Hegelian Method Explained and IllustratedTranscript - ST503 Contemporary Theology I: Hegel to Death of God Theologies © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved

Contemporary Theology I:

Transcript - ST503 Contemporary Theology I: Hegel to Death of God Theologies© 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.

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LESSON 03 of 24ST503

Hegelian Method Explained and Illustrated

Contemporary Theology I:Hegel to Death of God Theologies

This is lecture number three for the course “Contemporary Theology 1.” Last lecture, at the very end, we were talking about Hegel’s Dialectic Method. I would like to return to that for this lecture, explain it fully, and illustrate it through a portion of Hegel’s writing. In particular, I want to look at a portion of his Phenomenology of Spirit. But before we get to that, why don’t we bow for a world of prayer.

Lord, we thank You so much for the privilege of study. As we study today about Hegel, I just ask, Lord, that You would guide our thoughts. Help us to understand his dialectical method and to catch a glimpse of how this is going to work, not only in his philosophy as a whole, but in later philosophies and theologies. So, Lord, bless our time today, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Last time, as we started to talk about Hegel’s Dialectic Method, I mentioned that it was really a non-argumentative method and more of a demonstrative type of method, and we explained what that meant. Then I talked about several German words that suggest some ideas that are very important in the Dialectical Method. We looked at the terms or the words aufheben, aufgehoben, and aughebung. I noted that those words have, at their root, an idea of canceling or eliminating; but, in Hegel, he also includes the idea of preserving that which is canceled and sublimating and incorporating it into a higher order entity, rather than just simply canceling it and eliminating it.

Having said all that, I want to look more specifically at the constituents of the Hegelian method and talk about how it actually operates. Let me make a couple of general observations, and then we will look at the three essential elements of the Hegelian Method.

Hegel’s Method is demonstrative, or one of demonstration, as we’ve said; but not demonstration in the sense of a mathematical

John S. Feinberg, Ph.D.Experience: Professor of Biblical and

Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Transcript - ST503 Contemporary Theology I: Hegel to Death of God Theologies © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved.


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proof. Instead, the method is one of demonstration through what can be called an imminent unfolding of a concept. Let me explain what that means. When I talk about the unfolding of a concept, I mean that the Hegelian Method begins with a particular concept, and then the individual who is working with that concept sees how that concept unfolds, as the thinker thinks about the concept and reflects upon it, as to all the things that the concept means and implies. This process that we’re talking about, of reflecting on this concept, is an imminent unfolding of the concept. It is imminent in the sense that what the thinker uses in his thinking to consider this concept is not other concepts that are external to the concept you are thinking about; but, rather, you focus solely on the concept itself. You look at different facets of it. You see all the different aspects that it involves in and of itself. And, as you see those different facets of the concept you’re dealing with, you move, so to speak—that’s the unfolding idea—you move to a greater understanding of that concept.

We can also say that this process of analyzing and understanding the concept is an imminently formative one. By imminently formative, I mean that it forms itself, that is, the understanding of the concept and the process of understanding it forms itself out of itself. Let me give an example that I think will help here. Suppose you were trying to understand the concept of freedom. You would begin to think of different aspects of the notion of freedom. You would think of things that it does involve and things that it doesn’t involve. And, if you’re going to form your understanding of freedom imminently through the concept itself, then whatever you think about in understanding the notion of freedom would have to be suggested by the concept of freedom itself. If there was some other concept that you knew about, which in no way was related to freedom, it would be inappropriate to import that concept into the discussion of freedom in an attempt to better understand the notion of freedom. So you can see, then, what Hegel means by a process which is an imminently formative one.

Those are some general comments about this method, but let me then turn to look at the three essential elements of this method. In other words, I want to look more specifically at what must happen in thought for this imminent movement to unfold. The first element is that thinking has to—first of all—think of something in itself taken by itself. Here, what this means is that if one is thinking of a concept, he would think of one facet of that concept first. Hegel will call a facet of a concept a determination of the concept. When you think in terms of one determination of



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a concept, you think abstractly, as we’ve seen. To think abstractly, or for something to be abstract, is to isolate one item out from the rest. We’ve talked, then, about the first element in this movement. Now let me turn to the second element.

