I. Introduction

It can be argued that Hegel's philosophy of biology is one of the strongest chapters in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature.Footnote ¹ It can further be argued that Hegel's understanding of organic life underscores the explanatory power of ‘dialectical thinking’, as Hegel himself claims.Footnote ²,Footnote ³ To make good on these claims would require us to interpret and apply Hegel's notion of teleology in regard to the phenomenon of organic life and to evaluate its fruitfulness in detail.Footnote ⁴ I am certain that a strong case can be made that a Hegelian understanding of organicity will enrich contemporary philosophy of biology precisely because Hegel's understanding of ‘teleological relations’ in nature helps us to overcome many one-sided debates of our still prevalent Cartesian picture of nature. In other words, a detailed reconstruction of Hegel's logical consideration of teleology can offer us some of the categories that are needed for a contemporary philosophy of nature.Footnote ⁵

In this essay, however, I will approach Hegel's philosophy from a different perspective. What can we learn about Hegel's treatment of teleology and the ‘Idea of Life’Footnote ⁶ in his Logic if we start out by looking at the corresponding passages in his Philosophy of Nature first?

It will be argued that Hegel's Philosophy of Nature presents the notion of life in the ‘Organic Physics’ as a ‘true synthesis’ that unites the relations between natural objects that were discussed in the chapters on ‘Mechanics’ and ‘Elementary Physics’ in a way that is strikingly similar to the development of the notion of teleology in Hegel's chapter on Objectivity in the Logic. However, within the Logic, the notion of extrinsic teleology is introduced first, while the discussion of the notion of life as ‘intrinsic teleology’ is postponed and placed at the beginning of the next chapter: ‘Life’ is the first aspect of ‘The Idea’, while ‘Teleology’ is the last part of the chapter on Objectivity. Following Hegel in assuming a foundational function of his Logic for the development of the categorical distinctions in his Philosophy of Nature, this ‘mismatch’ between logic and philosophy of nature inevitably leads to the following two questions: what are the reasons for Hegel to treat the notion of life differently in his Logic when compared with its treatment in the Philosophy of Nature? And further: what is the ‘best’ or most convincing ‘logical place’ for a possible chapter on ‘life’ in a program like the Hegelian logic?

I will argue, first, that Hegel in fact discusses two separate notions of life: one more ‘materialist’ or ‘biological’ version, and one more traditional notion of life. Second, given this distinction it will be shown that it would be more fitting for Hegel's aim of ‘demonstrating the philosophical necessity of the logical notions employed in the Philosophy of Nature’ (Enc: §246, 9: 15; §246Z, 9: 20)Footnote ⁷ to discuss the logic of ‘finite’ or ‘material’ life in the chapter on objectivity, while discussing the ‘Idea of Life’ (or the notion of an ‘absolute life’) at the place where Hegel does address such a notion, but then better without Hegel's references to clearly biological themes. Such a reversal of the order in the Logic would be helpful for at least three reasons. It would strengthen Hegel's claim that the philosophy of nature is based upon the ordering of concepts in the chapter on ‘Objectivity’, thus increasing the coherence between the Logic and the Philosophy of Nature. It would further avoid the oddity within the Logic of introducing the notion of external teleology before the notion of inner teleology. This in turn would help us to differentiate more precisely between the notions of ‘life’ and ‘spirit’, or ‘material life’ and ‘logical life’ in Hegel's philosophy in a way that will be fruitful for further discussions of Hegel's different usages of the notion of ‘life’ in his philosophy.

II. The relation between Hegel's Logic and his Philosophy of Nature

This essay will investigate the chapter on teleology in the Logic by taking the Philosophy of Nature, not the Logic, as a starting point. The motivation to ‘reverse’ the perspective—looking at the Logic from the vantage point of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, instead of following with Hegel the ‘pure logical self-movement of the Concept’ (WL: 5: 17, 5: 50)Footnote ⁸—is based on Hegel's understanding of the task of his Philosophy of Nature.

