Peirce's Critique of Hegel's Phenomenology and Dialectic

Author(s): Gary Shapiro

Source: Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Summer, 1981), pp.
269-275
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40319928
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 Gary Shapiro

Peirce's Critique of Hegel's

Phenomenology and Dialectic
Although Peirce clearly and repeatedly stated his intention to construct
a philosophical system, each of his attempts in that direction is at best
fragmentary and some are ultimately incoherent. The ambiguities of
Peirce's cosmology, his theory of meaning and his conception of truth
cannot be avoided by anyone who carefully considers his own "guess at
the riddle." Rather than cataloguing these puzzles, I hope to give at least
a partial account of why they remain in the work of a philosopher who
was avowedly systematic, possessed great analytic and synthetic powers,
and had an acute sense of the physiognomy of the major schools of
philosophy. My account will be somewhat indirect, and therefore partial,
because it attempts to acquire some perspective on Peirce's own philo-
sophical method by considering his criticism of Hegel. Like many others,
Peirce regards Hegel as the systematic philosopher of the nineteenth
century. In reviewing the great philosophical systems of the past he
goes further than this by mentioning only two of independent signifi-
cance, the Aristotelian (with alterations by "Descartes, Hobbes, Kant
and others"!) and "the new Schelling-Hegel mansion, lately run up in
the German taste, but with such oversights in its construction that it is
already pronounced uninhabitable" "(I.!).1 Although the uninhabitable
mansion is elsewhere said to be "a pasteboard model of a philosophy
that in reality does not exist" (6.305), Peirce also declares that it is
closely allied to pragmaticism, differing from it in its denial of the
categories of Firstness and Secóndness (5.436). Among the aspects of
HegePs system which Peirce explicitly found congenial are evolutionism,
the denial of an unknowable thing-in-iteslf, a recognition of the prin-
ciple of continuity, objective idealism, and triadic structure. In some
areas, such as the conception of the summum bonum and the attempt to
construct a non-dualistic account of thought and action, there are addi-
tional deep similarities which Peirce did not remark. Why then does
Peirce pronounce Hegelianism to be the mere sketch of a philosophical
system? Aside from the general charge that Hegel was weak in mathe-
matics and formal logic, Peirce offers a detailed critique of Hegel's
phenomenology and categorial system and of his conception of philo-

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270 Gary Shapiro

sophical method; and it is these critiques, dealing with philosophical

architectonic and procedure which we shall examine. In each area
Peirce is inconsistent and one side of his thought is closer to Hegel than
he was able to acknowledge.
Peirce sometimes praises Hegel for recognizing a triadic set of cate-
gories like his own while at other times (and more frequently) he
complains of HegePs neglect of quality, immediacy and chance (First-
ness) or of shock, compulsion, and duality (Secondness) . In a diagram-
matic discussion of the types of philosophy in terms of Peirce's categories,
Hegel is said to recognize only Thirdness (law, generality or thought),
and he is accused of challenging the "independent and irrefutable
standings in thought" of the other categories by maintaining that
"Firstness and Secondness must somehow be aufgehoben" (5.77n., 5.91).
Although there are several problems of method and interpretation to be
analyzed here, Peirce's general charge that Hegel ignores or neglects
Firstness and Secondness is an exaggeration which needs to be corrected.
As for Firstness, Hegel claims at the beginning of his Science of Logic
"that there is nothing, nothing in the heavens or in nature or in the
spirit or anywhere which does not contain both immediacy and media-
tion." Here immediacy is not denied but declared to be omnipresent;
that it is manifested in connection with mediation does raise a problem
which will be considered in discussing the nature of Aufhebung,
Secondness, identified phenomenologically as struggle or shock, is also a
universal aspect of finite things for Hegel, although he calls it dialectic;
it is ironic that while some have found his suggestion that there are
existential contradictions absurd, Peirce supposes that Hegel fails to
recognize "the outward clash." Although according to Peirce it is the
three stages of Hegel's logic - being, essence, and thought - which are
his closest approximation to his own categories, a better analogy would
be the larger structure of Logic, Nature and Spirit. Logic is the Idea
simply in itself, Nature is the Idea outside of itself or in externality, and
Spirit is the Idea which has returned to itself through Nature. Yet to
the extent that Logic and Nature are the Firstness and Secondness of
Thirdness and not pure Firstness and Secondness, Peirce's interpretation
of Hegel is plausible, for the two trichotomies are disanalogous. However,
the Hegelian triad is not a phenomenological division but the structure
of a system of philosophy which aims at the fullest possible explanation.
Since both Peirce and Hegel take phenomenology to be essentially
prior to systematic philosophy, we need to inquire into the status of the

