If the iden- tity is not nothingness, that means to say, if it has content, it
contains
ipso facto a distinction.
Hegel Was Right_nodrm
?
?
?
Infinite and Distinction 163
would have to be in the microscopic level. But the most intelligent physics have noticed that "there is no distinction between the atoms" (GP I 362) just as Hegel thought. Besides d'Espagnat, it would be useful to quote other physics, for instance, P. W. Bridgman: "The elemental processes or 'objects' do not have individuality or identificability, nor can they be repeated. The concept of 'sameness' does not apply in the microscopic domain of quantum phenomena (Schilpp II 1970, 346).
Likewise, Eddington says:
". . . distinction of individuality, if it has any meaning at all, has no bearing on physical manifestations" (1978, 175).
The next paragraph of Max Jammer summarizes the thought and the experiments of Heisenberg, Hund, Denisson, Wigner, Heitler and London
These results not only lent weight to the concept of like particles; they also showed that like particles may be indistinguishable, that is, may lose their identity, a conclusion which follows from the uncertainty relations or, more precisely, from the impossibility of keeping track of the individual particles in the case of interactions of like particles. For, contrary to classical dynamics, trajectories could no longer be defined as sharp nonintersecting world- lines but had to be conceived as overlapping each other. In fact, all papers on exchange phenomena and, in particular, the calculations concerning the ground state of the helium atom, in which the wave functions of the two electrons overlap completely, showed clearly that the classical principle of an unrestricted identifiability of particles had to be abandoned. Moreover, it was possible to show that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle was al- ready contradicted by the idea of an approximately continuous sequence of atomic-configuration measurements, designed to identify electrons in lower-energy states and hence requiring positional uncertainties smaller than average electron distances. (1966. 344)
This is related with the 'forbidden distance' or impossible orbits of Bohr's atoms which we will in short bring into consideration. Let us only look first at this quotation of Paul Dirac: "If a system in atomic physics contains a number of particles of the same kind, e. g. a num- ber of electrons, the particles are absolutely indistinguishable one from another. No observable change is made when two of them are inter- changed. " (1981, 207)
Hegel had already said in times of classical mechanics that we are dealing with "exterior objects, not individual ones" (WL II 376).
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 164 Hegel was right
In the atomic model of Bohr, the atoms 'jump' from one orbit of radio to another depending on how much energy each of them has. However, as it was experimentally demonstrated by Planck's discovery of the indivisibility ad infinitum of physical realities, an orbit's radio cannot have any dimension, there are radios that are physically im- possible, which means that it is impossible for the electron to be at such a distance from the nucleus. Therefore, it is not the case that the electron passes from one orbit to another, but rather that the intermedi- ate states cannot exist. The only thing that happens is that the electron disappears from one orbit and reappears in another. But how could one affirm that it is the 'same' electron, if there is no continuity between one state and the other? Further: is it relevant at all that it is the same electron or not? The only possible meaning of being the same is con- sidering oneself to be the same. And this happens without any substra- tum. It is not the case that the subject remains the same even when he is not conscious of being the same; we already showed (III, 6) that these intermediate states do not exist. I am myself because I consider myself to be so. This lies in mutual dependency with intersubjectivity (cfr. III, 7): Just as it is true that I consider myself the same in function that the others consider me the same, so it is true that they consider me the same because I consider myself to be the same. "Only in morals this concept of the absolute individuality of consciousness has properly sense. " (GP I, 271). Individuality and identity of matter, is an absolutely unjustified projection of concepts which only have a meaning in the spirit.
In radioactivity, the tunnel effect demonstrates also that it is ab- surd to talk about the identity of the particles. There is a 'prohibited zone' for the particles around the nucleus, but these particles are in fact emitted from the nucleus towards the surrounding world. The zone is prohibited because the kinetic energy of the particle would be negative in it and its speed would be imaginary. Therefore, to say that a particle passes by this zone is to utter something impossible. All the problematic that may rise up in regard of the identity of the particle emitted by the nucleus is based on the ignorance of what the physical world is in contrast with the spirit.
This lack of knowledge was what made Einstein broke up with Bohr, and it is also the reason why he was incapable of accepting the decisive facts of relativity and, more in particular, the disturbing fact discovered by Young's dispositive and Geoffrey Ingram Taylor's technique. This technique is described by Ted Bastin:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Infinite and Distinction 165
. . . any interference experiment can be conducted at such low intensity that effects due to statistical assemblages of particles can be discounted, yet interference occurs just the same. Hence even in the traditionally central case of electron interference, purely statistical treatment is not possible. (1971, 5 n. )
In other words, it is not the case that a photon is interfered by an- other, but rather that it interferes with itself. And the same goes for the electrons. Cfr also: EB 23, 20, 2.
Niels Bohr summarizes the problem thus: "". . . to be obliged to say, on the one hand, that the photon always chooses one of the two ways and, on the other, that it behaves as if it had passed both ways" (1958, 51).
This is the dispositive: to the left hand we have a fountain of photons, in the center we have a partition with two orifices or little slots, and to the right hand we have a screen where the light is reflected and where we can observe by the form of the lights and the shades if there is in- terference or not, for strips of maximal intensity juxtaposed to dark strips mean that two wave trains are being superimposed, whether in phase or not. Let us remember that by the low intensity of the fountain one has achieved monophotonic rays; in other terms, it is not a front of various photons that goes toward the partition, but a single strip of a photons in which each of the elements advances one at a time. Now, if there is individuality in the material, the photon can only go through one of the orifices; but then there would be nothing of interference, since there would not be two different trajectories and hence there would not be superimposition or annulment of wave crests, something for which two wave trains are required.
