Yonderstone of Growth

The point at which spirit decides to exit language and enter into "real life" is only determined by the act of positing a particular stage of spiritual development as the beyond - "yonderstone" instead of cornerstone, in the Joycean style.

Up to that point, that is to say "in the past," myself appears as spirit, objective and external to me, with its internal divisions which I know to be true due to memory. And at present there are at least four divisions, although there ought to be, or rather, there is bound to be more both anterior and posterior to this list.

1. The Vocational Stage

Spirit knows the nullity of its own existence. Without it, the world will run its course, for it has always done so. From certain perspectives of ancient philosophy, this was the most tranquilizing perspective, and it was the cornerstone of an ethics, not necessarily Stoicism. But this perspective is based on the neglect of the presence of spirit. For such a presence, if the world is indeed existent in itself, is itself an enigma which cannot be solved by the bare assertion that it is not required for the world to be the way it is, has been and will be. Spirit thus looks for a "vocation," a way to step forth in the world and assert its own necessity in the process of things. This will to include itself - for here, it knows not yet that it is already included - is the ground of the vocational stage.

2. The Moral Stage

The search for the absolute vocation, and the failure therein, gives spirit the realization that it is indeed already the world. In fact, the whole world turns on itself. It was, is, and will be up to spirit alone to constitute the world. By returning out of the null world into its own omnipotence, spirit thus comes to feel the full force of all the implications of its primacy over the world. The responsibility is terrible, and spirit is now looking for a way to free itself from the burden of choosing everything for itself. In this state, spirit searches for a basis, a principle, upon which its place in the world is defined. It thereby aims to reclaim the world, not solely as its own possession, but as the chain of events which originally appeared to be autonomous, in itself, existing beyond the death of spirit. This search, and the various attempts to actualize what is found in this search (which are in fact only the moments of this search itself,) this is the moral stage.

3. The Aesthetic Stage

The universal power of spirit over the world, however, turns out to be an exaggeration. Or rather, through its attempt to universalize its own presence, its beliefs and principles, spirit comes to encounter another which resists this universalization. These systems, institutions, and material obstacles confronts spirit, and the world is given back to spirit once more, only this time as an other which is sharply distinguished from spirit itself. Compared to the first stage, the world now appears as the negative of spirit, and spirit also knows itself to be the negative of the world. Spirit now seeks to find a style of negation, a certain way of negotiating or relating to the world which immanently threatens to nullify the spiritual side of things. This is the aesthetic stage.

4. The Family Stage

The resistance from the other is also the recognition by the other. In being resisted, yet in surviving such resistances repeatedly, spirit comes to see the nullity of this negotiation itself. It does not matter how far or how little spirit pushes its own boundaries against the world. The quantitative difference does not turn into anything qualitative, but rather merely perpetuates the struggle to the point where everything becomes habitual. The need to introduce a more fundamental kind of negation arises. The only agent capable of such negativity is the other, or the family member. By relating to the absolutely free agent, wholly like itself, as its own kin and kindred spirit, spirit throws itself into a new contradiction, whereby a new struggle emerges. The other cannot be domesticated as the world has been, but at the same time, this other is not wholly other, it is attempting to do the same for spirit. Here, quantitative difference matters, for spirit knows that the degree to which it yields to the other is also the degree to which it kills itself. But the family member is at the same time spirit itself. Therefore, by being dominated by the other, spirit reclaims itself, and in fact it merely steps forth into a new existence, while asserting the higher standpoint of a universal spirit, the "I." This is the family stage.

The family stage is typically portrayed as the moment when spirit finally steps forth into life. Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a prime example. But to posit this last stage as the yonderstone of art is an arbitrary act. Indeed, Joyce is only able to justify this act by basing it in the myth of Daedalus, but this myth is something external to the concept of family, and as such it is not a justification of the ending of the Portrait at all. In this respect, Oe, who did choose to pursue the family as the new terrain of literature, is working beyond the confines of the early Joyce. The later Joyce also attempts to bring the family into prose, although not in the manner in which Oe or Tolstoy did, that is to say, directly and universally. But this is not really a legitimate critique of Joyce. In any case, the family stage is not the beyond of philosophy and literature. But that is where I stand right now, which is only a contingent fact.

