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150 Bowman, Kreines, Pinkard, Tolley some defi nition, fi nding that it contradicts itself and then moving on to something else. It is what is involved in thinking itself as self-conscious thought – of thinking of purposes as purposes (Hegel’s example), reasons as reasons, truths as truths, objects as objects, percepts as percepts, etc. Perhaps the Logic consists of the shadows cast by that activity, and it is the odd structure of self-consciousness itself that is being shadowed. IV. Questions Regarding Teleology, Causation, and the Hegelian Concept by Brady Bowman A. Anti-Foundationalist Conceptual Realism What is Hegelian metaphysics and wherein lies its philosophical appeal? As I understand Kreines’ book, the short answer would be that Hegel espouses an anti-foundationalist variety of conceptual realism, and that it is appealing because it shows us how there really is reason in the world and thus also how we, as fi nite rational beings, may be reassured that our human need for the world to be intelligible is more than just wishful thinking. On Kreines’ account of Hegelian anti-foundationalism, we are to distinguish between two kinds of metaphysical relation. On the one side we have relations of dependence or what I prefer to think of as relations of material constitution. On the other side there are explanatory relations, that is, relations such that an en- tity X is the reason for a state of aff airs Y just insofar as X belongs to kind K and Ys are an essential feature of K.17 I would like to call these relations of essential constitution, though Kreines does not use this language himself. Kreines suggests that a distinction along roughly these lines will allow us to tweak the foundationalist worldview: We can concede that everything that really exists, from photons to fi nancial institutions, depends on matter and its governing laws, and hence also that matter, to that extent, represents a foundational level of reality. However, the entities located at this materially foundational level are at best incompletely explicable, despite the fact that they constitute necessary conditions for the existence of higher-level, more completely explicable kinds of entities. At the highest level, by contrast, we fi nd entities that are completely explicable in reference to their own kind and are therefore able to serve as complete explainers in reference to the lower-level entities on which they materially depend for their existence (cf. RW 25, 200, 207). The 17 Kreines spells out this reason-constituting relation in greatest detail in chapter 3 (RW esp. 97–103). This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)85.115.248.14 on Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:59:55 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Metaphysics of Reason and Hegel’s Logic 151 higher-level entities constitute independently graspable “natures” or “essences” (cf. GW 21:15)18, of which the lower-level entities are material parts and con- tributing factors. Kreines recommends this anti-foundationalist scheme, with its explanatory prioritization of mediated, dependent entities over their relatively independent constituent parts, as better able to satisfy the demand for intelligi- bility than its competitor. Furthermore, Kreines conceives Hegelian anti-foundationalism as a variety of conceptual realism, expressed in what he dubs the “concept thesis”: “the reasons that explain why things are as they are and do what they do are always found in immanent ‘concepts’ (Begriff e), akin to immanent universals or kinds (Gattungen)” (RW 22; cf. 74, 207). The intended role of such immanent concepts is clear enough. They are worldly relations that do not depend for their existence on the mental activity, beliefs, or interests of fi nite thinkers, yet in virtue of which explanations can be judged as right or wrong and as more or less complete in a way that is non-arbitrary and does not make appeal to what con- tingently happens to be satisfying to some particular audience (cf. RW 49–56). That explanations can be more or less complete is thus for Kreines a fact of metaphysical signifi cance, pointing to the real presence of ‘reason in the world’, the existence of ‘immanent concepts’. Kreines’ book makes important contributions to Hegelian studies in many respects. For one, he off ers a detailed and extensive reconstruction of one of the most important parts of the Science of Logic, Hegel’s theory of mechanism, teleology, the idea, and their interrelations. In doing so, he encourages us to re-focus attention on Hegel’s logical doctrines by confronting them with a whole spectrum of contemporary debates on essentialism and natural kinds; on causation, explanation, reduction, and elimination; on the proper conception of nature, the idea of natural purpose, and the place of normativity in nature; and, not least, about the affi nities and discontinuities between life and mind. The vi- tality and relevance of historical texts depend on this kind of dialogue; indeed, without it, they cease to be even interpretable. And on that score, too, Kreines makes important progress