Logics of Power, Logics of Violence (According to Hegel)

Logics of Power, Logics ofViolence (According to Hegel)

R o c í o Z a m b r a n a

University of Oregon, Eugene

HA N N A H AR E N D T, W H O H A D L I T T L E S Y M P A T H Y F O R HE G E L I A N D I A L E C T I C S,

makes an important observation about the need to draw a distinction be-

tween power and violence in her book On Violence. Arendt laments that

“political science . . . does not distinguish among such key words as ‘power,’

‘strength,’ ‘force,’ ‘authority,’ and finally ‘violence,’ all of which refer to distinct,

different phenomena and would hardly exist unless they did” (Arendt 1969,

43). Getting clear on the conceptual distinction between power, authority,

and violence is important, because it allows a precise grasp of political

phenomena that are otherwise obscured. These distinctions allow us to dif-

ferentiate and assess logics of power from logics of violence that political

phenomena express.

Along these lines, Arendt draws her famous, albeit controversial, distinc-

tion between power and violence. The core of Arendt’s distinction is the

CR: The New Centennial Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2014, pp. 11–28. ISSN 1532-687X.

© 2014 Michigan State University. All rights reserved.

� 1 1

This work originally appeared in CR: The New Centennial Review, 14.2, Fall 2014, published by Michigan State University Press.

instrumental logic of means and ends. Power, according to Arendt, is “the

human ability not just to act, but to act in concert” (44). It is what springs up

when people come together and begin something new. Power is thus “an end

in itself” (51). Rather than to an action’s goal or consequence, its legitimacy is

tied to action itself—to new beginnings made possible by acting with others

(52). In contrast, violence is “by nature instrumental” and “relies on imple-

ments” (51, 42). It “is ruled by the means-end category” (4). Ends justify the

means. Means can override the ends. Power becomes not just something else,

but its very “opposite” when it becomes a means, when it is led by external

ends (56). It becomes violence. Accomplishing an end by implementing means

displaces the legitimacy of action in a foregone past or a future beyond.

As elsewhere, in On Violence Arendt signals Hegelian and Marxist dialec-

tics as exemplary of a dangerous intersection between philosophy, history,

and politics. On Arendt’s view, Hegel’s signature notion of negativity sustains

a teleological conception of reason, which yields an understanding of history

that follows a means-ends logic. History is a slaughter bench that accom-

plishes the aims of reason. “Hegel and Marx’s great trust in the dialectical

‘power of negation,’” Arendt points out, “rests on a much older philosophical

prejudice: that evil is nothing more than a privative modus of the good, that

good can come out of evil; that, in short, evil is but a temporary manifestation

of a still-hidden good.” For Arendt, “such time-honored opinions have become

dangerous.” They displace the end of action from acting in concert. “They are

shared by many who have never heard of Hegel or Marx,” Arendt writes, “for

the simple reason that they inspire hope and dispel fear—a treacherous hope

used to dispel legitimate fear” (56).

My aim in what follows is not to provide a defense of the textbook inter-

pretation of Hegel—an understanding of Hegel that Arendt leans on. Rather,

my aim is to examine Hegel’s own insistence on making a conceptual distinc-

tion between power and violence. My assessment reveals surprising overlaps

between Hegel and Arendt, in addition to dispelling common misunderstand-

ings of Hegel. To be sure, Hegel understands reason as “purposive activity”

(1977, 22; 1969b, 24). Hegel indeed argues that the unfolding of natural and

historical processes exhibits a logic or rationality. Attention to Hegel’s distinc-

tion between power (Macht, Kraft) and violence (Gewalt), however, suggests

1 2 � L o g i c s o f P o w e r , L o g i c s o f V i o l e n c e


that Hegel is as concerned as Arendt with means-ends rationality. Arendt and

Hegel’s shared worry stems from the suspicion that an external end leads to a

logic of means that does violence to the unfolding of matters themselves. For

Hegel just as much as for Arendt, concrete matters are ends in themselves.

Power, according to Hegel, is the capacity that natural and social things

and processes have to become what they are. The power of matters or things

themselves (die Sache selbst) is their rationality or, as we will see, their “sub-

jectivity.” Violence, in contrast, is what is suffered when a thing, person, or

natural and social process is subjected to an end and/or a means external to it.

Violence is suffered when a thing, person, or process is subjected to an unfold-

ing that is not its own, which is to say, an unfolding that is not based on the

concrete conditions producing the matter in the first place. The rationality of

things themselves can be thought of as their power when their unfolding is an

end in itself. This is why Hegel argues that the power of what he calls “the

concept” (der Begriff) does not do violence to reality. He goes as far as arguing

that both mechanistic and teleological understandings of natural and social

phenomena are intrinsically violent.

In what follows, I examine Hegel’s critique of violence in the Science of

Logic to clarify his insistence on making a conceptual distinction between

logics of power and logics of violence (2010). I focus on the Subjective Logic

and contrast Hegel’s critique of violence in his accounts of Mechanism, Tele-

ology, and the Idea of the Cognition with his characterization of power in his

account of the Idea as Method. As we will see, Hegel’s critique of violence in

the Logic is crucial for understanding his lifelong insistence on articulating a

concrete conception of rationality.1 Through a consideration of the Logic,

then, we can appreciate the surprising proximity between Arendt and Hegel,

in addition to gaining a clearer understanding of Hegel’s insistence on the

power of reason.

Before engaging the Logic, it is helpful to recall the central argument of

Hegel’s idealism. In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel famously

argues that everything hinges on understanding substance as subject (1977,

25; 1969b, 27–28). To be is to be intelligible, according to Hegel. Hegel gives the

commitment to intelligibility a distinctively post-Kantian twist. He moves

away from Kant’s insistence on the first person perspective for an account of

R o c í o Z a m b r a n a � 1 3


knowledge, truth, and moral worth. He argues that intelligibility is the result

of historically specific practices of rendering intelligible—what he calls Geist

(spirit). Geist is a notion that privileges history for understanding the nature of

intelligibility. What is, then, is always already historically mediated. Every-

where in his corpus, Hegel establishes that substance is subject formally by

arguing that the work of negativity (Negativität) is irreducible. Intelligibility is

the result of distinctions that establish what some thing is and what it should

be on the basis of what it is not. Rendering intelligible is thus based on

historically specific distinction making and remaking.

That what is is always already mediated, and means that a thing, event, or

process depends on its externality for its determinacy (its unity) and hence its

intelligibility. A thing’s externality (Außerlichkeit) refers us to existent condi-

tions that produce the thing, event, process in the first place. This will be

important for distinguishing between the power exhibited by anything to

become what it always already is from the violence experienced by anything

that is beholden to a norm, institution, or process that imposes an alien logic

on it. That a thing is always already outside of itself—determined by material,

social, historical conditions that exceed it—is not to the detriment of the

thing. Rather, it is the thing’s way of becoming what it is. Hegel’s signature

argument is, accordingly, that the self-negation of any thing makes possible its

actuality (Wirklichkeit). Reason’s purposiveness is for this reason expressed by

its “power to move,” Hegel says, and hence by being “pure negativity” (1977, 22;

1969b, 23). Indeed, negativity makes possible “being-for-self.” The “tremendous

power of the negative,” then, is the capacity of things to unfold in and through

conditions that exceed it thereby exhibiting their own rationality—their

subjectivity.

This is the main thought of the closing volume of the Science of Logic—the

Doctrine of the Concept. Substance is subject, Hegel reiterates in the Logic, in

being “absolute power or self-referring negativity” (2010, 509; 1969c, 246).

Actuality, Hegel argues in the last part of the Doctrine of Essence, is the result

of a totality of existent conditions that are established as necessary after the

fact. The ideality of any thing is dependent on existent conditions. Concrete

conditions rather than an epistemic faculty or a metaphysical principle exter-

nal to the phenomenon at hand produce the thing itself. Hegel’s move from



the Doctrine of Essence to the Doctrine of the Concept in the Logic is based on

his insistence on understanding actuality in terms of subjectivity. Things

themselves are produced by existent conditions, yet they nevertheless express

a rational form. The intelligibility or universality that matters bear in their

singularity depends on particular conditions at hand. Actuality should there-

fore be understood as a concrete form of rationality. Because the intelligibility

of any thing depends on the concrete conditions that produce it in the first

place, its form of rationality should be understood in terms of the self-

determination of the thing itself. The form of rationality that things express,

Hegel argues, is their “subjectivity.”