Dialectic of Work

It is by now an all-too-common commentary on the state of the economy to emphasize the lack of "good" jobs. Many university students graduate only to continue their hourly shifts. There are many internship "opportunities," but these quickly reveal themselves to be convenient tactics for corporations to get their mechanical office work done at a low cost.

There are many anxieties and discontents to be expressed duly from the subjective point of view of the average university graduate, but for the time being, I will take a Copernican viewpoint.

What does it mean to say that "there are not enough well-paying jobs for university graduates?" Among many things, it means that there are not enough "under-educated" people for getting the more "basic" tasks done. The production and distribution of basic human needs - food, shelter, transportation, etc. - require "men of hand," and this workforce is the basis upon which so-called white collar workers are able to work. The relationship here is reciprocal: it is not simply the case that white-collar workers need to "legitimize" their otherwise empty "work" while manual laborers are exploited one-sidedly. It is rather more accurate to say that the latter group is able to get their jobs done effectively precisely because of the new knowledge and system which trickles down from the former group.

But, it is precisely because the system and technology of labor is "given from above" that the manual laborers confront the risk of alienation. It is not up to them to decide how to work, at what pace, using what, and in what way. From a certain point of view, they become pawns, just another element in a system neatly designed to execute a grand plan which is accessible only to an elite few.

The other side of the coin, however, is that manual laborers are in a position to know and be certain that their work is essential, whereas the white-collars are in constant fear of losing their privileged position. The lack of experience in the latter means that it is extremely difficult and painful for the latter - both physically and existentially - to adapt to the possible position of a manual laborer. And this is precisely the fear which is being realized in the current situation.

How to confront this situation? By taking a close look at the dialectic of work. On the one hand, work is a response and self-subjection to the demands of another. On the other hand, work is an autonomous act. The worker is not free to act contrary to the demands and duties of his own work, but he is free to choose which duty/demand will be his calling. The latter freedom cannot be measured by income or prestige. Rather, this freedom is valuable in itself, and thus it is totally up to the worker to decide whether or not he is willing to renounce his capricious self for the particular opportunity which confronts him.

This insight complicates the idea of "improving the (economic) system." When politicians, corporations, and consultants use this phrase in public discourse, how are they able to take into account the gap between their point of view - i.e. what they believe they are offering - and the point of view of the workers - i.e. those who are meant to benefit in a certain way, yet experience a dimension wholly alien to the planners?

Even the Rawlsian "veil of ignorance" test is not decisive enough for either side to bridge this gap. This is because it is up to the individual to either appropriate or alienate himself from the work on offer before him. It is not a question of: "are you willing to be in the position of the other?" - this is because the freedom which is required for the overcoming of alienation implies that one's position, qua the person who makes the absolute decision to identify fully with his own occupation, is not interchangeable.

Fundamental Concepts of History

Robin G. Collingwood's The Idea of History consists of three parts. The first part deals with the history of the idea of history. The structure of this part is one of temporal sequence. It traverses the time between the pre-Greek theogonists and the post-Hegelian positivists. The goal here is to see how the present idea of history has been constituted. The second part deals with scientific history as it is practiced contemporaneously with Collingwood. The structure of this second part is spatial differentiation, and Collingwood surveys each country's own way of doing historical research. The third and final part is titled "Epilegomena," where Collingwood develops his own idea of history. This part is properly creative, and it is still in the form of a concept which awaits full development in actual academic practices.

Each part is divided into a large number of sub-sections, and each sub-section contains gems of insight. Naturally I cannot survey all of it in my own language. What drew my attention, as always, is Collingwood's superb interpretation of Hegel, and how much the former held the latter in high regard. So much so, in fact, that Collingwood's criticism of Hegel is not that Hegel was wrong in some way, but that he was not consistent with what he himself developed. In other words, Collingwood accuses Hegel of not being Hegelian enough at times.

Hegel's Philosophy of History is the chief target of Collingwood's criticism. Collingwood begins by noting that Hegel's work is really a compilation of the strong elements of historical thought which was prevalent around that time, and that Hegel's originality lies not so much in the independent ideas as in how they are systematized and purified into a strong order. According to this system, historical thought must proceed under a few guiding principles.

