Criticizing Consciousness:

The Question of the Finite Subject in Hegel and Ricoeur

By Eric J. Mohr

Hegel was not, strictly speaking, a hermeneutic thinker;¹ Nevertheless, it has been proposed that a resemblance can be detected between some fundamental Hegelian themes and those of the hermeneutic tradition in philosophy. The most familiar of these is how Hegel departs from Kant’s and Fichte’s transcendental philosophy, and manages to ground the subject in a temporally and historically structured framework. Perhaps, then, Hegel is to Kant, within the context of nineteenth century idealism, what Heidegger will later be to Husserl’s transcendental turn, in twentieth century phenomenology. And it is precisely upon Heidegger’s Being and Time whereby hermeneutics takes a phenomenological and ontological turn, and also whereby some phenomenologists take a hermeneutic turn. Paul Ricoeur, who I will here place in dialogue with Hegel, is the most important hermeneutic phenomenologist to delineate the anthropological or ontological implications of hermeneutics by his quest to break down the primacy of the subject and render it radically finite.

Perhaps, then, there is this ontological similarity of historicity between Hegel and the hermeneutic approach, which necessarily gives to the subject its essential characteristic as finite. However, the concept of finitude is just as much an epistemological claim as it is an ontological one, and it is precisely on the level of epistemology, I think, where Hegel and Ricoeur diverge. Hegel, on the one hand, cannot base a theory of knowledge in consciousness, and so must do so only within self-consciousness; thus, “It is true that consciousness of an ‘other’, of an object in general, is itself necessarily self-consciousness, a reflectedness-into-itself….”²

Ricoeur, on the other hand, takes an opposite, approach. Placing himself deeply within the phenomenological tradition and utilizing Husserl’s concept of intentionality, Ricoeur emphasizes instead how the very “meaning of consciousness lies outside of itself”³ and is therefore not simply reflexive. He writes, “…no consciousness is self-consciousness before being consciousness of something towards which it surpasses itself.”⁴ The dichotomy here rests on the double problematic of intentionality and the primacy of self-consciousness, namely, whether self-consciousness is always already there, before consciousness, to the extent of negating intentionality, or whether self-consciousness is found precisely in our intentional relationship with the world. The further, and more important question, then is how might these epistemological differences between Hegel and Ricoeur determine their respective conceptions of the subject as finite.

I do not propose a complete and impassable distanciation between Hegel and Ricoeur, for the two cohabitate in many similar themes. However, I am concerned here primarily with their divergence. Both attempt to criticize consciousness, but ultimately, I think, in very different ways. So, may paper will proceed as follows: I will first explore the claim that Hegel’s subject is essentially a finite one, and will then offer a theory of my own concerning this claim through an interpretation of Hegel’s discussion of consciousness. Secondly, I will compare how Hegel’s conception of consciousness compares with Ricoeur’s, especially with respect to the notion of intentionality. And third, I will conclude in noticing how their different theories of consciousness culminate in one (Hegel) abandoning the notion of the finite subject, due to his primacy of self-consciousness, and the other (Ricoeur) remaining at the level of finitude through his development of a “hermeneutics of the self.”

§II. The Post-Transcendental “Situation”

In his essay “Hegel and Gadamer,”⁵ Merold Westphal makes a distinction between what he calls the “sense-bound” character of knowledge and the “situation-bound” character. The description of each is contained in his section entitled “The Post-Transcendental Understanding of Knowledge,” whereby he argues that Hegel and Gadamer lie in close proximity based upon their shared understanding of the subject as “situation-bound,” and therefore finite with respect to knowledge. Westphal’s description of this situated, or “existentialist” explanation of the limitations of human knowledge, in contrast to the sense-bound, or “empiricist” approach,⁶ lies in the fact, “that there is no territory where the situatedness of human cognition does not place a qualification on the knowledge achieved.”⁷

Hence, we are always inevitably “thrown” into a certain historical framework, within a specific time and place. Westphal uses a summary of Gadamer by Ricoeur in order to stress this. This passage not only is a nice summary of the hermeneutic perspective on the matter, but shows also the tradition Ricoeur follows.