Just as the thinker must begin by thinking about one facet of a concept, or one determination of it, the thinker must also think of the contradictory of the facet that he’s been thinking about. Whatever the concept may be, whatever the aspect of that concept may be, the thinker, as he reflects upon this, should be led to think of the contradictory of that particular facet. And Hegel would say that we need not only to think of the contradictory, but we need to think of the contradictory determination along with the original facet that suggested its contradiction. In other words, you don’t think of each of these determinations in total abstraction, but you think of the first determination or facet of the concept and its contradiction simultaneously. As you do that, you wind up heightening the contradictoriness between the two elements or the two facets. Of course, for Hegel, you have to see the contradictoriness in the concept before you can then move on to a resolution of that contradiction. In fact, what happens is that, for Hegel, the contradictoriness within given concepts is very important; because, for him, really, the truth of a concept is to be found in the conjunction of all the contradiction. You will see how that works and exactly what that means a little bit better as we move along.

Well, then, the first element in the method is thinking one determination or facet of the concept by itself. The second element is to think that first facet and its contradictory simultaneously. And then the third element in this method is to unify the contradictory determinations, but it’s a unity that you get by sublimating and preserving the two contradictory ideas in a higher order unity. You don’t merely cancel the contradictions; you cancel them in a way that you preserve them at the same time. When you do that, it is then, and only then, that you get the truth of a concept. You never get the truth of what a thing is by looking at it in abstraction. Instead, you only get the truth about a concept, or whatever you’re dealing with, by looking at all of its determinations taken together.

Suppose, then, we wanted to look at a specific concept, and we wanted to see this concept unfold itself. How might we do that? For example, we begin thinking of one facet of a concept, and we think about it just as thoroughly as we possibly could; but we



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would think about it in abstraction from all other aspects of it. But as you continue to reflect on that one concept and consider it from every possible perspective, one of the perspectives that will present itself to you is the contradiction of that particular aspect or phase or determination of the concept. So then you will be led to think about that contradiction of the first phase of the concept. You think about that contradiction, but you don’t think about it in abstraction. You think about it in conjunction with that which it contradicts.

Then, as you reflect on the facet that you’re dealing with, facet of the concept and its contradiction, you think about them and you bring out the full contradictoriness within that whole set of ideas. And then you’re ready to move on to the next level of unity. And what happens here is that, instead of leaving the contradictions as they are, they’re overcome in a higher unity which maintains and preserves the earlier stages or phases in their contradictions. But it does it in such a way that we don’t just have the contradictions there. We really do have a higher order unity, but it’s a unity not at the expense of the lower level ideas; so that it’s not merely just cancelation of contradictions, but rather sublimation of the contradictions into a newer unity.

Let me say one further general word or two about the dialectical method, and then I want to give an example of how this might work and how it does work, as seen in the writings of Hegel himself. As you reflect upon this method, you might wonder: Where does this thing lead? According to Hegel’s thought, you would begin this procedure with one concept. You’d deal with one determination of it. You’d think it’s contradictory. You’d then get a unity, and then that itself, that unity, could be reflected on. It would suggest its contradictory, and you’d think about the idea and its contradictory, move to another order of unity, and continue on until you’re able to stop. Well, you say, When in the world would you be able to stop? The dialectic process can only come to an end when each determination in all of reality is completely mediated or related to something else, and the total concept is thought by thought. This turns out to be the realm of spirit when the absolute is what is thought.

In an earlier lecture, when I was defining absolute as it’s used by Hegel, we noticed that absolute means “totally unbounded, totally comprehensive, complete in itself.” And, as I pointed out, when you get to the end of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the last chapter is entitled “Absolute Knowledge.” There is nothing



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outside of “Absolute Knowledge,” because everything has been mediated, everything has been related. It’s all incorporated in this all-encompassing philosophy, and so you have the complete content of thought being thought by thought. So that’s when the movement can stop, but until you get to that point, as long as there is something outside, a determination outside of the concepts and the determinations you thought of, then the movement can go on.

