International Journal of Philosophical Studies

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From Gegenstand to Gegenstehenlassen: On the

Meanings of Objectivity in Heidegger and Hegel

Johan de Jong

To cite this article: Johan de Jong (2020) From Gegenstand to Gegenstehenlassen: On the
Meanings of Objectivity in Heidegger and Hegel, International Journal of Philosophical Studies,
28:3, 390-410, DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2020.1766883

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
2020, VOL. 28, NO. 3, 390–410
https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2020.1766883

ARTICLE

From Gegenstand to Gegenstehenlassen: On the

Meanings of Objectivity in Heidegger and Hegel
Johan de Jong
Institute for Philosophy, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT
One of Heidegger’s enduring concerns was to develop an original meditation
on the meaning of (the presence of) the present. Integral to this attempt is his
critique of the understanding of the being of beings in terms of the objectivity
of the object. In this paper, I trace Heidegger’s analyses of objectivity, through
which Heidegger consistently establishes objectivity as non-primordial and
derivative. In order to do this, however, Heidegger had to identify a specific,
narrow (spatio-temporalized) conception of objectivity (in terms of
Gegenstehenlassen and Vorstellen) as the hallmark of modern philosophy. I
show that it is unclear whether that conception is a justified result or rather
an unjustified presupposition of his approach. I then suggest what meanings of
objectivity might be lost after Heidegger, by pointing to several aspects of
Hegel’s notion of objectivity that are incompatible with Heidegger’s account, to
wit: the lack of ‘subject-object’-terminology in his definitions of objectivity; the
special language of ‘forms of’ objectivity; Hegel’s critique of representation; his
notion of Gegenstand as a content with a categorical form, and, finally, that
Aristotle’s notion of hypokeimenon might provide a clue as to how Hegel’s
notion of object can be understood.

KEYWORDS Heidegger; hegel; object; objectivity; time; presence

Introduction
One of Martin Heidegger’s enduring concerns was the critique of presence,
and this critique has rightly become an influential part of his philosophical
legacy. One example of this legacy is the case of Jacques Derrida, who
designated logocentric metaphysics as fundamentally a metaphysics of pre-
sence. It was not Heidegger’s intention to substitute for the privilege of the
presence a privilege of something else, even if he did take on board important
aspects of the existentialist idea of the privilege of the future, as it is expressed
for instance in Kierkegaard’s famous adage that philosophy may understand
life backwards but that it must be lived forwards (Kierkegaard 1999, 451).
The emphasis on the future was always in the service of understanding in
a richer way the presence [Anwesenheit] of the present. This was already the

CONTACT Johan de Jong [email protected]

© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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transformed, or built upon in any way.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 391

case for Edmund Husserl when – with his enriched conception of the ‘now’
as ‘comet’s tail’ of retension and protension – he showed how dimensions
previously thought alien to the present (past and future) in fact play their
part in every actual, ‘lived’ present or Erlebnis (Husserl 1991, 30ff.). And it is
still true for Derrida, who maintains that even the ‘aporetic’ present (con-
ceived as ‘originary trace’) ‘does not diminish’ the ‘founding value’ of pre-
sence (Derrida 1973, 7).1
Whatever their differences, all these attempts are couched in the counter-
ing of prevalent, ‘traditional’ notions of the presence of the present; notions
that are deemed too abstract, too artificial, too narrow, too unoriginal, or too
‘metaphysical’. For Heidegger, one of the most important of these is the
modern narrowing of the presence of the present into the objectivity of the
object, which also conditions the ‘vulgar’ conception of time (i.e.: as a linear
‘succession of nows’ [Heidegger 2010, 314]).2 Objectivity is not ‘wrong’ or
incorrect (in fact, it is the precondition for the modern interpretation of
correctness and incorrectness), but it is not ‘primordial’. The ‘object’ is
rooted in a more primordial phenomenon of (Ent-)gegenstehenlassen that
remains hidden from any philosophy that already interprets the being of
beings as the objectivity of objects. Although, especially in the later works, we
do find more extensive interpretations of the ‘thing’, the object and its
objectivity will never fail to have a pejorative – secondary, derivative, non-
primordial – sense for Heidegger.
It is this critique of objectivity that I want to focus on in this paper. I want
to suggest that though Heidegger has no doubt enriched the philosophical
understanding of the presence of the present, he has, in the same gesture,
perhaps made the notion of objectivity a little poorer – and that both that
enrichment and that impoverishment were inherited by his successors such
as Jacques Derrida.3 I will trace the meanings of objectivity in Heidegger’s
works and argue that Heidegger needed a specific, narrow (spatio-
temporalized) conception of objectivity to distinguish a more primordial
meditation from, and suggest that it is unclear whether this is the justified
result or rather the unjustified presupposition of his approach. I then point to
a number of aspects of Hegel’s notion of objectivity, in order to suggest
which meanings of objectivity may have gone lost after Heidegger.

Heidegger’s Critique of Objectivity in Being and Time

Although a critique of neo-Kantian notions of objectivity can already be
found in Heidegger’s first lecture courses in Freiburg and Marburg (Moran
2016), Being and Time (Heidegger 2010; hereafter: BT) is a good place to
start as it provides a comprehensive account of the secondary nature of
objectivity. Throughout Heidegger’s works, three main areas of concern
can be identified in which he raises the issue of objectivity: (1) Heidegger’s
392 J. DE JONG

own method, (2) the analysis of truth, and (3) the being-historical under-
standing of Modernity. Since Being and Time’s projected third part was not
published (the ‘destruction of the history of ontology’ announced in §6),
‘objectivity’ comes up mostly as a problem of truth and of method. I start
with the latter.
The discussion of method in §7 does not deal extensively or very explicitly
with objectivity. Yet, in a negative way, a few important points can be taken
from that discussion. The section aims primarily to show, through
a clarification of the method of ‘phenomenology’, that the investigation
that has as its ‘thematic object’ (BT 26) the being of beings or the meaning
of being, requires a special kind of procedure. Heidegger’s phenomenology is
a method of access to the self-showing of the matter at hand. Phenomenology
is the convergence of two terms that are shown to be already internally
related when their meaning is grasped in a specific way: the ‘phenomenon’
as ‘what shows itself in itself’ [das sich an ihm selbst zeigen] (BT 27), and
‘logos’ as ‘apophansis’, as letting-be seen [sehen-lassen] (BT 30–31).
Heidegger’s conception of descriptive phenomenology (as ‘[letting] what
shows itself be seen from itself, just as it shows itself from itself’ [das was
sich zeigt, so wie es sich von ihm selbst her zeigt, von ihm selbst her sehen
lassen], BT 32) therefore has the structure of a self-explication, and is as such
distinguished from the description of an object in any external sense: ‘The
idea of an “originary” and “intuitive” grasp and explication of phenomena
must be opposed to the naïveté of an accidental, “immediate” and unreflec-
tive “beholding”’ (BT 34). This is most clear in the consideration of the
‘object’ of such a phenomenology. Because ‘Being and its structure transcend
every being and every possible existent determination of a being’ (BT 36), the
proper object of phenomenology is not an ‘object’ in any conventional sense:
‘What is it that phenomenology is to “let be seen”? Manifestly it is something
that does not show itself initially and for the most part, something that is
concealed [verborgen] in contrast to what initially and for the most part does
show itself.’ (BT 33) For now, two things can be taken from the discussion of
method: (1) the object of Heidegger’s thought is not an ‘object’ in any vulgar
sense, but what shows itself as ‘what remains concealed in an exceptional
sense’ (BT 33). The being of beings remains concealed in an exceptional
sense because its concealment is not contingent; it will never end up being
simply ‘objectifiable’ after all. (2) The mode of access to the being of beings is
not to speak ‘about’ it, but consists in a certain kind of letting: a letting be
seen of what shows itself. Initially, this letting(-be) is an expression of the
‘pure description’ or ‘explication’ that Heidegger takes over from Husserl’s
phenomenology,4 and to an extent shares with Hegel’s Phenomenology (the
immanence of the method and the philosopher’s reines zusehen). Like the
peculiar self-explication of Dasein, ‘letting’ is for Heidegger always distinct
from a description that is ‘objective.’ It later becomes a central
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 393

methodological term (cf. the Gelassenheit-texts or: ‘The proper relation to the
rare is not to chase after it but to leave it at rest by acknowledging the
concealment’ [Heidegger 1992, 62]).
The explicit discussion of ‘objectivity’ – as itself an ‘object’ for the phe-
nomenology described above – is dealt with in the triangulation of three
themes: those of the world, language and truth. In each case, a secondary or
derived interpretation is contrasted to a phenomenally more original one.
First up is the discussion of being-in-the-world [In-der-Welt-sein] as
a single, original, ‘unified phenomenon’ (BT 53). Heidegger’s problems
with the privilege of objectivity in theories of knowledge are not so much
directed at Husserl but reflect the broader phenomenological break with
prevalent neo-Kantian conceptions of knowledge in terms of a specifically
perceived relation between subject and object. For Heidegger, that distinc-
tion transforms knowledge into the relation between two separate spheres
while leaving the ‘ontological meaning’ of that distinction unjustified (BT
59). Because being-in-the-world is to be approached as a unitary phenom-
enon, the first conception of the ‘object’ encountered in Being and Time is
defined by its mode of being ‘in’: the object is the kind of being that has as its
mode of being [Seinsart eines Seienden] the secondary sense of ‘to be in. . .’
the world in the way that ‘water is “in” the glass’ and ‘the dress is “in” the
closet’ (BT 54). Heidegger calls this kind of being vorhanden (sometimes
translated as ‘present-at-hand’ or ‘objectively present’).5 To this mode of
being, Heidegger contrasts the Zuhandenheit (being ‘ready-at-hand’ or ‘han-
diness’) of the Zeug (the ‘useful thing’ or ‘tool’). The world is only secondarily
or derivatively a collection of present-at-hand beings to which one can then
oppose a ‘knower.’ Primarily, though, a ‘world’ is a web of meaning in which
the ‘knower’ is fundamentally situated or absorbed. The complexes of mean-
ing-relations are designated initially as the ‘surrounding world’ [Umwelt]
into which Dasein ‘stands out’ (BT 58ff.).
This priority of zuhandenheit over vorhandenheit plays its part in the analysis
of language, specifically of the theoretical proposition or statement [Aussage] in
§33. Again it is a matter of secondarity and derivativeness: the proposition is
a ‘secondary’ or ‘derivative mode’ of interpretation [Auslegung]. How so?
Heidegger states that:

that which logic makes thematic with the categorical statement, for example,
‘the hammer is heavy’, it has always already understood ‘logically’ before any
analysis. As the ‘meaning’ of the sentence, it has already presupposed, without
noticing, the following: this thing, the hammer, has the property of heaviness
[das Hammerding hat die Eigenschaft der Schwere]. (BT 152)

Even before the analysis of the sentence starts, what is thematized by the sentence
has already been understood ‘logically’ to the extent that the sentence is taken to
express: (1) that there is something vorhanden (the hammer) that the sentence is
394 J. DE JONG

about; (2) that there is something else (the ‘property’ of being heavy); and (3) that
the sentence expresses the connection of the two (through the ‘relation-concept’
or ‘copula’ of ‘is’). Note the important temporality of Heidegger’s terms here
(‘even before. . .’; ‘having already. . .’), to which I will return below. The proposi-
tion is a mode of interpretation because it is only possible on the basis of a prior
disclosure (BT 151). Heidegger writes:

The being held in fore-having, for example, the hammer, is initially zuhanden
as a useful thing [Zeug]. If this being becomes an ‘object’ [Gegenstand] of
a statement, then, as soon as we begin the statement, a transformation in the
fore-having is already brought about. Something zuhanden with which we have
to do or perform something, turns into something ‘about which’ the statement
that points it out is made. [. . .] (BT 152; translation modified)

Initially, the being indicated by the statement is simply zuhanden. For it to

become an object [Gegenstand] a modification has to occur: the discovery of
Vorhandenheit by the statement is a covering-over of the (prior)
Zuhandenheit [dieses die Zuhandenheit verdeckenden Entdeckens der
Vorhandenheit]. In this sense, the ‘object’ is always secondary. It is derived
because the ‘apophantic as’ of the theoretical statement (interpretation of the
surrounding world as a hammer-thing) ‘covers up’ the primordial, prepre-
dicative ‘hermeneutical as’ of interpretation (the hammer as zuhanden).
Heidegger’s terminology leaves no room to doubt the secondariness of the
theoretical (c.q. objective) statement: the meaning-possibilities of the origi-
nal ‘hermeneutic as’ of interpretation are ‘cut off’ [abgeschnitten], and this
‘as’ is ‘pushed back’ into the ‘merely’ present-at-hand [Das »Als« wird in die
gleichmäßige Ebene des nur Vorhandenen zurückgedrängt]. It ‘dwindles’
[sinkt herab] to the level of letting what is merely vorhanden be seen
(BT 153).
The theoretical or logical interpretation of the categorical statement
entails a threefold presupposition: (1) that the world primarily consists of
vorhanden objects; (2) that language is primarily an instrument with which
to describe such objects (by relating them to properties in a statement); and,
finally, (3) that the statement is ‘true’ if the relation expressed in it ‘corre-
sponds’ to the beings in the world. Heidegger proceeds to contrast ‘the
derivative character’ (BT 205) of the ‘traditional’ interpretation of truth as
correspondence, to the more primordial notion of truth as αλήθεια. The
truth of the statement consists in its ‘being-revealing’ [Entdeckend-sein] and
what gets demonstrated with it is the ‘being-discovered of the being itself’
(BT 209). This entire procedure involves no comparison of representations,
‘neither among themselves nor in relation to the real thing’ (BT 209). In fact,
the articulation of primordial truth follows the same lines as the methodo-
logical remarks from §7: truth as αλήθεια, as unconcealment, discovering or
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 395

revealing, is inherently related to the ‘showing of itself by itself’ of phenom-

enology (BT 31).

Entgegenstehenlassen: Objectivity, Representation and Modernity

In Being and Time, the issue of the object’s secondarity (as well as that of the
statement and of truth as correspondence) was to show that it was rooted in
being-in-the-world as an existential of Dasein. But Heidegger abandons the
hierarchy and architectonic of Being and Time soon after 1927. He will later
designate his text ‘On the Essence of Truth’ as a turning-point (Heidegger
1998a, 250). That text adds a new dimension to his analysis because it
demonstrates the inner connection between objectivity and representation.
The context of the evaluation of objectivity remains the analysis of truth
as correspondence. Like in Being and Time, Heidegger is out to show that
the truth does not originally reside in the assertoric judgment or the
theoretical statement. But the non-originality of the statement is now
articulated differently. At issue is the question how exactly the resemblance
[Angleichung] is to be thought that the correspondence brings about. When
correctly stating that the coin is round, the statement seems in no way to
‘resemble’ the thing (the coin) that it nevertheless corresponds to. This
resemblance can never ‘signify a thing-like approximation [ein dinghaftes
Gleichwerden] between dissimilar kinds of things.’ How, then, must the
resemblance be understood?
The statement regarding the coin relates ‘itself’ to this thing in that it presents [vor-
stellt] it and says of what is presented [vom Vor-gestellten] how, according to the
particular perspective that guides it, it is disposed. What is stated by the presenta-
tive statement [die vorstellende Aussage] is said of the presented thing in just such
a manner as that thing, as presented, is. The ‘such-as’ has to do with the presenting
and what it presents [das Vor-stellen und sein Vor-gestelltes]. Disregarding all
‘psychological’ preconceptions as well as those of any ‘theory of consciousness’,
to present here means to let the thing stand opposed as object [das
Entgegenstehenlassen des Dinges als Gegenstand]. (Heidegger 1998b, 141; my
emphases)

The theoretical statement is no longer, like in Being and Time, a modification of

the hermeneutical into the apophantic ‘as’, whereby what was originarily zuhan-
den for Dasein as being-in-the-world now hides itself as vorhanden. Neither is
the point here that the object is the derivative mode of a supposedly primordial
‘thing’ instead of something zuhanden.6 Instead, Heidegger plays elaborately on
the similarity of the words for object [Gegenstand] and (re)presentation
[Vorstellung] in order to bring out their inner connection. The statement can
only be ‘correct’ [Richtig], it can only ‘correspond’ if it is somehow similar to the
thing with which it corresponds. This similarity [Angleichung] is possible
because the statement represents. Heidegger inserts the dash in Vor-stellung in
396 J. DE JONG

order to emphasize its literal meaning: to represent is to ‘posit before’. So the

statement presents a thing correctly if it says that the thing is in the manner in
which it represents it, or posits it before. This positioning-before is now
explained to mean the single unitary phenomenon of ‘to let the thing stand
opposed as object [das Entgegenstehenlassen des Dinges als Gegenstand].’
Representation means Entgegenstehenlassen, a notion first developed in
Heidegger’s encounter with Kant7: a letting-stand-over-against of the thing,
such that it becomes an object. This is the phenomenon through which the
thing is transformed into an object. To be an object [Gegen-stand] now means
(1) to be opposed (or ‘traverse an open field of opposedness’ [Durchmessen eines
Entgegen; ein offenes Entgegen; die Offenheit eines Ent-gegen]) and (2) to ‘main-
tain its stand [. . .] and show itself as something withstanding’ [stehenbleiben und
als ein Ständiges sich zeigen]. To be ‘posited before’ (representation as Vor-
stellen) and to be an ‘object’ [Gegenstand] as what stands [stand] opposed or
over-against [Gegen] are thereby shown to be internally related: representation
and objectivity essentially express the same thing.
After 1929, Heidegger will still use the term vorhanden, but all notions
of being as objects [Gegenstände] or objectivity [Gegenständlichkeit] are
inextricably tied to representation [Vor-stellung]. At the start of this text,
I announced that Heidegger develops his notion of objectivity primarily
in the context of three areas of concern: (1) his own method, (2) truth and
(3) the understanding of Modernity. Heidegger’s equation of objectivity
with representation in the analysis of truth has two important effects. On
a methodological level, Heidegger will ever more insistently emphasize
that his own discourse can neither be simply representative nor objective,
for instance when he opens his Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event)
with the announcement that ‘the issue is no longer to be “about” some-
thing, to present something objective [»über« etwas zu handeln und ein
Gegenständliches darzustellen], but to be appropriated over to the appro-
priating event [sondern dem Er-eignis übereignet zu werden]’ (Heidegger
2012, 5). Or, if the representative language of statements cannot be
avoided, then this is to be regarded as an ‘obstacle’ to thinking
(Heidegger 1972, 24). Secondly, because representation is constitutive of
the modern epoch (cf. Heidegger 1977), objectivity comes to designate the
fundamental determination of Modernity. It is the modern understanding
of the being of beings as the objectivity of the object that thwarts the
possibility of a primordial thinking or questioning.8 It could be shown
that objectivity and representation come to condition all the different re-
conceptualizations of the critique of Modernity in Heidegger’s later
works: objectivity becomes the particularly modern guise of the ‘aban-
donment’ by or the ‘self-withholding’ of being in the ‘beyng-historical’
works of the thirties,9 and it also conditions all the problems that
Heidegger designates in those works under the headings of ‘machination’
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 397

(Machenschaft; Heidegger 1989, 111, 127), and later (though with one
interesting exception) under the name of ‘technology’ [Technik].10

Heidegger’s Temporalization of Objectivity and Its Justification

Let us now take a closer look at Heidegger’s conception of the object resulting
from a representation that ‘lets stand over against’. Notwithstanding
Heidegger’s explicit warnings against ‘preconceptions’ derived from psychol-
ogy or from ‘theories of consciousness’ (Heidegger 1998b, 141), with the
notion of (Ent-)gegenstehenlassen Heidegger performs both a spatialization
and a temporalization of the notion of object. Both are necessary for Heidegger
to be able to claim the secondary and derived status of objectivity.
The spatialization concerns the Gegen (against) and the stand (standing).
Only what stands in the way of ‘over against’ or ‘opposite’ [Gegenüber] can be
an object. An object is a being that has the character of being-opposed-to . . .
or being-against (Gegen or, in the Kant-book, Dawider [Heidegger 1991, 73]).
This implies a distinction from and relation to a subject that the object is
opposed to, and it is this distinction for which Heidegger gives the required
further ontological clarification.11 To insist that this is indeed precisely the
notion of objectivity that Heidegger is criticizing, is to miss the point:
Heidegger never simply turns against this objectivity, but demands its onto-
logical clarification by means of a sufficient meditation. Thus, in the case of
our example from ‘On the Essence of Truth’, Heidegger does not argue
against the Entgegenstehenlassen of representation, but rather shows that it
presupposes an ‘openness’ that is not itself ‘created by’ that representation.
The (in)correct representation is only possible on the basis of the ‘pregift’
[Vorgabe] of a criterion or ‘standard’ that has already been assigned. The
remainder of the text targets a primordial meditation on that openness
through a string of different articulations, leading from ‘open comportment’
[das offenständige Verhalten] to freedom to unconcealment to concealment
to untruth and to errancy. In fact, at the end of the text, Heidegger stresses
that it is above all in the sequence of its ‘decisive steps’ that its contribution
must be sought (Heidegger 1998b, 154).
The temporalization is twofold. First, it occurs with the notion of ‘letting’.
Even if we concede that this letting is neither psychological nor that of
a ‘theory of consciousness’ (i.e.: neither psychic representation nor the
‘activity’ of a ‘conscious subject’), and even if we understand the letting in
the special technical sense that Heidegger gives to the term (namely as not
negative or foregoing or neglect, but precisely as a form of engagement [sich
einlassen] that is neither the activity nor the passivity of a subject [1998b,
144]), then still letting is of the order of a process or operation, of an event, of
a movement, an accomplishment, a transformation or an occurrence (gegen-
stehenlassen is that event through which the being of beings transforms into
398 J. DE JONG

the objectivity of the object). Traces of this kind of language abound in

Heidegger’s work. One can think of Vor-stellung or Wesen where Heidegger
invites the reader to hear their event-character by articulating these proper
nouns as verbs: Vor-stellung not as noun conveying a single representation,
but as event or happening of representation; ‘Wesen’ der Wahrheit not as
‘essence of truth’ but as ‘essential occurrence’ of truth, and so on.
The second temporalization can be found in the phenomenological adage of
‘always already’. In Heidegger’s hands, phenomenological conditions of
possibility12 or, to put it in more recognizably Heideggerian terms, the articula-
tions of the ‘more original’ or ‘more primordial’ phenomena are consistently
phrased in the terms of ‘pre-’ and ‘before’ (e.g. Vor-gabe) and ‘always already’
[(immer or je) ‘schon’]. But one can also think, for example, of Heidegger’s
calling the concealment of beings (the ‘proper un-truth’) ‘older than’ openness
(1998b, 148).
This temporalization of Heidegger’s language, of his articulation and con-
ceptualization of phenomena, is the point at which I wish to raise two remarks.
Firstly, it is this spatio-temporalization that limits Heidegger’s conception of
objectivity. I will try to bring this out below by contrasting Heidegger’s notion of
object to Hegel’s. Secondly, if this is the case, then what justifies this spatio-
temporalization? At this point, it is unclear whether this temporalization of
Heidegger’s terms can be taken as a justified result of, or rather forms the
unjustified precondition for Heidegger’s thought. Of course, on the one hand,
a certain temporalization is supposed to be the very result of Being and Time
(which aims to show that the metaphysical privilege of the present is the
privilege of a specific temporal dimension) or, for instance, of later conceiving
the truth of beyng as ‘event of appropriation’ [Ereignis]. But, on the other hand,
are these ‘results’ not made possible by analyses that are already couched in
temporalized terms? Given that it is precisely this circular or reciprocal determi-
nation of time and being that Being and Time aimed to explicate, I believe that
this is a structurally open question. Whether one takes this as Heidegger’s
strength or precisely as his vulnerability, his ‘method’ does not permit of the
type of linear justification whereby condition and conditioned are rigorously
distinguishable in a traditionally transcendental-philosophical fashion.
Nevertheless, even if we suspend the question of justification, there are still
three important insights that we can state unequivocally: (1) with Heidegger, we
can see a spatio-temporalization of the object and of objectivity in terms of
Gegenüber, Vor-stellen and gegenstehenlassen. (2) It is objectivity thus spatio-
temporalized that Heidegger claims to be derived and secondary. There is no
doubt that this enabled Heidegger to provide an ever richer account of the
presence of the present on his own terms, unfolding its dimensions in the way
that the text on the essential occurrence of truth unfolds the sequence of its steps.
But it also means that (3) because this kind of objectivity is the hall-mark of
modernity, it is also this kind of objectivity that is attributable to (and that
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 399

determines the secondary, derivative and restrictive character of) the great
modern philosophies (most notably those of Kant, Schelling and Hegel). And
it is this latter claim that one can take issue with.

Hegel and the ‘Forms Of’ Objectivity

In the space I have left here, I cannot pretend to give a complete account of
Hegel’s notion of objectivity, but will only point to a few aspects of Hegel’s
approach that are incompatible with Heidegger’s account. The result I am
looking for is threefold: first, that Heidegger’s reduction of Hegel’s thought
to a philosophy of objectivity as Heidegger understands it becomes question-
able. Second, to suggest that a kind of Babylonian confusion about the
meaning of the ‘object’ may be one important reason why Heidegger’s
encounter with Hegel never really got off the ground.13 And third, to give
a hint as to what aspects of objectivity get obscured and perhaps even lost
after Heidegger.
Where do we look for Hegel’s conception of the object? We know that
Hegel tirelessly insists that all relevant philosophical concepts should be
immanently developed within the philosophical investigation itself. Yet,
Hegel seems to explicitly develop his conception of the object only partly.
It is at least debatable whether a unified sense of the notion of object is
identifiable throughout its different uses, places and forms in the system,
such as the object as the correlate of a given form of knowing in the
Phenomenology, the ‘objectivity’ of the Logic or the notion of ‘objective
Spirit’ in the Philosophy of Spirit.14 If there were such a sense, one would
expect it to be developed in the Science of Logic, which indeed contains
a section on ‘objectivity’ [Die Objectivität]. That section is part of the logic
of the concept or Begriff, the sphere of free self-determination that is the
unity of being and essence. As the logic of the concept’s second moment,
between subjectivity and idea, objectivity here means ‘the being in and for
itself of the concept’ (Hegel 2010b, 630). The corresponding section in the
shorter Logic of the Encyclopedia gives us an explicit definition of the ‘object’
[das Objekt]: the object is the ‘realization of the concept’ (2010a, 265; §193),
as the ‘absolute contradiction of the complete self-sufficiency of the manifold
and the equally complete lack of self-sufficiency of the differentiated
[moments]’ (2010a, 268–69; §194).
A complete elucidation of the logic of objectivity would require an
exposition of the way objectivity incorporates as well as sublates the concept
in its subjectivity, as well as of its further development through the moments
of mechanism, chemism and teleology, for which there is no room here. But
even before hazarding a partial clarification of these definitions (which I will
work toward), it is clear with respect to our main question that they have
little to do with a ‘subject-object problem’. There is nothing ‘standing-over-
400 J. DE JONG

against’, nor is there ‘a subject’ for whom this would be the case. Instead,
these definitions rely on the previously developed notion of the concept
[Begriff] and on notions like contradiction, manifold, being-in-and-for-
itself, and the distinction between self-sufficiency and dependence.
But there is a problem in taking these definitions as a starting-point for
understanding Hegel’s notion of the object. Because long before their explicit
development, the object already plays its part in the Logic. Not only is
objectivity itself not developed until halfway through the ‘subjective’ Logic
(that is: after completion of the ‘objective’ Logic), but the object occurs
ubiquitously as Gegenstand (and if we look closely at Hegel’s use of the
notion of object, we should also not discount concepts like Sache or ‘matter-
at-hand’ and Inhalt or ‘content’). Does Hegel fail to rigorously develop the
concept of Gegenstand, thereby contradicting his own cardinal rule of dia-
lectics – that philosophy should be completely ‘presuppositionless’ and that
all pertinent concepts are to be developed within the philosophical investiga-
tion itself (2010a, 125; §78)? There is no rigorous distinction between
Gegenstand and Objekt that applies neatly to Hegel’s use of the terms gen-
erally (the same is true, though to a lesser extent, for Heidegger).
Nevertheless, a few remarks can be made about the object in general.
First of all, it is misleading to read in Hegel’s use of Gegenstand a literal
‘standing-over-against.’ He certainly uses the term in that way sometimes –
the object as opposing something else – but almost never without further
qualification. In these cases, he will speak of the object as ‘external’
[äußerlich], as mere object of representation [Vorstellung], or even as
Handgreiflich (2010b, 29–30, 518, 2010a, 200; §133). The metaphor of the
hands, so important for Heidegger in Being and Time, is almost always used
pejoratively by Hegel.15 Hegel distinguishes philosophy from these
approaches because they share the precondition of the separation of thought
and being. In fact, the entire Phenomenology of Spirit can be read as the
propedeutic to science that rids natural consciousness of its naive conception
of its distinction from and opposition to its object.16 And the Science of Logic,
working from that scientific standpoint that is the result of the complete
development of the Phenomenology, presupposes this ‘certainty which [. . .]
no longer stands over against an object [dem Gegenstande nicht mehr
gegenüber ist]’ that the Phenomenology works towards from its very first
chapter (Hegel 2010b, 47; translation amended). However, that the Logic is
an immanent development of thought, does not mean the object plays no
part in it any more (as some might want to distinguish the Phenomenology
from the Logic, conceiving the former as an investigation of forms of know-
ing that have an object and the latter as an immanent category-development
that would not have an object). In fact we see that Hegel’s notion of object
cuts through such distinctions. In the Logic, thought ‘is not something
distinct from its object [von ihrem Gegenstande] and content – for it is the
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 401

content in itself, the dialectic which it possesses within itself, which moves it
forward (2010b, 33; translation amended). Though the Logic is not the
‘science of the experience of consciousness’, it is explicitly the science of
thought generating and giving itself its object (2010a, §17, §22, §236).
Secondly, it is important to notice a change in language. The language that
Hegel employs, and that points to a dimension of objectivity that is impos-
sible in Heidegger’s thinking, is that of ‘forms’ of the object or of objectivity.
The language of ‘forms’ both continues as well as crucially modifies the
language of Kant. For Kant, the ‘form’ (singular) of the object denotes
those apriori, necessary and universal aspects that any object whatsoever
must have, if it is to be known (i.e. thought as well as intuited) as an object at
all (Kant 1998, A20/B34; Hegel 2010a, 83; §41). Hegel departs from Kant by
speaking of ‘forms’ (plural) of objectivity, that are constituted by, and
expressed in, their respective categories.17 If we want to say something
general about the object as it functions throughout Hegel’s writings, it
seems we must consider it as an X that is nothing outside of its different
‘forms’ which, in turn, are nothing other than the categories under which it is
thought.18 In this light, it would be insufficient to distinguish the more
developed Objekt from Gegenstand by saying that the former stands for
‘real’ or ‘actual’ objects or in relation to ‘a subject’, whereas the latter
would be a more general object of ‘thought’ or of ‘(self-)consciousness’ (‘a
subject matter in general’ [2010b, 629]). This would still be insufficient
insofar as the distinction is made with reference to certain concepts (such
as reality or actuality) that are themselves constitutive of a particular form of
object.19 In this sense, though Hegel may remind us in prefaces that the Logic
is about the object of thought proper, and not about, say, objects of repre-
sentation, we may not presuppose such distinctions that reintroduce the very
difference that Hegel’s speculative idealism sets out to overcome: the antith-
esis between thought and being. The only thing that we seem to be able to say
about the object in general with any real accuracy, is that the forms of object
(whether Gegenstand or Objekt) are determined by being more or less
mediated or developed, i.e. determined by more or less complex categories.
Such a conception of Hegel’s object, as an implicit X that is expressed in
and through different categories, is consistent with perhaps the closest thing
we can find to an explicit definition of the concept of Gegenstand in general,
in the opening of the 1830 edition of the Encyclopedia. Hegel opens the
Encyclopedia with two rather familiar theses concerning the object. The first
is that philosophy does not have the luxury of presupposing its object as
given beforehand. This is what distinguishes philosophy from all other
sciences. Philosophy may (and in fact must) presuppose a ‘familiarity’
[bekanntschaft] with its object, but such a familiarity derives from represen-
tations [Vorstellungen], leading to the second thesis: philosophy’s object is
truth, and as such philosophy comprehends its object through concepts
402 J. DE JONG

[Begriffe], and this is not the same as having a representation of them (Hegel
2010a, 28; §1).
It seems, then, that Hegel largely shares Heidegger’s critique of represen-
tation. In several of his major writings, Hegel describes philosophy (its
method and its object) in contradistinction to both representational (includ-
ing common-sense) and reflective (or ratiocinative) modes of knowing (cf.,
2010b, 35, 739, 2018, 19–20). He makes a similar distinction in the
Encyclopedia, but in a different way. Philosophy, writes Hegel, is at first the
‘thoughtful examination’ of objects [denkende Betrachtung der Gegenstände]
(2010a, 28; §2). Philosophical thought is, as a comprehending knowledge,
a special kind of form of the contents [Gehalt] of consciousness, and it is
generally not their initial form. Initially, a content is felt, intuited or repre-
sented rather than thought. Hegel calls the content the determinate part; i.e.
that which is felt, intuited, represented, pictured, intended, obliged, or
thought. This can stay the same through different forms (feeling, intuition,
representation, thought) or a mixture of these. Now Hegel gives what seems
to be a crisp definition of Gegenstand: ‘In any one of these forms, or as
a mixture of several of them, the content is the object of consciousness’
(2010a, 30; §3). The object, therefore, is any content that presents itself in
a variety or mixture of forms. This definition covers all different kinds of
object, including the ‘special’ kinds such as the ‘infinite’ objects of freedom,
spirit and God (2010a, §8), as well as the ‘absolute’ object of truth itself
(2010a, §25). Hegel now proceeds to distinguish philosophical content from
all others by claiming that the forms of feeling, intuiting, willing, etc. are all
representational, whereas philosophy relates to content only in the form of
thought. In that sense, ‘Representations may generally be regarded as meta-
phors of thoughts and concepts.’ Hegel hastens to add in §6 that notwith-
standing the apparently ‘subjective’ language of ‘contents of consciousness’
and of experience employed so far, these contents are what is actual [die
Wirklichkeit], emphasizing again that for him the concept of the object does
not rely on a prior distinction from a subject.
If the object is defined as formed content, then this, at least initially, entails
no Gegenüber, no opposition, and no relation to something else (a subject) to
which it would be opposed.20 If we try to look for comparable notions, then
we can take our cue from Hegel’s consistent admiration of ancient over
Modern philosophy on this point. The object as an implicit dimension21 that
is determined through its categorical determinations is less like the modern
object in the Heideggerian sense of what ‘stands over against’ a subject, and
more reminiscent of the Aristotelian notion of the hypokeimenon
[ὑποκείμενον].22
Because of Hegel’s progressive notion of history, it is sometimes for-
gotten that Hegel, like Heidegger, often rates ancient philosophy much
higher than modern philosophy.23 This is especially the case with the
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 403

conceptions of thought and knowledge: ‘The older metaphysics had in this

respect a higher concept of thinking than now passes as the accepted
opinion’ (Hegel 2010b, 25). This ‘higher’ conception is precisely the lack
of a ‘subject-object problem’:

This metaphysics thus held that thinking and the determinations of thinking
are not something alien to the objects [Gegenständen], but are rather their
essence, or that the things and the thinking of them agree in and for themselves
(also our language expresses a kinship between them); that thinking in its
immanent determinations, and the true nature of things, are one and the same
content. (Hegel 2010b, 25; translation amended)

If we try to translate Aristotle’s hypokeimenon in modern terms, then the

categories of ‘subject’ and ‘object’ soon become inadequate. Hypokeimenon is
what ‘under-lies’ (hypo-keimenon) as that ‘about which’ one speaks or
predicates [κατηγορειν]. In this sense it signifies the ‘object’ about which
one speaks, but it is the ‘underlying’ aspect that prompted the Latin transla-
tion of subiectum. Although Aristotle’s hypokeimenon does express some-
thing about what we would now be inclined to distinguish under the names
of ‘grammatical subject’, ‘object of investigation’ or ‘existing object’ – the
notion is in fact reducible to none of these (and this is precisely what Hegel
admires).
We see this, for example, in Aristotle’s text when he famously distin-
guishes four kinds of ‘things there are’ [τἃ ὄντα] in terms of their possibility
to be said of or be ‘in’ other things: some are ‘said of a subject’ [καϑ’
ὑποκειμένου], others are ‘in a subject’ [ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ], then there are
those that are both, and finally there are things that can neither be predicated
of anything else nor be ‘in’ anything else: the ‘individual man or the indivi-
dual horse’ (Aristotle 1984, 3; 1b5: what Aristotle at 3b10 calls the ‘this-here’
or τόδε τι). Crucially, what is classified here (thus also what is ‘said of
a subject’) is not primarily of a linguistic order: although the distinctions
concern ways of speaking, what is classified through them is different things
or beings [τἃ ὄντα], not ‘things that are said’ [τἃ λεγόμενα] (cf. J. L. Ackrill in
Aristotle 1963, 75). Aristotle can investigate the structure of things by look-
ing at the structure of language because of the fundamentally expressive,
disclosive relation of word and reality that he articulates with these very
distinctions.24 Another example of the entanglement of language and reality
in this text is the notion of οὐσία, as it can name both the ‘species and genera’
as well as the ‘this here’s.’ Both not only share the character of independence
or self-sufficiency (of not ‘being in’ an other subject) that characterizes οὐσία
as what ‘is’ most primarily (in this sense they are both hypokeimena), but
Aristotle also stresses: only the secondary substances ‘reveal [δηλοῖ; show,
present, point out, make manifest] the primary substance’ (Aristotle 1984, 5;
2b29–3a7, emphasis mine).
404 J. DE JONG

The Aristotelian hypokeimenon is that kind of ‘object of investigation’ that

‘underlies’ as that ‘about which’ one speaks; it is what is expressed and
revealed in speaking about it. It is that kind of entanglement of thought
and being that Hegel’s ‘object’ is closer to when he states that thought is
‘objective’ precisely inasmuch as it ‘contains thought in so far as this thought
is equally the matter [die Sache] as it is in itself; or the matter in itself in so far
as this is equally pure thought’ (Hegel 2010b, 29). But this is also what is
shown by Hegel’s definitions of the more developed concept of ‘object’ in the
Logic that we started with. ‘Objectivity’ is part of the ‘subjective’ logic because
it is the concept [Begriff] (and only the concept) that can be objective, or that
can – to use the language Kant also used – ‘give itself objectivity.’ In that
sense, the object is ‘realization of the concept’. Aside from Aristotle, Hegel
defends Descartes’ notion of ‘objective’ (as opposed to ‘formal’) reality on
similar grounds: if determination through predication is not simultaneously
‘realization and objectification of the concept’ [Realisation und Objektivirung
des Begriffes], then they would not be determinations of the object (2010b,
626). But this only works if (1) the concept is not ‘“subjective” in the sense of
abstract reflection and non-conceptual representation’, and if (2) the being of
the ‘object’ is not ‘supposed to be that which obtains in the context of outer
experience or in the form of sensuous perception [. . .], something to be grasped
with the hand, not with the mind, something visible essentially to the outer,
not to the inner eye.’ (2010b, 626–27).

In Conclusion
I have pointed to several ways in which Hegel’s conception of the object is
irreconcilable with Heidegger’s notion of objectivity as the hallmark of
modernity. I have indicated that Hegel’s explicit definitions of the developed
notions of the object do not rely on a prior ‘subject-object’-distinction; that
the language of ‘forms of’ objectivity means a completely different object
than merely what stands-over-against; that Hegel actually criticizes the latter,
sharing (mutatis mutandis) Heidegger’s critique of representation; that
Hegel’s Gegenstand is better understood as a content that is expressed in
the categorical form of thought, and that Aristotle’s hypokeimenon provides
a clue as to how such a mutually expressive concept-in-its-realization can be
thought. My point is neither that Hegel is a pre-critical metaphysician, nor
that he is never involved in any kind of correlation-analysis. But the specific
sense of that correlation and its analysis are obscured after Heidegger. It
involves no temporalized process nor external oppositionality. Hegel’s sub-
jectivity is neither presupposed nor distinguished from, but rather expressed
or shown in a particular categorical form of the object. After Heidegger, the
philosophical understanding of the presence of the present has no doubt
been enriched, but the understanding of the object has also been
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 405

impoverished; indifferent as Heidegger was to the particular characteristics

of Hegelian subject-object analysis.
Of course, Heidegger knew about the hypokeimenon. In his own way, his
retranslation of αλήθεια as ‘unconcealment’ and as ‘dis-covering’ attempts to
articulate something of this character of the disclosive power of language
that, for him, has gotten lost in the modern epistemology of ‘subject and
object’. But two things are therefore all the more strange. Firstly, it is strange
that Heidegger gives the same treatment to the hypokeimenon as he does the
object. The hypokeimenon [the ‘Da- und Vorliegende’] becomes rooted in
a spatio-temporalized vorliegenlassen that is completely analogous to gegen-
stehenlassen. It is that which, beforehand, lies before, because it stands present
[das Zum-voraus-schon-Vorliegende weil ständig Anwesende]. Thus, the
potential fruitfulness of the hypokeimenon has degenerated into mere objec-
tivity, confirming the conceptual solidarity between ‘object and subject’;
between the gegenstehenlassen of the Gegenstand and the vorliegenlassen of
the hypokeimenon. Both, in the end, are (merely) determinations of being as
presence (Heidegger 1963, 33). Heidegger never considered the alternative.
And that is the second strange thing: Heidegger never seems to reserve the
possibility that the term ‘object’ might itself carry some of the disclosive
potential that he obviously recognizes in the Greek notions of αλήθεια and
hypokeimenon. Of course Heidegger is right to stress the dangers of the
reduction of knowledge to a ‘subject-object problem’. But Hegel recognizes
that danger as well, sharing Heidegger’s critique of mere representation. The
danger is to reduce to crass externality that implicit dimension of the ‘that
about which’ that constitutes Heidegger’s presence of the present, but also
the immediacy and reality of Hegel’s Gegenstand.

Notes
1. I have elaborated on this at length in De Jong (2020).
2. For a good discussion of Heidegger’s critique of Hegel’s account of time and its
relation to the subject-object distinction, see Surber (1979).
3. For Derrida’s Heideggerian (i.e. spatio-temporal) notion of the ‘object’ see for
instance Derrida (1973, 7) or, with more associative freedom, in (1992, 10). For
Derrida’s explicit interpretation of Heidegger on objectivity and representa-
tion see Derrida (2007).
4. Cf. Husserl’s ‘principle of all principles’ in Husserl (1983, 44).
5. ‘Objective presence’ is one conventional translation of Vorhandenheit. Given
that the meaning of objectivity is precisely what is at stake in this paper, I will
leave the terms vorhanden and zuhanden untranslated throughout my text.
6. This would relegate the problem of the unitary phenomenon of correlation to
merely one side of that correlation, which for Heidegger is the mistake of
subject-object-thinking. At this early stage of the investigation, ‘thing’ is not
a phenomenologically primordial expression but rather one of common-sense
or (to use the language of Husserlian phenomenology) of ‘natural attitude.’ The
406 J. DE JONG

object does not presuppose a primordial thing, but rather the unitary represen-
tative phenomenon of Entgegenstehenlassen. It is this phenomenon which lets
a thing stand as object. The rest of the text develops the ontological nature of this
relational phenomenon of Angleichung into ever more primordial designations
(such as freedom, concealment, untruth, errancy), the first step of which already
establishes that such correspondence cannot be ‘thing-like’.
7. Cf. the need for an ‘entgegenstehenlassende Zuwendung-zu’ and the understand-
ing as ‘das Vermögen des Gegenstehenlassens von’ (Heidegger 1991, esp. 71–74).
Also: that one must understand Kant’s words ‘Gegen-stand’ and ‘Ob-jekt’ literally
(1963, 22), namely as ‘Entgegengebrachtes’ and as that which is ‘zu setzen und so
zum Stand als Gegenstand zu bringen’ by the understanding (1963, 16). In the
Kant-book it is notoriously unclear to what extent Heidegger takes himself to be
following, reinterpreting or surpassing Kant. Heidegger has himself discussed the
‘ambiguity’ of the book (1989, 252–54).
8. See, for instance, in Heidegger (1989, 88, 89, 171).
9. The ‘abandonment by being’ [Seinsverlassenheit] is Heidegger’s reconceptua-
lization of what in Being and Time he terms the forgetfulness of being
[Seinsvergessenheit]. Cf. Heidegger (1989, 110ff.). For its relation to the ‘history
of beyng’ see Heidegger (1989, 119ff.).
10. See Heidegger (2000). The interesting exception is the even further stage of
degradation of the truth of beyng (further, that is, than a thinking that under-
stands the being of beings merely as the objectivity of the object) through the
notion of Bestand, that is explicitly distinguished from objectivity (2000, 17,
19, 27).
11. Gegenüber (opposed to) and similar terms (Dawider, Entgegen) are almost
always pejoratives for Heidegger. At times he makes explicit (in a gesture not
without performative complexity) that primordial thinking must turn against
the ‘against’ and opposition. See, for example, his rewriting of Entgegen as Ent-
gegen (1998b, 141n); thinking as ‘outside the against’ [außerhalb des Gegen]
(1989, 187); and the need to encounter [begegnen] philosophers instead of
going counter to them [entgegengehen or dagegenangehen] (1968, 77).
12. Heidegger himself increasingly argues against transcendental philosophy from
the 1930s onward. Some believe that Heidegger’s own later problem with Being
and Time was that that work was still a work of transcendental philosophy. For
a useful discussion, see Dahlstrom (2005). I agree with Dahlstrom that
Heidegger remains concerned with ‘conditions’ (for instance, in the text on
the essence of truth, freedom is a condition for correctness, unconcealment for
freedom, concealment for unconcealment, and errancy for concealment), but
I disagree with his characterization of ‘transcendentalism.’ Heidegger’s specific
(early as well as later) way of approaching ‘conditions’ lies, I believe, in
identifying ‘more original’ phenomenal structures and attempting their articu-
lation in a ‘more primordial’ language, in line with the remark from Being and
Time that ‘Philosophy will never seek to deny its “presuppositions,” but neither
may it merely admit them. It conceives them and develops with more and
more penetration both the presuppositions themselves and that for which they
are presuppositions.’ (BT 297).
13. Given the importance of Hegel in the history of onto-theology, Heidegger’s
encounter with Hegel is surprisingly limited. The main sources are ‘Hegels
Begriff der Erfahrung’ (1942/43 in GA 5); ‘Hegel und die Griechen’ (1958 in
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 407

GA 9); ‘Hegel und das Problem der Metaphysik’ (1930 in GA 80) and the
materials collected in GA 28, 32, 68 and 86.
14. In what follows, I focus mostly on the Logic as one would expect the concept of
the object to be developed there. The Philosophy of Nature follows the
categories under ‘objectivity’ expounded in the Logic up to a point (comprising
mechanism and chemism but ending in organic physics rather than teleology).
For a discussion of the relation between objectivity in the Logic and the
Philosophy of Nature, see Winfield (2006, 140ff.). The notion of ‘objective
Spirit’ is perhaps the least likely candidate to provide clarification of Hegel’s
notion of the ‘object’. Pinkard notes that Hegel coined the phrase around 1817
after having called it ‘practical Spirit’ in the preceding 10 years (Pinkard 2019,
148). The use of the term in this sphere seems intended to fit a certain
common-sense usage of the term, in the sense of the ‘outward’ or ‘external’
manifestations of Spirit (Hegel 1970, 10/302; §483). Winfield highlights that
Hegel at times chooses terms to fit customary usage in the Logic as well
(Winfield 2006, 134).
15. In one way, this is a reflection of Hegel’s inability to think Heideggerian
Zuhandenheit: a handiness that is already imbued with meaning (an inability
that of course also has deeper-lying reasons, especially the irreconcileability of
presuppositionless thinking with hermeneutics). But before deciding that this
simply validates Heidegger’s critique of Hegel, we must also stress the reverse
point: Heidegger also relies on the hands in his spatio-temporalized under-
standing of objectivity as Vorhandenheit. Although Hegel no doubt has less to
say about prereflective practical meaningfulness than Heidegger, the flip-side
of this is that Heidegger in turn has less to say about objectivity.
16. Cf. representation as bound to the ‘form of objectivity’ [die Form der
Gegenständlichkeit] and the need for an ‘overcoming of the object of con-
sciousness’ [Überwindung des Gegenstandes des Bewußtseins] at Hegel (2018,
454).
17. In an interesting explanation for our present purposes, Stephen Houlgate
claims that Hegel departs from Kant because Kant ‘fails to suspend the
ordinary assumption that thought relates to objects’ (Houlgate 2006, 339).
Hegel would find Kant too ‘gegenständlich’ (Houlgate 1986, 114–15). This
seems to disregard what Hegel deems Kant’s ‘most excellent discovery’: the
explication of the distinction of thought and being in its ‘highest abstraction’
and the (albeit ‘limited’) sublation thereof (Hegel 2000, 340). This raises
Kant far above the level of mere ordinary consciousness. Cf. my De Jong
(2012).
18. Perhaps the best interpretation of Hegel’s notion of object in this direction is
by Kees Jan Brons when he speaks of the ‘primacy of the “object”’ in the
reflection on our relation to reality (Brons 2008) and of the ‘implicit’ character
of the relation to objective reality (Brons 2000, esp. 195–96 on subjectivity as
implicit form of the object).
19. Winfield makes this point well (2006, 136). Such a way of explaining the
distinction between Objekt and Gegenstand is implied by the inadequate
entry on the ‘object’ in Burbidge (2008, 133), which leaves out completely
the object as realization of the concept. It is still slightly under-emphasized in
Inwood (1992), but that is the far superior and more informative entry on the
different meanings of objectivity in Hegel’s works. Di Giovanni’s account is
similar (‘intended’ versus ‘actually present’ object, Hegel 2010b, xxxvi). In
408 J. DE JONG

order to keep the distinction he mostly translates Gegenstand as ‘subject-

matter,’ which is semantically sound but obviously loses crucial connotations.
20. It does, of course, entail ‘subjectivity’ (consciousness thereof is what separates
modern from ancient philosophy), but in the specific Hegelian sense of pure
negativity or free self-determination. This subjectivity is not opposed to the
object, but is rather expressed as the particular categorical form of the object,
which is what the Logic expresses by showing subjectivity and objectivity to be
moments of the concept. Cf. Brons (2000, esp. 196–203).
21. In this article I focus on those aspects of Hegel’s notion of the object that
differ from Heidegger’s. But if one were to look for continuities, it would lie
in this ‘implicit dimension’ and its relation to Heideggerian concealment,
their conceptions of philosophical self-explication, and their ideas about the
relation between presentation and the essence of thought as movement,
development or as a ‘way’, which I have worked out at length in De Jong
(2020).
22. My aim here is not to make a case for Aristotle’s historical influence on Hegel,
though the influence is certainly there. For this, see Ferrarin (2004). My aim is
solely to propose Aristotle’s use of hypokeimenon as a model that could help us
understand Hegel’s use of the term Gegenstand. Ferrarin briefly makes
a similar point when comparing Hegel’s ‘objective thoughts’ to Aristotelian
essences (2004, 75, 130). Secondly, I limit myself to the hypokeimenon as it
plays its part in Categories, not as ‘substance’ in Metaphysics Z4–7 or as the
‘substrate’ that underlies change in Physics A.
23. No doubt because this is the sense of knowledge most in need of rehabilitation
in modern times. Cf. the three ‘positions of thought towards objectivity’
(2010a, 66ff., §25ff.); the superiority of ancient over modern skepticism
(Hegel 2000); and Ferrarin (2004, 45ff.).
24. This does not mean one cannot be wrong (evidently one can misname things),
nor is it to deny that language is a flexible medium we can use to create new
terms. That different words can refer to different things changes nothing about
the ontological anchoring of language that Aristotle expresses in the distinc-
tions of ‘said of’ from ‘present in’. More importantly still, ‘disclosure’ does not
mean that there is some hidden ‘thing’ which naming would lay bare, but
rather the opposite: with names we show things in their what and how,
according to the distinctions Aristotle makes.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID
Johan de Jong http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5121-1348

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