[Hegel] proposes a new kind of history, to be called the philosophy of history (the proposal and the terminology being as old as Voltaire); but the philosophy of history is for him not a philosophical reflection on history but history itself raised to a higher power and become philosophical as distinct from merely empirical, that is, history not merely ascertained as so much fact but understood by apprehending the reasons why the facts happened as they did. This philosophical history will be a universal history of mankind (here Hegel follows Herder) and will exhibit a progress from primitive times to the civilization of to-day. The plot of this story is the development of freedom, which is identical with the moral reason of man as exhibited in an external system of social relations, so that the question which philosophical history has to answer is the question how the State came into existence (all this is taken from Kant). But the historian knows nothing of the future; history culminates not in a future Utopia but in the actual present (this is Schiller). Man's freedom is the same thing as his consciousness of his freedom, so the development of freedom is a development of consciousness, a process of thought or a logical development, in which the various necessary phases or moments of the concept are successively achieved (this is Fichte). Lastly, philosophical history exhibits no merely human process but a cosmic process, a process in which the world comes to realize itself in self-consciousness as spirit (this is Schelling). Thus, every one of the characteristic features of Hegel's philosophy of history is drawn by him from his predecessors, but he has combined their views with extraordinary skill into a theory so coherent and so unified that it deserves independent consideration as a whole (113 - 114)

Ontologically, history is the temporal manifestation (an external or immediate phenomenon) of the logical structure of a concept (the inner, unifying existence of temporal reality). This, however, does not mean that history is the same as logic. Hegel does argue that logic is a pre-requisite to studying history. But history has empirical content, whereas logic only deals with pure thoughts. History ought to start by empirical observation of past objects and documents. Through these, the historian comes to experience a serious constraint or discipline imposed upon his thought by these items. It is within this constraint that the historian must then turn to logic and try to understand the inner, thoughtful movements which the items point to. These movements are none other than the movements once experienced by past human beings. Only whereas past people tend to "be in the moment" and thus are not fully in command of how they are being bound by and contributing to the large-scale picture of their age, the historian is able to self-consciously experience the same sequence of thoughts from the bird's eye point of view. It is this latter step which Hegel calls the philosophy of history.

Why does Collingwood think that the Philosophy of History is defective nonetheless? For Collingwood, this work exemplifies a tension which exists between Hegel's ontology and his idea of history. We have already seen that for Hegel history begins with empirical discovered items and proceeds to deduce the concept which the people living contemporaneously with these items held in their minds. The implication of this method is that material things - the historical items - must be of such a kind that they serve as guidelines for the historian's thoughts. The reverse way of stating the same thing is to say that historical facts are those which must be capable of being materialized into objects which can exist beyond subjective thoughts. On the other hand, the subject-matter of Hegel's Philosophy of History is politics. However, politics is subjective, and as such only exists as facts of experience, not as historical items (this is a subtle point which Collingwood takes for granted and is present in Kant). Thus, politics is a topic incapable of satisfying the conditions which Hegel's idea of history lays down. In this sense, Collingwood writes:

It is a striking fact, and one which many readers have noticed, that as an historian Hegel was at his best in his lectures on the history of philosophy, which are a genuine triumph of historical method and have been the model for all subsequent histories of thought ... When Hegel repudiated the Kantian distinction between phenomena and things in themselves, he repudiated by implication the Kantian doctrines that all history is political history and that history is a spectacle. Hence the central position of the State in his Philosophy of History is an anachronism, and to be consistent with himself he ought to have held that the historian's business is to study not so much the process of objective mind as the history of absolute mind, i.e. art, religion, and philosophy ... The Philosophy of History is an illogical excrescence on the corpus of Hegel's works (120 - 121)

Thus, from Collingwood's point of view, Hegel initiated an important step towards the full concept of a philosophy of history, but he failed to fully practice what he preached. It is true that Hegel left his Aesthetics, Philosophy of Religion, and the History of Philosophy as examples of universal history in concreto. Hegel's failure lay merely in not fully making the connection between his ontology of mind - where art, religion, and philosophy occupy the position of the "absolute" - and his methodology in history.