The phenomenon which has caused an unmendable consternation among physics is that the interference is produced when the two ori- fices are open, but if we block one of them, no interference is produced. The intellectual honesty of Bohr and his colleagues oblige them to say: the photon, evidently, goes through one of the orifices, but it behaves as if it went through both of them. Otherwise, they would have to say something much more scandalous and completely absurd: when pass- ing through one of the orifices, the photon knows if the other orifice is closed or open, and as a result, it creates or not interference on the screen.
It is obvious, however, that an as if does not solve the problem and hence the Physics of our century has not dared to face the true logi- cal conclusion of the experiment. The conclusion is that individuality,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 166 Hegel was right
distinction and identity are categories that have nothing to do with the empirical word. If the entire physical world was only one being, the ob- servable phenomena would not be different as how they really are.
The experiment has been repeated thousands of times and in the most diverse circumstances and variants, always with the same shocking effect on the minds of the classical physics. For instance, if we capture one of the two resulting photons of the decay of positronium by means of a polaroid in a vertical position, the other will certainly go through a polaroid in a horizontal position. But if we turn forty-five degrees both polaroids, classical optics has to affirm that the first photon has fifty percent of probabilities of going through and that the second pho- ton, which knows nothing about the former one, would have the same probabilities. However, things are not this way. Let us put two po- laroids in a straight angle: if a photon goes through one of them, the other photon will always go through its corresponding polaroid. It acts is as if it knew that the other photon has gone through. If we do not want to sustain the absurdity that a photon, once it has went through its polaroid, communicates with the other and orders it to go through its corresponding polaroid --a communication that would have to take place at a speed faster than light--, the only solution is to say what physic O. R. Fisch has affirmed: "We must consider the two photons as being one system" (Bastin, 1971, 20).
It is obvious that we should repeat what we have said about the as if of Bohr. To begin with, physics should have never considered the two photons as two separate beings. They ought not to be deceived by the belief that individuality has some meaning in physics. Einstein accused quantum physics of believing in telepathy. But every problem of com- munication or telepathy supposes gratuitously that they are 'distinct' and 'individual' entities. Physics are ridiculously assuming this pseudo- problem, because these concepts only have a meaning in the spirit, not in matter. The 'occult parameters' of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen are only efforts to solve the same pseudo-problem.
7. the bottom of the probLem
After demonstrating that it is impossible to give empirical or physical meaning to the words distinction, identity and individuality, we are now in the conditions of going deeper into the matter.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Infinite and Distinction 167
We said that those who accuse Hegel of pantheism should only focus on whether self-consciousness is preserved or not. And the bottom-line is this: this ideal and not physical contraposition between different 'selves', between self-consciousnesses that reciprocally address each other and make each other being, is the only possible meaning of the word distinction. Evidently, however, the ideal and not physical entity they create thereby is only one; there is no way to fragment it because it is not material. There we have distinction in the identity and vice versa; it is impossible to define one without the other in the definition. The great difference between the abstract intellect that does not understand and the reason that understands consists in that the former "commits the same absurdity of making that which is pure relation into something devoid of all relation. " (WL. I 211).
"The elements of the distinction are the identity and the distinction itself" (WL II 34).
It has been nothing more than sheer superficiality to attribute un- intelligibility to the Hegelian thesis according to which "the identity of the identity with the no-identity" (JS 96), for "the identity [. . . ] does not exclude the distinction; it has it essentially in its own determination" (BS 371). The ideal entity called intersubjectivity cannot exist if these poles are not distinguished.
The abstract intellect stiffens: it considers that identity and distinc- tion are things that have nothing to do with each other and are not re- lated at all. One misunderstands thus both of them, since it is impossible to give them meaning by empirical or physical means. The abstract intellect uses these two words without giving them meaning.
In contrast with reason, " in general it stands for the understanding as abstracting, and hence as separating and remaining fixed in its sepa- rations. Directed against reason, it behaves as ordinary common sense and imposes its view that truth rests on sensuous reality, that thoughts are only thoughts, meaning that it is sense perception which first gives them filling and reality" (WL. I 26)
We have long enough demonstrated that this opinion is something utterly impossible. The sensible perception cannot give meaning to the concepts. What happens is that the abstract intellect 'thinks in a simi- lar way than imagination', as Hegel denounces. For imagination, each thing stands on its side with no relation to others; things are unrelated within the (imaginary) space. Properly speaking,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 168 Hegel was right
thought, mediation, the intellectual determinations as such are forms of relation, but they can be immobilized as imaginary figurations, and just then we must think properly in the form of imagination: the intellect (PR I 293).
But:
this holding apart of likeness and unlikeness is their destruction. For both are determinations of difference; they are relations to one another, the one being what the other is not; like is not unlike and unlike is not like; and both essentially have this relation and have no meaning apart from it (WL. II 36)
The ideal and mental reality called intersubjectivity --which is more real than anything physical, as our third chapter showed-- is a simple entity because it is immaterial; it is identical because it consists in that its poles are distinct from each other; it consists in that every self-consciousness addresses the others directly and reciprocally. This reality is pure act, self-determination of each of the subjects in action and a movement that integrates every one of them; but the intellect separates and makes these things static. It "commits the same absur- dity of making that which is pure relation into something devoid of all relation. " (WL I 211)
"If we take into account [. . . ] that the simple does not need to be void, one dispels the aforementioned impression, as if the simple ex- cluded from itself the distinct" (EGP 277).
The whole point is not to confuse simplicity with nothingness. Intersubjectivity is simple, because it is not material; but it consists in the distinction that exists among the subjects, which is the only real dis- tinction that there can be. According to Hegel, the identity in Aristotle is "activity, movement, repulsion, and therefore it is not inert identity; identity is identical to itself in the distinction" (GP II 164).