Hegel asserts that philosophy of nature is a genuinely philosophical, and therefore separate enterprise from the empirical natural sciences. Hegel describes ‘empirical physics’ and ‘philosophy of nature’ both as ‘thinking cognitions of nature’ (Enc: 9: 11–13; VN: 1–13).Footnote ⁹ Science, like all human activities, is dependent upon thinking, and thus makes use of logical determinations of thought. Therefore, we can always find an implicit ‘metaphysics’ in any scientific theory:

From Hegel's perspective, science employs an empirical method that is based upon a hidden ‘metaphysics of rationality’—an implicit understanding of concepts like cause, law, identity, difference, etc.Footnote ¹¹—that is employed in the search for the universal order and law-like ‘inner side’ of nature. In this way, science unveils—to a degree—the inner logic that underlies nature.Footnote ¹² Without getting deeper into Hegel's appreciation and criticism of this ‘metaphysics’ that underlies science, the crucial point for our question is that the scientific ‘instinct of reason’ is in so far justified according to Hegel as nature truly has an ‘inner logical side’ that is partly unveiled by science, but that also needs to be further interpreted by philosophy.Footnote ¹³

To be more precise: Nature as such is in a decisive sense surely nothing ‘logical’ for Hegel. Hegel is not a Berkeleyan idealist. Nature is neither ‘consciousness’, nor ‘spirit’, nor ‘intelligence’. By being spatial, temporal and finite—Hegel uses the term ‘externality’ (Äußerlichkeit)Footnote ¹⁴ to describe these basic properties of natural existence—nature is essentially different from the logical determinations of thought that are discussed in Hegel's Logic, and from ‘spirit’ as discussed in his philosophy of spirit. But nevertheless, both the success of science as well as true thoughts about nature are possible precisely because there is an underlying logic in nature after all.Footnote ¹⁵

Hegel captures this ambivalence of nature as being both ‘non-logical’, but at the same time having an underlying intelligible order, in his dictum that nature is the ‘Idea in the form of otherness’ (Idee in der Form des Andersseins).Footnote ¹⁶ If this assertion is supposed to have any precise meaning then whatever we learn about ‘the Idea’ in Hegel's Logic therefore has got to have decisive consequences for Hegel's understanding of nature. Hegel even defines at one point the task of his Philosophy of Nature as ‘finding the Idea’, the ‘realized Concept’ in nature: ‘The determination and purpose of philosophy of nature is therefore that spirit should find its own essence, i.e. the Concept in nature, its counterpart in it’ (Enc: §246Z, 9: 23).Footnote ¹⁷

In a modest understanding then, this means that we need to be able to show with Hegel that the dialectical development of certain given notions of the Begriffslogik actually helps us to gain important insight into aspects of nature. In other words, the empirical reality itself has to correspond to these notions as they are developed based on purely logical grounds in the Logic, as Hegel puts it.Footnote ¹⁸ But in fact Hegel claims more, namely that that his philosophy of nature has to relate the results of natural sciences to the inner necessity of the order of concepts that we arrive at if we take a purely logical stance. If nature is ‘the Idea in its otherness’ then Hegel must be able to demonstrate at least a certain plausible correspondence between the ‘universal order’ of nature as discovered in natural science and discussed in his Philosophy of Nature on the one hand, and the ‘immanent and necessary’ development of the self-determination of the highest notion in the Logic, the Concept, on the other hand (Enc: §246, 9: 15).

Therefore, if we want to study Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, we are told by Hegel that the ‘philosophical necessity’ of the notions that are employed by him to describe natural phenomena are not just a result of empirical investigations, but a result of dialectical conceptual explications. Accordingly, the task of philosophy is to develop a logical foundation for the most fundamental notions that we employ when we reconstruct our grasp of the structure of reality.Footnote ¹⁹ To philosophically understand a part of nature (or culture) thus means to grasp the ‘philosophical necessity’ of the underlying defining notions of that aspect of reality in and for the process of the self-realization of the Absolute Idea (Enc: §§381–82, 10: 17–26).Footnote ²⁰ One important consequence of this philosophical stance is Hegel's own attempt to correlate the philosophical understanding of natural and cultural phenomena with the corresponding dialectical unfolding of logical notions.Footnote ²¹ Hegel thus in his Philosophy of Nature implicitly and explicitly makes the order of the chapters of his Philosophy of Nature parallel to the order of the logical development in the chapter on ‘Objectivity’: ‘If the first part of philosophy of nature was Mechanism, and the second, at its apex, Chemism, this third [organic] part is Teleology’ (Enc: §377Z, 9: 339).Footnote ²² If we investigate this parallelism that Hegel draws here, we will see below that it makes perfect sense from a Hegelian perspective to look at organic life in this way. In fact, to do so is, as we will argue, one of the biggest strengths and most convincing aspects of Hegel's philosophy of biology. However, if we want to be precise, we also have to admit that this stated parallelism does, in fact, not actually match the way in which Hegel enfolds the more detailed discussion of these logical determinations in his Logic.Footnote ²³ Against Hegel's explicitly stated parallelism, there is in fact a mismatch between his Logic and his Philosophy of Nature.

