Who
Thinks Abstractly?
Written: by Hegel c. 1808;
Source: Kaufmann, Walter. Hegel: Texts and Commentary;
Published: Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1966, pp. 113-118.
Think? Abstractly? — Sauve qui peut! Let those who can save themselves! Even now I can
hear a traitor, bought by the enemy, exclaim these words, denouncing this essay because it will plainly deal with metaphysics.
For metaphysics is a word, no less than abstract, and almost thinking
as well, from which everybody more or less runs away as from a man who has
caught the plague.
But the
intention here really is not so wicked, as if the meaning of thinking and of
abstract were to be explained here. There is nothing the beautiful world finds
as intolerable as explanations. I, too, find it terrible when somebody begins
to explain, for when worst comes to worst I understand everything myself. Here
the explanation of thinking and abstract would in any case be entirely
superfluous; for it is only because the beautiful world knows what it means to
be abstract that it runs away. Just as one does not desire what one does not
know, one also cannot hate it. Nor is it my intent to try craftily to reconcile
the beautiful world with thinking or with the abstract as if, under the
semblance of small talk, thinking and the abstract were to be put over till in
the end they had found their way into society incognito, without having aroused
any disgust; even as if they were to be adopted imperceptibly by society, or,
as the Swabians say, hereingezäunselt,
before the author of this complication suddenly exposed this strange guest,
namely the abstract, whom the whole party had long treated and recognized under
a different title as if he were a good old acquaintance. Such scenes of
recognition which are meant to instruct the world against its will have the
inexcusable fault that they simultaneously humiliate, and the wirepuller tries
with his artifice to gain a little fame; but this humiliation and this vanity
destroy the effect, for they push away again an instruction gained at such a
price.
In any
case, such a plan would be ruined from the start, for it would require that the
crucial word of the riddle is not spoken at the outset. But this has already
happened in the title. If this essay toyed with such craftiness, these words
should not have been allowed to enter right in the beginning; but like the
cabinet member in a comedy, they should have been required to walk around
during the entire play in their overcoat, unbuttoning it only in the last
scene, disclosing the flashing star of wisdom. The unbuttoning of the
metaphysical overcoat would be less effective, to be sure, than the unbuttoning
of the minister's: it would bring to light no more than a couple of words, and
the best part of the joke ought to be that it is shown that society has long
been in possession of the matter itself; so what they would gain in the end
would be the mere name, while the minister's star signifies something real — a
bag of money.
That
everybody present should know what thinking is and what is abstract is
presupposed in good society, and we certainly are in good society. The question
is merely who thinks abstractly. The intent, as already mentioned, is
not to reconcile society with these things, to expect it to deal with something
difficult, to appeal to its conscience not frivolously to neglect such a matter
that befits the rank and status of beings gifted with reason. Rather it is my
intent to reconcile the beautiful world with itself, although it does not seem
to have a bad conscience about this neglect; still, at least deep down, it has
a certain respect for abstract thinking as something exalted, and it looks the
other way not because it seems too lowly but because it appears too exalted,
not because it seems too mean but rather too noble, or conversely because it
seems an Espèce, something special; it
seems something that does not lend one distinction in general society, like new
clothes, but rather something that — like wretched clothes, or rich ones if
they are decorated with precious stones in ancient mounts or embroidery that,
be it ever so rich, has long become quasi-Chinese — excludes one from society
or makes one ridiculous in it.
Who
thinks abstractly? The uneducated, not the educated.
Good society does not think abstractly because it is too easy, because it is
too lowly (not referring to the external status) — not from an empty
affectation of nobility that would place itself above that of which it is not
capable, but on account of the inward inferiority of the matter.
The
prejudice and respect for abstract thinking are so great that sensitive
nostrils will begin to smell some satire or irony at this point; but since they
read the morning paper they know that there is a prize to be had for satires
and that I should therefore sooner earn it by competing for it than give up
here without further ado.
I have
only to adduce examples for my proposition: everybody will grant that they
confirm it. A murderer is led to the place of execution. For the common
populace he is nothing but a murderer. Ladies perhaps remark that he is a
strong, handsome, interesting man. The populace finds this remark terrible:
What? A murderer handsome? How can one think so
wickedly and call a murderer handsome; no doubt, you yourselves are something
not much better! This is the corruption of morals that is prevalent in the
upper classes, a priest may add, knowing the bottom of things and human hearts.
