No More Learning

Nevertheless, it is widely the case that the absolute in Hegel is received one-sidedly as merely abstract, positive assertion. Couple such assertion on truth with comments on some other cultures and races that Hegel makes - including on African slaves, native Americans, Asians and Jews - and it is perhaps unavoidable that Hegel is labelled at best as a product of his age, and at worst as a defender of Western imperialism. This is only exemplified by his history of philosophy and philosophy of history which seem to claim that the West is the culmination of what reason can achieve in terms of the state and religion and the thinking of the absolute.
It has become part of the spirit of our own age to discipline thinkers from ages less enlightened than our own. Thus, Philip Kain has recently written that 'we cannot pretend that Hegel confines himself to merely describing Western ethnocentrism, imperialism, and racism . . . We must [also] admit that Hegel actually endorses them and we must be clear that this endorse- ment is deeply objectionable' (2005: 252). 2 Yet isn't this exactly what Hegel is being accused of, that is, looking backwards at times less enlightened than his own and judging their inadequacies? What will the future make of Kain's judgement here other than perhaps that he did not recognize the imperialisms of his own present in his comment on past imperialisms? In fact, in education in Hegel there is a much more rigorous acknowledge- ment of complicity in the imperialisms of the age than there is in Kain's reading of Hegel here. Hegelian philosophy allows no 'natural' or common sense standpoints immunity from negation. This changes fundamentally the status of philosophical critique in Hegel, for its own standpoint is within this unavoidable groundlessness of autoimmunity or self-opposition. How, for example, could one read the quotation above from the Lectures on the History of Philosophy and not experience such oppositions? Of course in the quotation we bristle at the certainties regarding European philosophy. It is precisely in such bristling - and Hegel would have expected this - that the standpoint commends its own autoimmunity. The notions of the begin- ning, the development and the consummation of Western thought in the concept and its attendant notions of freedom that are carried in the
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Education in Hegel in the History of Philosophy 43
quotation, also carry their own negation in and by their unavoidable complicity in the social and political relations of their time. That they are open to this complicity absolutely and unconditionally is what sets education in Hegel apart from philosophical critique that forgets or avoids its own imperialisms, even in stating that they are not avoiding them. This is the changed meaning of knowledge and of truth in education in Hegel. It means that it is possible to critique, for example, the presuppositions and the standpoints of critiques of imperialism and racism, not with a view to supporting either imperialism or racism, far from it, but with a view to revealing how they repeat in their critiques the imperialisms that they oppose. This is how the Aufhebung works, not just by rejecting tyrannies, but by recognizing the tyrannies even in such rejections. The contradictions of reason cannot disown their origins in 'free' thought. This is the extra mile that education in Hegel travels, not just to expose contingency, but the con- tingency of the exposure. I attempt this now with regard to the history of philosophy, past and present.
Hegel's notions of education
There are three notions of education in Hegel which, together, constitute the process of the history of philosophy. These are Bildung, Entwicklung and Aufhebung.
Bildung (cultural formation)
Bildung in Hegel is formation or development through the repetition of misrecognition. This is the meaning of culture in Hegel. It prioritizes the process involved in the experience of contradictions, most especially when the particular and the universal are opposed to each other. But if Bildung is seen as the entire import of education in Hegel this is a mistake, not just in regard to Bildung, but also to the nature of Hegelian science as a whole.
At times Bildung is translated as 'culturation' to refer to developments that move away from nature and towards reason. In the Philosophy of Right, for example, Bildung appears in relation to the maturation of the single individual from the necessity of external needs to the freedom of internal, rational needs. Hegel rejects the idea that Bildung is some kind of corrup- tion of a state of nature. Rather, Bildung develops the idea of the individual who has needs, but equally is able to recognize himself in these needs. Civil society is thus the enculturing of the person in his comprehension that his freedom lays in his freedom from others. This is the culture, the education, of
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 44 Education in Hegel
independence. But Bildung will also develop the individual's understanding of the contradictions of this independence, and will therein enable the per- son to recognize his objectivity in the universality of the state. Hegel is clear here that this education is a hard struggle for it involves the negation of desire in and by the labour of the concept. Bildung, therefore, describes the process by which ethical life replaces natural need, and it is the maturation of the person from particular to universal, and of family to civil society and state.
