A. Observing Reason

On the level of observation, reason again traverses the terrain of sense-certainty and perception, this time from the perspective of human being. If to know is to grasp the cognitive object through reason, then the subject must "find" itself in its object. It does so through concepts that transform what is given in sensory experience into ideas that capture its essence.

The exposition begins with description that picks out essential properties, then turns to explanation that formulates scientific laws, or hypotheses explaining what is given in experience. Laws describe the inorganic sphere, but not the organic sphere, where we need to appeal to ends, that is, to purpose, or immanent teleology. Since reason cannot find laws for organic nature, it turns inward toward the self. For Hegel, the logical laws of thought, the contemporary form of psychologistic logic, represent form without matter. He turns next to empirical psychology, in short, everything concerning the empirical study of the soul. He then considers physiognomy and phrenology, two contemporary pseudosciences, before finally going on to consider practical life in society.

The examination of reason begins through study of the spectator view of the cognitive subject, in Descartes's words "with man because

he is the spectator of all."6 Descartes analyzes knowledge through a conception of the subject as passive that merely observes what is. Hegel rejects this view in favor of a conception of the subject that knows what is is itself, or rational, and looks for reason, or itself, in otherness. The Hegelian subject "seeks its 'other', knowing that therein it possesses nothing else but itself: it seeks only its own infinitude" (§240, 146). Reason seeks itself everywhere in the world. The fulfillment of this enterprise demands the fulfillment of reason itself in the chapters on spirit and absolute knowing. The chapter on reason treats its less developed forms.

Observation, the first and least developed form of reason, is initially abstract, "only dimly aware of its presence in the actual world" (§341, 146). It presupposes an opposition between the observer, or pure subject that passively records what is given, and the object as a pure given. As in "Sense-Certainty," Hegel again refuses the idea of immediate knowledge on the grounds that knowledge is always mediate, or mediated by the cognitive subject. The idea that we truly apprehend the way things are as opposed to the way they appear is a mere fiction. For intellectual apprehension "transforms thought into the form of being, or being into the form of thought" (§242, 147). Yet in coming to know what things are through observation, we come also to know "what consciousness is in itself" (§242, 147*).

The exposition of observational reason is only the initial phase of a long investigation leading to the result that "what consciousness is in itself will become explicit for it" (§242, 147). This investigation will end only when in the chapter on spirit we comprehend that the real subject, or human being, is spirit. The lengthy section "Observing Reason" offers detailed study of nature, then of spirit, then of their relation.

The interest of this section is heightened by the disputed question of Hegel's grasp of natural science. His unusually severe criticism of Newton, which cannot merely be explained away, is sometimes seen as following from an insufficient background in natural science. Alone among the great German idealists, Fichte, who typically insisted on the scientific status of philosophy in the various versions of his Wissenschaftslehre, had virtually no knowledge of natural science. Schelling wrote extensively on this topic.7 Although not as directly versed in the science of the day as Kant,8 who made important contributions to cosmology, Hegel knew a good deal about natural science,9 enough so that some of his closest students regard his theory of nature as still one of the most important aspects of his theory.10 His grasp of contemporary

science and pseudoscience is apparent in remarks on natural science, psychology, and the pseudosciences of physiognomy and phrenology.

a. Observation of Nature

Since much of the factual material on which Hegel relied in composing this section is dated and his remarks on it often seem strained, we can go quickly. In fairness to Hegel, we should note that when he was writing, the effort to provide a scientific classification of the plant and animal world, to which much is owed to Linnaeus (Carl von Linné, 1707-1778), was very recent.

He notes, to begin with, that a cognitive approach dependent on observation and experience overlooks two essential points. On the one hand, the subject shapes what it observes or experiences. In siding with Kant against the British empiricists, followers of Locke, Hegel rejects the general effort to base a theory of knowledge on a pure given that, if Hegel is correct, is never experienced. For perception is always "of a universal, not of a sensuous particular" (§244, 147). On the other hand, experience can yield knowledge only if what is given in experience is not a sensuous this, as in sense-certainty, but a universal. By "universal" he means in the first instance mere identity, or "only what remains identical with itself" (§245, 147). Observation isolates one or more universals instantiated in a single object. Although there is no end of observations to be made, what we find is "merely the bounds of Nature and of its own activity" (§245, 148).

For Hegel, there are natural dividing lines within the world as experienced. Observation picks out what stands out as saliencies in nature. This claim is startling from someone who in effect holds that what we see depends on the perspective we adopt. There is a further difficulty in grasping the natural saliencies to which he is committed. Hegel adopts a pre-Darwinian perspective, opposed to evolution.11"Differentiae are supposed, not merely to have an essential connection with cognition, but also to accord with the essential characteristics of things, and our artificial system is supposed to accord with Nature's own system and to express only this" (§246, 149). Since he has no sense of natural variation, he is at a loss to explain the origin of such species-specific distinctions as claws or teeth. He maintains that approaches that regard the objects as invariant are confuted "by instances which rob it of every determination, invalidate the universality to which it had risen, and reduce it to an observation and description which is devoid of thought" (§247, 150). But this difficulty occurs in any conceptual scheme.

Moving on to a higher form of classification, he returns to the very idea of law that he has previously criticized in Newtonian mechanics. He points out that "law and the concept of the determinateness" (§248, 151*), whose truth is experientially illustrated, describe the behavior of observable phenomena. In a famous remark in the Philosophy of Right, he later asserts that the rational is the actual, and conversely.12 Anticipating this passage, he optimistically asserts that in nature what is is as it should be: "What is universally valid is also universally in force [geltend]; what ought to be, in fact also is" (§249, 151*).

His difficulty in integrating modern science into his philosophy is apparent in a remark about Galileo's law of falling bodies. He depicts this law as following by analogy, today we would say through induction, from the observation of many cases. The limitation of this approach lies in the fact that in each observation we deal only with a single instance, "for universality is present only as a simple immediate universality" (§250, 152). But the reasonable alternative is unclear.

Hegel attributes an exaggerated role to induction, the basis of Johannes Kepler's laws, in the rise of the new science. Galileo, Newton, and others did not found classical mechanics through induction at all. It is more likely that the rise of the new science was due to the imaginative reconstruction of an ideal.13 Hegel obscurely claims that we need to "find the pure conditions of the law" (§251, 153). To do this, we convert it into a concept through freeing it from specific things. Matter, he says, is "being in the form of a univeral, or in the form of a Concept" (§252, 134*). And the result of the experimental subject, its own object, is "pure law" (§253, 154) that is independent of sensuous being.

After these preliminary remarks, Hegel turns to the difference between organic and inorganic nature. His convoluted argument would have been more convincing had it been shorter and simpler. He depicts an organism as instable, as "this absolute fluidity in which the determinateness, through which it would be only for an other, is dissolved" (§254, 154). In organic being, the different properties are related within "the organic simple unity" (§254, 154). Apparently thinking of Montesquieu, who correlates law with climate,14 he notes that general laws, such as the correlation of "thick, hairy pelts" with "Northern latitudes," lack explanatory power, since they fail "to do justice to the manifold diversity of organic nature" (§255, 155*).

Kant invokes purpose as a merely regulative idea that, although not constitutive of nature, enables us to study it.15 On the contrary, for Hegel organism must be understood through an intrinsic end (Zweck), or internal teleology, or again a drive for self-preservation that is con-

stitutive of its being. Even if the end is not expressed, the organism "contains it" (§256, 156*). Like such later vitalists as Henri Bergson,16 he attributes purpose directly to organic nature. "The notion of End, then, to which Reason in its role of observer rises, is a Concept of which it is aware; but it is also no less present as something actual, and it is not an external relation of the latter, but its essence" (§257, 156*). The end immanent to the organism is known through reason that "finds only Reason itself" (§258, 137). Conversely, the organism "preserves itself" (§259, 138) through the immanent end. Hegel rejects the idea of biological law in observing that self-preservation is "lawless [gesetzlos]" (§260, 159*).

Hegel did not anticipate the sophistication of modern biology and related fields. He contends that observation can know inorganic phenomena, but it cannot know organic phenomena whose "inner movement . . . can only be grasped as Concept" (§261,159*). The dualistic approach to organism typically relates what is given in observation and what is imputed in thought as the invisible end through a law "that the outer is the expression of the inner" (§262, 160). This law posits that the inner and the outer are linked through "the organic essence [Wesen]" (§263, 160*).

Hegel floridly describes the inner as "the simple, unitary soul, the pure Concept of End or the universal, which in its partition equally remains a universal fluidity" (§265, 160). Its most basic organic properties are sensibility, irritability, and reproduction that directly derive "from the concept of 'end-in-itself'" (§266, 161*). Such properties manifest themselves outwardly as "shape" and inwardly as "organic systems" (§267, 161), or again as "part of the organic structure" and as "universal fluid determinateness which pervades all those systems" (§268, 161). We can observe either the outer or the inner functioning of the organism through laws, but not the relation between the inner and the outer through a third kind of law. Such laws cannot be formulated, since "the conception of laws of this kind proves to have no truth" (§269, 162).

For Hegel, who holds that laws can only be invoked to describe things that do not change, we cannot use laws in the realm of biological phenomena. His language is typically complex, but the point is simple enough.

We found that a law existed when the relation was such that the universal organic property in an organic system had made itself into a Thing, and in this Thing had a structured copy [gestalteten Abdruck] of itself, so that both were the same essence, present in the one case as a universal moment, and in the other, as a Thing. (§270, 162*)

Hegel now enumerates a number of difficulties that prevent the formulation of biological laws. To begin with, there are the qualitative distinctions between concepts that are instantiated as quantitative distinctions. This leads to merely formal laws that increasingly lose sight of content. Reproduction, which is unlike sensibility and irritability, cannot be related to such laws. Another difficulty is that laws are formulated conceptually, hence in a priori fashion, but the differences in question are derived from observation. Yet to take the fundamental properties as merely observational in character means that they lose their biological specificity, and "sink to the level of common properties" (§725, 165).

Observation only reaches the basic properties of organism in the form of externality that fails to grasp the dynamic aspect proper to life. Yet when living processes become anatomy, "the moments have really ceased to be, for they cease to be processes" (§276, 166). Since on the basis of the fundamental biological properties "a law of being" (§277, 166) cannot be formulated, Hegel rejects the very possibility of biological laws. "In this way the formulation [Vorstellung] of a law in the case of organic being is altogether lost" (§278, 167*).

As concerns biological phenomena, we possess general conceptions that cannot be confirmed. For there are no fixed objects, or "such inert aspects as are required for the law" (§279, 168). The link in question is inaccessible to observation, since the organism "displays its essential determinateness only as the flux [Wechsel] of existent determinateness" (§280, 168*). Now sounding like Bergson, for whom the intellect distorts,17 he says that the perceptual object has the "character of a fixed determinateness" (§281, 169). To say, for instance, that "'an animal with strong muscles' " is " 'an animal organism of high sensibility' " is to translate "sensuous facts into Latin, and a bad Latin at that, instead of into the Concept" (§282, 169*). Similarly, quantity, which is measured by number, cannot be equated with quality.

Hegel now considers "the outer aspect of organic being" (§283, 170). This is, to begin with, "structured shape" (§284, 170) that mediates between other things, or inorganic nature, and the organic nature it manifests, in respect to which "it is for itself and reflected into itself" (§285, 170). The inner and the outer are incommensurable since "number" fails to connect with organic life, "the living elements of instincts, manner of life, and other aspects of sensuous existence" (§286, 172). For the mere "shape" is not "organic being" (§286, 172). Perhaps misusing a scientific concept to mean "essence," he maintains that the "inner aspect of shape as the simple singularity of an inorganic thing is

specific gravity" (§288, 172), which, since it is undifferentiated, "does not have difference within itself" (§289, 173). The other aspect of the inorganic is "ordinary cohesion" (§290, 173). that is measured by number.

There is a basic dissimilarity between inorganic and organic entities. Unlike an inorganic thing, a biological being contains within itself its own principle, or its "true universality" that is "an inner essence" (§292, 177). Again invoking the idea of a syllogism, Hegel describes organic being as the middle term between the extremes of "universal life," or the "genus," and "the single individual" (§293, 177). He remarks obscurely that genus "divides itself into species on the basis of the general determinateness of number" (§294, 178). Rational observation relates to life on a general level that has no rational principle of order. For "life in general . . . in its differentiating process does not actually possess any rational ordering and arrangement of parts" (§295, 178). This claim apparently conflicts with what is now believed about the biological basis of reproduction. Rational observation can make no more than very general claims about "universal life as such," or "the form of systems distinguished quite generally" (§296, 179). Consistent with his view that language refers generally but cannot name the single thing, Hegel remarks that "observing Reason only has in mind the thing as its meaning [das Meinen]" (§297, 179*).

b. Observation of Self-Consciousness in its Purity and in its Relation to External Actuality: Logical and Psychological Laws

Hegel restricts biological explanation to mere surface observation. He does not, for instance, consider the complex, homeostatic nature of organisms studied in contemporary biology. Yet his contention that psychological phenomena cannot be explained through physical laws remains surprisingly contemporary. It foreshadows recent reactions against reductionist programs in analytic philosophy of science that are typically directed to explaining, say, biological or psychological phenomena in terms of physics.18 If even biology depends on laws, although laws different from anything we find in physics, depending on how we understand Hegel's argument it counts even against the possibility of biological explanation.

A similar remark is appropriate for his views of psychology and the

contemporary pseudosciences physiognomy and phrenology, where he also resists scientific reductionism in any form. As for his remarks on other natural sciences, Hegel's very brief comments on psychology must be understood in the context of what was known when he was writing. His approach to psychology here is later worked out in more detail in the Encyclopedia?19

As usual, he begins with a summary of what he thinks he has just shown. Now linking observation of the object to that of the subject, he suggests that the interest of psychological observation lies in the way that general concepts and individuality coincide when the subject takes itself as its observational object. "Observation finds this free Concept, whose universality contains just as absolutely developed within it developed individuality, only in the Concept which itself exists as Concept, or in self-consciousness" (§298, 180*).

As was common in his day, Hegel approaches psychology through the "Laws of Thought' (§299, 180). Such laws are abstract, hence untrue, since they have no content other than themselves. Their observational content is what merely is, "a merely existent content" (§300, 181*). Observation inverts (verkehrt) the object it grasps through laws. What it should grasp is the actuality of individuality that lies, not in such laws, but in "acting [tuendes] consciousness" (§301, 181*). This suggests "a new field of psychological study, or how the conscious person really acts, including not only personal habits, but also universal, or ethical action, or the acting actuality of consciousness [handelnden Wirklichkeit des Bewußtseins] (§302, 182*). Hegel, who regards the cognitive subject as a real human being, devotes extensive attention to practical action later on in "Reason" and in "Spirit."

Observational psychology will concern all these many "faculties, inclinations, and passions" (§303, 182). Observational psychology is concerned with noting the various faculties, inclinations, and so on, and in relating them in a unitary conception of the person, "the actual individuality" (§304, 183). Its laws bring together human individuality with the various circumstances in which it occurs. "Now, the law of this relation of the two sides would have to state the kind of effect and influence exerted on the individuality by these specific circumstances" (§306, 183). Obviously, a person becomes a particular individual in particular circumstances. Since there is no way of inferring from particular circumstances to what an individual will or will not do," 'psychological necessity' " is "an empty phrase, so empty that there exists the absolute possibility that what is supposed to have had this influence could just

as well not have had it" (§307, 185*). We cannot understand the relation between a particular human being, or "being which would be in and for itself"  (§ 308, 185), and laws. Like other biological phenomena, human individuality cannot be captured in terms of a law, since "psychological observation discovers no law for the relation of self-consciousness to actuality, or to the world over against it" (§309, 185).

c. Observation of the Relation of Self-Consciousness to its Immediate Actuality: Physiognomy and Phrenology

This very brief discussion of psychology shows that, taken as an object for study, a human individual cannot be grasped through the laws of thought or through any other laws. This is consistent with the wider claim that laws do not apply to organic phenomena. Hegel now applies this lesson in some detail, and with unusual clarity, to efforts to do just this in two contemporary pseudosciences.

Physiognomy and phrenology were devoted to the study of human being through external appearance. Physiognomy, the study of human individuality through the forms and movement of a person's face and figure, and phrenology, a similar effort with respect to the bumps and hollows of skull bones, were due respectively to J. C. Lavater and Franz Joseph Gall. Lavater was a friend of Goethe, whom he influenced.20 Hegel, who holds that organism cannot be described through laws, refutes reductive approaches intended to reduce complex phenomena to their components. His target here is not the reduction of biology or psychology to physics21 but rather what is now known in philosophy of mind as the materialist reduction of the mind to the brain, roughly the replacement of any discussion of the mind by discussion of the brain.22

The claim that there is no law governing the relation of "self-consciousness to actuality" now reappears in the study of "individuality" (§310, 185). One possibility is to take the body as a "sign [Zeichen]" (§311, 186*) of the individual. Once again, the problem is to grasp the relation of the inner and the outer, beginning with the outer as making visible the inner. "This outer, in the first place, acts only as an organ in making the inner visible or, in general, a being-for-another" (§312, 187). In principle, if this relation obtained, then "the outer shape could express the inner individuality" (§313, 188).

Unlike astrology, palmistry, and similar pseudosciences, physiog-

nomy considers the individual "in the necessary antithesis of an inner and an outer" (§314, 188*), which relates human consciousness and human existence. For instance, it could be argued that a person is represented through his "hand" that "is what a man does " (§315, 189). From this perspective, the "organ must now . . . be taken as a middle term" (§316, 189) between the individual in himself and his appearance for others, or again "the movement and form of countenance and figure in general" (§317, 190). So, we may take an expression as reflecting the inner being of a person, as "we see from a man's face whether he is in earnest about what he is saying or doing" (§318, 190). Physiognomy, for instance, studies individuality through a person's "features [Zügen]" (§319, 191*) on the grounds that a person's inner self is more important than what he does.

Both pseudosciences are committed to the claim that what one really is is revealed "through the overhasty judgment formed at first sight about the inner nature and character of its shape" (§320, 192*). In the same way as language cannot name the individual, physiognomy, which cannot connect general laws to individuals, provides only "empty subjective opinions" (§321, 193). Echoing Goethe's23 emphasis on the deed (Tat), Hegel insists that "the true being of a man is rather his deed" (§322, 193). He follows the views of Solon, the great Athenian lawgiver (see §315), and Aristotle24 that we only know who someone is at the end of life.

In psychology external reality makes "spirit" intelligible, whereas in physiognomy spirit is "the visible invisibility of its essence" (§323, 195). For this to be the case, there must be "a causal connection" between intentions and deeds. This presupposes a solution of the Cartesian problem of the relation of mind to body—Descartes famously locates their interaction in the pineal gland25 —since "for spiritual individuality to have an effect on body, it must as cause itself be corporeal" (§325,195*). It is sometimes thought, say, that "anger" is "in the liver" (§326, 196), or that "brain and spinal cord . . . may be considered as the immediate presence of self-consciousness" (§327, 196).

Since the most plausible view is that the spirit is located in the head, Hegel devotes specific attention to the phrenological view that the brain just is the skull. In this case, the living brain must "display . . . outer reality" (§329, 198) through the skull, so that the brain, regarded as "the organ of self-consciousness, would act causally on the opposite aspect" (§330, 199). It follows that a person is a thing, or more precisely, "the actuality and existence of man is his skull-bone" (§331, 200). This

point is very modern; it is a nearly exact statement of contemporary materialist mind-body identity theory.26

Hegel has little difficulty in showing that the skull has no useful cognitive function. Anticipating the French anthropologist and surgeon P. P. Broca's effort in the second half of the nineteenth century to localize particular mental functions in specific sites in the brain, he suggests the need to correlate particular parts of the skull with particular aspects of spirit. He maintains that "the skull-bone is not an organ of activity (§333, 200). There is no necessary correlation between different parts of the skull and feelings, emotions, and so on. For from whatever side we look at the matter, there is no necessary reciprocal relation between them, nor any direct indication of such a relation" (§335, 202). Any such correlation is at best fortuitous, since it is always possible that "a bump at some place or other is connected with a particular property, passion, etc." (§336, 203). Spirit is not a thing and human being is free, although it is always possible that "this bump or this hollow on the skull may denote something actual" (§338, 204). Yet it is simply false to regard human consciousness merely as a bone, as in the claim" 'I regard a bone as your reality'" (§339, 205).

This complex summary produces relatively meager results that are mainly important with respect to spirit. Like perception, observation of inorganic nature suffers from an inability to connect its various moments to sensuous being. In such observation, the subject freely takes itself as its object, to begin with through the laws of thought, then as a single conscious being. In so doing, the subject strives to know conscious human being by uncovering a necessary relation between what it takes as spirit, or inner, to the outer, nonspiritual reality. As in his account of biology, Hegel maintains here that we must reject the claim in phrenology "that takes the outer to be the expression of the inner" (§340, 206). The survey has shown no clear link between the inner and the outer, since "the moments of the relations present themselves as pure abstractions" (§341, 206). The observational approach simply imagines the relation between the mind and the brain, or between "spirit" and "a reality that is not conscious" (§342, 207).

Hegel sees the frustration arising from the failure to establish a necessary link as leading to pseudoscientific, materialistic effort to study human being as a thing. In our day, a similar frustration is manifest in the turn to cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and similar efforts to find a mechanical model for human being.27 The unavailing effort to show that spirit is a thing leads to a focus on spirit as existent. "It must therefore be regarded as extremely important that the true

expression has been found for the bare statement about Spirit—that it is" (§343, 208).

In conclusion, Hegel makes two points. First, a human being cannot be known through observation at all. If we want to know ourselves, we must do so through the activity in which we freely realize ourselves. A person is "itself the End at which its action aims, whereas in its role of observer it was concerned only with things" (§344, 209). Second, mere observation is intrinsically defective. Since it is not conceptual, it fails to grasp what human being is, hence fails to grasp how the inner and outer relate. In other words, it fails to comprehend "the specific character of the subject and predicate, and their relation in its judgment" (§345, 209*). Expanding the latter point, he contends that since a person is not a thing, but spirit, then true reality is not material but spiritual, or the being of spirit. For "brain fibres and the like, when regarded as the being of Spirit, are no more than a merely hypothetical reality" (§346, 210). The meaning of spirit will only finally be made clear in the chapter "Spirit."