First Chapter
The Ontological Ambivalence of Relations - G. W. F. Hegel
I. Hegel's defense of ontologically independent determinations
A. Difficulties of dealing with Hegel's philosophy
Hegel's philosophy is characterized, among other things, by the fact that its reception is marked by a remarkable contrast: On the one hand, the willingness to take note of it 'in toto' has diminished since its author's demise, while on the other hand, the reference to individual theorems has become increasingly popular. Thus, it is no longer a rarity to find statements in the most diverse contexts, which amount to the fact that - whatever one may think of Hegel's philosophy 'as such', however one may assess its methodological and systematic foundations and wherever the claims of this philosophy to knowledge and thus to truth may come from - what Hegel says about, for example, law, art or about recognition and work, about education, religion or psychology, is nevertheless just as illuminating as it is insightful and accurate. Such statements, whose factual value may be disputed, are not primarily remarkable for their own sake, but because they point, if not to a problem, then at least to a curiosity: namely, that the insight into the inaccessibility of a philosophical theory, which manifests itself in the difficulty of finding out something about its premises, its procedure and its intentions, by no means prevents one from considering its results not only acceptable, but even groundbreaking.
That Hegel himself is anything but innocent of this state of affairs is hard to deny. Like hardly any other philosopher, Hegel knew that he was exposed to a general distrust. This distrust has two main sources. One has its ground in Hegel's attempt, fascinating to some, repulsive to most, to integrate into his system all, but also all forms, of reality, so that from mica-slate to the logical figures of the syllogism, there is nothing that does not fall prey to Hegel's claim to be regarded as an expression of thought or concept, respectively, and in this respect to be made intelligible "in its necessity," as Hegel calls it. If this conviction of Hegel's of the reality-integrating power of his system is nowadays more than ever suspect and in this respect actually hardly of interest, the second source of distrust is more interesting and more consequential. It has its ground in Hegel's determinate logical and methodological assumptions, which are reflected in assertions such as "Contradictio est regula veri, non contradictio, falsi" 1 -- an assertion which Hegel advocated as a defensible thesis in the context of his habilitation proceedings --, or the dictum taken from the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, "The true is the whole,"2 or in statements such as that the form of judgment is unsuited to express the true, an utterance found in striking places in almost all of Hegel's works. 3 If each of these utterances already has something provocative in itself, they become objectionable when, as Hegel never tires of reasserting, they are to be regarded as expressions of truths, without the consideration of which no adequate cognition of reality can be realized. If it is then added that not only Hegel, but also his followers have done very little to shed sufficient light on the one hand on the meaning of such expressions and on the other hand on their knowledge-constituting function, it is quite reasonable to be skeptical or even dismissive of a philosophy that is based on such dark and counterintuitive maxims, and to take note of its results only insofar as they enjoy a certain plausibility detached from their philosophical-systematic background.
Now, for various reasons, this situation has rightly been considered unsatisfactory. The main irritation has been that the admitted lack of clarity about the methodological and programmatic foundations of Hegel's philosophy, which characterizes this situation, makes it very difficult to gain a reasonably well-founded picture of the nature and power of this philosophy. The attempts to characterize Hegel's overall position by using buzzwords such as 'absolute idealism' or 'idealistic monism' have not proved to be a means of simulating and clarifying relatively simple questions about Hegel's philosophy, nor has the labeling of the procedure peculiar to this philosophy as 'dialectical method'. Nevertheless, it is difficult to deny that the assessment of the nature and power of this philosophy depends to a large extent on the determination of its program and method.
Now, first of all, as far as the method is concerned - and this means here at present nothing more than the procedure Hegel uses in obtaining his substantive assertions - the interest in elucidating it has developed relatively early, even if in the course of time and depending on the respective proposals the question itself has changed: From the question of the possibility of realizing Hegel's system of philosophy by Hegel's methodological means (Haym, Trendelenburg, E. v. Hartmann), the question of 'the dialectical method' itself has very rapidly developed in more recent times, a question whose discussion has rapidly turned into a battleground of endless disputes, of which it is hardly possible to make out how they relate to Hegel's philosophy. 4 These discussions have shown that the question of the peculiarities of Hegel's method alone is not sufficient to provide an understanding of Hegel's scheme of theory. They compel us to recognize that only by clarifying the programmatic presuppositions of this philosophy is one enabled to make it accessible to critical discussion.
But there is also little clarity about the programmatic presuppositions or, in short, about Hegel's program - i.e., both about the assumptions on which his rejection of alternative philosophical positions is based and about the convictions whose systematic fulfillment is the aim of Hegel's philosophy, even though there are many more or less plausible conjectures about this. Again, Hegel is by no means blameless in this state of affairs, because he did little to make these assumptions and convictions explicitly clear. Thus it comes about that the most far-reaching attempts to reconstruct the methodological and programmatic foundations of Hegel's philosophy,5 although quite indicative, sometimes lead to results that are very difficult to interpret. Therefore, if one wants to look at any philosophical conception of Hegel on any subject, one is still dependent on looking at how this conception came about, and that means not only putting it in relation to the programmatic framework, but at the same time outlining the program itself.
B. Hegel on Relations and Ontology
To fulfill this challenging obligation in the context of clarifying the question how Hegel assesses the ontological relevance of relations is easier demanded than done. This is mainly because it is neither immediately obvious that, and, if at all, in which sense, Hegel made the topic 'relations' the subject of his reflections, nor is there too much clarity about what, if anything, one is to understand by 'Hegel's ontology'. There can be no doubt about one thing, however: Hegel never directly discussed the question of the ontological status of relations in the sense in which it occupied, say, Bradley or Russell -- simply for the reason that the explicit formulation of this question came about only after his time. Therefore, one will only be able to determine Hegel's position on this question counterfactually, i.e., one will not be able to find an answer to what Hegel actually thought of the reality or unreality, externality or internality of relations, but will have to be content with finding out what Hegel's position would have been on theses such as that of the reality or unreality of relations if he had been confronted with them. Before we can now proceed to an understanding of the reasons and backgrounds that are relevant for Hegel's presumed vote in a discussion about the ontological status of relations, we must first present this vote itself and give the main features of Hegel's ideas about relations and about ontology that go into it.
a. Relations
Proceeding from the stipulation proposed in the introductory chapter that the ontological significance of the discussion of internal and external relations can be tied to the clarification of the distinction between essential and non-essential determinations of objects on the one hand, and relational and non-relational determinations on the other, it is relatively easy to justify the assumption that Hegel would hardly have conceded the possibility of holding such a discussion to be ontologically relevant. For, as is clear from the Science of Logic, Hegel does not think anything of the 'essential-unessential' distinction, nor does he distinguish between relational and non-relational determinations. 6 For this reason alone he would be able to connect little sense with such a discussion. But apart from this, there are other reasons Hegel would give for the ontological irrelevance of the question of the lnternality or externality of relations. All of these reasons boil down to the thesis that everything related to things and their determinations, and also to substances and their accidences, is ontologically without any meaning.
If this thesis is first pursued in the context of the consideration of the thing and its properties, and taking into account the fact that for Hegel relational determinations also belong to properties, then Hegel apparently justifies it with the following consideration. 7 Whether one equates things with the sum of their properties, i.e., regards a thing as nothing but the sum of its properties, or whether one distinguishes things from their properties, i.e., does not regard the thing itself as identical with the sum of its properties, is of no consequence insofar as there are no logical reasons for preferring one mode of consideration to the other. If one asks oneself how the thing can be determined by its properties, an aporetic alternative arises. Either one proceeds from the fact that the thing is just what properties have entered into it, and can therefore consider it only as constituted by these properties and analyzable into them, but thereby dissolves the thing as distinct from its properties, or one proceeds from the fact that one must still distinguish the thing as a unity of the properties that have entered into it from the sum of these properties itself, and can then determine it only as something that has an existence apart from its properties, but thereby dissolves the thing in the sense that it appears only as an indeterminate unified form. Both ways of consideration are equivalent for Hegel because (1) in both the thing dissolves and because (2) both show that the concepts 'thing' and 'property' relate to each other like reflection concepts - if one explains the one by the other, the result is an empty concept. Equivalently, the two ways of looking at things are also correct in the sense that they both legitimately exploit the parameters established by the thing-property distinction.
For Hegel this means that the concept of the thing is a contradictory concept:
The thing as this totality is the contradiction of being, according to its negative unity, the form in which matter is determinate and reduced to properties ... , and at the same time to consist of matters which in the reflection of the thing-in-itself are at the same time equally independent as negated. [^reflex]
[reflex]: Encyclopedia, § 130. By 'matters' Hegel understands in this context substantialized qualities. Thus, according to this usage, a thing that is magnetic, brown, and malodorous consists of magnetic matter, dyeing matter, and smelling matter. Cf. Encyclopedia, §§ 126, 130.
Since this contradiction is for Hegel the inevitable result of the consideration of the relation of things and properties, in his eyes the determination of this relation cannot lead to any ontologically relevant results, and since the question of the ontological status of relations is to be determined by the question of the relation of things to their relational properties, for him also the question concerning relations is without any ontological sense.
Hegel has similar reservations about the substance-accident distinction. For him, it too is of such a kind that no consistent model of what is can be developed within its framework and by its means.8 Even if, therefore, according to Hegel, relations and the questions about their reality, internality, etc. can be reconciled with the substance-occidence theme, they play no role ontologically because the substance-occidence model of the object is self-contradictory. This result is not very favorable to any effort to make Hegel a witness for one of the two alternative views sketched at the outset in the controversy over the ontological status of relations.
If one is content to state on the basis of these Hegelian theses that Hegel does not attribute any ontological meaning to relations, this statement is, however, only conditionally true. This becomes clear when one comes to an understanding of what the reasons for this Hegelian conviction are. The attempt at such an understanding leads to Hegel's conception of ontology, more precisely: to his determination of the function and object of ontology. In a well-known passage at the end of the Introduction to his Science of Logic, Hegel characterizes the relation of the various parts of the Science of Logic to the "former metaphysics" as follows:
The objective logic thus rather takes the place of the former metaphysics, as which was the scientific building over the world, which should be performed only by thoughts. - If we take into account the last form of the formation of this science, then [it] is first of all directly the ontology, in whose place the objective logic steps, - the part of that metaphysics, which should investigate the nature of the ens in general; the ens comprehends both being and essence in itself, for which difference our language fortunately saved the different expression. (Science of Logic I, 46)
If one follows this description, it seems as if Hegel wants to accept as object of ontology everything that appears as determinations in his logic of being and essence. This semblance has its double right insofar as Hegel, on the one hand, actually declares the Ens of the metaphysical tradition to be completely determined by the categories of the logic of being and essence, and, on the other hand, seems to have no other concept of ontology than the one given for him by the tradition, according to which ontology presents the theory of the most general terms by which that which is is to be determined.
Nevertheless, for Hegel both these categories and the traditional ontology that theoretically legitimates them are only of limited value as long as it is not clear as categories of what they must be conceived. Indeed, if there is uncertainty as to what these categories refer to at all, or what it is at all that is determined by them, then, according to Hegel, what he states in § 33 of the Encyclopedia applies: "For these [the categories, R. P. H.] in their multiplicity and finite validity there is a lack of a principle; they must therefore be enumerated empirically and accidentally ...". For Hegel, this ambiguity or lack can only be removed by ascertaining what the ens of traditional metaphysics actually or 'in truth' is. For only when the nature and essence of this ens is elucidated, the function and validity of the categories determining this ens can be determined. This Hegelian conception obviously leads to a conception of ontology which, according to its claim, founds and integrates the ontology of traditional metaphysics, and which places the object of metaphysical investigation in the determination of what is 'the truth' of the ens of traditional metaphysics, in order to determine in this way what is 'in truth'.
According to Hegel, what 'the truth' of the Ens of traditional metaphysics is - of the ens, which he also often equates with the Kantian 'thing in itself' (cf. Science of Logic I, 45f.; Encyclopedia,§ 44.) -, and what is in this respect also 'in truth', is the 'real concept' or the 'idea'. But that which is marked by these expressions is in principle underdetermined in Hegel's eyes by the categories of the logic of being and the logic of essence. Therefore, in his view, with respect to this real concept or idea, the "objective logic, which considers being and essence, ... constitutes the genetic exposition" (Wissenschaft der Logik II, 213.).
One must add: "only the genetic exposition". But this mean not only that for Hegel even the Hegelian successor of traditional ontology, namely objective logic, is not capable of determining what is 'in truth'; it means, moreover, that this central ontological task can only be accomplished within the framework of a theory of the 'concept'. What is ultimately relevant for Hegel, therefore, in coming to an understanding of what is 'in truth' are not the determinations of traditional ontology, but the determinations demanded by the theory of the 'concept', among which, however, those of objective logic or traditional ontology can be found.
