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Abstract
This paper has two related goals. Firstly, after briefly clarifying the theoretical core of Solger’s thought, it will analyse his metaphysics from Hegel’s point of view, emphasizing that sacrifice is, for Solger, the fundamental structure of the relationship between the finite and the Infinite. Secondly, it will investigate the main reasons behind Hegel’s criticism of Solger, showing that they have different conceptions of privation and negation and concluding that Solger and Hegel have different aims. Hegel’s aim consists in recomposing the unity of finite and infinite, whereas Solger’s thought is structured on the rupture between these two.
Notes
1 This paper was presented at the Inaugural Conference of the Australasian Philosophy of Religion Association (27–28 September 2008). Helpful comments from conference participants are gratefully acknowledged. I would like also to thank Stephen Houlgate, Douglas Moggach and Paul Redding for their suggestions. Finally, I thank the anonymous referees of a previous version of this paper, whose detailed comments have greatly helped me in producing this new extended version.
2 See, for instance, Gustav E. Mueller, ‘Solger’s Aesthetics – A Key to Hegel (Irony and Dialectic)’, in A. Schirokauer and W. Paulsen (eds) Corona: Studies in Celebration of the Eightieth Birthday of Samuel Singer (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1941), pp. 212–27; Remo Bodei, ‘Il primo romanticismo come fenomeno storico e la filosofia di Solger nell’analisi di Hegel’, Aut Aut, 17 (1967), pp. 68–80. An exception is constituted by Jeffrey Reid, ‘Hegel, Critique de Solger. Le Problème de la Communication Scientifique’, Archives de philosophie, 60 (2) (1997), pp. 255–64. Reid raises the question of Solger’s relation to Hegel, and argues that Solger’s philosophical failure stems from the form of expression he applies to speculative content.
3 Hegel’s review of Solgers Nachgelassene Schriften und Briefwechsel (edited by Ludwig Tieck and Friedrich von Raumer) originally appeared in theJahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik, nos 51/52, 53/54, 105/106, 107/108, 109/110 (1828).
4 Giovanna Pinna, L’ironia Metafisica. Filosofia e teoria estetica in K. W. F. Solger (Genova: Pantograf, 1994).
5 Valeria Pinto, Filosofia e religione in K. W. F. Solger (Napoli: Morano Editore, 1995).
6 Claudio Ciancio, Il paradosso della verità (Torino: Rosenberg & Seller, 1999).
7 Marco Ravera, ‘Necessità e unità della filosofia in Solger’, Annuario filosofico, 3 (1987), pp. 167–86; ‘Solger e la salvezza come non conciliazione’, in P. Coda and G. Lingua (eds) Esperienza e libertà (Roma: Città Nuova, 2000), pp. 33–62.
8 Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger, Nachgelassene Schriften und Briefwechsel, Herausgegeben von Ludwig Tieck und Friedrich von Raumer (Heidelberg: Verlag Lambert Scheider, 1973). The first edition was published in 1826. All the translations from this text are my own.
9 Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger, Vorlesungen über Ästhetik, hg. von seinem Schüler Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Heyse (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1829); hrsg. von K. W. L. Heyse (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1962).
10 For a more detailed account of Solger’s metaphysics, see my article ‘Solger’s Notion of Sacrifice as Double Negation’, Heythrop Journal, 50(2) (March 2009), pp. 206–214.
11 Karin De Boer, ‘The Dissolving Force of the Concept: Hegel’s Ontological Logic’, Review of Metaphysics, 57(4) (June 2004), pp. 787–822.
12 One could argue that Solger’s theological categories have to be conceived à la Kant, as concerned not with ‘theological objects’, but with our mode of knowing these ‘objects’, so that, for instance, ‘God’ should be thought of not as a ‘metaphysical object’ but as a regulative idea. Or one could argue that Solger’s theological categories have to be conceived à la Hegel, that is, as representations of ontological categories, so that, for instance, God should be thought of as the principle that brings about the totality of conceptual determinations that underlie both human knowledge and reality. Although both these interpretations are in principle legitimate, I believe that neither of them is sufficiently grounded in Solger’s work to be pursued.
13 When Solger speaks of the finite (Endlich), he refers to the world (Welt) and, at the same time, to the human being (Mensch).
14 John N. Martin, Themes in Neoplatonic and Aristotelian Logic: Order, Negation and Abstraction (London: Ashgate, 2004).
15 I am grateful to Paul Redding for having called my attention to this point.
16 Solger, Nachgelassene Schriften, p. 171.
17 The German expression better captures Solger’s account, in which the finite (world) is non‐being in relation to the being of God.
18 Solger, Nachgelassene Schriften, p. 172.
19 Ibid., p. 248. This dynamic has been stressed very sharply by Pinto, Filosofia e religione in K. W. F. Solger, pp. 49–50.
