I believe that Charles Taylor’s well-known interpretation of Hegel, in his Hegel (Cambridge U. Press, 1975), is mistaken in a systematic way, which has not been adequately clarified in much of the literature that responds to his book. I devote five pages (pp. 122-126) of my Hegel’s Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God (Cambridge U. Press, 2005) to my critique of Taylor's book, and most of the book to expounding my alternative to Taylor’s interpretation. Since I haven’t laid out this critique online, I will give a brief summary of it here.
According to one of the central themes of Taylor’s book, Hegel sees individual humans as “vehicles” for the embodiment of “cosmic spirit” (p. 89), or of a “cosmic reason” (p. 562). True infinity, Taylor also writes, is “an infinite life embodied in a circle of finite beings, each of which is inadequate to it and therefore goes under, but is replaced in necessary order by another” (p. 240). Thus cosmic spirit, cosmic reason, or true infinity evidently stands by itself, as the standard that finite beings try but fail to live up to, or as the agent that uses finite things as its vehicle. The result of these metaphors of the “vehicle” or the external standard is that Taylor’s account fails to articulate the unity or the identity of the finite with the infinite. Of course Taylor is aware that Hegel intends such a unity, but because Taylor doesn’t get into focus the arguments by which Hegel actually accomplishes it, Taylor’s own metaphors—the “vehicle” and the unreachable standard—end up taking over his presentation.
The arguments that Taylor doesn’t get into focus are Hegel’s arguments for the failures of the “something,” the finite, and the spurious infinity to achieve “reality”—arguments that I analyze in sections 3.4 and 3.6-3.9 of my book. Taylor neither quotes nor interprets Hegel’s statements that true infinity “is only as a transcending of the finite” (Science of Logic GW 21:133, Suhrkamp edition 5:160, Miller translation p. 146), and that the true infinite is not “a power existing outside” the finite (same pages). These statements sum up Hegel’s alternative to the spurious infinity that presents itself as separate from and opposed to the finite. Hegel has shown, in his treatment of the something, the finite, and the spurious infinity, why and how the finite must transcend itself in order to achieve “reality.” It must do so in order to be “in itself,” as Hegel puts it in his introduction of “reality” (Realität) in section A of “Determinate Being (Dasein).” Anything that is determined by its relation to something other than itself, as the something, the finite, and the spurious infinity all are, isn’t fully “in itself” and thus isn’t “real.” (The spurious infinity is spurious, fails to be infinite, because it is determined by its relation to something that’s other than itself, namely, the finite.) So true infinity, the true “reality,” must “be only as a transcending of the finite,” and not as “a power existing outside” the finite.
This is Hegel’s demonstration of how the true infinity is identical with the finite—and by the same token how the Concept is identical with Being and Essence, and Spirit is identical with Nature, and Absolute Spirit is identical with Subjective and Objective Spirit. All of these relations embody the same pattern of identity in difference, or true infinity, which is why any interpretation of Hegel’s system that doesn’t get the pattern into focus will mislead its readers about what Hegel is up to in his entire system.
Taylor’s description of individual humans as “vehicles” for the embodiment of cosmic “spirit” doesn’t completely misrepresent Hegel, because “spirit” does transcend individual humans, but Taylor’s description does systematically overlook the fact that spirit does this only through the individual’s transcendence of her finite condition in pursuit of her own selfhood and reality—that is, it overlooks the side of Hegel’s true infinity that is critical of a “transcendence” that’s understood as a “power outside” the finite, or as a “beyond.” The key to understanding Hegel’s conception of true infinity in this way is seeing that his critique of Kant and Fichte, for allowing freedom to become mired in “spurious infinity,” overlies a fundamental agreement with Kant and Fichte about the importance of freedom as transcending finitude. In this way, interpreters of Hegel who emphasize the continuity of his thinking with Kant’s, as Robert Pippin does in contrast to Taylor, are quite right. Though they may not realize the full metaphysical significance of freedom’s transcending finitude—the way in which this transcending brings about something that’s “real” in a way that the finite is not.
It is easy to suppose that the only way to take Hegel’s theological language and interests seriously is to assume, as Taylor does, that God (or Geist) for Hegel is the primary reality, whose existence is not an issue in the way that the existence of finite things like ourselves is an issue. But Geist cannot be simply other than us, opposed to us (as it would have to be if it “used” us as its “vehicles”), on pain of being finite, itself. It is also true that we cannot be simply other than it—we cannot be simply finite—on pain of being unreal. And it is also true that despite this absence of simple otherness between the finite and the infinite, there must be, and is, a significant difference between finite and infinite, in order for this whole issue of their “unity” or identity to arise. This mutual dependence or identity-in-difference of finite and infinite, which is required for their (“truly infinite”) reality, is what we must understand in order to see how Hegel supersedes both conventional theism (with its notion of God as “the supreme being,” which as “a being” contrasted to other beings is, in fact, inherently finite) and traditional atheism by finding some real truth in each of them but also definitively going beyond each of them, and (thus) beyond the opposition between them. The truth in conventional theism is its insistence on the reality of transcendence. And the truth in traditional atheism is its rejection of a dualism that opposes God to the world as a separate being. Hegel’s conception of the true infinity as the finite’s transcending of itself shows how these two truths can be combined in a perfectly intelligible way. Which, however, is still so unfamiliar that few theologians, few atheists or humanists, and few interpreters of Hegel ever really get it into focus.
It is worth noting that while none of the major Anglophone interpreters of Hegel in the 45 years since Taylor wrote his book, interpreters such as Robert Pippin, Terry Pinkard, Robert Stern, Kenneth Westphal, Stephen Houlgate, Peter Hodgson, William Desmond, and Robert Brandom, has agreed with Taylor’s way of reading Hegel, none of them seems to have brought into focus the relation between finite and infinite, and nature and Spirit, that I have sketched. Of course most interpreters mention negativity, or identity in difference, or true infinity, at one point or another. But I’m not aware of an interpreter who has seen how they are the backbone of Hegel’s system, in the way that I’ve tried briefly to indicate here, and in more detail in my (2005). The habits of thought that Hegel is seeking to undermine, are very hard to shake.
For more detail on my way of reading Hegel’s system, please see, in addition to my (2005), my Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019) and the papers collected on my blog, robertmwallace.blogspot.com
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