By Ryan Smith
“The true and positive meaning of the antinomies in Kant is this: That every actual thing involves a co-existence of opposed elements. Consequently to know, or in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to being conscious of it as a concrete unitary of opposed determinations.” – Hegel: Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences §1.4.48
On the site we have previous touched upon how Ni and Te, when they possess the ascendancy over the psyche, together result in an expansive and empowering mode of cognition in the NTJ types. In this article, I am going to use the dialectics of G.W.F. Hegel to demonstrate the nature of this Dialectic, as well as to point out a few things about Ni and Te.
In Hegel’s philosophy, reason is thought to be antinomical and relative in nature. That is to say, everything that can be cognized by the psyche implies the existence of its opposite: Cognizing ‘cold’, you will be able to infer the existence of ‘hot’, cognizing ‘night’, you will be able to infer the existence of ‘day’, and so on. Each exists only in opposition to the other, and it is their opposition that constitutes the whole which is deemed the higher standpoint.
For Hegel, the dialectical movement is the process of moving from the standpoint of viewing one side in isolation (which he regards as an isolated and abstract mode of perception) to the standpoint of viewing the matter via Reason (which makes us comprehend the opposition to which the isolated standpoint belongs and makes us conscious of the whole). For example, from the isolated standpoint, you may experience only cold and concentrate on finding out as much about cold as possible (which would be an Si mode of consciousness). But from the standpoint of Reason, you realize that ‘cold’ is only a part of the opposition between hot and cold. Even if you had never experienced hotness, you would in principle be able to infer its existence through the use of the Hegelian dialectic. I therefore refer to it as an expansive or empowering dialectic.
Unification towards the Greater Whole
The Hegelian dialectic attempts to remove the opposition between the antinomies (such as hot and cold) by relating them to each other and unifying them under a new concept, which allegedly removes the dissonance between them. According to Hegel, the synthesis of two concepts is complete and all-inclusive and therefore points the way to a higher idea that can account for the differences. Hot and cold can thus be united in the concept of temperature, life and death can thus be united in the concept of change, and so on. Each new concept is an even higher idea with a higher and richer content than its predecessors. This process of dialectic can in principle continue indefinitely, until the whole of the world, and all of human knowledge, is contained in a single conception, which is again contained in the psyche of the Ni type. The Ni type can thus contain the entire world, and all knowledge of it, by way of its synthesis as a perfect idea.
Prior to Hegel, Kant had followed a different dialectic, the dialectic of confinement. By using Ti and Ne, Kant had concluded that we can never know pure reality as it exists “in itself”, apart from the human conception of it. He therefore turned his attention to the human mode of conception itself, and isolated a series of thought-forms (such as time, space, quantity, quality, and duration) which he argued that all humans impose on the things that are seen, somewhat like the way that a pair of blue glasses causes everything that is seen to appear in a bluish hue.
Responding to Kant’s dialectic, Hegel argued that the duality of reality “in itself” and the thought-forms that humans impose on it cannot be separate or foreign to each other without losing their significance as concepts. Just like hot stands in a logical opposition to cold, he argued, so reality “in itself” stands in a logical opposition to the thought-forms that humans impose on it. According to Hegel, they are mutually dependent upon one another, just like day is dependent upon night. By Hegel’s argument, therefore, it is possible to unify the concept of “reality ‘in itself’” with the concept of “limiting human thought-forms” and merge them into a higher concept that contains both of these standpoints in the same way that it was possible to merge hot and cold into the concept of temperature.[1]
Thus, though Kant had argued that humans can never know reality “in itself”, Hegel believes that he can indeed transcend the constrictions inherent to human consciousness through the use of his empowering dialectic. To Kant, the outer world holds the primacy over existence, and human perception can only inadequately attempt to adjust itself to it. But to Hegel, human consciousness (what he calls “Reason”) is its own master, which is higher than the idea of an external world. To Kant, it is reality-in-itself that constitutes reality, whereas to Hegel, it is the thought of reality that constitutes reality. Kant’s perception is extroverted (Ne); Hegel’s is introverted (Ni).
The Hierarchy of the Real
As mentioned, the synthesis of opposites by Hegel is invariably referred to as higher, truer, and more real than immediate modes of perception (Se). To Hegel, the higher ideas are more real because they have more content. They are more inclusive and thus contain more of reality (i.e. what is real). Again, this mode of perception bears witness to the Ni mode of consciousness. Ideas are the primary constituents of reality (whereas the Ne type would say that it is reality itself that is the primary constituent of reality).[2] Likewise, when Hegel says the higher ideas are more real because they contain more of reality, his mode of judgment indicates a strong measure of Te as it takes quantity as the measure of what is real while the Ti mode of consciousness orients itself by quality.
For example, we can say that something is bigger or smaller, more extensive or less extensive. These measures are indicative of quantity. But these measures say nothing about quality. Strictly speaking, an elephant is not “more real” than a mosquito, just because it is bigger and more extensive. But Te types are nevertheless more prone to perceive things as such, which is one reason for their efficiency.[3] By contrast, Ti types, for their part, are not prone to perceive the elephant as “more real” than the mosquito, which is one reason for their impracticality.