20 See Solger, Nachgelassene Schriften, pp. 31 ff.
21 ‘Folglich offenbart sich das Wesen als solches, oder wird wirkliches wesen nur dadurch, daß es dieses nichts aufhebt oder vernichtet’. Solger, Nachgelassene Schriften, p. 172.
22 Solger, Vorlesungen über Ästhetik, pp. 97–8.
23 I thank one of the anonymous referees of a previous version of the paper, who has drawn my attention to this point.
24 The former ‘something’ includes (but it is not limited to): first fruits; best lamb or other animal of the flock or herd; slaves; sexuality. The latter ‘something’ includes (but it is not limited to): divine support, help, benevolence; a place in heaven; redemption from evil.
25 Solger, Nachgelassene Schriften, p. 603.
26 Ivi, p. 511.
27 Ivi, p. 603.
28 The absence of a Hegelian Aufhebung in Solger’s thought has been stressed by Pinna, L’ironia Metafisica, pp. 233 ff.
29 See letter to Kessler, 16 May 1818, in Nachgelassene Schriften, pp. 631–3.
30 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Solgers Nachgelassene Schriften und Briefwechsel, in Berliner Schriften, ed. J. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 1956); trans. I. Diana, Solger’s Posthumous Writings and Correspondence, in Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline and Critical Writings, ed. Ernst Behler (New York: Continuum, 1990), pp. 265–319 (here p. 291).
31 Hegel, Solger’s Posthumous Writings, p. 291.
32 Ibid., p. 292.
33 For a deeper analysis of Hegel’s review, see Reid, ‘Hegel, Critique de Solger’, pp. 255–64. See also Mueller, ‘Solger’s Aesthetics – A Key to Hegel’, pp. 212–27; and Bodei, ‘Il primo romanticismo come fenomeno storico e la filosofia di Solger nell’analisi di Hegel’, pp. 68–80.
34 For a detailed account of different definitions of privation and negation see Laurence R. Horn, A Natural History of Negation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
35 ‘With Aristotle […] logic, epistemology and ontology all interpenetrate each other, and these neat divisions between negation, abstraction and privation simply will not work.’ Raoul Mortley, From Word to Silence, 2. The Way of Negation, Christian and Greek (Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1986), p. 259.
36 Paul Redding, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 82. Regarding Aristotle’s two negations, see also Horn, A Natural History of Negation, Ch. 1.1.
37 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book V, 22. See also Book 10, 5.
38 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book IV, 6, 1011b. See Mortley, From Word to Silence, p. 259.
39 See Martin, Themes in Neoplatonic and Aristotelian Logic.
40 To be more precise, ‘Hegel regarded term negation as appropriate in particular contexts and inappropriate in others’. This is what Paul Redding calls ‘Hegel’s cognitive contextualism’. Redding, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought, pp. 208ff.
41 Cyril O’Regan, in his The Heterodox Hegel (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), writes that ‘Hegel makes a distinction between two kinds of negative, a negative that is nonpositive, that is, a private negative, and a positive negative’ (p. 179). The Hegel text to which he refers (Wissenschaft der Logik, in Sämtliche Werke. Jubilaumsausgabe in zwanzig Bänden, Vol. 4 (Stuttgart: Frommann, 1965), pp. 535–51) leads us to identify the ‘positive negative’ with the ‘determinate negative’ and to consider the ‘privative negative’ as secondary to the determinate negative. O’Regan also writes that ‘Hegel shows himself capable of designating the finite as nonbeing and evil, without raising the issue of the relation between these two categories or exploring their possible differences’ (p. 179). The question is problematic and would need more development.
42 Georg Wilhlem Friedrich Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 114–15.
43 ‘Solger actually turns the existence of God into irony: God continually translates himself into nothing, takes himself back again, translates himself again, etc.’Kierkegaard’s Writings, ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Vol. 2, The Concept of Irony (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 317–18.
44 Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, trans. A. V. Miller, Science of Logic (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1989), pp. 45–6.
45 Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, p. 309. This claim is repeated in the final line of the chapter dedicated to Solger: ‘the thought that appeals to me most is that Solger was a sacrifice to Hegel’s positive system’ (p. 323).
46 Valeria Pinto, ‘Introduzione’, in K. W. F. Solger, Scritti filosofici (Napoli: Guida, 1995), pp. 10–11.
47 See, for example, the judgment passed by V. Descombes, Le Même et l’autre. Quarante‐cinq ans de philosophie française (1933–1978) (Paris: Minuit, 1979).
48 Solger, Nachgelassene Schriften, pp. 120–1.
49 See Ciancio, Il paradosso della verità, p. 103.
50 Albert Camus, ‘Le Mythe de Sisyphe’, in Essais (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), pp. 117–18.
51 Reid’s conclusion is that Solger and Hegel represent two opposite notions of logos: according to Hegel, the possibility of a language that is truth opposes a language that consists in representing the truth that is elsewhere – and this is the case of Solger. See Reid, ‘Hegel, Critique de Solger’, p. 262.
52 ‘Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being.’ Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 19.
53 Hegel, Science of Logic, ‘The logic of true being’.