Lewin, M. Hegel’s Logic of Forces and the Faculty Psychology, Hegel-Jahrbuch (in press).

 

1 Introduction

The concept of force (dynamis, potentia) was introduced as a technical term into philosophy by Aristotle. In his metaphysics, he attributes dynamis to a substance if it can modify or be modified by another substance. The concept of force was used throughout the history of philosophy and science and has found its way into the school textbooks of our time. Just as Aristotle did, the scholastic and modern philosophers distinguished between causal forces attributed to non-living objects and mental forces. Reason, for instance, is for Aristotle, just as for Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Wolff, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, in his Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, a force of the human mind. A philosophical program that accounts for different mental forces, explains how they operate, their laws and functions, and analyses their impact on epistemic, metaphysical, political, moral, and religious deliberations, is sometimes referred to as “ability” or “faculty psychology” (Vermögenspsychologie).[1]

Although the concept of forces has an immense importance, it has also faced several objections. In philosophy, the theory of forces has been charged with yielding bad, tautological, or outdated explanations. I want to argue that the concept of force is a logically necessary means for the construction of a certain kind of theories, even if the description of the theory can dispense with the talk of forces afterwards. To show this, I will (i) present five fundamental objections to the faculty psychology, (ii) explain what could be described as Hegel’s “logification” of the concept of force in the Doctrine of Essence, (iii) and how this logification helps us understand the limited, but crucial and non-replaceable function of this notion in the faculty psychology.

 

2 Objections to Faculty Psychology

Before introducing some objections to the concept of force in faculty psychology, it is important to consider a possible difference between mental forces and mental faculties. In fact, there may be no difference at all. Wolff used to define a faculty (following the German ver-mögen, or the Latin potentia) as the possibility of doing something. The concept of force, however, involves the notion of effort—to have a force means to have a constant effort to put something to action.[2] It is not necessary to stick to this difference, as one can distinguish between the active and the non-active state of a force just as between the active and the non-active state of a faculty. This is a possible reason why Kant—when he speaks of the mind (Gemüt)—uses both terms interchangeably. Both the faculty and the force are placeholders for an X that can cause a mental action and a change, e.g., reason or imagination.[3] For Hegel, “mental force” is an alternate expression for “mental faculty” (§ 445).[4]

Among the early critics of faculty psychology was J. F. Herbart,[5] who claimed that the supposition of faculties like reason, imagination, and memory, is non-scientific and leads to a mystic picture of psychology. Instead, he suggested analyzing different representational processes in actu, measuring the irritability that they produce. This critique is exemplary for objections that claim that the talk of faculties results in (1) an unneeded mystical hypostasis of forces. Indeed, the origin of the concept of force is anthropomorphic and mythical. And one could consider faculties as remains of a metaphysics that regarded the soul as an immortal substance. Therefore, it makes a big difference whether one analyses the forces in actu or claims that their source is a non-active faculty that became activated. Furthermore, if one introduces the concepts of faculties into philosophy, it becomes hard to find out how many there are, which could result in (2) an arbitrary indefinite fragmentation of mental forces.

Another possible objection is that explanations based on the concept of faculties yield (3) mere tautologies. During the psychologism debate around 1900, Husserl famously claimed that Kant’s philosophy is full of “confusing, mythic concepts”[6] of psychic faculties. If we appeal to them in our explanations, we will not make any theoretical progress. To give an example, he speaks of the art of dancing: if we back up this concept by referring to a faculty of dancing or to a faculty of dancing artfully, we explain nothing at all.

In the late twentieth century debates on rationality and its different types, Hans Lenk claimed that the secondary literature on Kant is full of misinterpretations that make it hard for any analytic philosopher to understand Kant’s theory of action.[7] Scholars use (4) Kant’s rudimentary metaphysical terminology and claim that reason is a faculty that acts, combines, thinks, has interests etc. A person can act, Lenk claims, not a faculty. What he is suggesting is a conceptual amelioration: instead of speaking of a faculty, one should introduce reason as an interpretational construct that is embedded in a structure of correlated concepts.