Other than this small defect, however, Collingwood is very sympathetic to Hegel's position. Indeed, upon sober reflection it is difficult not to agree with it. Any kind of history implies that an event has not merely happened out of the blue, but that that event is a result of previous strife and deliberation on the part of many people, and that moreover this result then will give rise to further events. To assert the reality of a historical event, therefore, one is obliged to present the rationale underlying that event, and it is in this sense that the "real is the rational and the rational is the real." As far as empirical evidence goes, however, history cannot get beyond the present, for otherwise it will launch into unscientific polemics concerning the "hopes and fears" (to use a Hegelian phrase) without any ground. And if freedom is thought of as self-consciousness, then indeed history is the amplification of material for thought which is comprised of thoughts, meaning that thought is progressively able to grasp how it behaves when such and such actions and events take place materially. As a consequence, thought, by running through history, progressively becomes more self-conscious and thus freer.

After dealing with Hegel, Collingwood devotes the last section of the first part to "Positivism" which takes place after Auguste Comte. The rise of positivism, according to Collingwood, was due mainly to the development of sophisticated techniques for analyzing historical items. This led to the compartmentalization of history in academia, and it also vastly increased the amount of work for the historians. Historians were no longer needed to engage in a philosophy of history in order to continue their research and keep their jobs. The problems which they faced, minute thought they may be, were complicated and demanding enough, so that they had no extra time or energy to devote to philosophy. This resulted in the substantial amassing of historical material, and an incredible accuracy in chronology. This is the positive feature of positivism. However, the negative feature is that history deteriorated into a most boring science, and historians were no longer able to educate the public at large on issues that actually mattered, i.e. thoughts which past people held and still influence how people live at present. As a parallel phenomenon, philosophy became exclusively focused on non-historical disciplines such as mathematics and logic, which equally led to the deterioration of the subject itself, for who cares about abstract thoughts which have no anchoring in their actual manifestations in how people lived or still live every day?

Such is the critical attitude with which Collingwood brings the first part to a close. The implications are clear: historians are encouraged to take advantage of the vast archive of historical facts in order to construct a map of historical thought, a philosophy of history, much more detailed than anything conceivable in the times of Hegel and his contemporaries.

Thoughts of the Beyond

In philosophy, one of the most (in)famous thoughts is that of Kant's concerning the "thing in itself." This "thing" is something which exists beyond our perception of objects. Now, many thinkers attribute to Kant the view that the thing in itself is "unknowable." However, "knowing" in the context of the Critique of Pure Reason has a very precise meaning, namely, that of becoming an object for cognition. The thing in itself is, according to Kant, something which is not incorporated into the result of our cognitive activity. Therefore, while we do "know" certain things about the thing in itself - that it is beyond cognition proper, that it nevertheless exists "out there" etc. - we cannot examine it and ascertain its qualities. In Kantian jargon, another way of putting this is to say that the thing in itself is empirically unknowable but transcendentally knowable. The message here is the same: the thing in itself cannot be subjected to direct observation, and as such we cannot ever receive its specific determinations.

It is also a curious fact that Kant very often designates the thing in itself in the plural form: noumena, or "things in themselves." This suggests that what is beyond our cognitive capacities is diverse, within which distinctions are already made. But why would this be the case? Is this not already "applying" human concepts onto things which, as Kant claims, cannot be grasped in human terms? This is the first criticism of Kant's thought concerning the thing in itself.

The second criticism, which is really the other side of the first, is often entertained by the post-Kantian idealists such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Here, instead of criticizing Kant for introducing a determination to something which is supposed to be "unknowable," the critics accuse Kant of not going far enough in determining the thing in itself. According to this view, to say that things in themselves are diverse is an idleness of the intellect in not being able to speculate further. If we are able to claim that the thing in itself exists, and if we are able to think of it as a plurality or as a singularity, then it must be possible to think it in all sorts of other ways. All of these thoughts ought to be examined systematically, so that, while we may not have empirical access to it, the thing in itself may nevertheless be revealed to us in all of its possible determinations.