on a topic that has received too little attention: Hegel affi rms the singularity of the concept and the idea, while at the same time speaking of concepts and ideas in the plural, e. g. the concept or idea of gravitation (cf. section 4.1 below). What precisely is the source of this duality, why does the one concept or idea manifest itself in a plurality of distinct concepts and ideas? And if truth, as Hegel says, “consists in the agreement [Übereinstimmung] of the object [Gegenstand] with itself, i. e. with its concept” (TWA 8: § 172 add.), what 18 All the translations in my section are my own. This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)85.115.248.14 on Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:59:55 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 152 Bowman, Kreines, Pinkard, Tolley precisely are we to understand by ‘objects’?19 For a proper understanding of Hegelian metaphysics, these are central questions, and Kreines’ book advances our understanding of them in crucial ways. In the spirit of critical appreciation, my questions to Kreines will focus on Hegel’s concept of the concept in comparison with Kreines’ ‘immanent concepts’. Does this latter notion lead to an independently plausible account of explanation? And is Kreines right to attribute the resulting account to Hegel? B. ‘Immanent Concepts’, the ‘Concrete Universal’, and Biological Species 1. Type-Token Relations and Issues with Causation Living beings, Kreines tells us, manifest “a specifi c kind of relation between the universal, the particular and the individual” that constitutes normativity and teleology: One side of the coin is that there is here a universal type that particularizes itself, giving the substance or nature of independent individuals that diff er in particular ways. The other side of the coin is that it is also the actions of these individuals – rather than any represented ‘marks’ in a represented concept – that distinguish themselves from everything else in a struggle to survive (assimilation) and bind themselves together as instances of one and the same general kind or concept by relations of reproduction whose ‘product’ is the identity of concept and species. (RW 98; emphasis added) He thus follows Hegel in locating the objective and non-arbitrary character of the concept-qua-genus (Gattung) in the fact that the genus-members’ distin- guishing features are not mere ‘marks’ by which an external observer may recognize and classify them. Rather, they are, fi rst of all, features that immediately serve the organisms’ purpose of self-preservation and reproduction; the marks are thus not “indiff erent” to the organism (cf. RW 50).20 Secondly, they are not just extensionally present in all the members of the genus; they are actively reproduced in a cycle that perpetuates the genus as a whole. The self-reproducing genus thus constitutes a prime example of a naturally existing ‘objective reason’ or ‘immanent concept’ and it does so by virtue of its structure as a ‘con- 19 On Hegel’s conception of ‘objects’ in relation to ‘the concept’ see Horstmann (1984). 20 That entities considered at the mechanical level are indiff erent toward the characteristic marks of the kind to which they belong is one of the chief failings of mechanicism: for example, cf. RW 38–46. This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)85.115.248.14 on Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:59:55 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Metaphysics of Reason and Hegel’s Logic 153 crete universal’. In contrast to mechanical systems, living species can be properly explained by reference to their own internal purposiveness and the normativity that goes along with it. To link the concept of substance to that of immanent purposiveness (teleofunctional unity) is a plausible move (cf. Robinson 2014). However, Kreines’ argument for the objective validity of teleological explanation has to confront diffi culties regarding causation. To see why, consider Kant’s reasons for casting doubt on the objective validity of explanations that appeal to purposes in non- artifi cial systems. Kant questions the objective validity of teleological explanation because it would require that the whole system (be it an individual organism, the whole genus, or a diversely populated ecosystem) actually be the cause of the form and disposition of its constitutive parts, and that it cause them without relying on the mediation of an already existent, intelligent being acting on the basis of a conceptual representation of the whole (AA V: 373). In other words, the initially merely possible whole would actually have to cause the existence of the parts that constitute the necessary and suffi cient conditions of its existence. But what is merely possible cannot actually cause anything to exist. Therefore, we cannot con- ceive how fi nal causation could be a reality, nor can we, in consequence, grasp how internally purposive, self-organizing systems are possible. On Kreines’ account of it, we can dispel Kant’s doubts by appealing to the concrete universal and the especially ‘intimate relation’ that obtains there between