No More Learning

? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 10 Education in Hegel
We should not pass over another intriguing aspect of this learning. It is not just death that is able to be known in life in recollection. It is also true for other ideas that are impossible for us, for example, those of infinity, eternity, absolute truth, the nature of God and the origin and purpose of the universe. It is commonplace that the finite human mind cannot grasp the infinite and the eternal. But the nature of their separation is already illusory. As we mentioned above, having them as an object of thought masks the ways in which this relation is already a political shape, a political pre- determination of the relation of thought to the eternal. As life is really death in life, so the finite is really the eternal in life. 13 Recollecting this rela- tion is also part of education in Hegel, just as is recollecting the other in the self, and truth in error. The recollection of these relations is what Hegel means by the education carried in the negation of the negation. It is what happens when negation learns of itself as learning.
Let me make this point somewhat differently. When I stare at the stars - and the stars have a noble status in the beginning as in the development of Western philosophy. For example, in the Metaphysics Aristotle says that man first philosophized owing to his wonder about the greater matters such as 'the moon and those of the sun and the stars, and about the genesis of the universe' (1984: I. 2. 1982b 12-17) - when I stare at the stars everything changes for me. I lose myself to the vastness of the universe. But I also lose the stars and the universe for they are not what I can see of them. There are two negations here. I am negated by the universe which is itself negated by me, that is, by that which it negates. This is not mutual recognition, nor absolute alterity. It is an education wherein lies the truth of the negation of the negation, a truth that we will come to know in Education in Hegel as the social relation wherein 'I am already other and the other is not me'. This can only have substance and subjectivity as education, because it is only as education that something can learn about itself, lose itself in doing so, and remain other than itself even in knowing about itself. This is not esoteric; it is rational, for the truth of reason as education in Hegel is both true and groundless. Openness to this impossibility as learning is the fundamental openness and non-dogmatic character of education in Hegel.
Finally, I have to admit that a book such as this will appear strange to many within the context of present Hegelian commentary. Its argument for the absolute in Hegel will appear anachronistic, and its choice of education as its focus in Hegel is very rare. I am reminded here of Theodor Adorno who said in this regard, 'anyone who is defending something that the spirit of an age rejects as out of date and obsolete is in an awkward position. The arguments put forward sound lame and overdone. He addresses his
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Introduction 11
audience as though he is trying to talk them into buying something they don't want. This drawback has to be reckoned with by those who are not to be dissuaded from philosophy' (1991: 20). Far from being dissuaded, I am resolved to describe here philosophy in Hegel as I have come to know it. I believe the truth of Hegel to lie in education and in learning. I have also found that this truth is never more powerful or more poignant than when it speaks directly to dilemmas and difficulties in life. It speaks to them of the meaning they carry as difficulties and dilemmas, but it does not resolve them, nor do I seek their resolution above all else, as I once did. I don't either seek the tranquillity of mind so aspired to by ancient and mediaeval philosophy. Education in Hegel has its own character, something that speaks of vulnerability and mastery, or of the vulnerable master who remains master and has this remaining master as part of his vulnerability. This approaches the character of the divine in modern life. Perhaps for this rea- son I have always found education in Hegel more open to teaching than to writing. In previous books I have referred to this education as the contradic- tion of enlightenment, as philosophy's higher education, and most recently as the philosophy of the teacher. I have also written about how this notion of education has been the substance of an undergraduate programme of studies. I have in this present book not repeated any previously published material on Hegel as a teacher or on some of his more pedagogically inspired texts and letters. But I am also painfully aware that the books fall short of the teaching. Perhaps it is right that this be so. If this book, and the earlier ones, is to be read in the spirit of education that this and they try to capture, then this is less likely to be the case for those who study Hegel among the cobwebs that, he himself warned, stand at the gates of entry to philosophy. It is more likely if it finds readers who experience the unavoid- ability of the eternal return of perplexity and who, nevertheless, refuse consolation in half-hearted assertions made with a bad conscience. To such readers I have tried to offer a Hegel who speaks to some of the most per- sonal aspects of our experiences of the world and those within it.
