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25 2 Nature and Spirit The opposition between nature and spirit is necessary absolutely. —G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics The distinction between nature and spirit is central to Hegel’s philosophy, including his philosophy of history. To understand Hegel’s views on history and race, including his portrayal of Africans and people of the Third World at large, we must first consider his theory of the distinction/relation between nature and spirit. For that, we turn to the second part of the Encyclopedia , the Philosophy of Nature. Nature Hegel asks, “What is nature?” He replies, “It is through the knowledge and the philosophy of nature that we propose to find the answer to this general question .” In the philosophy of nature, “we find nature before us as an enigma and a problem, the solution of which seems to both attract and repel us; it attracts us in that spirit has a presentiment of itself in nature; it repulses us in that nature is an alienation in which spirit does not find itself” (1970, 1:194). Although spirit is distinct from nature, it does not reside outside nature but rather within it. “The study of nature is therefore the liberation of what belongs to spirit within nature, for spirit is in nature in so far as it relates itself not to another, but to itself.” This liberation of spirit is “likewise the liberation of nature, which in itself is reason; it is only through spirit however, that reason as such comes forth from nature into existence.” Nature is, “so to speak, the bride espoused by spirit.” In fine, “nature is self-alienated spirit”; “nature is the Idea, but only implicitly”; in nature, “the unity of the Notion conceals itself” (1970, 1:204, 206). 26 Dialectic of Nature and Spirit Nature is distinguished from spirit by its finitude. Nature’s “beginning is also not a beginning, and the conflict between these opposed determinations, as it is involved in finitude, is devoid of resolution and reconciliation. It is because the finite is this contradiction that it perishes.” Further, “the finite has a beginning , but this beginning is not the first; it is independent, but its immediacy is limited in the same way” (1970, 1:208). In a memorable rendition of the dialectic of finitude, Hegel writes in Science of Logic, “Finite things are, but their relation to themselves is that they are negatively self-related and in this very self-relation send themselves away beyond themselves, beyond their being. They are, but the truth of this being is their end.” The finite “not only alters, like something in general, but it ceases to be.” Its “ceasing to be is not merely a possibility, so that it could be without ceasing to be, but the being as such of finite things is to have the germ of decease as their being-within-self: the hour of their birth is the hour of their death” (1991, 129). As the abode of finitude, nature is “what it is through its determinate existence , and it should therefore not be defied,” warns Hegel. Despite its deficiency in its finitude, “nature is implicitly divine in that it is in the Idea; but in reality its being does not correspond to its Notion, and it is rather the unresolved contradiction .” And yet even “in such an element of externality, nature is, nevertheless, the representation of the Idea, and consequently one may and should admire the wisdom of God within it” (1970, 1:209). Nature is manifold in its external aspects of existence. “It is not only that in nature the play of forms has unbounded and unbridled contingency, but that each shape by itself is devoid of its Notion” (1970, 1:209). Because “unity in nature is a relation between apparently self-subsistent entities however, nature is not free, but merely necessary and contingent.” Indeed, “nature is the negative because it negates the Idea” (1970, 1:210, 211). Nature is immediately concrete. “That which is immediately concrete is in fact an ensemble of juxtaposed properties, external and more or less indifferent to one another, to which simple subjective being-for-self is therefore equally indifferent, and which it consequently abandons to external contingent determinations .” Hegel calls this aspect “the impotence of nature.” The “impotence of nature is to be attributed to its only being able to maintain the determination of the Notion in an abstract manner, and to its exposing the foundation of the particular to determination from without” (1970...

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