The Doctrine of the Concept begins with a section entitled “Subjectivity”

(Subjektivität) and ends with a section on the “Idea” (die Idee). The first section

comprises chapters on “The Concept,” “Judgment,” and “Syllogism,” whereas

the last section comprises chapters on “Life,” “Cognition,” and the “Absolute

Idea.” In both sections, Hegel characterizes the universal in terms of power

(Macht, Kraft). He distinguishes the power of the universal from the violence

of reified notions of the concept. The universal is power insofar as it is the

“inner negativity” of things themselves (1977, 59; 1969b, 56; 2010, 35; 1969c, 52).

It is power when it expresses the self-negation of the thing as self-subsistent

or, put otherwise, when it expresses the necessary dependence on conditions

that exceed it. The universal is a source of violence if understood as a concept/

category or method/philosophical perspective taken to be fully other and

hence external to the real and the sensuous. Externality here does not refer to

dependence on existent conditions for the actuality of any thing. It refers to a

norm, principle, institution that purports to shape a thing, form of life, so on,

independently of the concrete conditions that produce it in the first place.

In the chapter on the concept, where Hegel discusses universality, partic-

ularity, and singularity, he argues that “[t]he universal is . . . free power [freie

Macht]; it is itself while reaching out to its other and embracing it, but without

doing violence to it [Gewaltsames]; on the contrary, it is at rest in its other as in

its own” (2010, 532; 1969c, 276).2 It is important to keep in mind that Hegel’s

master category is singularity (Einzelheit) rather than universality (Allgemein-

heit). The section on Subjectivity calls into question notions of the concept

that maintain the irreducibility of universality and particularity. Universality,



according to Hegel, is always already determinate universality (bestimmte

Allgemeinheit). It is necessarily tied to particularity (Besonderheit), since it

only qualifies as a universal based on its function as attribute, class, or genus.3

For this reason, Hegel argues, universality contains difference within it. It

cannot be understood as an “absolute self-identity,” “simple determination”

(2010, 530; 1969c, 273). Notions of the concept based on assumptions about its

simplicity, purity, and otherness to the real and the sensuous cannot account

for the concept’s purported universality.

For our purposes, the crucial point here is that conceptions of universality

and particularity as irreducible to each other express one of two metaphysical

positions that Hegel finds problematic: a model of instantiation (the Platonic

model) or the model of subsumption (the Kantian model). Notions of univer-

sality that treat ideality as a nonempirical constraint exemplified in realty or

that unifies the sensuous given reify the ideal. The dualism of ideality and

reality/sensuousness straightforwardly expresses a violent logic. It leads to an

account of ideality in which the concept, in its self-standing identity, does

violence to the nonidentical.4 The ideal simply determines the real and the

sensuous from beyond. The determinacy of any matter is rather due to its

singularity—that its articulation expresses a rationality germane to existent

conditions. Thus, the universal cannot be understood as mere form. It would

be able to account neither for the determinacy of things themselves nor for its

own activity.

In the closing section of the Logic, in the chapter on the absolute idea,

Hegel argues that what he calls “method” is the “truer meaning of universality”

(2010, 737; 1969c, 552). Method, he says, is the “universal aspect of the idea”

(736; 550). Universality is to be understood at this point as “absolute form”

(absolute Form) (737; 551). Absolute form is a notion of form that Hegel devel-

ops to account for the relation between concept and reality formally—

philosophically.5 Idealism must work from the side of form. “The sense of any

possible not-I, let us say, any objective content,” as Robert Pippin puts it, “is

inseparably linked to the structure of our asserting and inferring and justify-

ing practices (our Setzen, let us say)” (Pippin 2010, 102). For this reason, Hegel

articulates a conception of form that rivals ideas about an ontological differ-

ence between form and reality/sensuousness. As absolute form, then, method



is designed to counter the logic of violence germane to the metaphysics of

classical and transcendental philosophy. It counters the imposition of ideality

on reality that according to Hegel realism, dualism, and critical philosophy

sustain.