Now Hegel does not call his theory of the concept or his theory of what is 'in truth' ontology. It is indeed not ontology in the categorial-analytical sense,9 but it is ontology in the other customary sense, according to which ontology is precisely the theory of what is 'in truth' or 'actual'. Hegel prefers to call his theory of the concept 'science of logic', in order to clarify with this formulation - as can already be inferred from the prefaces to the two editions of the Wissenchaft der Logik - two things: (1) the actual theory of what is 'in truth' is not the ontology of traditional metaphysics, (2) the actual ontology is as theory of the concept 'in truth' logic.
C. The Task
Against the background of this sketch of Hegel's understanding of ontology, it now seems easy to identify which representations enter into the view that relations are ontologically irrelevant or do not play an ontological role or are without ontological meaning. It seems to be representations like this, that relations do not belong to what is 'in truth', that they are not 'actual', or - oriented to Hegel's usage of language - that they are not the 'concept' or of the character of the 'concept'. This appearance, however, is significantly deceptive. For even the most superficial consideration of the relevant Hegelian characterizations of what he wants to be understood by 'real concept' or 'idea' shows 10 that Hegel understands the state of affairs called 'idea' or 'real concept' as an essentially relational state of affairs, i.e., as such a state of affairs as can only be grasped as a determinate relation between determinate elements. But this means that Hegel declares relations or at least a relation to be the constitutive element of that which alone actually exists, if it is true that for Hegel only the 'concept' actually exists.
It is therefore somewhat confusing to find Hegel on the one hand declaring relations, understood as relational determinations of objects and substances, as ontologically irrelevant, but on the other hand at the same time declaring them to be the distinguishing feature of what ultimately exists 'in truth' alone, i.e. what must be regarded as ontologically real. If one wants to counter this confusion, one obviously has to proceed from the fact that Hegel believes that he possesses means which allow him to assert both. What representations ground this Hegelian opinion is difficult to discern. This is not least because they are extremely obscure, especially in their Hegelian formulation. To attempt to illuminate them is to trace Hegel's ontological program in outline, the program which can be summed up precisely in the thesis that only the 'concept' is actual. This will be done in the following. Already these preliminary remarks make clear where one has to look for this program: in the 'Science of Logic', namely in its two parts. As far as it is destructive or critical in nature with respect to tradition, it is unfolded mainly in the so-called objective logic, because it is supposed to be the one in which the categories of traditional ontology are put up for discussion. Insofar as it is constructive and affirmative in nature, it is mainly the so-called subjective logic or conceptual logic that is of interest, because in it Hegel is compelled to set forth that which, in his eyes, justifies the claim that his conception of what is 'in truth' is superior to the models provided by traditional metaphysics.
Since Hegel develops this program of his in confrontation with and in distinction from traditional metaphysical positions, a possible and meaningful approach to the realization of the essential aspects of this program is first to come to an understanding of the reasons that led Hegel to engage in the project of a theory alternative to the metaphysical theories known to him in the first place. It will be seen that mainly one of these reasons (1) has immediate consequences, drawn by Hegel himself, for the plausibility of classical ontological positions, and (2) leads to a dilemma that calls into question the very possibility of philosophy as Hegel determines it. To avoid this dilemma and at the same time to systematically unfold and sustain a concept of the object specific to him will prove to be the problem characterizing Hegel's ontological program.
II. Hegel and the traditional metaphysics
A. Metaphysics and "Form of Judgment
In the preface to the second edition of his book, "Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in the Grundrisse," Hegel declares, "What I have been working toward and am working toward generally in my philosophical exertions is the scientific knowledge of truth." 11 Exactly what the ambiguous formula "scientific knowledge of truth" means to Hegel is difficult to discern, but one of its meanings is certainly that of recognizing "what the objects truly are."12
In clarifying this question, Hegel thinks he can profit very little from the philosophical tradition because, however this question has been approached in it, it has proceeded from false premises. As is well known, Hegel distinguishes three different ways of approaching the question of what objects are in truth by the philosophical tradition, three ways which he thematizes as so-called "positions of thought on objectivity" in the Encyclopedia. If Hegel also considers each of these ways incapable of answering the posed question satisfactorily, he is at the same time of the opinion that one must distinguish between different degrees of incapacity in the different ways. According to Hegel, the positions that prove to be particularly incapable are those that he characterizes, on the one hand, as the standpoint of immediate knowledge, a standpoint that he associates mainly with Jacobi's position, and, on the other hand, identifies as that of empiricism of Locke-Humean provenance or that of criticalism of Kantian origin.
Hegel evaluates metaphysics, the third way of dealing with the question of what objects truly are, differently. He characterizes this way as.
the unbiased procedure which ... contains the belief that through reflection the truth is known, that what the objects truly are is brought before consciousness. In this belief, thought proceeds straight to the objects, reproduces the content of sensations and impressions from itself into a content of thought, and is satisfied in such as truth. ^[Encyclopedia, § 26.]
Now, in opposition to his evaluation of the achievements of empiricism and criticism, on the one hand, and immediate knowledge, on the other, Hegel considers this unbiased procedure to be in principle quite capable of addressing the question raised as to what the objects are in truth in a manner satisfactory to Hegel in terms of content ("dem Gehalte nach" [^acz]), even if this procedure does not do so as metaphysics. 13 As metaphysics, this procedure is therefore unable to recognize the objects as they are in truth, because metaphysics attempts to recognize its objects -- the thing in general (ontology), the soul (rational psychology or pneumatology), the world (cosmology), and the supreme being (natural or rational theology), in short, the "objects of reason" in Hegel's terminology -- by means that cannot do justice to these objects of theirs. Hegel characterizes the totality of these means as "Verstandesansicht." He can therefore arrive at the dictum that metaphysics is "the mere Verstandes-Ansicht of the objects of reason" and to that extent fails in its attempt to answer the initial question adequately. 14
[^acz:] Encyclopedia, § 27.]
Hegel's assessment of metaphysics, as expressed in the opening paragraphs of the Encyclopedia, is thus determined by two things: on the one hand, by the fact that, in his opinion, it shares in a determinate way the presuppositions of the so-called impartial procedure. These presuppositions have taken with it the form of the conviction that "the determinations of thought are to be regarded as the fundamental determinations of things."15 This is a common presupposition. This common presupposition is the reason why Hegel regards it as a variant of the impartial procedure, a procedure to which he attests that "according to its content it can be genuine speculative philosophizing"16, and it is at the same time the reason why for Hegel metaphysics is already superior to empiricism, criticalism, and immediate knowledge in its approach. On the other hand, Hegel's assessment of metaphysics is determined by the fact that for him it is caught in a way of looking at its objects that makes it impossible for it to exploit the potential for truth that lies in its presupposition.
This preliminary characterization of Hegel's views on (1) what the task of philosophy is, (2) what attitudes toward this task the philosophical tradition has taken, and (3) for what reasons these attitudes are inadequate, can now provide information about the constraints under which Hegel places his independent attempt to solve the task of philosophy that he identifies. For if one proceeds with Hegel from the assumption that metaphysics fails, perhaps not merely, but at least also, in the attempt to recognize its objects as they are in truth, because the manner of considering its objects, which is peculiar to it, condemns it to failure, then it trivially applies to Hegel's own efforts that they must avoid the deficiencies of the metaphysical manner of considering. This trivial observation becomes interesting when one realizes in what Hegel then sees the decisive defect of the metaphysical manner of considering. It consists, in short, in the fact that it makes use of the form of judgment in clarifying what the objects are in truth. 17 This determination of the deficiency of metaphysics turned back to that trivial observation, however, now yields the perplexing realization that Hegel is evidently prepared to assert that one cannot recognize objects as they are in truth with a manner of considering that uses the form of judgment. Such an assertion is perplexing primarily because it seems implausible from several points of view. On the one hand, it is difficult to see how one can communicate about objects in a cognitive way, but not by means of judgments. On the other hand, it is not obvious why judgments present a particularly unsuitable means of expressing what objects truly are. And finally, it is a fact that cannot be overlooked that Hegel himself regards the form of judgment as the normal form of truthful discourse about objects, which is also valid for his philosophy, in that he uses it.
Therefore, if one does not want to see in Hegel's critique of the metaphysical manner of consideration, which is based on the form of judgment, merely an incomprehensible dictum of a dark philosophical writer, one has to deal with a problem in this starting position, which can be expressed in different ways. The most suitable formulation of this problem for our purposes can be presented in the form of a question thus: What is to be thought of a critique of traditional metaphysics which criticizes it as inadequate because of its use of means (or forms) which are themselves the standard means of expression in the asserted alternative to it, that is, Hegelian philosophy?
B. Hegel's Critique of the "Form of Judgment"
The discussion of this problem necessitates an understanding of (1) what, in particular, Hegel objects to the form of judgment, and (2) why, according to Hegel, this has a special significance precisely in connection with traditional metaphysics.18 In §§ 28-32 of the third edition of the Encyclopedia, Hegel outlines various objections to traditional metaphysics, all of which are aimed at demonstrating that some unanalyzed presuppositions have entered into this metaphysics which lead to difficulties with its own claims. Hegel characterizes these presuppositions by indicating the way in which the metaphysics methodically redeems the assumption, correct in approach, that "the determinations of thought must be regarded as the fundamental determinations of things."19 The presuppositions of the metaphysics are the same as those of the traditional metaphysics. According to Hegel, they can all be traced back to a basic failure of traditional metaphysics, a failure which consists in using the form of judgment without reflection.
By the unreflective use of the form of judgment Hegel understands various things. First of all, it includes the assumption, which for Hegel is not proven by anything, that judgments have a relation to what is, that is, to ontologically relevant facts, in the sense that they give a peculiarly direct information about the ontological constitution of reality or what is 'actual'. Among the consequences of this unsecured assumption of traditional metaphysics, according to Hegel, are two: first, that it has been groundlessly inclined to regard the world in its ontological foundations as an ensemble of substances and accidents, because it has held as the standard form of judgment the judgment of the subject-predicate form. If Hegel still has little objection to this consequence under certain conditions, the second consequence is more problematic for him: it consists in the unfounded tendency of traditional metaphysics to derive from the assumed correspondence between the subject-predicate-form of judgment and the substance-accident-constitution of reality the conviction that one can express with judgments what states of affairs are in truth. Hegel does not find problematic the assumption contained in this conviction that one can relate to objects in a judgmental way; rather, he sees a problem in the assumption, also contained in this conviction, that one can proceed without examination from the fact that, as he puts it, "the form of judgment can be the form of truth." 20 For Hegel, there is cause for such an examination insofar as the concepts of subject and predicate constitutive of this form do not, under every interpretation, justify the assertion that a subject-predicate judgment contributes something to the determination of an object. Finally, for Hegel, traditional metaphysics' unreflective use of the form of judgment also includes its use of an all-too-obvious, 'natural' interpretation of the concepts of subject and predicate, on the basis of which the form of judgment determined by these concepts is condemned to ontological irrelevance.
a. Objections to Predicate Concepts
What, then, are Hegel's objections to the traditional metaphysical conception of subjects, predicates, and judgments? First, concerning predicates, Hegel formulates his two objections in § 29 of the Encyclopedia:
Such predicates are for themselves a limited content and show themselves already as not according to the fullness of the representation (of God, nature, spirit, etc.) and by no means exhausting it. Then they are connected with each other by the fact that they are predicates of one subject, but by their content they are different, so that they are taken up against each other from the outside.
What Hegel aims at with the first objection is obvious: A predicate is a concept that characterizes a property or a characteristic of objects, it is, formulated with Kant, a partial representation of the object. As such, it is by definition incapable of characterizing a total object, i.e., the object with all its features. In this respect, the predicate is "limited content", "not according to" the conception of the object, "by no means exhausting it".
This objection seems strange at first sight. If predicates are understood as terms characterizing partial representations of objects, then it seems obvious that they cannot characterize the total representation of any object. To assume that it is a defect of predicates that they do not characterize the respective total conception of some object is therefore hardly more than to attribute to them as a defect what they are, namely predicates. Such a criticism, however, can hardly be convincing. If one is to be able to connect any sense with this objection, then one must see it in the context that Hegel has in mind, and that is in the context of what the use of predicates means for metaphysics. And here, after all, is the assumption Hegel makes of metaphysics in § 28, that one can determine its objects "by attaching predicates." If now, according to Hegel's objection in this context, predicates are understood as partial representations, and if one further proceeds from the assumption that a partial representation is not identical with the total representation of an object, then predicates, i.e. partial representations, do not determine the total representation of the object in the sense that they do not provide a means to determine which predicates are necessary for the determination of the total representation. Thus, for example, with the judgment 'humans are mortal', the total conception 'human' is not determined by the partial representation 'being mortal', but it is only determined that the partial representation 'being mortal' also belongs to what constitutes the total conception 'human'. But to the total conception "man" belong many other partial representations, which together make up the total conception "man". As long as these partial representations remain unconsidered, the total representation "man" is determinate only with respect to one of its characteristics, but not as a total representation, and also as a total representation it is in principle not determinable by partial representations.
