Re-reading Hegel:
Meaning and Subjectivity in the
Phenomenology of Spirit
WILLIAM J. URBAN
The Absence of Meaning: Figurations of the Infinite Judgment
To say that the subject has taken responsibility for its experience of reality is to say that the subject has been reduced to a void, to a minimal point co-extensive with reality. As we saw, the logic of this movement is formally accomplished by the end of the third chapter. But it is more dramatically demonstrated in the following chapter which stages the gradual emptying of consciousness whose result is the universally reduced subject of unhappy consciousness.22 Having been compelled to give up all its will and possessions to an other and having severed all ties to its own bodily pleasures, the subject now truly becomes equal to reality in its totality and is prepared to enter into the standpoint of reason. By the end of the section entitled ‘Observing Reason’ an analogous process will be accomplished on the side of objectivity which will likewise be deprived of all its living flesh and reduced to its bare minimum. Here we arrive at the objectal correlate to the reduced form of subjectivity. (Dolar 1994: 68)
This non-subjectivizable object, explicitly articulated as a ‘bone’ in the fifth chapter, is implicitly introduced in the fourth. There Hegel equates desire with self-consciousness so that it ‘henceforth has a double object: one is the immediate object, that of sense-certainty and perception... and the second, viz. itself, which is the true essence, and is present in the first instance only as opposed to the first object.’ (§167) At once we see the impossibility of Hegelian subjectivity, for the subject is radically split between itself (qua immediacy, in its pathos) and the split itself. That is, it is never the case that the subject is externally split between two terms, for the true split runs internally and divides the subject from within. As well, ‘[f]rom this arises the ambiguity that characterizes the object of desire, or, rather, the duality of the end intended by desire’ whose end point is not the sensuous object ‘but the unity of the I with itself’ so that desire ‘desires its own desire.’ (Hyppolite 160) Certainly desire is subsumed to the unitary philosophical project of the Phenomenology, but nevertheless desire clearly serves to determine the subject’s self-reflexivity throughout the text. This is implicitly the case from the very first chapter on sense-certainty.23 But more importantly, since desire desires itself we must also posit the ex-sistence of a pure object of desire as precisely that which splits the subject of desire from within.24
Hegel expresses the relation between the reduced subject and its non-subjectivizable object in the concise form of the infinite judgment, most famously as ‘Spirit is a bone.’ (§343) This proposition appears within the context of the passage from physiognomy, in which ‘Spirit is supposed to be known in its own outer aspect, as in a being which is the utterance of Spirit – the visible invisibility of its essence,’ to phrenology, in which ‘the outer aspect is lastly a wholly immobile reality which is not in its own self a speaking sign but, separated from self-conscious movement, presents itself on its own account and is a mere Thing.’ (§323) The passage from physiognomy to phrenology is thus the change from signifying representation to inert presence. With physiognomy, we remain at the level of bodily gestures intended to signify the interior of the subject. The problem is that such language of the body invariably fails to reveal what is intended, for there is no proper signifier of the subject. But through the skull bone of phrenology the void of the subject is embodied: the presence of the Thing literally ‘gives body’ to the impossibility of the signifying representation of the subject. (Žižek 1989: 208) Hence, Hegelian dialectics in no way sublates ‘it all,’ for the very movement of dialectics implies a certain meaningless objectal leftover which escapes the circle of subjectivization. And the subject is precisely correlative to this leftover which embodies the impossibility which ‘is’ the subject. (ibid 209) Hegel’s proposition ‘Spirit is a bone,’ whose incompatible terms are hopelessly without common measure, in effect severs all ties between subject and object and at once marks the end of their dialectical relation, the limit of their possible mediation. Moreover, the fact that the subject cannot appropriate this non-dialectical presence and utterly fails to recognize itself in this dead object provides the clue to the proper way we are to read this proposition. To ensure we do not overlook this, Hegel explicitly informs his readers in the Preface how the true meaning of philosophical propositions is grasped only after we go back and read it again, for this true meaning arises from the very failure of the initial reading. (§63) So at the level of representation and abstract understanding, the first reading yields absurdity and nonsense. However, the proper speculative reading is reached once we recognize how the unbearable contradiction and self-referential negativity experienced in the first reading coincides with subjectivity itself. The proposition ‘Spirit is a bone’ thus succeeds on a second reading in ‘transmitting the dimension of subjectivity by means of the failure itself, through the radical insufficiency, through the absolute maladjustment of the predicate in relation to the subject.’ (Žižek 1989: 207) This movement from the first to the second reading involves the conversion of the lack of the signifier into the signifier of the lack, and this conversion itself has a signifier which Hegel evokes metaphorically at the very end of ‘Observing Reason.’ (ibid: 209) There we find this exceptional signifier naively expressed when nature combines the highest (generation) and lowest (urination) functions in the phallus. (§346)
Exactly one hundred pages later, Hegel introduces consciousness qua ‘language of flattery’ which will pass to wealth and thereby repeat the passage from physiognomy to phrenology at a richer, more concrete level. (§511) First in the triad is noble-minded consciousness whose medium of activity in serving the substantial common good of the state is deeds. With the subjectivization of the state, we pass to the heroism of flattery whereby the medium is now language in the form of flattery addressed to the monarch who embodies the state. The dialectical process ends with the infinite judgment ‘Self-consciousness... is wealth.’ (§514) There are other judgments similar to this ‘Self is wealth’ and the above ‘Spirit is a bone’ such as ‘the state is monarch’ and ‘God is Christ,’ but the discussion of language presented here is exceptional to the rest of the Phenomenology which reduces language to a medium of the dialectical process. For here the process concerns language as such which ‘has for its content the form itself, the form which language itself is, and is authoritative as language. It is the power of speech, as that which performs what has to be performed.’ (§508) Because of the ‘alienation which takes place solely in language’ (ibid), the language of flattery entails an ethical dimension beyond the psychological level which merely treats the flatterer as a hypocritical subject who simply feigns adulation and accommodates external rituals which supposedly have nothing to do with the subject’s sincerest convictions. On the contrary, Hegel’s text compels us to consider how the form of flattery, devoid of all sincerity in its pronouncing of empty phrases, is actually truer than those convictions. This is what the paradoxical heroism of flattery is all about: flattery indexes a certain eagerness to renounce one’s deep and meaningful convictions, thereby disrupting the process of subjectivization and voiding-out one’s subjectivity. Again there is an objectal correlate to this subject thus emptied of all richness of personality: wealth. What the subject gets in return for flattery is money – a cold, inert coin he can hold in the palm of his hand. So the difference between the two propositions ‘Spirit is a bone’ and ‘Self is wealth’ only concerns the dialectical starting points. Either language is conceived as bodily gestures so that the subject finds his non-language counterpart in the inertia of the skull or language is treated as the medium of social relations, in which case the subject meets his match with wealth qua embodiment of social power. (Žižek 1989: 209–12)
These propositions bear witness that Hegel is not a semantic idealist, for he is well aware that the subject is shaken out of his self-complacent immersion in the substantial totality of meaning when confronted with the void of pure negativity – the absence of meaning – which is precisely what occurs when first reading these propositions. The second, speculative reading reveals that the domain of meaning can never achieve closure and ground itself in a self-referential hermeneutic circle, for the very domain itself relies on an objectal leftover, a leftover which embodies the very absence of meaning.
Lacanian-themed puzzles
