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The “Unhappy Consciousness” And Conscious Unhappiness: On Adorno's Critique Of Hegel And The Idea Of An Hegelian Critique Of Adorno
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2015
Abstract
In the early sections of The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy, Hegel offered some advice on how not to write the history of philosophy. In the hands of the collector of philosophical opinions “philosophy is transposed to the plane of information. Information is concerned with alien objects”. But for Hegel a scarcely less inert relation to previous work in philosophy is implied when this work is taken as a series of faltering steps towards the invention of a perfected thought-technique which would spare truth the labour of error. In these circumstances “The preceding philosophical systems would at all times be nothing but practice studies for the big brains”. Research on the Phenomenology of Spirit has occasionally resembled both an aggregation of inert philological objects and a series of intellectual work-outs. But either fate may be preferable to its relegation to the honourable oblivion of Gedankendichtung, “conceptual poetry”. The phrase “Hegel-specialist” has an oxymoronic ring to it; but the separation of faculties which governs this need for experts cannot be wished away. A stuffed replica of the Phenomenology of Spirit, or even a requirement that all philosophers should speak Hegelian, can hardly today provide more than philosophical kitsch. Hegel's philosophical compositions continue mutely to reproach the graceless cerebration sometimes conducted in their name, but they are still worse served by what Hegel referred to as “the conceit that will not argue”. These considerations also apply to the content of interpretations of the Phenomenology itself and of Hegel's thought in general. Some recent readings have emphasized Hegel's Kantian and Fichtean inheritance to the point where it might almost be thought that what is distinctively interesting about Hegel has vanished altogether. But such readings represent a fair response not merely to any idea that Hegel kindly allows us to have back intact the dogmatic metaphysics harshly prohibited by Kant, but also to interpretations which forget that Hegel's critique of epistemology proceeds immanently and epistemologically rather than being shot from a pistol. Discussion of the “unhappy consciousness” might stand as an epitome for these oppositions in Hegel-reception. At one extreme lies Walter Kaufmann's suggestion that “Hegel evidently wanted to get some ideas about medieval Christianity off his chest…”; but deeper and more nuanced readings of the presence of a phenomenology of religious consciousness in this passage are not lacking, above all the monograph by Wahl and Hyppolite's discussion in his commentary.
- Type
- Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
- Information
- Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 15 , Issue 1: number 29 , Spring/Summer 1994 , pp. 71 - 88
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 1994
References
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