nietzsche and hegel breaking the dialectic

7/30/2019 Nietzsche and Hegel Breaking the Dialectic

1/7

Nietzsche and Hegel: breaking the dialectic...

Nietzsche breaks with the Hegelian dialectic by more rigorously conceiving the Hegelian "subject,"

or that aspect of "what actually is" in Hegel that becomes, that negates: there is a negativity that is

greater and more powerful than Hegelian negativity, a type of becoming that is more true and

more fundamental than Hegelian becoming, and thus a different type of movement and structure

of the actual than the dialectic.

When we say "subject," we are of course referring to the famous and crucial phrase from the

Preface to the Phenomenology of Spiritthat essentialy sums up Hegel's philosophical position:

In my view, which can be justified only by the exposition of the [Hegelian] system itself,

everything turns on grasping and expressing the True [what is real, actual], not only as

Substance, but equally as Subject.

-Phenomenology of Spirit, 17.

Essentially, this means that what is actual, is only because it is both 1) being, existence (this is

what is meant by "Substance," a thing that has attributes), and 2) becoming (this is what is meant

by "Subject"). That which really or actually is, not only is (that is, not only exists), but also becomes

or incorporates becoming into its existence. In fact, by saying "equally" Hegel says that what is

actual is indeed actual only to the extent thatit also becomes: becoming and being only effect

actuality insofar as they occur equally, insofar as becoming incorporates itself into being just as

much as being exists. Now, this becoming that is incorporated into the Substance that is actual

Hegel calls "negativity." Thus he says a little later on in the Preface:

The living Substance is being which is in truth Subject, or, what is the same, is in truth actual

only insofar as it is the movement [read: becoming] of positing itself, or is the mediation [read:

becoming] of its self-othering with itself. This substance is, as Subject, pure simple negativity.

-Phenomenology of Spirit, 18.

"Pure negativity" Hegel says a little later, is, "when reduced to its pure abstraction [or the most

general concept which will encompass it], simple becoming" ("Preface", 20). Thus, when being

(Substance) is "in truth," as Hegel says here, when it is actual, it negates, it becomes. Linking

negation up with the concepts of becoming and being, subject and substance, we can see then

why Hegel calls becoming "negativity:" becoming is the absence of being, and therefore,

conceived purely, is not. It is the "not," pure and simple--what does not exist but what makes

something actual. We can also see that the statement about the True as substance and equally as

subject responds essentially to Descartes, who thought the True, the actual, was only insofar as it

was Substance. For Descartes, the cogito, when it grasped its actuality, was a res cogitans,

"thinking thing," a thing that possessed the attribute of thinking. For Hegel, conceiving of actuality

as guaranteed by the mere attribute of a thing did not seem concrete enough: reality and actuality

conceived only as the adequate possession of a particular attribute seems too flimsy. Cartesian

truth, Hegel thinks, would only be a matter of determining whether something possessed the right

attribute and so was a substance--it was no more profound than this, this determining what is
http://mikejohnduff.blogspot.se/2007/07/nietzsche-and-hegel-breaking-with.htmlhttp://mikejohnduff.blogspot.se/2007/07/nietzsche-and-hegel-breaking-with.htmlhttp://mikejohnduff.blogspot.se/2007/07/nietzsche-and-hegel-breaking-with.html


2/7

essentially already priveliged to be a substance (since it already possesses the attribute). The

whole method of Descartes, the whole taking away of all that was supposedly real to reach what

was actual, is essentially meaningless, since it only finds out what was already there. For Hegel,

this whole process of abstracting away from reality essentially and necessarily effectedthe

grasping of actuality that Descartes found--it didsomething, it hadto do something, otherwise the

truth that Descartes found would merely be superfluous, would not govern reality or essentially be

true. Thus, whatever was true also had to be a "subject," had to be not merely an attribute but a

predicate that determined the thing it was asserted to be the possession of. Calling this predicate

of the substance "subject" essentially means: the "I think" is not indifferent to the "I am," the

thinking itself of Descartes effectuates the being that the thinking supposedly proves; or, put

differently, the "cogitans" is not merely an adjective modifying "res," but essentially determines

"res" as a verb. The "res," is what it does. This "doing" is not merely being, but is in fact a going

beyondbeing into a realm where being is not. Conceived adequately, this "doing" is, for Hegel, a

becoming. Thus he says, essentially of the res cogitans, that for it not to be a mere empty phrase,

a mere truth that is indifferent to the everyday world that it supposedly governs, in order for it to

govern that world as its actual nature, it must become, must enter into an otherstate that is not

being--that in fact is not-being itself, negation: "whatever is more than... a word... contains a

becoming-otherthat has to be taken back [into the word itself as its action, as what it does]"

("Preface" 20).

Now that this is cleared up, where does Nietzsche fall with respect to all of it? We said that

Nietzsche breaks with the Hegelian dialectic by more rigorously conceiving the Hegelian "subject."

We now see that implied in this is a radicalization of how Hegel, too, more rigorously conceived

the Cartesian cogito: Nietzsche too is reacting to Descartes. Essentially, then, how Hegel conceives

of actuality as effected by a becoming--becoming as negativity being the essence of the "subject"--

will have to be just as inadequately conceived for Nietzsche as Descartes' substance was for Hegel.

Let us see what Nietzsche says:

What are attributes?-- We have not regarded change in us as change but as an "in itself" that is

foreign to us... and we have posited it, not as an event, but as a being, as a "quality"--and in

addition invented an entity to which it adheres; i.e. we have regarded the effectas something

that effects, and this we have regarded as a being. But even in this formulation, the concept

"effect" is arbitrary: for those changes that take place in us, and that we firmly believe we have

not ourselves caused, we merely infer to be effects, in accordance with the conclusion "every

change must have an author";--but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which

effects from the effecting. If I say "lightning flashes," I have posited the flash once as an activity

and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the

event but is rather fixed, is, and does not "become."-- To regard an event as an "effecting," and

this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.

-The Will to Power, #531 (composed 1885-1886)

Now, first of all, we should clarify what Nietzsche means by "attribute" in this note, for the


3/7

question "what are attributes?" is that to which the whole rest of the note responds. Nietzsche

means by "attribute" both attribute in the Cartesian sense, as that which is a property of a

substance, but also "predicate" in the Hegelian sense, as that which is the subject of a substance.

This is the upshot of the paragraph: we see not only that attributes are attributes, but that things

that are asserted as predicates are attributes. It is not even a matter of a misnomer: Hegel does

not use "predicate" when what he "really means" is "attribute," for Nietzsche--Hegel is not merely

mistaken in taking something that is an attribute to be a predicate. What Nietzsche is getting at

here, what he essentially determines the "attribute" to be, is something that is also signified by

"predicate"--using "predicate" does not outstrip or go beyond what is essentially signified by

"attribute," as Hegel thinks it does. That is, Nietzsche destroys Hegel's assumption that in making

the attribute into a predicate, he is accurately conceiving actuality. Niether attribute nor predicate

can do this for Nietzsche: actuality is something that exceeds the grasp of both these concepts,

and thus are just as effective in grasping actuality as we now know (after Hegel) the attribute was-

-we can therefore lump them together under one name.

The main thrust of the paragraph thus made visible, we can turn to the actual statements

themselves to determine how indeed the Hegelian predicate is just like an attribute. For wasn't

the predicate subject, and the subject negativity, that is, becoming?How is becoming in Hegel

only an attribute?

Because, says Nietzsche, it is not adequately conceived as becoming. In other words, it is covertly

conceived as being. This is what Nietzsche means when he says, "We have not regarded change in

us as change but as an 'in itself' that is foreign to us... and we have posited it, not as an event,

but as a being, as a 'quality.'" "Change" here is becoming. "Not regarding change as change"

means not conceiving becoming as a becoming that is adequate to the nature of becoming. What

is this nature? Well, as we already determined when looking at Hegel, the nature of becoming is

not-being: becoming is what happens when being stops being and changes into a different type of

being. While a being is changing into a different type of being, it engages in a process where it

turns into its opposite and negation--it becomes, it engages in not-being. Thus, if becoming is the

opposite of being, to not regard becoming as becoming is essentially to pass off something as

becoming that is not really the full and pure opposite of being, but only approximates this

opposite. This pseudo-opposite would therefore be something that appears to change, appears to

become, but does not really become. In fact, it would still be being. This is what Nietzsche means

by "we have posited it [change, becoming] not as an event, but as a being." Now, what remains to

be explained is the crucial part of this statement: how is this pseudo-becoming a pseudo-becoming

because it is "regarded.. as an 'in itself' that is foreign to us?" Indeed, this "foreign-ness" of

becoming is proffered as the essential thing that makes it lack actuality in the paragraph. How

could becoming be in itself something foreign, and as this not really be actual becoming?

Well, let us reflect on what Hegel said becoming was. Hegel said "the living Substance is being

which is in truth Subject, or, what is the same, is in truth actual only insofar as it is the

movement of positing itself, or is the mediation of its self-othering with itself." Notice that Hegel

describes what is in effect becoming--Subject--as a type of "self-othering with itself." Is not this

"self-othering" of which Hegel speaks what Nietzsche refers to as the "foreign?" Indeed, what is

"other" is what is foreign: what is other is whatever is not-itself, what is not-here (but there, over


4/7

and against oneself, in the foreign). Indeed, the German "fremd" carries this meaning of "other"

with it much more than the "foreign" with which we translate Nietzsche: in German "other" is

"anderes", a conjunction of "an", meaning "on," "apart from and yet related to," "an aspect of a

thing that is not it but is added onto it," "on top of and against," and therefore essentially "not" in

a privative way similar to the Latin prefix "a-" when it is used as a prefix, and the word "da," which

means "here"--thus we say what is other is what is not-here. Indeed, Hegel himself often plays on

this meaning, implying that what is other is also what is foreign. What this part of the passage of

Hegel's means, then, is what we have just explained when we were explaining becoming: "self-

othering" is what is necessary for something not just to merely exist as a substance, but also as

subject. In order for something to really exist, it must in a sense go out of itself and change such

that it becomes its own other. This is what Hegel means by "mediation:" something mediates

insofar as it traverses a path in which it engages in a process where it becomes foreign, other than

itself. Now, when we were explaining becoming and its opposition to being, we did not give it this

sense of "becoming-foreign"--but indeed we can see that this is what we meant. Becoming is not

just becoming for Hegel, it is becoming-other, becoming-foreign. It is becoming something that,

while it "is" not, is indeed something that is set up as in opposition to being--that is, substance

proper. This is so much the case that we can say the following: what does not become other, what

does not become foreign to itself as being, does not become at allfor Hegel. What does not set

itself up in opposition to being when it becomes is only still merely being, merely substance

without being subject, and fails to attain actuality or Truth.

Now we understand what Nietzsche means by regarding change or becoming "as an 'in itself' that

is foreign to us." For Hegel, becoming is, in itself, what is foreign to being. As soon as something

engages in becoming instead of being, it must be foreign or other to being, because becoming is in

itself something different, foreign and other to being, to existence.

Now, Nietzsche says this regard for becoming as in itself foreign to being makes becoming or

change into being. Why is this the case? Is not becoming something that is foreign to being? Hegel

seems to be on the right track here: Nietzsche suddenly looks as if he is ruthlessly undermining

something that most, if not all, would agree upon. But let us hear Nietzsche out. Why does

Nietzsche assert becoming is being when it is regarded as the other of being? Because this makes

becoming into "a 'quality.'" What is a quality? we must ask. Well, a quality is a quality of being. It is

something that being does not have as an attribute or (what is the same for us now) a predicate,

but which is commensurable with the character that being itself has. Being of the same quality as

being means that one is commensurable with, adequate with, equivalent with being. Being a

quality of being means that one can be substituted for being without any change effecting itself

within the character of being. Thus, we see how what we agree upon fails us, along with Hegel. For

it is obvious that if becoming, according to Hegel, is something that is commensurate with being,

can be exchanged with being without making being change, well, as change itselfbecoming can no

longer really be called becoming. What Nietzsche is getting at is this: if becoming can be

something that being can just enter into, well, then it is not really becoming because it does not

force that being to become, to change. The only question left to us, then, is whether Hegel holds

this. If we reflect on what we have heard Hegel say, namely, that becoming isnegation this will

prove the case. Simply by negating itself, by being not-being, being itself can become what is other


5/7

to it--becoming. Nietzsche is right. If being can be other than itself and thereby be becoming,

becoming is commensurable with the character of being, and is therefore its "quality." When

being negates itself, then, it is still being. All this comes down to one fundamental insight:

Nietzsche effectively claims here that as long as becoming is the other of being, then it is not

actually becoming.

Before specifying what actualbecoming would be (presumably a becoming that is not the other of

being), we might take a moment to show how immense this claim is. For its power is such that it

effectively "breaks" the dialectic of Hegel. Furthermore, it does not break it from the outside by

specifying something wrong with the points Hegel begins his dialectic at and ends it with (nature

and Absolute Knowledge, respectively), in the manner of Strauss, Feuerbach, and the early Marx.

What Nietzsche does is much more radical, and only the late Marx and Kierkegaard approached it

prior to him: Nietzsche breaks the dialectic from the inside, from the movement of the aufheben

or negativity that constitutes it.

Now, what is the dialectic, and how does it get constituted by negativity? This is an immense

question, but we can state what it is quite simply from what we have already determined. The

dialectic is the name we give for the process of negation that makes a being or substance attain its

actuality through its becoming. It is essentially the process of "mediation" we described earlier--a

substance's taking up of its own opposite (the opposite remaining its becoming) in its becoming.

When this substance is determined as all of actuality, all of the world and its meaningful events,

or, to call it by its Hegelian name, Spirit--when this is the case we have the "dialectic" proper: it is

the totality of world-meaning or Spirit mediating itself, going through the process of its becoming

actual. This huge global movement is, then, what is broken by Nietzsche. No longer can we look at

the history of the world and of its meaningful events as a process of the becoming-actual of being,

or the subjectivization of its substance, for this becoming-actual or subjectivization is what is

already there, what is superfluous about its deeper essence. Thus, what Hegel hated about

Descartes, namely, that he was saying something that did not really say anything, can be applied

back to Hegel by Nietzsche. Any process of negation, the becoming other of a thing, doe not

necessarily have to proceed the way that Hegel specifies it will because he conceives of this

becoming merely as a quality of being. We can see how this might change our perception of things

when we look at the example of the lightening that Nietzsche gives: "lightning flashes." Now, for

Hegel, the substance of the lightning is actualizing itself or realizing itself in the sky because as it is

ceasing to merely be and instead become not just merely itself but what is foreign to itself--its

becoming. The lightningflashes: the flashing is the sign of the becoming of the substance that is

lightning. We see how intertwined this perspective is with our normal conception of things when

we merely begin to think of even more every day examples: the tree grows--it ceases being a tree

and realizes itself as a growing-tree; the dog walks--the dog ceases to just merely be a dog by

being a walking dog, by becoming something other. These are dialectical interpretations of events

because they specify a structure of reality that the events supposedly coincide with. But how does

Nietzsche view these events? "If I say 'lightning flashes,' I have posited the flash once as an

activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with

the event but is rather fixed, is, and does not 'become.' What this means is that Nietzsche sees

the lightening dialectically and looks at its flashing not as an activity of the lightning but merely as


6/7

something that the lightning instantiates itself as for the dialectician. The flash is not a unique

event. It is merely an unfolding of what was always already present in the lightning just simply

being lightning. This is because the flashing is not becoming, but being. We can see why Nietzsche

says that this view posits the flash twice: the flash is supposedly something that is supposed to be

other than being and yet at the same the activity that has made it other. While this first thing is

specified by what Hegel calls "becoming," the actual activity, the flashing itself, is not grasped by

this type of "becoming" since it is something that really truly excludes being (unlike Hegel's

"becoming," which, let us repeat it, is only a being's "quality"). What actually makes the lightning

flash is something that is not its becoming. According to Hegel, what makes the lightning flash is its

not-being. But this only makes it into something that is a "subject" (as Nietzsche says) over and

above its substance. It does not make it flash. Thus we come back to what we first specified as the

upshot of this entire passage: what Hegel determined as predicate is just as good as the Cartesian

attribute--they both miss the real issue, the real activity that is in complete opposition to being.

What this is we have yet to specify--though Nietzsche does indeed specify it--but already we can

use a more poignant example in order to hit home how incadequate this Hegelian view of things

is: "I murder." The murder is not a consequence of any actual activity on my part according to

Hegel--it is only the consequence of my not-being-myself. Now, Nietzsche allows us to see that I

am myself insofar as I am not myself, because this murder was indeed me acting in accordance to

my character as a substance, as an "I." But as far as Hegel is concerned, the activity of this action

extends only so far as to show that I was acting as something that was not myself, but an

application of myself, a becoming-other of what-once-was the substance that was myself. We

indeed subscribe to this view in the courts, where we think an action is the application of the

subjectivity of the subject: Hegel would say that it is the subjectivity of the subject. But this is,

according to Nietzsche, missing the point. The action itself is never touched: the real becoming is

pawned off as this pseudo-becoming, this mere predicate or attribute of being. This is what

Nietzsche means when he characterizes this as a mere dogmatic adherence to the naive believe

that "every change must have an author." Every becoming, every lightning flash, every murder, is

only as it is because it is the effectof an intention, an authoring, a being that has become by

negation or not-being. We have to ask: is this always the case? Especially of nature--how does

lightning "intend" a flash?

What is the real action according to Nietzsche? We can look at how he describes this pawning-off

in order to specify it. "We have regarded the effectas something that effects," Nietzsche says. That

is, we regard an effect as a cause. In order to perceive the real essence of becoming, theactivityof

becoming, that which we mistakenly think we grasp when we call it this mere "effecting" that is

really in essence an effect--in order to get at this we have to reverse cause and effect here. That is,

in order to grasp actual becoming, we have to consider what we call a cause here--being, the

lightning--and see this as the effect of a different cause. What is this different cause? Nothing

other than what is effected by this "effecting," that is, the flashing, what we called the becoming

of the being, the negation of the being. Put differently, in order to properly conceive becoming,

we have to reverse cause and effect as we normally see it. This means not only that we have to

reverse the priority of being over becoming that determines the particular relationship of

becoming and being, for it is this priority of being overbecoming that makes becoming the "other"


7/7

of being. In other words, becoming is what it is for Hegel only insofar as it is is not-being. This

implies that it has no real essence apart from being merely the cessation of being: where being

stops, there becoming is; becoming is only the consequence of being, its effect. Reversing this

priority means reversing cause and effect. Therefore we have to conceive of being itself, existence,

as a consequence of what we call becoming, such that being is merely not-becoming. This reversal

effectuates a conception of the actual--which we remember is the mediation of the effecting and

the effect, what we called being and its negation--that is one in which becoming as activity is

genuinely conceived. Becoming in this actual sense is what becomes such that in not becoming it is

being. Only when becoming is something that can be (exist) when it stops becoming--and not the

mere consequence of a cessation in things being--only when this is the case have we properly

conceived becoming. What does this look like? We have hinted at it: instead of seeing the

lightning effectuating the flash, or causing it, we see the flash causing the lightning. How can this

be? Well, we regard the lightning as something that serves as the vessel or embodiment for the

particular event (becoming) that is the flash. This is perhaps better seen in the example of murder.

Where murder was something that was merely the extention and application of the substance or

existing person, for Nietzsche, the person is a mere vessel for the act of murder, no matter what

she or he intended. And while this may be more troubling, and make it universally harder to assign

guilt, looking at events this way will make them more accurate, make them more actual. It is the

ability to think this, to think of what is merely as the vessel for the mighty process of becoming (a

will to power) that sustains in fact brings it as it is about, that allows us to say we have adequately

forged a realm for thought beyond the dialectic and the shoddy interpretation of becoming as

something lacking action--that is, it allows us to say we have adequately gone beyond Hegel. We

have only hinted at how this beyond is to be really thoroughly conceived, but hopefully the break

with the dialectic itself will be clear--and that is what is important in knowing the thrust and the

importance of both Nietzsche and Hegel.

nietzsche and hegel breaking the dialectic

Documents