III. A ‘mismatch’ in the correlations between the Logic and the Philosophy of Nature?

In his Philosophy of Nature Hegel characterizes life (Leben) as the ‘existing Idea’ (Enc: §337, 9: 337: ‘Hereby the Idea came into existence’ (‘Die Idee ist hiermit zur Existenz gekommen’)) while the Idea itself is characterized in the Logic as the ‘Unity of Concept and Reality’ or as the ‘Unity of Subjectivity and Objectivity’.Footnote ²⁴ If we want to understand Hegel's interpretation of life in nature, we are therefore required to study the Logik des Begriffs. But where exactly should we find the logical notions and categories that are foundational for Hegel's philosophy of biology?

It seems obvious to point to the chapter called ‘Life’ in Hegel's Logic, i.e. the first part of the section about ‘the Idea’ (see WL: 6: 469–87). The subdivisions of this part match precisely with the structure of Hegel's analysis of organic life in his ‘Organics’.Footnote ²⁵ But we can also easily notice that the preceding chapter in the Logic (called ‘Objectivity’, WL: 6: 402–61) closely corresponds to the structure of the Philosophy of Nature as a whole: the first sub-chapter ‘Mechanism’ corresponds to the part called ‘Mechanics’ of the Philosophy of Nature, ‘Chemism’ is the culmination point of the section called ‘Physics of Individuality’, and surely for Hegel organic life is characterized by teleology. We have just seen that Hegel himself claims that the main divisions in his Philosophy of Nature do in fact correspond to the ‘Objectivity’ chapter in his Logic.Footnote ²⁶ But what are we then to make of the ‘extra’ chapter on the ‘Idea of Life’? In other words: how do we interpret these overlapping correspondences? Are there two chapters of the Logic that Hegel draws from in his Organics, one called ‘Teleology’ and another one called ‘Life’?

A closer look tells us that the teleology that is discussed in the Logic is primarily external teleology, while Hegel tells us explicitly in his Philosophy of Nature that life is characterized by inner teleology:

If we assume—following Hegel's own hint—a linear correspondence between the Philosophy of Nature and the Logic, then this leads us to the obvious question why the chapter called ‘Life’ in the Logic is not the last subchapter of ‘Objectivity’. In other words, why do we instead find here something else, namely a treatment of primarily extrinsic teleological relations? The order in the Logic seems reversed, at least at first glance, when we look at it from the perspective of Hegel's Realphilosophie. What are we to make of this quite striking ‘mismatch’ between the development of concepts in Hegel's Logic as opposed to their application or appearance in the Realphilosophie? What are the consequences of this reversal of order, both for the chapter on teleology in the Logic and for the understanding of organisms in his Organics?

To approach an answer to these questions I will, first, shortly sketch the philosophical notion of organicity that is central to Hegel's Organics. I will then, second, compare and contrast this notion of organic life with what is said in the chapters on ‘Teleology’ and ‘Life’ in the Logic respectively. This will lead us to tentatively argue for structural changes in Hegel's philosophy that might help to solve the discussed problems and be advantageous for an actualization of Hegel's philosophy of biology.

IV. Life as a dialectical synthesis of nature

Hegel conceptualizes organic life as a form of existence that unites two opposing ‘modes of being’ whose logical conceptualizations are discussed in his chapters on Mechanism and Chemism.Footnote ²⁸

A mechanical object—for example a stone or a planet—is characterized by a set of changing external relations that it can go through without changing its essential identity.Footnote ²⁹ A moving stone is just as much, and not more or less of a stone than a stone at rest; a hot one not more than a cool one, etc. Qualitative identity of a mechanical entity is therefore compatible with certain kinds of non-essential changes, just as long as the stability of its self-identity is not threatened:

According to Hegel, ‘mechanical physics’ looks therefore at external changes to otherwise self-identical objects (Enc: §253, 9: 41; WL: 6: 408–10). In a chemical process, however, an object or element radically changes its quality, and thereby its essential identity. It might even get completely dissolved. We then speak of a new and different kind of element as the outcome of a chemical transformation (Enc: §336, 9: 334–36; WL: 6: 429–31). The product is essentially (i.e. qualitatively) not the same as the educt. ‘[T]he beginning and the end of the [chemical] process are different from each other; this is what constitutes its finitude, which distinguishes and separates it from life’ (Enc: §225, 9: 333).Footnote ³¹ We observe changing transformations without preservation of identity on the level of the interacting substances.

