Thought and Reality in Hegel's System

Thought and Reality in Hegel’s System/31taking effort and diligent application are not in the least essential to thesearch after truth: truth is given, is thrust upon us in immediate, intuitiveperception. But this is a dangerous attitude, Hegel urges. It may bethat God gives to His beloved in sleep; but, so far as we can see, thatwhich is given in sleep is usually discovered to be simply the wares ofsleep. In less figurative language, if truth is a matter of feeling, howeverhigh above reason the feeling may be supposed to stand, then it is relativeand the search for it is useless: individual perception, immediateintuition, or what not, is too prone to cater to individual prejudices andprepossessions. “What has its root only in my feelings, is only for me; itis mine, but not its own; it has no independent existence in and foritself.” 74 Hence, if ultimate reality is and can be only an object of feeling,whether that feeling be called intuition, faith, immediate certainty,or ultra-rational perception, then there is absolutely no reason why thereal should not be denied objectivity; on the contrary, there seems to beevery reason to urge that it is reduced to purely subjective terms. Hegelmakes merry over this predicament of the Jacobian philosophy, and sarcasticallyexclaims: “Truth is in a bad way, when all metaphysics isdone away with, and the only philosophy acknowledged is not a philosophyat all!” 75But fortunately for truth it is not in this sad predicament. In supportingthis position Jacobi overlooks the fact that short-cuts in philosophyare as useless and hurtful as they are in any other field where assiduousand patient toil is an absolute requisite. Philosophy, the discoveryof truth, does not depend upon a miracle, as Jacobi asserts, but uponhard work. Jacobi was led to his false position by his misconception ofthe nature of thought as a mediating activity. This Hegel sees clearlyand criticizes sharply and decisively. As Jacobi conceives the matter,the mediation of thought is merely a progression from finite to finite,from conditioned to conditioning which is in turn conditioned. 76 It is aprocess of mediation among phenomena quasi-mechanically related toeach other; thus it can be nothing but a regresses ad infinitum. The endof this infinite regress cannot be anything more than a blank abstraction,the empty absolute, a barren identity of thought and being. 77 Theultimately real must lie beyond such knowledge, since to know it wouldbe to limit it and a limited absolute is a contradiction in terms. 78 Thusthere is an impassable gulf set between the finite and conditioned andthe infinite and unconditioned, between the realm of that which seemsand that which really is. And the process of mediation is arbitrarily