Abstract
From the scientific point of view, as we have said, Hegel’s attempt appears curiously aberrant. We are surprised that it occurred so late in time, since barely a century separates it from us; from the standpoint of logic it looks rather as if it could have been produced well before Descartes: it is something of an anachronism. What made it possible is obviously Hegel’s attitude toward science. Granted he says he wants to respect science and profit from its teachings, but only on the condition that he can be selective about it, accepting part of it and abandoning the rest. What he accepts is only the empirical part: facts and generalizations based directly on these facts. Everything theoretical, explanatory, leading more or less to assumptions about the inner nature of things, he believes must be rejected out of hand.
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Notes
Kuno Fischer, Geschichte 8:1176. Wundt, for whom Hegel’s philosophy and positivism are “the two most remarkable phenomena of the last century, phenomena that, in spite of all their innate defects, contain the significant seeds of a subsequent development,” treats them as absolutely antagonistic positions (Einleitung in die Philosophie, 5th ed., Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1909, pp. 266 ff.).
Cf. Wiss. der Logik, 3:462 [Miller 380]: “The quantitative side of this fact [of planetary motion] has been accurately ascertained by the untiring diligence of observation, and further, it has been reduced to its simple law and formula. Hence all that can properly be required of a theory has been accomplished” [Meyerson’s brackets]. Hegel’s strange understanding of the respective roles of Kepler and Newton was formed quite early. Indeed, it is found in De orbitis planetarum (Werke, 16:17): “Patet inde, quanto purius fuerit Kepleri ingenium et indoles” [“This shows how much purer the talent and natural inclination of Kepler were” (Adler 292)]. Alluding to the anecdote according to which Newton’s ideas on gravitation were inspired by a falling apple, Hegel jokingly declares that this is consequently the third time the apple has brought misfortune to mankind, having first been the source of original sin, then of the Trojan War and finally of the misfortune of the sciences and philosophy. Cf. Chapter 11, p. 306, note 51, above.
Cf. Ch. 4, pp. 73–74, and IR 6, 9, 11, 446 [Loewenberg 20–21, 22, 23–24, 390].
Kant, Premiers principes métaphysiques de la science de la nature, trans. Andler and Chavannes (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1892), pp. 4–5 [Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), trans. James Ellington, pp. 4–6]. Furthermore, we know that for Kant “the construction of concepts,” the “presentation of the object in a priori intuition,” takes place only by way of mathematics (p. 5 [5]).
Hegel, Über die Einrichtung einer kritischen Zeitschrift der Literatur (An das Ministerium des Unterrichts eingesandt), Werke, 17:368–390. Unlike the other official documents published in the same volume, this one is undated, but must be from Hegel’s final period. The author stresses from the outset that the organ he seeks to found will be an integral part of the administration (17:373, 380, 381); the editorial committee “will at the same time have the status of a governmental organ [Behörde]” (17:383 [Meyerson’s brackets]). The committee members will of course be appointed by the government and must include officials of the higher administration of public instruction. It will therefore be “really one of the monarchy’s central institutions” (17:384) and it will not be possible for any Prussian writer to remain indifferent to the fact of being recognized by the publication, “under the eyes of the higher administration, so to speak” (17:378–379). Professors will thus be led to teach above all what has been really established and to be wary of misguided originality. Here Hegel cites Voltaire’s remark: “Germany is a country rich in misguided originals” (17:372).
Jules Simon, Victor Cousin, 4th ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1910), passim, esp. Ch. 3, pp. 76 ff., ‘Le régiment’ [Victor Cousin, trans. Gustave Masson (London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1888), pp. 79 ff., ‘The Regiment’].
Hegel, Naturphilosophie, 71:92, 461 [Miller 62, 297]. William Wallace recognizes that Hegel in general “looked down upon the mere natural world” (‘Hegel,’ Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., 13:206). That was certainly a quite characteristic and very individual peculiarity of Hegel’s personality, one for which neither his time nor his entourage can be held responsible; German romanticism, following the impetus given it by Jean Jacques Rousseau, one of Hegel’s favored intellectual sources in his youth (cf. Rosenkranz, Hegel’s Leben 17), professed a boundless admiration for nature, particularly its untamed aspects, and Hegel’s most intimate friend, the poet Hölderlin, arrived at a veritable deification of nature in his cult of Greek classicism (Hegel’s Leben iv). Moreover, Schelling had already underlined this distinctive feature of his rival’s philosophy: “Jacobi can hardly treat nature worse than Hegel does ...” (Zur Geschichtet, I, 10:152).
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Meyerson, É. (1991). Hegel and Comte. In: Explanation in the Sciences. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 128. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3414-9_13
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