In this photo series I attempt to imagine the what-is-it-like-ness of Hegel’s Abosulte Spirit, but through the lense of Nagel’s bat.
Hegel aims to answer the question What is this?in Phenomenology of Spirit. According to Hegel, when consciousness enters the realm of phenomena and acts on the unmediated, there is the inevitable realization that “thisness” which sense-certainty attributes to individuality is not specific to each entity. To the contrary, “thisness” can be found on every individual and thus is universal: “If they wanted to say ‘this’ bit of paper which they mean, if they wanted to say it, then it is impossible, because the sensuous this that is meant cannot be reached by language, which belongs to consciousness, i.e., to what which is inherently universal.”[1] There is also the problem of the indescribable nature of “thisness”—since it is a non-qualitative property, the thisness of one entity cannot be separated from the thisness of other entities. When people attempt to express the “thisness” of an entity, they always fail to describe what is actually meant, and the expression itself is always too general to represent what is being expressed: “in the actual attempt to say it, it would therefore crumble away; those who started to describe it would not be able to complete the description, but would be compelled to leave it to others, who would themselves finally have to admit to speaking about something which is not. They certainly mean, then, this bit of paper here which is quite different from the bit mentioned above; but they say ‘actual things’, ‘external or sensuous objects’, ‘absolutely singular entities’ and so on, i.e., they say of them only what is universal. Consequently, what is called the unutterable is nothing else than the untrue, the irrational, what is merely meant but not actually expressed.” [2] For Hegel, the thisness of everything is interconnected and cannot be singled out and ascribed to a single experience: the “what-is-it-like-ness” of the bat is also the “what-is-it-like-ness” of the cave, and the rocks, and the other bats.
It is clear to Hegel that, the consciousness that grasps the thisness is not of a single, subjective entity, but rather it combines various subjective viewpoints together with the objective spirit. Hegel believes, thisness should be understood conceptually since 1) the Phenomenology of Spirit is regarded as “a type of propaedeutic to philosophy rather than an exercise in or work of philosophy; it is meant to function as an induction or education of the reader to the standpoint of purely conceptual thought from which philosophy can be done.”[3] 2) the kind of point of view Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit offers inevitably render thisness to a general ontological property.
And this is another aspect that distinguishes Hegel’s thisness from that of Merleau-Ponty and Sartre’s: the point of view of the consciousness that captures and defines thisness is always situated—in the world, in time, in relationships. But instead of announcing a comprehensive vantage point that integrates all subjective and singular viewpoints, the vantage point from which thisness is perceived is situated in a single, subjective entity. Using Nagel’s bat as an example, the thisness of a bat entails a point of view—the point of view of the bat. This point of view is situated within the world because the bat itself is situated within the world. Moreover, the haecceity of the bat is as such precisely because it is perceived from the bat’s point of view. However, the haecceity of Hegel’s bat would be viewed and grasped through an almost bird's-eye view where the subject—the bat—is regarded as an intentional object among other objects which constitute parts of the thisness of the bat.
The point-of-view that thisness entails does not necessarily suggest the entity who possess this vantage point is conscious. For example, in a cave where there are a rock and a bat. The haecceity of the bat is different from the rock. Nonetheless, the thisnes of the rock still comes from the vantage point of the rock. In this case, the rock becomes the subject, the center of the phenomena—not in a traditional sense—whereas the bat becomes the object that is encompassed by the thisness of the rock.
There is thus a conflict between these two kinds of thisnes. On one hand, there is a thisness that is perceived through a vantage point that transcends our own experience and yields knowledge that is conceptual and general. On the other, thisness is seen through the scope and the vantage point of a single, subjective entity; it is phenomenologically singular and aconceptual.
Nagel in his book The View from Nowhere discusses this apparent conflict where he calls the former one ‘a view from nowhere’ as he attempts to combine the perspective of a particular person inside the world with an objective view of that same world, the person and their viewpoint included. For him, these two viewpoints seem to be in conflict in nature. “An objective standpoint is created by leaving a more subjective, individual, or even just human perspective behind; but there are things about the world and life and ourselves that cannot be adequately understood from a maximally objective standpoint, however, much it may extend our understanding beyond the point from which we started.”[4] Nonetheless, a purely subjective standpoint is proved as not sufficient. We need a view that is wider than our subjective experience to provide us with theoretical knowledge that is not accessible through a purely subjective standpoint. Like Nagel says “…that we are small creatures in a big world of which we have only very partial understanding, and that how things seem to us depends both on the world by accumulating information at a given level – by extensive observation from one standpoint. But we can raise our understanding to a new level only if we examine th
at relation between the world and ourselves… and form a new conception that includes a more detached understanding of ourselves, of the world, and of interaction between them.”[5]
Therefore, thisness is the constant interplay between the universal and the singular, the individual and the assemblage, the transcendental and the immanent.
[1] G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 66
[2] Ibid., 77
[3]Paul, Redding, "Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition)
[4] Thomas, Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 7.
[5] Ibid, 5.