Mechanism, the dominance of self-stability without inner change, and Chemism, the dominance of change without self-identity, are the two opposing notions that are juxtaposed in the chapters of Mechanism and Chemism in the Logic as well as in corresponding passages of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature.Footnote ³²

In Hegel's analysis of Mechanism and Chemism we can further find a dominance of ‘external causality’ (WL: 6: 408, 6: 419, 6: 423, 6: 429, 6: 434f.). Dynamic mechanical processes are determined by a balance of forces that are conserved. This conservation or balance is, however, not itself existing as another thing or mechanical object, but it is the mere inner law that unites the system.Footnote ³³ The prevailing mode of mechanical causality is external causality. Even though the inner quality of the chemical objects is deeply relevant for the resulting chemical process in a way that the quality of the mechanical object is not, the causality is still linear and thus external. As we said, the product is something other than the educt. The chemical process is not ‘self-determined’ or ‘starting itself’ (WL: 6: 432).Footnote ³⁴ We speak of a chemical ‘reaction’, not of an action (WL: 6: 431; Enc: §335Z, 9: 333).

The organism now unites these two opposed modes of being, and is emphatically celebrated by Hegel as a ‘dialectical existence’.Footnote ³⁵ ‘The fact that both determinations [rest and change] are unified in one, does not come into existence [in inorganic nature]; this unity as existing is the determination of life’ (Enc: §336Z, 9: 334).Footnote ³⁶ In other words, life is metabolism, it stays the same (i.e. keeps being the same living organism) precisely because and only as long as it fundamentally changes itself (WL: 6: 479, 467f., 472–75; Enc: 9: 480).Footnote ³⁷ The process of self-transformation is essential for this type of self-identity. Life can thus neither be described ‘chemically’ in Hegel's sense, i.e. as a change without inner preserved self-identity, nor ‘mechanically’, i.e. as a self-identity without necessary inner change. Therefore, life has an inner identity that is neither identical with any given momentary embodiment (since this matter will be exchanged), nor can this inner identity be found ‘outside’ of the living organism.Footnote ³⁸ An organism is not a mere object, it is a Self, it embodies the structure of self-affirming and self-creating subjectivity.Footnote ³⁹

For Hegel, we have reached the highest dialectical synthesis that nature can achieve, because the very two opposing determinations of nature itself, externality and interiority (Äußerlichkeit and Insichsein), are now truly united—while all other stages of nature before life are only incomplete and one-sided ‘unifications’, unifications under the dominance of externality. True ‘interiority’, ‘subjectivity’ was never before realized as an object.Footnote ⁴⁰ Therefore Hegel exclaims that in life the Idea, as we heard, is now existing.

Nevertheless, Hegel also tells us that this ‘overcoming of nature’ is itself yet taking place within nature, and that therefore two new and qualitatively different, yes even deeper forms of externality are connected with life. First, according to Hegel, in life, a new dualism emerges between the generality of the species and the singularity of each individual living organism. The individual organism cannot embody the generality of the species, let alone of life as such. It is but one limited instantiation of the potential nature of the species (WL: 6: 485–86, and see Enc: §§367–76, 9: 498–537).Footnote ⁴¹ Second, living organisms are confronted with an environment that is external to them: the organism truly is a ‘centre’ in a world, but a fragile one.Footnote ⁴² Environment can be food and nutrition, but it can also be dangerous and deadly. Furthermore, living organisms are challenged by other living organisms that can be both helpful members of their own species or mortal enemies. Interest, pleasure and pain, help and harm, categories of the life of subjectivity—different from mechanical and chemical relations because of their teleological aspects—enter the world stage. These processes belong to the logic of external teleology. Life itself has the intrinsic goal of self-affirmation that goes along with a Hegelian understanding of subjectivity. But because of this inner goal otherwise neutrally existing external circumstances are measured as ‘good or bad’, i.e. as threat or promise for the organism. Organic irritability and sensitivity are essentially evaluative (Enc: §351Z, 9: 432).Footnote ⁴³ The gap between the ‘centric’ nature of the organism and the otherwise indifferent externality of other objects and organisms remains a challenge, even a threat for the organism, as an existing ‘end in nature’.