Actuality as subjectivity can therefore only be accounted for philosophi-

cally with the notion of absolute form. Absolute method contains the notion of

form that makes possible giving an account of the relation between concept

and reality without affirming a notion of form over against reality. Form is

absolute when it articulates the inseparability of concept and reality, form

and content. In being nothing but the power of the negative, the universal

requires reality.6 In being nothing but existent conditions, reality/sensuous-

ness admits of a distinctive form of universality. Ideality and reality always

already express concrete forms of rationality. They always already contain

aspects of each other. Conceptions of reality are conceptions—articulations by

and within historically specific practices, discourses, and institutions of sense

making (science, art, philosophy, etc.). Conceptions of ideality are expressions

of real commitments—notions of truth, beauty, the good, elaborated in histor-

ically specific contexts. The power of the concept, then, establishes that the

ideality of any matter is due to its singularity. Ideality expresses a rationality

germane to existent conditions. Absolute form takes stock of the unity of the

concept and reality expressed by a concrete form of rationality.

Now, Hegel glosses absolute method as absolute form quite dramatically

in the closing section of the Logic. Here again he argues that, as the universal

aspect of the idea, method is power. The language that Hegel uses, however,

might suggest that method is a figure of violence rather than a figure of power.

“The method,” Hegel writes,

is . . . to be acknowledged as the universal, internal and external mode, free of

restrictions, and as the absolutely infinite power [die schlechthin unendliche

Kraft] to which no object that may present itself as something external, re-

moved from reason and independent of it, could offer resistance, or be of a

particular nature opposite to it, and could not be penetrated by it. It is there-

fore soul and substance, and nothing is conceived and known in its truth

unless completely subjugated [vollkommen unterworfen] to method; it is



method proper to each and every fact because its activity is the concept

[Tätigkeit der Begriff ist] (2010, 737 [trans. mod.]; 1969c, 551−52).

I have argued that the notion of absolute form is designed to rival any concep-

tion of form external to the real or the sensuous. Method is the philosophical

perspective that rises to a greater level of formality in accounting for the unity

of the concept and reality from the side of form. It is therefore the philosoph-

ical perspective that can give an account of the unity of concept and reality as

a singularity. Before elaborating upon why this establishes that method is a

figure of power rather than violence, it is helpful to turn to Hegel’s critique of

violence earlier in the Subjective Logic.

There are two moments in the Doctrine of the Concept in which Hegel

pursues a critique of violence: in the chapters on Mechanism and Teleology

and in the chapter on the Idea of Cognition.7 All three discussions are versions

of a critique of the logic of violence that results from an understanding of form

as external. The chapters on mechanism and teleology are two of three chap-

ters on what Hegel calls “Objectivity.”8 The character of mechanism, Hegel

argues, is that every element in the mechanical relation or process “remains

external” (äußerlich blieben). For Hegel, “whatever the connection that ob-

tains between the things combined, the connection remains one that is alien

[fremde] to them, that does not affect their nature” (2010, 631; 1969c, 409).

Mechanism contains a functional “center,” which yields a law that the me-

chanical process follows (640ff; 423ff). The parts of a mechanical system are

replaceable—the parts of an engine, for example, can be replaced if they break

(Lampert 2011, 143). The relation between the center and the parts is thus one

of indifference. For this reason, Hegel argues that the law that the center

yields—the universal—is a mere “ought” (Hegel 2010, 641; 1969c, 423). Rela-

tions not only among parts in the mechanical process but between objects in

a mechanical relation only “strive” toward the center. They are in no way

intrinsically related to the law that determines their value or worth from

beyond.

Hegel is not implying that inanimate objects have moral worth, but rather

that a mechanistic logic is intrinsically violent in not recognizing the signifi-

cance of the part-whole relation. Violence, Hegel argues, is a feature of the fact



that in the mechanical process “singularity lacks the capacity for what is

communicated to it and is therefore shattered by it, for it is unable to consti-

tute itself as subject in this universal, cannot make the latter its predicate”

(2010, 639; 1969c, 420). In being a merely functional logic, parts are dispens-

able, void of all intrinsic value. A merely functional understanding of nature,

for example, is precisely what sustains nature as something to exploit without

understanding the impact that exploitation may have on a system as a whole.