If the iden- tity is not nothingness, that means to say, if it has content, it contains ipso facto a distinction.
By mere conceptual analysis, Proclus affirmed rightly that the mul- tiple (i. e. distinction) is not in itself; that one can only understand the multiple as included in and streaming from the one (i. e. identity); the multiple would not be multiple if they were not one. Indeed, if they were completely unrelated and had nothing to do with each other, we would not call them many, but we would call each of them one by
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their own, and the mind would not know of the other when consider- ing each of them. The multiple must stream from the one itself; the distinction has to be included in the identity. For that reason Hegel says: "The reality of the contraries and real contraposition can only be brought about by identity" (JS 97). This could only be rejected by whoever manages to give the words 'identity' and 'distinction' another intelligible meaning; not an imaginary one, for we saw that what one can imagine is empirical and no empirical data can correspond to the meaning of these words.
For that reason, Hegel says the following about those who accuse him of pantheism:
These doctrines are of speculative kind, and if there are theologians who are not able to understand them, that in this point they cannot follow the pace of the concept, they should at least, in their weakness, leave alone these speculative subjects. Theology is to understand the religious con- tent; these theologians should acknowledge that they cannot understand, and they should refrain from passing the judgment of pantheism to the concepts they have not understood (PR I 256).
The first thing that these theologians do not understand is the word God. As we saw in our previous chapters (III, 1), they do not know what the spirit is and they tend to define it as the negation of the material. This recourse is pointless since the definiendum does not get thereby any other content than materiality itself. And we saw (IV, 3) that they do not know the meaning of 'infinite' either. This should not surprise us, since the meaning of infinite is the spirit itself. "We, on the other hand, consider God as spirit" (PR I 8); now, "the spirit is essentially being for the spirit" (PR I 201). The spirit is intersubjectivity; but, as we just exposed, there is the identity, and not only does it not loose distinction, but rather there is precisely the identity so that the distinction between God and men can have any meaning.
"This relation with the Absolute is not suppressing both, for there would be no distinct thus, but rather they must remain distinct without losing that nature" (JS 96).
"The principal is the true determination of this identity, and the true identity is the one that exists in the infinite subjectivity, which cannot be conceived as neutralization or reciprocal cancellation, but only as infinite subjectivity" (PR II, II 68).
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 170 Hegel was right
In universal history, the only thing that matters is that these two parts re- main in absolute unity, true conciliation, a conciliation in which the free subject does not succumb in the object mood of the spirit, but rather obtains his full autonomy, and in the like way, the absolute spirit, the objective and reluctant unity, obtains its absolute right as well (VG 244).
This subject about identity and distinction is the point in which the famous 'conversion ad phantasma' of the Scholastic philosophers plays a dirty trick against them. It demonstrates not only that it is false that we should cast our eyes to fantasy in order to understand: it also demon- strates that we have to do without fantasy if we want to understand. For this distinction to be real, they imagine that the human spirit must be outside from God, and that God must be outside from the hu- man spirit. This is obviously something absurd, because the spirit is nothing spatial from which we could predicate an 'inside' or an 'outside'. To say that something is outside from God is simply ludicrous.
Another possibility: They could be imagining that besides conscious- ness and intersubjectivity, spirits have a substratum, and that these substrata really distinguish themselves from each other despite that intersubjectivity builds some sort of drawbridge between them. We showed (III 4) that there is no concept of a substance distinct from its acts of self-consciousness and intersubjectivity. Therefore, what they have is an image. Every attempt of intellection fails if one does not start from this assumption: identity and distinction are intelligible, not imaginable. If they imagine the substrata, they become spatial beings, not spirits.
Or else: they place on the left side of the imaginary screen a 'time' in which God had not carried out the act of intersubjective appeal by which he made being the human spirit. We exposed extensively (III 6) that this time of physics is space, not time, and that these lapses in which there are no acts from the spirit do not exist.
The Hegelian commentator W. T. Stace incurred in the same mis- take --only that this time, the mistake took place on the right side from the screen-- when he affirmed that Hegel did not take literally the immortality of men but only as a symbol of "the absolute value of spiritual individuality. Immortality is a present quality of the spirit, not a future fact or event" (1955, 514). Stace pretends to correct both Hegel and the only adequate conception of time which is "something about movement" (Phys IV 219a 9), in name of an exterior absolute
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time that rules over God and the universe only because of the fact that we imagine time as a spatial line that goes from right to left, which exists independently from whatever may happen or not. As we have said, this line is space but no time; therefore, its right segment is no future, nor is the left segment the past in which the Scholastic placed God before he created the human spirit. Of course, the hu- man spirit is not immortal if one understands by immortality that the spirit becomes coextensive with this line that goes to the right, for neither spirit nor true time have extension. Likewise, God is not coextensive with the left segment of this imaginary construction. Time is the 'abstractum of transformation" (PR I 234), i. e. from the self- determination of spirit that transforms itself by giving to itself new and diverse determinations.
In general, when they say that God is or lies beyond, it becomes per- fectly obvious that spatial imagination continues to play tricks with us. The true transcendence consists in the intersubjectivity we have discussed: it consists in that the self is always face to face with a thou which cannot be absorbed or reduced to the self. But this true distinc- tion is at the same time identity. Only there the concept of distinct could have had its origin. If man were only surrounded by things and objects, he would never distinguish himself, just as his own body never distinguishes itself. We would have never come up with the concept of distinction. Consequently, he would not have the concept of a self either. Therefore (III, 7), the intersubjectivity which makes me a distinct being for the first time is the only possible way for a man to exist, that is to say, the only possible way to create man. But it is identity, for only in identity could there be distinction. We tie thereby a loose end that was (III, 8) missing.
