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1 Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Hegel and Transcendental Philosophy Author(s): Robert R. Williams Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 82, No. 11, Eighty-Second Annual Meeting American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Nov., 1985), pp Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Stable URL: Accessed: 25/01/ :11 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Philosophy.

2 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPhY VOLUME LXXXII, NO. 12, DECEMBER 1985 *4- o HEGEL AND TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY* T HE current interest in Kant is in part a discovery of transcendental philosophy and argument. If the critical transcendental turn is taken, can Hegel be far behind? However, few topics are murkier in understanding Hegel, than the question concerning transcendental philosophy. Here confusion reigns, particularly in English-speaking scholarship, concerning Hegel and concerning transcendental philosophy. Some writers (Robert Solomon, Charles Taylor) see Hegel as a transcendental philosopher.' Taylor identifies the opening arguments of the Phenomenology as transcendental, and Solomon thinks that Hegel's concept of Geist is another version of Kant's transcendental ego or transcendental unity of apperception. On the other hand, from the continental side, Klaus Hartmann has characterized the Phenomenology not as transcendental philosophy, but as "one big introductory argument to transcendental philosophy."2 Ludwig Siep, along with others, has observed that Hegel's concept of Geist, far from being a species of transcendental philosophy, is in fact a critique of such and a departure from such.3 Now if Hegel's Phenomenology is an introduction to transcendental philosophy, it cannot very well already be transcendental philosophy as Taylor and Solomon contend. And if Siep is correct, then Geist-surely a central, if not the central concept in Hegel's philosophy-is not a continuation of but a departure from transcendental philosophy. *To be presented in an APA symposium on Hegel, December 29, Merold Westphal will comment; see this JOURNAL, this issue, 606/7. 'See their essays in the volume Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays, Alasdair MacIntyre, ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1972). 2Klaus Hartmann, "On Taking the Transcendental Turn," Review of Metaphysics, xx.2, 78 (December 1966): 'Ludwig Siep, Anerkennung als Prinzip der praktischen Philosophie (Freiburg: Alber Verlag, 1979) X/85/8211/0595$ ? 1985 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

3 596 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Several questions have arisen concerning transcendental philosophy: Does transcendental philosophy require an introduction at all? Doesn't an introduction imply a contradiction to the whole transcendental program, which is to provide a ground or foundation for explaining everything else? This question has certain presuppositions concerning the goal of transcendental philosophy, namely, that it is to be regarded as an attempt to maintain or achieve the goal of philosophy as radical inquiry, i.e., freedom from prejudices and presuppositions. This goal means not merely that philosophy must offer a transcendental grounding of science (Kant) but that philosophy must become aware of and justify its own presuppositions. In short, philosophy must explain itself, i.e., be self-justifying. Kant fails to achieve this goal: he can offer an account of the conditions of possible experience and of possible objects of experience, but he cannot or does not give an account of his ability to do so. Kant does not explain how transcendental knowledge itself is possible, much less justify it. But if philosophy were to accomplish its goal of providing absolute knowledge, then perhaps the task of an introduction would be superfluous. The presuppositionlessness of philosophy implies absolute autonomous knowledge, and absolute autonomy rules out any prior or preliminary justification, i.e., anything prior to the transcendental ground or principle. What is interesting about Hegel is that although he tends to think of transcendental philosophy in the terms outlined above and is critical of Kant, he nevertheless thinks that it requires an introduction. The Phanomenologie des Geistes is that introduction.4 Yet although it is addressed to the prolegomatic critical-epistemological problem identified by Kant as the problem requiring the transcendental turn, it is not a prolegomenon in Kant's sense. The Phenomenology represents a unique way of taking the transcendental turn; in this we agree with Klaus Hartmann's characterization of it (op. cit.) as an extended introduction to transcendental philosophy. This brings us to the question: Why does transcendental philosophy require an introduction? How are we to understand the pre-transcendental level? What motivates the transcendental turn? Is it a concern for the validity of scientific theory? the need to provide a ground for the- validity of synthetic judgments a priori? Awareness of contradictions in ordinary consciousness? Further, what sort of introduction is required? Is the introduction itself a 4Hegel, Phanomenologie des Geistes, Hrsg. J. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 1952) Hereafter cited as PhG.

4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEGEL 597 foundation for the transcendental turn and for transcendental philosophy? Or can the latter be understood only "from within", i.e., systematically? Finally, what is the telos of the transcendental turn, or the transcendental region? Is it an absolute ego? or a concrete life-world? Or is the transcendental terminology and conceptuality simply abandoned in favor of Geist? In what follows we shall address and hope to clarify at least some of these questions. I. WHY IS AN INTRODUCTION NECESSARY? Why does Hegel, despite his rejection of prolegomena and Kant's formal transcendentalism, nevertheless present an introduction to his own system of philosophy? Put simply, an introduction is necessary because the transcendental region is itself problematic. The issues are both epistemological (is the transcendental-critical philosophy itself knowledge?) and ontological (what is the ontological referent/interpretation of the transcendental ego?). Historically these issues arose in critical reaction to Kant. Is the critique of knowledge itself knowledge? It is obviously not knowledge in the sense that is established by the Critique. What sort of knowledge is the Critique then, and how is it possible? To take up this question is to take up a prior question, and so to engage in an "introduction" to Kant's transcendental program. The immediate concerns of Kant's transcendental deduction are to show that the categories of the understanding have objective validity, i.e., that they are conditions not only of our knowledge but of the possibility of the objects of experience themselves. The transcendental unity of apperception is not itself transcendentally deduced. It is rather introduced as the unifying ground of the transcendental categories, the "I think" which must accompany all acts of conception and representation. However, the status of the transcendental unity is problematic. Is it consciousness? or merely a structure? Does it exist? or is it merely a postulate of transcendental deductive procedure? If it does exist, can it be known i.e., unified and thought via the categories? Kant's dictum that he has sought to deny knowledge in order to make room for practical faith suggests that the transcendental ego does "exist," but cannot be known; it remains an object of faith. There is no cognitive access to it, only practical access (which is noncognitive). In his introduction to Wissenschaftslehre5 (6 ff) Johann Fichte provides additional evidence for the problematic nature of trans- 'Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Science of Knowledge, with first and second introductions, Peter Heath and John Lachs, ed. & tr. (New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1972).

5 598 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY cendental philosophy. He shows that another transcendental postulate is possible: besides or instead of the transcendental subject or self-in-itself, the dogmatist can postulate a transcendental object or thing-in-itself as the ultimate unifying ground. Fichte maintains that there is no rational way to decide between these transcendental postulates, since what counts as rationality, evidence, etc., is itself determined by the postulate. The postulates, as transcendental first principles, cannot themselves be demonstrated because they are the prius, the ground of demonstration. Grant the first principle and then a system can be worked out which explains everything else. But the choice of the first principle itself depends on nonrational grounds, namely, the sort of human being one is and the interests one has. What Fichte thus shows is that the pluralism of transcendental first principles really means that there are no unproblematic first principles or foundations from which to begin transcendental deductions. Hence the enterprise of philosophy, especially so-called "first philosophy," is in crisis, not merely from external attacks, but from within; for there are at least two candidates for first or transcendental principles. Fichte himself seeks to suspend the debate between the idealist and the dogmatist. Philosophy is no longer possible as substantive metaphysics, but is possible only as critical idealism. So Fichte develops a third critical alternative, according to which "the ultimate ground of all consciousness lies in an interaction of the self with itself, by way of a not-self which has to be regarded from different points of view" (248). This alternative, however, is not continuous with the naivete of the traditional alternatives; Fichte thinks that no more than a pragmatic justification can be given for transcendental philosophy, including his Wissenschaftslehre. Consequently, the Wissenschaftslehre is no longer to be understood as "first philosophy," but rather as a pragmatic history of spirit. Thus for Fichte there are two crucial points to be noted concerning transcendental philosophy: (1) There is a plurality of possible transcendental programs. The choice among them is made not on theoretical but on pragmatic, practical grounds. Although Fichte speaks of intellectual intuition as providing access to the transcendental region, this is something more and other than pure intellectual contemplation. It includes nonrational elements as well. There is no purely theoretical way of deciding "first principles." (2) The verification of the choice of a first principle is to be found in the consequences that follow from it. But to grasp what follows from the logically and transcendentally prior first principle, transcendental-logical deduction is insufficient. It is necessary to turn in addition to experience and