A human being discovers his finitude in the fact that, first of all, he finds himself within a tradition of traditions. Because history precedes me and my reflection, because I belong to history before I belong to myself, prejudgment also precedes judgment, and submission to traditions precedes their examination. The regime of historical consciousness in that of consciousness exposed to the effect of history. …we are always situated within history in such a fashion that our consciousness never has the freedom to bring itself face to face with the past by an act of sovereign independence.⁸

It is precisely within this hermeneutic tradition of historicity that Westphal wants to place Hegel: “Hegel stands with Gadamer in this post-transcendental tradition. In fact, it is to him [Hegel] that we owe its first clear formulation. As early as his essay on natural law he expects ‘to see the empirical condition of the world reflected in the ideal mirror of science,’ because ‘the condition of all sciences will express also the condition of the world.’”⁹

Tom Rockmore argues a similar position in his essay, “Hegel and the Hermeneutics of German Idealism.” In his refutation of the common interpretation that Hegel constitutes the “end of philosophy,” Rockmore writes:

Hegel nowhere claims to bring philosophy to an end. Any claim to end the philosophical tradition implies either that philosophy itself could be and has been completed or that it has reached a permanent impasse. A view that it is or even could be completed is contradicted by his consistent emphasis on the unavoidable link between a given theory and its historical moment. In his initial text, he insists that no philosophical system can escape being treated historically.¹⁰ In the Phenomenology, he relates stoicism and scepticism to the periods in which they arose.¹¹ At the end of his Lectures on the History of Philosophy he insists that no philosophy surpasses its own period, its historical moment.¹² And in the Philosophy of Right, he famously defines philosophy as its own time comprehended in thought.¹³ Ideas are rooted in their own historical moment, hence historically limited. ¹⁴

The implication behind this interpretation of the historical situatedness of the subject—indeed, the very framework upon which such an interpretation is possible—is that of human finitude, as was emphasized by Ricoeur in his passage above. However, what exactly is “constituted” when we speak of the subject as being historically constituted? Where does this so-called constitution lie? Traditionally, it is the constitution of consciousness that is emphasized. Therefore, the ontological character of finitude is subjugated by its essential epistemological character.

But now, since Hegel’s non-transcendental move away from Kant, this constitution must be expressed in a different way than it was within the Kantian framework. Since the subject is no longer outside space and time, conditioning perception by intentional categories, Hegel must ground the once “transcendental apperception” into an historical framework. Indeed, it is Hegel’s conception of consciousness, having moved away from Kant, that also demonstrates how Hegel views the subject as finite.

§III. Finitude in “Being-for-consciousness”

Other than approaching the finite subject from an ontological standpoint of historical situatedness, in light of historicity, it is now important to be explicit on how a discussion of finitude is essentially an epistemological one.

Hegel’s philosophical relation with Kant, like the other idealists, was one of adoption, but also adaptation. Adopted was the essential Kantian project of a critique of reason and of showing the limits thereof.

In the introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel writes:

“The object, it is true, seems only to be for consciousness in the way that consciousness knows it; it seems that consciousness cannot, as it were, get beyond the object as it exists for consciousness so as to examine what the object is in itself, and hence, too, cannot test its own knowledge by that standard.”¹⁵

It seems here Hegel is radically criticizing the possibility of knowledge, much in the same way Kant did before him.

This same attitude pervades the first part of the Phenomenology on “Consciousness.” In “Sense-Certainty,”¹⁶ Hegel seeks to breakdown the naïve conception of how sense-certainty immediately gets at the particular. Rather, that which “appears as the richest…and truest…kind of knowledge [inevitably turns out] to be the most abstract and poorest truth.”¹⁷ In fact, sense certainty is able only to mediately get at a universal. It knows only that a thing is, i.e., exists: the mere, “here” and “now” of a thing, and only as universal. The extreme limiting claim on knowledge is clear even at this first moment; consciousness can never achieve anything at this stage, but is only driven back into itself. Consciousness seems to be as bound as ever—ineluctably enclosed within itself. And this process continues.

In “Perception,”¹⁸ he razes to the ground what generally we have always taken to be the certainty of truth achieved by sense perception. Aristotle based an entire theory of knowledge upon its claims, and it never has been seriously questioned until now. Hegel shows that perception, too, is only met by the universal. The object of perception turns out to be simply “the thing with many properties,”¹⁹ and so “the point of singular individuality” only radiates “forth into plurality.”²⁰ The “Also” is always dialectically negating the “One,” and vice versa. For “positing these properties as a oneness is the work of consciousness alone.”²¹

Thus it becomes quite definite for consciousness how its perceiving is essentially constituted, viz., that it is not a simple apprehension, but in its apprehension is at the same time reflected out of the True and into itself. This return of consciousness into itself which is directly mingled with the pure apprehension of the object…alters the truth. This being so, we have now in the case of perception the same as happened in the case of sense-certainty, the aspect of consciousness being driven back into itself.²²

Advancing finally to the problem of “Understanding,”²³ we find out the not much else is different in this moment than within the previous two, but the problem takes a different form. Here, understanding is so contrived that the subject can never surpasses the flux of theories and get at how things are “in reality.” The Newtonian theory of force is compared with the Kantian theory of understanding, and the outcome is that each theory ends up so utterly opposed to the other that it is dubitable whether we ever get beyond theories set out by consciousness; do we not end up, therefore, only in an “inverted world,” wherein one world, the Newtonian “tranquil kingdom of laws,” or “the play of Forces” exists as the exact inversion of the other: Kant’s “world of appearances”? But, did they not both “apprehend” the same world? This is a remarkable point

I am most interested, though, in the final pages of this third section on consciousness. Hegel introduces there a new concept never before mentioned in the previous sections, namely, the concept of self-consciousness. This concept alone can give meaning to the entire prior discussion because, “consciousness of a thing is possible only for a self-consciousness,”²⁴ and further, “self-consciousness alone is the truth of those shapes.”²⁵

“This curtain of appearance hanging before the inner world is therefore drawn away, and we have the inner being gazing into the inner world—self-consciousness. …there is nothing to be seen unless we go behind [the curtain] ourselves.”²⁶

I will return later to incorporate the meaning of self-consciousness to this discussion on the aims and achievements of consciousness proper after a segue to see how Ricoeur, now, understands consciousness and its implications for finitude. However, one should ask at this point: where have we arrived in Hegel’s discussion of consciousness? If anywhere, it is only at the most empty and abstract of knowledge. For consciousness has not been able to surpass itself; it has not emerged beyond consciousness itself—all objects are merely being-for-consciousness. Not even constructivist epistemology is at work here, it seems, for there is no basis upon which Hegel may even build a theory of knowledge at all. What has been made clear so far is only this: that before consciousness can do anything—be anything—it first must have recourse to self-consciousness. Consciousness must first become self-consciousness.

This looks like a radical razing of the subject to a state of almost total incapacity and complete incapability, and thus an extreme finitude; indeed, Hegel himself explicitly says in the third part of The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Science, the “Philosophy of Spirit”: “the existence of mind in the stage of consciousness is finite, because it is merely a nominal self-relation, or mere certainty.”²⁷ But this is the truth of only this moment (this first stage). In fact, as we will see, this radical “finitude,” as only here it stands, is precisely the framework Hegel needs for a starting point in order to raise up the subject to the extent of shaking off all limitation and finitude. For self-consciousness in thoroughly autonomous.

§IV. Intentionality, “Belonging,” and Hegelian Consciousness

Thus, I have left Hegel, in a sense, suspended, in not having come to any conclusion concerning his theory of knowledge. We have merely approached, but with no analysis yet, the moment when Hegel arrives into truth, i.e., in self-consciousness. Before emerging into this realm of the dialectic, it is fitting to see how Ricoeur adds to the discussion of consciousness, noticing the ways in which he and Hegel are similar, and wherein they part ways.

The theme with which Ricoeur most occupied himself throughout his entire philosophical career is the problematic of the “celebrated” cogito of Descartes.²⁸ His entire philosophy of the self turns on how existence is never an immediately self-evident certainty or truth, but how self-reflection is always mediated, or already intertwined in, “what Dilthey called the expressions in which life objectifies itself.”²⁹ One knows oneself only through the narrative of one’s life, through the actual existence and context one finds oneself. “It is in telling our own stories that give ourselves an identity.”³⁰

I will explore these ideas further and find their relation to Hegel only in light of an important article of Ricoeur’s entitled “Phenomenology and Hermeneutics,”³¹ which will serve as the foundation of their dialogue.

In this essay, on the grounds for developing a hermeneutic phenomenology, Ricoeur does two important things. First, he places the hermeneutic tradition within the phenomenological one by drawing from Husserl the element of intentionality, and, second, he distances the phenomenological tradition from the hermeneutic by criticizing Husserlian “idealism,” i.e., idealist overtones within intentional analysis itself—the doctrine of epoché and reduction, for example. Ricoeur’s modified notion of intentionality is contained in what he means by the (Gadamerian) concept of “belonging,” i.e., belonging to an historical tradition.

How does Ricoeur adopt, and adapt for hermeneutics, the notion of intentionality? Ricoeur, precisely by criticizing Husserlian idealism, thinks himself more faithful (than was Husserl) to the central discovery of phenomenology, namely,

“that the meaning of consciousness lies outside of itself. The idealist theory of the constitution of meaning in consciousness has thus culminated in the hypostasis of subjectivity. … Such difficulties attest that phenomenology is always in danger of reducing itself to a transcendental subjectivism. The radical way of putting an end to this constantly recurring confusion is to shift the axis of interpretation from the problem of subjectivity to that of the world. That is what the theory of the text [hermeneutics in general] attempts to do….”³²

In order to do this, “hermeneutics proposes to make subjectivity the final, and not the first, category of a theory of understanding. Subjectivity must be lost as radical origin, if it is to be recovered in a more modest role.”

So Ricoeur proposes that a theory of knowledge that essentially starts with the situation, that starts with the world and the subject’s intentional relation to it, i.e., its “belonging” to the historical tradition, and it is from the subjects intentional relationship with the world that a narrative is born, and personal identity is achieved.

Hermeneutics, then, most generally presupposes the question of meaning, for the “problem of concealed meaning” (of the text, for example), is precisely the task of hermeneutics.³³

“…the thesis of intentionality states that if all meaning is for a consciousness, then no consciousness is self-consciousness before being consciousness of something towards which it surpasses itself…. That consciousness is outside of itself, that it is towards meaning before meaning is for it and, above all, before consciousness is for itself: is this not what the central discovery of phenomenology implies.”³⁴

Nevertheless, this recourse to intentionality in no way indicates any naïve realism. This is first shown above by how, within hermeneutics, the object of intentionality is not some kind of “being-in-itself,” but it is also not simply being-for-itself, which Ricoeur implies in the last line of the above quote. rather, consciousness is first and primarily “towards meaning.” It is secondarily revealed in the unsurpassable “ontological condition of understanding,” namely, “finitude.”

These points can best be unified through a passage from an earlier work of Ricoeur’s, one of his “Philosophy of the Will,” entitled Fallible Man. Here he designates this ontological condition of understanding now as “the perspectival limitation of perception,” which “causes every view of…to be a point of view on….”³⁵ Finitude consists in precisely this fact. However what is most significant is how the finite subject realizes its finitude only with respect to the correlate object, i.e., within the experience of intentionally realizing the object as more than my understanding of it.

Thus it is on an aspect of the appearance, taken as an intentional correlate of receiving, that I must catch sight the finitude of my point of view. This aspect of the appearance, which refers me back to my point of view, is the perceived object’s insurmountable and invincible property of presenting itself from a certain angle, unilaterally. I never perceive more than one side at any given time, and the object is never more than the presumed unity of the flux of silhouettes. Thus it is upon the object that I apprehend the perspectival nature of perception….The intentional analysis of this inadequacy makes me turn back from the object to myself as a finite center of perspective.³⁶

However, Ricoeur designates this concept not only negatively, as finitude, but rather as a positive condition, or as “belonging.”³⁷ But in changing the term, he changes also the concept. Intentionality is not simply “couched in a conceptuality which weakens its scope, namely the conceptuality of the subject-object relation.”³⁸ Rather, “the problematic of objectivity presupposes a prior relation of inclusion which encompasses the allegedly autonomous subject and the allegedly adverse object.”³⁹

This “inclusive or encompassing relation” is precisely “belonging.” Belonging refers to a pre-reflective ontological relation, which was similarly expressed by Heidegger’s being-in-the-world,⁴⁰ and denotes a share “in the very thing about which one questions.”⁴¹ Belonging, and its correlate, “distanciation,” immerses one within an unsurpassable tradition, which renders impossible the hypothesis of “total mediation.” “Only a total mediation would be equivalent to an intuition which is both first and final. … But the key hypothesis of hermeneutic philosophy is that interpretation is an open process which no single vision can conclude.”⁴²

Now, how does all of what Ricoeur has said here about consciousness and intentionality relate to Hegel’s theory of consciousness?

It is important to note first that all of Ricoeur’s criticisms of Husserl’s “idealism” cannot be applied to Hegelian idealism; after all, have we not already noted that Hegel’s move away from Kantian transcendentalism was more akin to Heidegger’s and the hermeneutic move away from Husserl, which Ricoeur so aptly demonstrates? It is also important to see the similarities between Ricoeur and Hegel. There are three similarities, and correlative dissimilarities, in particular: (1) Ricoeur, like Hegel, emphasizes human finitude (the “ontological condition of understanding”) in such a way that any grasping of “being-in-itself” is not possible on the level of consciousness. However, the dissimilarity is that this does not mean consciousness only grasps itself, “being-for-consciousness.”

(2) Ricoeur, like Hegel, seeks to break down the traditional conception of intentionality interpreted according to the paradigm of a distinct subject-object relation. This is not how Ricoeur—contra Husserl and the Cartesian tradition—interprets intentionality. However a correlative dissimilarity is that, for Ricoeur, this does not change the fact that consciousness in always still intending something, but changes only that towards which consciousness is intentional and the relation of intentionality to a “prior relation” of pre-reflection; it no longer intends some objective metaphysical reality, some “res extensa” or “the things themselves,” but rather meaning on the relational level of “belonging.”

(3) Ricoeur describes the concept of “belonging” as a share in the thing (“about which one questions”). This seems very close to Hegel’s description of being-for-consciousness, whereby consciousness finds itself in the object. However, the dissimilarity here, in how much one belongs to the thing, is one of degree: Ricoeur says “share,” but not total equation with the thing. The latter seems true of Hegel, on the level of consciousness, even to the point that consciousness cannot get beyond itself. This will be most significant for self-consciousness.

Implied in these three relations is a fourth difference that I want to emphasize above the others. It comes from a statement Hegel makes in the section on consciousness in his “Philosophy of Spirit.” In the passage, Hegel is stressing his departure from the Kantian and Fichtean schemas of consciousness and, therefore, mentions that “Both systems [namely, Kant’s and Fichte’s] have clearly not reached the intelligible unity or the mind as it actually and essentially is, but only as it is in reference to something else.” The question arises then: what is meant by mind “only as it is in reference to something else.” This could either mean understanding the nature of the mind in an analogous reference to something else: “the mind is analogous to a blank slate,” for example. Or it could mean understanding the mind in a intentional reference to something else. The latter is clearly the case, because he is referring to how Kant regards the Ego “as reference to something away and beyond,” namely, the “thing-at-itself.” It follows then that, for Hegel, “the mind as it actually and essentially is” is other than its character of having an intentional reference.

But this is precisely what Ricoeur will not allow, for the very “meaning of consciousness lies outside of itself.” The nature of consciousness is to be always intending, i.e., always referencing something. Furthermore, Ricoeur’s description of consciousness as intentional is the very ground for his demonstration of the subject as finite.

It seems Hegel leaves room for a different nature of the mind in his description of self-consciousness, and hence, leaves little room, if any, to interpret consciousness as intentional, in the Husserlian sense. The question then arises: what would it mean to have consciousness of an object which is already within consciousness? It would mean that having consciousness of any object would be precisely having consciousness of itself—self-consciousness. “It is only a motionless tautology of: ‘I am I.’”⁴³

§V. The “Night” of Self-Consciousness: From Certainty to Truth

Up until now, I have only hinted at the significance of the Hegelian shift from consciousness to self-consciousness insofar as what it might mean for Hegel’s subject as finite. Thus, in finally approaching Hegel’s discussion of self-consciousness, it is important to restate Hegel and Ricoeur’s central opposition: for Hegel, no theory of knowledge is advanced on the level of consciousness because consciousness is unable to surpass itself to grasp any truth beyond. Thus, knowledge is only in its most abstract and universal sense. For Ricoeur, however, consciousness is essentially intentional (but in the specific hermeneutic modifications from Husserl), and this intentionality in consciousness is the very foundation of finitude, demonstrated negatively in “the perspectival limitation of perception,” and positively as “belonging.”

Therefore, for Hegel, consciousness cannot be intentionally aimed toward something other than itself, and for Ricoeur it cannot not be intentionally aimed toward something other than itself. This has tremendous ramifications, I think, on the subject as finite. I will now attempt to demonstrate these ramifications in my treatment of Hegel’s notion of self-consciousness.

To use my quote of Hegel’s from the introduction, “It is true that consciousness of an ‘other’, of an object in general, is itself necessarily self-consciousness, a reflectedness-into-itself….”⁴⁴ And elsewhere he says, “since what [self-consciousness] distinguishes from itself is only itself as itself, the difference, as an otherness, is immediately superseded for it….”⁴⁵ So, it is true than that consciousness, for Hegel, is indeed intentional; but again the object, or that towards which, consciousness intends has changed. Ricoeur changed intentionality to intend meaning; Hegel here has placed consciousness back upon itself: the object which consciousness intends is now only itself. In his “Philosophy of Spirit” (the section on “subjective spirit”), Hegel describes self-consciousness thus:

Self-consciousness is the truth of consciousness: the latter is a consequence of the former, all consciousness of an other object being as a matter of fact also self-consciousness. The object is my own idea: I am aware of the object as mine; and thus I am aware of me. The formula of self-consciousness is I = I: abstract freedom, pure ‘ideality’. In so far it lacks ‘reality’: for it is its own object, there is strictly speaking no object, because there is no distinction between it and the object.⁴⁶

Here we have a very clear and succinct formulation of what Hegel means be self-consciousness. A first point to draw from this passage is Hegel’s reference of consciousness as a “consequence” of self-consciousness. This is quite different from Ricoeur’s statement that “no consciousness is self-consciousness before being consciousness of something towards which it surpasses itself.”⁴⁷ For Ricoeur, then, the paradigm has done complete turn around, for self-consciousness is a consequence of consciousness, towards something beyond itself. This theme I will develop more in my next and final section.

Most important in this passage of Hegel’s, however, is his reference to a state of “abstract freedom” and “pure ‘ideality.’” There are great implications in this description, for I think it reveals two interrelated points. The first is how, when self-consciousness finds nothing other than itself and finds no other object than its own idea (thus finding no distinction between consciousness and the object), consciousness is in a state of the utmost autonomy. Indeed, “its aim is to be free.”⁴⁸ There is no greater freedom than having superceded the limitations of an external world; but since objects are only my own ideas, the possibilities are now endless. The second point is that when this happens, we experience the identification of the being-in-itself and the being-for-consciousness: consciousness and the object become one, only within self-consciousness. This is the logical end of the dialectic for Hegel wherein there is now no distinction between any object as it exists in-itself and self-consciousness.

Now, to show the link between these two points, Hegel tells us first that “In thinking, I am free, because I am not in an other, but remain simply and solely in communion with myself….”⁴⁹ Furthermore, however, “in thus characterizing this shape of self-consciousness…it is thinking consciousness in general, that its object is an immediate unity of being-in-itself and being-for-itself.”⁵⁰

This heeds a state of “absolute knowing,” which is “perfectly knowing what it[self] is…, [the] withdrawal into oneself in which it abandons its outer existence and gives its existential shape over to recollection.”⁵¹

At this late point in the dialectic, is it still possible to retain the interpretation of Hegel’s subject as a finite one, which we have attempted to show by his move away from transcendental philosophy and by discussion of consciousness as explicitly limited? I am not proposing that these interpretations are incorrect (indeed, I think they adequately describe the subject, but only in those prior stages before they have been subjugated). Therefore, they are not sufficient, I think, to account for Hegel’s whole philosophy. Rather, the subject, at the end is characterized as an absolutely free, autonomous self, on the verge, if not having emerged into, a state of infinitude. For does Hegel not at least imply this by saying that “Ego is infinite self-relation of mind;”⁵² or in saying that “the self as infinite universality.”⁵³ Is this not also implied in the Schiller quote at the end of the Phenomenology: “from the chalice of this realm of spirits foams forth for Him his own infinitude”?⁵⁴

Can Hegel then really be interpreted as non-transcendental as Heidegger or Ricoeur? Indeed, this is precisely my question in relating Hegel’s and Ricoeur’s conceptions of the subject. We can certainly recognize some kind of non-transcendental move away from Kant, and we can notice an extremely limited subject in Hegel’s section on consciousness, but, in the end, when self-consciousness has been actualized and everything is subjugated to itself—even in a sense, the Unchangeable or Infinite (i.e., God)—can we really say that, where epistemology is concerned, Hegel’s subject really stays “in the world,” or ineluctably “belongs” to a single historical tradition?

I would rather propose that the following passage of Ricoeur’s can (at least in part) be applied to Hegel’s subject: “A thinking subject called ‘transcendental,’ [is] a subject which is not bound up with the accidents of history, a kind of foundational subject which would be, in the awareness of itself, the source of all knowledge.”⁵⁵ Ricoeur wants to say, however, that self-awareness is granted us only through the mediation of meaning from outside sources: from symbols and texts.

§VI. “Hermeneutics of the Self”

“The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought”. G. B. Madison in his essay entitled “Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of the Subject,” wrote concerning one of Ricoeur’s earlier works, The Symbolism of Evil,

“Perhaps the most important lesson of Ricoeur’s research…was that meaning is not something constituted by a sovereign, transcendental Ego. Meaning does not originate in the conscious, reflecting subject but comes to him from the outside, from his encounter with thought-provoking symbols mediated by his culture. Meaning is the result, not of a work of constitution, but of an effort of appropriation.”⁵⁶

Indeed, Ricoeur himself stated, “the task of the philosopher guided by symbols would be to break out of the enchanted enclosure of consciousness of oneself, to end the prerogative of self-reflection.”⁵⁷

This is the idea of a mediated self-understanding, accomplished only in a round-about way of our consciousness of meaning, and through a critique of reflection. The cogito is “a truth in vain,” since it is the promotion of an immediate self-consciousness. Rather “reflection is a blind intuition if it is not mediated by…the expressions in which life objectifies itself. …thus, reflection is a critique…in the sense that the cogito can be recovered only by the detour of a decipherment of the documents of life.”⁵⁸

In Hegel, it seems we have a situation similar to Descartes’, at least in the sense that self-consciousness is still, in a sense, transparent and wholly self-reflexive, and thus not mediated in the sense Ricoeur is proposing. For Hegel, self-consciousness is first and primary, and consciousness is a “consequence” of it, not vice versa. Thus, self-consciousness is never revealed by a “detour through signs, symbols, and cultural works, etc.”⁵⁹ Rather, it is precisely within a reflexive philosophy of self-consciousness that these things are found. Again, another description by Madison explains this well:

The presence of the subject to itself, which is the very definition of subjectivity and self-consciousness, is an indirect, mediated presence. And thus were it not for his participation in the realm of culture, the subject would not exist as such. Moreover, the fact that the presence of the self to itself is irremediably indirect means that absolute knowledge (Hegel’s Wissenschaft) is forever impossible….”⁶⁰

Mediation Through Text, or “Oneself as Another”. So, from this concept of mediation, what is meant by “hermeneutics of the self.” Essentially it is the movement to a different sort of mediation, namely, from symbol to text. in his essay, “On Interpretation.” Ricoeur writes:

The most important consequence of [mediation by texts] is that an end it put once and for all to the…ideal of the subject’s transparence to itself. To understand oneself is to understand oneself as one confronts the text [i.e., as another] and to receive from it the conditions for a self other than that which first undertakes the reading.⁶¹

The first sentence of this passage correlates with what I have been describing above; it is the second half, however, that is directly pertinent here, particularly how we “receive from it [i.e., from the text, or from the other] the conditions for a self….”

This is the framework upon which Ricoeur structured his hermeneutic ontology in his Gifford Lectures in 1990, compiled now as Oneself as Another. The work is precisely the development of this “hermeneutics of the self,” but which is far too complex to get into much here. Suffice it to say, he situates his hermeneutic subject between Descartes “exalted subject” and Nietzsche’s “humiliated” one. A “hermeneutics of the self” is indeed an intermediary position in the sense that it comes about by “reflexive” philosophy, but not one of pure self-reflection; and so it brings down any primary subjectivity, but not as far as Nietzsche’s shattering of the cogito. It is a subjectivity that arises through oneself as text, i.e., “oneself as another.” It is therefore a mediated subject: neither a humiliated one, nor an exalted one.

Madison states, describing Ricoeur,

A “hermeneutical philosophy”…is precisely one which accepts the mediated nature of subjectivity and which “gives up the dream of a total mediation, at the end of which reflection would once again amount to intellectual intuition in the transparence of itself to an absolute subject.”⁶² Nothing could be further from Hegelianism….

What Ricoeur has finally succeeded in doing, by means of his extensive researches into textuality and interpretation theory, is to have reformulated his long-standing presupposition of meaning in non-idealist…language.⁶³

But far more than simply a reformulation of language (Madison wrote this essay before the publication of Oneself as Another), is that he positioned this non-idealist language within a specific hermeneutic ontological framework—an ontology, or better, an anthropology, essentially of a finite subject who does not gain a privileged epistemological position because any self-reflexive transparency of itself, but understands itself always only within the narrative of its historical situation.

§VII. Conclusion

I have refrained from proposing any definite conclusions on Hegel’s philosophy as a whole, but I have attempted to make definite conclusions insofar as Hegel can be related to Ricoeur on the question of the finite subject. However, not without, I hope, giving a sense of the tremendous difficulty it is to interpret Hegel definitely as one who either does or does not have a conception of the subject as finite. One thing is for certain, it is not as explicit as Ricoeur’s.

Therefore, I hope to have offered some support to the interpretations who claim finitude in Hegel’s subject by my own reading of his section on “Consciousness”; but nevertheless, not without severely questioning these interpretations as well. The radical differences between Hegel and Ricoeur are apparent, even to the extent of in many ways being completely opposite theories (do we here have another example of inverted worlds?). The question though is which theory best reveals the finitude of the subject and how therein do they compare.

Epistemologically, I have shown how their respective views of consciousness, with respect to intentionality, are opposed. The ramifications of this are great. Put simply, Ricoeur proves finitude precisely by “wagering”, or “attesting” to (but not necessarily knowing) the reality of an outside world. This is the key to explaining the subject as finite in Ricoeur. The subject is limited only when it finds itself up against an other. But this is not the case for Hegel’s notion of consciousness. I have therefore criticized him on these grounds.

Ontologically, I came back at the end to the question of historicity and the importance of mediation in Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of the self.” The other, therefore, is not only the source of our epistemological limitations, but it is precisely through the mediation of signs, symbols, and texts, as other, that we apprehend ourselves, including the limitation of our own historical situation. But this is not the case for Hegel’s notion of self-consciousness, I have therefore criticized him on these grounds.

However, in my criticisms, I mean nothing more than simply how some aspects of Hegel’s philosophy do not work well with the claim of finitude. This problem, however, need not relate to Hegel’s project itself, but only with respect to the specific interpretation claiming Hegel to have theory of a finite subject.

Bibliography

Works Cited:

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________. Philosophy of Mind. Translated by William Wallace. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894.

Madison, G. B. “Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of the Subject,” The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Edited by Lewis Edwin Hahn, Library of Living Philosophers, vol. XXII. Chicago: Open Court, 1995.

Ricoeur, Paul. Fallible Man. Translated by Charles A. Kelbley. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986 (1965).

________. The Symbolism of Evil. Translated by Emerson Buchanan. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969 (1965).

________. “Ethics and Culture: Habermas and Gadamer in Dialogue.” Philosophy Today 17 (1973): 153-65.

________. The Conflict of Interpretations. Edited by Don Ihde. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974.

________. “Phenomenology and Hermeneutics.” Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation. Edited and Translated by John B. Thompson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

________. “History as Narrative and Practice.” Philosophy Today (Fall 1985).

________. “On Interpretation.” From Text to Action: Essay in Hermeneutics, II. Edited by James M. Edie. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991.

Rockmore, Tom. “Hegel and the Hermeneutics of German Idealism.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 3 (1995): 111-31.

Westphal, Merold. “Hegel and Gadamer.” Hermeneutics and Modern Philosophy. Edited by Brice R. Wachterhauser. New York: State University of New York Press. 1986.