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 Peirce's Critique of Hegel's Phenomenology and Dialectic 271

categories in their phenomenologies. Peirce, perhaps with his own pro-

cedure in mind, says that Hegel's phenomenology is indeed the source
of his categories but that the actual categorial system of the Phenome-
nology of Mind is misconceived, especially in its view of immediacy or
presen tness as the most abstract of the categories (5.38, 5.44). Peirce's
Firstness, which he takes to be analogous is concrete, positive and is just
what it is and not another thing. Peirce apparently has in mind Hegel's
analysis of sense-certainty, the initial stage of consciousness examined in
his Phenomenology. However Hegel's intent is not to describe immediacy
as a general form of consciousness or, in Peircean language, as what "is
in any way or in any sense present to the mind" (1.284), but to consider
whether the consciousness of immediacy is at the same time a valid cog-
nitive stance. Peirce's failure to see this is surprising for it is surely one
of the crucial themes of his epistemology to deny that there can be any
immediate or intuitive knowledge and to insist that cognition neces-
sarily involves signs or Thirds. The deficiency which Hegel's analysis of
sense- certainty reveals is not in immediacy as such but in the attitude
of mind which confuses immediacy and knowledge. The Phenomenology
of Mind itself is not an attempt to elucidate the indecomposable elements
of the appearances (or phanera) as such, but corresponds to Peirce's
Search For a Method: both review various conceptions of scientific and
philosophical method in order to discover one which is universally and
absolutely valid. In so far as Hegel has a general phenomenology in
Peirce's sense, it is a part of his philosophy of subjective mind, and there
he does recognize a "monadic" state of "sensitive individuality" ana-
logous to Peircean Firstness and a variety of conscious states which
involve duality, ranging from self- feeling, in which the subject is aware
of its own separation from its particular feelings to "practical feeling"
which marks the discrepancy between the ideal and the actual with its
dualistic "ought."2
If Hegelian and Peircean phenomenology are not strictly comparable,
while Hegel seems to recognize analogues of Firstness and Secondness,
Peirce's critique seems to be reduced to the claim that the Hegelian idea
of Aufhebung somehow negates any such recognition. It is correct to
say, as Peirce does, that immediacy and contradiction are aufgehoben in
Spirit, or being and essence in the notion) . But since Hegel insists that
this Aufhebung is as much a preserving as a dissolving, Peirce's con-
tention that Hegelian triads are really monads, leaving his own prag-
maticism as a more genuinely triadic system of philosophy, is a pre-