The chapters can be read independently of each other, and therefore some repetition of certain key points and ideas has proved unavoidable. 14 Chapter 1 lays out the structure of Hegel's philosophy of the other, and of life and death as they are carried in and by education in Hegel; Chapter 2 finds education in Hegel in the history of philosophy and carries a discus- sion of different types of education in Hegel, including Aufhebung as recollection; Chapter 3 re-thinks fossil fuel culture as a form of modern misrecognition of freedom and brings to bear the substance that pertains to the concept of illusion (Schein); Chapters 4 and 5 accept the challenge of
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 12 Education in Hegel
relating education in Hegel to Derrida and Levinas respectively; and Chap- ter 6 experiments with a reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit as a modern, reflective, personal and social education.
Notes
1 From Twilight of the Idols.
2 I will try to substantiate this claim against Derrida and Levinas in Chapters 4
and 5.
3 Rightly in my view, Donald Verene states that 'so much interpretation of Hegel
will not dare anything; it engages [only] in a kind of deft furniture moving'
(Verene, 1985: 21).
4 I am reminded here of Nietzsche who, in Twilight of the Idols, notes that freedom
decays when the struggle for it is deemed complete or institutionalized.
5 This refers to the Prologue of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietzsche,
1982).
6 There are many other ways in which education in Nietzsche and Hegel could be
compared favourably with each other. I have attempted such a comparison in Tubbs, 2005, chapter 7. In a future work tracing the history of Western philoso- phy I will read Nietzsche and Hegel together as the truth of modernity.
7 This is not a Romantic view of death. It does not mean to infer a recollection that seeks death rather than life. The truth of recollection, rather, is the struggle to know death while alive, and not instead of life.
8 I do not explore the notion or the concept in the book specifically (although educa- tion in Hegel is das Begriff), but actuality and spirit are both discussed in some detail. Also, I have not used capital letters for these and other specialist Hegelian terms, although I have retained them in quotations from translations that do.
9 See, for example, Socrates working with the slave boy in the Meno (1956).
10 As, for example, in a recent piece by George Lucas Jr. ; see Gallagher, 1997,
97-115.
11 There is another theme in recollection here, that of time. I have not included
discussion of this in the present volume, even in regard to the history of philoso- phy in Chapter 2 (although it does appear towards the end of Chapters 2, 5 and 6). It is something I will return to in a forthcoming history of philosophy as the concept of future history of philosophy and its relation as world-spirit. However, in brief, we could say here that the owl of Minerva flies at dusk not just in seeing what this day has taught it, but knowing also that past flying and future flying are both the groundlessness - the learning - of this flight. This is the same wisdom, put more prosaically, that comprehends that just as 'the good old days' are the perspective of present recollection, so, too, present recollection is already 'the good old days' of future recollection. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard both observed that recollection works forwards as well as backwards. As we will see in Chapter 6, this is the actuality of the old man, not old in terms of chronology but in terms of the wisdom of education that knows the past and the future in the present, and knows therein the eternal.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Introduction 13
12 This is the title of Chapter 6.
13 These are themes I intend to take up again in a forthcoming History of
Philosophy.
14 As is the fact that some concepts employed in one chapter might be more fully
discussed in another. The most important example of this I think is that recollec- tion, used throughout the work, has its most detailed exposition in Chapter 2.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Chapter 1
Self and Other: Life and Death
Man is born handed over to the necessity of death.
Introduction
(Aquinas, 1975b: 212)
In what ways might one be said to learn from the sadness of a funeral? Is it in the way a funeral is a teacher of death in life? Is it because it commends a deep recognition of the truth of death in life? Death is the great universal; we know this. Yet often it takes a funeral, or something of this nature, to bring us to the reminder of where death lies in life. We are of death yet we live as if death is other than life. In fact, life draws a veil over death. Some- times we see both the veil and its secret. Most times the veil itself is hidden, and in a very particular fashion that will be described below. Either way, education in Hegel teaches us that a philosophy of the other is carried in and by this veil.