In the Phenomenology and the Lectures on the History of Philosophy the educa- tion carried in and by Bildung is given a much fuller treatment. Specifically, it describes how the self-alienation of spirit is played out in the Middle Ages between the lawless barbarian invaders and the divine authority of the Christian God. The only law that is present here is the inward devotion to God. But because the political world and the spiritual world are alienated from each other there exists both appalling barbarism and austere peni- tence in equal measure.
However, culture (Bildung) holds this relationship of contradiction and opposition within itself in a way that will educate it to a recognition of its rational universality. Culture in this sense not only repeats the lack of a rela- tion between God and man but it also experiences the failure of all attempts to unite them. All attempts to change the world according to the Will of the beyond collapse in on themselves precisely because they are human attempts. Such attempts are re-formed3, then, not in succeeding with reconciliation, but rather as emphasizing, again, the impossibility of such reconciliation - yet, as we will come to see, this also reaffirms their relation to each other. The result of the experience of the repetition of opposition as failure results in even greater alienation. Doing God's Will on earth becomes ever more impossible, yet demands ever greater efforts, all of which will be repeatedly re-formed against their original intentions. The more devoted are the attempts to bring this world into line with the other world, the greater is the repetition of the experience of barbarism.
Bildung here has two contradictory motions. It reinforces the status quo, reproducing spirit's self-alienation in existing social relations, and yet it is changed or re-formed in doing so by the experience of this repetition. Together these constitute political experience, and the relationship of the- ory and practice. Reform is the goal of a political action, but it is re-formed in attempting such reform, and re-formed in such a way as to reveal the domination of existing social relations over all such political action. As we will see shortly, it is philosophy that can comprehend the meaning and sig- nificance of this experience in which the goal of political action is inverted or turned against itself.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Education in Hegel in the History of Philosophy 45
The education of Bildung in the Phenomenology is to be found in the totality of this pre-determined formation and equally pre-determined re- formation. Its moments are those of speculative logic. It is, first, an immediate (re)production of the alienation of spirit, one that contains therein the drive for reform. Second, Bildung is the negative experience of attempting such reforms, that is, that they do not work and merely reinforce the status quo. Thus 'good' action for reform becomes 'bad' action in practising fur- ther earthly barbarism. The noble deed becomes the ignoble deed. The ruler is not an obedient servant but a wealthy and powerful master. But, and third, there is the recognition of the implications of these contradictions, that nothing is quite as it seems, and that meanings and values are them- selves inverted, or pass into their opposite. Thus, says Hegel, 'the language of this disrupted consciousness is the perfect language and the authentic existent Spirit of this entire world of culture' (1977: 316; 1949: 370).
The self-contempt that results from this experience of hypocrisy is the experience of 'pure' culture, stripped now of the finery behind which power masquerades as servant to God. This is the pure culture, the pure education, of the faithful self of pure consciousness as really the reasoning schemer and deceiver who must face his own truth in the dissolving of his charades. Pure education here is the I that says I am never what I take myself to be; rather, I am the negation of all that I take myself to be. My hypocrisy is my education regarding myself. I have been reformed every time I have sought to deny this hypocrisy. Now I must accept the universality of this re-formation, that is, the universality of the negative. 'Here, then, we have the Spirit of this real world of culture. Spirit that is conscious of itself in its truth and in its Notion. It is this absolute and universal inversion and alienation of the actual world and of thought; it is pure culture' (1977: 316; 1949: 371). This alienation reforms spirit and reforms the reforming spirit. The double negation is the truth of a new shape of spirit, an honourable spirit that owns up to the hypocrisy of not acknowledging inevitable inver- sion. With this education the edifices built out of hypocrisy collapse. This I is now prepared for further and higher education regarding its objectivity and formation and re-formation but this, as we will see in a moment, requires a different form of philosophical education.