One who
knows men traces the development of the criminal's mind: he finds in his
history, in his education, a bad family relationship between his father and
mother, some tremendous harshness after this human being had done some minor
wrong, so he became embittered against the social order — a first reaction to
this that in effect expelled him and henceforth did not make it possible for
him to preserve himself except through crime. — There may be people who will
say when they hear such things: he wants to excuse this murderer! After all I
remember how in my youth I heard a mayor lament that writers of books were
going too far and sought to extirpate Christianity and righteousness
altogether; somebody had written a defense of suicide; terrible, really too
terrible! — Further questions revealed that The Sufferings of Werther [by Goethe, 1774] were meant.
This is
abstract thinking: to see nothing in the murderer except the abstract fact that
he is a murderer, and to annul all other human essence in him with this simple
quality.
It is
quite different in refined, sentimental circles — in
In
quite a different manner I once heard a common old woman who worked in a
hospital kill the abstraction of the murderer and bring him to life for honor.
The severed head had been placed on the scaffold, and the sun was shining. How
beautifully, she said, the sun of God's grace shines on Binder's head! — You
are not worthy of having the sun shine on you, one says to a rascal with whom
one is angry. This woman saw that the murderer's head was struck by the
sunshine and thus was still worthy of it. She raised it from the punishment of
the scaffold into the sunny grace of God, and instead of accomplishing the
reconciliation with violets and sentimental vanity, saw him accepted in grace
in the higher sun.
Old
woman, your eggs are rotten! the maid says to the
market woman. What? she replies, my eggs rotten? You
may be rotten! You say that about my eggs? You? Did
not lice eat your father on the highways? Didn't your mother run away with the
French, and didn't your grandmother die in a public hospital? Let her get a
whole shirt instead of that flimsy scarf; we know well where she got that scarf
and her hats: if it were not for those officers, many wouldn't be decked out
like that these days, and if their ladyships paid more attention to their
households, many would be in jail right now. Let her mend the holes in her
stockings! — In brief, she does not leave one whole thread on her. She thinks
abstractly and subsumes the other woman — scarf, hat, shirt, etc., as well as
her fingers and other parts of her, and her father and whole family, too —
solely under the crime that she has found the eggs rotten. Everything about her
is colored through and through by these rotten eggs, while those officers of
which the market woman spoke — if, as one may seriously doubt, there is
anything to that — may have got to see very different things.
To move
from the maid to a servant, no servant is worse off than one who works for a
man of low class and low income; and he is better off the nobler his master is.
The common man again thinks more abstractly, he gives himself noble airs
vis-à-vis the servant and relates himself to the other man merely as to a
servant; he clings to this one predicate. The servant is best off among the French.
The nobleman is familiar with his servant, the Frenchman is his friend. When
they are alone, the servant does the talking: see Diderot's
Jacques et son maître; the master does nothing
but take snuff and see what time it is and lets the servant take care of
everything else. The nobleman knows that the servant is not merely a servant,
but also knows the latest city news, the girls, and harbors good suggestions;
he asks him about these matters, and the servant may say what he knows about
these questions. With a French master, the servant may not only do this; he may
also broach a subject, have his own opinions and insist on them; and when the
master wants something, it is not done with an order but he has to argue and
convince the servant of his opinion and add a good word to make sure that this
opinion retains the upper hand.
In the
army we encounter the same difference. Among the Austrians a soldier may be
beaten, he is canaille; for whatever has the passive right to be beaten is
canaille. Thus the common soldier is for the officer this abstractum
of a beatable subject with whom a gentleman who has a uniform and port d'epée must trouble himself — and that could drive one
to make a pact with the devil.
Note by Walter Kaufman:
In
the nineteenth-century edition of Hegel's Werke,
this article (Wer denkt
abstrakt?) appears in volume XVII, 400-5. Rosenkranz discusses it briefly (
Glockner reprints it in his edition of the Werke
in vol. XX (1930), which is entitled: Vermischte
Schriften aus der Berliner Zeit. He
includes it among "four feuilletons that Hegel wrote for local
papers during the later years of his
Hoffmeister, whose critical edition of Hegel's Berliner
Schriften: 1818-1831 (1956) is much more
comprehensive than Glockner's (800 pages versus 550),
does not include this article. In a footnote he says that it belongs to Hegel's
“
Of Glockner's "four feuilletons" Hoffmeister retains only one, and that is really a letter
to a newspaper, protesting their review of a new play. Hoffmeister
gives no reasons for dating this article so much earlier than Rosenkranz and Glockner did.
Possibly, the disparaging remark about Kotzebue (a
German playwright, 1761-1819) suggests a date before Kotzebue
was stabbed to death by a German theology student. That the piece was written
in
Source: HyperText (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/)