Hegel in particular carried out this second criticism both implicitly and explicitly in his own system. The Science of Logic, as the science of thought, is essentially a gigantic work on the various possible determinations of the thing in itself. For Hegel, it is not the thing in itself per se that is problematic in Kant, but rather its status as a "pure beyond," which amounts to a null object devoid of significance. Hegel already finds the germ of both positions in Kant: on the one hand, the Kant of the Transcendental Dialectic gives a positive account of the thing in itself, claiming that it is that which we are able to think it is, while, on the other hand, the Kant of the Transcendental Analytic shrinks back into skepticism, claiming that the thing in itself is merely the beyond of cognition.

For Hegel, the ways in which empirical objects appear to us each presuppose how we think about - either implicitly or explicitly - the thing in itself. To give a simple example also often used by Kant, consider a criminal in a court hearing. The accuser might state the criminal's personal tendencies which, arising out of the freedom of the criminal himself, conditioned and led to the crime. The defendant, on the other hand, might point to the natural upbringing of the criminal, and how this made the crime inevitable or necessary. The former attitude attributes responsibility to the criminal himself, while the latter attitude does not. In order to decide the truth of either position, one only needs to examine how both presuppose a different thought concerning the thing in itself, namely, the criminal. There is nothing empirical in either the claim to freedom or to necessity. In other words, we cannot simply observe the criminal as in our observations of animals in zoology or of particles in physics, and from this observation draw an inference in favor of one or the other. Rather, in order to observe the person as free or determined, we need to presuppose a certain thought concerning what he is supposed to be in the first place. Hegel's claim is that we make such presuppositions all the time, and there is no escape from them.

Here I would like to introduce a third figure into this debate: David Hume. Hume's position is very close to Hegel's, or rather, the latter's is close to the former's. Hume famously claimed that the idea of causality is not the property of the object - Hume's term for the thing in itself - but rather is something which we infer from our perceptions. However, Hume also recognizes, and elaborates on the view, that causality is necessary and essential to how we interact with objects and with each other in our everyday lives. It is only when we abstract from our everyday immersion with things and take the philosophical attitude that we come to see that causality is not "in" the object. For Hume, skepticism is thus the necessary outcome of taking the philosophical stance, while naturalism, or more precisely a kind of projectionism, is the inevitable result of coming back to our everyday practical perspective.

Now in his Treatise of Human Nature Hume elaborates on this general train of thought and applies it to other ideas too such as identity, substance, accident, matter, solidity, etc. In each case, Hume shows that these are not determinations of the object, but rather ideas which we infer from our perceptions and then project back onto the external world. These ideas, however, are indispensable to our practical affairs. Thus, the practical attitude demands that we take objects to be constant, exist outside perception, and have a necessary causal connection with each other. A bread will cause calories to be transferred into our bodies. A word of insult will cause anger or sorrow in the mind of our friends. There are a million such suppositions which we unconsciously entertain on a daily basis. It is only by shifting our position, and thus adjusting our thoughts, in a properly philosophical way that we are able to take the skeptical standpoint and recognize this as expressing the truth of things.

Hume here highlights the irresolvable tension which exists between the practical, everyday attitude and the theoretical, philosophical one. In so far as this tension goes, Hume is here very close to Kant. However, Hume is close to Hegel with regards to his account concerning our ideas which we project onto things in themselves. Unlike Kant, Hume is explicit in his claim that all sentient beings necessarily project these ideas onto things which go beyond their perception. Hume has a nice account of why this is necessary from a practical point of view. The name Hume gives to this necessity is "habit" or "custom," and it is supposed to be a tendency which we carry within ourselves from our birth. It is "a priori," to put it in Kantian jargon. Thus, the thing in itself vanishes out of sight the moment we adopt the practical attitude. On the other hand, objects, as things beyond our cognition, become accessible to our thoughts as they are - namely, as things which simply are beyond our capacity to grasp them - from a theoretical standpoint. Perhaps here is the point at which Hume and Hegel differ. For Hegel, it might be claimed that the various determinations of the thing in itself come into view from a purely philosophical point of view. Whereas for Hume, the practical stance is a necessary per-requisite for us to spontaneously infer certain determinations concerning objects, and then, by criticizing these inferences reflectively, we finally come to see retrospectively how we determined the thing in itself. Here, the alteration between practice and theory is necessary for us to fully grasp how we think about the thing in itself.