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272 Gary Shapiro

mature judgment. The immediate and the contradictory do not disappear

in the Absolute but find their explanation there. In fact Hegel's
philosophy of nature requires that nature be in large part contingent
and accidental; the particular contingencies of nature are not abolished
by Spirit but it is undertsood that contingency itself is necessary for the
realization of the Idea. According to Peirce, a Third is similarly impos-
sible without a First and a Second; any Third must impart some general
quality (a First) to the reactions (Seconds) which it governs. If there
is a conflict between Hegel and Peirce here, it has to do not with
whether the final category includes or transcends the other two (it does
both) , but whether or not the less complex categories have an independent
status. Peirce recognizes three modes of discrimination: dissociation,
prescision and distinction. A phenomenon may be dissociated from
another if it can be imagined without that other, as in the case of red
and blue; it may be prescinded if it can be supposed separate even if it
is not so imaginable, as space may be prescinded from color; and it may
be distinguishable in the case where, although like the shorter in relation
to the taller, it is neither dissociable nor prescindible, but nevertheless
constitutes a distinct idea. In Peirce's phenomenology a category can
be prescinded only from those which are more complex than it is,
although each is distinguishable from the others. In contrast, Peirce says
that "All the categories of Hegel's list from Pure Being up appear to me
very manifestly to involve Thirdness, although he does not appear to
recognize it, so immersed is he in this category" (5.79). Peirce is right
here, with an important qualification. Pure Being and the other logical
categories do involve Peircean Thirdness, but Hegel does notice it for the
very good reason that they are explicitly categories of thought and not of
phenomena in general. In terms of Peirce's categories, Logic, Nature,
and Spirit are, respectively, the Firtsness, Secondness, and Thirdness of
Thirdness. Again the problem in Peirce's interpretation arises from mis-
construing Hegel's intent. If we ask whether simple self-feeling, Hegel's
analogue of the phenomenological first, can be prescinded from more
complex mental attitudes, Hegel's answer seems to be yes; his constant
distinction between what a conscious attitude is "for itself "and what it
is "for us," allows that non-complex states may be enjoyed and experi-
enced without any awareness of complex states or categories. It is the
perspective of philosophical knowledge ("for us") in which it becomes
necessary to see the connections of the simple and complex which may
not be apparent to the simpler state considered "for itself." Here what

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 Peirce9s Critique of Hegel's Phenomenology and Dialectic 273

Hegel is interested in is the most comprehensive of explanations and it is

only in this context that Firsts and Seconds are aufgehoben. But in this
context much the same could be said of Peirce's account of the categories.
For Peirce the ideal of conduct is the "development of Reason" which
consists in "embodiment" or "manifestation" (1.615); this ideal is a
goal because it is at the same time a thorough explanation and the
"embodiment" which Peirce speaks of is reason's power to govern
qualities and events (i.e. Firsts and Seconds) by rationalizing them.
The same emphasis on the finality and inclusiveness of Thirdness appears
in Peirce's account of reality as "an affair of Thirdness as Thirdness,
that is, in its mediation between Secondness and Firstness . . . Reality
consists in regularity. Real regularity is active law. Active law is
efficient reasonableness, or in other words is truly reasonable reasonable-
ness. Reasonable reasonableness is Thirdness as Thirdness" (5.121).
The truth of Peirce's charge against Hegel, however, lies in Hegel's
failure to have a phenomenology which would be an architectonic basis
for the rest of his philosophy. It is not so much that Hegel does not
recognize Firsts and Seconds as that he does not see the need to begin
philosophy with a phenomenological study of the categories of experience
(rather than knowledge), but sees philosophy as essentially dialectical
and circular. Peirce, aware of this difference, criticizes Hegel's dialectic
as a form of the a priori method of fixing belief; based as it is on our
inclinations or hunches it lacks the unique power of the scientific
method for self criticism (5.382, 5.385). Peirce claims to follow Kant's
architectonic conception of philosophy, even to the extent of deriving
metaphysical from logical categories (3.422). In the order of the
sciences, philosophy follows mathematics which studies logical possibility
alone; philosophy, on the other hand, is a positive science which studies
the general features of common experience. In Peirce's conception,
philosophy plays Second to the First of Mathematics because it is subject
to the compulsions of experience. Accordingly, philosophy is to imitate
the experimental sciences by employing a fixed terminology so that its
results may be clearly stated and submitted for general verification.
Peirce himself found it difficult to adhere to this ethics of terminology.
For example, the pragmatic theory of meaning holds that the meaning oi
ultimate logical interpretant of any intellectual concept is a habit; but
Peirce's metaphysical analysis of habit shows that it is a Third, which
like a concept, is of a cognitive and significant nature and therefore
susceptible of interpretation. Yet Peirce offers the pragmatic theory oí

