THE HEGELIAN KEY TO UNDERSTANDING IQBAL

Absar Ahmad

The Hegelian influence is clear both in Iqbal’s criticism of the cosmological argument as well as in his combined criticism of the ontological and teleological arguments. Iqbal’s comments on the ontological and teleological arguments contain a whole epistemology and an entire metaphysic, and his position is, I would suggest, only quasi-Hegelian. Consider, for example, the following two statements by Iqbal:

(1) Apropos of the cosmological argument: “The true infinite does not exclude the finite; it embraces the finite without effacing its finitude, and explains and justifies its being.”[1]

(2) Apropos of the ontological and teleological argument; “. . . thought or idea is not alien to the original nature of things ; it is their ultimate ground and constitutes the very essence of their being, infusing itself in them from the very beginning of their career and inspiring their onward march to a self-determined end.”[2]

It is my contention that the Hegelian influence here is un­mistakable even though his name is not explicitly mentioned. This suggestion of a Hegelian influence is, therefore, an interpretation, but in its absence Iqbal’s statements are not intelligible. In the present climate of modern English-speaking philosophy, statements of the type “the true infinite does not exclude the finite” and “thought is the ultimate ground of the original nature of things and constitutes the very essence of their being” would at least raise, and left unqualified perhaps deserve, considerable suspicion and incredulity ; indeed, the more positivistically inclined linguistic philosophers would hardly hesitate in branding them as patent nonsense. The complexion of this problem is radically altered when we attempt to understand Iqbal’s statements within the context of the Hegelian system. My aim here is the very modest one of trying to make sense of Iqbal’s arguments in the context of Hegel’s philosophy. Clearly then we are committed to some minimum exposition of that philosophy. But I must emphasise that this “minimum exposition” is not intended to be a condensed account of the Hegelian system. It is simply an attempt to indicate certain salient features in their barest outline so that we may get a reasonable view of the nature and purpose of the Hegelian philosophy—and sufficient, hope-fully, to show that Iqbal’s theses are intelligible only as integral components of such a system.

The Hegelian System

(I) Hegel’s Circle. The Hegelian philosophy is, arguably, the most ambitious system developed within the Western tradition. It presents at its very core the apparent paradox of setting out to resolve that which, in ordinary thought and experience, is ir­resolvable, to unite that which cannot be united : God and Man, Spirit and Nature, Thought and Being, Subject and Object. It is a self-contained circle—an oft-recurring image throughout Hegel’s writings—and one which is unprecedented alike in its comprehensivness as well as its immunity to external criticism. Hegel himself characterises his enterprise in the Introduction (following the famous Preface) to the Phenomenology of Mind, thus :

“... the pathway of the natural consciousness which is striving toward a true knowledge, or the path of the soul which is making its way through the sequence of its own transformations as through way stations prescribed to it by its very nature, that it may, by purifying itself, lift itself to the level of Spirit and attain cognizance of what is in itself through the completed experience of its own self.”[3]

For Hegel philosophical truth cannot be merely stated, asserted, or, even, in the traditional manner, argued or demonstrated. Truth is rather the culmination of a long, arduous and complex process of development—the whole elaborate movement being subsumed (though not simply cancelled) in the final result. Accordingly, such terms as “emerge,” “final outcome,” “con-summation” assume a special significance and occur frequently in his writings.[4] The following rigorously selected textual passages well indicate the nature and style of the Hegelian philosophy.

From the Preface to the Phenomenology of Mind: “This be-coming of science in general or of knowledge is what this phenomenology of the spirit represents. . . . To become true know-ledge, to generate the element of science which is a pure concept itself, it has to work its way through a long journey.” Later on, in the same section, “The individual must also pass through the

contents of the educational stages of the general spirit. . . . The world spirit has had the patience to pass through these forms in the long expanse of time, taking upon itself the tremendous labour of world history..:.” And further, “consciousness knows and comprehends nothing but what lies within its experience; ... The Spirit, however, becomes an object, for the Spirit is this movement of becoming something other for itself, i.e. an object for itself, and then to sublimate this otherness. And experience is the name we give to just this movement.

Science may organise itself only through the life of the Concept ;[5] the determinedness which some would take externally from the scheme to affix it to existence is in science the self-moving soul of the abundant content.” (A related statement occurs at the very beginning of the conclusion : “I find the distinctive mark of science in the self-movement of the concept....) Further variations on this theme—”what therefore matters in the study of science is taking upon oneself the exertion of the concept... . The content should be made to move itself by virtue of its own nature, i.e. through the self as its own self, and then to contemplate this movement. One should not intrude into the immanent rythm of the concept. . . . The concept is the object’s own self which presents itself as its becoming. . . . It is the concept that moves itself and takes its determinations back into itself. In this movement the resting subject itself perishes.... The return of the concept into itself must be represented expressly. This movement which takes the place of that which proof was once sup-posed to accomplish is the dilectical movement of the proposition itself.”

The following statements occur near the end of the Preface : “True thoughts and scientific insight are to be won only through the work of the concept. . . . We must have the conviction that it is of the nature of truth to prevail when its time has come, and that truth appears only when its time has come. . . .”

From the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Mind : “This dialectical movement, which consciousness exercises on itself—on its knowledge as well as its object—is, insofar as the new, true object emerges to consciousness as the result of it, precisely that which is called experience.”

From the Science of Logic: “This spiritual movement which, in its simple undifferentiatedness, gives itself its own determinedness its quality with itself, which therefore is the immanent development of the Notion, this movement is the absolute method of knowing and at the same time is the immanent soul of the con-tent itself. I maintain that it is this self-construing method alone which enables philosophy to be an objective, demonstrated science. . . . What logic is cannot be stated beforehand, rather does this knowledge of what it is first emerge as the final outcome and consummation of the whole exposition. . . The Notion of logic has its genesis in the course of exposition. Now if logic has not undergone any change since Aristotle . . then surely the conclusion which should be drawn is that it is all the more in need of a total reconstruction ; for Spirit, after its labours over two thousand years, must have attained to a higher consciousness about its thinking and about its own pure, essential nature.... The exposition of what alone can be the true method of philosophical science falls within the treatment of logic itself; for the method is the consciousness of the form of the inner self-movement of the content of logic.”

Some of the features exemplified above together with the image of the circle are vigorously, and not ineloquently, expressed by Hegel in the section headed “With what must the science begin ?” at the beginning of The Science of Logic :

“ . . Absolute Spirit which reveals itself as a concrete and final supreme truth of all being, and which at the end of the development is known as freely externalising itself, abandoning itself to the shape of an immediate being—opening or unfolding itself (sick entoabliessend) into the creation of a world which contains all that fell into the development which preceded that result and which through this reversal of its position relatively to its beginning is transformed into something dependent on the result as principle. The essential requirement for the science of logic is not so much that the beginning be a pure immediacy, but rather that the whole of science be within itself a circle in which the first is also the last and the last is also the first. . Thus the beginning of philosophy is the foundation which is present and preserved throughout the entire subsequent development, remaining completely immanent in its further determination.”

(2) The Nature of the Content. According to Hegel, religion and philosophy have the same content.[6] The following statement is especially worthy of note (Introduction to The Science of Logic) : “ . . . Logic is to be understood as the system of pure reason, as the realm of pure thought. This realm of truth as it is without veil and in its own absolute nature. It can therefore be said that this content is the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and a finite mind.” And again, even more plainly, in the very opening section of the Encyclopaedia Logic, Hegel writes : “The objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In both the subject is truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is the truth.”

Further, Hegel identifies logic with metaphysics. Thus in the Preface to the first edition of The Science of Logic he writes of “the Science of Logic which constitutes metaphysics proper of purely speculative philosophy”. And again in the Encyclopaedia Logic (Section 24) : “Logic therefore coincides with Meta-physics, the science of things set and held in thoughts.”

(3) The Elements of the System. The concept of the Notion (Begriff) is perhaps the most centrally important idea in the entire Hegelian philosophy. The last chapter of the Encyclopaedia Logic (Chapter 9, third sub-division of logic : the doctrine of the notion) commences thus : “The Notion is the principle of freedom, the power of substance self-realised. It is a systematic whole” and, further on: “The Notion, in short, is what contains all the earlier categories of thought merged in it. It certainly is a form, but an infinite and creative form, which includes, but at the same time releases from itself, the fullness of all content. ... The Notion is a true concrete ; for the reason that it involves Being and Essence, and the total wealth of these two spheres with them, merged in the unity of thought. The movement of the Notion is development : by which that only is explicit which is already implicitly present.”

If the spirit of the whole Hegelian philosophy could somehow be expressed briefly and schematically, the most succinct formula would be “the internal self-movement of the Notion”. This process of self-movement is the famous dialectic--the process through which Spirit undergoes self-negation and self-reconciliation (by overreaching its self-negated form). Being, the Notion, dialectic, negation, and overreaching are, in fact, the key terms in the Hegelian system. The three major components of the sys­tem are Logic, Nature and Spirit. Emil Fackenheim’s brilliant work The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought enunciates “the principle of the Hegelian middle”. “And we shall seek to grasp it by interpreting Hegel’s thought as a threefold mediation, of which each phase involves the other two. Elements of all three phases are found scattered throughout Hegel’s works.” Fackenheim elaborates on this and goes on to quote the Hegelian pass-age which “states the principle of the threefold mediation clearly, tersely, and completely.” The passage opens thus : “Everything rational shows itself to be a threefold union or syllogism, in that each of the members takes the place both of one of the extremes and the mediating middle. This is especially the case with the three members of philosophical science, i.e. the logical Idea, Nature and Spirit.”

(4) The Nature of the Problem of Knowledge. Hegel had the very deep insight that there could be no “external” examination of knowledge. Therefore, anything like the Kantian beginning is entirely mistaken. He writes in the Science of Logic (Preface to the second edition) : “Since, therefore, subjective thought is our very own, innermost act, and the objective notion of things constitutes their essential import, we cannot go outside this our act, we cannot stand above it, and just as little can we go beyond the nature of things.” And again in the Encyclopaedia Logic : “But the examination of knowledge can only be carried out by an act of knowledge. To examine this so-called instrument is the same thing as to know it. But to seek to know before we know is as absurd as the wise resolution of the Scholasticus, not to venture into the water until we had learned to swim.” Accordingly the assessment of knowledge must necessarily remain a purely “internal” procedure. Thus he writes in the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Mind : “The fundamental standard of measurement would be in us . . . since consciousness provides itself with its own standard, investigation will he a comparison of consciousness with its own self.” Hegel then develops this argument, and resolves the problem of the correspondence between knowledge and that (object) which is known, in terms of his concept of the Nation. K.R. Dove[7] has characterised this phase of Hegel’s thought as a revolutionary departure from the time honoured approach to the problem of knowledge (based on the abstract distinction between knowledge and truth).

This rapid excursus into Hegel’s philosophy enables us to return to the two Hegelian themes in Iqbal (viz. the unity of thought and being, and the finite-infinite relationship) more profitably.

The Unity of Thought and Being

Ivan Soli has recently argued that the abolition of the separation of the knowing subject from its object is the major function of The Phenomenology of Mind. There can be no doubt that this is one of the most important motifs in the entire Hegelian system. Soli relates this to Hegel’s case against Kant : “According to Hegel, the denial of knowledge of things-in-themselves rests on the separation of the knowing subject from its object.” Thus we read in the Preface to The Phenomenology of Mind :

“It is the standpoint of the consciousness to know of objective things in opposition of itself, and to know of itself in opposition to them (Section 7, `The Element of Knowledge’). The development of philosophical science, through the internal self-movement of the concept, overcomes this dichotomy—’Being is mediated absolutely ; it is substantial content which is just as immediately property of the ego, self-like, or Concept. With this the Pheno­menology of the Spirit is concluded. What the spirit prepares for itself in this phenomenology is the element of knowledge. In this element the moments of the spirit spread themselves out in the form of simplicity which knows its object as itself. They no longer fall apart into the opposition of being and knowledge but abide in the simplicity of knowledge.”

In The Science of Logic we find plainer and more forceful The Hegelian Key to understanding Iqbal39 statement of these theses :

“These views on the relation of subject and object to each other express the determinations which constitute the nature of our ordinary, phenomenal consciousness ; but when these preju­dices are carried out into the sphere of reason . . . then they are errors the refutation of which throughout every part of the spiritual and natural universe is philosophy.”

And, further, Logic is “defined as the science of pure thought, the principle of which is pure knowing, the unity which is not abstract but a living, concrete unity in virtue of the fact that in it the opposition in consciousness between a self-determined entity, a subject, and a second such entity, an object, is known to be overcome ; being is known to be the pure Notion in its own self, and the pure Notion to be the true being. These, then, are the two moments contained in logic.”

The Finite and the Infinite

The peculiarly Hegelian identification of logic, metaphysics and philosophy of religion is well exemplified by the theme of the relationship between the finite and the infinite. At the very out-set of his Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God, Hegel observes that he has “chosen a subject that is connected with the other set of lectures which I gave on logic . . . a kind of supplement to that set inasmuch as it is concerned only with the particular aspect of the fundamental conception of logic.” The finite-infinite relationship is only the most abstract aspect of “this wealth of relationship which exists between the human spirit and God,” and “the logical relation is at the same time also the basis of the movement of the fullness of content”. Indeed, the tension between the finite and the infinite is at the very heart of Hegel’s entire metaphysical enterprise. Fackenheim has expressed this admirably :

“Hegel has not forgotten that the time which he sees as ripe for `science’ is also (like all time)—one of conflict, chance and brute fact, and that he—a self rising to absolute thought—is also a contingent self in the midst of time. Many years after the composition of the Phenomenology Hegel wrote : `I raise my-self in thought to the Absolute. Thus. being infinte consciousness ; yet at the same time I am finite consciousness. . . . Both aspects seek each other and flee each other. . . . I am the struggle between them.’ This struggle—and `the struggle to resolve the struggle’—is in the end the sole theme of the Pheno­menology and, indeed, of the whole Hegelian philosophy.”

The purely logical aspect of the finite-infinite relationship is described thus in the Science of Logic :

“The Notion of the infinite as it first presents itself is this, that being in its being-in-itself determiness itself as finite and transcends the limitation. It is the very nature of the finite to transcend itself, to negate its negation and become infinite. Thus the infinite does not stand as something finished and complete above or superior to the finite, as if the finite had enduring being apart from or subordinate to the infinite.”

The transition to the “principles of theology” in the Encyclopaedia Logic is noteworthy :

“And what men call the proofs of God’s existence are, rightly understood, ways of describing and analysing the native course of the mind, the course of thought thinking the data of the senses. The rise of thought beyond the world of sense, its passage from the finite to the infinite, the leap into the supersensible which it takes when it snaps asunder the chain of sense, all this transition is thought and nothing but thought.”

The finite-infinite relation ship recurs again in the Lectures on the Proofs of God’s Existence. Thus, apropos of the Cosmological Proof Hegel writes :

“Finite Being does not continue to be an Other : there is no gulf between the infinite and the finite. The finite is something that cansels itself, loses itself in something higher, so that its truth is the Infinite, what has Being in-and-for-itself.”

And in relation to the Teleological Proof :

“The finitude of finite minds is not true Being ; it is, by its very nature, dialectic, which implies that it abrogates itself, negates itself, and the negation of this finitude is affirmation as infinitude, as something universal in-and-for-itself. This is the highest form of the transition ; for the transition is here Spirit itself.”

The logical concept of the Notion, the finite-infinite relationship, the epistemological (and metaphysical) thesis of the unity of thought and being and the theological idea of the existence of God all cohere in a uniquely Hegelian manner in the following remarkable statement (which occurs near the end of the Lectures on the Proofs of God’s Existence) :

“In the case of the finite, existerce does not correspond to the Notion. On the other hand, in the case of the Infinite, which is determined within itself, the reality must correspond to the Notion ; this is the Ideal, the unity of subject and object.”

NOTES