After this comparison, it is evident how the three thinkers made their own respective contributions towards an adequate concept of the "beyond" of cognition. Kant gave it the most appropriate name, the thing in itself. Hume pointed out the perspectival shift which necessarily precedes any positive account concerning the thing in itself. Hegel provided an extensive thought-map for understanding the possible determinations which we may give to the thing in itself. These thinkers often misinterpret each other with regards to this issue of the beyond. But a close and generous comparison reveals a possible way to combine their respective accounts into a coherent new theory. Admittedly, the present interpretation is no more than a suggestion which, for the moment, must await further development.

Hume's Third Science

David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature is declared to be a "science of man." It is neither "moral philosophy" (a phrase not for ethics, but rather for what we today call psychology) nor "natural philosophy" (mainly physics, chemistry, and biology.) The former investigates the subject, the latter the object. From the Treatise, I suggest that one could construct a third science whose task is to describe the nature and scope of various transitions between subject and object.

What are such "transitions" here? There are certain subjective phenomena which are resolved within the subject, and thus have little to no import on how objects appear to us. The same can be said of objects, that certain physical relations have no influence over how we think or feel. However, there are certain mental phenomena which influence the way objects appear, and conversely there are certain objects which condition how we think and feel. "Transition" is a term which aims to capture this third domain where neither "subject" nor "object" suffice as the adequate name for the matter inquired.

Hume's Treatise contains a rich series of speculations which can be consistently interpreted under the heading of the science of transitions. The term "man" is here substituted with "transitions," and thus man is defined as this ambiguous movement, symbolized in the figure of Hermes, perhaps. Of these transitions, Hume distinguishes two types: automatic ones, and ones which are to an extent controllable. The former is consistently treated under the rubric "custom" or "habit," while the latter is often presented indirectly and implicitly through various claims.

In this context, Book I of the Treatise, where matters such as geometry, arithmetic, causality, chance, probability, and necessity are discussed, one could imagine a sub-title: "Concerning the Automatic Processes of the Mind as They Affect Objects." But what are those "objects?" Hume is not a direct realist. Objects give rise to "impressions," but these impressions are never directly cognized. For Hume, everything which enter into consciousness are already "ideas," that is, impression converted in a certain way. Ideas which are directly connected with their corresponding impressions are true, while any further subjective manipulation can potentially compromise this initial correspondence and thus the truth of them. Now according to Hume, ideas are by themselves true, that is, sufficiently determined as objects of reflection. On the other hand, there are certain relations which we, as humans, impose upon these ideas, and thus form expectations with regards to how future ideas may turn up. The latter relations are: contiguity, resemblance, and causality.

With the division between impressions and ideas, the "ideas of impressions" and the "ideas of ideas," and the different laws which hold for these different domains, we already see that it is unreasonable and fruitless to try and sort these divisions into "objective" and "subjective" categories. Rather, object and subject often overlap in these cases. An idea of an impression, for example, is not purely subjective, since it is conditioned by an object, but neither is it purely objective, since it is retained even after the object becomes absent from immediate perception. Or, to look at impressions themselves, while it is clear that they are in some sense "copies" of external objects, they too are already "subjectivized" in some sense, ready to be converted into ideas, the latter enjoying a more permanent and free kind of existence.

The distinction between "constant conjunction" and "causality" can also be interpreted along these ambiguous lines. Constant conjunction seems to arise out of our direct perception of objects. These objects are already distinct from each other, and thus are ready to enter our consciousness in their plurality. Now these objects then give rise to ideas. If objects are altered, so are our ideas. At this point, we are now able to explicitly experience the "conjunction" of multiple objects. This conjunction is "constant" just in case there is a high degree of resemblance and repetition going on. Causality, however, is not present in all this. This is because causality is an act of isolating two ideas and declaring that the two form a kind of set. So for example we can have the constant conjunction of {a, b, c, d} and {e, f, g, h} at a certain point: two temporal moments, each containing four objects each distinct from the others. Now to say that this conjunction occurs is uncontroversial. But to claim that, for instance, the presence of {a} is the cause of the effect {f} is already to isolate two elements and to assign an additional determination. On this latter model, the conjunction is "in reality" as follows: {b, c, d} and {e, g, h} are distinct moments in time, each separate from the other, while a third set {a, f} overlaps into both moments and exist in a separate order. This additional determination, however, can only be added after the occurrence of the conjunction {a, b, c, d} and {e, f, g, h}. In this sense, for Hume the origin of the idea of a "necessary connexion" (or for that matter, any causal connection) is subjective.