But however one reconstructs in detail Hegel's objection to the determination of total representations by partial representations, as indicated in the first sentence of § 29,21 the real aim of this objection to the 'unreflective' use of predicates seems to be something else. Its real metaphysical-critical potential becomes fully apparent only when it is considered within the framework of a distinction Hegel considered fundamental, namely, that between objects as they are in representation and objects as they are in truth. This distinction presupposed, Hegel's objection is intended to point out that if one cannot even exhaustively determine the representation of an object by predicates, one has not the slightest reason to suppose that one can exhaustively determine by them what the object is in itself or in truth. The objection is therefore primarily aimed at contrasting what predicates do or do not do with respect to representations with what they do with respect to adequate knowledge of objects. That they contribute nothing to adequate knowledge of objects or to knowledge of what objects are in truth, this is due, according to Hegel, not so much to the more 'technical' defect that as partial representations they cannot determine an overall conception, but to the fact that metaphysics regards its determinations of thought (predicates) as "determinations of understanding"22. But this means, as Hegel indicates in § 25, "that they are only subjective and have the permanent opposition at the objective". But how can -- so this aspect of Hegel's objection could be formulated as a question -- determinations (predicates) that are only subjective provide information about the objective nature of an object?23 At best, they can contribute something to the determination of the subjective presence of the object, that is, its representation. But even in this subjective realm -- Hegel's reasoning continues -- these predicates, at least if they are regarded as objectivity determinations in the sense of metaphysics, are inadequate and lead to incomplete descriptions not of objects but of representations of objects.
The second objection formulated in § 29 is also meant to refer to a principal difficulty to which the predicates understood as (subjective) determinations of understanding are subject. The objection was: "Then they are connected with each other by being predicates of a subject, but they are different by their content, so that they are taken up against each other from the outside." Hegel's point here is to show that the idea of the determination of a representation of an object by predicates is already problematic insofar as it only functions under the assumption of an already determinate representation of an object. This is because predicates themselves cannot be taken to indicate either which representation of the object they determine in each case, or which other predicates are necessary in each case in order to arrive at a determinate representation of the object.
Again referring to the example of mortal humans, one can paraphrase this Hegelian consideration in this way: If one has, for example, the predicates 'mortal', 'partly hairy' and 'bipedal', these predicates are themselves indeterminate with respect to which representations of the object are determined or not determined by them. Thus, whether the representation of the object 'man' is determined by the given predicates or not, this question cannot be determined by considering, for example, these three predicates. Therefore, in order to connect a sense with the assumption of the determination of a representation of the object by attaching predicates, one is referred to at least one of two implausible hypotheses: Either one assumes that one already has such a determinate representation of the object 'man' that one has in this prior determination of the representation of the object a basis for adding or rejecting predicates and that is for determining the representation by predicates. But such a construction is difficult to reconcile with the postulate of the determination of an (indeterminate) conception of the object by predicates. Or one has to assume that predicates are not "taken up against each other from the outside", as Hegel calls it, but that they stand in a quasi-analytical relation to each other of the kind that from the consideration of only one predicate not only all those predicates can be obtained which together with the first predicate determine the representation of the object, but that, moreover, the consideration of one predicate also gives information about when a constellation of predicates is reached which can be interpreted as a determinate representation of the object. If, to stay with our example, one could somehow get from the predicate 'mortal' to the predicates 'partly hairy' and 'bipedal', and if one assumes that exactly these three predicates completely determine the representation of the object 'man', then one could say that whenever one has established this constellation of predicates, one has determined the representation of the object 'man'. But since, according to Hegel, traditional metaphysics would certainly not have agreed to such a conception of the predicate as a function ultimately generating representations of the object, it has no choice at all but to regard predicates "as being taken up against each other from the outside." But this leads to the difficulties connected with the first hypothesis, which are sufficient to make the assertion of traditional metaphysics that objects can be determined by attaching predicates incomprehensible and unconvincing.
The value of this Hegelian objection to the 'unreflective' use of predicates, and thus to the 'unreflective' use of subject-predicate judgments, again becomes clear only when it is understood as an indirect argument against the ability of traditional metaphysics to recognize objects as they are in truth by its means. This argument, too, exploits Hegel's distrust of the conception of the correct thesis he imputes to traditional metaphysics, that objects can be known through thought, and again the aim is to point out that predicates, under a determinate interpretation, namely that of traditional metaphysics, which takes them to be subjective determinations of thought, that is, determinations of understanding, not only cannot be shown to be determinations that characterize what objects are in truth, but cannot even determine objects of representation.
Both objections thus equally boil down to the fact that the conception of function and capacity of the predicate, as traditional metaphysics "unreflectively" holds it, has two defects: (1) with it not even one's own "unreflective" expectations can be taken into account and (2) its results are of such a kind that there is no possibility of considering them ontologically relevant. They can contribute nothing to finding out something about the actual constitution of the objects, about what they are 'in truth'.
b. Objections to Subject Concepts
But it is not only the inevitable ontological irrelevance of predicative determinations that makes Hegel suspect of the traditionally metaphysical interpretation of the form of the subject-predicate judgment, but just as much the necessary misunderstandings associated with this interpretation concerning the ontological status of what occurs as subject in the judgment. Again explicitly confined to metaphysics, Hegel hints at his reservations in § 30:
Their (metaphysics', R. P. H.) objects were indeed totalities, which in and for themselves belong to reason, to the thinking of the general concrete in itself, - soul, world, God; - but metaphysics took them from the representation, took them as already given subjects, as a basis for the application of the determinations of understanding to them, and had only at that representation the measure, whether the predicates were appropriate and adequate or not.
Again, the objection is twofold. The first refers to the ontological status of what appears as subject in the judgment, the second to the possibilities of knowledge connected with the judgment under the presupposition of a determinate concept of subject. In its general form, i.e., not limited to the objects of metaphysics, but referring to objects in general, the first objection concerning the subject can be paraphrased as follows: That which is marked by the subject expression in the normal, 'unreflective' subject-predicate judgment is not the object at all, as it is in truth, in itself, or objectively, but that which the subject expression marks in the normal judgment is only the (subjective) representation of the object. But if the subjects of judgment stand only for representations of objects, then it is completely unexplained in what sense the predicates determining the representation also say something about the objects as they actually are, in truth or objectively. For metaphysics, which thinks "that what is, in order that it is thought, is known in itself,"24 this means that it cannot proclaim for itself precisely the knowledge of the "Ansich" which it claims, if that which appears in its judgments as subject only characterizes the object of conception. As an objection reflecting the ontological status of the subject of the judgment, Hegel's consideration amounts to saying that the subject of the judgment, to put it mildly, is not seen to be marking ontologically relevant things -- an objective object, an object as it is in truth -- or merely subjectively given things -- an object of representation.
But if, according to the second objection concerning the subject, objects are taken up from the representation -- and this is exactly what Hegel's conviction makes metaphysics do -- and it is they who are characterized by the subject of judgment, then one gets into trouble with a variant of what more than 100 years later G. E. Moore called the paradox of analysis. Namely, if the subject concept of the judgment is fully determinate by the representation of the object, then the question of what predicates can be ascribed to this subject is only a question of what is analytically contained in the subject concept, i.e., what the (subjective) representation contains in terms of features. The analysis of what is contained in the subject concept, however, does not lead beyond what is already obscurely or implicitly given. Thus, if one proceeds to recognize the true by judgments whose subject concept characterizes a representation of the object, and if one proceeds on the assumption that it is at least completely groundless to suppose that the representation of the object has anything to do with what the objective correlate of the representation of the object, i.e., the object in truth, is, then it becomes arbitrarily complicated to legitimize the claim that with a normal subject-predicate judgment an object can be recognized as it is in truth. 25 Hegel himself, a few paragraphs later(§ 33), expresses the problem one has with objects of conception and their predicative determination thus: "It can be a matter merely of the correctness of analysis and empirical completeness consistent with the use of language, not of the truth and necessity of such determinations in and of themselves."
For our context, it is not so important here whether one finds these objections of Hegel, proceeding from the consideration of the subject of judgment, against the capacity of the subject-predicate judgment for the purpose of knowing what objects are in truth, factually convincing or not. This is because the initial point here is only to clarify what factual motives played a role for Hegel in attempting not only to question the traditional forms of philosophical discourse and, consequently, the patterns of argumentation and rationality associated with these forms, but moreover to consider them only of limited suitability -- not, as will be shown, of complete unsuitability -- for the purpose of knowing "what is true" or what objects are in truth. The critique of traditional metaphysics clearly shows that it is problems connected with the ontological implications of a form of language, namely that in which the subject-predicate judgment is assigned a distinguished role, which have contributed to make him attempt to develop an approach alternative to the philosophical tradition. For, according to Hegel, if, as in traditional metaphysics, judgment is conceived as a subject-predicate connection, and if both the ontological function of what is signified by the predicate concept and of what is signified by the subject concept are unclear, then the legitimacy of the use of the form of judgment in philosophy becomes questionable, if indeed it is the case that philosophy is concerned with the knowledge of what objects truly are. This questionability is documented precisely by metaphysics, which, after all, for Hegel makes an in and of itself reasonable presupposition with the conviction, attested to by him, that what things really are is known only by thinking, and which nevertheless became, as he says in § 32, "dogmatism" precisely because it did not follow the ambiguities connected with the form of judgment, but decided unreflectively to a subjectivist interpretation of judgment. Such a subjectivistic interpretation is already questionable because it has the disadvantage, as has been attempted to explain, of not being able to make clear in any way how the so-called "determinations of understanding" -- that is, the "heuristic determinations" -- are to be understood. Verstandesbestimmungen -- i.e., Hegel's Denkbestimmungen in a subjectivist interpretation -- as predicates and the subjective form of the presence of objects, i.e., the representations, as subjects of judgment can secure to judgment itself -- as the likewise only subjective form of the linkage of subject and predicate (" measure" of the linkage is the -- subjective -- representation, § 30) -- any claim to ontological significance in the sense of reference to objective reality or truth.26
The side of the subjectivist metaphysical interpretation of the judgment that is even more questionable from the point of view of ontological significance is that it leads to the assumption of an ontology, if not even obligates us to it: to the assumption, namely, that the objects corresponding to the subjects of the judgment are to be thought as substances to which the properties designated by predicate terms belong. The unreflective subjectivist interpretation of judgment "taken up" (§ 30) by metaphysics implies, or at least suggests, what may be called a substance ontology, that is, an ontology according to which substances independent of one another are assumed to be the basic entities of the world, which are individually determinate by accidental characteristics that either belong to them or do not belong to them. And this implication or this ontological suggestion of the unreflective interpretation of judgment, which is difficult to avoid, is what causes difficulties for Hegel.
Now, remarkably, these difficulties concern not so much the suggested ontological model itself, but the inability of traditional metaphysics to redeem it by its means. For if judgment is interpreted in the way Hegel calls unreflective, then it is impossible to see how the ontological model suggested by the form of judgment can hold up against the objects themselves in the sense of providing information about the constitution of those objects. For if one thinks of objects as substances, which are determined by or provided with determinate properties, then one will be able to see how the ontological model suggested by the form of judgment can hold its own in the sense that it provides information about the constitution of these objects. then one will understand subject-predicate-judgments in such a way that the subject-expression refers to a substance which is characterized by the property denoted by the predicate-expression, But if the analysis of how one has thought the connection of subject and predicate in the judgment within the framework of traditional metaphysics leads to the result that the subject-expression in the judgment is either referred only to a representation of an object unanalyzed with respect to its possible substantiality-character, or else characterizes the unity-condition for predications which is itself predicatively indeterminate, then the substance disappears, so to speak, that is, it proves to be inaccessible in principle, resp. as an empty concept.27 In Hegel's eyes, however, it is an unsatisfactory state of affairs, on the one hand, to arrive at an ontological model on the basis of the conviction of the reality-closing capacity of the subject-predicate judgment, according to which substances with their properties must be regarded as ontologically basic entities, but, on the other hand, to be forced to the assertion that these basic entities are not such entities to which judgmental reference can be made. In other words, Hegel seems to hold objectionable not so much an ontological model in which substances play a role as a theory of judgment that makes impossible precisely what it is supposed to make possible, namely, the knowledge of what is in truth. The consequences Hegel draws from this his assessment of the shortcomings of traditional metaphysics are two demands: (1) The form of judgment must be interpreted differently. (2) The concept of the object as it is in truth must be capable of being grasped in such a way as to be accessible to cognition through judgment. But this means that it must not be interpreted 'unreflectively' by the concept of a substance which is determined by accidents.
