Who can Philosophize?
Or: Why there's no such thing as non-aesthetic philosophy
Who wrote the Oldest Systematic program of German Idealism? We have no definitive evidence of Hegel having written the text (the title was given to it by Franz Rosenzweig in 1917). Thinkers like Lukács and Habermas were convinced Schelling wrote the text, while Heidegger denied this as a possibility, but he would also not confirm any author. To me, for reasons I will go into below, it is quite clear that Hegel wrote the text.1 Anyhow, this text is a fragmentary essay written around 1796/97, which means Hegel would’ve been around the age of 26 while writing it.
The Unity of Absolute Beauty
Why does it matter who wrote this text? No, why does this text matter in the first place? Besides being of philosophical interest to analyze how Hegel as a thinker came to be, this youthful, almost zealous text reveals some core philosophical principles; their timeless and contemporary relevance. If it is indeed Hegel who wrote it, it’d be significant for laying bare to his lifelong consistency regarding the point in the following quote. In the Oldest Program, he writes:
”I will show … the idea which unites all, the idea of beauty, the word taken in a higher Platonic sense. I am now convinced that the highest act of reason, which, embracing all ideas, is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness are only conjoined in beauty.”2
As is well known, the triad of the good, true and beautiful comes from the ancient philosopher Plato. According to the young Hegel in the passage above, the former two are only conjoined in beauty. In his magnum opus, the Science of Logic, we find the most mature formulation of this stance. At the very end of the book, we find the practical and theoretical Idea coming to be united in the Absolute Idea:
1. The practical Idea strives for attaining the Good, thereby failing to attain it fully.
2. The theoretical Idea strives for attaining the Truth, thereby too failing to attain it fully.
And then, 3. The Absolute Idea! The grand reconciliation of the true and the good in the beauty of harboring within the concept, or the “I,” the most extreme opposition: the principally unovercomeable nature of the two former Ideas.3 The insurmountable rift is reconciled within and as the highest Idea — the beautiful.
So, what do we make of this Idea of the beautiful? It won’t suffice to get off on some emanation of the One. The image of a navel-gazing circle-jerk is off-putting. While leaving the nutting behind, we will go for the pure and clean clarity. Half-jokes aside. Firstly, for Hegel, philosophy is philosophy of Spirit. And Spirit is what? God seeking his self-knowing, attaining it, and losing Himself in Himself, as the plethora of self-differentiating subjects coming to themselves through their own otherness, actual as the concrete existence of language. Now, back to his Oldest Program. In there, Hegel lays it all out in the open for us:
”The philosopher must possess as much aesthetic power as the poet. Men without an aesthetic sense are our philosophers of letters (Buchstabenphilosophen). The philosophy of spirit is an aesthetic philosophy. One cannot be witty (geistreich4) in anything; one cannot even reason wittily about history — without an aesthetic sense.”5
The poet is praised for his “aesthetic power.”6 He is the philosopher’s friend, while the philosopher of the letter is dry, sterile, unimaginative, intentionally uninventive and spiritually poor (unwitty). It’s not that their philosophies are non-aesthetic, but that their aesthetic is bland. We can therefore easily draw the conclusion that if Hegel were to take a plunge in our time, he’d be more sympathetic to creative and unorthodox interpretations of his philosophy, than scholars merely identifying, praising and regurgitating his system and its gargantuan proportions and meticulous inner workings, notwithstanding the valuable pedagogical role they might serve.
Kant and Ye
For Kant, answering the question of this article’s title, boils down to the distinction between learning philosophy (by the letter), or learning to philosophize. This minimal distinction (seemingly no distinction for the multitude) makes all the difference in the world. It is the difference between being dazzled by complexity of thought and the particulars of history, versus being mutually fascinated, in living dialogue, by the universality of the becoming of truth. Identification with any kind of perceived (sometimes lost) perfection in any historical thinker, or even your direct, living predecessor or mentor who lets truth speak through them is inevitable and forgivable, but also — especially if one clings on to the thinker on for an extended amount of time — goes to show one’s unreconciled self-relation. One comes to outsource one’s thinking to some other, so that one halts the angst of having to sing one’s own song. Analogously, there’s nothing wrong with making great covers of beautiful songs, although something is definitely covered up, if this is all one can bring oneself to do.
In line therewith, True masters or teachers are always repulsed by groupies or yes-men. The best thing that they can in turn do about it, is to attempt to give these people back to themselves. The work of art has the power to inspire, made possible by the creator who masters said art-form. This then causes the subjects whom are inspired to be attracted to not only the work of art, but also to that which in the work of art spoke to them. This attraction, might subsequently attach them to the creator, possibly even in guise of repulsion. Because of the distance to the artist, this dynamic, or rather dialectic is not between master and listener or reader, since the former is a projected image put up by the latter. It is a dialectic occurring within the listener or reader's self-relation. This is not to say that there's no input the creator can take in from the responses the listeners evoke and have lent from their image of the art and artist.
Kanye expressed the one-directional, or non-relational, nature of transference unambiguously when he said: “If you're a Kanye West fan, you're not a fan of me, you're a fan of yourself.” The privilege of falling in transference for a creative spirit and their particular songs, poems, and philosophical works, is the result of sensitivity for being receptive to the aesthetic revelation these works bring about. This sensitivity indicates the singularity (and universality) of what one finds aesthetically appealing — one’s style. It occurs out there. Comes down from above, occurs within oneself, speaks to one’s unconscious, and so one’s own (external) Other discourse. These works dreamily awaken a spark within oneself.
From there on out, what is at stake is identifying with already established projects, versus carving out one’s own creative becoming, confronting the limits of self-making, and persevering in the work7. To finish any work of art, one must struggle with chaos (gaping abyss in ancient Greek) and discipline. Each result, any finished song or writing has been preceded by discarding many potentialities. Oftentimes, a lot of work has to be discarded, the crux is that this invisible work, and the discarded and unfinished potentialities are just as much part of the finished result, which could not have come about if it wasn’t for all the “wasteful effort.” The fact that this invisibility can be seen only from the side of the creator, attests to the importance of art and philosophy as creative autobiographical work.
Spirit in a Bildungsroman and the Aesthetic Idea
Art and philosophy are works of sublimation, which, Lacan explains consists of “raising a mundane object to the dignity of the Thing,” that is, picking out any seemingly contingent appearance and idea-lizing it. It is the mythologization of one’s experience, in a beautiful, free and self-determined manner. To become an artist or a philosopher, it is, of course, inadequate to sing or regurgitate solely the admirable and life-changing projects of others, no matter how masterful they may be. Yet, only affirming this side of the story is insufficient too, as the importance of mimesis, i.e. rehearsing and mimicking the master repeatedly, is a crucial step to submit to if one is to become one’s own in a cultivated, and encultured sense. If, on the hand, we get the trap of one making covers and the philosopher of the letter, then on the other hand we get the premature self-expression of singularity trumping humility and gratitude, trumping the awareness of being positioned in a spiritual tradition, trumping universal truth. Even if projects turn out to be ground-breaking works that defy genre, these are only achieved through the arduous labour that has tarried with traditions which were present at hand, this is especially the case in philosophy. My bet is that this is true to a lesser extend in music. In any case, in the Oldest Program, Hegel believes to innovate on the following:
“First of all, I shall speak here of an idea which, as far as I know, has not yet come to mind — we must have a new mythology, but this mythology must be in the service of ideas, it must become a mythology of reason.”8
The manuscript cuts off before we get to see how Hegel would build out his mythology at that time. Fortunately, he published the Phenomenology of Spirit, which is a project in the same vein. Mythology, a literary genre, undeniably appeals to aesthetic sense. The Science of Logic too, falls within the category of the mythology of reason. Whereas the Phenomenology functions as a Bildungsroman about Spirit undergoing its development and final consummation in Absolute Knowing, the Logic starts out from this vantage point, culminating in the Absolute Idea, that is, the beautiful. It’s not a surprise that Goethe the poet had an direct influence on Hegel. Hegel’s philosophical innovation is partially attributable to Goethe’s literary ingenuity.9
A Change of Mind on the Title Page
Showcasing Hegel’s consistency from this early text to his mature works is interesting, but there’s also a major difference between this early text and his mature works. Let us juxtapose this quote to an epigraph Hegel uses:
“Before we make ideas aesthetic, that is, mythological, it has no interest for the people (Volks); and conversely, before mythology is sensible, the philosopher must be ashamed of it. Thus, at last the enlightened and the unenlightened (Unaufgeklärte) must join hands; mythology must become philosophical and the people reasonable, and philosophy must become mythological in order to make the philosophers sensuous. Then there is eternal unity among us. Never the contemptuous look, never the blind trembling of the people (Volks) before their sages and priests”10
A few decades later, Hegel’s last written words were on a note to his printer asking him to add the following epigraph by Cicero to the title page of the Science of Logic:
“For philosophy is content with a few judges. With fixed purpose it avoids, for its part, the multitude, which in turn views it as an object of suspicion and dislike.”11
It’s not that Hegel gives up on the masses, Hegel solemnly came to realize that it is the destiny of the philosopher to cope with the thankless reception by most, who have no intention to give it a sincere chance. Philosophy, however aesthetic or mythological, soulful, rigorous, or simply truthful it might be, will never be a thing of the people. Music, obversely, is widely accessible to the multitude, insofar as it attracts many by the sheer auditory harmony it produces. Why is the nature of aesthetic sense such? Why is not the most logical, the most beautiful? Why would that be a wrong question? Because… the singular and universal are, apropos beauty, inextricably intertwined. To restate it simply, the Big Other is internally incoherent with itself, not a guarantee of meaning. And thus, furthering this line of questioning begins from that position.
The philosopher must not possess the aesthetic power of the poet to proselytize his mythology of reason to the multitude, but to further the cause of the sublime, subliminal and sublimative beauty of liberatory love. Philosophy is only possible in mutual confession of unknowing, opening up the possibility for the unity of living spirits in dialogue towards knowing.
This too is generally accepted by contemporary scholars, who have compared the handwriting to other works by Hegel from the same period. the relevance of that fact I will leave to you, my dear reader.
Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism: Translation and Notes by Daniel Fidel Ferrer
I don’t aim to do justice to entirety of the technical intricacies of the systematic dialectical explication. Nevertheless, here’s is the quote I’m alluding to:“The Absolute idea has shown itself to be the identity of the theoretical and the practical idea, each of which, of itself one-sided, possesses the idea only as a sought-for beyond and unattained goal; each is therefore a synthesis of striving, each possessing as well as not possessing the idea within it, passing over from one thought to the other without bringing the two together but remaining fixed in the contradiction of the two. The absolute idea, as the rational concept that in its reality only rejoins itself, is by virtue of this immediacy of its objective identity, on the one hand, a turning back to life; on the other hand, it has equally sublated this form of its immediacy and harbors the most extreme opposition within. The concept is not only soul, but free subjective concept that exists for itself and therefore has personality – but the practical objective concept that is determined in and for itself and is as person impenetrable, atomic subjectivity – but which is not, just the same, exclusive singularity; it is rather explicitly universality and cognition, and in its other has its own objectivity for its subject matter. All the rest is error, confusion, opinion, striving, arbitrariness, and transitoriness; the absolute idea alone is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and is all truth.” - Science of Logic, G.W.F. Hegel
Witty! A beautiful word when translated to German, geistreich, literally translated to spirit-rich! That is quite funny, or geestig, as we say in Dutch, which would literally translate to spirity! The French and Italians too, have their own variation; esprit or spirito — wit as being one of Spirit.
Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism: Translation and Notes by Daniel Fidel Ferrer
He continues… “Poetry (Die Poesie) thus acquires a higher dignity, it becomes again in the end what it was in the beginning — teacher of mankind; for there is no more philosophy, no more history, poetry alone will outlive all other sciences and arts.”
Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism: Translation and Notes by Daniel Fidel Ferrer
If you would like to dive deeper into the idea that the Phenomenology is a Bildungsroman, I can highly recommend this article by Hernet Saeverot (open access, bless him).
Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism: Translation and Notes by Daniel Fidel Ferrer
See The Dash—The Other Side of Absolute Knowing by Rebecca Comay and Frank Ruda for more on the meaning of this epigraph.
You are an excellent writer and thinker, and I found this work tremendous. Beauty is an incredibly important topic, and you have elucidated its relevance and criticality well.