Nietzsche and Hegel: breaking the dialectic...

Nietzsche breaks with the Hegelian dialectic by more rigorously conceiving the Hegelian "subject," or that aspect of "what actually is" in Hegel that becomes, that negates: there is a negativity that is greater and more powerful than Hegelian negativity, a type of becoming that is more true and more fundamental than Hegelian becoming, and thus a different type of movement and structure of the actual than the dialectic.

When we say "subject," we are of course referring to the famous and crucial phrase from the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit that essentialy sums up Hegel's philosophical position:

In my view, which can be justified only by the exposition of the [Hegelian] system itself, everything turns on grasping and expressing the True [what is real, actual], not only as Substance, but equally as Subject.
-Phenomenology of Spirit, §17.

Essentially, this means that what is actual, is only because it is both 1) being, existence (this is what is meant by "Substance," a thing that has attributes), and 2) becoming (this is what is meant by "Subject"). That which really or actually is, not only is (that is, not only exists), but also becomes or incorporates becoming into its existence. In fact, by saying "equally" Hegel says that what is actual is indeed actual only to the extent that it also becomes: becoming and being only effect actuality insofar as they occur equally, insofar as becoming incorporates itself into being just as much as being exists. Now, this becoming that is incorporated into the Substance that is actual Hegel calls "negativity." Thus he says a little later on in the Preface:

The living Substance is being which is in truth Subject, or, what is the same, is in truth actual only insofar as it is the movement [read: becoming] of positing itself, or is the mediation [read: becoming] of its self-othering with itself. This substance is, as Subject, pure simple negativity.
-Phenomenology of Spirit, §18.

"Pure negativity" Hegel says a little later, is, "when reduced to its pure abstraction [or the most general concept which will encompass it], simple becoming" ("Preface", §20). Thus, when being (Substance) is "in truth," as Hegel says here, when it is actual, it negates, it becomes. Linking negation up with the concepts of becoming and being, subject and substance, we can see then why Hegel calls becoming "negativity:" becoming is the absence of being, and therefore, conceived purely, is not. It is the "not," pure and simple--what does not exist but what makes something actual. We can also see that the statement about the True as substance and equally as subject responds essentially to Descartes, who thought the True, the actual, was only insofar as it was Substance.

For Descartes, the cogito, when it grasped its actuality, was a res cogitans, "thinking thing," a thing that possessed the attribute of thinking. For Hegel, conceiving of actuality as guaranteed by the mere attribute of a thing did not seem concrete enough: reality and actuality conceived only as the adequate possession of a particular attribute seems too flimsy. Cartesian truth, Hegel thinks, would only be a matter of determining whether something possessed the right attribute and so was a substance--it was no more profound than this, this determining what is essentially already priveliged to be a substance (since it already possesses the attribute). The whole method of Descartes, the whole taking away of all that was supposedly real to reach what was actual, is essentially meaningless, since it only finds out what was already there. For Hegel, this whole process of abstracting away from reality essentially and necessarily effected the grasping of actuality that Descartes found--it did something, it had to do something, otherwise the truth that Descartes found would merely be superfluous, would not govern reality or essentially be true. Thus, whatever was true also had to be a "subject," had to be not merely an attribute but a predicate that determined the thing it was asserted to be the possession of.

Calling this predicate of the substance "subject" essentially means: the "I think" is not indifferent to the "I am," the thinking itself of Descartes effectuates the being that the thinking supposedly proves; or, put differently, the "cogitans" is not merely an adjective modifying "res," but essentially determines "res" as a verb. The "res," is what it does. This "doing" is not merely being, but is in fact a going beyond being into a realm where being is not. Conceived adequately, this "doing" is, for Hegel, a becoming. Thus he says, essentially of the res cogitans, that for it not to be a mere empty phrase, a mere truth that is indifferent to the everyday world that it supposedly governs, in order for it to govern that world as its actual nature, it must become, must enter into an other state that is not being--that in fact is not-being itself, negation: "whatever is more than... a word... contains a becoming-other that has to be taken back [into the word itself as its action, as what it does]" ("Preface" §20).

Now that this is cleared up, where does Nietzsche fall with respect to all of it? We said that Nietzsche breaks with the Hegelian dialectic by more rigorously conceiving the Hegelian "subject." We now see that implied in this is a radicalization of how Hegel, too, more rigorously conceived the Cartesian cogito: Nietzsche too is reacting to Descartes. Essentially, then, how Hegel conceives of actuality as effected by a becoming--becoming as negativity being the essence of the "subject"--will have to be just as inadequately conceived for Nietzsche as Descartes' substance was for Hegel.
Let us see what Nietzsche says:

What are attributes?-- We have not regarded change in us as change but as an "in itself" that is foreign to us... and we have posited it, not as an event, but as a being, as a "quality"--and in addition invented an entity to which it adheres; i.e. we have regarded the effect as something that effects, and this we have regarded as a being. But even in this formulation, the concept "effect" is arbitrary: for those changes that take place in us, and that we firmly believe we have not ourselves caused, we merely infer to be effects, in accordance with the conclusion "every change must have an author";--but this conclusion is already mythology: it separates that which effects from the effecting. If I say "lightning flashes," I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, is, and does not "become."-- To regard an event as an "effecting," and this as being, that is the double error, or interpretation, of which we are guilty.
-The Will to Power, #531 (composed 1885-1886)

Now, first of all, we should clarify what Nietzsche means by "attribute" in this note, for the question "what are attributes?" is that to which the whole rest of the note responds. Nietzsche means by "attribute" both attribute in the Cartesian sense, as that which is a property of a substance, but also "predicate" in the Hegelian sense, as that which is the subject of a substance. This is the upshot of the paragraph: we see not only that attributes are attributes, but that things that are asserted as predicates are attributes. It is not even a matter of a misnomer: Hegel does not use "predicate" when what he "really means" is "attribute," for Nietzsche--Hegel is not merely mistaken in taking something that is an attribute to be a predicate. What Nietzsche is getting at here, what he essentially determines the "attribute" to be, is something that is also signified by "predicate"--using "predicate" does not outstrip or go beyond what is essentially signified by "attribute," as Hegel thinks it does. That is, Nietzsche destroys Hegel's assumption that in making the attribute into a predicate, he is accurately conceiving actuality. Niether attribute nor predicate can do this for Nietzsche: actuality is something that exceeds the grasp of both these concepts, and thus are just as effective in grasping actuality as we now know (after Hegel) the attribute was--we can therefore lump them together under one name.

The main thrust of the paragraph thus made visible, we can turn to the actual statements themselves to determine how indeed the Hegelian predicate is just like an attribute. For wasn't the predicate subject, and the subject negativity, that is, becoming? How is becoming in Hegel only an attribute?
Because, says Nietzsche, it is not adequately conceived as becoming. In other words, it is covertly conceived as being. This is what Nietzsche means when he says, "We have not regarded change in us as change but as an 'in itself' that is foreign to us... and we have posited it, not as an event, but as a being, as a 'quality.'" "Change" here is becoming. "Not regarding change as change" means not conceiving becoming as a becoming that is adequate to the nature of becoming. What is this nature? Well, as we already determined when looking at Hegel, the nature of becoming is not-being: becoming is what happens when being stops being and changes into a different type of being. While a being is changing into a different type of being, it engages in a process where it turns into its opposite and negation--it becomes, it engages in not-being. Thus, if becoming is the opposite of being, to not regard becoming as becoming is essentially to pass off something as becoming that is not really the full and pure opposite of being, but only approximates this opposite. This pseudo-opposite would therefore be something that appears to change, appears to become, but does not really become. In fact, it would still be being. This is what Nietzsche means by "we have posited it [change, becoming] not as an event, but as a being." Now, what remains to be explained is the crucial part of this statement: how is this pseudo-becoming a pseudo-becoming because it is "regarded.. as an 'in itself' that is foreign to us?" Indeed, this "foreign-ness" of becoming is proffered as the essential thing that makes it lack actuality in the paragraph. How could becoming be in itself something foreign, and as this not really be actual becoming?

Well, let us reflect on what Hegel said becoming was. Hegel said "the living Substance is being which is in truth Subject, or, what is the same, is in truth actual only insofar as it is the movement of positing itself, or is the mediation of its self-othering with itself." Notice that Hegel describes what is in effect becoming--Subject--as a type of "self-othering with itself." Is not this "self-othering" of which Hegel speaks what Nietzsche refers to as the "foreign?" Indeed, what is "other" is what is foreign: what is other is whatever is not-itself, what is not-here (but there, over and against oneself, in the foreign). Indeed, the German "fremd" carries this meaning of "other" with it much more than the "foreign" with which we translate Nietzsche: in German "other" is "anderes", a conjunction of "an", meaning "on," "apart from and yet related to," "an aspect of a thing that is not it but is added onto it," "on top of and against," and therefore essentially "not" in a privative way similar to the Latin prefix "a-" when it is used as a prefix, and the word "da," which means "here"--thus we say what is other is what is not-here. Indeed, Hegel himself often plays on this meaning, implying that what is other is also what is foreign. What this part of the passage of Hegel's means, then, is what we have just explained when we were explaining becoming: "self-othering" is what is necessary for something not just to merely exist as a substance, but also as subject. In order for something to really exist, it must in a sense go out of itself and change such that it becomes its own other. This is what Hegel means by "mediation:" something mediates insofar as it traverses a path in which it engages in a process where it becomes foreign, other than itself. Now, when we were explaining becoming and its opposition to being, we did not give it this sense of "becoming-foreign"--but indeed we can see that this is what we meant. Becoming is not just becoming for Hegel, it is becoming-other, becoming-foreign. It is becoming something that, while it "is" not, is indeed something that is set up as in opposition to being--that is, substance proper. This is so much the case that we can say the following: what does not become other, what does not become foreign to itself as being, does not become at all for Hegel. What does not set itself up in opposition to being when it becomes is only still merely being, merely substance without being subject, and fails to attain actuality or Truth.

Now we understand what Nietzsche means by regarding change or becoming "as an 'in itself' that is foreign to us." For Hegel, becoming is, in itself, what is foreign to being. As soon as something engages in becoming instead of being, it must be foreign or other to being, because becoming is in itself something different, foreign and other to being, to existence.

Now, Nietzsche says this regard for becoming as in itself foreign to being makes becoming or change into being. Why is this the case? Is not becoming something that is foreign to being? Hegel seems to be on the right track here: Nietzsche suddenly looks as if he is ruthlessly undermining something that most, if not all, would agree upon. But let us hear Nietzsche out. Why does Nietzsche assert becoming is being when it is regarded as the other of being? Because this makes becoming into "a 'quality.'" What is a quality? we must ask. Well, a quality is a quality of being. It is something that being does not have as an attribute or (what is the same for us now) a predicate, but which is commensurable with the character that being itself has. Being of the same quality as being means that one is commensurable with, adequate with, equivalent with being. Being a quality of being means that one can be substituted for being without any change effecting itself within the character of being. Thus, we see how what we agree upon fails us, along with Hegel. For it is obvious that if becoming, according to Hegel, is something that is commensurate with being, can be exchanged with being without making being change, well, as change itself becoming can no longer really be called becoming. What Nietzsche is getting at is this: if becoming can be something that being can just enter into, well, then it is not really becoming because it does not force that being to become, to change. The only question left to us, then, is whether Hegel holds this. If we reflect on what we have heard Hegel say, namely, that becoming is negation this will prove the case. Simply by negating itself, by being not-being, being itself can become what is other to it--becoming. Nietzsche is right. If being can be other than itself and thereby be becoming, becoming is commensurable with the character of being, and is therefore its "quality." When being negates itself, then, it is still being. All this comes down to one fundamental insight: Nietzsche effectively claims here that as long as becoming is the other of being, then it is not actually becoming.

Before specifying what actual becoming would be (presumably a becoming that is not the other of being), we might take a moment to show how immense this claim is. For its power is such that it effectively "breaks" the dialectic of Hegel. Furthermore, it does not break it from the outside by specifying something wrong with the points Hegel begins his dialectic at and ends it with (nature and Absolute Knowledge, respectively), in the manner of Strauss, Feuerbach, and the early Marx. What Nietzsche does is much more radical, and only the late Marx and Kierkegaard approached it prior to him: Nietzsche breaks the dialectic from the inside, from the movement of the aufheben or negativity that constitutes it.

So, what is the dialectic, and how does it get constituted by negativity? This is an immense question, but we can state what it is quite simply from what we have already determined. The dialectic is the name we give for the process of negation that makes a being or substance attain its actuality through its becoming. It is essentially the process of "mediation" we described earlier--a substance's taking up of its own opposite (the opposite remaining its becoming) in its becoming. When this substance is determined as all of actuality, all of the world and its meaningful events, or, to call it by its Hegelian name, Spirit--when this is the case we have the "dialectic" proper: it is the totality of world-meaning or Spirit mediating itself, going through the process of its becoming actual. This huge global movement is, then, what is broken by Nietzsche. No longer can we look at the history of the world and of its meaningful events as a process of the becoming-actual of being, or the subjectivization of its substance, for this becoming-actual or subjectivization is what is already there, what is superfluous about its deeper essence. Thus, what Hegel hated about Descartes, namely, that he was saying something that did not really say anything, can be applied back to Hegel by Nietzsche. Any process of negation, the becoming other of a thing, doe not necessarily have to proceed the way that Hegel specifies it will because he conceives of this becoming merely as a quality of being. We can see how this might change our perception of things when we look at the example of the lightening that Nietzsche gives: "lightning flashes."

Now, for Hegel, the substance of the lightning is actualizing itself or realizing itself in the sky because as it is ceasing to merely be and instead become not just merely itself but what is foreign to itself--its becoming. The lightning flashes: the flashing is the sign of the becoming of the substance that is lightning. We see how intertwined this perspective is with our normal conception of things when we merely begin to think of even more every day examples: the tree grows--it ceases being a tree and realizes itself as a growing-tree; the dog walks--the dog ceases to just merely be a dog by being a walking dog, by becoming something other. These are dialectical interpretations of events because they specify a structure of reality that the events supposedly coincide with. But how does Nietzsche view these events? "If I say 'lightning flashes,' I have posited the flash once as an activity and a second time as a subject, and thus added to the event a being that is not one with the event but is rather fixed, is, and does not 'become.' What this means is that Nietzsche sees the lightening dialectically and looks at its flashing not as an activity of the lightning but merely as something that the lightning instantiates itself as for the dialectician. The flash is not a unique event. It is merely an unfolding of what was always already present in the lightning just simply being lightning. This is because the flashing is not becoming, but being. We can see why Nietzsche says that this view posits the flash twice: the flash is supposedly something that is supposed to be other than being and yet at the same the activity that has made it other. While this first thing is specified by what Hegel calls "becoming," the actual activity, the flashing itself, is not grasped by this type of "becoming" since it is something that really truly excludes being (unlike Hegel's "becoming," which, let us repeat it, is only a being's "quality"). What actually makes the lightning flash is something that is not its becoming. According to Hegel, what makes the lightning flash is its not-being. But this only makes it into something that is a "subject" (as Nietzsche says) over and above its substance. It does not make it flash. Thus we come back to what we first specified as the upshot of this entire passage: what Hegel determined as predicate is just as good as the Cartesian attribute--they both miss the real issue, the real activity that is in complete opposition to being. What this is we have yet to specify--though Nietzsche does indeed specify it--but already we can use a more poignant example in order to hit home how incadequate this Hegelian view of things is: "I murder." The murder is not a consequence of any actual activity on my part according to Hegel--it is only the consequence of my not-being-myself. Now, Nietzsche allows us to see that I am myself insofar as I am not myself, because this murder was indeed me acting in accordance to my character as a substance, as an "I." But as far as Hegel is concerned, the activity of this action extends only so far as to show that I was acting as something that was not myself, but an application of myself, a becoming-other of what-once-was the substance that was myself. We indeed subscribe to this view in the courts, where we think an action is the application of the subjectivity of the subject: Hegel would say that it is the subjectivity of the subject. But this is, according to Nietzsche, missing the point. The action itself is never touched: the real becoming is pawned off as this pseudo-becoming, this mere predicate or attribute of being. This is what Nietzsche means when he characterizes this as a mere dogmatic adherence to the naive believe that "every change must have an author." Every becoming, every lightning flash, every murder, is only as it is because it is the effect of an intention, an authoring, a being that has become by negation or not-being. We have to ask: is this always the case? Especially of nature--how does lightning "intend" a flash?

What is the real action according to Nietzsche? We can look at how he describes this pawning-off in order to specify it. "We have regarded the effect as something that effects," Nietzsche says. That is, we regard an effect as a cause. In order to perceive the real essence of becoming, the activity of becoming, that which we mistakenly think we grasp when we call it this mere "effecting" that is really in essence an effect--in order to get at this we have to reverse cause and effect here. That is, in order to grasp actual becoming, we have to consider what we call a cause here--being, the lightning--and see this as the effect of a different cause. What is this different cause? Nothing other than what is effected by this "effecting," that is, the flashing, what we called the becoming of the being, the negation of the being. Put differently, in order to properly conceive becoming, we have to reverse cause and effect as we normally see it. This means not only that we have to reverse the priority of being over becoming that determines the particular relationship of becoming and being, for it is this priority of being over becoming that makes becoming the "other" of being. In other words, becoming is what it is for Hegel only insofar as it is is not-being. This implies that it has no real essence apart from being merely the cessation of being: where being stops, there becoming is; becoming is only the consequence of being, its effect.

Reversing this priority means reversing cause and effect. Therefore we have to conceive of being itself, existence, as a consequence of what we call becoming, such that being is merely not-becoming. This reversal effectuates a conception of the actual--which we remember is the mediation of the effecting and the effect, what we called being and its negation--that is one in which becoming as activity is genuinely conceived. Becoming in this actual sense is what becomes such that in not becoming it is being. Only when becoming is something that can be (exist) when it stops becoming--and not the mere consequence of a cessation in things being--only when this is the case have we properly conceived becoming. What does this look like? We have hinted at it: instead of seeing the lightning effectuating the flash, or causing it, we see the flash causing the lightning. How can this be?

Well, we regard the lightning as something that serves as the vessel or embodiment for the particular event (becoming) that is the flash. This is perhaps better seen in the example of murder. Where murder was something that was merely the extension and application of the substance or existing person, for Nietzsche, the person is a mere vessel for the act of murder, no matter what she or he intended. And while this may be more troubling, and make it universally harder to assign guilt, looking at events this way will make them more accurate, make them more actual. It is the ability to think this, to think of what is merely as the vessel for the mighty process of becoming (a will to power) that sustains in fact brings it as it is about, that allows us to say we have adequately forged a realm for thought beyond the dialectic and the shoddy interpretation of becoming as something lacking action--that is, it allows us to say we have adequately gone beyond Hegel. We have only hinted at how this beyond is to be really thoroughly conceived, but hopefully the break with the dialectic itself will be clear--and that is what is important in knowing the thrust and the importance of both Nietzsche and Hegel.