In socially orientated philosophy, such as that of Apel, Habermas, and Schnädelbach, the concept of a faculty is related to (5) the paradigm of a subjectivistic philosophy of mind (Bewusstseinsphilosophie). The analysis of faculties is seen as an old and fruitless endeavor of an “epistemology of mind” that does not help us in dealing with challenges arising from our co-existence.[8]

 

3 Hegel’s Logification of the Concept of Force

The faculty psychology must deal with at least five basic objections brought against it in the last two centuries. I want to argue that in the course of the history of philosophy, Hegel offers a very promising approach to the theory of forces: what we could call a systematic “logification” of the concept of force. Force is a constrained, but necessary thought determination, an unavoidable logical category that reappears in different guises in the natural sciences and humanities. The above five objections are based on a systematic misunderstanding of the limited logical function and status of the concept of force.

Hegel’s logic deals with the basic categories or thought determinations that underlie the reasonable structure of the world as well as the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of natural scientists, humanities scholars, and philosophers. Unlike in the Kantian or Fichtean deduction of the categories, praedicabilia, and other transcendentalia, Hegel recognizes and extrapolates the logical content of fundamental forms of reflection and their interdependence in one dialectically construed chain of the self-unfolding idea. The concept of force—which Kant assigned to the praedicabilia—has its specific place in the Doctrine of Essence. The use of the notion “essence” as a form of reflection is based on the abstraction from all determinate predicates (§ 112). The essence, if one keeps this negative act in mind, is actually “not behind or beyond the appearance” (§ 131): it consists in what we have abstracted from. The essence can be therefore grasped as the relation between what appears and the appearance. This is the background for the introduction of the notion of “force and its expression”. In the following, I will briefly describe four features of Hegel’s concept of force.

(1) In the Jena Phenomenology of Spirit, the reflection upon force is the first conceptual jump beyond the realm of perception. The perceiving consciousness comes across unresolvable inconsistencies using pure observational language. For instance, one and the same object can be encountered in different states of aggregation, such as water and ice. The natural consciousness on this stage considers the conditions of the states, but lacks the concept of force. Force is not the ultimate explanation of phenomenal changes; rather, it serves as a non-perceivable reason that yet must be understood, i.e., expressed in terms of verifiable laws (TWA 3, 118–120). Force is, therefore, a conjectured or discovered interstage between perception and explanation. Without it we could not formulate scientific hypotheses.

(2) For Hegel, there is no logical difference between the sentence “I conceive that the lightning strikes because the clouds become statically charged and the electrical force expresses itself” and the sentence “I recognize the electrical force”. We do not have to be epistemically cautious and skeptical: we do recognize the forces themselves—although they seem to be supersensible—because conceptually the content of the force is nothing more than what appears as its effect. The relation between the force and its expression is uncircumventable: it does not make sense to separate the two, to speak of a force per se, independent of its appearance, or to claim unnecessarily that the nature of a force cannot be conceived (§ 136). The expression of a force logically equals the force: the content of a force is its appearance.

(3) The quintessence of this Hegelian speculative conceptual analysis is that sentences like “the stone falls because there is a gravitational force” are tautological. They explain nothing at all; they are the explanandum (§ 136). We need to perceive several phenomena and to formulate a gravitational law, test, and verify it.

(4) Although the empirical sciences tend to explain physical, biological, psychological, etc. systems of phenomena and define different forces separately, this is not a deficiency of the concept of force; it is rather a question of method: one can isolate different forces, but a thoroughgoing analysis demands that we find the most suitable method and order the forces in the best possible way (§§ 135, 136). This is a difficult task, but not a well-grounded objection to the concept of force.

 

4 The Logic of Forces and Faculty Psychology

If we follow Hegel, we can claim that there can be a lack of logical understanding of the concept of force and that there can be a bad faculty psychology, but this alone is not a sufficient reason to abandon the concept of force. One can simply understand the conceptual logic correctly and do a better psychology. So, how can the five basic objections against the faculty psychology be countered with Hegel’s logic of forces, who himself suggests a possible faculty psychology in the third part of the Encyclopedia?