One other thing that I want to say here is to contrast this understanding of the Hegelian Dialectic with the typical understanding, and perhaps even caricature, of the Hegelian dialectical method. Typically, when people explain Hegel’s method, they caricature it as a combination of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. What they usually mean by that is that there is first one idea or concept, or one phase in a process, and it has certain characteristics. Then there is another idea or concept or phase, and it has other characteristics in it. And what you do is you look at the first concept, and you look at the second concept, and you see the items which are identical in the two concepts, and you join them together in a third-order concept, which is a synthesis. The items in the first concept, or the thesis, which don’t match with the antithesis just drop out altogether. And the synthesis is just a blending together of all the common ideas in the thesis and the antithesis. Now if that were the way that the Hegelian dialectical method moved, it would turn out that a lot of things about the thesis and a lot of things about the antithesis did not get incorporated into the synthesis. But if Hegel is trying to build an all-comprehensive and all-encompassing philosophy that doesn’t leave out anything, you can see how a dialectical method that leaves out various things is not going to be satisfactory. That is why the more accurate understanding of the dialectic is to consider the thesis in terms of all the things that are true of it. Whatever we can say that would be true of that concept, then to consider the antithesis all the things that would be true of that concept, and then the synthesis is a conjunction or a conjoining of everything in the thesis with everything in the antithesis. This means that there will be some items that are common between thesis and antithesis. There will be some items that contradict one another in the thesis and the antithesis, but both the common items and the contradictions are included in the synthesis. It is a higher order level of concept, but it unites at the same time that it still is able to keep distinct in this higher order the overarching concept that has been formed.



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I have included in your materials a diagram of the typical way in which the Hegelian method is understood, and then what I’m suggesting is the correct way to understand the Hegelian dialectical method. You can take a look at that and see illustrated there the ideas that I’ve just been presenting.

Let me move now, in the time that remains in this lecture, to give an example or illustration of how the method works in Hegel’s writings themselves. I am thinking here of Hegel’s work The Phenomenology of Spirit, and I’d like to present what he refers to as the “Dialectics of Master and Slave.” Now there are various phases in this particular dialectic, and we want to see each one of them, and we want to see how this dialectical method works as it proceeds.

We begin in a section that talks about the “dialectic of desire.” In this phase of consciousness and, in fact, the various stages in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit are referred to as shapes of consciousness, various stages in consciousness’ self-development. We begin the “dialectic of desire” with a problem that confronts the person who’s thinking about this stage in the process. In fact, every new phase in the dialectic is going to begin with a certain problem. The problem in this case is to give an individual self-consciousness self-certainty of its existence. The way to do this is for a self-consciousness to relate itself to itself through the negation of an object. What that means is that the way to prove that you are something is to do something to objects in the world, so that you can look at them and say See, look at what I did. Then you’re certain that there is an “I”.

Well, how in the world would you go about doing this? The most immediate form of doing this, according to Hegel, is desire. Desire causes us to negate or cancel objects to show that they are really for us and to prove the certainty of ourselves. So we decide that that’s what we’re going to do – we’re going to negate various objects. So we go out in the world and we start ripping up one object or another. But there is always a problem with this. For one thing, there are always more objects out there. You can’t negate or rip up the whole world. But there’s an even deeper problem involved in this. Even if there were only one object for you to confront and to cancel or negate or rip up, as we’re talking about, you would still fail to get self-certainty. The reason is that you would not have anything to actualize your self-certainty against once you had ripped up that one object.



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In other words, if the only way to have self-certainty of self-consciousness is to negate other objects, then if you get rid of all of these objects, then you’d have nothing more to do. And you would just regress into emptiness where you couldn’t have self-certainty. What’s the answer to this? This moves to the synthesis stage.