However, this does not mean that causality has no import on how objects appear to us. Causality is part of "human nature" - we cannot dispense with it without lapsing into some kind of dysfunctional slumber. Although causality is not an impression, and thus not something which exists objectively in the natural world, it does govern the way in which we make decisions. At the close of Part I, Hume introduces the notion of a "general rule" by which we judge the nature of various phenomena, from the real meaning of another person's words to the truth of what is written or represented in a certain historical material. Without the idea of causality, there is no way in which we can make such judgments, and there can be no such general rules. But these rules, which Hume cites from the most ordinary everyday interaction of people, are essential to how humans form societies with each other and with other living beings in nature.

Therefore, causality is for Hume an ambiguous idea, yet its proper use is clear. On the side of science, it must be used with a grain of salt, for it is clearly not part of natural objects in themselves, and thus are not to be included in "objective" accounts of nature. In particular, any claim to the "necessity" of a certain course of objective events has to be seen through skeptical eyes. This is the skeptical Hume with whom we are all familiar. But there is a second side to the story. On the side of ethics, causality plays an essential role in coordinating our decisions and our interventions into nature. Here, the idea of causality is a necessary condition for humans to fulfill their "natural" needs. This is Hume's naturalism with regards to causality. But the proper scope of the idea of causality here concerns human action. As such, it is neither purely "objective" nor "subjective," but rather the idea of causality is deployed in the aforementioned third domain of "transitions." This interpretation already anticipates a certain concept of freedom which can further be constructed out of what Hume has to offer his readers in the Treatise. But more on this on another occasion.

What is Analytic Cognition?

Or, to say the same thing in different words, what is analysis? The most simple concept of analysis is this: the extraction of a predicate which is already contained in the subject. "The sky is blue" is analytic, because the experience of seeing the sky already contains the experience of seeing the colour blue.

Of course, this notion is too vague and, more problematically, untrue. This account of analysis fails to tell us exactly what the analytic operation itself is doing. That is to say, it fails to tell us how it is possible that we "extract" a predicate, and how it is possible that we see a predicate as "already contained" in a subject.

These are the issues which Hegel tackles in the Science of Logic. Hegel's account is (very roughly) as follows. Analysis requires that the thing to be analyzed be already "given." The givennness of the thing is, however, none other than a mere collection of predicates, what Hegel calls an "accidental manifold." (This manifold is not simply "given," as if it arises out of nowhere - more on this later.) There are no relations established between these predicates. Thus, at this point, no distinction is made between cause/effect, essence/accident, etc. To introduce these distinctions into this manifold is already a synthetic act, that is to say, an act which changes the way in which the manifold appears to us. Now analysis claims that a predicate is contained in a subject. However, what is thought of as "subject," e.g. the sky, is only an element in the manifold which is external to the other element, e.g. "blue." To "extract" the blue is already to shift one's focus from the sky as such to a blue which is necessarily not identical with the sky. Therefore, the act of extraction is in fact a synthetic act. Ergo, the simple concept of analysis is untrue.

What, then, is analysis, or what Hegel calls "analytic cognition?" Hegel's answer is ingenious. Analysis is, to put it in a short formula, the repetition of a rule onto an accidental manifold. In other words, analysis takes a collection of predicates, seeks a rule which is already placing these predicates in relation to each other, re-applies this rule, and sees how things change. Here, change is involved, but nothing is added to the "given" manifold.