Hegel vs. Plato and Jung
According to Hegel, when opposites are absorbed into a higher concept, their differences are not annulled. The opposites are not negated, but are to be understood as a completion and not a supplantation. Therefore, to Hegel, even the highest concept and the highest mode of consciousness contains nothing abstract or remote, but is completely manifest and concrete, even though it is a vastly expansive idea.
This mode of conceptualizing the absolute gives us recourse to compare Hegel to Plato and Jung. These thinkers also believed that they could unite the opposites found in reality into a higher idea, which would lead the way to a higher mode of consciousness. However, a very clear difference emerges here, namely that both Plato and Jung’s “higher mode of consciousness” abstracted from the world as it appears to us and postulated the empirical world as a derivative of archetypes, the Forms, or of a higher ultimate unity that stood somehow apart from this world.
With Hegel, as we have seen, there is no abstracted content in the higher mode of consciousness that leaves the sensible world behind. There is nothing soteriological about it. To Hegel, the true infinite is nothing but the totality of this world, contained in the psyche of the individual. Anything abstracted or otherworldly (as in the case of Jung and Plato) is a superficial and false infinite – an “armchair infinite” which stands in opposition to the real. Unlike Jung and Plato, Hegel has no wish to leave phenomena or the empirical world behind, only to cognize it better and more fully.
This difference between Hegel and Jung-Plato makes clear a central difference between INTJs and INFJs: As Ni types, they share the propensity towards synthesis and ontological idealism, but the types with Ti seek refuge in abstract, otherworldly, and unchanging ideas, which the types with Te regard as empty and non-existent. For them it is engagement with, and mastery over, this world that constitutes the true challenge and goal of life.
APPENDIX: Hegel versus Nagarjuna on the Absolute
This appendix proposes to compare Hegel’s conception of the absolute with that of Nagarjuna. If you are not already acquainted with Nagarjuna, we recommend that you read this article before proceeding with the appendix.
In his philosophy, Hegel claims that we progress on our path towards the absolute when we form a synthesis of views. For example, if we think “freedom is good, therefore we should have a completely free society,” we would be in error as that would be a one-sided view. But on the other hand, if we think that “authority is good, therefore we should have completely authoritarian society,” then by Hegel’s standards we would also be in error. One idea (ultimate authority) is simply the other idea (ultimate freedom) in reverse.
However, if we produced a synthesis of the two views, we would arrive at something like the concept of Enlightened Absolutism (which was indeed Hegel’s preferred mode of government): Under Enlightened Absolutism, the monarch retains absolute power in an authoritarian fashion, but at the same time, he embraces the best of the arts and sciences and allows them to prosper freely. Hence we have formed a synthesis of the views of absolute freedom and absolute authority and we are now, in Hegel’s view, closer to realizing the absolute.
To Nagarjuna, on the other hand, the fact that Hegel’s march towards the absolute has not in any way taken us out of our normal, empirical mode of consciousness is proof that we have not really advanced beyond our starting point. We have merely re-arranged ourselves within the confines of the empirical. Our lot is now empirically superior, but we are no closer to the absolute.
This point of contention is a genuine disagreement between Nagarjuna and Hegel, since Hegel supposes that the absolute can (indeed, must) be conceived through the faculty of human reason, where Nagarjuna maintains that the true realization of the absolute can only take place through the faculty of supra-mundane intuition. To Nagarjuna, therefore, even the Hegelian synthesis of views is but another view – one more view among views, neither better nor worse than any of the others. By his own understanding, Nagarjuna’s view is “the view that is not itself a view.”
Faced with such reasoning, Hegel would probably join forces with the various Western commentators on Nagarjuna and assert that if Nagarjuna’s philosophy produces nothing that is accessible to human reason, then Nagarjuna’s philosophy is really a species of nihilism. The roots of the disagreement here thus hark back to the fact that Hegel presupposes that reason is the necessary medium for reaching the absolute while Nagarjuna denies it, saying that the real is inexpressible to ordinary thought.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Professor T.R.V. Murti for his discussions of the Hegelian dialectic.
NOTES
[1] Hegel’s proof that this synthesis of “reality-in-itself” and “limiting human thought-forms” is possible basically amounts to saying that no other explanation is possible. According to Hegel, the richness of thought that results from assuming that his argument is true is unparalleled, which to him functions as a guarantee of its truth. This mode of argument is often employed as a means of proof by Ni types (e.g. Plato, Jung, and Lenin). Yet strictly speaking, it is not a valid argument, specifically because it hinges upon the value problem. Who is to judge whether “insight into the true relation between hot and cold” is more or less valuable than the ability to know a lot about either of them specifically? It cannot be objectively argued that one of them is more desirable than the other, but nevertheless Ni types tend to think that they can, which is one reason why it is fitting to categorize Ni as a subjective function.
[2] Thus the types with extroverted perception might ask: If ideas are the constituents of reality, does that not imply that all ideas are true? Hegel would deny that this is so, setting himself up as the ultimate judge of falsehood and truth (again being unable to account for the value problem). But Jung would actually accept this implication of his own ontology, concluding that all functions are equally valid and collapsing his epistemology into a form of solipsism. For more on this, see: Nagy: Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C. G. Jung (State University of New York Press 1991) p. 32.
[3] As with the problems of induction (Te) and deduction (Ti), the things that are strictly correct and logically valid are not always the same as the things that are practical and efficient.
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Image of Hegel in the article commissioned from artist Georgios Magkakis.