotic or humanitarian tirades, so there are philosophers who win an extraordinary degree of influence in certain minds by mixing together great words of uncertain significance and mysterious color, arranging them in symmetrical schemes and in elegant combinations, and making reversible charades or impressive phrases broken here and there by a noisy outburst of metaphysics. When you read that a syllogism is "the essence of logic meeting with itself," that the "negative is also positive, positive in the very fact of its being negative," that "the unreal has its own reality, which is to be sure the reality of the unreal: the reality of 'not-being' in the dialectic triad, of that 'not-being' which is not real, but is the stimulus of the real," you experience an æsthetic pleasure which is different from that of poetry, but is none the less unmistakable, though it has as yet no name. A similar pleasure is to be derived from the unexpected and sometimes grotesque comparisons of the Hegelians, which recall the famous metaphors of the decadent lyrists of the seventeenth century. A similar pleasure comes also from the sort of musical and suggestive rhythm which appears in certain pretentious and meaningless phrases. There are pages of Hegel which have in the field of thought the same effect that the sonnets of Mallarmé have in the field of poetry. They are instruments of evocation and of indefinite, sentimental suggestiveness—and they are nothing more. That does not lessen their value; it may even increase it. But verbal narcotics and hypnotic formulas are not to be imposed on us as truths.

The sentimental states most readily produced by the books of Hegel are pride, mystic ecstasy, and the sense of motion. The sense of motion certainly pervades Hegelian philosophy, and despite deficiencies in logical expression has certainly contributed to its popularity. The thinkers of Hegel's day were a little weary of static systems, of fixed and motionless metaphysics, of the cold classifications and distinctions of traditional philosophy, and they felt the need of a start, a run, a crack of the whip. The philosophy of Hegel, even in the manner of its utterance, brought this sense of motion, of change, of development. The Hegelian world is rather a promenade for the Idea than a stationary piece of furniture full of drawers and pigeonholes.

Men were beginning just then to acquire that love of motion and speed which has today reached the point of frenzy; and we have Hegel to thank for starting the reaction against the immobility of the old regime in philosophy, just as Darwin started it, a little later, in biology.

But Hegelianism is not to be wholly accounted for by the satisfaction which it gives to such sentiments. Its success has been due to other causes as well, and in particular to moral causes. It satisfies the need which men have always felt for the creation of a world sui generis, located beyond and above the world of sense and of science, exempt by its very nature from the attacks of criticism and the denials of experience, a world wherein one may give free play to beliefs and sentiments of every sort. These metaphysical worlds of the philosophers have in the city of thought the same function that cathedrals had in the Middle Ages: they enjoy the right of asylum. For when a man who has sinned in the presence of science or experience takes refuge in such a world, its prelates cover him with the mantle of philosophy, and save not only his life, but his reputation.

III

In speaking thus of the philosophic concept—the Isis, the Phœnix, and the Veiled Prophet of Hegelianism—I have by implication criticized the Hegelian dialectic as well, since this dialectic feeds only on these particular concepts. But the dialectic may also be attacked directly, and without recourse to the notion of the inconceivable. The worst absurdity that lurks in the dialectic seems to be this: while the Hegelians boast that by means of their dialectic they can transcend antitheses and can thus attain the unity and homogeneity of the world (Croce affirms that Hegel justifies the saying of Goethe that the world is all of a piece, without kernel and without bark), they start off by accepting as actual and as justified many of the very antitheses which they seek thereafter to transcend. Now anyone who tries to reconcile two persons bears witness, by that very action, that they are in disagreement; while in the case of concepts we have to deal not always with actual antitheses, but often with different expressions of the same idea, or with concepts which are different but not necessarily antithetic.

Croce, to be sure, bases his criticism of Hegel upon what he regards as Hegel's confusion between the relationship of antithetic entities and the relationship of different entities—for Hegel, according to Croce, applies to the latter relationship a procedure which is valid only for the former. Yet Croce himself accepts as antithetic certain concepts which are merely different formulations of one basic concept. In his account of the problem of antitheses in the history of philosophy, for instance, he regards as antithetic the materialists, considered as the representative monists, and the spiritualists, considered as the representative dualists: whereas everyone knows that there have been materialists who were also pluralists (some of the pre-Socratics, for example), and spiritualists who were also monists (Berkeley, for example). The Hegelians, in short, are too ready to consider certain concepts as antithetic, and then to make valiant efforts to reconcile antitheses which needed only to be unmasked.