(1) The hypostasis objection is justified only insofar as it refers to a very few mystical concepts of force, but not in general—as it is per se wrong to consider a force as an entity independent of its expression. The logical content of, for example, the faculty of reason or of the faculty of imagination is filled with what is experienced in appearance. To separate a faculty from the appearance and consider it as if it exists independently, is a mistake. The skeptics are sometimes guilty of this error when they do not scrutinize the faculties as deeply as the theorists of force.[9]

(2) The endless fragmentation objection is not substantial, as the problem of ordering and structuring is common to all systematic scientific endeavors. For Kant, in the Critique of Pure Reason (A 658 / B 686), it is the interplay between reason’s principles of homogeneity, specificity, and continuity that solves this problem: these are required, for example, for the ordering of species in biology, which is far harder than ordering different psychic faculties. Of course, in Hegel’s case, we cannot simply postulate a “bag full of faculties”[10]: instead, we need a suitable method. Hegel criticizes empirical psychology for isolating different forces of the mind and describing them separately. In the third part of the Encyclopedia, he suggests a systematic-teleological account of the faculties (§§ 440–481). The different psychic forces, beginning with sensibility and ending with reason, i.e., with knowledge of subjective freedom, are the stages of spirit’s liberation.

(3) The tautological explanation objection is, following Hegel’s logic, a total misinterpretation of the function of the concept of force. Speculatively, one can even say that force is inherently tautological, because a force equals its expression. The explanation of a force can be given when the force is noticed or purported. Thus, Husserl’s critique was unjustified. Kant, for example, does not explain the possibility of pure thinking by postulating a force of pure reason. He claims instead that there is a faculty of pure reason since we can create concepts such as the infinity of the world. Kant explains how pure reason functions via the use of categories and inferences. If he could explain ideas of reason by postulating a force of pure reason of which they are expressions, he would not have had to have written his Critiques. Kant regards such or similar approaches as “the death of all philosophy”[11]; he is—even more radical than Husserl or some analytical philosophers such as Lenk—a critic of such easy solutions.

(4) That the concepts of psychic faculties and activities are the remnants of older metaphysics terminology, is an argumentum ad populum. Pure observational language, as Hegel has shown, does not lead us beyond perception, which can describe changes in phenomena and the conditions for change, but does not grasp their reason. Hence, it is a necessary category that guides us to the realm of the supersensible, which is not only shared by the dogmatist and mystic, but also by critical and speculative metaphysicians and scientists, who can verify their hypotheses. The psychic faculties and their explanations need to be verified: not only as a coherently described system that can be analyzed and checked by other philosophers, but also by experiments. These are carried out in empirical psychology. But a Kantian can also propose experiments, such as: think of an infinite universe. It is not imagination, not a concept of the understanding (whether empirical or pure)—it is a discursive construction that one is capable of due to inferences that Kant describes. Good and scientific explanations are the core and the engine of the faculty psychology, not the conjecture of forces and faculties alone.

(5) The subjectivism objection is a similar argumentum ad populum. As Hegel shows, the concept of force is a basic logical thought determination. It reappears in the reasonable structures of the world and in our thinking about nature, mind, and our interactions with others. It is a constituent, a part of the whole. Without natural forces, we would not have the objective conditions to interact with others. Without the ability to learn a language and to control our body, emotions, and thoughts, as demonstrated in the anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology in Hegel’s philosophy of subjective spirit, there could be no development in law, morality, and social ethics, as well as in art, religion, and philosophy.