Perhaps it will not be superfine to say that Thomas Aquinas also conceived creation in terms of identity. A posture to which a theolo- gian of our century, Karl Rahner, adheres:
Thomas does not regard the supreme mode of production of another, the creating activity of God, as an action that goes out from the agent towards and extrinsic patient, but rather as the immanent action of God, as God's free self fulfillment, which maintains himself completely within himself (De pot. q. 3 a, 15 corp). Thus, it becomes manifest that even the supreme causality towards the outside is more fully a modus of self-realization, and that transitory causality is a peculiar modus of formal causality (1964, 358).
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 172 Hegel was right
They would not only have to charge Hegel with pantheism, but also Aquinas and the most serious part of the Catholic tradition.
We said (III, 8) that the only real causality we know and the only one of which we have a concept is the cause that determines itself. It follows from this that every attempt to understand creation that does not hold to the self-production of the spirit recourses inevitably to an imaginative figuration but not to a concept. Such attempts intend to play magic tricks by only pronouncing the word cause. Only intersub- jectivity --as a simple and identical entity-- has the capacity of pro- ducing something different without losing its identity. The Thomistic system as such is impotent to confront these things; matter and form are metaphors, evidently, but we are not dealing here with Literature.
And Hegel even makes a precision: "Creating is not a definite thought" (GP III 157). "The term 'creation' comes from religion; but it is a void word taken from imagination; in order to be thought and to have philosophical meaning, it must be more precisely defined" (GP III 240).
And let us see how Hegel himself defines it: "that we are not origi- nal and only in relation to God we come to being" (BS 239). Our third chapter exposed that it is the divine imperative which by means of in- tersubjectivity makes us come to be. "God is the manifestation of him- self to the spirit, and this manifestation is to produce the spirit at the same time" (PR I 200). "This is the content of the Absolute: manifesta- tion" (WL II 164).
The abstract intellect --which separates and stiffens everything-- cannot understand that God is only conceivable in and by means of human intersubjectivity, whose essentially moral character we have highlighted. "To express it in more theological terms, the spirit of God is essentially in its collectivity; God is spirit in so far he is in his collec- tivity" (PR I 52). "God as spirit, if He remains on the other side, does not exist as vital spirit in his community, he remains unilaterally deter- mined as mere object" (PR III 19).
8. phiLoSophy and faith
Since the theology of the abstract intellect does not realize that it does not have the concept of God and that it does not know what it is speaking about, since that theology does not realize that God is only conceiv- able in the moral imperative --whose obedience is a free act, despite
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Infinite and Distinction 173
the natural appearances-- it blindfoldedly holds a difference between Theology and Philosophy, between faith and reason, that does not exist. When this theology speaks of "natural reason" in contrast with faith, it does not know what it says. Reason is not on the side of nature. Being rational is not natural to us. Although one demonstrates irre- futably with reasons --just as this book does-- that the sensible data should not be trusted, man can anyway cling to the empirical data and distrust reasons; and that takes us to its naturality.
Natural reason is a twisted expression. [. . . ] Reason is rather not to be what one immediately is. Spirit consists precisely in raise above nature, to sub- tract oneself from the natural, not only being free from the natural, but to make in the natural that the natural obeys, adapts and surrenders itself to the spirit (PR II, I 10s).
In its most noble but infrequent sense, believing is to know something that is not in sensibility and that goes beyond what our senses witness. It is in this sense in which us the believers know --even by demonstra- tion-- that God exists (cfr PR I 85 n). The moral imperative, which is revealed by God, is knowledge of God with certainty. Evidently, in our context, the trivial meaning of the word 'believing' is irrelevant. "Believing is a word with many meanings" (PR III 199).
The noble sense alluded cannot be opposed to reason, because it co- incides with the knowledge that is characteristic of reason, in contrast with the empirical knowledge of perception.
Perhaps the fundamental mistake of abstract-minded theology is to figure that one can know God doing without the moral imperative. Hegel is as intransigent as Kant in this point, and he is so with justi- fied reason, since this is not only about the affective consequences: "the purpose and essence of every true religion, included ours, is the morality among men" (FS 105). It is the concept itself of God:
True religion and religiosity stems only from ethicity, and it is ethicity that thinks about itself, that means to say, the ethicity that gains awareness of the free universality of its concrete essence. Only in the light of it the idea of God as a free spirit can be known; therefore, it is futile to look outside the ethical spirit for true religion and religiosity (EPW 552 A).
It is about the content itself of the idea of God. And all depends on which elements one takes as a point of departure to raise the mind up
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 174 Hegel was right
to God. "Kant fixed correctly the principal point of this elevation when he considered that the faith in God has its source in practical reason, for the point of departure implicitly encloses the content or material which constitutes the concept of the content of God" (ibid).
In the Kantian vocabulary, the practical reason is the one that per- ceives and obeys the moral imperative.
Kant pointed out with good enough reason that cosmological and teleological arguments demonstrated the existence of many things but not the existence of God. If one does not previously have the concept of God, the demonstration does not fulfill its purpose; and if one does have the concept, it is because we know God in the imperative without which we would not even be thinking, for the imperative is the one that makes us have a self and be humans. For that reason, Hegel told us: "It is very true that men have to be educated towards religion and not towards something that is not even there yet" (VG 128).
Our present chapter --which has dealt with the concept of infinite, and in which it was absolutely necessary to speak about our identity and distinction with regard to God-- could not dismiss the droning thesis of the abstract intellect about the alleged difference between Philoso- phy and Theology, between faith and reason, whose fundamental mis- take has just been pointed out by us.
would have to be in the microscopic level. But the most intelligent physics have noticed that "there is no distinction between the atoms" (GP I 362) just as Hegel thought. Besides d'Espagnat, it would be useful to quote other physics, for instance, P. W. Bridgman: "The elemental processes or 'objects' do not have individuality or identificability, nor can they be repeated. The concept of 'sameness' does not apply in the microscopic domain of quantum phenomena (Schilpp II 1970, 346).
Likewise, Eddington says:
". . . distinction of individuality, if it has any meaning at all, has no bearing on physical manifestations" (1978, 175).
The next paragraph of Max Jammer summarizes the thought and the experiments of Heisenberg, Hund, Denisson, Wigner, Heitler and London
These results not only lent weight to the concept of like particles; they also showed that like particles may be indistinguishable, that is, may lose their identity, a conclusion which follows from the uncertainty relations or, more precisely, from the impossibility of keeping track of the individual particles in the case of interactions of like particles. For, contrary to classical dynamics, trajectories could no longer be defined as sharp nonintersecting world- lines but had to be conceived as overlapping each other. In fact, all papers on exchange phenomena and, in particular, the calculations concerning the ground state of the helium atom, in which the wave functions of the two electrons overlap completely, showed clearly that the classical principle of an unrestricted identifiability of particles had to be abandoned. Moreover, it was possible to show that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle was al- ready contradicted by the idea of an approximately continuous sequence of atomic-configuration measurements, designed to identify electrons in lower-energy states and hence requiring positional uncertainties smaller than average electron distances. (1966. 344)
This is related with the 'forbidden distance' or impossible orbits of Bohr's atoms which we will in short bring into consideration. Let us only look first at this quotation of Paul Dirac: "If a system in atomic physics contains a number of particles of the same kind, e. g. a num- ber of electrons, the particles are absolutely indistinguishable one from another. No observable change is made when two of them are inter- changed. " (1981, 207)
Hegel had already said in times of classical mechanics that we are dealing with "exterior objects, not individual ones" (WL II 376).
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 164 Hegel was right
In the atomic model of Bohr, the atoms 'jump' from one orbit of radio to another depending on how much energy each of them has. However, as it was experimentally demonstrated by Planck's discovery of the indivisibility ad infinitum of physical realities, an orbit's radio cannot have any dimension, there are radios that are physically im- possible, which means that it is impossible for the electron to be at such a distance from the nucleus. Therefore, it is not the case that the electron passes from one orbit to another, but rather that the intermedi- ate states cannot exist. The only thing that happens is that the electron disappears from one orbit and reappears in another. But how could one affirm that it is the 'same' electron, if there is no continuity between one state and the other? Further: is it relevant at all that it is the same electron or not? The only possible meaning of being the same is con- sidering oneself to be the same. And this happens without any substra- tum. It is not the case that the subject remains the same even when he is not conscious of being the same; we already showed (III, 6) that these intermediate states do not exist. I am myself because I consider myself to be so. This lies in mutual dependency with intersubjectivity (cfr. III, 7): Just as it is true that I consider myself the same in function that the others consider me the same, so it is true that they consider me the same because I consider myself to be the same. "Only in morals this concept of the absolute individuality of consciousness has properly sense. " (GP I, 271). Individuality and identity of matter, is an absolutely unjustified projection of concepts which only have a meaning in the spirit.
In radioactivity, the tunnel effect demonstrates also that it is ab- surd to talk about the identity of the particles. There is a 'prohibited zone' for the particles around the nucleus, but these particles are in fact emitted from the nucleus towards the surrounding world. The zone is prohibited because the kinetic energy of the particle would be negative in it and its speed would be imaginary. Therefore, to say that a particle passes by this zone is to utter something impossible. All the problematic that may rise up in regard of the identity of the particle emitted by the nucleus is based on the ignorance of what the physical world is in contrast with the spirit.
This lack of knowledge was what made Einstein broke up with Bohr, and it is also the reason why he was incapable of accepting the decisive facts of relativity and, more in particular, the disturbing fact discovered by Young's dispositive and Geoffrey Ingram Taylor's technique. This technique is described by Ted Bastin:
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Infinite and Distinction 165
. . . any interference experiment can be conducted at such low intensity that effects due to statistical assemblages of particles can be discounted, yet interference occurs just the same. Hence even in the traditionally central case of electron interference, purely statistical treatment is not possible. (1971, 5 n. )
In other words, it is not the case that a photon is interfered by an- other, but rather that it interferes with itself. And the same goes for the electrons. Cfr also: EB 23, 20, 2.
Niels Bohr summarizes the problem thus: "". . . to be obliged to say, on the one hand, that the photon always chooses one of the two ways and, on the other, that it behaves as if it had passed both ways" (1958, 51).
This is the dispositive: to the left hand we have a fountain of photons, in the center we have a partition with two orifices or little slots, and to the right hand we have a screen where the light is reflected and where we can observe by the form of the lights and the shades if there is in- terference or not, for strips of maximal intensity juxtaposed to dark strips mean that two wave trains are being superimposed, whether in phase or not. Let us remember that by the low intensity of the fountain one has achieved monophotonic rays; in other terms, it is not a front of various photons that goes toward the partition, but a single strip of a photons in which each of the elements advances one at a time. Now, if there is individuality in the material, the photon can only go through one of the orifices; but then there would be nothing of interference, since there would not be two different trajectories and hence there would not be superimposition or annulment of wave crests, something for which two wave trains are required.
The phenomenon which has caused an unmendable consternation among physics is that the interference is produced when the two ori- fices are open, but if we block one of them, no interference is produced. The intellectual honesty of Bohr and his colleagues oblige them to say: the photon, evidently, goes through one of the orifices, but it behaves as if it went through both of them. Otherwise, they would have to say something much more scandalous and completely absurd: when pass- ing through one of the orifices, the photon knows if the other orifice is closed or open, and as a result, it creates or not interference on the screen.
It is obvious, however, that an as if does not solve the problem and hence the Physics of our century has not dared to face the true logi- cal conclusion of the experiment. The conclusion is that individuality,
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distinction and identity are categories that have nothing to do with the empirical word. If the entire physical world was only one being, the ob- servable phenomena would not be different as how they really are.
The experiment has been repeated thousands of times and in the most diverse circumstances and variants, always with the same shocking effect on the minds of the classical physics. For instance, if we capture one of the two resulting photons of the decay of positronium by means of a polaroid in a vertical position, the other will certainly go through a polaroid in a horizontal position. But if we turn forty-five degrees both polaroids, classical optics has to affirm that the first photon has fifty percent of probabilities of going through and that the second pho- ton, which knows nothing about the former one, would have the same probabilities. However, things are not this way. Let us put two po- laroids in a straight angle: if a photon goes through one of them, the other photon will always go through its corresponding polaroid. It acts is as if it knew that the other photon has gone through. If we do not want to sustain the absurdity that a photon, once it has went through its polaroid, communicates with the other and orders it to go through its corresponding polaroid --a communication that would have to take place at a speed faster than light--, the only solution is to say what physic O. R. Fisch has affirmed: "We must consider the two photons as being one system" (Bastin, 1971, 20).
It is obvious that we should repeat what we have said about the as if of Bohr. To begin with, physics should have never considered the two photons as two separate beings. They ought not to be deceived by the belief that individuality has some meaning in physics. Einstein accused quantum physics of believing in telepathy. But every problem of com- munication or telepathy supposes gratuitously that they are 'distinct' and 'individual' entities. Physics are ridiculously assuming this pseudo- problem, because these concepts only have a meaning in the spirit, not in matter. The 'occult parameters' of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen are only efforts to solve the same pseudo-problem.
7. the bottom of the probLem
After demonstrating that it is impossible to give empirical or physical meaning to the words distinction, identity and individuality, we are now in the conditions of going deeper into the matter.
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We said that those who accuse Hegel of pantheism should only focus on whether self-consciousness is preserved or not. And the bottom-line is this: this ideal and not physical contraposition between different 'selves', between self-consciousnesses that reciprocally address each other and make each other being, is the only possible meaning of the word distinction. Evidently, however, the ideal and not physical entity they create thereby is only one; there is no way to fragment it because it is not material. There we have distinction in the identity and vice versa; it is impossible to define one without the other in the definition. The great difference between the abstract intellect that does not understand and the reason that understands consists in that the former "commits the same absurdity of making that which is pure relation into something devoid of all relation. " (WL. I 211).
"The elements of the distinction are the identity and the distinction itself" (WL II 34).
It has been nothing more than sheer superficiality to attribute un- intelligibility to the Hegelian thesis according to which "the identity of the identity with the no-identity" (JS 96), for "the identity [. . . ] does not exclude the distinction; it has it essentially in its own determination" (BS 371). The ideal entity called intersubjectivity cannot exist if these poles are not distinguished.
The abstract intellect stiffens: it considers that identity and distinc- tion are things that have nothing to do with each other and are not re- lated at all. One misunderstands thus both of them, since it is impossible to give them meaning by empirical or physical means. The abstract intellect uses these two words without giving them meaning.
In contrast with reason, " in general it stands for the understanding as abstracting, and hence as separating and remaining fixed in its sepa- rations. Directed against reason, it behaves as ordinary common sense and imposes its view that truth rests on sensuous reality, that thoughts are only thoughts, meaning that it is sense perception which first gives them filling and reality" (WL. I 26)
We have long enough demonstrated that this opinion is something utterly impossible. The sensible perception cannot give meaning to the concepts. What happens is that the abstract intellect 'thinks in a simi- lar way than imagination', as Hegel denounces. For imagination, each thing stands on its side with no relation to others; things are unrelated within the (imaginary) space. Properly speaking,
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thought, mediation, the intellectual determinations as such are forms of relation, but they can be immobilized as imaginary figurations, and just then we must think properly in the form of imagination: the intellect (PR I 293).
But:
this holding apart of likeness and unlikeness is their destruction. For both are determinations of difference; they are relations to one another, the one being what the other is not; like is not unlike and unlike is not like; and both essentially have this relation and have no meaning apart from it (WL. II 36)
The ideal and mental reality called intersubjectivity --which is more real than anything physical, as our third chapter showed-- is a simple entity because it is immaterial; it is identical because it consists in that its poles are distinct from each other; it consists in that every self-consciousness addresses the others directly and reciprocally. This reality is pure act, self-determination of each of the subjects in action and a movement that integrates every one of them; but the intellect separates and makes these things static. It "commits the same absur- dity of making that which is pure relation into something devoid of all relation. " (WL I 211)
"If we take into account [. . . ] that the simple does not need to be void, one dispels the aforementioned impression, as if the simple ex- cluded from itself the distinct" (EGP 277).
The whole point is not to confuse simplicity with nothingness. Intersubjectivity is simple, because it is not material; but it consists in the distinction that exists among the subjects, which is the only real dis- tinction that there can be. According to Hegel, the identity in Aristotle is "activity, movement, repulsion, and therefore it is not inert identity; identity is identical to itself in the distinction" (GP II 164).