But disregarding these matters of method, for which the Hegelian mind has no liking, it is difficult in any case to accept the Hegelian dialectic as a metaphysical explanation of the world. If Hegel had limited himself to the introduction of the idea of motion into our conception of the universe, all would have been well; but when he attempts to represent the marche des choses as a pursuit of antitheses and of syntheses which give way to new antitheses, transcended in their turn by new syntheses—and so on in rhythmic perpetuity—we cannot help wondering that men of genius, including Hegel himself, should really have believed that the world was made in such a fashion, by dint of the actions and reactions of abstract concepts. For we must remind ourselves once in a while that the mere attribution of the adjective concrete to an ethereal abstraction and the mere assertion that the range of certain concepts represents the whole of reality do not suffice to prove that one is actually dealing with real and concrete things. It is easy enough to give a name to a thing, but it remains to be seen whether the thing really possesses the characteristics indicated by the name. I may affirm that The Tempest is a historical comedy: but that affirmation does not turn Prospero, Ariel, and Caliban into historical characters. The Hegelians have too much faith in the magic power of the word; and when they have filled their mouths with those words which most readily inspire the confidence of the populace (real, concrete, true, etc.), they really think that they have bestowed upon their theories the qualities which those words indicate. In this respect the Hegelians are very like the positivists. What a mass of absurd theses and superficial generalizations people have been made to swallow without question, just because they were labeled positive, scientific, or mathematical!

But I am forgetting my purpose, which consists not so much in attempting a criticism of the Hegelian dialectic—which would hardly be possible save for those who are ready to deal in majestic and confused phrases and to fabricate rebuses of the same sort—as in attempting to discover in it some reasonable meaning. By way of making amends for my delay, I will be generous: instead of suggesting one meaning I will offer two, and the Hegelians may take their choice.

My first interpretation is this. The Hegelian dialectic is a logical reaction (masked as a metaphysical reaction) against the false distinctions of scholasticism and of traditional philosophy in general; it is a paradoxical defense against those who have sought to stop the course of thought by putting insistent dilemmas in its way. Hegelianism, then, in the presence of false distinctions, has sought to fuse and to mingle at all costs, in such a way as to produce confusions which in their turn require new distinctions, presumably better than the old ones. Hegelianism is in a certain sense the declaration of our right to disregard apparent antinomies. To those who say "either this or that" Hegelianism replies "both this and that." Hegel represents the warfare of the and's against the or's, the point of view of those who instead of "cutting off the bull's head" prefer simply to cut off his horns. There have been false antinomies in all the sciences (heavy and light, terrestrial and celestial, for instance), and scientists have removed them one by one. Hegel, instead of performing the same task in the field of philosophy by a direct criticism of false philosophic antinomies, chose the form of metaphysics, and was led on by his enthusiasm to give the appearance of a system of reality to what was in fact merely a correction of method.

And if you do not like my first interpretation, here is my second. The Hegelian dialectic is a sort of historic law, a theory of the manner in which social forms or scientific theories succeed each other. It amounts to saying this: that an exaggerated assertion is usually succeeded by an assertion which exaggerates in the opposite direction, without regard to the restrictions which in part justify the original assertion; and that these two contrary assertions then give place to a third, which takes account of the modicum of truth contained in each of the first two, and consolidates them by reestablishing the tacit restrictions and suppressing the exaggerations. It amounts, in short, to saying that it takes two opposite errors to establish a truth. This generalization, which could be amply instanced, is of the same order as Comte's law of the three states, and constitutes a similarity between Hegelianism and positivism. Both of these laws, though they refer to entirely different classes of facts, simplify to a high degree; but roughly, and within certain limits, they do represent the movement of the history of ideas. They afford material, then, rather for the psychology of philosophers or of scientists than for philosophy itself, as the Hegelians would have us believe.

In short, the choice lies between the hypothesis that the Hegelian dialectic is a disguised logical reaction, and the hypothesis that it is a historic law. In the first case Hegel assumes the semblance of a pragmatist; in the second case he is linked with the positivists. Let the Hegelians choose.

1. Written à propos of Benedetto Croce's Ciò ch' è vivo e ciò ch' è morto nella filosofia di Hegel ("What is Living and What is Dead of the Philosophy of Hegel"), Bari, 1906.