The ‘process of nutrition and perception’ (assimilation) aims at overcoming the first form of this new externality, while the ‘process of the species’ aims at overcoming the second one (WL: 6: 480–86; Enc: §§361–67, 9: 473–98, §369, 9: 516–20). Both eventually fall short for Hegel; the individual organism is mortal. Hegel tells us that the individual has to die and is finite just because it does not reach ‘true lasting universality’ in the process of replication, but it produces yet only another single individual that remains a different individual.Footnote ⁴⁴ Universality and particularity cannot be synthesized in nature. Therefore, for Hegel, the true first overcoming of this new deeper externality can only be found in mind. Mind is characterized by that form of true inner universality that is void of such an absolute external difference or opposition. The mind, especially the human mind, but also mind in its finite form as ‘soul’, therefore is no longer a part of nature, but belongs to a different order.Footnote ⁴⁵

Let us now use this very brief sketch of Hegel's understanding of organic life in his Philosophy of NatureFootnote ⁴⁶ and compare it to the corresponding chapters of the Logic in order to shed some more light on the mismatch that we have discussed before.

V. The externality of the chapter on teleology in Hegel's Logic

The chapter on teleology is predominantly concerned with the external relationship between an end and a mean whose inner connection is essential, but whose inner identity only ‘becomes manifest’ at the end, in the ‘realized purpose’. Only at the end do we find a balance between inner purpose and outer reality, or between Concept and Reality, Subjectivity and Objectivity (WL: 6: 451).Footnote ⁴⁷ Hegel uses the reflections about teleology, as we said, to constitute a transition from his chapter on Objectivity to the chapter called ‘Idea’ (with its first subsection on ‘Life’). We have just seen, however, how within the Organic the causal structure and inner self-identity of organic life was conceptualized as a synthesis of Mechanism and Chemism. Therefore, one would expect to see a corresponding logical reflection to be positioned here at the end of the chapter on Objectivity. To be sure, Hegel refers explicitly to organisms at this point and proclaims that teleology as such—whether it is internal or external—is the synthesis that is needed at the end of the chapter on Objectivity.Footnote ⁴⁸ Fair enough, but why, again, is the notion of external teleology introduced before the internal one? Why is internal purposiveness a determining feature of organic life in nature, but only an outcome of ‘external teleology’ in Objectivity?

Looking carefully at the logical development that Hegel presents, it is difficult not to interpret the introduction of the logical equivalent of an intentional agent—i.e. a ‘subjective end’ that relates to objects externally via means—at this point in the Logic as a logical blueprint for ‘organicity’(WL: 6: 445).Footnote ⁴⁹ In order for us to speak about external teleology, some kind of purpose must be set or given in the first place. The chapter is spelled out in metaphors that are clearly reminiscent of intentional external teleological activity.Footnote ⁵⁰ In order to make sense of this, an agent, a goal-setter is needed, and must be logically constituted. And naturally, one can read the end of the chapter on Chemism precisely in this way. Already here, Hegel argues, that the ‘self-determination’ of the Concept that was lost in the ‘externality of the objectivity’ is regained (WL: 6: 426).Footnote ⁵¹ The argument runs shortly sketched like this: if we unite the two steps of Chemism that Hegel analyses, we arrive at a structure that overcomes the externality of Chemism: a process that constitutes and sustains its own identity (WL: 6: 434–36). The first process of Chemism is based on the given differential tension between the seemingly independent chemical agents. This process culminates in a ‘neutral’ outcome, thereby ending the chemical process (WL: 6: 431). Chemical agents can react because of their inner relations, and they do so, as soon as they are no longer ‘externally’ or ‘forcefully’ separated (WL: 6: 429). Hegel thus states that the chemical object entails a ‘contradiction’ between the seemingly independent existence and the true inner relatedness to each other. The chemical process allows this inner relatedness—this ‘inner truth’ of the chemical object—to manifest itself: the inner unity is ‘made explicit’ and comes into existence, however, only in the mode of ‘externality’ (WL: 6: 432), namely as another separated ‘neutral educt’. The second chemical process that Hegel analyses is the ‘diremption’ of a neutral chemical object into the ‘chemical basis’ and the ‘energetic’ process. This is the beginning of a self-movement that starts from within the chemical agents and results for Hegel in the presupposed preconditions of the first process (WL: 6: 432–33).Footnote ⁵² But both steps, the overcoming of chemical differences in a neutralizing process, and the unfolding of these differences out of the unity of a chemical element, are not yet united in Chemism. Taking these steps together will—conceptually speaking—constitute ‘life’.Footnote ⁵³ Hegel writes:

This result of Chemism would thus precisely be the notion of an existing ‘individual’ in objectivity, a Subject-Object, or the ‘concept as existing in objectivity’. In fact, Hegel claims that the ‘subjective end’ that he introduces at this point is the notion that is needed to discuss the relationships of external teleology. Hegel states that in the ‘subjective end’ the ‘concept has reached itself in objectivity’ (WL: 6: 446).Footnote ⁵⁵ But it is difficult to distinguish this phrasing from the ‘realized end’ understood as the ‘Idea as the realized concept’ that will be introduced only later, namely as the outcome of the considerations on teleology. Hegel later calls the ‘subjective end’ retrospectively the only ansichseiende (being-in-itself) identity of concept and objectivity, and distinguishes this from the Idea as the fürsichseinde (being for itself) identity of concept and objectivity (WL: 6: 461). Any defence of Hegel's order of categories in the Logic would need to carefully distinguish the ‘subjective end’ as the (almost?) realized Concept in Objectivity from the Idea as a (complete?) unity of Subjectivity and Objectivity. Suppose we claim that we can clearly distinguish these notions, we still then would have to decide whether we should understand our notion of organic life in accordance with the first kind or the second kind of identity.

In other words, on the one hand we do need a version of a ‘realized concept’ to start the reflections about teleological relations. On the other hand, Hegel introduces the notion of ‘life’—and therefore of subjective agency that can have ‘finite ends’ (WL: 6: 446) and ‘drives’—explicitly only later, by subsuming it under the logic of the Idea, instead of dealing with ‘life’ under the rubric of the concept-object relationship.

Why then does Hegel reverse the order that one would expect—coming from his Philosophy of Nature, and when following our shortly sketched analysis of the end of the logical chapter on Chemism—and deal with external teleology—with the introduction of a ‘subjective purpose’—before he speaks about the inner teleology of life? What could be Hegel's reasons to ‘postpone’ the logical analysis of life—that would be, as we said, a goal-setting entity in an objectivity—and to deal with it in the first chapter of the ‘Idea’, rather than in the last chapter of ‘Objectivity’?Footnote ⁵⁶

One could suggest that the main reason for this reversal is Hegel's extraordinarily high evaluation of the peculiar structure of the organic unity of life.Footnote ⁵⁷ It closely resembles, yes even embodies, his description of absolute Subjectivity which is the highest category of Hegel's thinking as such. The Concept in the Logic was already in some explanatory comments associated with freedom, the I, and with life.Footnote ⁵⁸ Accordingly, reflecting about life certainly played an important role for Hegel in his own development of his dialectical method. Furthermore, the strange purposive identity of life was certainly one of the riddles for any philosophy of nature during Hegel's time.Footnote ⁵⁹ Since Hegel conceives of objectivity as the realm of externality per se, Footnote ⁶⁰ one might argue that the highest possible and truly dialectic unity of life is for Hegel, as it was for Kant, a sign of something that goes beyond mere objectivity, something beyond the realm of the mere mechanical Cartesian understanding of nature. Following the Kantian reservations against a mere mechanical explanation of the teleology of life,Footnote ⁶¹ Hegel is able to explain, as we have just sketched, in what sense life is in fact in its mode of being truly too radically different from any other natural objects to be just subsumed among them. Against Kant, however, Hegel can show a convincing way how to logically transform the natural categories of Mechanism and Chemism and transition from their pure externality to the mode of being of life, thus overcoming the strict and rigid Kantian (ultimately Cartesian) dualism of either mere mechanical or else ‘ideal’ causation.Footnote ⁶²

However, the mature Hegel is reluctant to ascribe to ‘nature’ itself the power of such a logical or dialectical self-transformation.Footnote ⁶³ He explicitly regards his dialectic of concepts as a purely logical affair: self-determination and purpose, unfolding of conceptual implications (Entwicklung) seems to point to a realm or force that cannot be conceptualized in ‘natural terms’.Footnote ⁶⁴ In the Logic, Hegel thus states that the inner essence of life lies beyond objectivity. It is therefore explicitly described as immaterial, and associated with the concept of the ‘soul’.Footnote ⁶⁵ Accordingly, vitalist passages against chemical and mechanical reductions of organic phenomena, and a rejection of the idea of a natural evolution can be found in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature more often than we might be comfortable with from a modern perspective.Footnote ⁶⁶