If the iden- tity is not nothingness, that means to say, if it has content, it contains ipso facto a distinction.
By mere conceptual analysis, Proclus affirmed rightly that the mul- tiple (i. e. distinction) is not in itself; that one can only understand the multiple as included in and streaming from the one (i. e. identity); the multiple would not be multiple if they were not one. Indeed, if they were completely unrelated and had nothing to do with each other, we would not call them many, but we would call each of them one by
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their own, and the mind would not know of the other when consider- ing each of them. The multiple must stream from the one itself; the distinction has to be included in the identity. For that reason Hegel says: "The reality of the contraries and real contraposition can only be brought about by identity" (JS 97). This could only be rejected by whoever manages to give the words 'identity' and 'distinction' another intelligible meaning; not an imaginary one, for we saw that what one can imagine is empirical and no empirical data can correspond to the meaning of these words.
For that reason, Hegel says the following about those who accuse him of pantheism:
These doctrines are of speculative kind, and if there are theologians who are not able to understand them, that in this point they cannot follow the pace of the concept, they should at least, in their weakness, leave alone these speculative subjects. Theology is to understand the religious con- tent; these theologians should acknowledge that they cannot understand, and they should refrain from passing the judgment of pantheism to the concepts they have not understood (PR I 256).
The first thing that these theologians do not understand is the word God. As we saw in our previous chapters (III, 1), they do not know what the spirit is and they tend to define it as the negation of the material. This recourse is pointless since the definiendum does not get thereby any other content than materiality itself. And we saw (IV, 3) that they do not know the meaning of 'infinite' either. This should not surprise us, since the meaning of infinite is the spirit itself. "We, on the other hand, consider God as spirit" (PR I 8); now, "the spirit is essentially being for the spirit" (PR I 201). The spirit is intersubjectivity; but, as we just exposed, there is the identity, and not only does it not loose distinction, but rather there is precisely the identity so that the distinction between God and men can have any meaning.
"This relation with the Absolute is not suppressing both, for there would be no distinct thus, but rather they must remain distinct without losing that nature" (JS 96).
"The principal is the true determination of this identity, and the true identity is the one that exists in the infinite subjectivity, which cannot be conceived as neutralization or reciprocal cancellation, but only as infinite subjectivity" (PR II, II 68).
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In universal history, the only thing that matters is that these two parts re- main in absolute unity, true conciliation, a conciliation in which the free subject does not succumb in the object mood of the spirit, but rather obtains his full autonomy, and in the like way, the absolute spirit, the objective and reluctant unity, obtains its absolute right as well (VG 244).
This subject about identity and distinction is the point in which the famous 'conversion ad phantasma' of the Scholastic philosophers plays a dirty trick against them. It demonstrates not only that it is false that we should cast our eyes to fantasy in order to understand: it also demon- strates that we have to do without fantasy if we want to understand. For this distinction to be real, they imagine that the human spirit must be outside from God, and that God must be outside from the hu- man spirit. This is obviously something absurd, because the spirit is nothing spatial from which we could predicate an 'inside' or an 'outside'. To say that something is outside from God is simply ludicrous.
Another possibility: They could be imagining that besides conscious- ness and intersubjectivity, spirits have a substratum, and that these substrata really distinguish themselves from each other despite that intersubjectivity builds some sort of drawbridge between them. We showed (III 4) that there is no concept of a substance distinct from its acts of self-consciousness and intersubjectivity. Therefore, what they have is an image. Every attempt of intellection fails if one does not start from this assumption: identity and distinction are intelligible, not imaginable. If they imagine the substrata, they become spatial beings, not spirits.
Or else: they place on the left side of the imaginary screen a 'time' in which God had not carried out the act of intersubjective appeal by which he made being the human spirit. We exposed extensively (III 6) that this time of physics is space, not time, and that these lapses in which there are no acts from the spirit do not exist.
The Hegelian commentator W. T. Stace incurred in the same mis- take --only that this time, the mistake took place on the right side from the screen-- when he affirmed that Hegel did not take literally the immortality of men but only as a symbol of "the absolute value of spiritual individuality. Immortality is a present quality of the spirit, not a future fact or event" (1955, 514). Stace pretends to correct both Hegel and the only adequate conception of time which is "something about movement" (Phys IV 219a 9), in name of an exterior absolute
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time that rules over God and the universe only because of the fact that we imagine time as a spatial line that goes from right to left, which exists independently from whatever may happen or not. As we have said, this line is space but no time; therefore, its right segment is no future, nor is the left segment the past in which the Scholastic placed God before he created the human spirit. Of course, the hu- man spirit is not immortal if one understands by immortality that the spirit becomes coextensive with this line that goes to the right, for neither spirit nor true time have extension. Likewise, God is not coextensive with the left segment of this imaginary construction. Time is the 'abstractum of transformation" (PR I 234), i. e. from the self- determination of spirit that transforms itself by giving to itself new and diverse determinations.
In general, when they say that God is or lies beyond, it becomes per- fectly obvious that spatial imagination continues to play tricks with us. The true transcendence consists in the intersubjectivity we have discussed: it consists in that the self is always face to face with a thou which cannot be absorbed or reduced to the self. But this true distinc- tion is at the same time identity. Only there the concept of distinct could have had its origin. If man were only surrounded by things and objects, he would never distinguish himself, just as his own body never distinguishes itself. We would have never come up with the concept of distinction. Consequently, he would not have the concept of a self either. Therefore (III, 7), the intersubjectivity which makes me a distinct being for the first time is the only possible way for a man to exist, that is to say, the only possible way to create man. But it is identity, for only in identity could there be distinction. We tie thereby a loose end that was (III, 8) missing.
