The Night in Which All Cows Are Black

Some time ago, my Dad wrote to me, relating his and my Mom’s attempts to understand Hegel. "She can't get very far with Hegel and, frankly, neither can I," he said, and asked if there was something that Hegel wrote which would be easier to understand than the Science of Logic. (My parents, be it duly noted, are no intellectual slouches. Dad has a Ph. D. in physics, Mom has a college degree and is the daughter of two prominent and pioneering food scientists.)

This aroused conflicting emotions for me. Generally, I like philosophy, and I like to encourage anyone who’s interested in the subject; I majored in philosophy as an undergraduate and even went on to graduate study. But Hegel? Why are my parents trying to read Hegel?

I have similarly considered whether I ought to even write about Hegel at all. Perhaps we just shouldn’t draw any more attention to this subject! But if I can prevent just one earnest student from going down an endless blind alley, an intellectual black hole which consumes all and gives nothing in return — or worse yet, becoming a professor of philosophy who will teach others to do the same — then this essay will have served its purpose. On the other hand, it does not seem to be wise to throw too many stones here. I feel compassion for those who have entered this pit of no return, reflecting that — had things gone a bit differently — I might very well have gone down this path myself.

The difficulty of Hegel is legendary. Hegel is full of ponderous and complex statements, with lots of big words. My objective is to provide a guide for the earnest seeker of truth who comes across Hegel and wants to know what it’s all about. Everyone, after all, must determine for themselves what they will do with their lives and how long they will go down what seems like a blind alley before giving up and turning back. The real problem here is not that with Hegel, but with ourselves.

I read from Hegel statements such as this one:

"To pit this single assertion, that ‘in the Absolute all is one,’ against the organized whole of determinate and complete knowledge, or of knowledge which at least aims at and demands complete development — to give out its Absolute as the night in which, as we say, all cows are black — that is the very naïveté of emptiness of knowledge."

I could give other examples. In fact, the curious are urged to pick up the Phenomenology of Spirit and open it at random and start reading. Now what, exactly, is Hegel trying to say — here or anywhere else? And perhaps more to the point, why should we care?

We care because Hegel is held up as an example of "philosophy." Hegel is an Important Thinker, and if we bypass Hegel we are missing some Important Thoughts. Because scholars are authority figures, because a few of them study Hegel, and because anything attached to an authority figure in our society is prima facie something important, most people who think about Hegel at all regard Hegel as a legitimate subject in the modern university. But did Hegel say anything Profound and Important? Or is the fact that he is studied in the modern university not a product of the value of his ideas or writings, but is a product of the authority of those who attach importance to Hegel?

Hegel is for all practical purposes practically unintelligible even for professional philosophers. A surprising number of intelligent people actually agree privately that Hegel as a bunch of nonsense. I recently mentioned this to one professor of philosophy, who agreed that of course Hegel was a bunch of "gobbledy-gook."  Arthur Schopenhauer wrote perhaps the definitive commentary on Hegel: "But the greatest effrontery in serving up sheer nonsense, in scrabbling together senseless and maddening webs of words, such as had previously been heard only in madhouses, finally appeared in Hegel. It became the instrument of the most ponderous and general mystification that has ever existed, with a result that will seem incredible to posterity, and be a lasting monument of German stupidity."

But very few philosophers get around to denouncing Hegel publicly. The obvious question to anyone claiming that Hegel is a bunch of nonsense is "how come there are all these professors teaching Hegel and all these books written by people who are evidently pretty smart who seem to think that Hegel had something important to say?" It seems that these authorities are sincere; the suspicion of fraud or incompetence appears to be excluded; surely the fact that Hegel actually said something meaningful is the best explanation. Therefore, there is a desire for proof that these authorities are wrong. Lacking proof, it is best to keep silent.

I believe that this way of posing the question is wrong. Proof could, in principle, be provided, but it would be more trouble than it’s worth. I do believe that Hegel is a bunch of nonsense, but I do not care to prove it, any more than I would want to "prove" to someone who thought otherwise that The Lord of the Rings is a work of fiction and not a historical record of events.