D. The Dilemma
The problem situation, on the basis of which Hegel felt compelled not only to question individual theses or theories that have been advocated within the framework of traditional metaphysics, but to come to the conviction that metaphysics needs another approach, can be clearly indicated in one of its aspects. Before proceeding to present in what way Hegel's approach can be understood as a reaction to the problematic situation he diagnosed, the question of the connection between critique of the form of judgment and metaphysics or ontology will be taken up again. This is because it is not immediately obvious that a critical assessment of the capacity of the judgment is almost automatically connected with the compulsion to revise the interpretation of the subject-predicate-judgment that Hegel considers traditional.
Other possibilities are conceivable. One could, e.g., take a Kantianizing path and limit the possibilities of cognition of philosophy to that which corresponds to the capacity of judgment, without claiming to explain the "true" constitution of the world, but only to elucidate the constitution of the world as it is for us. Another possibility to deal philosophically with the actual or supposed inadequacies of the form of judgment would be to introduce corrective postulates in such a way that to every judgment -- conceived as an inadequate expression of a state of affairs which is 'in truth' structured quite differently from what is suggested by the form of judgment -- a corrective can be given which leads to a correction of the meaning of the judgment in a methodologically controlled way; this possibility was, e.g., propagated in a certain way by English idealism, especially by Bradley.
If now, like Hegel, one thinks, on the basis of the assumption of inadequacies of the form of judgment, immediately to interpret this form differently, then this presupposes a peculiar conviction of the relevance of this form for the possibility of philosophy. For only when one thinks that one cannot do philosophically without this form, although its normal, 'unreflective' use must be regarded as inadequate for the purposes of philosophy, only then does the demand arise to take this inadequacy systematically into account.
Significantly, in the metaphysics-critical passages we are considering, Hegel does not reject the form of judgment as something to be abandoned in principle when it comes to formulating cognitions; he first (in §28) merely points out that no thought has been given to whether it "can be the form of truth" and declares it (in§31) to be "one-sided" and false because of its one-sidedness. Both formulations indicate very clearly that Hegel is careful not to carry the criticism of the form of judgment so far that it completely devalues judgment as a means of knowledge. Against this background, wanting to change the interpretation of the form of judgment makes sense only if one demands at the same time (1) that philosophy use the form of judgment in presenting its content and (2) that it try in some way to undermine the defects peculiar to this form when used without reflection.
If one formulates this fact differently and more related to Hegel's theory-immanent situation, Hegel's programmatic approach, or at least one aspect of it, can also be described in this way: Hegel's program of overcoming the difficulties of traditional metaphysics is determined by two convictions that together lead to a dilemma. On the one hand, there is the conviction that, because of the subject-predicate structure peculiar to judgment, the mode of judgmental discourse about states of affairs given by the nature of language leads to the adoption of an ontology that becomes astonishingly implausible under the traditional 'unreflective' interpretation of the subject-predicate judgment. This means, among other things, that the philosophical performance of 'normal' language working with this traditional interpretation cannot be very highly estimated, and this is precisely what the highest form of traditional philosophizing, metaphysics, shows for Hegel. On the other hand, there is the Hegelian conviction that, in a certain sense, language and with it the subject-predicate form of judgments cannot be shaken - one cannot talk about facts in any other way than in a predicating way, and philosophy, too, can talk about what it talks about only in such a way that it says something about something. If one does not want to leave it at the statement of this dilemma and thus give away the claim of philosophy to knowledge of what is in truth, then one has with Hegel a possibility of the resolution of the same: one renounces the assumption of ontological implications of the uncertainty, clarifies the question what objects are 'in truth' and what there is 'in truth' and then develops a thesis about the connection of ontology and judgment. In what sense and to what extent Hegel realized this possibility must now be clarified.28
III. Hegel's twofold conception of the object.
Hegel's critique of traditional metaphysics' conception of the subject-predicate judgment now largely establishes the framework to which Hegel's own conception of a theory of what objects are in truth must conform. I will call this conception "Hegel's ontology" in what follows. The conditions given by his critique can be summarized in two propositions: (1) Hegel's ontology must present a conception of the object which presupposes that what is referred to in judgment is the objects themselves and not any representations of them or any logical conditions of the unity of manifold. In other words, the conception of the object must be such that it can be known 'in truth'. This presupposes that one can associate with the term 'object as it is in truth' a sense that can be given, a sense that also makes clear how one has to think the connection between these objects themselves and judgments. (2) In Hegel's ontology, a conception of the object must play a role that points to how to reinterpret the form of the subject-predicate-judgment, if the interpretation of traditional metaphysics is already ontologically unsatisfactory. The first point is dealt with in sections A and B, and the second point is considered in outline in section C.
A. The logical conception of the object
a. Three meanings of 'object'.
As far as the conception of what an object really is is concerned, an understanding of what Hegel means by 'object' or 'Gegenstand' is useful for its elucidation. Hegel uses the term 'object' in at least three different senses. First, he uses this term unterminologically in a sense in which it is normally used, namely, to designate everything that can be referred to or dealt with in some way. To speak of an object in this sense is philosophically innocuous. Above all, there is no ontological claim connected with this sense of 'object', i.e. when one speaks of objects in this sense, one does not commit oneself to any assumptions about the ontological status of objects. It is this sense of 'object' that one probably has more or less clearly in mind when one declares not only a tree or a house, but also God and the revolution, and finally also golden mountains or contradictory terms to be objects. To call something an object in this innocuous sense is ontologically noncommittal or neutral insofar as one does not in any way commit oneself to ascribing reality, existence, or being to such objects - one can talk about golden mountains and contradictory terms, make them the 'object' of a discourse, without normally committing oneself to the claim that there are golden mountains somewhere, or something characterized by a contradictory term. It is in this ontologically neutral sense of 'object' that Hegel speaks, for example, of 'logical objects' or 'objects of logic' when he speaks of determinations of thought as the object of the science of logic."29
The second meaning in which Hegel uses the term 'object' has already appeared in the context of his critique of traditional metaphysics. It is the meaning in which 'object' means something like 'object of the representation' or 'representation of the object’ (,Gegenstandsvorstellung’). To speak of something as an object in this sense is to conceive of it as something that is determined by the way it is present in the representation. Objects, understood in this sense, share with objects (Gegenständen), understood in the first sense, the peculiarity of being ontologically neutral, that is, indeterminate with respect to their ontological status. Unicorns and more than six-figure bank balances can be objects in this sense; in their case, doubts about whether they actually exist have no bearing on the possibility of referring to them as objects of representation. A difference between what can be called an object in this second sense and what can be called such according to the first sense, however, is that not everything that can be regarded as an object according to sense (1) of 'object' is also an object according to sense (2). Excluded are impossible facts like 'round squares' or 'married bachelors', objects which cannot be represented because of the contradictory determination of the content of the representation.
Hegel now distinguishes very sharply between this second sense in which he speaks of 'object' and a third sense of the use of this term. It is this third sense that is important in our context because it gives clues as to what Hegel understands by 'object' in an ontologically serious sense. Terminologically, Hegel speaks of objects in this third sense when it is a matter of 'objects as they are in truth' or of 'concepts of objects'. This at first sight strange way of characterizing objects stems from Hegel's conviction that what objects are in truth is their concept, where by 'concept' is meant, in a way reminiscent of Leibniz, a determinate constellation of so-called 'determinations of thought' or 'determinations of thought’ (,Denkbestimmungen' bzw. ,Gedankenbestimmungen’). In this third sense of Hegel's discourse of 'object' two things are remarkable: (1) only objects that can be called objects in this third sense are ontologically relevant for Hegel, i.e. only they can be regarded as real or real, and (2) what can be regarded as object in this third sense is a concept defined by thought determinations. Both need explanation.
b. "Object in truth" and "concept".
As for, first of all, the identification of what an object is in truth with its concept, the reason for this seems to lie in the Hegelian assumption, already considered, that what objects are in truth is known by reflection (durch das Nachdenken). 30 Namely, by proceeding as from a fact 31 that there are at least three ways of dealing with objects in a cognitive way, which he distinguishes from one another as the sensuous, the imaginative (vorstellenden), and the thinking, and of which he regards the first two as deficient with respect to their capacity for truth, Hegel basically has only a limited set of strategies at his disposal for regarding objects as they are in truth, on the one hand, as distinct from their sensuous and imaginative givenness, and on the other hand, at the same time, for asserting their cognizability in principle. The closest way, and therefore probably the one taken by Hegel, in attempting to account for these specifications is to conceive of the object as it is in truth as something that is accessible to thought only insofar as it can be identified with the concept of the object. In the background of this consideration there is obviously the assumption, emanating from tradition, that thinking can only deal with concepts or that only concepts can be objects of thinking. Hegel's identification of the object, as it is in truth, with the concept of the object is easy to prove32 and has its ground in Hegel's maxim, poorly handed down but all the more intelligibly expressed: "Apart from my thoughts there is nothing in the thing, and my thoughts are nothing apart from the thing"33 - a maxim which puts his objective idealism in a striking formula.
Now, for Hegel, these concepts of objects are not the so-called general concepts of traditional logic, but entities that are difficult to grasp precisely, which are characterized by the fact that they are (1) non-sensuous or a determinate an of thought objects and that they are (2) objective - understood as counter-concept to subjective. Considered as these objective thoughts, these concepts are determinate in the sense that different ratios of conceptual determinations are to be found in them, which occur because of the specific status of the concepts as thought or thought determinations. These thought determinations themselves can be provisionally conceived as a kind of predicative determinations, or more precisely probably as the set of all those determinations on the basis of which the concept of an object can be regarded as determinate.34
This is the place to point out the following against common misunderstandings: Occasionally the opinion is held -- so, to refer to a recent example; also by H. F. Fulda (Hegels Dialektik, 129) -- that the concept 'Begriff' is for Hegel a 'singulare tantum', that therefore for Hegel there can be only one concept in his sense of 'Begriff'. While this is correct, it is also in a sense misleading. Misleading because this assertion only makes sense if one makes it against the background of important distinctions, especially distinctions concerning the role and function of the science of logic on the one hand and real philosophy on the other. If one refrains from making these differentiations, then one will only have to say that while for Hegel the object of logic is the (Hegelian) concept 'Begriff', thus Hegelian logic is a theory of the (Hegelian) concept, in real philosophy the (Hegelian) concepts of objects are considered. In other words, the insistence that the concept 'Begriff' is a singulare tantum can, on the one hand, have the sense of pointing out only that, within the context of logic, the concept 'Begriff' itself is the object of investigation and that all determinations that come up as determinations of the concept 'Begriff' in the context of such an investigation may be concepts in some sense, but are not the concept whose 'logic' logic wants to elucidate. Outside the context of logic, the discourse of 'concepts' may be unproblematic in this respect, insofar as this term there refers only to what is asserted as the object of cognition with respect to an object, namely its concept. On the other hand, the discourse of the Hegelian Begriff as a singulare tantum can also be understood as an indication that for Hegel there is only one Begriff, that is, only one object in truth. This view, however, which completely correctly characterizes the monistic aspect of Hegel's theory, is based, as will be shown, on other convictions than those which make the concept as an object of logic a singulare tantum.
B. Hegel's ontological conception of the object
a. The organological thesis
Hegel's conviction that objects as they are in truth can be referred to cognitively, i.e., judgmentally, is thus related to the assumption that what objects are in truth is their concept. One can call this conception of what an object is in truth Hegel's logical concept of the object. This logical concept of the object makes it intelligible how Hegel can, on the one hand, maintain that objects as they are in truth are strictly distinct from objects of representation and, in general, from the manner of their subjective presentation, and, on the other hand, assume that they can be known as what they are in truth, i.e., can be made the object of judgments. This logical concept of the object, however, does not give any information about what objects are in truth. This question is to be answered by Hegel's ontological conception of the object.
First of all it is to be noted that the formula 'what objects are in truth' is ambiguous; on the one hand it can mean: Assuming x is an object, what is x in truth, i.e. irrespective of the way of its being given this sense of the formula covers the logical concept of the object, - on the other hand this formula can mean: What conditions must something fulfill in order to be accepted as an object at all, i.e. - remembering the third sense of Hegel's discourse of 'object' relevant here what conditions must something fulfill in order that there can be a concept of it at all. By Hegel's ontological conception of the object I understand Hegel's attempt to give an answer to the question what objects are in truth, understood in the second interpretation of this question. A constitutive part of this conception is the assumption that only that is real or actual, that is, ontologically relevant, which corresponds to this conception. If one summarizes it in the form of a preliminary assertion, objects according to this ontological conception are all those objects which can be thought according to an organological pattern.