In this chapter, then, I want to make the case for a philosophy of the other in Hegel which has its substance in the relation of life and death and in the ways this relation appears as social and political actuality, including that of world spirit. I will try to show how education in Hegel teaches of this relation of death in life as the template for the relations of self and other. In modernity, this relation has form and content in reflective subjectivity but the relation of life and death that determines it is hidden in the illusion of appearing not to be hidden. This is the veil of modern social relations, a transparent freedom that uses its transparency to hide itself. It is seen through but is not itself seen through at all. This is the ambivalent sense in which 'transparent' will be used in this chapter. Hegel's philosophy of the other is an education about the seeming ingenuousness of this (hidden) veil. But we must note even at this early stage, revealing the veil does not mean removing it, for illusion is the truth of self and other in Hegel.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Self and Other: Life and Death 15 Triadic loss
Derrida and Levinas have created the appearance respectively that Hegel cannot accommodate a notion of philosophy that is open to difference or to otherwise-than-being. These claims are explored in Chapters 4 and 5 below. Some who are more sympathetic to Hegel try to claim for him a theory of the other in the model of mutual recognition that is found in paragraphs 178-184 of the Phenomenology of Spirit. This, however, is also mis- leading. It is all too easy to read these paragraphs independently of the part they are playing in the master and slave relation. In fact, mutual recogni- tion in Hegel is written from a standpoint of its being an impossible beginning and end for the self-consciousness that thinks it. Mutual recogni- tion is always already the misrecognition of its being thought. This is the significance of illusion in Hegel, that thought hides its presuppositions behind the freedoms they make possible.
It is from within this misrecognition that Hegel's philosophy of the other is to be found. This means comprehending that his philosophy of the other is a triadic philosophy that concerns not only self and other but also the comprehension of the third partner in their relationship, a third partner who is hidden within the relation of self to other that it determines.
This third is pursued in different ways in each of the chapters of this book, but in this chapter it is explored in a very specific way as the hidden third partner in the relation of self and other in Hegel. This requires us to explore, in turn, the determination of the self in loss, the export of loss beyond the self, the hiding of both this loss and its export, and the forma- tive significance of its return. Because the loss and its export are both hidden there can be no simple political unification of self and other, for both are already determined in the deceit, and neither can free itself from its complicity within this appearance of separation. There is, then, a third partner to the self and its other, namely, the aporia that haunts the relation of their being separated. To coin a phrase from Adorno, self and other are torn halves of an integral freedom to which, however, they do not add up. But their dilemma is our education about the incompletion of this relation. Taken as evidence only of failure, and not also of formative political experi- ence, the self can grant itself the right to wallow in the aesthetic of resignation and mourning, and its concomitant, the demand for action. It presumes to know what is wrong with society and what it needs to put it right. But both resignation and the demand for action repeat the truth of the third part- ner, that is, the failure that accompanies them. There is here a dialectic of
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 16 Education in Hegel
enlightenment where resignation calls for action and action returns to resignation. Taken as a whole, this dialectic of enlightenment is the loss of both resignation and the demand for action. What, then, is left? This ques- tion and its despair leave us open, now, to begin to explore and to learn the meaning of the self that is loss without ground. I will argue that loss without ground is carried in the ambiguities of the following statement of identity and non-identity: I am already other and the other is not me. In particular, this statement recognizes the complicity of the veiled self even in the state- ment about its complicity. Loss without ground is the illusion of the self and of its other. But in modern bourgeois social relations, as we will see, even the illusion itself is present as a transparent veil that, as such, cannot be seen. We will, however, begin our study of self and other with a veil that is not veiled, in order to bring out more clearly the nature of the self that it reveals.
The veil
We begin, then, by looking at a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) called 'The Minister's Black Veil'. 1 In this parable the Rever- end Mr. Hooper one day appears before his congregation wearing a black crepe veil that drops down over his face. This causes consternation, of a sort that we will explore in a moment, amongst all who know him, including his wife, and to all who subsequently meet him. He never explains the veil, nor does he ever remove it, not even on his own death-bed. He is buried still wearing the veil, but not before he has forced himself, just prior to death, and with a mighty effort, to look around the room at those who are gath- ered and to announce 'I look around me, and lo! on every visage a Black Veil' (1987: 107). This is a major theme in the short story. When his congre- gation see the veil, it is as if their Minister has climbed inside them and revealed their darkest thoughts and sins. They hear Hooper preach, through the veil, that they should be prepared for the dreadful hour which will snatch the veil from their own faces.
If this was the sole meaning of the parable - that we all hide behind a veil of some kind; indeed, that it is the truth of the bourgeois to do so - then it would be a wonderfully dramatized critique of amour-propre and its intrigues. It would be no less an essay if Hawthorne had confined himself to making this point. We will return to this notion of bourgeois semblance in a moment. However, it is to a different but related aspect of the story that we now turn.