It is up to the supporter of Hegel to show what the meaning of Hegel is, not on you to demonstrate that Hegel has no meaning. If you don’t understand Hegel, your lack of understanding is just as important as some professor’s claim that Hegel makes sense. What I hope to show is that there is a more plausible hypothesis: that these professors, books, and other discussions of Hegel are the responses to the authority invested in Hegel by academic philosophy. It is sufficient to explain Hegel’s relative success by reference to the authority of those believing in Hegel. It is not necessary to assume that Hegel said anything meaningful.

The success of such modern philosophers as Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger (probably others could be added to the list) is not due to anything comprehensible that these philosophers have written, but due to a constellation of psychological and sociological phenomena. These psychological and sociological factors include at least these: (1) most people assume that anyone in a position of authority has that authority for a reason; (2) one judges one’s own performance as much as by the reaction of those in authority, as by one’s own judgment of the object of study; (3) there is an assumption that if someone in authority says something that you don’t understand, it is because the authority figure is "wise" and you are a "student"; (4) there is the perceived need on the part of philosophers to "produce" something — let’s call it philosophical wisdom — which is out of the ordinary. If it can be easily understood, then it will be obvious and therefore cannot be truly wise — and why would one need to go to graduate school to learn such things?

What has happened is as follows:

1. Someone, somehow, becomes an "authority" in Philosophy. They make a living at it by getting a job at the university.

2. They make difficult-to-understand statements. They assign difficult-to-understand texts.

3. Gradually, students assemble to study these authorities.

4. Those who are smart enough to realize that this is going nowhere drop out and study something else.

5. Eventually, the students who remain — either because of social conditioning, or because of lack of any other easy way to make a living — find a way to please the authority in some way or another and become "experts." These students become professors of philosophy. Go to step 1 and start over.

This does not apply to all academic philosophy, but it applies to more of it than it should.

This is not the case with other famous philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Descartes, John Stuart Mill, Marx, Kierkegaard, or Peter Singer. The success of all of these figures had to do with their discussion of subjects outside of academic philosophy or their appeal to people outside of academic philosophy. Hegel’s success, however, does not require any such appeal. Hegel scholarship is an intellectual Ponzi scheme, the success of which depends on convincing another generation of scholars-to-be that Hegel actually said something.

Someone might say, "what about Marx? He was influenced by Hegel, and he affected the lives of millions of people." Marx, of course, may have believed he was getting something out of Hegel, but that is Marx’s problem, not ours. Marx fancied himself a philosopher, and dabbled in philosophy like countless others. Marx even sought to differentiate himself from Hegel. But until it is shown what Hegel said, it cannot be claimed that anything that Hegel actually said — as opposed to what Marx thought he got out of Hegel — actually changed the world.

Zen practitioners delight in posing paradoxes to their students. They will ask essentially unanswerable questions like "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" and "what was your face like before your parents were born?" The purpose is to get away from verbal or mental responses, and one simply demonstrates one’s misunderstanding if one replies that "one hand clapping would simply create the soft movement of air." If someone goes on from Zen Buddhism to change the world, we cannot claim that it was because they really knew what their face was before their parents were born, or really knew what the sound of one hand clapping was. 

Those who were "influenced by Hegel" probably underwent a similar process. It is not because they understood Hegel, but because their tortuous attempts to read Hegel and relate it to something in the real world finally resulted in thoughts entering into their minds which actually made sense to them. But they didn’t "get it from Hegel" any more than someone who went on to become a writer, poet, or statesman after studying Zen Buddhism really knows what the sound of one hand clapping is.

Of course, these same psychological and sociological processes occur in other disciplines as well. Every discipline has the problem of ineptitude or outright fraud; we continue to generally trust authorities in these disciplines anyway, because on the whole it is more useful than constantly questioning everything. But other disciplines have ways of regulating themselves and this process could not succeed, in the long run, in most disciplines. This process is allowed to continue because academic philosophers do not have to appeal to anything outside of their own discipline.

Most disciplines have to appeal to something or someone outside of their own discipline. Anyone in the hard sciences, such as physics, chemistry, or molecular biology, and who promulgated nonsense would be exposed as a fraud at some point. But this also applies even to the "softest" of disciplines. Religious mystics have written books trying to communicate eternal truths to us; but they do not appeal to academics in the department of religion, but to any earnest seeker. "The Dark Night of the Soul" was not written for academics. Other great literature must have appealed to someone in the "real world" at some point; someone must have heard and liked the plays of Euripides, and someone must have read Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, etc. The existence of history does not depend on history professors. Monet and Rembrandt would still continue to be admired even if every art department in the world disappeared. But Hegel? If academic philosophy disappeared, would anyone read Hegel?

To those unfamiliar with philosophy, the difficulty of Hegel is initially quite plausible. Many disciplines are difficult. Nuclear physics, molecular biology, the history of medieval Christianity — all these, and others, have texts which simply cannot be picked up by beginners and read. Because those outside of philosophy departments usually assume that philosophy is a discipline much like other disciplines, they usually accept that Hegel is just such a difficult subject. This makes Hegel plausible.

Psychologically, to read Hegel is already to assign value to Hegel. Hegel is valuable because he was, well, valued by other philosophers. He was an influence on Feuerbach, on Fichte, on Schelling, on Marx, on Schopenhauer, we rationalize; there must be something that one will "get out" of reading Hegel. Those who have not already accepted this, will not be tempted to study Hegel. Should I take a course in Hegel, solely so that I can write a dissertation in philosophy which will denounce Hegel as a scam and those who taught me Hegel as, at best, deluded? No. Why would I waste my effort? If I don’t think much of Hegel, the much more reasonable course of action would be to study things other than Hegel.

If reading Hegel is already to psychologically assign value to Hegel, then to continue to study Hegel is to assign even more psychological value to Hegel. And thus, over time, when we go to Hegel-experts for an opinion about Hegel, we draw on a pool of people who, at least at the beginning of their studies, had already formed an opinion on the subject, and the continuation of their studies further reinforces this belief.

What, after all, is the possible final, definitive refutation of the idea that Hegel makes sense? After years of study and analysis, and many years of effort, someone might publish a massive work — itself almost as ponderous as Hegel — entitled Hegel: An Intellectual Ponzi Scheme. Such an analytical refutation is unlikely ever to be produced. Even if it were fairly straightforward, it would be a mammoth undertaking. It would require years of effort, and one would virtually have to sacrifice one’s career to the "refutation" of Hegel. And what, assuming that one could produce such a work, would one achieve? There would be an ever-so-slight ripple in the sales of books about Hegel, a few reviews in the scholarly literature, and then — nothing. One would be left to pursue an academic career on the basis of years of study of a subject which, by one’s own acknowledgment, was not worthy of study.

We have not proven that Hegel is nonsense, but we wish to suggest that various psychological and sociological factors responsible for the legitimacy of Hegel in current academic philosophy are sufficient to explain Hegel’s success. It is the simplest explanation, along the principles of Occam's razor.  We do not need to appeal to anything that Hegel actually says or wrote. This would not be the case for the success of the statements of Einstein, "The Dark Night of the Soul," or the plays of Euripides, all of which had to appeal to people outside of the special academic departments which study them. And that is because academic philosophy does not have to appeal to anyone not making a special study of philosophy.

Can the proposition that Hegel’s success is due to psychological and social factors, rather than the meaningfulness of what he is actually saying something, be objectively supported? Does this sort of thing ever happen? We search in vain for a letter of Hegel where he might say something like, "Today the Science of Logic is finally published! That should keep them busy for a while. Since of course no one can understand it, my success at the university is assured." More likely, Hegel found himself being subtly rewarded, admired, and pursued, after making expressive but ponderous statements in his lectures, and gradually came to emphasize this aspect of his lectures. Or perhaps he actually intended to say something when he wrote, and liked to use big words in odd ways, and just wasn’t very good at communicating clearly what he was trying to say. These are all issues which shed light on this mechanism, but are not essential to it. What is essential is the five-step process outlined above.