“Power becomes violence,” Hegel writes, “when power, an objective universal-

ity, is identical with the nature of the object, yet its determinateness or nega-

tivity is not the object’s own immanent negative reflection according to which

the object is a singular” (639; 421). Mechanism turns the power of any object

against itself, then. The process to which any object in a mechanical relation is

subjected is one that is indifferent to the object itself, but also to the process

itself—to the way in which any process implicitly pursues ends that go beyond

a merely functional logic.

This is why, surprisingly perhaps, real violence appears in the chapter on

teleology and culminates in the chapter on the idea of cognition.9 The most

important difference between mechanism and teleology is that the latter is

based on a notion of inherent function.10 Unlike mechanism, in teleology the

“content becomes important.” The relation among the parts and the whole is

a reciprocal relation yielding “a unity that is reflected into itself, a unity that is

determined in and for itself and therefore a content” (2010, 653; 1969c, 438).

Teleology is thus a candidate for understanding the thing, event, institution in

its singularity. When understood as external rather than internal purposive-

ness, however, teleology fails to be the appropriate logic for grasping the

part-whole relation germane to any singular thing, event, or process. In con-

trast to the externality distinctive of mechanism in which “the external deter-

minant is itself again just such another object,” the pernicious externality of

teleology surfaces as a cause that indeed affects the nature of the object but

from beyond (652; 437).11 For Hegel, this is but a heightened version of the

violence of mechanism.

Initially, the problem with external purposiveness is that this relation

“may be regarded as violence inasmuch as purpose appears of an entirely

different nature than the object” (2010, 663; 1969c, 452). However, the real



source of violence has to do with the way in which the end turns into the

means. Violence here is considered not only as the imposition of an external

end on an object. Rather, external purposiveness is violent when the end

becomes the means but can nevertheless shield itself from the violence done

to the object through the means. Hegel is here worried about the violent logic

that results from purposes that remain unscathed throughout the purposive

process. The capacity to remain unscathed reveals that the purposive process

is itself external not only to the object but to the means. The violence of

teleology therefore comes into view with Hegel’s gloss on the cunning of

reason entailed by the process itself. Hegel writes:

But that the purpose posits itself in a mediate connection with the object, and

between itself and this object inserts another object, may be regarded as the

cunning of reason. . . . But in this way, by sending an object as a means ahead of

it, it lets it do the slavish work of externality in its stead, abandons it to the wear

and tear while preserving itself behind it against mechanical violence (663;

452).

As Jay Lampert explains, the idea here is not that the cunning of reason uses

apparent violence to accomplish legitimate ends, but that there is real vio-

lence in a notion of reason that shields the end from the violence that it

perpetuates (2011, 148). The latter is an idea of reason that insofar as it remains

unscathed within the purposive process, it is external not only to the object

that it has transformed into a mere means. It is external to the end itself that

has become a means in the object. For Hegel, this is nothing but the “truth of

the mechanical process” (Hegel 2010, 663; 1969c, 452). There is no genuine

relation between part and whole, since the parts (the object, the means, the

ends) are sacrificed to an alien whole (the purposive process, the cunning of

reason). As Lampert succinctly puts it, “ultimately, it is not just purposes that

do violence to objects; teleology does violence to purposes” (150). The point

here is that Hegel calls into question the hierarchy between ends and means.

In Lampert’s reformulation of Hegel’s example, the decay of the stone in a

house amounts to urban decay which in turn destroys the purpose of commu-

nal living. When the stone or an urban space is understood as subservient to



the end of living in community or vice versa, the cunning of reason is merely

the violence of external rationality.

Teleology proper, according to Hegel, is not a means-ends relation per se.

It is rather the structure of return of internal purposiveness (Hegel 2010, 667;

1969c, 459). Such return, Hegel writes, “requires using no violence against the

object, no reinforcement against it.” It is nonviolent in being the self-reflected

negativity of the purposive process itself—the return of an end or, better

stated, the development of an end through its self-negation as an end into

means and the self-negation of the means in an end (667; 459). The violence of

an end over the means in the object is a self-inflicted violence and vice versa.

