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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
It is a commonplace among certain recent philosophers that there is no such thing as the essence of anything. Nietzsche, for example, asserts that things have no essence of their own, because they are nothing but ceaselessly changing ways of acting on, and reacting to, other things. Wittgenstein, famously, rejects the idea that there is an essence to language and thought – at least if we mean by that some a priori logical structure underlying our everyday utterances. Finally, Richard Rorty urges that we ‘abandon … the notion of “essence” altogether’, along with ‘the notion that man's essence is to be a knower of essences’.
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2 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), §§89, 92, 97Google Scholar.
3 Rorty, Richard, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), pp. 361, 367Google Scholar.
4 For a defence of the view that Nietzsche does not understand the will to power to be the ‘underlying essence’ of things, but rather their inner ‘pathos’, see Houlgate, Stephen, Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism of Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 66–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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6 Rorty, Richard, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982) pp. 46–7Google Scholar, my italics.
7 Taylor, Charles, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1975), pp. 287, 299, 300CrossRefGoogle Scholar, my italics.
8 Nietzsche, , The Will to Power, §515Google Scholar. See Houlgate, , Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism of Metapr ysics, p. 37Google Scholar.
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10 Hegel, G. W. F., Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. Moldenhauer, E. and Michel, K. M., 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969)Google Scholar [Theorie Werkausgabe, vols. 5, 6], 2: 246Google Scholar; Science of Logic, trans. Miller, A. V. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1989), p. 577Google Scholar.
11 Pippin, Robert, Hegel's Idealism. The Satisfactions of SelfConsciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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13 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 1: 68–9, 82, 116–18, 131Google Scholar; Science of Logic, pp. 69–70, 82, 109–11, 122. See also Henrich, Dieter, ‘Hegel's Logik der Reflexion. Neue Fassung’, in Die Wissenschaft der Logik und die Logik der Reflexion, ed. Henrich, D. (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1978)Google Scholar [Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 18], p. 246Google Scholar.
14 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 1: 134Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 124: ‘the determination is, as such, open to relationship to other’.
15 Hegel, G. W. F, Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1830). Erster Teil: Die Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. Moldenhauer, E. and Michel, K. M. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970)Google Scholar [Theorie Werkausgabe, vol. 8], pp. 225–7Google Scholar [§108 and Addition]); The Encyclopaedia Logic, trans. Geraets, T. F., Suchting, W. F. and Harris, H. S. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991), pp. 171–2Google Scholar.
16 Hegel, , Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1830). Erster Teil: Die Wissenschaft der Logik, p. 229 [§111]Google Scholar; The Encyclopaedia Logic, p. 173.
17 For a more detailed discussion of the transition from the doctrine of being to the doctrine of essence in Hegel's Science of Logic, see Biard, J. et al. , eds., Introduction à la lecture de la Science de la Logique de Hegel. I. L'Etre (Paris: Aubier, 1981), pp. 280–91Google Scholar.
18 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 17Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 393.
19 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 18Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 394 (translation emended).
20 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 18Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 394
21 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 18Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 394.
22 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 19Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 395.
23 See Henrich, , ‘Hegel's Logik der Reflexion. Neue Fassung’, p. 236Google Scholar.
24 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 13Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 389.
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26 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 22Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 398 (translation emended).
27 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 19, 21Google Scholar; Science of Logic, pp. 395, 397.
28 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 1: 118Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 111.
29 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 22Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 398.
30 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 22Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 397.
31 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 22Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 398.
32 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 23Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 399 (translation emended).
33 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 23Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 398 (translation emended).
34 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 22Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 398. For Henrich's subtle analysis of this process, see ‘Hegel's Logik der Reflexion. Neue Fassung’, pp. 256–0027;60.
35 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 23Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 399.
36 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 25Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 400.
37 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 1: 66Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 68.
38 See, for example, Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 202Google Scholar; Science of Logic, p. 542 (on ‘immediate, unreflected actuality’). For Hegel, therefore, the world of nature and history, which is the unfolding of reason or the Idea, must include a moment of irreducible, immediate contingency. On this, see Henrich, Dieter, ‘Hegels Theorie über den Zufall’, in Dieter Henrich, Hegel im Kontext, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1967), pp. 157–86Google Scholar, and Houlgate, Stephen, ‘Necessity and Contingency in Hegel's Science of Logic’, The Owl of Minerva, 27, 1 (Fall 1995): 37–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
39 Hegel, , Wissenschaft der Logik, 2: 122–3, 220Google Scholar; Science of Logic, pp. 477–8, 556.
40 This might well be one significant difference between Hegel and Wittgenstein and one significant similarity between Hegel and Nietzsche.
41 Deleuze, Gilles, Difference and Repetition, trans. Patton, P. (London: Athlone Press, 1994), p. xix, my italics.Google Scholar
42 Marx, , Selected Writings, p. 389Google Scholar, my italics.
43 Hegel, , Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften (1830). Erster Teil: Die Wissenschaft der Logik, p. 236 [§114]Google Scholar; The Encyclopaedia Logic, p. 179.