When Hawthorne describes the effect that the veil has on both its audi- ence and its beholder, it is always in the darkest forces of terror and,
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Self and Other: Life and Death 17
significantly, of death. I will cite a few examples here. When Hooper attends the funeral of a young girl it is felt that the veil is suddenly not out of place, but rather that it is quite appropriate. Indeed, when Hooper leans over the girl his face would have been visible to her, and one of those assembled there swears that at this moment 'the corpse had slightly shuddered' (1987: 100) as if death had recognized itself in Hooper. Moreover, it is said that it is as if the spirit of the Minister and of the deceased 'were walking hand in hand' (1987: 100). At a wedding the veil inspires in the bride a 'death-like paleness' (1987: 101). Accompanying this partnership of the veil and death are feelings of horror, dread and sorrow which induce, in turn, fear and trembling. Those who are on their own death-beds are indeed drawn to Hooper and they refuse to die until he has come to them. The gloom of the veil 'enabled him to sympathize with all dark affections' (1987: 104). What disturbs Hooper the most is his wife, who leaves him, refusing to have the veil come between them, and the children of the parish who show an 'instinctive dread' (1987: 104) of the veil and flee from Hooper whenever he approaches them.
The veil, then, covers Hooper's face. But, of course, it reveals far more than ever it conceals. It is taken as a sign that Hooper is hiding a secret sin, yet it reveals to those who see it in this way that they are doing the same; such secrets, as they say, that 'we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would feign conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them' (1987: 99). The veil hides Hooper's face from being seen but is interpreted as a turn inwards to reveal his own darkest corners to himself. I wonder, says one lady, that he is not afraid to be so alone with himself. This underestimates just how painful the revelations of the veil are to Hooper. He says to his wife, 'you know not how lonely I am, and how frightened, to be alone behind my black veil' (1987: 103), and he avoids mirrors to avoid the revelations that are realized in seeing his face veiled. 'With self-shudderings and outward terrors, he walked continually in its shadow, groping darkly within his own soul, or gazing through a medium that saddened the whole world' (1987: 104). The veil reveals inwardness and the fear and trembling accompanying such inwardness not just to Hooper behind the veil, but also to all who come face-to-face with it, as it were. As he is entombed in that 'saddest of all prisons, his own heart' (1987: 105) so, he reveals that same prison in others who would prefer to avoid it.
I want in particular here to illustrate the educational and formative rela- tionship between death and the veil in Hawthorne's story for it illustrates vividly the life and death struggle and the master and slave relation in the
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 18 Education in Hegel
Phenomenology of Spirit. This will be examined in more detail in a moment, but for now, note how the veil comes to symbolize death by reminding the parishioners of their existential form, and of its fragility to investigation, and how, accompanying this fragility, is the darkness of what is not revealed about themselves. As the bourgeois flees from the life and death struggle to the illusory stability of identity and independence, so, the veil uncovers the instability of this illusion and reveals the presence of death in life to the masters.
There is a further important Hegelian aspect that can be uncovered here. The parishioners were content with the face-to-face, but not because it ensured openness or that, to introduce a Levinasian theme here, it spoke of the inscrutability of God in the face of the stranger. In fact, the situation is the reverse. The face-to-face offered the mutuality only of a deception shared by the participants. The face-to-face hides more than it reveals. Only when the face-to-face was interrupted, when the veil itself refused the mutu- ality of its face with the face of the other, did the parishioners' philosophical education truly begin. Refused the mirror of mastery the parishioners were thrown back upon the oldest and most terrifying maxim of the Western philosophical tradition: Know Thyself.
Rousseau and civil society
This education, then, has its origins long before its modern form and content. Nevertheless, it is this modern form and content that we are con- cerned with here. The intrigue of the bourgeois is wonderfully exposed by Rousseau both in the Discourses and in Emile, and this is all the more impor- tant in the way Rousseau ties this intrigue to social relations and to private property in particular. We will spend a moment exploring Rousseau's cri- tique of the mask of the bourgeois, before turning our attention to Hegel.
In the 'Discourse on the Origin of Inequality', Rousseau links the origin of the person in society to the establishing of property relations. 'The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying "This is mine", and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society' (1973: 84).