Before pursuing this assertion, some restrictive remarks: (1) This assertion is not to be understood as implying Hegel's conviction that all objects are organisms, but it is also (2) not to be understood as allowing the possibility that for Hegel there is anything that cannot be conceived according to an organological pattern. Rather, the meaning of this assertion to be explicated is to be seen precisely in the fact that, according to it, not everything that exists - from feldspar and mica slate to matter and magnetism to state, law and religion - can be interpreted as an organism and thus admitted as an object 'in truth', but that everything can be interpreted organologically. (3) The conceptual definitions occurring in the science of logic cannot be regarded as possible objects in this sense. This is not because it is clear that Hegel would not have regarded them as objects in this sense, but because it is unclear how he can regard them as such objects. This becomes clear if one supplements the given determination by the formulation mentioned above, which is terminologically closer to Hegel, and says that everything is an object for Hegel to which there is a (Hegelian) concept. Now, if it is true that Hegel's analysis of the (Hegelian) concept of the object 'concept' within the framework of logic leads to the result that this object consists in nothing but a complicated connection of conceptual determinations - the 'moments' of the object 'concept', then it is obvious that these conceptual determinations cannot themselves be the (Hegelian) 'concept', unless one accepts iteration problems and part-whole paradoxes. But it is also difficult to assume that there can be one (Hegelian) Begriff of each of them; for if the Hegelian Begriff is a complex of Begriffsbestimmungen, then the Begriff of a (single) Denkbestimmung would have to consist of a manifold of Begriffsbestimmungen, which again leads to iteration and inclusion problems, especially if one sensibly proceeds from the assumption that not any arbitrary collection of Begriffsbestimmungen yields a Hegelian Begriff. But if there can be no concept to a Begriffsbestimmung, then it cannot be conceived as an object in the sense given here. Hegel himself seems to have had certain difficulties with the logical or ontological status of conceptual determinations, as the note to §162 of the Encyclopedia shows, in which he does not want the "logical determinations ... of being and essence" to be regarded as "mere thought determinations" on the one hand, but not as proper (Hegelian) concepts either.
b. The Kantian Background
Now, the organological conception of the object characterized by the above assertion is neither immediately obvious, nor is it easy to see what such a conception suggests in the first place. If one traces the reasons for this conception, which at first seems both arbitrary and not very plausible, it turns out that they all have little to do with any insights into the phenomenology of the object. They are much more clearly related to some underlying convictions of Hegel's entire philosophical approach. These convictions primarily concern the conditions under which, according to Kant, philosophy is still possible at all, and have their starting point in the assumption that a post-Kantian philosophical system has the task both of holding on to the 'progressive' elements provided by Kant's philosophy, but at the same time of overcoming the dualistic overall conception of Kant's theory, an overall conception whose opposition of thing-in-itself and appearance, on the one hand, and mechanical and teleological modes of explanation, on the other, has been held to be mistaken not only by Hegel. 35 Among the elements to be held fast are - also not only for Hegel - all anti-dualistic components of Kant's philosophy, i.e. above all Kant's theory of the transcendental unity of apperception and the representation of the purposiveness of nature in all its forms of appearance, admitted by Kant himself, however, only as regulative idea. One can now make Hegel's organological conception of the object and the motives underlying this conception accessible to oneself by considering them as the result of the analysis of the conditions to which the concept of the object must do justice, given an anti-dualistic intention and while maintaining the problem situation given mainly by Kant.36
This problem situation can be characterized in the aspects relevant here very briefly as follows: Kant, for reasons connected with his theory of experience developed in the Critique of Pure Reason, was of the opinion that the mechanical mode of explaining nature, which can lead to objectively valid knowledge, is unsuitable for explaining the totality of natural phenomena insofar as it is inapplicable to one type of natural objects, namely to those which require the assumption of natural purposes for their explanation. These objects, which altogether constitute what may be called organic nature, are, according to Kant, accessible only to teleological consideration. For Kant, this mode of consideration is essentially distinguished from the mechanical one mainly by the fact that it is not capable of leading to objectively valid knowledge or explanation, but produces only subjectively valid knowledge. For Kant, therefore, in the question of the relation between the two modes of explanation on the one hand, and between the modes of explanation and the respective objects of knowledge on the other hand, the following situation is characteristic: If it is about objectively valid knowledge, only the mechanical mode of explanation helps, and everything that cannot be explained mechanically cannot be explained objectively validly. Nevertheless, there can be, although not objectively, but subjectively valid cognitions of states of affairs that cannot be explained mechanically, but only teleologically. To these states of affairs belong for Kant, on the one hand, the whole range of phenomena of organic nature, with respect to which, however, it is reasonable, according to Kant, to hope that it can sometime be explained mechanically, and, on the other hand - most probably in principle - the range of states of affairs which can be thought only on the assumption of a so-called 'causality according to purposes' and which cannot be regarded as natural phenomena in the proper sense, states of affairs, therefore, such as the supreme being or a subject of history.37
c. Hegel's Resolution of Kant's Presuppositions
It is quite obvious that this Kantian model is characterized by several dualistic convictions, namely (1) by the assumption of two kinds of objects whose difference is sufficiently determined via their accessibility by different modes of explanation, and (2) by the assumption that each of these two modes of explanation leads to different kinds of knowledge, namely objectively and subjectively valid knowledge, respectively. Now if, like Hegel, one wants to avoid these dualisms on the one hand and cannot simply deny the distinctions made by Kant on the other, one is forced to do two things: First, one has to present a conception of the object according to which all objects can be regarded as similar in principle, and second, one has to undermine the distinction between objectively and subjectively valid cognitions.
Subverting the distinction between objectively and subjectively valid cognitions is not difficult for Hegel because of his logical concept of the object. This is because, by equating what an object is in truth with its concept and by asserting that the cognition of an object consists in the cognition of its concept, he can declare without problems for his approach that everything that can be called cognition of the object at all is objectively valid in the sense, that it must constitute something about the concept of the object, so that the notion of a subjectively valid cognition presents a 'contradictio in adjecto' - either something is a cognition, and then it is an objectively valid cognition, namely a cognition of the concept of the object, or it is not a cognition at all, but representation, Anschauung and the like.
The former, namely the thesis of homogeneity with respect to objects, also results from Kant's presuppositions. If, like Kant, one wants to distinguish between a mechanical and a teleological mode of explanation 38 of objects or object connections because there are objects or connections of them which cannot be explained mechanically but require another, namely the teleological mode of explanation, then the reason for the distinction between these two modes of explanation and for the assertion of their inevitability lies in the assumption of irreducible structural differences between types of objects. If one now intends, as Hegel did on the basis of his anti-dualistic intention, to question this reason for the assumption of the inevitability of different kinds of explanation, the nearest strategy is to deny the presupposition of structurally different objects that enters into this assumption and to present a conception of the object according to which objects can be conceived as being so constituted that they are structurally alike. For if they can be thought of as structurally alike, then one can still hold to the thesis of the inevitability of different modes of explanation, but one no longer has to buy this thesis at the price of asserting structurally different objects.39
If, however, an anti-dualistic program orientated towards Kant's presuppositions is exhausted in the quite understandable demand for a conception of the object according to which objects can be regarded as structurally similar, then there is still very little to be done with it as long as it is not determined in what the structural similarity of objects consists. For even if one remains within the framework of the alternative set up by Kant and distinguishes only between objects that can be explained mechanically and those that can be explained teleologically, with the assertion of structurally similar objects one has established oneself in an anti-dualistic way, but has not yet formulated an anti-dualistic program. This is because the Kantian alternative thus formulated quite obviously admits of two antidualist programs: one which proceeds on the assumption that all objects are structurally of the same kind as those which can be explained mechanically, or that all objects are mechanisms, and another which proceeds on the assumption that all objects are structurally of the same kind as those which can be explained teleologically, or that all objects are organisms. Now, if it is not merely a matter of advocating any anti-dualistic program within Kant's presuppositions, i.e., if one does not want to be completely decisionistic about which one, then one must agree on a consideration which makes it plausible why one prefers either a mechanistic conception of the object to an organological one or, conversely, an organological one to a mechanistic one.
Now the argument that can be provided by Hegel for his decision in this question is again strongly dependent on Kant's initial theory and is based on two assumptions. The first is that Kant was quite right in his conviction that not all objects can be explained mechanically; the second, which has already been discussed, is that Kant was quite wrong in his conviction that one can distinguish between objectively and subjectively valid cognitions. Now if there are objects, according to Hegel, which cannot be explained mechanically, then a mechanistic conception of the object is unsuitable for an anti-dualistic program, because such a conception leads to a contradictory position to which even the Kantian dualistic position is preferable. Namely, it leads to a position which has to distinguish between mechanically explicable and non-mechanically explicable objects, but at the same time - on the basis of the second assumption does not have the possibility to refer to the different kind of validity of different kinds of explanation, so that the concept 'non-mechanically explicable object' can only appear as a contradictory concept within the framework of this mechanistic position. Thus, such a position cannot integrate non-mechanically explicable objects or can only do so at the price of contradiction.
But one does not get into this difficulty with an organological conception of the object. For if it is only assumed that one cannot regard all objects as mechanisms, but not that one cannot regard all objects as organisms, then trivially the possibility is not excluded to regard all objects as organisms. If one admits this possibility and continues to deny, according to the second assumption, that mechanisms and organisms differ in that they lead to different kinds of valid knowledge, then the only price to be paid for an organological conception of the object is that one must declare mechanisms to be a special case of organisms. Therefore, staying within the Kantian alternatives of mechanism and organism, mechanical and teleological mode of explanation, one is virtually forced to favor an organological conception of the object if the intention is anti-dualistic.
That Hegel actually advocated such a conception is well known and difficult to overlook. 40 It is noteworthy that for this conception it is by no means necessary to bring into play any affinities to the early romantic philosophy of nature, but that the examination of Kant's Third Critique alone is sufficient to suggest such a conception compellingly in the case of anti-dualistic intentions. That an organological conception of the object was attractive to Hegel mainly for reasons other than those having to do with overcoming Kant's philosophy cannot and should not be denied. But the extent to which a philosophy of Hegel's kind is rooted in the contexts of discussion of its time is clearly shown by the possibility of such an understanding of essential aspects of its foundations.41
Nevertheless, it is very difficult to fill this conception with content, i.e., to state more or less precisely what its distinguishing features are. A hypothesis that is sufficient for the present context, even if it needs a lot of explanation, is the formulation that an organological conception of the object for Hegel is one that is able to understand objects as units of incompatible determinations. This in such a way that the unity character of objects or the nature of the unity of objects is determined by their respective determinations. Hegel captures the essential core of the conviction entering into this conception in formulas as famous as they are apocryphal, such as that of life as the connection of connection and non-connection, which already goes back to his Frankfurt period, or that of the absolute as the identity of identity and non-identity or the unity of unity and multiplicity, which comes from the 'Differenzschrift'.42
C. Object and Judgment
Before proceeding now to deal more precisely with Hegel's organological concept of object, the topic of 'object and judgment' must be taken up again. The path taken here to clarify Hegel's basic ontological assumptions for the purpose of understanding why relations are ontologically irrelevant for him is in a sense prefigured by Hegel himself through his critique of the understanding of judgment and of traditional metaphysics' assessment of the performance of subject-predicate judgment. This critique leads, as shown, to the statement that before one can make out anything about what is in truth, two demands must be met, (1) one must have come to an understanding about what objects are in truth in the first place, and (2) one must also have developed a thesis about how these objects are accessible to judgment as they are in truth. Only when these two demands are fulfilled, so one can let Hegel claim, one will be able to know something about how one has to deal with judgments when it comes to the knowledge of "the truth". Now Hegel claims to have satisfied both demands, the first by asserting that what is to be able to occur at all as an object 'in truth' or as an actual object must be thought organologically, i.e., as a unity of incompatible determinations, the second by identifying what an object is in truth with its concept. It is now to be asked what these assertions mean for an interpretation of judgment that is correct in the Hegelian sense and alternative to the conception of traditional metaphysics. The answer that can be given to this question proceeds on the assumption (1) that every concept is an object in truth, or that all concepts are concepts of objects, and (2) that in judgments concepts are determinate.
First of all, a summary of the starting position again: To recognize objects in truth means to recognize their concept, because what the object is in truth is its concept. Moreover, only that is object in truth which does not have to be thought as mechanism, but which can be thought organologically as unity of incompatible determinations or as organism-like. This starting position now seems to have led Hegel to the view that what an object is in truth, namely its concept, must also be thought as organism-like. This view, however little natural it may seem in a normal understanding of the terms 'object' and 'concept', i.e. not related to Hegel's usage, can be justified from the assumptions formulated in the initial position just as correctly as, for instance, from the statements 'humans are bipedal living beings' and 'humans are mortal' the view that bipedal living beings are mortal can be justified. One can also interpret this view as the result of the identification of what has been called above the logical concept of the object with what we have called the ontological concept of the object, an identification which seems strange only if one has not paid enough attention to the Hegelian double sense of the formula 'object in truth'.