To solve this deeper problem of maintaining self-certainty of self-consciousness, it seems that you would need to have an object of a very special kind that you’re exercising your hostilities toward; namely, you’d need an object which could remain at the same time that it was being canceled. In fact, you would really need one that’s capable of negating itself. What kind of an object is this going to be? It’s going to need to be a mind that negates another object, which negates itself and yet stays. The only kind of object that could possibly be negated by me, and yet negate itself and remain, is another’s self-consciousness. So you can see what’s happened in this particular dialectic of desire. We’ve moved from the level of having only one self-consciousness, looking for self-certainty, and that’s the initial concept.

The initial concept includes the idea of desire and wanting to rip up things in the world in order to assert its self-certainty. But, then, if you reflect upon that very long, you see that if you rip up everything, you’re not going to have anything left, and there still won’t be anything against which you can actualize your self-certainty. So at that point, we’ve seen that we have not only the initial concept of expressing my desire by destroying other objects in the world, but then I take that to its logical conclusion, and I find out that the more I rip up, the less I have a chance to maintain my self-certainty. That brings out the real contradictoriness in the situation. Then, in order to solve this problem, I move now to another stage where I have an object that I negate, I cancel; but it cancels itself at the same time that it continues to exist. And what I actually have is a situation in which there’s no longer just one self-consciousness, but there’s two. You can see how there’s really not an argument in all of this, that this is what one has to do; but, rather, there is sort of an unfolding of the idea of how an individual self-consciousness would get certainty of itself. The relation between these two self-consciousnesses will ultimately be that of master and slave, but we’re getting a little bit ahead of ourselves if we jump that far ahead. I just wanted to let you know where we’re going.

So we have gotten to the stage in the dialectic where we now



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have two self-consciousnesses. The next section in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit analyzes the dialectics of two self-consciousnesses in relationship to one another. Hegel begins this chapter with the notion of two self-consciousnesses, and he claims that each one of those self-consciousnesses exists through recognition of the other and by the other. Without that recognition by the other self-consciousness, you don’t have self-certainty of your own self-consciousness.

Hegel says, “Consciousness finds that it immediately is and is not another consciousness, as also that this other is for itself only when it cancels itself as existing for itself, and has self-existence only in the self-existence of the other. Each is the mediating term to the other,” each is the relating term to the other, “through which each mediates and unites itself with itself.” In other words, if it weren’t for the other person who interacted with me, I wouldn’t be certain that there is a me or an I that actually exits. But by the other person interacting with me, he is showing that he recognizes that there is a me or an I that is there. Hegel then says, “And each is to itself and to the other an immediate self-existing reality, which, at the same time, exists thus for itself only through this mediation. They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another.”

So far, so good; but what happens in this particular phase? At this point, then, we have two self-consciousnesses existing side by side; and both of those self-consciousnesses have a need, but this also creates a problem. Both need the recognition of the other, and yet neither of them is initially inclined to give that recognition. How in the world, then, are they going to get the attention of one another and the recognition of one another? It’s at this point that the process moves to the second phase of the dialectic. The first phase in the dialectic was the two self-consciousnesses side by side and recognizing their need of one another, but recognizing, as well, that neither is inclined to give recognition to the other.

Now we have to get a situation in which they will recognize one another. How will that happen? Hegel says that what happens here is that you have to come to the experience of the fight to death. What he means here is that each self-consciousness wants self-certainty and one way to get it is to destroy other things, as was the case with the dialectics of desire. So you begin the fight to death. But the fight to death is both a positive element and a negative element in gaining self-certainty. The reason that happens is really several-fold. By fighting the other individual



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you risk your life, and by risking your life you show to yourself that really you transcend your life and you’re free. In addition, by risking your life in this fight, you also gain recognition as a self-consciousness from the one who’s fighting with you. After all, if he is going to strike back, then there must be a you or an I that he is confronting. But while there is this recognition that you gain in this fight to death, there is also a downside to this. And this is where the contradictoriness of this whole relationship becomes extremely evident. Both of you are fighting one another, but if you really won this fight, or if your opponent really won it—in other words, if someone died—then the process of self-certainty would stop. The reason that’s so is that if you were killed, then there wouldn’t be any self for you to be certain of; you would be nonexistent. On the other hand, if your opponent is killed, there would still be no self-certainty for you, because there would be no other individual to give recognition to you as a self-consciousness, just as if you rip up all the objects in the world, there’s not anything left to prove your self-certainty against. Likewise, if you kill your opponent, he can’t continue the fight. And if he can’t continue the fight, then there’s not the certainty that there’s really a you for him to fight.