To summarize, since one would expect externality to be dominant in the chapter of Objectivity, and fully realized ‘interiority’, ‘absolute unity’ to be a sign of the Idea, then life, thus understood, could not be a part, not even the last part, of the chapter on objectivity. Therefore, it seems that Hegel argues that mere external teleology has to come first, because it is something ‘lower’ than a truly realized purpose. The coinciding of mean and end, of inner subjective purpose and external objectivity, realizes a mode of being that stands higher than any product of blind natural mechanical or chemical forces. As a higher unity, life in the Logic signifies the status of the ‘Bei sich sein’ of the Idea, or of a ‘realized concept’ that now has ‘its own reality’ and exists as its own objectivity.Footnote ⁶⁷

In other words, in his Philosophy of Nature, life belongs to nature, in his Logic, life is associated with the Idea, and not with objectivity.Footnote ⁶⁸ This leads to the question of how life should truly be understood. Is it the last synthesis of nature (and thus a part of objectivity, logically speaking), or is it the first part of the Idea? Hegel seems to fuse at this point in his Logic a more traditional ‘pure and glorified’ notion of ‘Life’ with which we are no longer necessarily familiar. This is a notion of Life (with a capital ‘L’) that goes far beyond the concept of biological material organicity, and is associated with the concept of the soul, absoluteness, and self-movement. This notion of Life has its own venerable philosophical history.Footnote ⁶⁹ Following this tradition, organic life is one possible expression of a notion of life, the presence of embodied goal-directed purposive intelligence. This traditional, often metaphysical or religious ‘absolute’ Idea of eternal ‘Life’ aimed at describing the highest possible form of causality: a causality not only directed towards ‘subjective purpose’ (like survival in organic life, or like external teleology), but at ‘Goodness’ and ‘Truth’ (the highest notion of inner teleology) as opposed to the blind necessity that characterizes ‘mechanical’ or ‘external causality’. ‘Life’ in this pre-biological highest understanding was the notion of a causal structuring of reality according to perfection. Material organic life and Life are thus related as versions of purposive causality, but these notions are not understood to mean the same: organicity is an expression of, or a version of Life, but it is not Life.Footnote ⁷⁰ It is, however, also possible to look at organicity merely as the most complex form of materiality in nature; a notion of life that started with the Cartesian notion of organic machines, and gained popularity after Hegel. This more materialistic notion of life (as ‘material organism’) has strongly influenced our contemporary modern biological notion of life.Footnote ⁷¹ Which notion does Hegel aim at, or if he aims at both, how are they to be understood?

VI. Life in Hegel's Logic, and the finitude of organic life in nature

Hegel takes pains in his Logic to argue that all three categories—Mechanism, Chemism and Life—are general logical categories, and not notions that only apply to the realm of nature. Otherwise, these categories would only belong to the Philosophy of Nature, and could not be a part of the Logic. They are therefore to be understood as having a general meaning, such that they can be used to describe logical, natural and mental processes.Footnote ⁷² This leaves us with two possible interpretations of the deeper externality of organic life that we have discussed before.

We could conceive of this duality as a consequence of a merely ‘finite’ manifestation of an otherwise ‘absolute’ Idea whose first aspect or immediate form is Life. The glorified Life in itself, logically understood, would then be the truly absolute unity of Subjectivity and Objectivity, the overcoming of all externality, an existence directed towards truth and goodness—the two other notions that characterize Hegel's Idea in addition to ‘Life’—and it would be something singular: there are not many absolute Ideas in the Logic that compete or are in need of being synthesized.

Following this interpretation, the last chapter of the Logic, the ultimate synthesis, would then have to unfold this absolute unity without any true, let alone hostile externality—at this stage of the Idea there is nothing left ‘outside’ of this absolute unity. But it would still be possible to speak about a potential inner unfolding of the aspects of this absolute unity in itself and their relations. Following Hegelian patterns, this absolute Idea would have an immediate side, a reflexive side, and a self-mediated unity, now, however, all exclusively under the dominance of ‘Bei-Sich-Sein’—so as not to fall back into what was defined as ‘objectivity’. This, however, it seems to me, would be in fact the logical Idea of a Soul, or of mind.Footnote ⁷³