From the assumption that the concepts of objects must themselves be conceived as organism-like, the following picture emerges for Hegel's interpretation of judgment: If with judgments concepts of objects, i.e., what objects are in truth, are determined, and not, for instance, representations of objects, then they must be conceived in such a way that they are able to do justice to the peculiarities of their object, namely, the concept of the object. To conceive of them in this way, however, means to have to take into account two things: (1) that concepts are to be thought of as organism-like entities, i.e., as unities of incompatible determinations, and (2) that the subject-predicate form of judgments, while linguistically unavoidable, is ontologically misleading. 43 If the second stipulation says only that one must not interpret the meaning of judgments in the way suggested by the linguistic form of the judgment, the first stipulation determines how to deal with it when it comes to determining a concept. The main features of this determination can be summarized in two theses. The first is that for every judgment whose subject concept is the concept of an object and whose predicate concept is a determination of this concept, there must be at least one judgment incompatible with it with respect to the predicate concept. This for two reasons: (1) because the very subject of judgment, the concept of an object, is supposed to contain incompatible determinations, and because the unity which the object in truth, i.e. the concept, presents is thought by Hegel to be constituted by opposite determinations, so that the primal subject of judgment characterizing this unity is, in the terminology of traditional logic, a contradictory concept. The second is that for every judgment whose concept of subject is the concept of an object and whose predicate concept is a determination of this concept, there must be exactly one judgment incompatible with it with respect to the subject concept.
Since Hegel's theory of judgment, which is very complex, complicated, and difficult to grasp precisely, is only a secondary topic in the present context, these references, which present the topic of 'object and judgment' only in a very abbreviated way, must suffice to indicate at least the direction in which Hegel's conception of judgment leads on the basis of his concept of object. 44 It should be noted that these indications may give rise to the assumption that the role of contradiction in Hegel's philosophy has a trivial and a, so to speak, extravagant aspect. The trivial aspect is already implicit in the formulation frequently chosen here, according to which objects must be capable of being conceived as unities of incompatible determinations. For if incompatibility of determinations is allowed, there seems to be no way around the consequence that one thereby admits precisely contradictory determinations as determinations of the object, which, when applied to predicates in judgments, leads to the assumption of the contradictoriness of the concept of the object characterized by the subject expression. But this consequence is theoretically unproductive, or rather does not lead to logically objectionable positions, as long as one knows ways and means to connect the incompatibility of the determinations of an object with a non-classical notion of the contradictory concept. But although Hegel himself has such means at his disposal--for example, in his distinction between (Hegelian) concepts and (classical) general concepts--in the discussion of the problems of Hegelian contradictions, arguments have been provided almost exclusively by Hegel supporters and Hegel opponents alike which proceed on the assumption that one must regard Hegelian concepts as classical general concepts.45
Often overlooked is the extravagant aspect, peculiar to Hegel, of his conception of a connection between contradictions and the concept of the object. This consists in the assumption, never discussed in great detail by Hegel, that there is a contradiction between the conception of objects as units of determinations and their conception as units of determinations, contradiction understood here in the sense in which, for example, there is a contradiction between duck perception and rabbit perception in the duck-rabbit-puzzle of gestalt psychology. The peculiarity or extravagance of this assumption is that it implicitly contains the claim that any conception of the object which conceives objects as unities of determinations operates with a contradictory concept of the object. For Hegel, this view concerning the logical status of the concept of the object is, on the one hand, cause for rejecting the "unreflective" use of this concept of the object; on the other hand, he seems to have no hesitation not only in admitting a, so to speak, "reflective" use of this concept, but even in considering it particularly suitable as a means of presenting the concept of an object, understood as a presentation of what an object is in truth.46
IV "Subjectivity" as an ontological category
Summarizing the result of the foregoing in one sentence, it may be stated as follows: Hegel's critique of traditional metaphysics has a powerful basis in his conviction that by its means one is unable to present an acceptable theory of what an object is in truth. This is because, on the one hand, due to its "unreflective" understanding of judgment, it can grasp objects only as objects of representation, and on the other hand, it is incapable of providing material cover for an 'organological' conception of the object. The first partial thesis of this critique, concerning objects as objects of representation (Vorstellungsgegenstände), has already been considered as far as it is relevant for our purposes and has led to the logical conception of the object, according to which what an object is in truth is its concept. Not sufficiently considered so far, however, is the second partial thesis, which concerns the organological conception of the object, of which so far it has only been possible to make out that Hegel actually holds it. Above all, the formula 'organological conception of the object' is at present still far too obscure to be informative. As it has been used so far, however, it points to two things: first, to the fact that according to Hegel everything that can be regarded as an object 'in truth' must be regarded as homogeneous in a sense yet to be clarified, and further, to the fact that this homogeneity consists in an affinity to the constitution and structure of organisms which has hitherto remained unclear. The former has resulted from the formal requirements of a unified philosophical or monistic program, the latter on the basis of determinations related to the alternatives factually available to Hegel.
A. Specification of the organological thesis
If we leave the monistic aspect of this conception for now, the first question that arises is what is meant by 'organism-like' and similar terms. This question arises not only because terms like 'organism' are notoriously obscure, but above all because the assertion that Hegel proceeds from the assumption that only those objects which can be conceived as organisms or as organism-like can be regarded as objects 'in truth' or as actual objects is very easily misleading without appropriate qualifications. If, for example, one approaches the real-philosophical parts of the Hegelian system on the basis of such an assertion with the expectation that in them all thematized objects (Gegenstände) will be presented as such, which must be regarded 'in truth' as organisms or at least as structured in an organism-like way, then one will very quickly find that, if at all, then only a very indirect connection between organism-likeness and object-likeness exists. The first qualification of the picture of Hegel's organological conception of the object, which has so far been established only terminologically, must therefore be gained by coming to an understanding of the demands that must be made on an organological conception of the object which, on the one hand, is prepared to hold the thesis that everything that is object 'in truth' is also organism-like in a still undetermined sense, but which, on the other hand, maintains that not every object is an organism.
What speaks against a simple identification of the organological conception of the object with the thesis that all objects are 'in truth' organisms is that it is very difficult to find a description of what an organism is that does not make an organological conception of the object appear either meaningless, false or trivial. If one chooses, e.g. like Kant a functional description, according to which an organism or, as Kant says, an "organisirtes Wesen" must fulfill the conditions "that the parts of it mutually produce one another altogether according to their form as well as connection and thus a whole from its own causality, the concept of which could in turn be the cause of it according to a principle (in a being which would possess the causality according to concepts presupposed for such a product)" - or one defines more briefly: "An organized product of nature is that in which everything is purpose and reciprocally also means", 47 - if one chooses such a description, then one is exposed to a double misfortune if one wants to assert that all objects are 'in truth' organisms. Even if one admits as objects only what Hegel thematizes as objects in his philosophy of nature and philosophy of mind, one will fail with such a description on the one hand because of a large number of these objects in the sense that one cannot apply it to them under any circumstances. On the other hand, if one insists on this description and the assertion that all objects are 'in truth' organisms, one will be forced to annihilate precisely those objects to which this description is not applicable. Both would invalidate an organological conception of the object at the very outset.
But even if one resorts to a more formal description and would describe organisms as unities of incompatible determinations, for instance by taking up the formulation used as an alternative above, one would have gained little for the attempt to formulate an organological conception of the object in more than a metaphorical way. For such a description is primarily burdened by the fact that it leaves at least two things completely unclear. It (1) does not make clear in any way what the conditions of incompatibility are, i.e. it does not indicate when determinations have to be regarded as incompatible. It gives (2) no information about what one should think of units of compatible determinations, if there are any, unless one declares such units to be non-organic units according to the precondition, i.e. non-organisms, and therefore refrains from admitting them as objects. This solution, too, would hardly contribute to insight into the philosophical attractiveness of an organological conception of the object.
Already these difficulties are sufficient to make understandable why one cannot be interested in identifying an organological conception of the object with the thesis that all objects are 'in truth' organisms. However, they give no indication of how to separate such a conception from this thesis. Hegel now seems to want to achieve this separation by resorting to a structure in the description of what objects are 'in truth', which he understands as an essential feature of a determinate kind of organisms, namely conscious living beings, and which he calls 'subjectivity'. Leaving aside for the moment what is meant by "structure" and "subjectivity" and only paying attention to whether the required separation can be achieved by such an operation, this seems to be the case. For by means of this operation an organological conception of the object is describable as such, according to which everything that can be regarded as an object 'in truth' or as an actual object can be characterized according to it only by recourse to the structure called 'subjectivity', a structure which finds its primary expression 48 in organisms of the kind of conscious living beings. Although this description still expresses the privileged relation that is supposed to exist between objects 'in truth' and organisms, it nevertheless makes it clear that one need not regard every object as something that is 'in truth' an organism.
B. Hegel's Theory of Subjectivity.
While this version of Hegel's organological conception of the object may have the advantage of leading around some common difficulties of the Hegelian approach, it has the disadvantage of tying Hegel's understanding of the object, and thus his ontology, to one of the most obscure parts of his theory, namely, his theory of subjectivity. This theory is obscure from almost every point of view from which one looks at it. This is not changed by the fact that, because the central role of this part of the theory is easy to see, one has been concerned with its elucidation for a long time. 49 The following remarks will hardly be able to change anything about this situation, on the one hand because they deal with Hegel's theory of subjectivity only insofar as it is relevant for his ontology, on the other hand because they do not consider presuppositions and implications of this theory.
a. Historical Preliminary Remark
First, a historical preliminary remark. Regardless of what Hegel means more precisely by 'subjectivity' or closely related terms such as 'self-consciousness', 'I' or 'spirit', it is nevertheless difficult to overlook the fact that Hegel again brings to bear a motif of Kantian philosophy, namely the theme of the transcendental unity of apperception. As already mentioned, besides the Kantian doctrine of teleological power of judgment, it has been above all the theory of the transcendental talen unity of apperception which Hegel, for various reasons, has considered an unwaivable starting point also of his philosophy. These reasons, however, do not directly coincide with those that determined Kant's assessment of the function and performance of this theory; they are rather understandable against the background of the reinterpretation of Kant's assessment by Fichte and Schelling. The point at which not only Hegel, but above all Fichte and Schelling thought they could find a point of contact in Kant's theory of the transcendental unity of apperception, is the aspect, which Kam himself did not actually suggest at all, according to which the non-empirical I, which secures the conditions of objectivity of cognition, is at the same time something like a producer of reality in a material respect in a way that is differently understood by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. What moved Fichte, Schelling and Hegel as well as some other of their contemporaries to turn the representation of the transcendental unity of apperception, initially introduced by Kant only as a logical condition of the possibility of cognition, into a material condition of ontological reality at almost any price - to answer this question even somewhat informatively would be equivalent to presenting a history of the development of German Idealism. If one wants to answer it only for Hegel with a very abbreviated indication, one will be able to say that Hegel seems to have been primarily interested in bringing the representation of the transcendental unity of apperception into a connection with the central idea of the teleological power of judgment in such a way that the idea of the objective purposefulness of nature can be transformed into the idea of an intelligent being manifesting itself in nature as the epitome of all reality.50
b. "Subjectivity"" and "Concept""
This historical preliminary remark, however, is of little help in the matter. With respect to it, the state reached is rather curious. For if one asks what the qualification of the organological conception of the object implied above means in terms of the matter, one must formulate the result in the sufficiently paradoxical phrase that Hegel's theory of the ontologically relevant object is, to all appearances, essentially a theory of subjectivity. This result, which is contracted by Hegel with his characteristic use of punch lines into the remark that "subjectivity and object are the same thing" 51 is, however, not only paradoxical but also confusing. For if one considers the immense spectrum within which Hegel thinks he can employ the term 'subjectivity' as an expression qualifying states of affairs, then there are allrn many ways to interpret the sense of the connection of object with subjectivity. In the present context, there are two determinations of 'subjectivity' in particular that cause difficulties. On the one hand, the one that, according to 'subjectivity', presents a characteristic that distinguishes the (Hegelian) concept, and on the other hand, the one that is difficult to reconcile with this first one, which, according to 'subjectivity', is a characteristic that can only be presupposed for the Hegelian concept under very determinate conditions. That these two determinations pose special problems is related to the fact that Hegel's understanding of the object is determined essentially by his understanding of the concept.
The ambiguities inevitably connected with the paradoxical formulation cannot now be resolved at one stroke. But they can be eliminated rudimentarily if one recalls once more some of Hegel's main theses, as far as they have been developed so far. The starting point can again be the thesis of the logical conception of the object, that what objects are in truth is their concept. This thesis, in connection with that of the ontological conception of the object, according to which only that is 'in truth' object which can be conceived as organism in a sense yet to be specified, now directly contains the assertion that what there is 'in truth', what is thus alone ontologically relevant, is precisely these concepts or the concept. What are concepts now? The answer we have been familiar with so far, namely that concepts are complexes of thought-determinations, is not sufficient in this context, because it may characterize concepts formally correctly, but it does not give information about how the connection of thought-determinations in the concept can be thought, or in other words, which complexes of thought-determinations can be regarded as concepts.