type and token: “With life generally”, he writes, “a part (token) is possible only insofar as that part (type) plays its benefi cial role in relation to the whole (type). So the parts are present specifi cally on account of the way in which they are a benefi t to the whole” (RW 96). In other words, the token-parts have as the necessary pre-condition of their existence the fact that they belong to a type of part that generally benefi ts the corresponding type of whole, and if that relation had not obtained in their particular ancestors and progenitors, then these particular token-parts would not have come into existence at all. To that extent, then, we are supposed to be able to make sense of the idea that what makes possible the existence and form of the parts is the purpose of the whole (cf. RW 84; AA V: 373). If the argument goes through, it would appear that the internally purposive whole does in fact precede its parts, in the form of really existing progenitors and their cyclically repeating history of survival, assimilation, and reproduction. However, it is questionable whether the ‘intimate relation’ between type and token really resolves the Kantian quandary. Kreines states that in an orga- nized being the parts themselves will be “responsible for the organization of the whole”, explaining that “the parts ([as] tokens) are present on account of the eff ectiveness of those very parts ([as] types). The eff ectiveness of those parts ([as] This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)85.115.248.14 on Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:59:55 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 154 Bowman, Kreines, Pinkard, Tolley types) itself brings about a new token system, in which each part is thus means to the ends of the other parts” (RW 97). It is a general point, however, that tokens are not identical with their types since they belong to diff erent ontological orders. Tokens are spatio-temporal particulars with causal powers, whereas types are universals, i. e. non-spatio-temporal entities lacking causal powers. At least on this understanding, to say that the type is causally responsible for (e. g. ‘brings about’) any feature of the corresponding tokens amounts to a contradiction in terms. Moreover, it seems possible and, with a view to ontological parsimony, even attractive to suppose that whatever causal powers the tokens do have, they have in virtue of something that has nothing to do with the type they instantiate as functional parts, but rather with their belonging to a purely mechanical type. (Think, for example, of the way protein structures are determined by the geometric properties of amino acids that determine how they fold.) So the type-token relation cannot dispel Kant’s worries about fi nal causation either unless sense can be made of fi nal causation at the level of the token where the actual causal powers are presumably located, or unless we embrace the broadly Platonist conception of causally effi cacious abstract objects (‘ideas’).21 2. The Contingency of Material Basis-Properties Undermines Teleological Explanation Slightly at odds with the way I just characterized his view, Kreines suggests that we can by-pass diffi culties with causation by emphasizing the actually existing cycle of species-reproduction (Gattungsprozess) while at the same time abando- ning Kant’s focus on the question of how naturally existing living beings, Natur- zwecke (teleological systems) originate (cf. RW 103–107). Once such a cycle has 21 In this context, consider that nothing about belonging to a functional type (e. g. being a leaf) can guarantee that the token in question will function as it ought. And that (we might say) is because the type has no causal effi cacy to exercise. All the real causation is mechanical, and some mechanically caused systems happen to be self-reproductively stable, so that relevantly similar token- parts tend to be reproduced across successive wholes of the right type. But there is no sense in which the type is ‘responsible’ for the organization of the token-wholes and their token parts. – A further statement provokes similar misgivings. Kreines says that the concrete universal is a “type that particularizes itself, giving the substance or nature of independent individuals that diff er in particular ways” (RW 98; emphasis added). That is indeed a characteristically Hegelian way to talk, but what does it really mean for a universal to ‘particularize itself’, and what kind of agency do we ascribe to it in speaking thus? This way of talking has a place in the Platonic tradition, of course, where timeless universals are conceived as producing their own spatio-temporal instantiations, but Kreines takes an Aristotelian approach, explicitly concerned to construe Hegel as not making “any demands at all about any sort of supersensible substrate of nature transcending temporality” (RW 103). This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)85.115.248.14 on Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:59:55 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Metaphysics of Reason and Hegel’s Logic 155 been established, the fact of life has thereby also been established; we need to look no further than the relatively local history of a self-reproducing population of individuals in order to recognize the teleofunctional determination of rele- vant traits. We thus locate all the causality in the tokens, while the functionality is a concomitant of their belonging to a self-reproducing type. Because Kreines believes that an appropriate stretch of reproductive- and survival-history is suffi cient to constitute internal purposiveness, he cheerfully concedes that “there are many scientifi c questions for which Hegel has no an- swers. One such question is this: How could there have been a transition from a universe of lifeless matter to a universe with life? […] But Hegel’s […] argument […] would also show that these other questions are irrelevant to the defense of natural teleology” (RW 105). He judges the questions irrelevant because he locates Kant’s main worry about inner purposiveness in the relation of part and whole in an organism and its (individual) genesis. For Kreines, in contrast, the cycle of species reproduction, construed in terms of the type-token relation criticized above, displaces any concern with the “origin of a species [or] of all life”; on his view, attempts to explain “a transition from lifeless matter to living beings” (RW 105) are superfl uous. Kreines does concede, in a footnote to his discussion, that Kant himself thought the “appeal to the history of a species would ‘merely put off the explanation’ and so the problem of Naturzweck”, but he denies that Kant’s “claim is supported by the argument concerning his actual analysis” of the concept of inner purposiveness (RW 105, note 32). “[D]ependence does not undermine teleological explicability: because […] it is dependence on something merely ‘indiff erent’” (RW 207, with reference to GW 12: 188; cf. 102). There is reason to think Hegel would disagree with that statement. When we ask how life originated in a formerly lifeless universe, Hegel writes, we represent “the fact that purposiveness exists […] as contingent”: What we refer to as non-organic nature in general is represented as existing independently and for itself, and the organic is represented as an external addition, so that whether or not the [non-organic world] opposite it provides the conditions it needs to exist is a matter of contingency. […] The question is this: Is that the true conceptual determination of the non-organic, and are living things […] the dependent term? […] The true relation is this: […] the organic is what is fi rst; the non-organic has merely the appearance [Schein] of being. (TWA 17: 512) If internally purposive systems as such are contingent products of mechanistic con- catenation, that undermines the whole idea that teleological explanation represents an independently valid approach to understanding nature. If life is merely a random, contingent fact that could as well have failed to obtain, then its This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)85.115.248.14 on Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:59:55 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 156 Bowman, Kreines, Pinkard, Tolley teleological character is undermined. Conceived thus, the existence of purposes is itself purposeless. But if there is no purpose behind purposiveness, then, on Kreines’ account of explanation and normativity as constituting immanent concepts, there would in eff ect be no reason why reasons of a certain kind (purposes) are present and have real, causal consequences in the material world (in virtue of teleological behav- ior in organic systems and intentional action in rational agents). Mechanism would therefore reassert its priority and we would be left with brute facticity, together with whatever laws emerge as governing interactions between bits of matter. So both in regard to Hegel and as a broader philosophical point, I think that Kreines cannot put questions of original fi nal causation to one side if he wants to rehabilitate teleological explanation and grant living beings a place of their own in the metaphysical structure of reality.22 My worries extend to what Hegel calls the ‘absolute idea’ insofar as Kreines construes it in close analogy to teleofunctional, i. e. living, systems (cf. RW 220). He emphasizes that the idea “must necessarily depend on its being realized in something that is not a form of the idea; or, the completely explicable must depend on its being realized in the incompletely explicable” (RW 200). This kind of dependence is not supposed to compromise the idea’s “metaphysical priority” as what is “highest” and “most substantial” (RW 232). However, if the idea depends for its existence on the fact that its subservient material constituents are as they are, where that fact is brute and ultimately contingent, it becomes hard to see how its self-referential explanatory completeness is anything but epiphenomenal. C. Can there be Complete Explanation in the Absence of Metaphysical Dependence? For the reasons given, I am not yet persuaded that the ‘concrete universal’ can do the required explanatory work if we construe it as a special kind of type-token relation. I turn now to questions about the degree to which Kreines’ ‘immanent concepts’ capture what Hegel calls ‘the concept’. 22 This is what is at stake in Hegel’s question about which of the two concepts is higher, truer in itself, mechanism or teleology (see GW 12: 154 f.). This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)85.115.248.14 on Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:59:55 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Metaphysics of Reason and Hegel’s Logic 157 1. Explanation and Dependence I: The Structure of the Hegelian Concept My fi rst question concerns the principle according to which the hierarchy of explainers is ordered, running from matter in motion at the low end through biological life to the free and self-refl ective idea at the high end. Kreines rightly notes that for Hegel, mechanism “is more like a degenerate or weak form of almost-teleology than something distinct in a manner that gives it a self-evi- dent trumping power” (RW 101). Rightly again, he approaches the structure of the absolute idea on strict analogy with the structure of teleofunctional systems (cf. RW 220). The story he tells in terms of explanatory completeness is also very plausible, momentarily discounting the worries expressed above about epiphenomenality: Adequate explainers are complete in requiring no reference to outside entities except insofar as these can be specifi ed in terms of the explainer’s own immanent norm, function, or ‘concept’. And yet something still seems to be missing on the metaphysical side of the story. In what sense are the higher-level entities complete explainers not only of themselves, but equally of the lower-level entities that are their material constituents? Kreines denies that we need to posit, in addition to the bottom-up relation of material constitution, a top-down relation such that the material constituents at any given level actually depend on what they help to constitute (cf. RW 275–276). But then teleology does not appear really to be necessary in order to grasp the lawful realm of mechanism. Is there really any reason, metaphysi- cally speaking, why the realm of the lawful could not just be radically incomplete and causally or otherwise underdetermined? Is there no possible world in which matter in motion fails to cohere in the ways required for the genesis of self-organizing, teleofunctional systems? And if there is no prior metaphysical reason prohibiting that, what real sense is there to Hegel’s calling teleology “the truth” of mechanism (cf. GW 12: 158, 166)? Attention to the structure of the Hegelian concept suggests an answer. Con- sider a passage that Kreines also discusses (cf. RW 36, with reference to GW 21: 15 f.): Gravitation is the true and determinate concept of material corporeality, [the concept] that has been realized as the idea. Universal corporeality undergoes an essential diremption [urteilt sich wesentlich] into particular bodies and then, through its motion, it re-integrates itself [schließt sich zusammen] in the moment of individuality [Einzelheit] or subjectivity as a phenomenal existence [erscheinendes Dasein] which is thus immediately a system of several distinct bodies. Remark: […] As we have already shown, the concept of gravitation contains two moments, the moment of being-for-self and the moment of a continuity This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)85.115.248.14 on Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:59:55 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 158 Bowman, Kreines, Pinkard, Tolley that negates [aufheben] being-for-self. [. . . ] The syllogism [Schluß] containing the idea of gravitation – i. e. gravitation itself as a concept which, by virtue of the particularity of distinct bodies, has opened itself into external reality while at the same time, in the ideality and refl ection-into-self of that same external reality, revealing itself through its motion as a self-integrating whole [in der Bewegung sich mit sich selbst zusammengeschlossen zeigt] – also contains the rational identity and inseparability of the moments that we ordinarily imagine as independently self-standing [selbstständig]. (ENC § 269; emphasis in bold added) Note the way Hegel glides from talk of the concept of gravity to talk of the idea of gravity. Hegel applies the latter term to characterize a system of distinct, rotating celestial bodies (planets) revolving around a central star (the sun) that is also the source of light in the system.23 In his words, the ‘universal corporeality’ undergoes diremption (urteilt sich) into ‘particular bodies’, at the same time undergo- ing ‘re-integration’ (schließt sich zusammen) into a self-moving ‘individual’, viz. the solar system as a single, synthetically unifi ed whole, to which he furthermore attributes ‘subjectivity’ in virtue of its character as self-moving. The passage suggests that Hegelian concepts are characterized (minimally) by polarity, that is, by the presence in them of contradictory determinations.24 In the case of gravity that is the presence of being-for-self (in the form of dis- creteness or repulsive force), on the one hand, and being-for-other (in the form of continuity or attractive force) on the other (cf. GW 21: 155–166,135–145). That is quite a substantive statement on how an immanent concept must be structured. It also gives rise to the question of how something constituted as an internal polarity or contradiction can at the same time constitute a real unity. I will return to this point momentarily. 