 

5 Conclusion

Hegel ironically described speculative thinking as mystical (TWA 8, 178–179). To think of force in the way presented here is mystical, not because (1) the force is a mystical addition to psychology, (2) there is an arbitrary indefinite fragmentation of forces possible, (3) it can be used for tautological explanations, (4) it belongs to old dogmatic vocabulary, or (5) subjectivistic philosophy, but because there is a logically correct, non-destructive way of thinking about force. One can do make many errors in trying to understand the logical content of this concept. but not if one seeks its organic unity in the whole structure of reasonability and unfolds its embedded functionality. This is indeed something mystical, as, firstly, it differs from what one naturally and usually thinks without a thoroughgoing investigation, and, secondly, bridges several domains in which the concept of force is used. In this way, faculty psychology (1) deals with forces, whose content equals their expression, (2) uses suitable methods of ordering, (3) proposes the relation between psychic faculties and their appearance as something that is yet to be explained, (4) asks for causes of changes in mental phenomena, and (5) explains epistemological, moral, ethical, religious, etc. elements of subjectivity and intersubjectivity broadly construed. Hegel’s logic of essence therefore justifies the “ability” or “faculty psychology” and any philosophy, psychology, or science that operates with concepts such as faculty, ability, force, energy, power, disposition, etc.

 

Dr. Michael Lewin

michael.lewin.di@gmail.com

[1] For a brief history of the faculty psychology see Klaus Sachs-Hombach: „Vermögen; Vermögenspsychologie”, in: Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Band 11, Basel 2001, Sp. 728–731. For a historical overview over the concept of faculties, see Stefan Hessbrüggen-Walter, “Vermögen”, in: Neues Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe, vol. 3, edited by Petra Kolmer and A. G. Wildfeuer, Freiburg 2011, 2321–2333.

[2] See Christian Wolff, Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt, den Liebhabern der Wahrheit mitgetheilet, Halle 1720, 50. For recent studies on Wolff’s psychology see S.D.F. Araujo, T.C.R. Pereira et al. (eds.), The Force of an Idea. New Essays on Christian Wolff’s Psychology, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 50, 2021.

[3] For Wundt this is a result of a semantic shift in the use of the notion of force: “the effects of these different ‘forces’ manifest themselves so irregularly that they hardly seem to be forces in the proper sense of the word; and so the phrase ‘mental faculties’ came in to remove all objections. A faculty, as its derivation indicates, is not a force that must operate, necessarily and immutably, but only a force that may operate.” W. M. Wundt, Principles of Physiological Psychology, vol. 1, translated by E. B. Titchener, London 1904, 19.

[4] In the following, the focus will be on the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. References to this work are given by corresponding paragraphs. The translations are from G.W.F. Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline. Part I: Science of Logic, translated and edited by Klaus Brinkmann and Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Cambridge 2010. References to other texts are made according to the pagination of G.W.F. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Bänden, Frankfurt am Main 1986 (= TWA).

[5] See J. F. Herbart, Psychologie als Wissenschaft, neu gegründet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik und Mathematik, Königsberg 1824.

[6] Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, vol. 1, translated by J. N. Findlay, London/New York 1900, 135.

[7] Hans Lenk, “Zu Kants Begriffen des transzendentalen und normativen Handelns”, in: Handlungstheorie und Transzendentalphilosophie, edited by Gerold Prauss, Frankfurt am Main 1986, 185–203.

[8] “Ganz anders die moderne ‘Logic of Science’: Hier fehlt nicht nur die Rede von psychischen Vermögen; auch das Problem des Bewusstseins als des Subjekts (im Gegensatz zu den Objekten) der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis ist so gut wie beseitigt.” Karl-Otto Apel, Transformation der Philosophie. Band II: Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft, Frankfurt am Main 1973, 157.

[9] See J.G. Fichte, “Rezension Aenesidemus”, in: Fichte, Johann Gottlieb: Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, edited by Rainhard Lauth/Hans Jacob et al., Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt 1962 ff., vol. I/2, 49–50.

[10] My translation for “Sack voll Vermögen” (TWA 2, 272).

[11] My translation for “der Tod aller Philosophie”: See Immanuel Kant: “Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in der Philosophie“, in: Kant, Immanuel: Akademie-Ausgabe (Kants gesammelte Schriften), edited by the Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1902 ff., vol. VIII, 398.