The example Hegel gives is arithmetic. By the way, this is the madness and shrewdness of Hegel, to refute another philosophical theory while at the same time  explicating his own view. The theory he is targeting is Kant's claim that mathematics is synthetic a priori. For Kant, the operation "5+7=12" is synthetic in the sense that 12 is not immediately "given" in the concepts "5" "+" and "7." Later proponents of this view, such as Wittgenstein, Kripke, and Karatani, further point out that we can introduce different rules to arithmetic which will alter the result of this addition, and since the rules are thus not explicitly given in the equation itself, it must be added from the outside, and this addition is precisely the act of synthesis. Against this view, however, Hegel points out that this account - that math is synthetic by virtue of the implicit rules required to solve an equation - does not in the least refute the possibility that the same equation is analytic. To return to the example, "5+7=12" is based on the rule that the "+" is the combination of quantities, and that in this case the decimal system must be followed (as opposed to, say, the binary numeral system.) These rules are, however, already given with the equation. If we take the manifold "5+7" with these rules, then the other side of the equation just has to be "12" - or, for that matter, "1+2+3+6" etc. There is no need to add anything to this manifold in order to produce the desired result. The fact that there are twelve units in total in the initial manifold is a fact and phenomenon clear as daylight. To express it as "12" or as "5+7" is no different from this point of view.

Hegel then proceeds to more precisely describe the difference between analysis and synthesis in mathematics. All analytic cognition in mathematics is merely the act of solving a problem. Hegel explicitly notes here that machines are capable of analytic cognition, since there is absolutely no need to add something external to what is already given in the manifold. On the other hand, synthetic cognition is a proof which culminates in a theorem. Based on this distinction, it is clear that "5+7" is analytic; for it is not a theorem which requires proof, but rather is merely a problem to be solved. A proof requires the invention of rules. The plausibility of the rule, however, can be checked analytically by comparing it to existing rules and see if it is consistent with the rest. Thus, the latter task is merely a problem.

I find the above account of analytic cognition both convincing and elegant. It nicely explains why machines are capable of calculation but incapable of mathematics proper. It further explains why humans are able to make judgments against situations which have no ready-made solution, while pre-programmed objects simply fail to respond in an appropriate way and thereby also fail to survive.

The account which I summarized here is of course too simplistic and is not doing justice to Hegel's original exposition. In particular, I have left unexplained how the "givenness" of the manifold is in fact a product of a preceding logical operation. It is only by forgetting this condition that a thing appears as "given," but this does not mean that it is actually so. But to go into the original constitution of the given requires another long explanation, which cannot be given here for the time being.

Idea of a Family

Family has always occupied a miserable position in the history of philosophy. In literature, Tolstoy gave it a detailed and dynamic portrait in Anna Karenina, and of course Joyce's last work, Finnegans Wake, is one big chaos based on the story of a family -- the Earwickers. Philosophers, on the other hand, neither analyze nor raise families. It is a famous fact that Rousseau, the writer of one of the most detailed treatise on education, failed to even commit to a son whom he secretly had to abandon, and one of the few truthful things which Nietzsche wrote was that the best philosophers are almost always unmarried. And even married philosophers, such as Jacques Derrida, are fond of recalling how their entry to philosophy was coupled with a fierce rejection of the family -- "families, I hate you!" was one of Derrida's mottos during his adolescent years.

Family is not permitted to enter philosophical discourse. Philosophy is not addressed to a family, and the notion of family is also scarcely given direct attention. Hegel returns to this notion once in a while, but only in the context of Antigone. Perhaps a re-reading of Hegel will, however, give us something to consider when analyzing the philosophical notion of family.

On the other hand, philosophy also suffers by the hands of the family. In the familiar context, philosophy loses its edge, and turns into a domesticated discourse. It cloaks the appearance of a universal, profound truth, but at bottom its "truth" is only warranted by the emotional bond between the family members, the speaker and the listener. As such it is highly contingent, yet the family tie prevents either person to take a distance from what is going on.

Here, then, is a contradiction which seems irresolvable: a family cannot be discussed philosophically, and philosophy cannot grow within a family. As a consequence, the philosophical idea of a family seems to have to stand outside the experience of the family, and its presentation would not be addressed to a family. And a person remaining within the bounds of familiar emotional ties will also be denied access to any kind of rigorous philosophy.

I nonetheless dream of a philosophical idea of a family which is both formulated from within the experience of the family and in a language which is addressed to a family member. Such an account will be philosophical yet at the same time catered towards the family, thus giving a family member the chance to access philosophy from precisely that position. But would such an account have to shamelessly circumvent the traditional language of philosophy? Perhaps. It will definitely have to take a new, different tone, with a new lexicon and a new logic. How much of this new mode of speech can incorporate tradition remains to be seen.

At the moment, the articulation of the idea of a family remains merely a plan and a project.