6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEGEL 599 history. Fichte's transcendental philosophy is no longer an a-historical rationalism, but rather a pragmatic history of spirit (198).6 Fichte's early Wissenschaftslehre (1794, plus the introductions of 1797) set the stage for Hegel's Phenomenology. The problem Hegel seeks to address in the introduction (not the Preface) is the problem of how to philosophize in the absence of unproblematic universal first principles. That is precisely the problem that Fichte had identified in his introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre. Transcendental philosophy is problematic because the regress to first principles is problematic. As Hegel says, one barren assurance concerning a transcendental first principle is as good as another (PhG 66). And for Hegel the problem had become if anything more acute, for he rejects intellectual intuition. That was the way in which Fichte and Schelling believed they had access to the transcendental region and thus were in a position to resolve the question of the nature and possibility of transcendental knowledge. In contrast, Hegel rejects all claims of immediate access to the transcendental region. On the transcendental level this amounts to a-rejection of all vestigial traces of Cartesianism, and requires a complete rethinking of the very meaning of the concept of the a priori, e.g., the a priori conditions of possible knowledge and objects, etc. Further, it requires a radical revision in the concept of the transcendental region itself. For, if Cartesianism goes, what goes with it is the transcendental ego and a first-person "subjective" conception of transcendental philosophy. But if Hegel rejects intellectual intuition, hasn't he given up the only way in which transcendental knowledge is possible? And doesn't that mean that he has thereby abandoned transcendental philosophy in the sense of a regress to the foundations, the conditions of possibility of empirical knowledge? It must be acknowledged that the sense in which Hegel is a transcendental philosopher is elusive. Yet I believe that Hartmann is correct in characterizing the Phenomenology as an extended introduction to a transcendental program. Hegel is still taking up that traditional issue; what is novel is the way in which he takes it up and pursues it. In denying immediate access to the transcendental region, Hegel is not denying all access whatsoever. There is mediated access. But what provides 6 ontological interpretation of the transcendental ego remains open for Fichte. It should be noted that his thought underwent considerable change and development on this question. He published several different versions of his Wissenschaftslehre. In the 1794 edition he presents a minimal interpretation of the transcendental ego as little more than a postulate. From 1804 on, however, the transcendental ego is given an ontological interpretation as being itself, and as God. From our perspective it is the early Fichte that is important for the development of Hegel.

7 600 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY the mediation? It is ordinary, i.e., nontheoretical or pretheoretical consciousness itself. Hegel addresses the problem, How to philosophize in the absence of unproblematic philosophical first principles and criteria?-by turning to consciousness in its natural attitude or life-world.7 Hegel thus abandons the Cartesian method of grounding philosophy by separating theoretical-transcendental consciousness from ordinary or pretheoretical consciousness. The Cartesian way of grounding has itself become problematic, ending in formalism or in "knowing before you know." Hegel rejects the transcendental-empirical doublet and its corresponding separation between transcendental and ordinary consciousness. Ordinary consciousness itself will not only provide the criteria for its assessment, in the course of its own experience vis-'a-vis these criteria; it will also test such criteria. Thus the descriptive phenomenological traversal of the various Gestalten des Bewusstseins will furnish the phenomenological introduction to transcendental philosophy. Hence the transcendental standpoint will not be imposed on the traversal, but will rather emerge immanently in the course of it. Thus, despite initial appearances to the contrary, there is a transcendental region which can be entered. However, it cannot be attained all at once, or at a single stroke, as Descartes and the early Husserl thought. Instead, ordinary consciousness (or consciousness in the natural attitude) must be led to the transcendental region through a series of mediated steps. In the course of these mediations, the transcendental standpoint and the standpoint of the natural attitude will be shown not to be fundamentally different.8 This points to a novel conception of the transcendental which is not separate or separable from history. If the transcendental region can be attained only mediately through the traversal of the Gestalten des Bewusstseins, the meaning of the transcendental has to undergo a considerable transformation 'Two recent studies of the Phenomenology both make use of this terminology to expound the argument. See Merold Westphal, History and Truth in Hegel's Phenomenology (New York: Humanities Press, 1980), and Joseph Flay, Hegel's Quest for Certainty (Albany: SUNY Press 1984). 8 Flay, op. cit., uses the term 'merge' to characterize the relation between the natural and the speculative consciousness in the Phenomenology. This term is vague, however, and conceals many important interpretive problems. Flay's discussion of those problems is quite good. It should be noted that Hegel's rejection of intellectual intuition is similar to Husserl's self-criticism of the so-called "Cartesian way" of doing the phenomenological reduction. Common to Hegel and the later Husserl is the recognition that the transcendental region cannot be attained at a single stroke, or immediately. This recognition in turn leads to a transformation in the conception of the transcendental region. Hegel moves to a dialectical holism, and Husserl discovers that the life-world itself belongs to the transcendental stratum.

8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEGEL 601 and expansion. The experience "made" by ordinary consciousness is conceived far more broadly by Hegel than by Kant, who restricted transcendental deduction to justifying a philosophy of nature. The Phenomenology of Spirit is more than an archeology and genetic account of consciousness (Bewusstsein), although it includes such. The work as a whole extends beyond an archeology of the subject to include culture and history. The bearer of the forms of consciousness is a historical and social self, which Hegel terms Geist. The Phenomenology is not only a phenomenology of consciousness; it is a Phenomenology of Geist. Geist is not a Gestalt des Bewusstseins; it is the Gestalt einer Welt. This means that the traditional means of attaining the transcendental region-such as the phenomenological reduction (Husserl)-or the transcendental deduction (Kant)-are transformed, if not eclipsed. The sense in which Hegel is or is not doing transcendental philosophy, or for that matter phenomenology, is inextricably bound up with the interpretation of Geist. For Geist can be read as a departure from transcendental philosophy in the Kantian sense. But Geist has also been read as simply another term for Kant's transcendental ego, i.e., as representing a terminological but not a conceptual change in a transcendental program. On the former reading Geist is a sociocultural-historical concept. On the latter reading Geist is an a-historical transcendental subject. Can it really be both?9 II. HEGEL'S CONCEPT OF GEIST Since time and space are limited, I shall refer to a fuller discussion elsewhere'0 and sketch briefly two different concepts of Geist which are to be found in Hegel. This contrast will allow the fundamental issues to emerge. Jurgen Habermas distinguishes two different models of Geist in Hegel, the so-called "idealist" model and the intersubjective model." In the idealist model Geist is a living identity which divides itself, opposes itself to itself, and returns to itself out of its otherness, alienation, division etc. In this model the other is notother, or the self-othering of Geist. In the second model, which corresponds to the Phenomenology, Geist is an I which is a We, a social 9This paradox points to highly controversial issues: the relation of the Phenomenology to the Logic, and the problem of the unity of the Phenomenology itself. Cf. Haym's thesis that the PhG splits up into transcendental philosophy and psychology on the one hand (Bewusstseinlehre), and philosophy of history on the other (Geist). '0 See my "Hegel's Concept of Geist" which will be published in the forthcoming volume of the Proceedings of the 1984 Biennial Meeting of the Hegel Society of America, Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit (Albany, SUNY Press). " "Arbeit und Interaktion," in Friihe politische Systeme, hrsg. G. Gohler (Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1974).

9 602 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY self which is attained only through and as a result of intersubjective interaction. The two different models are not to be distinguished genetically, for both conceptions are found within the Phenomenology itself. Yet each points to a different ontology of the transcendental region and so to a different sense of transcendental philosophy. When the concept of Geist is first introduced in the Phenomenology, it appears as a result of the struggle for recognition. In the course of the discussion of recognition, Hegel makes the point that self-consciousness cannot be fully attained simply through reflection and contemplation alone; it requires intersubjective mediation. The full sense of self-consciousness is that of an I which is also a We, and this is the initial formulation of the concept of Geist. Geist therefore designates an intersubjectively mediated social self, a concrete infinite or universal. It finds institutionalization in marriage and family as natural communities, and is extended to cover also the communal life of a people, i.e., shared language, customs, land (property), and religion. T-his concept of Geist is set forth as emerging from the transition from consciousness to self-consciousness, and so is Geist considered from the perspective of Bewusstseinlehre or Geist in its appearance. If this is to be regarded as a transcendental philosophical program and not as an introduction to such, then the question concerning the ontological interpretation of Geist is answered by saying that the transcendental subject is a social subject or an I which is a We (see Westphal, op. cit.). Hegel would not then intend to speak of an a-historical transcendental subject, but would rather seek the transcendental as incarnated in human history in the form of a community. However, this is not to "romanticize" Hegel; for what is meant by 'community' is a distinctive level of being. Community has an irreducible triadic structure, which prevents it from being reduced to a dyadic subject-object scheme such as that found in transcendental philosophy, e.g., the distinction between the founding stratum and the founded stratum. It represents a unique and distinctive level of being, namely, a structured plurality. Its unity is not simply the unity of a concept, or a logical unity. It is a unity brought about through reciprocity; i.e., as Hegel says, each recognizes the other as recognizing it. On the other hand, this does not mean that community as a structured plurality cannot be conceived at all or that it is simply an irrational surd. It is a unique whole made up of parts. The second concept of Geist is formulated in the Preface, which reflects the completion of the argument of the Phenomenology.

10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEGEL 603 Here Geist is considered not from the perspective of consciousness, but from the final perspective in which the standpoint of consciousness has been transcended. The difficult question is, In what sense is consciousness transcended? One way to understand the contrast between Geist and Bewusstsein is to note the different meanings of objectivity on each level. For consciousness, what is objective is alien, other, transcendent. Hence all philosophies that adopt the standpoint of consciousness remain haunted by subjectivism, even on the transcendental level, as Husserl has pointed out. 12 For Geist, however, objectivity is no longer alien, because it has been comprehended in the course of the traversal of the various Gestalten des Bewusstseins. To put the point somewhat too simply, when the whole of experience has been comprehended (which is what the Phenomenology claims to have done, at least in principle-this is why it has to be regarded as a transcendental argument), there is nothing in principle alien left to understand or comprehend. Objectivity thus comprehended is no longer alien, other. It is recollected not as absolutely alien and transcendent, but as not-other. Thus Hegel writes concerning Geist: But Geist becomes object, for it is just this process of becoming other it itself (i.e., making itself an object for itself) and of overcoming this otherness (und dieses Anderssein aufzuheben) (PhG 32). At the level of Geist, objectivity is no longer given a realistic, but rather a transcendental and dialectical interpretation. If Geist has its heritage in the transcendental ego, it is a heritage appropriated and modified by Hegel's dialectical interpretation of the ego as positing itself, the not-self, and the unity of these two. Does this involve an illegitimate identification of the ideal and real ground, as Thomas Seebohm contends?"3 This is an extraordinarily difficult and subtle issue. Everything depends on Hegel's distinctive formulation of identity as an identity of identity and nonidentity. It would seem that Seebohm grants only partial expression to Hegel's fundamental idea of identity as a coincidence of opposites. Seebohm's charge that there is an identification of ideal and real ground is truer of Schelling's early system of identity as indifference, which Hegel attacked as a "night in which all cows are black." In contrast, Hegel's concept of Geist is a dynamic coincidence of opposites which 12 See Hegel, Faith and Knowledge, Walter Cerf and H. S. Harris, trans. (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977). See also Edmund Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, D. Cairns, trans. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), pp. 232 ff. " "Schelling's 'Kantian' Critique of Hegel's Deduction of Categories," Clio, VIII (1979): 239 ff.

11 604 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY both reconciles and preserves the opposites. Geist is the Idea in its concrete universal process of negating itself and negating its negation and so returning to itself. That is what Hegel claims to have demonstrated in the long argument of the Phenomenology wherein substance becomes subject. Geist is the vision of itself in and through its other. 14 Hence Geist and its other do not simply collapse into undifferentiated identity. The question remains whether the two concepts of Geist -the intersubjective and idealist-are compatible, exclusive, or reciprocal concepts. Here it would seem that although due allowances must be made for the different categorial levels of the Phenomenology and its preface, much will depend on the adequacy and admissibility of Hegel's dialectical interpretation of the other in terms of negation. The question is whether the interpretation/reconstruction of other as negation, is an adequate account of the social-intersubjective sense of other. For Seebohm is right: If the real ground is identified with the ideal ground, the result is not a real other but an ideal other. The dialectical other, qua negation, belongs to the same continuum as the original subject (Seebohm 250 ff). But if that were so, then such a Geist would not be intersubjectively constituted or mediated. Is the triadic structure for which Hegel is so notorious to be understood as a communal model, an intersubjective I which is also a We, as spirit in its community? or rather in terms of the dyadic model of absolute Geist, of substance become subject? Is the unity that is claimed for the categories adequate to account for or to explain the social unity of communities, institutions, and the like? Even so dedicated a defender of the logical Hegel as Klaus Hartmann acknowledges a problem here. Hartmann maintains that the unity of categories is unable to do justice to the relation of reciprocal co-existence constitutive of communities (247 f). As a concrete living whole of parts, the unity of a community is not reducible to or explicable in bipolar categorial unities of thought and being. Does this mean, as Hartmann claims, that there is simply nothing to be understood here? i.e., no theoretical-cognitive problem? Or does it mean rather, as Josiah Royce would claim, that intersubjective community is a distinctive irreducible mode of being? I believe that Hegel is closer to Royce than to Hartmann or Seebohm. Hegel's concrete identity, first formulated in the Differenzschrift (1801), does not simply identify the real with the ideal ground. Since Hartmann knows this as well as anyone, it is sur- 14Enzyklopadie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1830), hrsg. F. Nicolin and 0. Poeggeler (Hamburg: Meiner, 1969), 214.