23 On the relation of opposition between light and gravity cf. ENC §§ 262 and §§ 275–277. 24 Kreines addresses the thorny issue of real contradictions in chapter 10, sect. 2 (RW 245–50). Here is my own suggestion to those who balk at the idea that to instantiate an immanent concept in the Hegelian sense is to exist as a real contradiction: Any realized concept, that is, any idea (cf. ENC § 242), is going to be structured as an individuated, internally diff erentiated, kinetic whole; this totality is governed by the polarity of opposing determinations whose mutual tension, rather than self-destructing the way we might expect a real contradiction to do, instead dynamizes the system of integrated parts it constitutes. The fl at-out contradiction, devoid of really mediating terms, is a feature of the abstract, i. e. the as yet not fully realized concept, not of the idea, i. e. the realized concept. So there is a way to embrace really real ‘immanent concepts’ without taking leave of the understanding. However, it does force us to adjust our use of the term ‘concept’ to denote, in the strict sense, only such relations that either instantiate the fully integrated, realized structure of the idea or which are intelligible as its merely partial and incomplete (and hence also self-contradictory) realizations. This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)85.115.248.14 on Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:59:55 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Metaphysics of Reason and Hegel’s Logic 159 2. Explanation and Dependence II: Real Unity, the Idea, and Metaphysical Dependence My second question concerns the principle in virtue of which more complete reasons may claim a superior place in the hierarchy of ‘immanent concepts’ not merely insofar as they provide more complete and self-contained explanations, but also insofar as they correspond to the actual grounds of existence of themselves and the constituent entities they explain. As noted above, Kreines denies that top-down relations of dependence are a necessary condition for genuine explanation, but for the reasons stated in the preceding section, I am not convinced that explanation in the strong sense he intends can be had at that lower price. Plotinus holds that it is “in virtue of unity that beings are beings”.25 Hegel is committed to a closely related view.26 To the extent that something lacks unity, it fails to possess being in the full and proper sense of the term. Now, what he calls the concept is the principle of unity as such. To be unifi ed is tohave or indeed to be a concept. However, as we saw above, the Hegelian concept is at the same time a principle of diremption, division – Urteil. The concept purely as such may therefore rightly be claimed as the principle of unity, but not as real unity itself. Real unity is only present when the concept assumes determinate form in an element that can express both the moment of diff erence (e. g. continuity, being-for-other) and the moment of unity or selfsameness (e. g. repulsion, being-for-self). What Hegel calls ‘the idea’ is present to precisely the extent that the principle of unity, that is, the concept, is realized. To the extent that the determinate element falls short of expressing unity, e. g. by representing it in the form of mutually external partes extra partes, that element constitutes the side of fi nitude, appearance, transience, in short, the side of non-being. Only in the case of the absolute idea do we fi nd the concept, the principle of unity, fully realized. Kreines is of course aware of these doctrines and he draws on them liberally throughout the book, devoting special attention to them in the concluding sec- tions (esp. RW 199–272). From my point of view, however, he errs in locating the monistic aspects of the absolute idea on the epistemological side exclusively, painting Hegel as a metaphysical pluralist (RW 26, 217, 258–267). Monism is the view that only one object truly is or exists, and Hegel clearly seems to be say- ing that nothing other than the absolute idea is a fully determinate unity and that therefore nothing other than the absolute idea fully is, i. e. fully possesses being. That’s monism. A monism that propounds an unmistakable doctrine about the relation of dependence in which fi nite things stand to the idea: Insofar as 25 Plotinus (1918, 237). Cf. Halfwassen (2004, 32–34). 26 On Hegel’s relation to Neo-Platonism cf. Beierwaltes (2004, 144–153); Halfwassen (2005). This content downloaded from (cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)85.115.248.14 on Wed, 08 Jan 2020 10:59:55 UTC(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0)(cid:0) All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms