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Hegel, the phenomenology of spirit, a guide in mp3 voice
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Perception
Having come to see that it cannot coherently think of individuality in terms of some sort of unique individuating essence, consciousness is now ready to conceive of individuals as being constituted by characteristics they have in common with other individuals, and so to think in terms of universality as well as individuality. Hegel therefore describes the transition from 'Sense-certainty' to the following section on 'Perception' in these terms: 'Immediate certainty does not take over the truth, for its truth is the universal, whereas certainty wants to apprehend the This. Perception, on the other hand, takes what is present to it as a universal . . . Since the principle of the object, the universal, is in its simplicity a mediated universal, the object must express this its nature in its own self. This it does by showing itself to be the thing with many properties' . However, because perception is still at the level of sense-experience, the universals out of which it takes individuals to be constituted are of the simplest kind, that is, they are sensible properties, like being white, cubical, tart, and so on. As Hegel makes clear at the end of the section, this introduction of a limited conception of universality will in fact turn out to be inadequate: 'Thus the singular being of sense [at the level of sense-certainty] does indeed vanish in the dialectical movement of immediate certainty and [at the level of perception] becomes universality, but it is only a sensuous universality' . The aim of this section is therefore to bring out that consciousness gets into difficulties if it only conceives of universals in these limited terms, difficulties that lead it to lose faith in the very ontology of things and properties on which this conception is based, and to turn to the more radical ontology of forces discussed in the following section, out of which a different conception of universality will emerge. At first, however, the position of perception appears satisfactory and straightforward, even commonsensical: consciousness here conceives of objects as combinations of sensible properties, and so treats each individual as a bundle of universals, as an 'Also':
This abstract universal medium, which can be called simply
'thinghood' or 'pure essence', is nothing else than what Here and
Now have proved themselves to be, viz. a simple togetherness of a plurality; but the many are, in their determinateness, simple universals themselves. This salt is a simple Here, and at the same time manifold; it is white and also tart, also cubical in shape, of a specific weight, etc. All these many properties are in a single simple 'Here', in which, therefore, they interpenetrate; none has a different Here from the others, but each is everywhere, in the same Here in which the others are. And, at the same time, without being separated by different Heres, they do not affect each other in this interpenetration. The whiteness does not affect the cubical shape, and neither affects the tart taste, etc.; on the contrary, since each is itself a simple relating of self to self it leaves the others alone, and is connected with them only by the indifferent Also. This Also is thus the pure universal itself, or the medium, the 'thinghood', which holds them together in this way.
Perception thus treats each individual as a co-instantiation of some collection of property-instances in a single spatial region, so that (for example) this piece of salt is seen as nothing more than exemplifications of whiteness, tartness, and so on co-existing together in one place. Having introduced what is traditionally known as a 'bundle view' of the object as an 'Also', Hegel now argues that this view proves unstable, and gives rise to its opposite, which takes the object to be a 'One', that is, a unified substance or substratum over and above its properties:
In the relationship which has thus emerged it is only the character of positive universality that is at first observed and developed; but a further side presents itself, which must also be taken into consideration. To wit, if the many determinate properties were strictly indifferent to one another, if they were simply and solely self-related, they would not be determinate; for they are only determinate in so far as they differentiate themselves from one another, and relate themselves to others as to their opposites. Yet; as thus opposed to one another they cannot be together in the simple unity of their medium, which is just as essential to them as negation; the differentiation of the properties, in so far as it is not an indifferent differentiation but is exclusive, each property negating the others, thus falls outside of this simple medium; and the medium, therefore, is not merely an Also, an indifferent unity, but a One as well, a unity which excludes an other. The One is the moment of negation; it is itself quite simply a relation of self to self and it excludes an other; and it is that by which 'thinghood' is determined as a Thing.
Unfortunately, this passage is rather obscure and hard to interpret. One interesting reading of it is given by Charles Taylor . He suggests that Hegel is claiming that we can only think of properties as determinate by contrasting them with other properties, but this notion of properties being contrasted with others requires us to think that nothing which has one could have another ('nothing can be red and green all over', 'nothing can be square and round', and so on); but (Taylor suggests) 'of course, without the notion of a particular or something closely resembling a particular, such a phrase would be meaningless; for it is only of particulars, of things that can bear properties, that one can say that they cannot be both red and green' . Thus, on Taylor's view, Hegel's move from the 'Also' to the 'One' is designed to show that 'there is a kind of mutual dependency here, that we couldn't logically have our property concepts if we didn't operate with particulars' . However, the difficulty with this reading is that it mistakes the position from which the argument starts, and so fails as an interpretation. According to Taylor, the position that treats the thing as an 'Also' is said to hold that 'properties . . . [exist] alongside each other in the universe but not bound together into particulars' . But, on my account, to conceive of the object as an 'Also' is not to deny that it is a particular, because on the bundle view we can still conceive of the object as (for example) 'this piece of salt'; it is just that the particular object is viewed as nothing over and above the instantiated universals that constitute it. I therefore think Taylor is wrong to characterize the position Hegel starts from here as one that lacks the concept of a particular altogether: it just conceives of particulars in a certain way (as bundles of instantiated universals).
So, is there another way of understanding Hegel's position here? An alternative reading can be developed by comparing the passage we are considering to the following paragraph from F. H. Bradley's Appearance and Reality:
We may take the familiar instance of a lump of sugar. This is a thing, and it has properties, adjectives which qualify it. It is, for example, white, and hard, and sweet. The sugar, we say, is all that; but what the is can really mean seems doubtful. A thing is not any one of its qualities, if you take that quality by itself; if 'sweet' were the same as 'simply sweet' the thing would clearly be not sweet. And, again, in so far as sugar is sweet it is not white or hard; for these properties are all distinct. Nor, again, can the thing be all its properties, if you take them each severally. Sugar is obviously not mere whiteness, mere hardness, and mere sweetness; for its reality lies somehow in its unity. But if, on the other hand, we inquire what there can be in the thing beside its several qualities, we are baffled once more. We can discover no real unity existing outside these qualities, or, again, existing within them.
Now, Bradley does not here refer explicitly to Hegel (though his example of a lump of sugar may be supposed to recall Hegel's similar example of a piece of salt), and he is not writing as a commentator on the Phenomenology: nonetheless, there are interesting parallels between the two passages, and the argument of the one may help shed light on the argument of the other. Like Hegel, Bradley here moves from a bundle view to a substratum/attribute view. He begins by taking the reductionist position of the bundle theorist, who identifies the individual thing with its properties ('It is, for example, white, and hard, and sweet'). He then asks how we can say that this is so, as this would make the single individual identical with three distinct properties. He argues that this difficulty cannot be evaded by making the thing identical with just one of these properties, because it is no more identical with this one property than the others, in so far as it also has other properties and these are distinct. Nor can the difficulty be evaded by making the thing identical with all the properties taken together as a collection: for they are many and the thing is one ('Sugar is obviously not mere whiteness, mere hardness, and mere sweetness; for its reality lies somehow in its unity', where here by 'Sugar' Bradley would appear to still mean the individual lump of sugar, rather than the stuff or kind). Faced with this puzzle, Bradley then introduces the substratum/attribute view, which holds that the unity of the thing is something over and above its many qualities: rather than identifying the individual with its properties, these are now seen as inhering in it, so that the 'is' can now be treated as an 'is' of predication rather than an 'is' of identity. However, Bradley then raises the traditional objection, that we are now left with the baffling idea of the thing as a 'bare particular', lacking in any properties (, '[N]one will assert, that substance is either a colour, or a sound, or a taste . . . We have therefore no idea of substance, distinct from that of a collection of particular qualities, nor have we any other meaning when we talk or reason concerning it.').
Now, the passage from the Phenomenology we have been considering may be made less mysterious by interpreting it in the light of Bradley's argument. (For further helpful discussion of that argument, ) Thus, Hegel may be understood as suggesting that there is something unsatisfactory in the bundle view of the object as a co-instantiation of property instances (of the thing as an 'Also') as soon as we realize that these properties are distinct from one another, as they must be if they are to be determinate ('for they are only determinate in so far as they differentiate themselves from one another, and relate themselves to others as to their opposites'). For it then appears that we cannot identify this individual with these properties, for then it would be many and not one ('Yet; as thus opposed to one another they cannot be together in the simple unity of their medium, which is just as essential to them as negation'). We may then distinguish the thing as one from the properties as many, at which point we have arrived at the substratum/attribute view, of universals as predicates inhering in (rather than constituting) the individual thing. Thus, Hegel uses the one/many problem to get us from the bundle view to the substratum/attribute view, in a way that Bradley also adopted. Moreover, as we shall see shortly, Hegel like Bradley thought that the substratum/attribute view is just as problematic as the bundle view;
but where Bradley went on to claim that this means we can never reach a coherent view of reality, Hegel merely took this puzzle to show that we must start with a deeper conception of universality than that adopted here by perception. (For more on the general issue of how Bradley's pessimism contrasts with Hegel's rationalistic optimism, )
Before we see how Hegel's discussion develops along these lines, it is interesting to ask whether the Hegel/Bradley attempt to undermine the bundle view succeeds. One standard objection to Bradley's argument (and thus to Hegel's on this Bradleyan reading) is that he fails to distinguish the 'is' of identity from the 'is' of predication . But this objection appears misguided, as in fact the argument seems designed to take us from the 'is' of identity adopted by the bundle view to the 'is' of predication adopted by the substratum/ attribute view (where this is then shown to be no more satisfactory as a way of understanding the 'is' than the bundle theorist's identity conception, because the thing of which the attribute is predicated becomes a mysterious bare particular). Another objection might be that as so far presented, the Hegel/Bradley argument overlooks an obvious response by the bundle theorist, namely, that the thing is identical with its properties in some relation to one another, where that relation is sufficient to make the several properties into a single individual. Now, in fact Bradley himself does consider this option, and deals with it largely by moving on to question whether relations can possibly make a many into a one in this way, or whether the many/one issue will always re-emerge . Hegel, however, does not consider this objection, and offers no such general argument against relations; but in fact this is not necessarily a difficulty. For, it should be remembered that at this point the universals he is considering are property-universals (whiteness, tartness etc.), between which no relation holds, so that their diversity cannot be overcome in this way (as Hegel himself puts it: 'The whiteness does not affect the cubical shape, and neither affects the tart taste, etc.; on the contrary, since each is a simple relating of self to self it leaves the others alone, and is connected with them only by the indifferent Also'. Thus, having begun with the bundle theory of the object, Hegel uses the one/many problem to show how consciousness cannot retain the reductionist conception of the individual with which it began, so that we arrive at the substratum/attribute conception instead. Hegel now sets out to show that consciousness cannot rest content with either view, claiming that '[i]t is only a matter of developing the contradictions that are present therein'. Hegel argues that consciousness oscillates between the one conception and the other, sometimes treating the object as a bundle of properties which then undermines its sense that the object is really a unified individual distinct from other individuals, and sometimes treating the object as a unity over and above its plurality of properties, which then leads to the idea of a characterless substratum and back to the 'This' of sense-certainty. Perception cannot decide which conception is the correct characterization of how things are, and which conception merely results from the delusive influence on us of how things appear to us to be:
The object which I apprehend presents itself purely as a One; but I also perceive in it a property which is universal, and which thereby transcends the singularity [of the object]. The first being of the objective essence as a One was therefore not its true being. But since the object is what is true, the untruth falls in me; my apprehension was not correct. On account of the universality of the property, I must rather take the objective essence to be on the whole a community. I now further perceive the property to be determinate, opposed to another and excluding it. Thus I did not in fact apprehend the objective essence correctly when I defined it as a community with others, or as a continuity; on account of the determinateness of the property, I must break up the continuity and posit the objective essence as a One that excludes. Faced with this two-fold way of viewing the object, as one and as many, perception is torn between on the one hand making the object independent of its plurality of properties, and treating them as secondary, and so as holding that 'the Thing is white only to our eyes, also tart to our tongue, also cubical to our touch, and so on' , and on the other hand attributing these properties to the object itself, to give it a way of distinguishing it from other things and to avoid making the object's nature indeterminate, so that on this view 'it is in truth, then, the Thing itself that is white, and also cubical, also tart, and so on'. Corresponding to this two-fold view of the object, there is a two-fold view of the role of the subject, as either breaking up the unity of the object into a plurality of properties, or as holding together that plurality into a unity; as Hegel puts it, 'If we look back on what consciousness previously took, and now takes, responsibility for, on what it previously ascribed, and now ascribes, to the Thing, we see that consciousness alternately makes itself, as well as the Thing, into both a pure, many-less One, and into an Also that resolves itself into independent "matters"' . At this stage, failing to find any way to decide which way of viewing the thing is correct and which delusive, consciousness now attributes both unity and diversity to the object itself, and attempts to render this view consistent by treating the manifold properties as inessential; but because it is only these properties that distinguish it from anything else, consciousness is forced to admit that they are nonetheless necessary to the object, so the distinction between essential and inessential here collapses: 'This, however, is a distinction that is still only nominal; the unessential, which is none the less supposed to be necessary, cancels itself out' .
Hegel therefore offers his diagnosis of what has gone wrong here, which, as we have already pointed out, focuses on the inadequate conception of the categories of universality and individuality being used by perception: while perception has some grasp of the category of universal, it is an extremely limited conception, which treats universals as simple sensuous property instances like 'white' and 'cubical'; this has led it to reduce the object to a plurality of unrelated attributes, with all the consequent difficulties that Hegel has analysed:
Thus the object in its pure determinateness, or in the determinatenesses which were supposed to constitute its essential being, is overcome just as surely as it was in its sensuous being. From a sensuous being [at the level of sense-certainty] it turned into a universal [at the level of perception]; but this universal, since it originates in the sensuous, is essentially conditioned by it, and hence is not truly a self-identical universality at all, but one afflicted with an opposition; for this reason the universality splits into the extremes of singular individuality and universality, into the One of the properties, and the Also of the 'free matters' . . . The sophistry of perception seeks to save these moments from their contradiction, and it seeks to lay hold on the truth, by distinguishing the aspects, by sticking to the 'Also' and to the 'in so far', and finally, by distinguishing the 'unessential' aspect from an 'essence' which is opposed to it. But these expedients, instead of warding off deception in the process of apprehension, prove themselves on the contrary to be quite empty; and the truth which is supposed to be won by this logic of the perceptual process proves to be in one and the same respect the opposite [of itself] and thus to have as its essence a universality which is devoid of distinctions and determinations. Thus, what this section is meant to show, is that although there is some advance in moving from the irreducible individuality of sensecertainty to the instances of property-universals recognized by perception, this does not take us far enough; for, as the problems encountered by perception have evealed, '[t]he lowest conception one can have of the universal in its connexion with the individual is this external relation of it as merely a common element'. Faced with an irresolvable oscillation between two equally unsatisfactory accounts of 'the Thing' as 'One' and as 'Also' which has resulted from this conception of the universal, consciousness now abandons this ontology, and takes up instead the ontology of 'Force', which is the focus of the next section, as Hegel moves from Perception to Understanding.
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