The end of achieving equality by eliminating all opposition in a political

community not only does violence to the object—the dead in the Terror, for

example—but it does violence to the end of equality itself.12 The purposive

process as a whole must accordingly be understood in light of the inseparability of

means and ends. The ends become means just as means actualize ends. For this

reason, the end relation cannot refer the activity of reason unscathed in the

purposive process. Rather, the end relation is the reciprocal relation of a concrete

form of rationality in which ends are both determined by and determine means,

and vice versa. “Violent teleology,” Lampert suggests, “is just what suffers violence

at the hands of nonviolent teleology” (152). Teleology proper is the sublation of

externality, where externality means an end or a means beyond the object. Non-

violent teleology follows the power of the concept.

Hegel’s unique understanding of teleology is crucial to his notion of the

absolute idea, which he glosses as the unity of the theoretical and the practical

(2010, 735; 1969c, 548).13 The chapter on the Idea of Cognition examines the

violence of a pernicious teleology implicit in Kant’s theoretical and practical

philosophy.14 The problem with the theoretical idea is that the concept stands

over against an empirical reality that is beyond epistemic reach. Kant sets out

to give an account of the objectivity of epistemic conditions to be applied to

what is given in sensation, to an other that appears as a “given.” The project of

a transcendental deduction, then, is one of bridging the gap between two

independent orders by overcoming “the idea’s mere subjectivity,” that is, by

establishing the objectivity of cognition. However, on this model, knowledge

remains knowledge of the activity of “reflective positing,” of transcendental



conditions, and therefore it does not extend to the thing itself—to “reality” or

“determinateness” (2010, 728; 1969c, 540). The contradiction here is that the-

oretical cognition strives to know a truth that it itself has named unknowable.

The unknowable is considered the true.

With the practical idea we encounter the inverse problem. Practical cog-

nition attempts to bridge the gap between the idea and reality by establishing

the objectivity of willing. Yet the idea of the good that drives the will to its

actualization is not in itself realizable, since it is itself an “absolute end”

confronted with a world that it takes to be a fundamental limitation. The good

that the will is driven to realize is in itself “the objective,” Hegel says, and

reality must receive its true being “through the ends of the good” (2010, 732;

1969c, 545−46). The contradiction here is that willing is said to be the source of

objectivity in seeking to realize itself in the world. Yet it is equally fully limited

by reality, because it can never bring about its end—the good—in full. The

postulates of practical reason make morality impossible, since they establish

conditions for the highest good (God, immortality, so on) beyond experience.

The authority of morality must be established in volition, but Kant ends up

merely appealing to a good beyond being.

The theoretical and practical ideas by themselves, then, are “one-sided, pos-

sessing the idea itself only as a sought-for-beyond and unattained goal; each,

therefore, is a synthesis of endeavor, and an unattained goal” (2010, 735; 1969c, 548).

The idea of the true and the good are mere externalities. They represent ends that

cannot be actualized, because their authority derives from their absolute inde-

pendence from reality/sensuousness. The problem here, however, is not that the

determination is frustrated by the assumption that concept and reality are of

different ontological orders. Rather, the problem is that the true and the good are

impositions of form over against reality/sensuousness. This is a logic of violence

because the ends of reason override the authority of the sensuous particularity of

the object or the singularity of need in the ethical situation.15 In contrast, Hegel

argues that as absolute, the idea is the unity of the theoretical and the practi-

cal, which he understands as the unity of the concept and reality/sensuous-

ness that finds its ground in the concept (734, 735; 548). Such ground is more

precisely the concept as absolute form, which is crucial to Hegel’s notion of

method.



At this point, we are in a position to read the problematic passage on

method that I began to consider previously. Recall that the passage was

problematic in characterizing method as “free of restrictions,” as “the abso-

lutely infinite power to which no object . . . could offer resistance . . . could not

be penetrated by it” (2010, 737; 1969c, 551−52). That nothing is conceived or

known until it is “subjugated” to method speaks to the textbook interpreta-

tion of Hegel in which the power of the universal—the idea as method—is

nothing but the violence of reason. Although the language here suggests that

method is a figure of violence rather than power, I argue that it is consistent

with Hegel’s understanding of the power of the concept as the power of

matters themselves. The idea as method addresses two problems at once,

both of which specifically address the violence of externality that Hegel has

tracked in the earlier sections of the Subjective Logic. As a response to these

two problems, the idea as method is Hegel’s bold attempt to do justice to the

rationality of matters themselves.

First, the idea as method specifies the status of a philosophical account

that gives an account of the relation between concept and reality. Key here is

acknowledging that any such account inevitably works from the side of form

yet at the same time developing a notion of philosophy that does not privilege

the concept at the expense of reality. Hegel’s strategy is to elaborate a notion

of method—philosophical reflection—that contains the notion of absolute

form. As we saw previously, absolute form expresses the unity of concept and

reality from the side of form without affirming form over against reality. It is

with the figure of method that we get a sense of how the latter requirement is

actually met. Method is infinite power, since it is the power of the idea in

accounting for its own activity. What does this mean?

Under the banner of absolute method, Hegel gives an account of the

account of the unity of concept and reality pursued in the Logic. In the last

instance, the Logic accounts for this unity in light of the failures of critical

philosophy.16 Indeed, method specifically counters the violence of the idea of

the true and the good. These figures of violence betray a notion of reason as

powerless. According to Hegel, Kant ultimately affirmed that the unknowable

is the true, that the unrealizable is the moral. If things in themselves are

unknowable, they are cognized irrespective of their sensuous particularity. If



contradiction is the ultimate test of morality, then the need of an individual is

but an occasion for obedience to the authority of the moral law.17 Method

accounts for this violence as a failure to grasp the inseparability of cognition/

willing and reality/sensuousness.18 Rather than philosophical perspective ex-

ternal to reality/sensuousness, then, method gives an account of the conse-

quences of a philosophical reflection that does not consider its own status. It

points out the fact that philosophy must apply the philosophical problems

germane to specifying the relation between concept and reality to itself.

This hypercritical moment at the end of the Logic leads to the second

problem that method is designed to address. Rather than a conception of

reason that accomplishes its ends unscathed, method is the infinite power

that considers matters according to their singularity. Indeed, absolute

method is the philosophical perspective that can give an account of the unity

of concept and reality as a singularity. Method rivals the violence germane to

a conception of rationality that occludes the fact that concrete matters ex-

hibit their own rationality. Matters are ends in themselves, according to

Hegel. They have the power to move, to become what they are, to exhibit a

universality based on their particularity—on particular conditions that ex-

ceed them yet that produce them in the first place. Everything is conceived

and known in its truth when subjugated to method, then, insofar as the thing

is understood in terms of its singularity—as the unity of concept and reality

expressed by it as a concrete form of rationality. In sum, absolute method is

absolute because it develops a notion of reason that does justice to the ratio-

nality of matters themselves by being self-aware of the fact that it itself is the

work of reason.

Hegel’s conception of the power of reason is thus the very opposite of the

violent logic of an externality. It is specifically designed to rival any conception

of law or purposive process in which reason remains unscathed throughout

the unfolding of matters themselves. Read this way, Arendt would have found

an unlikely ally in Hegel. She would have noticed that the tremendous power

of the negative does not rest on the philosophical prejudice that that evil is

nothing more than a privative modus of the good. The good of negation, for

Hegel, is nothing but the self-articulation of matters themselves. Negation is

the key to understanding things themselves as ends in themselves, because it



clarifies why the universality that matters bear in their singularity depends on

particular conditions at hand. She would have thus realized that she shares

with Hegel the thought that getting clear on the distinction between power

and violence is necessary because it allows us to assess phenomena in their

singularity. Such distinction, according to Arendt and Hegel, allows us to

trace the violence of an abstraction that draws its legitimacy and imposes its

authority from beyond matters themselves.

N O T E S

Thanks to Matthew Congdon and María del Rosario Acosta for helpful comments on this

essay. I am especially grateful for María del Rosario’s inspiring work on Hegel and the many

formative conversations we have shared about Hegel and other matters.

1. See Bernstein (2003).

2. He continues: “Just as it has been called free power, it could also be called free love and

boundless blessedness, for it relates to that which is distinct from it as to itself; in it, it has

returned to itself.”

3. The notion of organism, for example, is necessarily pregnant with content other than

reference to itself. In order to be universal, universal concepts—genera—must be differen-

tiated into particular determinations—species. The genus organism is differentiated into

the species animal, plant, or single-celled life form. Through this self-related negativity—the

division implied by the differentia that differentiates the genus into species—we are speak-

ing of the being-for-self of this singular. See Hegel (2010, 530ff; 1969d, 274ff).

4. Cf. Adorno 1973, where he argues that Hegel’s notion of the concept does violence to the

nonidentical. Against Hegel, he develops the preponderance of the object thesis: any con-

cept necessarily depends on that which is wholly other to it. Adorno not only misreads

Hegel but also falls back on the Kantian dualism of appearances and things in themselves

that Hegel is arguing is intrinsically violent.

5. Method is the “self-knowing idea” (1969d, 551).

6. A philosophical account of intelligibility requires a “real” exposition of nature, self, or

society if it is going to be a philosophy of nature, a philosophical psychology, or a political

philosophy. The Logic therefore ends by externalizing itself into nature. In less-awkward

language, philosophy can only speak of nature by referring to actual scientific discourses.

7. See also: “Violence [Gewalt] is the appearance of power [Macht], or power as external” (406,

501).

8. The chapters on objectivity are expositions of the explanatory purport of logics of nature.

See Kreines (2004; 2008).



9. See Lampert (2011).

10. This discussion is a critique of Kant’s argument for a regulative understanding of teleology

in the Critique of Judgment. See Hegel (2010, 654ff, esp. 656; 1969d, 440ff, esp. 444).

11. Hegel argues that external purposiveness implies an “extramundane intelligence,” thereby

necessarily attributing the self-determination of things themselves to a higher being, to an

“author” of the nature of things themselves (2010, 652; 1969d, 437).

12. See Hegel’s discussion of the French Revolution and the Terror (1977) and Comay (2010).

13. For a full account of these sections, see Zambrana (2010 and under review).

14. See Comay (2010) for Hegel’s critique of Kant in terms of violence.

15. See note 4. See Hegel’s The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate (1971; 1969a) for a critique of

Kantian morality on the basis of life and love in which need figures prominently. See also

Bernstein (2003).

16. The Logic accounts for the unity of concept and reality through an immanent critique of

realism, foundationalism, and transcendental idealism. See Zambrana (2010 and under

review).

17. See Bernstein (2003, 410).

18. See Rose (1981), especially chapters six and seven, for an incisive account of the relation

between Hegel’s speculative logic and social theory. Rose argues that method grasps the

disunity of concept and reality expressed by bourgeois law and property relations. In other

words, the unity of concept and reality makes possible understanding the violent gap

distinctive of modernity.

R E F E R E N C E S

Adorno, T. W. 1973. Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: Seabury Press.

Arendt, Hannah. 1969. On Violence. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Bernstein, Jay. 2001. Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

. 2003. Love and Law: Hegel’s Critique of Morality. Social Research 70, no. 2: 393−432.

Comay, Rebecca. 2010. Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution. Palo Alto: Stanford

University Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. 1969a. Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Vol. 1, Der Geist des Christentums und sein

Schicksal, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main:

Suhrkamp Verlag.

. 1969b. Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Vol. 3, Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Eva

Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

. 1969c. Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Vol. 5, Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. Eva Moldenhauer

and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

. 1969d. Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Vol. 6, Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. Eva Moldenhauer

and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.

. 1971. Spirit of Christianity and its Fate, trans. T. M. Konx. Philadelphia: University of

Pennsylvania Press.



. 1977. Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

. 2010. The Science of Logic. trans. and ed. George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Kreines, James. 2004. Hegel’s Critique of Pure Mechanism and the Philosophical Appeal of the

Logic Project. European Journal of Philosophy 12, no. 1: 38−74.

. 2008. The Logic of Life: Hegel’s Philosophical Defense of Teleological Explanation of

Living Beings. In The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and 19th Century Philosophy, ed.

Frederick C. Beiser, 344–77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lampert, Jay. 2011. Violent and Nonviolent Teleology in Hegel’s Science of Logic. In Person, Being,

& History: Essays in Honor of Kenneth L. Schmitz, ed. Michael Baur and Robert Wood,

140–55. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.

Pippin, Robert. 2010. Hegel’s Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rose, Gillain. 1981. Hegel Contra Sociology. London: Humanities Press.

Zambrana, Rocío. 2010. Hegel’s Hyperbolic Formalism. Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great

Britain 61: 107–30.

. 2013. Hegel’s Theory of Determinacy, under review.



28 �


Documents

Logics of Power, Logics of Violence (According to Hegel)