Now, Hegel tells us that it is the logical notion of Life as such with its implications— independent whether it is the life of finite organisms or finite minds—that he wants to address here, and he does equate it with the notion of the soul, as we have just seen. In regard to such a pure ‘logical’ notion of Life—understood as the immediacy of the absolute Idea in singular—it could be said that the act of ‘falling into finitude’ (or freely transitioning itself into such externality) would be responsible for all externality of earthly life and human subjectivity. All these aspects would then belong to ‘nature’, but not to the ‘pure Idea’ itself.Footnote ⁷⁴ This may be a convincing attempt to defend Hegel's notion of Life in the Logic, however, Hegel himself seems not to stick to this interpretation in his Logic for too long, at least as far as I can see. After seemingly arguing in this direction, Hegel then suggests a different possible interpretation of the externality that is connected to the Idea of Life, namely by understanding it as a consequence of the ‘immediacy’ of the Idea itself.

Hegel argues that because of this immediacy itself, Life first has to be understood as a singular individual. Surprisingly here, this singularity of the Idea, however, seems not to mean a Hegelian Einzelheit, as we would expect it from the Idea, but it clearly is spelled out as mere Besonderheit. This logical living individual is at once situated in an external objectivity, a realm of reality that it is not yet identical with, and that it only aims at ‘sublating’.Footnote ⁷⁵ The categories of this external relationship that are now unfolded are in fact based on external teleological relations between a ‘Subject-Object’ and its non-subjective reality (namely strikingly the ‘process of irritability’ and ‘assimilation’) and between such a Subject-Object and another Subject-Object (the ‘process of the species’ (WL: 6: 480–87)). This makes sense in the philosophy of biology. But is it convincing to argue like this, given what Hegel is aiming at here at the end of the Logic? In other words: does it make sense to introduce markedly finite, even temporal and material notions of irritability, sensitivity, even of suffering and death into the Logic of the absolute Idea?Footnote ⁷⁶

There can be little doubt, I think, that these notions belong, in fact, logically speaking, to the chapter on externality, that is to the chapter on Objectivity. If the externality of teleological relations means that they must be banned from the perfect unity of the Idea, then also such a singular unity of Subjectivity and Objectivity within Objectivity—about which these sub-chapters of Life in the Logic speak—belongs to Objectivity.

To summarize: looking at both chapters (Teleology and Idea of Life), and given Hegel's explicit understanding of Objectivity on the one hand, and of the unity of the Idea in singular, it would be much more plausible to treat ‘life’ (as a ‘living object’) as the last part of Objectivity. Life would then truly be conceptualized as a synthesis of Mechanism and Chemism, an externally determined form of inner purposiveness within objectivity. From here, the external teleological relationships of such an entity could be unfolded, and then a transition to the chapter on the Idea could be made in an analogous way to Hegel's transition from his philosophy of biology to the Philosophy of Spirit. In other words, one is tempted to suggest that the Idea of Mind (or ‘soul’), not life, is the ‘Idea in its immediacy’. And this would at once offer a lot of fruitful philosophical insights, since a mind (or soul) cannot be conceptualized in the same way as a material or external physical object (including an organic body). The mind is not in the world as water is in a glass, maybe not even in the same way in which an organism is in its environment. Organs can be ‘torn out’ of an organism. They will cease to exist and function as organs, but they will be physical-material objects nonetheless. Thoughts, emotions and impressions cannot, however, be ‘ripped out’ of a mind. The relationship between mind and nature is therefore in no way conceptually or logically similar to that of organic bodies and food. Furthermore, ‘objective life’ as aiming at ‘self-sustainment’ has to be conceptually distinguished from the logical ‘life of the mind’ that potentially aims at ‘knowing’ and ‘goodness’.Footnote ⁷⁷ Mind may start in life, but the embodied aspects of life belong to Objectivity, or to ‘nature’ for that matter. These physical relations can and must be described with logical concepts that presuppose objective externality, and thus we can avoid Hegel's vitalist temptations in his Philosophy of Nature. The mind itself, however, it seems, cannot adequately be described in this way.

Accordingly, the main divisions in Hegel's Logic would correspond precisely to the main division of Hegel's Realphilosophie. The division between nature and mind would match the division between Objectivity and Idea. Only in mind, if ever, can nature be thought to be ‘beyond itself’ in a way that requires fundamentally new and different philosophical categories: ‘For us, spirit has nature as its presupposition, the truth of which and thus its absolute first it is. In this truth, nature has disappeared’ (Enc: §381, 10: 17).