If one tries to find information about this in Hegel, one is immediately at the topic of 'subjectivity', because in the Science of Logic as well as in the Encyclopedia Hegel always refers to facts like 'I', 'self-consciousness', 'spirit' or 'subject', which he himself brings into a close relationship with what he calls 'subjectivity'. All these references indicate that, while one must not identify the Hegelian concept with any of the facts mentioned, one must nevertheless regard these facts as the most 'empirical' paradigms of the concept. The question, then, of what is a or the Begriff for Hegel can be resolved into the two questions (1) what then makes such states of affairs as 'I', 'self-consciousness', or 'spirit' the best empirical paradigms of the Begriff for Hegel, and (2) what meaning 'subjectivity' has for Hegel in the context of such states of affairs as 'I', 'self-consciousness', or 'spirit'. The duplication of the question cannot be avoided because Hegel does not simply identify 'subjectivity' with any of the mentioned states of affairs, so that the question of the connection of Hegel's concept with 'I', 'self-consciousness', etc. is initially at least independent of the question of what the designation 'subjectivity' means for the concept.
As far as the first question is concerned, Hegel's most detailed answer is to be found in the introductory passages of the third part of the Science of Logic. Here Hegel declares, "The concept, in so far as it has progressed to such an existence which is itself free, is nothing else than I or pure self-consciousness" or "I is the pure concept itself which has come into existence as a concept." 52 Hegel can come to this view because for him both the concept and I or self-consciousness must be thought as one and the same structure or as structurally identical, namely as a unity of generality, particularity, and singularity or as "absolute generality, which is just as immediately absolute singularity." 53 How Hegel arrives at these descriptions and which factual convictions enter into them need not interest us here. It is only to be noted that the special affinity between I, selfconsciousness, etc., and concept is established by Hegel through a consideration of the structure of these facts.
c. "Einseitige" and "übergreifende Subjektivität".
The second question is more difficult to answer, namely, the meaning of what Hegel calls 'subjectivity'. Indeed, Hegel uses this term in at least two different senses. Both meanings are probably interrelated, but the nature of their connection is extremely obscure and, as far as I can see, nowhere specifically addressed by Hegel. From the few places where Hegel himself refers to the double sense of this term, it can only be inferred that he distinguishes between 'overarching' and 'one-sided' subjectivity, between subjectivity as an essential characteristic of the concept and as marking what he describes by 'externality and contingency.' 54
What Hegel means by 'one-sided subjectivity' or 'subjectivity' in the sense of 'externality and contingency' is still relatively easy to understand. Subjectivity' is used here as an opposite term to 'objectivity' and refers to the fact that something that is subjective in this sense, e.g. an opinion or an impression, still stands in a certain opposition to or must be distinguished from that which is its objective basis. It is this sense of 'subjectivity' to which Hegel refers when, in Wissenchaft der Logik und Enzyklopädie, he titles the respective first sections of the doctrine of the concept "Subjectivity" and "The Subjective Concept." 55
What Hegel, on the other hand, aims at with the discourse of 'overarching subjectivity' or of the 'essential subjectivity of the concept' 56 is less easy to discern. This is unfortunate not least because this second sense of 'subjectivity' is relevant to his logical, or better, metaphysical theory of subjectivity to quite a different degree than the first sense. If one follows the indications from Wüsenschaft der Logik and Enzyklopädie, then it becomes apparent that Hegel presupposes what he calls in the Enzyklopädie 'overarching subjectivity' to the presence of precisely those conditions that must be fulfilled in order for something to conceive of itself as identical with something else. He develops this conception in the context of science of logic and encyclopedia in the context of determinations about how one has to think about the relation of subjectivity to objectivity or of the subjective concept to the object in the context of the theory of the concept. 57 He proceeds from the assumption that one has a sufficient concept of subjectivity only if one interprets it as the concept of a relation or relationship that exists between states of affairs that can themselves be thought as determinate relations or relationships (Verhältnisse oder Beziehungen) of the same elements or moments.58 'Subjectivity' in this sense is thus supposed to describe a determinate kind of self-relation or self-relationship (Selbstverhältnis oder Selbstbeziehung). Now, Hegel seems to think that 'overarching' is an appropriate characterization of this concept of subjectivity because it is meant to think a relation between relations which can be called 'subjectivity' only if it finds a corresponding foundation in the relations which it puts into relation. Such a foundation is apparently given when the relation called "subjectivity" can be mapped onto the relations that it relates to each other, or when it reaches over (übergreift) these relations.
The difficulty of explicating the metaphor of "overarching subjectivity" by Hegelian means corresponds to the exclusivity of its significant use by Hegel. Basically, according to Hegel, there should be only one state of affairs to which subjectivity in this sense can be attributed as a characteristic. This state of affairs is the Hegelian "idea", the entity which is conceived by Hegel as the unity of two irreducible but similar relations. Of it it is said, "The unity of the Idea is subjectivity."59 Now, since the representation of overarching subjectivity forms the core of Hegel's metaphysical theory of subjectivity, it must be pursued further with the aim of bringing out at least the outline of the model underlying the conception of subjectivity in this sense.
d. Excursus: Hegel's Metaphysical Concept of Subjectivity in Jena
Since in the present context it is not so much a matter of discussing Hegel's logical 60 theory of subjectivity elaborated in Science of Logic and Encyclopedia, but rather of characterizing the way in which Hegel would like what he calls 'overarching subjectivity' to be conceived, it is advisable to advance the clarification of the question posed by a brief discussion of a position Hegel later abandoned. The position consulted here is that advocated by Hegel in 1804/05 in the Second Jena System Draft, a system draft that has become known under the title Jena Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Nature. This position clearly presents, by relatively simple means, the model of subjectivity, the structure of which Hegel did not fundamentally change. Even if the factual and categorical filling of this model was not taken over by him into his mature system presented through Science of Logic and Encyclopedia, it nevertheless gives very clear information about what Hegel sees as the theoretical power of the concept of subjectivity and what are the factual reasons for his metaphor of overarching subjectivity.
Hegel develops this model in the second part of this Second Jena System Draft, entitled "Metaphysics". The basic assumption also of this draft is the conviction which we already encountered as the basis of Hegel's identification of 'object in truth' with 'concept of object' on the one hand and 'organologically interpretable object' on the other hand. These are the assumptions (1) that, for epistemological reasons alone, there must be some kind of structural sameness between everything that can be admitted as an object 'in truth' at all, and (2) that everything that is an object in any ontologically relevant sense is 'in truth' its concept, and to that extent must be accessible to cognition. The requirements of accessibility and homogeneity do not refer to any material conditions that must be satisfied by cognition or objects, but are rather to be understood in the sense that everything that can be regarded as an entity at all must satisfy certain formal conditions.
Hegel develops these conditions in his early logic and metaphysics, thus also in the metaphysics of the Second Jena System Draft, within the framework of an analysis of the concept of cognition. According to this analysis, cognition is to be described as a specific relation between entities, which themselves can only be conceived as constellations of elements, i.e. relationally. A peculiarity of the relation of cognition is that the properties of this relation depend on the kind of constellation of elements that characterize the posited entities. To determine precisely this relation called " Erkennen " makes considerable difficulties and would require a detailed consideration of the relevant passages of the logic of this Second Jena System Draft. However, it can be regarded as the essential characteristic of this relation that, according to Hegel, it can only be encountered between states of affairs whose basic stock of determinations (moments) is of the kind that the relations that can be established between these determinations are of the same kind. Hegel now knows exactly two such states of affairs. One of these states of affairs he characterizes as "cognition in the narrower sense" or also as "different cognition", the other one as "thing-in-itself". Thing-in-itself and different cognition are the two "moments of cognition" 61 not only in the sense that they are trivially the relata of the cognition relation as cognition subject and cognition object, but in the stronger sense that they and only they fulfill the conditions that are constitutive of moments of cognition, and that is, that they must be regarded as relations that possess a certain degree of complexity specific to them and are homogeneous.
This starting point not only describes a state, namely the one that appeared as the constellation concluding the logic of the Second Jena System Draft, but at the same time formulates a program and points to strategies for its redemption. The program is determined by the compulsion to redeem the assertion made by the starting point and consists in nothing else than (1) the concrete determination of the kind of homogeneity of the relations that are supposed to constitute the moments of the epistemic relation and the proof of their homogeneity and (2) the analysis of the properties of the epistemic relation itself, insofar as it is considered to be determined by the specific nature of its relata. The strategies available for solving this twofold task are various. 62 The one chosen by Hegel in the context of the metaphysics under consideration here consists in the fact that he first proves, by a precise analysis of the material elements constitutive of each of the relata - Hegel here calls them "Sich-selbst-Gleichheit" and "Reflexion" 63 - that the relata of the epistemic relation must be conceived as identical in the sense that one is the same as the other. According to Hegel, this proof of the type-identity of the relata at the same time constitutes the justification for the fact that the relation existing between these relata can only be conceived as a relation, which he designates by the term "ground."64
This result of the first section of the metaphysics ("cognition as a system of principles") asserts only the structural or the type identity of the relata of the cognition relation determined as "ground", but not their numerical identity. That they must also be regarded as numerically identical, to prove this is the aim of the second step of the explication of the epistemic relation, the "metaphysics of objectivity." 65 If, however, the numerical identity of the relata can be asserted, the epistemic relation is no longer sufficiently determined, according to Hegel, if it is conceived only as "ground". For the "ground" relation implies only the type identity of the relata, and this is a necessary, but by no means a sufficient condition for the numerical identity of the relata. The relation that exists between such numerically identical relata must therefore be conceived differently, and Hegel characterizes it terminologically as "infinity." 66 "Infinity" now means in general a relation which exists between numerically identical relata, in which therefore a state of affairs stands to itself. It is a case of an epistemological relation if the relata can be interpreted as relations of determinate type. 67
From the fact that the relata of the knowledge relation must be regarded as numerically identical, if they are to stand in the infinity relation to each other, it follows immediately that the infinity relation must be understood as a reflexive or as self-relation. The more precise determination of what can be called "self-relation" at all in this context now constitutes the third part of the metaphysics, the "metaphysics of subjectivity", and leads to a further determination of the relation of cognition, which is now called "spirit" ('I', "absolute spirit").68 Hegel comes to this further determination on the basis of the consideration of the immanent structure of the relata of the infinity relation. As already emphasized several times, the relata are to be considered as relations of elements or moments, that is, as relational entities themselves. The investigation of the relational constitution of these relata now leads, according to Hegel, not only to the insight that it is the same for each of the relata -- which, after all, would be only a trivial consequence of the numerical identity of the relata -- but, moreover, is to make clear that the relational constitution of the relata is the same as that of the relation whose relata they are, that is, that the elements of the relata themselves stand in exactly the same relation to one another as that in which the relata stand to one another, namely, the infinity relation.69
In addition to type identity and numerical identity of the relata, there is the third relational identity of relation and relata, which is terminologically difficult to grasp. That exactly this third is what Hegel has in mind when he speaks of the relation of cognition as "spirit", becomes easily clear from determinate formulations, two of which may be referred to: (1) "The absolute spirit, is the simple infinity or infinity referring to itself" 70 and (2) "By thus recognizing infinity, the spirit comprehends itself, for its comprehension is that it sets itself as referring to another; it comprehends itself because it sets itself as referring to the other, i.e., itself as the Andre of its own existence. i.e., itself as the Andre of itself, as infinite, and thus equal to itself."71 This result of the "Metaphysics of Subjectivity" at the same time determines what Hegel expects the concept of subjectivity to accomplish: it is to characterize a determinate type of self-relation.
However one may understand this conception of 'cognition', 'spirit', etc. 72, apparently abandoned by Hegel soon after the appearance of the Phenomenology of Spirit, it makes clear that Hegel here uses the term 'subjectivity' to denote a relation that something has to itself when it has conceived of itself as identical with or as the same as something different or different from itself. Necessary conditions for something to be ascribed the characteristic of 'subjectivity' seem to be (1) that it can be regarded as a relation, structured in a determinate way, of at least two self-defined elements, and (2) that it can be distinguished from itself in such a way that it can refer to itself as to an Other of itself, which Other (3) in turn must have the same structural constitution of the same elements as itself.73
This excursion into the Jena Hegel has been undertaken in order to gain insight into the second sense in which Hegel uses the term 'subjectivity', the sense that Hegel has in mind when he speaks of 'overarching subjectivity' or 'non-one-sided subjectivity'. Although, as already noted, the Jena concept of subjectivity cannot be attributed to the later Hegel without important limitations, it is hard to overlook that the main points of the Jena approach to a metaphysics of subjectivity can still be found in the Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia. This becomes clear when one realizes that for the post-Jena representation of overarching subjectivity the presuppositions already fundamental to the Jena conception are typical, namely (1) that subjectivity is conceived as a relation or relation (Relation oder Verhältnis) and (2) that this relation is to be regarded as a relation between relations of a determinate kind. However little these indications may help to free Hegel's logical or metaphysical theory of subjectivity from the suspicion of obscurity, they are sufficient for characterizing the function that the concept of subjectivity assumes in Hegel's ontology.