Bildung, then, contains within itself the totality of a dialectic that forms and is re-formed in turn. All universals are found culpable of self-interest, and self-interest becomes the new universality. This also characterizes modern social relations. Culture does not describe a one-off stage of spirit's alienation and education. Culture is the movement of all experiences of inversions and of contradictions in theory and practice. Modern culture
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 46 Education in Hegel
expresses the separation of thought and the absolute. Here, though, it con- cerns the inversion of reason which is experienced as acting against itself, and takes place not in the feudal barbarism of lawlessness, but in the univer- sal property law of bourgeois social relations. This is not the alienation of spirit where personality is to be sacrificed in bringing God's will to earth; it is rather the misrecognition of spirit as universal in individual property rights. The person of Roman law returns now with the status of Emperor shared among free men, and a free man is the man who is independent of others in owning his own property. Nevertheless, contradiction and culture are both present here. The good act that seeks universal significance becomes the act of perpetuating self-interest. Philosophical education per- sists in the same self-contempt for not being what the master appears to be.
Thus, to comprehend modern social relations requires acknowledging that actions for universality are determined in and by a world wherein the terms defining such actions and purposes have already ensured their incom- patibility. Here is the double bind of all political action: the terms that define what must be done are the same terms that make it impossible. At this point one can imagine resignation in the face of failure and impotence. But this is not the significance of Bildung. Bildung is a totality of opposition. In modern terms this totality has been defined by Horkheimer and Adorno as the dialectic of enlightenment. This states the totality of inversion and contradiction as myth is already enlightenment and enlightenment returns to myth. In a sense this dialectic of enlightenment is pure culture, or the culture of reason wherein formation and re-formation is reason in and for itself. The dialectic of enlightenment takes culture as far as it can go, that is, to the pure recognition of itself as misrecognition. But the culture of culture con- tained in Bildung here - and in its modern form as the dialectic of enlightenment - is a philosophical education regarding the truth that this total inversion contains. This philosophical form of Hegelian education is the Aufhebung.
Entwicklung (development)
Entwicklung, in the Introduction to the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, refers to development as the unfolding and evolving of a story or a drama. In particular it is used to illustrate the relation between potentiality and actuality.
In the section entitled 'The Idea as Development' (Die Idee als Entwick- lung)4 Hegel teaches that in any form of development there must be two principles, namely potentiality and actuality. A development must have the
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Education in Hegel in the History of Philosophy 47
potential for that development already within itself as part of itself. Spirit, then, for Hegel, is self-formative and reveals and learns only what was always potential in it.
In describing development as potential Hegel often uses the seed as illustrative. 'The seed,' he says, 'is endowed with the entire formation (For- mation) of the plant; the productive force (Kraft) and the product (Hervorge- brachte) are one and the same. Nothing emerges except what was already present' (1987: 72-73; 1940: 103). This activity of the seed, then, is self- production (Sich selbst Hervorbringen; [1940: 103]). However, it is formative not just of its potential, but also of the repetition of its production beyond itself. The seed does not just produce itself once. Rather, the process of self- formation is complete only when a new seed has been produced, and there- fore even the completion of the self-formation is not really a completion, only a renewal or a repetition.
This entire cycle of self-development from potential to potential has its actuality in the existence of the potential. If the content of the seed never waivers in its self-development, the form that this content takes in doing so nevertheless changes visibly. It has, as Hegel puts it, to become 'something different' (1987: 73) in acquiring a form in relation to other things. How- ever, what the seed does naturally, reason must do cognitively. The seed can be all plants as one plant can be all seeds. Development here is not rup- tured by relations of universal and particular, for its circular nature is without beginning or end. 5 But reason's development is not so unproblem- atic. Hegel notes the part reason plays in the development or unfolding of the human being.
