This is a good example for showing that we miss the end in such modes of explanation. On the other hand, it is not a good example, because it is taken from the kingdom of the self-conscious will, where deliberate and not unconscious end reigns. In this criticism of the Anaxagorean _νοῦς_ we can certainly see it generally expressed that Anaxagoras made no application of his _νοῦς_ to reality. But the positive element in the conclusion of Socrates seems, on the other hand, to be unsatisfying, because it goes to the other extreme, namely, to desire causes for nature which do not appear to be in it, but which fall outside of it in consciousness. For what is good and beautiful is partly due to the thought of consciousness as such; end or purposive action is mainly an act of consciousness and not of nature. But in so far as ends become posited in nature, the end, as end, on the other hand, falls outside of it in our judgment only; as such it is not in nature itself, for in it there are only what we call natural causes, and for its comprehension we have only to seek and show causes that are immanent. According to this, we distinguish, for instance, in Socrates the end and ground of his action as consciousness, and the causes of his actual action: and the latter we would undoubtedly seek in his bones, muscles, nerves, &c. Since we banish the consideration of nature in relation to ends—as present in our thought and not existent in nature—we also banish from our consideration teleological explanations in nature formerly admired, _e.g._ that grass grows that animals may eat it, and that these last exist and eat grass, so that we may eat them. The end of trees is said to be that their fruit may be consumed and that they should give us wood for heat; many animals have skins for warm clothing; the sea in northern climates floats timber to the shores because on these shores themselves no wood grows, and the inhabitants can hence obtain it, and so on. Thus presented, the end, the Good, lies outside of the thing itself: the nature of a thing then becomes considered, not in and for itself, but only in relation to another which is nothing to it. Thus, because things are only useful for an end, this determination is not their own but one foreign to them. The tree, the grass, is as natural existence, independent, and this adaptation of it to an end, such as making grass that which is to be eaten, does not concern the grass as grass, just as it does not concern the animal that man should clothe himself in his skin; Socrates may hence seem to miss in Anaxagoras this mode of looking at nature. But this to us familiar way of regarding the good and expedient is on the one hand not the only one, and does not represent Plato’s meaning, while, on the other, it is likewise necessary. We have not to represent the good or the end in so one-sided a manner that we think of it existing as such in the perceiving mind, and in opposition to what is; but set free from this form, we must take it in its essence as the Idea of all existence. The nature of things must be recognized in accordance with the Notion, which is the independent, unfettered consideration of things; and because it is that which things are in and for themselves, it controls the relationship of natural causes. This Notion is the end, the true cause, but that which recedes into itself; it is the implicitly existent first from which movement proceeds and which becomes result; it is not only an end present in the imagination before its actuality exists, but is also present in reality. Becoming is the movement through which a reality or totality becomes; in the animal or plant its essence as universal genus, is that which begins its movement and brings it forth. But this whole is not the product of something foreign, but its own product, what is already present as germ or seed; thus it is called end, the self-producing, that which in its Becoming is already implicitly existent. The Idea is not a particular thing, which might have another content than reality or appear quite different. The opposition is the merely formal opposition of possibility and actuality; the active impelling substance and the product are the same. This realization goes right through the opposition; the negative in the universal is just this process. The genus sets itself in a state of opposition as individual and universal, and thus, in what lives, the genus realizes itself in the opposition of races which are opposed, but whose principle is the universal genus. They, as individuals, aim at their own self-preservation as individuals in eating, drinking, &c., but what they thereby bring to pass is genus. Individuals sublate themselves, but genus is that which is ever brought forth; plants bring forth only the same plants whose ground is the universal.
In accordance with this, the distinction between what have been badly named natural causes and the final causes has to be determined. Now if I isolate individuality and merely regard it as movement and the moments of the same, I show what are natural causes. For example, where has this life taken its origin? Through the generation of this its father and mother. What is the cause of these fruits? The tree whose juices so distil themselves that the fruit forthwith arises. Answers of this kind give the causes, _i.e._ the individuality opposed to an individuality; but their principle is the genus. Now nature cannot represent essence as such. The end of generation is the sublation of the individuality of Being; but nature which in existence certainly brings about this sublation of individuality, does not set the universal in its place, but another individual. Bones, muscles, &c., bring forth a movement; they are causes, but they themselves are so through other causes, and so on into infinitude. The universal, however, takes them up into itself as moments which undoubtedly appear in movement as causes, though the fundamental ground of these parts actually is the whole. It is not they which come first, but the result into which the juices of the plants, &c., pass, is the first, just as in origination it appears only as product, as seed, that which constitutes the beginning and the end, even though they be in different individuals. Their real nature is the same.
But such a genus is itself a particular genus and is essentially related to another, _e.g._ the Idea of the plant to that of the animal; the universal moves on. This looks like external teleology—that plants are eaten by animals, &c., in which their limitation as genus lies. The genus of the plant has the absolute totality of its realization in the animal, the animal in the conscious existence, just as the earth has it in the plant. This is the system of the whole in which each moment is transitory. The double method of considering the matter thus is that each Idea is a circle within itself, the plant or the animal the Good of its kind; and, on the other hand, each is a moment in the universal Good. If I consider the animal merely as externally adapted to an end, as created for something else, I consider it in a one-sided way; it is real existence, in and for itself universal. But it is just as one-sided to say that the plant, for instance, is only in and for itself, only end to itself, only shut up within itself and going back into itself. For each idea is a circle which is complete in itself, but whose completion is likewise a passing into another circle; it is a vortex whose middle point, that into which it returns, is found directly in the periphery of a higher circle which swallows it up. Thus, for the first time, we reach the determination of an end in the world which is immanent within it.
These explanations are necessary here, since hereafter we see the speculative Idea coming more into the universal; it was formerly expressed as Being and the moments and movements were called existent. What has to be avoided in this transition is that we should thereby think that Being is given up and that we pass into consciousness as opposed to Being (in so doing the universal would lose all its speculative significance); the universal is immanent in nature. This is the meaning which is present when we represent to ourselves that thought constitutes, orders, &c., the world. It is not, so to speak, the activity of the individual consciousness, in which I stand here on one side and, opposite to me, an actuality, matter, which I form, dispose and order as I will; for the universal, Thought, must abide in Philosophy without this opposition. Being, pure Being, is universal when we thereby keep in mind that Being is absolute abstraction, pure thought; but Being as it is thus set forth as Being, has the significance of the opposite to this Being-reflected-into-itself, to thought and recollection; the universal, on the contrary, has reflection immediately in itself. So far, the ancients really got: it does not seem far. “Universal” is a dry determination; everyone knows about the universal, but not of it as real existence. Thought, indeed, reaches to the invisibility of the sensuous; not to the positive determinateness of thinking it as universal, but only to the predicateless absolute as to the merely negative; and that is as far as the common ideas of the present day have come. With this discovery of thought we conclude the first Section and enter upon the second period. The profit to be derived from the first period is not very great. Some, indeed, think that there is still some special wisdom in it, but thought is still young, the determinations are thus still poor, abstract and arid. Thought here has but few determinations—water, Being, number, &c.—and these cannot endure; the universal must go forth on its own account as the self-determining activity, and this we find it doing in Anaxagoras alone.
We have still to consider the relationship of the universal as opposed to Being, or consciousness as such in its relation to what is. By Anaxagoras’ determination of real existence, this relationship of consciousness is also determined. In this regard nothing satisfactory can be found; for he recognized, on the one hand, thought as real existence, without, however, bringing this thought to bear on ordinary reality. Thus, on the other hand, this is destitute of thought and independent, an infinite number of homœomeriæ, _i.e._ an infinite amount of a sensuous implicit existence, which now, however, is sensuous Being; for existent Being is an accumulation of homœomeriæ. The relationship borne by consciousness to real existence may likewise be various. Anaxagoras could thus either say that the truth is only in thought and in rational knowledge, or that it is sensuous perception; for in this we have the homœomeriæ which are themselves implicit. Thus, in the first place, we find from him—as Sextus tells us, (adv. Math. VII., 89-91) “that the understanding (_λόγος_) is the criterion of the truth; the senses cannot judge of the truth on account of their weakness”—weakness for the homœomeriæ are the infinitely small; the senses could not grasp them, do not know that they have to be something ideal and thought. A celebrated example of this is given by him according to Sextus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. 13, §. 33), in the assertion that “the snow is black, for it is water, and water is black.” He here asserts the truth in a reason. In the second place, according to Aristotle (Met. III. 7), Anaxagoras is said to have asserted that, “there is a medium between contradiction (_ἀντιφάσεως_); so that everything is untrue. For because the two sides of the opposition are mingled, what is mingled is neither good nor not good, and thus not true.” Aristotle also quotes another time from him (Met. III. 5): “That one of his apothegms to his disciples was that to them things were as they supposed them.” This may relate to the fact that because existent Being is an accumulation of homœomeriæ which are what really exists, sensuous perception takes things as they are in truth.
There is little more to be made of this. But here we have the beginning of a more distinct development of the relationship of consciousness to Being, the development of the nature of knowledge as a knowledge of the true. The mind has gone forth to express real existence as Thought; and thus real existence as existent, is in consciousness as such; it is implicit but likewise in consciousness. This Being is such only in so far as consciousness recognizes it, and real existence is only the knowledge of it. The mind has no longer to seek existence in something foreign, since it is in itself; for what formerly appeared foreign is Thought, _i.e._ consciousness has this real existence in itself. But this consciousness in opposition is an individual consciousness; thereby in fact, implicit Being is sublated, for the implicit is what is not opposed, not singled out, but universal. It is, indeed, known, but what is, only is in knowledge, or it is no other Being than that of the knowledge of consciousness. We see this development of the universal in which real existence goes right over to the side of consciousness, in the so much decried worldly wisdom of the Sophists; we may view this as indicating that the negative nature of the universal is now developing.
CHAPTER II FIRST PERIOD, SECOND DIVISION: FROM THE SOPHISTS TO THE SOCRATICS.
IN this second division we have first to consider more particularly the Sophists, secondly Socrates, and thirdly the Socratics, while we distinguish from these Plato, and take him along with Aristotle in the third division. The _νοῦς_, which is at first only grasped in a very subjective manner as end, that is to say as that which is end to men, _i.e._ the Good, in Plato and Aristotle became understood in what is on the whole an objective way, as genus or Idea. Because thought has now become set forth as principle, and this at first presents a subjective appearance as being the subjective activity of thought, there now sets in (since the absolute is posited as subject) an age of subjective reflection; _i.e._ there begins in this period—which coincides with the disintegration of Greece in the Peloponnesian war—the principle of modern times.
Since in the _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras, as the still formal self-determining activity, determination is as yet quite undetermined, general and abstract, and along with that contentless throughout, the universal standpoint is the immediate necessity of going on to a content which begins actual determination. But what is this absolute, universal content which abstract thought as self-determining activity gives itself? That is the real question here. Consciousness now confronts the untrammeled thought of those ancient philosophers, whose general ideas we have considered. While hitherto the subject, when it reflected on the absolute, only produced thoughts, and had this content before it, it is now seen that what is here present is not the whole, but that the thinking subject likewise really belongs to the totality of the objective. Furthermore, this subjectivity of thought has again the double character of at once being the infinite, self-relating form, which as this pure activity of the universal, receives content-determinations; and, on the other hand, as consciousness reflects that it is the thinking subject which is thus positing, of also being a return of spirit from objectivity into itself. Thus if thought, because it immersed itself in the object, had as such, and like the _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras, at first no content, because this stood on the other side, so now, with the return of thought as to the consciousness that the subject is what thinks, we have the other side—that what has to be dealt with is the attainment of a truly absolute content. This content, taken abstractly, may itself be again a double one. Either the “I” is in respect of determination the real when it makes itself and its interests the content, or the content becomes determined as the altogether universal. According to this, we have two questions to deal with, which are—how the determination of what is in and for itself is to be comprehended, and how this is likewise in immediate relation to the “I” as thinking. It comes to pass in Philosophy that although the “I” is the positing, yet the posited content of that which is thought is the object existent in and for itself. If one were to remain at saying that the “I” is that which posits, this would be the false idealism of modern times: in earlier times men did not remain at saying that what is thought is bad because I posit it.
To the Sophists the content is _mine_, and subjective: Socrates grasped the content which is in and for itself, and the followers of Socrates have, in direct connection with him, merely further defined this content.
A.—THE SOPHISTS.
The Notion, which reason has found in Anaxagoras to be real existence, is the simple negative into which all determination, all that is existent and individual sinks. Before the Notion nothing can exist, for it is simply the predicateless absolute to which everything is clearly a moment only; for it there is thus nothing so to speak permanently fixed and sealed. The Notion is just the constant change of Heraclitus, the movement, the causticity, which nothing can resist. Thus the Notion which finds itself, finds itself as the absolute power before which everything vanishes; and thereby all things, all existence, everything held to be secure, is now made fleeting. This security—whether it be a security of natural Being or the security of definite conceptions, principles, customs and laws—becomes vacillation and loses its stability. As universal, such principles, &c., certainly themselves pertain to the Notion, yet their universality is only their form, for the content which they have, as determinate, falls into movement. We see this movement arising in the so-called Sophists whom we here encounter for the first time. They gave themselves the name _σοφισταί_, as teachers of wisdom, _i.e._ as those who could make wise (_σοφίζειν_). The learning of the Sophists is thus directly the opposite to ours, which only aspires to acquire information and investigate what is and has been—it is a mass of empirical matter, in which the discovery of a new form, a new worm, or other vermin is held to be a point of great importance. Our learned professors are in so far much less responsible than the Sophists; however, Philosophy has nothing to do with this lack of responsibility.
But as regards the relation of the Sophists to what is ordinarily believed, they are, by the healthy human understanding, as much decried as by morality. By the former this is on account of their theoretic teaching, since it is senseless to say that nothing is; and in respect of practice because they subvert all principles and laws. For the first mentioned, things certainly cannot be left in this confusion of movement and in their negative aspect merely; yet the rest into which they pass is not the restoration of what is moved into its former condition of security, as if in the end the result were the same and the action were a superfluous one. Now the sophistry of common opinion, which is without the culture of thought and without scientific knowledge, is found in the fact that to it its determinations are, as such, held to be existent in and for themselves, and a number of rules of life, maxims, principles, &c., are considered as absolutely fixed truths. Mind itself is, however, the unity of these in many ways limited truths, which in it are all recognized as being present as sublated only, as merely relative truths, _i.e._ with their restrictions, in their limitation, and not as existent in themselves. Hence these truths to the ordinary understanding, are, in fact, no more, for on another occasion it allows and even asserts the opposite to have a value also for consciousness; or it does not know that it says directly the opposite to what it means, its expression being thus only an expression of contradiction. In its actions generally, and not in its bad actions, ordinary understanding breaks these its maxims and its principles itself, and if it leads a rational life, it is properly speaking only a standing inconsistency, the making good of one narrow maxim of conduct through breaking off from others. For example, a statesman of experience and culture is one who knows how to steer a middle course, and has practical understanding, _i.e._ deals with the whole extent of the case before him and not with one side of it, which expresses itself in one maxim only. On the other hand, he, whoever he is, who acts on one maxim, is a pedant and spoils things for himself and others. Most commonly it is thus. For example, we hear it said, “it is certain that the things that I see are; I believe in their reality.” Anyone can say this quite easily. But in fact it is not true that he believes in their reality; really he assumes the contrary. For he eats and drinks them, _i.e._ he is convinced that these things are not in themselves, and their being has no security, no subsistence. Thus common understanding is in its actions better than it thinks, for in action it is Mind as a whole. But it is not here known to itself as Mind, for what comes within its consciousness are definite laws, rules, general propositions, such as by its understanding are esteemed to be the absolute truth, whose limitation it, however, sets aside in action. Now, when the Notion turns to the riches which consciousness thinks to possess, and when the latter is sensible of the danger to its truth without which it would not be, when its fixed realities are destroyed, it is enraged; and the Notion which in this its realization applies itself to the common verities, draws hatred and disdain upon itself. This is the ground of the universal denunciation of the Sophists; a denunciation of healthy human understanding which does not know how else to help itself.
Sophistry is certainly a word of ill-repute, and indeed it is particularly through the opposition to Socrates and Plato that the Sophists have come into such disrepute that the word usually now signifies that, by false reasoning, some truth is either refuted and made dubious, or something false is proved and made plausible. We have to put this evil significance on one side and to forget it. On the other hand, we now wish to consider further from the positive and properly speaking scientific side, what was the position of the Sophists in Greece.
It was the Sophists who now applied the simple Notion as thought (which with Zeno in the Eleatic school had commenced to turn towards its pure counterpart, motion) to worldly objects generally, and with it penetrated all human relations. For it is conscious of itself as the absolute and single reality, and, jealous of all else, exercises its power and rule in this reality as regards all else, since this desires to be considered as the determinate which is not Thought. The thought identical with itself, thus directs its negative powers towards the manifold determination of the theoretical and the practical, the truths of natural consciousness and the immediately recognized laws and principles; and what to the ordinary conception is established, dissolves itself in it, and in so doing leaves it to particular subjectivity to make itself first and fixed, to relate everything to itself.
Now that this Notion has appeared, it has become a more universal Philosophy, and not so much simple Philosophy as the universal culture of which every man who did not belong to those devoid of thought, partook, and necessarily partook. For we call culture just the Notion as applied in actuality, in so far as it makes its appearance not purely in its abstraction, but in unity with the manifold content of all ordinary conceptions. But in culture, the Notion is the predominant as also the actuating, because in both the determinate is recognized in its limits, in its transition into something else. This culture became the general aim of education, and there were hence a number of teachers of Sophistry. Indeed, the Sophists are the teachers of Greece through whom culture first came into existence in Greece, and thus they took the place of poets and of rhapsodists, who before this were the ordinary instructors. For religion was no instructress, since no teaching was in it imparted; and though priests certainly offered sacrifices, prophesied and interpreted the sayings of the oracle, instruction is something quite different from this. But the Sophists educated men in wisdom, in the sciences, music, mathematics, &c., and this was their foremost aim. Before Pericles appeared in Greece, the desire for culture through thought and through reflection was awakened; men wished to be cultured in their ideas, and in their various relations to guide themselves by thought, and no longer merely through oracles, or through custom, passion, the feelings of the moment. For the end of the State is the universal, under which the particular is comprehended. Because the Sophists kept in view and enlarged upon this culture, they prosecuted teaching as a special calling, business, or profession, as an office taking the place of schools; they travelled round the towns of Greece, the youth of which was by them instructed.
Now culture is certainly an indefinite expression. It has, however, this meaning, that what free thought is to attain must come out of itself and be personal conviction; it is then no longer believed but investigated—in short, it is the so-called enlightenment of modern times. Thought seeks general principles by which it criticizes everything which is by us esteemed, and nothing has value to us which is not in conformity with these principles. Thus, thought undertakes to compare the positive content with itself, to dissolve the former concrete of belief; on one side to split the content up, and, on the other, to isolate these individualities, these particular points of view and aspects, and to secure them on their own account. These aspects, which are properly not independent, but only moments of a whole, when detached from it, relate themselves to themselves, and in this way assume the form of universality. Any one of them can thus be elevated to a reason, _i.e._ to a universal determination, which is again applied to particular aspects. Thus, in culture, it is requisite that men should be acquainted with the universal points of view which belong to a transaction, event, &c., that this point of view and thereby the thing, should be grasped in a universal way, in order to afford a present knowledge of what is in question. A judge knows the various laws, _i.e._ the various legal points of view under which a thing is to be considered; these are already for him universal aspects through which he has a universal consciousness, and considers the matter in a universal way. A man of culture thus knows how to say something of everything, to find points of view in all. Greece has to thank the Sophists for this culture, because they taught men to exercise thought as to what should have authority for them, and thus their culture was culture in philosophy as much as in eloquence.
In order to reach this double end, the Sophists were one in their desire to be wise. To know what constitutes power amongst men and in the State, and what I have to recognize as such, is counted as wisdom; and because I know the power, I also know how to direct others in conformity with my end. Hence the admiration that Pericles and other statesmen excited, just because they knew their own standpoint, and had the power of putting others in their proper place. That man is powerful who can deduce the actions of men from the absolute ends which move them. The object of the Sophists has thus been to teach what is the mainspring of the world, and since Philosophy alone knows that this is the universal thought which resolves all that is particular, the Sophists were also speculative philosophers. Learned in the proper sense they hence were not, because there were as yet no positive sciences without Philosophy, such as in their aridity did not concern all mankind and man’s essential aspects.
They further had the most ordinary practical end, to give a consciousness of that which is involved in the moral world and which satisfies man. Religion taught that the gods are the powers which rule over men. Immediate morality recognized the rule of laws; man was to find satisfaction in conforming to laws, and was to assume that others also find satisfaction because they follow these laws. But from the reflection which here breaks in, it no longer satisfies man to obey law as an authority and external necessity, for he desires to satisfy himself in himself, to convince himself, through his reflection, of what is binding upon him, what is his end and what he has to do for this end. Thus the impulses and desires that man has, become his power; and only inasmuch as he affords them satisfaction does he become satisfied. Now the Sophists taught how these powers could be moved in empirical man, for the good as ordinarily recognized, no longer determined them. Rhetoric, however, teaches how circumstances may be made subject to such forces; it even makes use of the wrath and passions of the hearer in order to bring about a conclusion. Thus the Sophists were more especially the teachers of oratory, and that is the aspect in which the individual could make himself esteemed amongst the people as well as carry out what was best for the people; this certainly characterizes a democratic constitution, in which the citizens have the ultimate decision. Because, in this way, oratory was one of the first requirements for the rule of a people, or for making something clear to them through their ordinary ideas, the Sophists trained men for common Greek life, for citizenship and for statesmen, without appearing to prepare State officials for an examination in specific subjects. For the particular characteristic of eloquence is to show the manifold points of view existing in a thing, and to give force to those which harmonize with what appears to me to be most useful; it thus is the art of putting forward various points of view in the concrete case, and placing others rather in the shade. Aristotle’s _Topica_ comes to mind in the connection, inasmuch as it gives the categories or thought-determinations (_τόπους_), according to which we have to regard things in order to learn to speak; but the Sophists were the first to apply themselves to a knowledge of these.
This is the position taken up by the Sophists. But we find a perfectly definite picture of their further progress and procedure in Plato’s Protagoras. Plato here makes Protagoras express himself more precisely respecting the art of the Sophists. That is to say, Plato in this dialogue represents that Socrates accompanies a young man named Hippocrates, who desires to place himself under Protagoras, then newly arrived in Athens, for instruction in the science of the Sophists. On the way, Socrates now asks Hippocrates what is this wisdom of the Sophists which he wishes to learn. Hippocrates at first replies Rhetoric, for the Sophist is one who knows how to make men clever (_δεινόν_) in speech. In fact, what is most striking in a man or people of culture is the art of speaking well, or of turning subjects round and considering them in many aspects. The uncultivated man finds it unpleasant to associate with people who know how to grasp and express every point of view with ease. The French are good speakers in this sense, and the Germans call their talking prattle; but it is not mere talk that brings about this result, for culture is also wanted. We may have mastered a speech quite completely, but if we have not culture, it is not good speaking. Men thus learn French, not only to be able to speak French well, but to acquire French culture. What is to be obtained from the Sophists is thus the power of keeping the manifold points of view present to the mind, so that the wealth of categories by which an object may be considered, immediately occurs to it. Socrates, indeed, remarks that the principle of the Sophists is not hereby determined in a sufficiently comprehensive way, and thus it is not sufficiently known what a Sophist is, “yet,” he says, “we have a desire to go on.”[86] For likewise, if anyone wishes to study Philosophy, he does not as yet know what Philosophy is, else he would not need to study it.