V. Subjectivity-ontological monism
If one refers this consideration of Hegel's theory of subjectivity back to the question of Hegel's ontological theory, i.e., to the question of what there is in truth or actual according to Hegel, then one must integrate the results of this consideration into the framework of the following three determinations, which stem from the course of the previous considerations and which together determine the formal concept of an ontology according to Hegel: (1) Ontological - in contrast, for example, to psychological, mathematical, or physical - reality or actuality accrues to an object for Hegel only if it can be regarded as an object in truth. (2) That which an object is in truth is the concept of that object, not its representation. (1) and (2) together establish that - regardless of what qualifies as an object in truth or as an actual object - what this object is in truth is its concept, so that ontologically real can only be concept or the concept, depending on whether there are several objects or only one object in truth. (3) Concepts must be conceived as units of incompatible determinations or organism-like according to a model that asserts what Hegel calls 'subjectivity' as the essential distinction of organism-like entities. These three determinations presuppose the formal concept of an ontology according to Hegel insofar as they indicate the conditions which something must satisfy if it is to be regarded as an object in truth, i.e. -- according to the double meaning of 'in truth' -- on the one hand not merely as a representation, on the other hand not merely as a physical (body), psychological (soul), theological (God) etc. object. is to be regarded as an object. The specifications, however, do not yet determine Hegel's material concept of ontology; they do not say anything about what it is that can be regarded as such an object in truth.
A. Formal Concept of the Ontological Object.
Against the background of these determinations and with the inclusion of Hegel's theory of subjectivity, one is now in a position to give an innocuous reading to Hegel's already quoted enigmatic dictum that in a certain sense "subjectivity and object are the same". If one understands subjectivity as a relation of relations to each other, then this dictum only says that only the object is what can be regarded as a relation of relations to each other. Proceeding further, as the context of the quotation suggests, that the object Hegel thematizes in this dictum is the object in truth, it says precisely that such objects are to be conceived as relations of relations to one another. This reading is innocuous, but not very informative. It becomes informative only when one takes into account how Hegel determines the relations as whose relation to each other the relation called 'subjectivity' can occur, or in other words, which relations it is whose relation to each other the object called 'object in truth' is. Hegel considers this question within the framework of his theory of the "idea", or rather, Hegel's theory of the "idea" is nothing else than the answer to this question. The answer is contained in Hegel's definition of the 'Idea', according to which the 'Idea ... is the true in and of itself, the absolute unity of concept and objectivity', 74 First, a preliminary remark on terminology. The distinction made by Hegel here between concept and idea has the function of pointing out what then the concept is in truth, namely idea. It thus serves to specify the sense in which one can speak of a concept as that which an object is in truth. The idea, if one prefers this formulation, is the (Hegelian) concept of the object 'concept'. It can also be characterized by Hegelian means as the "real concept" in relation to which the object 'concept' has the status of an "abstract" or "formal concept."75
If, like Hegel, concepts are essentially characterized by subjectivity and subjectivity is determined as a relation of relations to each other, then the Hegelian definition of the idea, if it determines what concepts are in truth, determines these relations as 'concept' on the one hand and as 'objectivity' on the other hand. The concept, therefore, understood as what an object is in truth, must be conceived as a specific relation - for Hegel it is obviously the identity relation of 'concept' and 'objectivity'. This conception, however, determines not only the (Hegelian) concept, but also directly what then can be regarded as an actual object or as an object in truth. For since an actual object or an object in truth is in any case to be a concept, and nothing other than a concept can be an actual object or an object in truth, by the given determination of the concept the object in truth is to be understood as a relation between. 'concept' and 'objectivity' is determined. The Hegelian answer to the question, between which relations the relation called 'subjectivity' now exists, thus, as a result of the double sense connected with the expression 'object in truth', serves the double purpose of characterizing conclusively both what is an object in truth, i.e. the concept, and what is an object or an actual object in truth, If the first aspect of this answer leads to the definitive structure of the concept, the second leads to Hegel's monism.
Now, as far as the concept, that is, what an object is in truth, is concerned, Hegel's intention to present it as a unity of the ('formal') concept and objectivity is remarkable insofar as it presents an attempt to integrate into what the object is supposed to be in truth, namely the concept, something like a material, non-conceptualist component. In other words, the thesis that what objects are in truth is to be conceived as the unity of the 'formal' concept and objectivity attempts to account for the fact that it is advisable, though perhaps not obligatory, in many respects to include in a conception of what an object is in truth the aspect of existence, the fact, that is, that objects, even if one does not want to think of them as real in an ontologically relevant sense, nevertheless exist in some sense.
Hegel's solution to let the existential aspect of the object come to the fore by including the determination of objectivity in the concept itself is now not only an attempt to meet the expectation, which is difficult to avoid, to be able to connect meaning with the latter even within the framework of an approach that distinguishes between ontological reality and objective existence. Hegel's solution is at the same time intended to help avoid an alternative that his position might face without it. One limb of the alternative would be to declare the objectivity or existential aspect of objects to be something simply irrelevant, illusion or 'bad semblance' - in this way one could establish, by Hegelian means and within the framework of the Hegelian approach, a skeptical position little loved by himself. The other limb of the alternative would be to explain objects, as given as objects, as appearances, expressions, signs that refer to something completely different, namely the Hegelian concept, -- such an interpretation would be conceivable as the basis for a Hegelian Kantianism or even Platonism. Hegel himself does not advocate either of these solutions. He makes objectivity or the existential aspect of the object a constitutive element of the concept, in which he conceives its so-called subjectivity in such a way that without the complement of objectivity it remains incomplete, one-sided, not overarching. The object, the object in its, so to speak, preconceptual mode of givenness, is thus conceived as something which presents a necessary but by no means sufficient condition for its own concept.
However ingenious and -- in the event that one accepts it -- attractive it may be, Hegel's solution to avoiding, on the one hand, skeptical consequences and, on the other hand, a two-world theory in claiming his formal concept of ontology remains unclear for several reasons. The main reason is probably that Hegel does very little to make intelligible what then makes what he calls 'objectivity' an element or moment of what he calls 'subjectivity'. For even if one grants him everything that his concept of subjectivity requires according to the analysis presented here, it is not possible to see, on the basis of the formal structure of this concept, why precisely Hegel's 'objectivity' is an element of this concept. Therefore, as far as I can see, Hegel's theory of what an object is in truth, namely, a concept, can be made accessible on the basis of its presuppositions only up to the point where the performance actually expected of it begins, namely, the performance of bringing or "mediating" the Hegelian concept of the object into a connection with its 'objectivity', its mode of existence. Whether this theory can actually accomplish this feat remains - here at least - unanswered.
B. Material Concept of the Ontological Object
But not only what is an object in truth is determined by the Hegelian definition of the Idea, but it is determined by it, as has already been indicated, what then comes into question as an object in truth. This is because precisely only that which can occur as a (Hegelian) concept is supposed to be an object in truth or an actual object. The discussion of Hegel's definition of the idea from this point of view leads to Hegel's material concept of ontology and i.e. to his monism. Here, too, first a preliminary remark: if one resorts to the distinction introduced in the introduction between two kinds of monism and their characterization, 76 one will already find little difficulty, on the basis of Hegel's formal concept of ontology elaborated so far, in regarding Hegel's ontology as a weak or qualitative monism in the sense explained there. For however one may interpret Hegel's draft in detail, one will have to take as its basic starting conviction the assumption that only that qualifies as an object in truth which is constituted in such a way that it can be grasped as a concept. But this means that it must be able to be thought as organism-like or capable of subjectivity, which is only the case if it proves to be reducible to one and the same basic structure. An ontological position characterized by such an assumption implies a weak monism because, although it is indeterminate with respect to the question whether there are several or only one object 'in truth', it demands of everything that is supposed to be able to be an object in truth that it is at least structurally of the same type.
It is more difficult to see why Hegel's ontology must also be regarded as monism in its strong variant, or as numerical monism, that is, as one that ultimately admits only a single object as ontologically real. That Hegel himself understood his position as a strong ontological monism, this is hardly to be doubted. 77 Now the reason for this view of his lies again in his conception of subjectivity. Leaving aside for the moment the very complex formal structure with which Hegel endowed his concept of ('overarching') subjectivity, only hinted at in outline in the foregoing, it remains as a fundamental fact that 'subjectivity' for Hegel -- quite in the sense of a transcendental-idealist tradition -- is supposed to characterize a type of self-relation, namely the type in which something of a determinate kind relates to something else of the very same kind as to itself. Subjectivity, conceived as a type of self-relation, therefore already trivially presupposes the numerical identity of the relata which are to stand in this relation. That which can stand in this relation of subjectivity can only be one and the same. Only that is a Hegelian concept of which it can be said that it stands to itself in this kind of self-relation. This is because the distinguishing characteristic of the concept is supposed to be subjectivity. For Hegel, however, there is only one object of which it can be rightly claimed that it is distinguished by this kind of self-relation, and this is not the (Hegelian) concept - according to Hegel, subjectivity only "formally" or "abstractly" belongs to it - but the (Hegelian) concept of the (Hegelian) concept, namely the idea. For, according to Hegel's intention and construction, only the Idea fulfills the conditions that are supposed to be constitutive for the existence of the relation of subjectivity.
From here it is no longer a long way to the insight that for Hegel there can be only one actual object or only one object in truth. For if the only candidates for the title 'object in truth' or 'actual object' are the (Hegelian) concepts and it is shown that there is only one (Hegelian) concept, then there can also be only one object in truth or one actual object. This object, the idea, is in this respect the only object that is ontologically relevant, if ontological relevance is only given to that which actually exists. Hegel's material concept of ontology, i.e., his substantively determinate conception of what must be regarded as ontologically real, as actual, thus establishes his ontological position in terms of a strong monism, a monism that can be called a 'monism of subjectivity' because of the specific concept of subjectivity that grounds it.
C. Consequences
This sketch of Hegel's ontology - as abbreviated and fragmentary as it is with respect to each of the basic conceptions considered in it - if it can be regarded as a presentation that fairly describes the basic outlines of Hegel's position, at least makes it clear why, from a determinate point of view, relations do not present an ontological problem for Hegel. This leads back to the starting point of the considerations here, namely, the question of what makes it possible for Hegel, on the one hand, to afford the standpoint that one can basically advocate whatever one wants with respect to relations without ever arriving at any ontologically relevant results, 78 and, on the other hand, to pass off as the basic monistic entity a state of affairs that is essentially relationally determinate, namely, as a relation of relations to one another. Now the answer to this question is obviously not that Hegel escaped the latent incompatibility of these two positions. Rather, he seems to think that one position necessitates the other.
To see this, one must look back again at the justification Hegel gives for his thesis of the ontological irrelevance of relations. As has been evident from his critical discussion of the ontological tenability of the 'thing-property' or 'substance-accident' distinction, his justification for this thesis is that these distinctions are untenable and to that extent the traditional ontology based on them is invalid. The dictum of the ontological irrelevance of relations therefore initially refers only to a notion of relation that has its place within the framework of traditional ontology. But this only means that the question whether there are relations - either as relational properties or as relational accidences or, finally, as independent entities related to things and properties - is, in a context determined by the assumptions and categorial apparatus of traditional ontology, an unproductive question that cannot lead to any insight into what is actual.
This assessment of the 'problem of relations', as far as it is approached within the framework and with the means of traditional ontology, does not prevent Hegel from seeing that every alternative ontology to the traditional one has to take into account the fact that there is a 'problem of relations'. This in the sense that in every ontology as a theory of what is in truth or actual there is an explicit or implicit information about what relations must be thought as. Now Hegel apparently did not think that the ruin of traditional metaphysics he diagnosed gave rise to the expectation that what is ultimately actual should be conceived as a relationless, indeterminate and indeterminable X, in no way accessible. To him, the relational aspect of reality seems to have been so important and apparently also ontologically problematic that he conceives the monistic substrate favored in his own ontological theory, that is, that which alone actually exists according to this theory, as a relation, namely as a specific kind of self-relation.
Thus, even if Hegel's view that relations, understood in the sense of traditional ontology, are ontologically meaningless is not incompatible with the relation-ontological 'monism of subjectivity' he advocates, all this says very little about the plausibility and tenability of Hegel's monism. To expect information about this in this context is mistaken. This is not only because in the context of the task at hand it was only a matter of putting Hegel's ontological program, i.e. some of his basic premises and the conclusions drawn from them, up for discussion. Such an expectation is also mistaken because the means for the fulfillment of this expectation can only be gained on the basis of an understanding of Hegel's philosophy that goes far beyond what is necessary for the necessarily partial insight into the foundations of the program of this philosophy. Thus it may well be that the really interesting questions to Hegel's philosophy begin only at the point where the presentation given here ends. 79