12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEGEL 605 prising to see him in effect concede the point that Seebohm raises against Hegel by acknowledging the inadequacy of the categories to account conceptually for intersubjective community. However, Hartmann also maintains that categories are reconstructions in thought of what is. This is an important qualification of the above negation; for the point is not really that categories identify ideal and real ground and so are inadequate to intersubjectivity, but rather that, qua reconstructions of what is, they are on a different ontological level, even a realm of shadows, as Hegel says. As Reinhold Aschenberg has persuasively argued, the Logic, as categorial ontology, presupposes a pre-categorial ontology of the Gestalten des Bewusstseins and the Gestalten des Geistes."5 Since the logical categories are reconstructions of the pre-categorial realities of experience, they presuppose the latter. The Phenomenology functions as a hermeneutical existential ontological introduction to the Logic. Hence it is not a mere ladder to the absolute standpoint which can be laid aside when the latter is attained. Nor is the Phenomenology, as Hartmann suggests (p. 237), merely a source book of illustrative material for the so-called "deep structure" or the logical categories. The uniqueness of the Phenomenology among Hegel's works is that it presents a concept of Geist as historical and intersubjective. For this reason the Phenomenology and the ordinary intersubjective consciousness whose experience it describes are not displaced when the absolute standpoint is finally attained. The Phenomenology is not simply displaced by the Logic, or subordinate to it, but, as Johannes Heinrichs claims"6, is equiprimordial with it. How could it be otherwise if Hegel's goal is not to effect a Cartesian-Platonic separation of transcendental consciousness from ordinary consciousness, but rather to show their mutual coinherence? The central problem in deciphering Hegel is to understand such equiprimordiality and coinherence of the descriptive pre-categorial ontology of the Phenomenology, with the categorial ontology of the Logic. The Logic can treat the problem of the other in terms of negation precisely because it is a reconstruction that presupposes experience, and not a total framework displacement of experience-whatever that would be. If we think through such equiprimordiality, we find that transcendental philosophy is no longer the formal indeterminate transcendental of Kant, but has become nonformal and determinate. This is more than a synthesis of Kant and Aristotle; for the 5 See Rudolf Aschenberg, "Der Wahrheitsbegriff in Hegel's 'Phanomenologie des Geistes,'" in Die ontologische Option, hrsg. Klaus Hartmann (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1976). 16See Johannes Heinrichs, Die Logik der Phanomenologie des Geistes (Bonn: Bouvier, 1974), p. 73.

13 606 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY transcendental subject is metamorphosed into Geist, and Geist requires time and history to become self-conscious. Geist, as the form of a world, is historical and has a history. Hiram College ROBERT R. WILLIAMS HEGEL'S PHENOMENOLOGY AS TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY* Like Fichte and Schelling, Hegel agrees with Kant that philosophy must be scientific and that it must be transcendental if it is to be scientific. Hegel also agrees with Fichte and Schelling that Kant was unsuccessfully transcendental and therefore unsuccessfully scientific. Williams poses a crucial question in this regard. What bearing does this have on our interpretation of that massively mystifying introduction to Hegel's system, the Phenomenology of Spirit? Is it an instance of transcendental philosophy? an introduction to transcendental philosophy? a critique and revision of transcendental philosophy? Williams wants to say yes to the last two options while denying the first. If we remove an ambiguity in the concept of an introduction to transcendental philosophy, it will become possible to say yes to all three questions. Perhaps this will give us a better fix on the Phenomenology. Williams is right in stressing Hegel's denial of any immediate access to "the transcendental region," and in pointing to the Phenomenology as providing the consequently necessary introduction to transcendental philosophy. But it is misleading to talk as if the whole of the Phenomenology were this introduction. The whole is indeed an introduction to something, but this is best identified as the scientific standpoint or absolutes Wissen. The Logic as a transcendental ontology cannot begin until this standpoint is reached, and since there is no immediate access to this standpoint, a mediated transition is required, the Phenomenology as such. However, the absolutes Wissen which is declared at the end of the long phenomenological journey needs to be distinguished from "the transcendental region," into which we find ourselves thrust * Abstract of a paper to be presented at an APA symposium on Hegel, December 29, 1985, in response to Robert Williams, "Hegel and Transcendental Philosophy," this JOUJRNAL, this issue, X/85/8210/0606$00.50? 1985 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.