Abstract
At one point Hegel describes the task of the Phenomenology as “an investigation and critical examination into the reality of knowledge [Erkennens].”1Although this is a traditional topic in epistemology, Hegel objects strenuously to traditional approaches to it. Hegel’s casual formulation of these issues stems from his desire to address both a general reading public as well as his often less than incisive philosophical contemporaries.2 The casual tone of the opening paragraphs of the Introduction to the Phenomenology, however, disguises both the complexity of the issues Hegel raises as well as the sophistication of his approach to them. As these paragraphs initiate Hegel’s replacement of “epistemology” with a “phenomenology,” I will examine them with some care.
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Notes to Chapter One
See for example Hegel’s critical reviews of Schulze in ‘Verhältnis des Skepticismus zur Philosophie ...’ (Kritisches Journal der Philosophie 1 No. 2 [1802]), and of Krug, ‘Krugs Entwurf eines neuen Organons der Philosophie’ (Erlanger Literatur-Zeitung No. 22 [1802]) and ‘Wie der gemeine Menschenverstand die Philosophie nehme, dargestellt an den Werken des Herrn Krug’ (Kritisches Journal der Philosophie 1 No. 1). These essays are reprinted in Gesammelte Werke Vol. 4, pp. 197–238, 112, and 174–187, respectively. The first and last of these are translated by H. S. Harris in Between Kant and Hegel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985), pp. 311–354 and 292–307.
G53.1–10/D7–8/M46.1–13.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (N. K. Smith, tr. [New York: St. Martin’s, 1929], hereafter abbreviated “CPR”), B23. Page references are given in the standard manner; “A” designates the first edition, “B” designates the second.
Meditation 1 (J. Cottingham, tr. [Philosophical Writings of Descartes. 2 Vols. |Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985}, hereafter cited as “PWD”]), Vol. 2, p. 12; Oevres de Descartes (C. Adam and P. Tannery, eds. [revised ed.; Paris: Vrin, 1964–76], hereafter cited as “AT”), Vol. 7, p. 17.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (A. C. Fraser, ed. [New York: Dover, 1959], hereafter cited as “Essay”), p. 13.
G. Berkeley,Three Dialogs Between Hylas and Philonus, Preface (D. M. Armstrong, ed. Berkeley’s Philosophical Writings. [London: Collier, 1965]), p. 133.
D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 2nd ed. (L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch, eds. [Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1978], hereafter cited as “Treatise”), p. xvi.
For an excellent discussion of the philosophically vigorous response to Kant that Hegel addresses, see Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).
Note Hegel’s remark shortly before his death that the Phenomenology was written for a time dominated by an abstract conception of the absolute. (Hegel’s remark is quoted in J. Hoffmeister’s Appendix to his edition of the Phänomenologie [Hamburg: Meiner, 1952], ‘Zur Feststellung des Textes,’ p. 578.)
G53.11–14/D8/M46.13–17.
G53.11–21/D8/M46.17–25.
G53.21–23/D8/M46.25–27.
G53.23–27/D8–9/M46.28–33. This strategy was Rheinhold’s “problematical” method. Richard Norman notes that this strategy was also Schopenhauer’s (Hegel’s Phenomenology [New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1981], p. 10).
G53.27–31/D9/M46.33–47.2.
G54.3–6/D9/M47.13–6.
W. V. O. Quine makes this suggestion in generic form in Word and Object (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1960), p. 5, and in ‘Epistemology Naturalized’ (Ontological Relativity and Other Essays [New York: Columbia University Press, 1969], pp. 69–90), p. 83. The form of consciousness Hegel designates as “perception” makes this suggestion in a specific form when it comes to recognize the role of its diverse sensory modalities (G75.21–5, 37–39/M72.9–15, 27–32).
G54.11–20/D10/M47.22–34.
October 10, 1811; Briefe von und an Hegel (J. Hoffmeister, ed. [Hamburg: Meiner, 1952], Vol. 1, p. 389; Hegel: The Letters (C. Butler and C. Seiler, trs. [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984]), p. 275.
Quentin Lauer, A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (New York: Fordham University Press, 1976), p. 26.
Cf. Willem A. deVries, ‘Hegel on Representation and Thought’ (Idealistic Studies 17 No. 2 [1987], pp. 123–132) and, in far greater detail, Hegel’s Theory of Mental Activity (op. cit.)
G54.30–34/D11/M48.6–11.
The basically skeptical orientation of Modern and contemporary foundationalist epistemology has been well argued by Frederick L. Will, Induction and Justification (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), chs. 3 and 5. That Kant had skepticism up his sleeve is evident from his claim to “have ... found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith” (CPR Bxxx). See below, Chapter Three §III, pp. 38–39.
G54.19–20/D10/M47.33–4.
G54.10–11/D10/M47.21–2.
Enz. §246r; cf. §§9, 10, 12.
H. F. Fulda, Das Problem einer Einleitung in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik 2nd ed. (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1975).
G58.12–22/D18/M52.17–30.
The dilemma of the criterion has only very recently attracted attention in Anglo-American philosophy. It is not so much as mentioned in the article by Philip Hallie on Sextus in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Paul Edwards, ed.-in-chief [N.Y.: Macmillan, 1967]; Vol. 7 pp. 427–28), though it is included in the article by Richard Popkin on skepticism (ibid.), p. 450. The dilemma is among the excerpts from Sextus included in Meaning and Knowledge (E. Nagel and R. Brandt, eds. [New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965], p. 381). Roderick Chisholm has discussed the problem several times. His first discussion (to my knowledge) is in Perceiving: A Philosophical Study (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957). He also discusses it in Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966). He discussed it at greater length in his Marquette University Aquinas Lecture (‘The Dilemma of the Criterion’ [Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1973]), a revised version of which is incorporated in his recent book, The Foundations of Knowing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). It is noteworthy that in the first two of these (Perceiving, Theory) Chisholm does not formulate the “problem” of the criterion as a dilemma, although in the former he footnotes Sextus’s discussion (p. 32 note 2) and notes the problem of circularity (p. 38). The “problem of the criterion” in these works is “that of describing certain of the conditions under which we may apply our epistemic vocabulary” and the response to circularity is a kind of “postulate” (ibid., pp. 33, 39). It is not until his Aquinas lecture that he formulates the problem as a dilemma, though he does so without reference to Sextus. That he doesn’t discuss Sextus in this connection is surprising given that Sextus’s formulation is more incisive than the ones he canvasses and reconstructs from scholastic sources and given that he is familiar with Sextus (see his essay, ‘sextus Empiricus and Modern Empiricism’ [Philosophy of Science 8 |1941}, pp. 371–384], or consult any of the indices to his books). William Alston has recently criticized Sextus’s dilemma. His views are discussed in Chapter Five below. Quite recently, numbers of articles on Sextus have been appearing in the journals, several of which are cited below.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism (R. G. Bury, tr.; Works Vol. I. [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933], hereafter abbreviated “PH”). Also cited is his Against the Mathematicians VII-XI (ibid., Vols. 2, 3 [1935, 1936]), abbreviated “M.” (This text is translated by Bury under the titles ‘Against the Logicians” I-II, ‘Against the Physicists’ I-II, and ‘Against the Ethicists’ I.)
See Michael Frede, ‘Des Skeptikers Meinungen’ (Neue Hefte für Philosophie, Hefte 15/16 [Göttingen, 1979], pp. 102–129; recently translated as ‘The Skeptic’s Beliefs’ in his collection, Essays in Ancient Philosophy [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987], pp. 179–200) and ‘The Sceptic’s Two Kinds of Assent and the Question of the Possibility of Knowledge’ (ibid., pp. 201–222) and Charlotte Stough, ‘sextus Empiricus on Non-Assertion’ (Phronesis 29 No. 2 [1984], pp. 137–164). Robert Turnbull has reminded me that Sextus could accept an everyday contrast between appearance and reality, e.g., between something’s being red but looking lavender.
Sextus’s terms for these are almost always enargea and adelon and their variants. “Enargea” means resplendently manifest, “adelon” means unclear. (At M VIII 143 Sextus uses “delon” in a sense of clear and evident.) Myles Burnyeat glosses “the evident” as follows: “The notion of that which is evident ... is a dogmatist’s notion in the first instance. Things evident are things which,come to our knowledge of themselves (PH II 97, M VIII 144), which are grasped from themselves (PH II 99), which immediately present themselves to sense and intellect (M VIII 141), which require no other thing to announce them (M VIII 149), i.e. which are such that we have immediate or non-inferential knowledge of them, directly from the impression (M VIII 316). Examples: it is day, I am conversing (M VIII 144), this is a man (M VIII 316). Sextus declares that this whole class of things is put in doubt by the skeptic critique of the criterion of truth (PH II 95, M VIII 141–2).” (‘Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?’ [In: M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat, and J. Barnes, eds., Doubt and Dogmatism |Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980}, pp. 20–53], p. 26 note 9.)
See note 51 below.
PH II 74.
Cf. PH II 72–73.
Myles F. Burnyeat is right that this problem does not quite constitute the modern “problem of the external world,” because the existence of the world is not called into doubt by this objection to representationalist theories of perception (see ‘Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed’ [The Philosophical Review 91 No. 1 |1982}; pp. 3–40]). In following Burnyeat’s lead and analyzing the transformation of classical into Modern skepticism Michael Williams overlooks a basic reason why classical skeptics did not press the problem of the external world as a stock epistemological problem: pressing this problem as a stock problem requires commitment to a representationalist account of perception, and, in true Pyrrhonian fashion, Sextus would avoid commitment to this doctrine. (See M. Williams, ‘Descartes and the Metaphysics of Doubt’ [in: A. O. Rorty, ed., Essays in Descartes’ Meditations, |Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986}, hereafter cited as “Rorty”], pp. 117–140.) In a more recent essay, Williams overlooks this problem and again mistakes the relation of Pyrrhonism to Cartesian skepticism. In ‘scepticism without Theory’ (Review of Metaphysics 41 No. 3 [1988], pp. 547–588), he claims that Sextus and his opponents lack the relevant sense of “external,” since they did analyze perception into a physical and a mental component (p. 585). Williams is correct on this last point, but wrong on the first. The Stoic theories of perception offer a sufficient basis for raising this problem, and Sextus challenges them accordingly. Locke is often criticized for failing to see this problem. However, Locke thinks that he has the double correspondence of ideas and things as a premise in his argument. The real question is, on what grounds did or could he claim this crucial thesis as a premise?
PH II 77–78.
The Stoics were anything but unaware of the kinds of difficulties posed by claiming knowledge based on sensory states that convey states of the world. One central Stoic doctrine pertinent to settling problems about the reliability of sensation is that of the “kataleptike phantasia” a sensory presentation that is absolutely and manifestly reliable. Although this doctrine is a predecessor of Descartes’s doctrine of clear and distinct ideas, it does not bear discussion here because the Stoic notion of perception is decidedly different from Descartes’s. The Stoics were materialists through and through and never would have countenanced what Descartes identifies as the strict sense of perceiving in Meditation II, namely, seeming to see, hear, and feel (PWD ii 19; AT vii 29). (See W. Matson, ‘Why Isn’t the Mind-Body Problem Ancient?’ [in: P. Feyerabend and G. Maxwell, eds., Mind, Matter, and Method |Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966}, pp. 92–102].) Also, the Stoics never clearly formulated the distinction between an impression’s being absolutely reliable and its being manifestly reliable, and so never clearly resolved this difficulty. (See J. Annas, ‘Truth and Knowledge’ [in: Doubt and Dogmatism |op. cit.}, pp. 84–104].)
For a very helpful discussion of this doctrine see M. Frede, ‘stoics and Skeptics on Clear and Distinct Impressions’ (in: M. Burnyeat, ed. The Skeptical Tradition [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983], pp. 65–93).
PH I 166–169.
PH II 20; cf. I 116–117.
See above, p. 4.
PH I 170, 178.
PH I 203; II 79, 103.
Hegel makes this point against G. E. Schulze, whose book he reviews in the Skepticismus essay.
Peter King made this suggestion to me in conversation.
M VII 278, 294–96. See C. Stough, Greek Skepticism: A Study of Epistemology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 145. This is not to say that Protagoras was a phenomenal-ist, but only that he refused to distinguish between appearances and the things that cause those appearances.
See G. Vlastos, ‘The Third Man Argument in the Parmenides’ (in: R. E. Allen, ed., Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, N.Y.: Humanities Press, 1965], pp. 231–263), pp. 245–248. Also see M. Burnyeat, ‘Can the Sceptic Live his Scepticism?’ (op. cit.), p. 25; and Charlotte Stough, Greek Skepticism (op. cit.), pp. 142f.
PH I 226, 236.
PH I 170. 66. PH I 192–93.
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Westphal, K.R. (1989). Problems of Knowledge and Problems with Epistemology. In: Hegel’s Epistemological Realism. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 43. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2342-3_2
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