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274 Gary Shapiro

meaning as the outcome of a proof which presumably follows the

scientific method. The problem is typical of Peirce's philosophical
"proofs" and points not so much to a misuse of his own scientific
method, but to the difficulty in the conception of philosophy as a kind of
Second.3 Peirce is more successful when he employs a dialectical method.
The general metaphysical purport of pragmatism is to show the unity
of thought and action; the conclusion is reached by a series of analogical
arguments which involve an extension and modification of the concepts
possessed at the beginning of inquiry rather than by adhering to the
ethics of terminology. Peirce sometimes articulates an alternative version
of philosophical method which allows that "it is of the nature of thought
to grow" (2.32), notes the similarities to Hegelian dialectic, but dis-
misses it as ultimately vague and untrustworthy. In his explicit criticism
of the Hegelian method he charges it with omitting the element of chance
altogether and therefore being devoid of "living freedom" (6.30J).
This is a misunderstanding which echoes that of Hegel's phenomenology,
assuming as it does that Aufhebung is nothing but dissolution. In fact
HegePs conception of method is much like the one which Peirce uses to
best advantage. For both what is primary is the transition from implicit
or abstract purpose to its concrete realization. In his Encyclopedia Hegel
shows the movement from the bare form of the intention to know what
is to the actualization of the purpose in Spirit's self-knowledge. Much
of what is encountered along the way is immediate, contingent, or dis-
ruptive; the realization of the purpose must overcome these obstacles but
it neither eliminates them altogether nor sees them as simply appearances
of a necessary order. Part of the purpose is simply to realize itself
through its encounters with the immediate and contingent. As Hegel
notes in several places the precise sequence of these encounters is of
minor importance.
This account of Hegel's method is like Peirce's own description of
conduct which seeks an ideal through critical self-control. Peirce never
explicitly identifies such reflective conduct with philosophy because it is
in conflict with his official view of philosophy as a positive science of
experience and because it runs contrary to his proclaimed abhorrence,
as a scientific man, of the mixing of theory and practice. Yet seme of
Peirce's crucial arguments are dialectical in form. In "The Fixation of
Belief," for example, Peirce shows that although all the methods con-
sidered have the common aim of stabilizing belief, all but the scientific
necessarily generate doubts which frustrate their own purpose. Since the

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 Petrels Critique of Hegel's Phenomenology and Dialectic 275

decisive factor in the superiority of the scientific method is its ability to

comprehend and criticize its own operations, the parallel with Hegel is
more than formal. The community of inquiry which is destined to
reflect on its own nature and methods is the rationalization of nature
under the influence of critical self-control. It is "concrete reasonable-
ness" whose main deviation from Hegel's Absolute Spirit is its trans-
formation of the latter's cognitive claims into the subjunctive mood.
If Hegel's defect is to underrate the importance of the immediate and
contingent, Peirce's problem is an inadequate recognition of the role of
Thirdness within philosophy itself. To recognize this Thirdness would
be to adopt explicitly the point of view (which is often implicitly at
work) that philosophical knowledge depends upon the growth and
development of ideas; as it is, Peirce is torn between two conceptions of
philosophy. His official view leads to an architectonic model which is
unrealizable; for his phenomenology, designed to describe what is present
to the mind, in fact presupposes a certain conception of mind. In this
respect, Hegel's view that philosophy is a circle seems more appropriate
and explains why he has no presuppositionless phenomenology comparable
to Peirce's. Although the consideration of Peirce's critique of dialectical
philosophy reveals a contradiction in his own approach, it also suggests
a way of understanding his arguments and concepts which may be more
illuminating than his official methodological pronouncements.

University of Kansas

NOTES

1. References are by volume and paragraph to Peirce's Collected Papers.

2. Encyclopedia, pars. 405, 407, 472.
3. For a fuller argument along these lines see Habit and Meaning in Peirce s
Pragmatism," in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Winter 1973.
Work on this paper was supported by a grant (3213-5038) from the University
of Kansas General Research Fund.

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