Perhaps it will not be superfine to say that Thomas Aquinas also conceived creation in terms of identity. A posture to which a theolo- gian of our century, Karl Rahner, adheres:
Thomas does not regard the supreme mode of production of another, the creating activity of God, as an action that goes out from the agent towards and extrinsic patient, but rather as the immanent action of God, as God's free self fulfillment, which maintains himself completely within himself (De pot. q. 3 a, 15 corp). Thus, it becomes manifest that even the supreme causality towards the outside is more fully a modus of self-realization, and that transitory causality is a peculiar modus of formal causality (1964, 358).
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They would not only have to charge Hegel with pantheism, but also Aquinas and the most serious part of the Catholic tradition.
We said (III, 8) that the only real causality we know and the only one of which we have a concept is the cause that determines itself. It follows from this that every attempt to understand creation that does not hold to the self-production of the spirit recourses inevitably to an imaginative figuration but not to a concept. Such attempts intend to play magic tricks by only pronouncing the word cause. Only intersub- jectivity --as a simple and identical entity-- has the capacity of pro- ducing something different without losing its identity. The Thomistic system as such is impotent to confront these things; matter and form are metaphors, evidently, but we are not dealing here with Literature.
And Hegel even makes a precision: "Creating is not a definite thought" (GP III 157). "The term 'creation' comes from religion; but it is a void word taken from imagination; in order to be thought and to have philosophical meaning, it must be more precisely defined" (GP III 240).
And let us see how Hegel himself defines it: "that we are not origi- nal and only in relation to God we come to being" (BS 239). Our third chapter exposed that it is the divine imperative which by means of in- tersubjectivity makes us come to be. "God is the manifestation of him- self to the spirit, and this manifestation is to produce the spirit at the same time" (PR I 200). "This is the content of the Absolute: manifesta- tion" (WL II 164).
The abstract intellect --which separates and stiffens everything-- cannot understand that God is only conceivable in and by means of human intersubjectivity, whose essentially moral character we have highlighted. "To express it in more theological terms, the spirit of God is essentially in its collectivity; God is spirit in so far he is in his collec- tivity" (PR I 52). "God as spirit, if He remains on the other side, does not exist as vital spirit in his community, he remains unilaterally deter- mined as mere object" (PR III 19).
8. phiLoSophy and faith
Since the theology of the abstract intellect does not realize that it does not have the concept of God and that it does not know what it is speaking about, since that theology does not realize that God is only conceiv- able in the moral imperative --whose obedience is a free act, despite
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the natural appearances-- it blindfoldedly holds a difference between Theology and Philosophy, between faith and reason, that does not exist. When this theology speaks of "natural reason" in contrast with faith, it does not know what it says. Reason is not on the side of nature. Being rational is not natural to us. Although one demonstrates irre- futably with reasons --just as this book does-- that the sensible data should not be trusted, man can anyway cling to the empirical data and distrust reasons; and that takes us to its naturality.
Natural reason is a twisted expression. [. . . ] Reason is rather not to be what one immediately is. Spirit consists precisely in raise above nature, to sub- tract oneself from the natural, not only being free from the natural, but to make in the natural that the natural obeys, adapts and surrenders itself to the spirit (PR II, I 10s).
In its most noble but infrequent sense, believing is to know something that is not in sensibility and that goes beyond what our senses witness. It is in this sense in which us the believers know --even by demonstra- tion-- that God exists (cfr PR I 85 n). The moral imperative, which is revealed by God, is knowledge of God with certainty. Evidently, in our context, the trivial meaning of the word 'believing' is irrelevant. "Believing is a word with many meanings" (PR III 199).
The noble sense alluded cannot be opposed to reason, because it co- incides with the knowledge that is characteristic of reason, in contrast with the empirical knowledge of perception.
Perhaps the fundamental mistake of abstract-minded theology is to figure that one can know God doing without the moral imperative. Hegel is as intransigent as Kant in this point, and he is so with justi- fied reason, since this is not only about the affective consequences: "the purpose and essence of every true religion, included ours, is the morality among men" (FS 105). It is the concept itself of God:
True religion and religiosity stems only from ethicity, and it is ethicity that thinks about itself, that means to say, the ethicity that gains awareness of the free universality of its concrete essence. Only in the light of it the idea of God as a free spirit can be known; therefore, it is futile to look outside the ethical spirit for true religion and religiosity (EPW 552 A).
It is about the content itself of the idea of God. And all depends on which elements one takes as a point of departure to raise the mind up
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to God. "Kant fixed correctly the principal point of this elevation when he considered that the faith in God has its source in practical reason, for the point of departure implicitly encloses the content or material which constitutes the concept of the content of God" (ibid).
In the Kantian vocabulary, the practical reason is the one that per- ceives and obeys the moral imperative.
Kant pointed out with good enough reason that cosmological and teleological arguments demonstrated the existence of many things but not the existence of God. If one does not previously have the concept of God, the demonstration does not fulfill its purpose; and if one does have the concept, it is because we know God in the imperative without which we would not even be thinking, for the imperative is the one that makes us have a self and be humans. For that reason, Hegel told us: "It is very true that men have to be educated towards religion and not towards something that is not even there yet" (VG 128).
Our present chapter --which has dealt with the concept of infinite, and in which it was absolutely necessary to speak about our identity and distinction with regard to God-- could not dismiss the droning thesis of the abstract intellect about the alleged difference between Philoso- phy and Theology, between faith and reason, whose fundamental mis- take has just been pointed out by us.