Man is essentially reason (Vernunft); the man, the child, the educated and the uneducated man, all are reason, or rather the possibility of being reason is present in and given to everyone. . . . The only difference is that in the child reason is only potentially or implicitly present, while in the adult it is explicit, transformed (gesetzt) from possibility into existence. (1987: 74; 1940: 104)6
However, reason's cycle of self-development is interrupted by the fact that 'development' is concrete as the 'I' or as subjectivity. What the seed does naturally reason must do consciously. A development that knows of itself is an education that disrupts this development. It is a development that opposes development. In the sense referred to above, this opposition is what drives Bildung. It is the experience that re-forms what is experienced, and negates therefore the initial formation. We can say here that Bildung is
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 48 Education in Hegel
education regarding the cycle of Entwicklung. Bildung disrupts the smooth flow of potentiality to actuality. What is actual here is the experience of the negation of development, or its being re-formed in its being known. This opposition is the history of philosophy, that is, the history of philosophy is the history of a development whose unfolding appears to exceed itself at every turn. The history of philosophy is therefore set a different and unique challenge: to comprehend a development whose comprehension obstructs development. Or, to comprehend how the I can be of unfolding yet also as unfolding. This requires a notion of education or development that, in appearing to exceed development, in fact practises development.
Between them, Bildung and Entwicklung play out an educational drama that has philosophical implications which still remain to be acknowledged and comprehended. Therefore, we move now to the third and most impor- tant notion of education in Hegel, that of Aufhebung, in order to show how Bildung and Entwicklung are its constitutive but not its exhaustive moments. What they constitute is the disruption of the consciousness that does not think philosophically, and the historical, theological and political telos of doing so. Disruption as teleology, and teleology as disruption are the motor force of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and his History of Philosophy. Together they ensure that dogma is constantly negated and that the negation is understood as human development. Together here they have their relation comprehended as a self-(re-)formation in the Aufhebung.
Aufhebung (self-[re-]formation)
This is perhaps the most disputed term in all Hegelian thought. On it hangs the system itself because the Aufhebung is the mechanism by which negation and negation of negation realize a determinate self-(re-)formation. It is un- Hegelian to see Hegel's philosophy as based around the triadic relationship of thesis-antithesis-synthesis because such a formula suppresses the fact that in Hegel any such movement changes the consciousness that experi- ences it. This change is the culture, the formation and re-formation, of the consciousness. Merely to observe this development and to comment upon its apparent logic from a vantage point, or as a voyeur, is both to presuppose and to misunderstand this culture of experience, and of subjectivity. Indeed, it is to eschew precisely the education that the sequence of the terms describes. In the mind, let us say, of a critic of Hegel, this formula is inter- preted as one in which the synthesis overcomes the opposition of thesis and antithesis. Equally, in the same mind, a critique of this overcoming might
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Education in Hegel in the History of Philosophy 49
be made on the grounds of the apparent imperialism of Eurocentric ratio- nalism. Overcoming and resolving oppositions, the critic might say, is the terror imposed by reason over all oppositions or dualisms. Such a critic may champion the view, on the one hand, that differences should not be over- come or, on the other, that difference exceeds the illusory sovereignty of the synthesis that reason seeks to impose. The former might be called the pluralism of the postmodern, the latter the excess of the poststructural.