How is this situation to be resolved? It’s at this point that the process moves to the synthesis, the third stage which incorporates the contradictoriness of the situation we’ve just described at the same time that it moves to a higher order level of reality.

According to Hegel, the only answer to this problem is to have a fight to the death where both individuals risk their life, both of them mutually recognize one another, but neither one of them actually gets killed. Instead, what happens is that one self-consciousness has to give in. It has to negate itself and put itself into servitude. So what happens here, then, is that the relationship between the two self-consciousnesses moves to a master-slave relationship; but this happens not by one person forcing the other into servitude. It happens, instead, by one self-consciousness willingly doing to itself what the other self-consciousness is trying to do to it by force. You might think that this is where the process ends, but it doesn’t; because then we move to the next stage in the process.

Here we come to the dialectics of the master-slave relationship. Hegel begins by talking about the concept, or the basic idea, of the master-slave relationship. As you reflect on that idea initially, it appears that pure dominance of the master over the slave is at least the concept of the master-slave relationship that most



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of us would have. But when you actually start reflecting on this relationship between master and slave, you begin to see that the reality of the master-slave relation—not the concept of it—but the actual reality of the master-slave relation is dominance of the slave over the master. Let me explain how that works out. First of all, we have to see exactly what the concept of the master-slave relation is, in and of itself; and then we will see the next stage, where we think of it in all of its contradictoriness.

What is the basic concept of the master-slave relationship then? The master is related to the world immediately through the slave who works on the world for the master. The master doesn’t go out and do anything in the world. He doesn’t till a garden, he doesn’t plow a field, he doesn’t do anything like that. The slave goes out and does that for him. The master can’t actually be related directly to the world in any way. In fact, the only way he can really be related to the world is through his slave, because he gave up the world and being tied to it in order to have his freedom and his dominance over the slave. The master relates himself to the slave through the world, as well, because the master’s power over the slave ties the slave to the world in bondage. In other words, it’s because the master has power that he can force the slave to work in the world for him, so that he, the master, can be free from the world while the slave is bound to it.

When you think about it in those terms, it sounds like everything is in the master’s advantage; but then Hegel moves on to say let’s think about this a little bit more closely. Let’s talk about the real relationship between the master and slave. And when you reflect on this further, you recognize that the slave is actually better off than the master for several reasons. For one thing, the slave relinquished his independence before the master; but, in return for that, he gained recognition as the master’s slave. Not only that, it’s a relinquishing that he, the slave, did on his own; so that, really, the slave has asserted his self-certainty in two ways. He’s done it by the act of relinquishing. You can’t relinquish a self if there isn’t a self that’s actually there and that you’re certain of. And he also has gained certainty by the recognition of the master that the slave is the master’s slave.

There’s another sense in which the slave is better off than the master. The slave is better off, because the master depends on the slave for recognition. Then a third respect in which the slave is better of is that the master has no content in the world, because he’s detached from it. So his freedom is there, yes, but it’s freedom



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in abstraction. The slave, on the other hand, has content in the world and thereby recognition. The slave can point to some work that he’s done in the world, something that he’s made, and say that that is his work. That shows that there must have been a slave, there must have been an I who actually did this. The master can’t do anything like that. He can’t point to the world and say this is what I have done.

There are three features in the slave’s existence, according to Hegel, that help the slave gain awareness of himself. For one thing, there is fear. The slave has gone through a number of experiences of fear. The experience of total fear, of course, is that the self isn’t any of the things that the self fears. Now the master has not come to this point of awareness, because he has not had anything to fear; but the slave, as a slave of the master, has had various experiences of fear. And that has helped him to come to a better awareness of who he is. In addition, the slave has undergone the discipline of obedience. This makes the slave self-aware. It does not just merely make him stubborn or anything else. It gives the slave content to his consciousness, which the master can’t possibly have, because the master doesn’t have to obey anyone.

The other element in the slave’s existence that helps him to gain awareness of who he is is the slave’s labor. Specifically, this puts the slave into the world in a concrete way. The slave works on things in the world, but he doesn’t destroy them. Instead, he makes them over into a new form, which comes from himself—that new form does, that is. This shows that his freedom can be expressed in a concrete way. Obviously, the master is not capable of expressing his existence in the world in this way, because he doesn’t work on the world.

Hegel says, though, that the contradictory thing in all of this, in regard to the labor matter, is that the reason that a slave puts form on the world is that the slave does it for the master to whom he is enslaved. But by laboring for the master, the slave puts his own form on the world and expresses his freedom, so that in a sense he is free, and in a sense he is not free.

When you reflect upon all of this, namely, the original concept of the master-slave relation, and then what Hegel says is the real relation between master and slave, namely, that the slave is



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actually more dominant than the master, you can see that there’s a real contradiction there between the situation of the slave and the situation of the master. But, as a matter of fact, there’s a sense in which neither of them is truly free.

We are ready, then, to move on to the next stage, the synthesis. The synthesis that arises, according to Hegel, is none other than stoicism. Let me explain what he means by this and how he says we get there. The master, according to the master-slave relationship, is supposed to be free, and he’s supposed to have mastery over the world and the slave. But we’ve seen that he really doesn’t, when you analyze this whole notion of the master-slave relation. The freedom of the master is really abstract. If you look for it in the world, you’re not going to find it in any specific object. On the other hand, the slave is better off than the master, because he can objectify himself in the world, that is, he can do things specifically on the world that he can point to as things that he has done. Yet, the slave still isn’t free. He is bound to the master, and even the form that he puts on the world is not his fully, but it’s actually his master’s. He is doing it for someone else, so that the slave’s freedom really can’t be entirely expressed in the world as he would like it to be.

If neither the master nor the slave can be free in the world, where can they be free? According to Hegel, they can be free in thought. That is, thinking is free, because it’s not foreign. In other words, it’s your thoughts that you’re thinking. It’s not someone else’s. Thinking is also free in the sense that the mind can relate immediately to itself without any mediation through a slave, if you’re a master; or through a master and world, if you’re a slave. In addition, you come to see that what the relation between master and slave asserts is a thing which is a self or a consciousness. And therefore the inherent reality of independent consciousness is consciousness, that is, something that is mental. So the most natural move, the necessary move in the process is the move to stoicism, where the essence of man is seen to be thinking, in spite of other external relations that pertain to the master and the slave.

At this point, I think I can stop talking about this particular dialectic of master and slave. You’ve probably gotten the idea of how, in fact, this dialectical method works. As you might suspect, the next phase in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit then goes on to

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analyze stoicism, to explain what it is, and then what it is suggests what it isn’t. The contradictions get heightened, and then there’s a movement on to the next phase. Not only in consciousness, but this is also, as you can suspect, something of his analysis of history.

Well, that’s what I want to say about the Hegelian Dialectic. And what we’re going to see is that the dialectical method is extremely important in contemporary theology and contemporary philosophy. Whether or not people accept Hegel and many of his assumptions about the world, they seem to incorporate, in many ways, this dialectical method. And if they don’t incorporate it, a lot of them make a special point to explain why they’re not incorporating it. So this is something that becomes very, very important for philosophy and theology after the time of Hegel.

The next topic I want to deal with is to just simply look at some of the key concepts in Hegel’s system. We’ve looked at his dialectical method, which talks about how he believes you should do philosophy; but we want to look at some specific concepts in his system. And I want you to see them, because some of them are important in themselves, but they also set the stage for later phases in contemporary theology. We will pick up those concepts in the next lecture.

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Hegelian Method Explained and IllustratedTranscript - ST503 Contemporary Theology I: Hegel to Death of God Theologies © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved