Summary: The Phenomenology of Spirit (page 2)

In the famous preface to the Phenomenology, Hegel offers a new definition of truth that breaks with the traditional view: The true is the whole. ¹ But what does this mean?

When we are confronted with two opposing theories, our instinct is to determine which of the two is true, assuming they cannot both be correct. We naturally uphold the principle of non-contradiction, as defined by Aristotle in the Metaphysics: It is impossible for the same thing at the same time to be and not to be, in the same respect and in relation to the same thing.

The confrontation of opposing doctrines is therefore experienced as an intolerable contradiction, one that must be swiftly resolved by identifying the single truth.

Moreover, common opinion conceives of truth as timeless. If an idea is true, then it has always been true. The mathematical formula 2+2=4 is the perfect example – a truth valid for all time.

In this view, truth has no temporality, no progression. There is no development over time in which an idea might initially be inadequate, inapplicable, or false, and then, at a later stage in history, come to be seen as true – only to become obsolete once again.

To summarise: common opinion conceives less of the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive development of truth than it sees in this diversity merely contradiction.

It is precisely this model that Hegel rejects, in a gesture that is both inaugural and revolutionary. He places becoming – or in other words, temporality, history – and contradiction at the very heart of truth, redefining it as a whole.

Truth is not given from the outset. It undergoes a progressive development through which it takes on certain forms; at a given stage in this development, some theories will be true, others false. Later, truth assumes other forms, rendering the previous theories obsolete and inadequate to this new stage – and thus, false. A different theory then becomes the truth of that moment in history, before itself giving way to others, and so on.

Hence, if there is such a thing as universal truth, it cannot lie in any one of these individual forms, but only in the whole – the entirety of the successive shapes that truth assumes throughout its becoming.

This is why Hegel insists that the true is the whole.

Hegel uses a particularly vivid metaphor to illustrate this idea: the plant, too, undergoes a process of progressive development. It begins as a simple bud, then blossoms – a shoot appears, followed by the bloom, which in turn gives way to fruit. It would be absurd to see a contradiction between the shoot and the flower, or between the flower and the fruit, and to try to determine which of the three represents the true form of the plant. These are merely successive stages of the plant’s development, and none is truer than the others. Rather, each represents the truth of the plant at a different moment in time:

The bud disappears in the bursting forth of the blossom, and one could say that the bud is refuted by the blossom. Similarly, by the emergence of the fruit, the blossom itself is shown to be a false form of the plant’s existence, and the fruit replaces the blossom as its truth. These forms are not only distinct – each displaces the other because they are mutually incompatible. Yet at the same time their fluid nature makes them moments of an organic unity in which they do not merely repel each other, but are equally necessary – and this equal necessity alone constitutes the life of the whole.

In the same way, the various philosophical systems (scepticism, Stoicism, Kantian criticism, etc.) do not represent the whole truth, but only a moment in its development. Each flourished at a particular historical stage (for instance, Stoicism during the Greek and Roman periods), before giving way to other philosophical systems more suited to the emerging world (such as the Christian world, and so on).

Yet what we readily accept in the case of the flower – that there is no contradiction between its successive forms – we struggle to accept in the realm of philosophy. The existence of several philosophical theories seems problematic; the fact that they lead to contradictory conclusions appears unacceptable. We try to resolve the contradiction by proving the theory we prefer and refuting the others:

The contradiction raised against a philosophical system is usually not conceived in this way, and the consciousness that apprehends the system generally does not know how to free this contradiction from its one-sidedness or preserve it free from that one-sidedness, nor to recognise in what appears conflicting and self-opposing so many mutually necessary moments.

Contradiction, then, should not be seen as a scandal, but embraced as an essential feature of truth itself – a truth conceived as a becoming whole, passing from one form to another, each of which has its legitimacy in its own time.

In offering this redefinition, Hegel performs a truly revolutionary gesture: History enters the very definition of truth. The model of timeless mathematical truth – valid for all time – is no longer adequate.

What, then, are the consequences of this irruption of Time at the heart of truth? That is what we shall now explore.

¹ Our translation. The references for the quotations are available in the book Hegel: A Close Reading