Hegel does not, however, have a philosophy based on such a simplistic view of the overcoming or resolving of opposing dualisms. Hegel's philoso- phy and the notion of the Aufhebung within it are centred on the relations that serve as the conditions of the possibility for the thinking of objects. The sense of contingency found here is more radical, more penetrating and more significant than versions of contingency that seek only to assert relations of dependence. Such assertions are forced to presuppose the rela- tion they wish to acknowledge. Or, put another way, the relation to the object is always made possible by, and is contingent upon, a prior relation to that object. This means not only that even assertions of contingency are contingent, but also that this realization must in turn collapse under the weight of itself, even, or especially, when it is posited as difference, as possi- bility, or as the impossibility of absolute thinking. We saw above this re-formation as characteristic of Bildung.
This insight into philosophy as the relation of the relation does not, of course, belong exclusively to Hegel. On the contrary, it is the insight into the dialectic that gives form and content to Western philosophy from Plato to Derrida. What is significant about Hegel's contribution to this debate7 is that his whole philosophy works not with the one relation or the other, but within the relation of both relations; that is, within the relation to the object and the relation to that relation. This is the educative significance of the Aufhebung. It is, we might say here, to work within the broken middle8 of the natural standpoint of thought's relation to an object and the philosophical standpoint of thought's relation to that relation. There is no overcoming here although there is a double negation; the negation of the object in rela- tion to consciousness and the negation of that relation in relation to consciousness (now as its own object). Hegel's system is a detailed explora- tion into the implications of each relation upon the other. It is not a system where mediation or negation are overcome, but rather one where philoso- phy, and, therefore, education in Hegel, are precisely the subject and substance of those implications. As an essentially educative experience, this broken middle cannot be resolved, for it precedes thinking as the latter's
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 50 Education in Hegel
condition of possibility. But what it can learn from this impossibility of resolution is its own truth, a truth known in and as the form and content of the contradictory and inevitable conjunction of abstraction and media- tion. Aufhebung is this truth that lies within the relation of contingency to itself, and in the following section we will explore the structure of this edu- cational relation as recollection.
Seen in this way, Aufhebung is the philosophical education that underpins the education of Bildung and Entwicklung, and, most importantly, their phil- osophical and educational relation to each other. My case, here, is this. Bildung in the Phenomenology prioritizes the reform of the thinker that comes with thought's negation of its object. Entwicklung in the History of Philosophy prioritizes the telos of such changes. As such, as we saw above, their relation to each other is anything but harmonious. Telos is already disrupted in Bil- dung, and Bildung always returns to (this disrupted) telos. It is this difficult relation - an aporetic relation - that is expressed as self-(re-)formation in and by Aufhebung.
Recollection
A thought has escaped: I was trying to write it down: instead I write that it has escaped me
(Pascal, 1966: 218)
Aufhebung is significant in Hegel because it achieves something that appears to the abstract rational consciousness to be impossible. It is able to know something as both an appearance and as the negation of this appearance. This means that it somehow preserves what it knows as both what it was (its appearance) and what it is now known as. When Aufhebung is translated as 'sublation' it fails to pay due attention to the most important feature of the Aufhebung, that it is essentially a learning experience. But if this was all there was to it, the Aufhebung would amount to no more than a sceptical knowing, that is, a knowing of things to be not as they appear. What seems to be lack- ing in Aufhebung seen in this way is any kind of positive knowledge about what the thing actually is. The nature of the positive element of the Aufhe- bung is what is most at stake in Hegel. If it is purely positive then it is easily fashioned into the kind of claims for absolute knowing that appear arro- gant and self-satisfied. If it is not positive at all, then it teaches us nothing. What kind of notion remains, then, if any, that might somehow know the
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Education in Hegel in the History of Philosophy 51
truth of something in what it is not, and maintain that negativity even in its being known as such? How might it be possible to know something that is known as unknown? The answer to this question, and the structure of the Aufhebung in Hegel, is of education as recollection. When the negative knows itself it is as recollection.