There is now, I am pleased to say, some objective support that this sort of thing is at least possible. Alan Sokal, a physicist no less, wrote an essay entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" which he published in an academic magazine called Social Text. It was published. A month later, he explained that the whole thing was a parody, and that he was just making it up. Social Text declined to print his subsequent explanation of why he did it, saying that it wasn’t up to their standards. (One wonders, of course, why they printed the initial essay.) A number of people don’t understand what this really means and are accusing him of tampering with academia or tampering with science. They really ought to read a little more Hegel.

Sokal isn’t addressing quite the same issues that I am. His target is somewhat narrower — the use of the philosophy of science by other intellectual leftists (who no one pays much attention to anyway) and in post-modernism (whatever THAT is). My target is academic philosophy (not all of it, but a whole bunch, let me tell you.)

Other examples of this sort of thing could also be produced. There is in fact a growing body of literature on "urban legends" — stories which are plausibly circulated to college-educated people and spread about indiscriminately on the internet via e-mail and other devices. One classic story in this regard is the Nieman-Marcus Cookie Recipe story. A woman tastes a cookie in Nieman-Marcus, likes it, and asks for the recipe. She is told that the price for the recipe is "two fifty," and she gives them her credit card. But next month when her statement comes in, the charge is $250, not $2.50. She protests, but to no avail. In revenge, she circulates the cookie recipe far and wide. The whole story is a hoax (Nieman-Marcus doesn’t even sell cookies), but it is widely believed and circulated nevertheless — even among sophisticated and computer literate college graduates.

One of the best-selling books about Jesus is Edmund Bordeaux Szekeley’s work, "The Essene Gospel of Peace." It purports to be a manuscript discovered in the Vatican which is the true original gospel. No one else has ever seen this manuscript, and we have only Szekeley’s word that it ever existed — yet hundreds of thousands of people have bought this book, many of them believing it to be a valid manuscript.

The phenomenon of bizarre, incomprehensible, or false statements being made by or believed by intelligent people is well attested. Nonsense sometimes takes off, is widely circulated, and even gets the upper hand. This is what has evidently happened in the case of Hegel.  This process sheds light on social reality, and how we judge what is significant and what is not.  

Whenever a philosopher says, "of course, no one pretends that this is easy to understand," alarm bells should go off. We are being prepared for something which will require a large shovel. Just as we have "Hegel-experts" who expound on the wisdom of Hegel and try to explain it to lesser mortals, there are "Wittgenstein-experts" as well. They start out in the same way: patting us on the back and acknowledging the difficulty of the subject.

An important obstacle in my own realization that Hegel is a "bunch of nonsense" was that I perceived this observation to be merely a comment from the analytic school of philosophy on the typical product of the continental system. Hegel is counted in the continental school, along with Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Marx, and others. I first heard the view that Hegel is a bunch of nonsense from another graduate student in philosophy. "It’s all a bunch of nonsense," he said derisively of Hegel; "I can’t believe people are teaching this."

But the Hegel-problem is not just a problem with continental philosophy; it is a problem with all philosophy. It has also pervaded the analytic school as well, and that its primary symptom is Ludwig Wittgenstein. John Shotter remarks on the statements in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: "They are not, however, easy to read or to understand. They are written as a sequence of numbered remarks, not always apparently connected with each other." Wittgenstein would make such statements as:

"What remains if I subtract the fact my arm went up from the fact that I raised my arm?"

Or:

"My aim is: to get you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense."

