The Notion

by J.R.

Hegel’s (re)formulation of the German word Begriff in Phenomenology of Spirit is so distinct that it inspired A.V. Miller to translate it into English as Notion instead of as the expected, traditional, translation Concept. Perhaps it is the singular function of this term, the Notion, or perhaps it is the way it never seems to fall into consciousness that encouraged this decision. As Martin Heidegger tells us in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, the word Begriff (he is not explicitly referring to Hegel) etymologically possesses the root of the German verb greifen, to hold. He leads with this fact in order to describe the difficulty of holding onto a concept, and the way in which consciousness of a concept also implies that the concept holds on to you. Hegel’s Begriff, I believe, incorporates this strange interplay of holding, though by declaring the primacy of this one Notion, we do not solely confront the difficulty of holding onto one item of thought; rather, we confront the very difficulty of ‘holding on’ itself.

In the Phenomenology Hegel describes how the Spirit (Geist), mind, self-consciousness, enters particular stages (self-conceptions) which each reveal variable orientations around the theme subject and object. For example, in the section entitled “Freedom of Consciousness ” directly after the well-trodden Master/Slave dialectic, Hegel describes a movement of Spirit from Stoicism, to Skepticism, to the Unhappy Consciousness. Hegel utilizes the Notion here to critique and also move through each of these stages, always illustrating that an imbalance exists in the value attributed to the subject and object of each stage. The Notion, which is what ‘can be’ transparently reasoned at the ultimate stage Absolute Knowledge, is present before this final stage as the measure of error in each prior stage. It is also present as that which seeks its own resolution. Since the Notion is the perfect balance of subject and object, each stage errors on the side of too much of one or the other. In Stoicism, for example, Hegel places the error on the side of objectivity: the stoic treats self-consciousness as a “pure abstraction of the I” (Hegel, p. 119), in doing so the stoic ignores the “intrinsic” (Hegel, p. 120) or subjective element of Spirit. The Notion rescues us from this static conception, thereby transferring us into a new form of self-consciousness, Skepticism, where Spirit declares: “the Notion is for me straightaway my notion” (Hegel, p. 120). Skepticism is thus directly opposed to Stoicism, for where the stoic objectifies self-consciousness the skeptic registers it as a sign of freedom, as a sign that “I am not in an other” (Hegel, p.120). Well, this reconfiguration of Spirit, in the end, acts as a type of overcompensation, carrying the skeptic too far into the error of subjectivity, thereby requiring another movement, so to bring the Notion closer to itself.

Hegel’s famous term Aufhebung defines this capacity to shift from object to subject and then back again (subject to object); it is the ‘sublative’ act that reconfigures the balance sheet so to say. One crucial element of Aufhebung which spurs on the teleology of the Spirit (wherein Spirit is self-conscious of the Notion itself) is its capacity to record this action into the history of the Spirit. When the skeptic sublates the objectivity of the stoic into subjectivity, Aufhebung inscribes this action in such a way so as to bring Spirit closer to the Notion. Thus, though the skeptic seems at first to have swung far too close to solipsism, the stoical concept of an external mind remains to ensure that the skeptic, now moving towards another sublation, “truly experiences itself as internally contradictory” (Hegel, p. 126). The skeptic is thus capable of simultaneously recognizing the objectivity of the stoic and his or her original subjective freedom. Yet, at the moment the Spirit grasps, seizes, this contradiction it has enacted a second Aufhebung, and acceded to a new stage, in this case, “The Unhappy Consciousness”. Why unhappy? Because it is conscious of itself as a definitively “contradictory being” (Hegel, p. 126), with no hope to merge subject and object. As Hegel says about the Unhappy Consciousness, “The duplication of self-consciousness within itself, which is essential in the Notion of Spirit, is thus here before us, but not yet in its unity” (Hegel, p. 126).

This unity is the Notion as Notion, a self-consciousness that registers nothing but the Notion itself, a conception of subject and object that no longer treats them as contradictions, that treats them as constitutive of each other, decisively “extimate” if you will. To reach this ultimate stage, once we have arrived at the stage of “Unhappy Consciousness”, we need to travel through, with nothing in our sack but Aufhebung, all religious, philosophical and artistic ventures of the mind. Yet, even on the penultimate page, we still find the Notion struggling to present itself. At this point, Hegel’s language nears an ecstatic incomprehensibility: “The self-knowing Spirit knows not only itself but also the negative of itself, or its limit: to know one’s limit is to know how to sacrifice oneself. This sacrifice is the externalization in which Spirit displaces the process of its becoming Spirit in the form of free contingent happening, intuiting its pure Self as Time outside of it, and equally its Being as Space. This last becoming of Spirit, Nature, is its living immediate Becoming; Nature, the externalized Spirit, is in its existence nothing but this eternal externalization of its continuing existence and the movement which reinstates the Subject” (Hegel, p. 492). Though we might read this as the final stage of the Notion, Hegel is not finished yet, describing how the knowledge the Spirit attains here is a “withdrawal into itself in which it abandons its outer existence and gives its existential shape over to recollection. Thus absorbed in itself, it is sunk in the night of its self-consciousness” (Hegel, p. 492). A few hundred words from “infinitude” and we are once again shrouded in “the night where all cows are black.”

And then Hegel exerts the Aufhebung one last time, and would have us believe, or would have himself believe, that this final Aufhebung has achieved the Spirit’s transparent conception of itself as subject and object, as Notion qua Notion, recording all the previous Aufhebung’s of each stage in such a way as to expose itself in its naked light.

In recent years, many attempts have been made to extract Hegel’s Notion from its teleological consummation at the end of the Phenomenology. In Jean-Luc Nancy’s text “L’inquiétude du négatif (The Restlessness of the Negative)”, Nancy argues that the Notion negates every conception of self, and in this sense, the Notion is the source of Aufhebung, that which tears a hole in our imago or self-identification. By lopping off the final stage, Nancy simultaneously reconfigures the manner in which Spirit records the history of the Aufhebung. Without teleology, the history of Spirit no longer progresses towards the Notion; instead, the memory or trace of Aufhebung emphasizes that Spirit can never behold the Notion directly. Nancy does not aspire towards a self-conscious registration of the Notion, for such a conception would still possess the potential of negation present in each previous stage of the Spirit, immediately revealing its own error. Without this final stage, the Notion becomes a method of critique; it sublates the dogmatism and ego of each particular construct self-consciousness enters. This type of thinking, I believe, brings Hegel’s Begriff very close to Freud’s Treib. It flows underneath each object of desire, which manifests for Freud in fantasy and for Hegel in the imbalance of subject and object. The Notion divides us, like drive, into our identity, while the trace of this division remains so to inadequate our self-consciousness. The strength then of Hegel’s Notion resides in its aggressive redundancy, its constant undercutting force.

In the final section on Absolute Knowledge, where Hegel attempts to bring the Notion into self-consciousness by way of speculative Reason, Hegel seems to have forgotten the very nature of his Notion. He enters a sort of dogmatic trance where he has at last grasped the Notion in true form. It is like watching a man debride himself and then call the inside of his skin his god.

G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).