We saw in Chapter 1 how life can know its own nothingness in death, how the master can know his own nothingness in the slave, and how the self can know his nothingness in his other. But if we now replace 'know' here with 'recollect,' the educational character and structure of this knowing can be brought to the fore. To recollect oneself is to be what one is not. There is a double significance here, and one that was also found in Chapter 1 regard- ing life, the master and the self. First, one recollects that one is something other than what one is. This is the same as saying that one is never what one was, because the knowledge of what one was can only be recollected. It can only be known differently to how it was. This opens up a fear of only ever being nothing, a fear of nihilism, because a positive standpoint is forever impossible. But, and second, to recollect is to be what one is not. This is a result, albeit one that looks strange and out of sorts with rationalism. There is only one way that this opposition or autoimmunity can make sense of itself without the aid of further external presuppositions or assertions. One can be what one is not when one is learning about oneself. The structure of this learning is recollection, for in recollection what is recalled is what was by that which is what one was. What is lost and kept is that which is recol- lected as recollecting. In this learning, in this education, the positive and the negative carry their own truths at the same time in and as learning. This is how the Aufhebung works, through recollection, as our philosophical edu- cation that what was and what is are both present and absent in and as learning. Learning holds thought and being together without suppressing their difference. This, indeed, is what is educational about philosophy and philosophical about education.
Later in this chapter we will see how the history of philosophy appears when viewed philosophically as recollection. This is undertaken by looking at the aporetic mastery of the West and its export of vulnerability across the world. Before that, however, we will illustrate this concept of recollection, and therefore Aufhebung, in three ways. First, by looking at the role it plays in Hegel's presentation of the psychology of thought; second, and with the non-specialist in Hegel in mind, by way of William Wordsworth's ode 'Inti- mation of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood'; and third, albeit briefly, by looking at recollection in Philip Verene's book Hegel's Recollection.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 52 Education in Hegel Psychology
For those who seek an obvious justification from Hegel that the Aufhebung is recollection there is not much to go on. But what there is, goes a long way. Recollection is primarily described as a moment in the development of thought to rational cognition. In both the Philosophical Propaedeutic (1809-1811) and the Philosophy of Mind (1830) Erinnerung is the first stage wherein immediate intuitions come to be held as images in the memory such that they become representations. The translation of Erinnerung as inwardizing9 refers to what happens when the ego or the I recollects itself from its feelings and intuitions as a presence or a being in time and space. Recollection works here by creating the intuition as an image within the ego. To know the image as mine is to know the I to whom it belongs.
But the term inwardizing does not capture the unique features of what takes place here. In the Philosophical Propaedeutic Hegel notes that the I does not restrict itself to the intuition that has been internalized, but also liber- ates this intuition from an external time and space to a subjective time and space. In this way, it is universalized as form and 'through the sublation (das Aufheben) of the particular time of intuition it becomes enduring (dau- erned)' (1986: 152; 1970: 45). The nature of this universality is 'just as much a non-existent as a preserved existence' (1986: 152; 1970: 45), and it is the Aufhebung that preserves what is not, or what is negated. It is as recollection, then, that the I here learns to know itself in this activity as the I. The point that must not be missed is that the imagination and the I can only know of themselves as recollection through another recollection. This same struc- ture is therefore repeated when thought, having itself or this I as its own object, knows itself in self-opposition. Here, the Aufhebung is a recollection of what the I is not as what nevertheless is.
As we saw above in the quotation from the final paragraph of the Phenom- enology, recollection is not restricted to its part in the psychology of the knowing mind. In the philosophical mind recollection recalls itself and plays out the negation of the negation as formative self-determination. This is true of all mediations, not just those in the imagination, for it is how the I will know itself as recollected even within the imagination. In the latter the I recollects itself in the negation that is representation. This is true also of the recollection that is absolute spirit. In both cases there is the relation of the external in the internal, and the relation to that relation. The latter is the recollection of the former as itself prior to this education. This is as true for immediate intuition as it is for all representations of objects, and of the relation to these representations. Recollection is what makes the relation a triadic self-(re-)formation. This is why, also, it is the substance of
? ?