Wittgenstein does not use big words or confusing concepts. Wittgenstein has made an important advance on Hegel: he shows us that in order to qualify as "a bunch of nonsense," it is not necessary to use big words. Just ordinary English sentences will do just as well. While Hegel appears to make sense at the outline level but turns out to be nonsense when each individual sentence is analyzed, Wittgenstein appears to make sense at the sentence level, but fails to say anything at the outline level. This is not to say that we cannot say something intelligent about the philosophy of mind or about intention: just that it needs to be stated plainly, not in obscure fragments of sentences.

Perhaps Hegel and Wittgenstein are philosophers in a different sense. Sometimes Zen masters pose enigmatic questions such as "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" Is this perhaps what Hegel and Wittgenstein are doing — giving us unanswerable or baffling material, not with the intent that we respond to it literally, but so that we will respond "existentially"? There’s no evidence that this is how they intended their statements to be taken, but even if this were the case, one would have to ask whether this sort of thing is necessary. Why should we be presented with stuff which we can’t understand, and which is taken at a literal level conveys nothing in particular, but which is being presented by a presumed authority figure, and learn from this? Don’t we get this on TV? Isn’t this what politicians present us with all the time? To put it in a nutshell: we do not need any more "devil’s advocates"; the devil has no shortage of advocates. Life is full of opportunities to respond to material in other than a literal fashion. What we need are people who will see, report, and speak the truth. This process is overdue in modern philosophy.

If my thesis is original, it is not because I am the first to think that Hegel is a bunch of nonsense. My parents and numerous graduate students in philosophy, and even some professional philosophers, have evidently figured this out. What is original is that I have proposed the five-step mechanism by which things in philosophy turn out this way (see above).

This is a small-time "scam" that is not deliberate, and that is the key to its survival. Knowledge of Hegel is not required to get a government job. No major stock market schemes depend on Hegel. Knowledge of Hegel is not even required to get a degree in philosophy. If you wanted to expose important hoaxes, you would not start in departments of philosophy. There are people who are perpetrating real and deliberate hoaxes which do substantial damage to people, such as multi-level marketing schemes, fake "contractors" who bilk senior citizens out of their life savings, and Enron executives who concoct fraudulent accounting schemes. Anyone teaching Hegel is teaching it, most likely sincerely, to clearly consenting adults for probably a minimal salary based on the amount of knowledge he or she possesses, and is only providing what the student asked for: guidance in understanding Hegel.

The demand for "proof" that Hegel is nonsense is based on a misunderstanding. Everyone has access to philosophy just as everyone has access to literature and art. We disagree about literature and art, but we know, basically, what it is. Sometimes, as in the case of some modern music, we have music which appeals only to some musicians, or art that is so bizarre that people question whether it is art. But these occur at the periphery of these disciplines, not at the center. Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger are all central to modern academic philosophy.

"Wisdom" is not a special subject with technical terms. It is something which we all have within ourselves, or we couldn’t recognize it when we saw it, even after study. We must judge for ourselves whether any particular course of thought is a blind alley or might bear fruit. Hegel does not mean something because some obscure professors of philosophy believe in Hegel. It means something only if it means something to you. And if it does mean something to you, then the burden of proof is on you to explain why Hegel should be studied or taught (other than, perhaps, in the history of bad ideas) in the light of the fact that so many intelligent people can’t make heads or tails of it.

There is one nice phrase which I picked up from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit which I quoted above: "The night in which all cows are black." This image stays in my mind as the one thing I will always remember about Hegel; it contains, in my humble opinion, the essence of Hegel’s thinking. Isn’t this precisely the path which Hegel offers? You can’t see very much in the night in which cows are black, though you may wind up stepping in a lot of cow manure if you wander around very much. Just because you speak obscurely doesn’t mean you’re saying anything, but if you get into philosophy, you can waste a lot of your own and other people’s time this way.

Keith Akers
September 7, 2002

P. S.  I'm not alone!  Here are some other anti-Hegel links:

The Difficulty With Hegel, by Roger Kimball

G. W. F. Hegel in The Friesian Journal