Private property for Rousseau was merely a false or inauthentic expres- sion of the instinct for self-preservation which characterized 'natural man'. In the 'Second Discourse', he argues that it was this desire for self- preservation that led natural man to the understanding that co-operation with others aided self-preservation. The selfishness of natural man was mutual, and therefore brought about self-motivated co-operative forms of
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Self and Other: Life and Death 19
living. Such a union was a natural union, for it was based solely upon the desire for the self-preservation of each individual. For Rousseau, such a union was not yet a social union, and natural man who co-operated with other such men was not yet a person.
The natural union becomes a social union through the influence of the common life which natural man begins to lead. What was formed in order to best preserve the independence of natural man now turns against its original purpose and creates all of the social customs to which the individ- ual loses his independence. These include speech, feelings of love, the family, leisure time and most importantly, public esteem. 'Each one began to consider the rest, and to wish to be considered in turn; and thus a value came to be attached to public esteem' (1973: 90). In the leisure time brought about through the efficiency of co-operation, natural man came to judge himself in comparison with others around him. As a result, natural self-preservation was turned into social self-interest. Independence ceased to be natural. Now man was preserved not only through self-preservation of the body, but also his identity was preserved through and by the good opin- ion held of him by others. In these social relations of dependency, for Rousseau, lay the origin of property and inequality.
So long as they undertook only what a single person could accomplish, and confined themselves to such arts as did not require the joint labour of several hands, they lived free, healthy, honest, and happy lives. . . . But from the moment one man began to stand in need of the help of another; from the moment it appeared advantageous to any one man to have enough provision for two, equality disappeared, property was introduced, work became indispensable. . . . (1973: 92)
In this social situation, it was no longer the case that man worked for himself and in the interests of pure self-preservation. Now, through prop- erty, it became possible for some not to have to work at all, while others had absolutely no choice but to work for those who had 'provision for two' (1973: 92). Rousseau notes that 'in this state of affairs, equality might have been sustained, had the talents of individuals been equal' (1973: 94). How- ever, with the disappearance of the independence of natural man, and his dependence upon others, there was now nothing to prevent the natural inequality between men unfolding, and becoming a social inequality. Strength, skill and ingenuity made equal work into unequal reward, one man gaining 'a great deal by his work, while the other could hardly support himself' (1973: 94-95).
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 20 Education in Hegel
This social inequality, made possible by the division of labour and private property, gave rise to a whole new way of life which Rousseau knows as 'civil society'. It became in the interests of men to secure co-operation with others in order to gain advantage over them, to make someone work not for the benefit of himself, but for another. To this end civil man invented new strategies to ensure his own success at the expense of others.
Insatiable ambition, the thirst of raising their respective fortunes, not so much from real want as from the desire to surpass others, inspired all men with a vile propensity to injure one another, and with a secret jeal- ousy, which is the more dangerous, as it puts on a mask of benevolence, to carry its point with greater security. In a word, there arose rivalry and competition on the one hand, and conflicting interests on the other, together with a secret desire on both of profiting at the expense of oth- ers. All these evils were the first effects of property, and the inseparable attendants of growing inequality. (1973: 96)
Property therefore gave rise to a society where each was at war with the other, a war masked by the pretence of 'civility'. So often seen as the natural state of man, for Rousseau this war of all against all was a corruption of nat- ural man, a corruption inevitably brought about when one man co-operated with another for reasons other than his own self-preservation. To be able to have more than was necessary for self-preservation, and to see the advan- tages over others of doing so, were the beginnings of the evils of civil society. The coup de gra^ce was achieved when the right to inequality was enshrined in the universal right of private property. Rousseau argues that the rich real- ized quickly that the force by which they had appropriated their riches was a force that others could use against them. To secure themselves from such usurpation, the rich 'conceived at length the profoundest plan that ever entered the mind of man' (1973: 98). Masking the benefit which such a plan gave the rich, they argued to all those who had less and were a threat,
let us join . . . to guard the weak from oppression, to restrain the ambi- tious, and secure to every man the possession of what belongs to him: let us institute rules of justice and peace, to which all without exception may be obliged to conform; rules that may in some measure make amends for the caprices of fortune, by subjecting equally the powerful and the weak to the observance of reciprocal obligations. (1973: 98)
The ruse was successful, for the weak were also busy trying to gain rewards for themselves, and saw in political institutions at least some advantage to
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?