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Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism
Sebastian Rödl undermines a foundational dogma of contemporary philosophy: that knowledge, in order to be objective, must be knowledge of something that is as it is, independent of being known to be so. This profound work revives the thought that knowledge, precisely on account of being objective, is self-knowledge: knowledge knowing itself.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
194 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 26, 2018
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Sebastian Rödl
10 books6 followersSebastian Rödl is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 15, 2024
From A First Person Point Of View
There seems to be a gradual shift in philosophy back to the large questions of metaphysics and epistemology that analytic philosophy of language had for the most part rejected. A small number of philosophers are even hearkening back to absolute idealism, a philosophical approach for years given up as dead.
Sebastian Rodl's book "Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism" (2018) illustrates both of these philosophical tendencies. Rodl is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig. In 2016-17, Rodl was a fellow at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. His book shows he learned a great deal at Pittsburgh, particularly from the philosopher John McDowell who arranged Rodl's visit. Rodl's book evidences familiarity with analytic philosophy even while taking a radically different approach. If analytic philosophy is understood as understanding philosophical questions as questions of language, then Rodl emphatically rejects this approach. He follows an older approach in which philosophy studies reality and the mind rather than only language. His book owes a great deal to Aristotle and to Hegel.
I have sympathy for Rodl's approach, but he does himself few favors in this book. The writing is obscure, even oracular, and repetitive. In many places, the writing is frustrating and remains opaque after several readings. The style of this book is in places deliberately contentious and provocative. It makes for a difficult reading experience, even for readers who have read a great deal of philosophy.
I think that the writing style of this book mirrors what Rodl has to say. The book has the goal of breaking down the claimed distinction between the object of thought and the thought itself, or judgment. Philosophical realism in its many forms makes this distinction while philosophical idealism rejects it. Rodl want to say that objectivity is not separate from consciousness but is part of it. Part of his thinking is that this position cannot be argued for because argument itself makes use of the alleged distinction that Rodl wants to reject. Rodl claims that his position is in fact adopted by every person upon reflection on self-consciousness. His goal is to expound upon what self-consciousness finds in itself and thus to do away with claimed objections. His account is thus of self-consciousness, or the first person "I think". He breaks down the distinction between the first person judgment and its alleged object. And the difficult writing style reflects this, as it can be seen, I think, as capturing the author's own study of the nature of his self-consciousness and its relationship to objective judgment. Rodl believes in the objectivity of thought, rather than in forms of relativism or perspectivism.
Rodl offers the following discussion of the nature of his project and of his understanding of the absolute idealism he presents to his readers.
"It is obvious that we possess empirical knowledge: knowledge of something that is as it is independently of being known to be so. However, if knowledge is of nothing but itself, then -- so it seems we must say -- there is no such thing as empirical knowledge. And if it be claimed, against reason, that knowledge, always and as such, is self-knowledge, then that of which we are used to thinking of as knowledge of an independent world will turn out to be knowledge merely of the mind. The aim of this essay, as an introduction to absolute idealism, is to make plain that it is impossible to think judgment through this opposition; mind here, world there, two things in relation or not. To dismantle this opposition is not to propose that the world is mind-dependent. Nor is it to propose that the mind is world-dependent. These ways of speaking solidify the opposition: they are an impediment to comprehension." (15- 16)
The book consists of ten chapters which approach and develop Rodl's position in increasing detail, in the manner, roughly, of concentric circles. The book is at its best when it develops and rejects various positions from analytical philosophy of language. I thought the book was insightful in its discussion of Frege and in rejecting Frege's distinction between the "force" and "content" of a thought and in rejecting Frege's critique of psychologism. Rodl also offers arguments against the analytical distinction between language and meta-language (first and second order language) -- a distinction which rejects frontally the non-linguistic philosophy Rodl wants to develop. He also considers contemporary philosophers, including Thomas Nagel and Adrian Moore whose project is somewhat similar to his own in that they seek to understand the nature of objectivity and to distinguish it from perspectivism. Rodl shows sympathy with these thinkers but rejects their conclusions in that they fail to see the linkage between objectivity and self-consciousness that Rodl tries to present.
Rodl distinguishes between empirical sciences which have a contrary -- or a judgment which could be otherwise -- and science "uberhaupt" or "without a contrary" which is the study of self-consciousness or mind's knowledge of reality. This judgment or science "without a contrary" is the subject of philosophy. Rodl points out that the natural sciences, biology, psychology, neuroscience, offer insight into the mind but that they offer no insight into what it means to be a human being. (This is a rather traditional metaphysical position and a religious position.) For that understanding, a different type of study is required -- and this is the study of understanding oneself and one's consciousness. He says "If the concept of a human being is not originally thought in the first person, then there is no such thing as comprehending myself, in the first person, through a theory treating of human beings. For I know that I am a human being only if what I know myself to be -- what I know myself to be in first-person thought-- provides sufficient grounds for judging that I am a human being. And nothing short of my knowledge that I am a human being provides such grounds." (72) Rodl continues:
"It follows that there is a science -- episteme, Wissenschaft -- that reigns supreme over any empirical inquiry into what it is to be a human being, a science in which any such inquiry must ground itself. That is the science that articulates what I know myself to be. It is the self-science, its knowledge is self-knowledge, and it is nothing other than what it knows. This science is philosophy." (72)
In roughly the second half of the book, Rodl offers an increasingly complex discussion of the relationship between the empirical sciences, the sciences with contraries, and the study of self or judgment, the study without a contrary to establish, as put in the title of the concluding chapter
"the identity of absolute and empirical knowledge." Rodl rejects both the argument (perhaps associated with the American pragmatist Charles Peirce) that at some mythical end of inquiry there will be a unity of absolute and empirical knowledge. Rodl also rejects the view that there never will be any meeting between a claimed absolute or total knowledge and empirical knowledge. Instead of either of these positions, Rodl concludes his book:
"Both ideas [sketched above] rest on the same thought: that self-consciousness and objectivity exclude one another. Judging anything at all, in the thought of the validity of judging as we do so, we reject this. Judging anything at all, we recognize the difference of self-knowledge of nature to be their identity, their identity, their difference." (158)
It is striking that this book shows, essentially, a return to the philosophical approach of the late Nineteenth Century and offers an attempted revitalization of idealism. The author tries to develop his position by engaging with and rejecting some of the critical themes and methods of the analytical philosophy which displaced idealism. This book is valuable and challenging in both its use and rejection of what sometimes is called the linguistification of philosophy. It is also valuable in that Rodl draws on many contemporary philosophers whom I had not known who take positions that Rodl incorporates into his own. I enjoyed getting to know these thinkers. For all its difficulty and quirkiness, this book is worth reading by serious students of philosophy who have a great deal of patience and who seek to consider alternatives to what is still the prevailing approach towards philosophical thinking.
Robin Friedman
There seems to be a gradual shift in philosophy back to the large questions of metaphysics and epistemology that analytic philosophy of language had for the most part rejected. A small number of philosophers are even hearkening back to absolute idealism, a philosophical approach for years given up as dead.
Sebastian Rodl's book "Self-Consciousness and Objectivity: An Introduction to Absolute Idealism" (2018) illustrates both of these philosophical tendencies. Rodl is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig. In 2016-17, Rodl was a fellow at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. His book shows he learned a great deal at Pittsburgh, particularly from the philosopher John McDowell who arranged Rodl's visit. Rodl's book evidences familiarity with analytic philosophy even while taking a radically different approach. If analytic philosophy is understood as understanding philosophical questions as questions of language, then Rodl emphatically rejects this approach. He follows an older approach in which philosophy studies reality and the mind rather than only language. His book owes a great deal to Aristotle and to Hegel.
I have sympathy for Rodl's approach, but he does himself few favors in this book. The writing is obscure, even oracular, and repetitive. In many places, the writing is frustrating and remains opaque after several readings. The style of this book is in places deliberately contentious and provocative. It makes for a difficult reading experience, even for readers who have read a great deal of philosophy.
I think that the writing style of this book mirrors what Rodl has to say. The book has the goal of breaking down the claimed distinction between the object of thought and the thought itself, or judgment. Philosophical realism in its many forms makes this distinction while philosophical idealism rejects it. Rodl want to say that objectivity is not separate from consciousness but is part of it. Part of his thinking is that this position cannot be argued for because argument itself makes use of the alleged distinction that Rodl wants to reject. Rodl claims that his position is in fact adopted by every person upon reflection on self-consciousness. His goal is to expound upon what self-consciousness finds in itself and thus to do away with claimed objections. His account is thus of self-consciousness, or the first person "I think". He breaks down the distinction between the first person judgment and its alleged object. And the difficult writing style reflects this, as it can be seen, I think, as capturing the author's own study of the nature of his self-consciousness and its relationship to objective judgment. Rodl believes in the objectivity of thought, rather than in forms of relativism or perspectivism.
Rodl offers the following discussion of the nature of his project and of his understanding of the absolute idealism he presents to his readers.
"It is obvious that we possess empirical knowledge: knowledge of something that is as it is independently of being known to be so. However, if knowledge is of nothing but itself, then -- so it seems we must say -- there is no such thing as empirical knowledge. And if it be claimed, against reason, that knowledge, always and as such, is self-knowledge, then that of which we are used to thinking of as knowledge of an independent world will turn out to be knowledge merely of the mind. The aim of this essay, as an introduction to absolute idealism, is to make plain that it is impossible to think judgment through this opposition; mind here, world there, two things in relation or not. To dismantle this opposition is not to propose that the world is mind-dependent. Nor is it to propose that the mind is world-dependent. These ways of speaking solidify the opposition: they are an impediment to comprehension." (15- 16)
The book consists of ten chapters which approach and develop Rodl's position in increasing detail, in the manner, roughly, of concentric circles. The book is at its best when it develops and rejects various positions from analytical philosophy of language. I thought the book was insightful in its discussion of Frege and in rejecting Frege's distinction between the "force" and "content" of a thought and in rejecting Frege's critique of psychologism. Rodl also offers arguments against the analytical distinction between language and meta-language (first and second order language) -- a distinction which rejects frontally the non-linguistic philosophy Rodl wants to develop. He also considers contemporary philosophers, including Thomas Nagel and Adrian Moore whose project is somewhat similar to his own in that they seek to understand the nature of objectivity and to distinguish it from perspectivism. Rodl shows sympathy with these thinkers but rejects their conclusions in that they fail to see the linkage between objectivity and self-consciousness that Rodl tries to present.
Rodl distinguishes between empirical sciences which have a contrary -- or a judgment which could be otherwise -- and science "uberhaupt" or "without a contrary" which is the study of self-consciousness or mind's knowledge of reality. This judgment or science "without a contrary" is the subject of philosophy. Rodl points out that the natural sciences, biology, psychology, neuroscience, offer insight into the mind but that they offer no insight into what it means to be a human being. (This is a rather traditional metaphysical position and a religious position.) For that understanding, a different type of study is required -- and this is the study of understanding oneself and one's consciousness. He says "If the concept of a human being is not originally thought in the first person, then there is no such thing as comprehending myself, in the first person, through a theory treating of human beings. For I know that I am a human being only if what I know myself to be -- what I know myself to be in first-person thought-- provides sufficient grounds for judging that I am a human being. And nothing short of my knowledge that I am a human being provides such grounds." (72) Rodl continues:
"It follows that there is a science -- episteme, Wissenschaft -- that reigns supreme over any empirical inquiry into what it is to be a human being, a science in which any such inquiry must ground itself. That is the science that articulates what I know myself to be. It is the self-science, its knowledge is self-knowledge, and it is nothing other than what it knows. This science is philosophy." (72)
In roughly the second half of the book, Rodl offers an increasingly complex discussion of the relationship between the empirical sciences, the sciences with contraries, and the study of self or judgment, the study without a contrary to establish, as put in the title of the concluding chapter
"the identity of absolute and empirical knowledge." Rodl rejects both the argument (perhaps associated with the American pragmatist Charles Peirce) that at some mythical end of inquiry there will be a unity of absolute and empirical knowledge. Rodl also rejects the view that there never will be any meeting between a claimed absolute or total knowledge and empirical knowledge. Instead of either of these positions, Rodl concludes his book:
"Both ideas [sketched above] rest on the same thought: that self-consciousness and objectivity exclude one another. Judging anything at all, in the thought of the validity of judging as we do so, we reject this. Judging anything at all, we recognize the difference of self-knowledge of nature to be their identity, their identity, their difference." (158)
It is striking that this book shows, essentially, a return to the philosophical approach of the late Nineteenth Century and offers an attempted revitalization of idealism. The author tries to develop his position by engaging with and rejecting some of the critical themes and methods of the analytical philosophy which displaced idealism. This book is valuable and challenging in both its use and rejection of what sometimes is called the linguistification of philosophy. It is also valuable in that Rodl draws on many contemporary philosophers whom I had not known who take positions that Rodl incorporates into his own. I enjoyed getting to know these thinkers. For all its difficulty and quirkiness, this book is worth reading by serious students of philosophy who have a great deal of patience and who seek to consider alternatives to what is still the prevailing approach towards philosophical thinking.
Robin Friedman
June 18, 2019
This is the type of book that it is particularly beneficial to read twice; understanding the ending enables the reader to better appreciate the thread of argument that runs the through the text. What is Rödl doing here?
He is making explicit the self-conscious grasp of the validity of a judgment inherent in any valid judgment. This is important to keep in mind: he takes the fact (the "that") of valid judgment as a given and seeks to articulate what this fact entails (the "why"). Rödl's basic argument is that knowledge of what is the case in a valid (i.e. true) judgment is knowledge of the validity of so judging.
Rödl takes this basic idea to be required by the validity of judgment, since the idea of a judgment that is consciously valid is literally nonsense. This would be a belief formed by some non-rational process but not a judgment, not a belief that was non-accidentally true. This idea is used to critique Frege's distinction between force and content and various theories of knowledge that treat truth as a regulative ideal that shapes the process of inquiry.
Rödl's argues against these views that in any valid judgment, for instance the judgment p therefore q, one knows both q because of p, and the principles of inference, especially principle of non-contradiction and the categories. How? When one knows q because of p one knows that p excludes the negation of q and necessitates q. One also appreciates the way that objects function in time since, p and q must be empirical judgments; this means that one appreciates the categories.
Much more can be said about this book. It provides a seamless reading of Aristotle and Hegel and extends work by John McDowell. It also complements (and corrects) work by MacIntyre on tradition, showing how MacIntyre's position on tradition is actually deeply Aristotelian.
The question that one might raise about the book is what exactly Rödl accomplishes. In another paper, he has argued that Hegel's Logic is precisely the self-actualization of the power of judgment. In other words, it is an engagement in the pattern of thoughts needed to make the principles of judgment explicit. Given Rödl's defense of the principle of non-contradiction as a principle that inseparably of thought and being, what else are we committed to when we accept the claim that judgment is essentially self-conscious? Must we be Hegelians? Or possibly Thomists?
He is making explicit the self-conscious grasp of the validity of a judgment inherent in any valid judgment. This is important to keep in mind: he takes the fact (the "that") of valid judgment as a given and seeks to articulate what this fact entails (the "why"). Rödl's basic argument is that knowledge of what is the case in a valid (i.e. true) judgment is knowledge of the validity of so judging.
Rödl takes this basic idea to be required by the validity of judgment, since the idea of a judgment that is consciously valid is literally nonsense. This would be a belief formed by some non-rational process but not a judgment, not a belief that was non-accidentally true. This idea is used to critique Frege's distinction between force and content and various theories of knowledge that treat truth as a regulative ideal that shapes the process of inquiry.
Rödl's argues against these views that in any valid judgment, for instance the judgment p therefore q, one knows both q because of p, and the principles of inference, especially principle of non-contradiction and the categories. How? When one knows q because of p one knows that p excludes the negation of q and necessitates q. One also appreciates the way that objects function in time since, p and q must be empirical judgments; this means that one appreciates the categories.
Much more can be said about this book. It provides a seamless reading of Aristotle and Hegel and extends work by John McDowell. It also complements (and corrects) work by MacIntyre on tradition, showing how MacIntyre's position on tradition is actually deeply Aristotelian.
The question that one might raise about the book is what exactly Rödl accomplishes. In another paper, he has argued that Hegel's Logic is precisely the self-actualization of the power of judgment. In other words, it is an engagement in the pattern of thoughts needed to make the principles of judgment explicit. Given Rödl's defense of the principle of non-contradiction as a principle that inseparably of thought and being, what else are we committed to when we accept the claim that judgment is essentially self-conscious? Must we be Hegelians? Or possibly Thomists?
October 15, 2018
"A Guess at the Rödl"
Self-Consciousness and Objectivity is an odd little book written by Sebastian Rödl, a German philosopher who has spent some time in America. I do not think it is a very good one. The book advertises itself as "An Introduction to Absolute Idealism", a philosophical position which has spent some time on the Anglosphere's agenda (in the persons of, say, Bradley and Brand Blanshard) but has been viewed as a 'non-starter' for quite a while. As a person with quite a bit of time for Hegel's "logic", and someone who does not view what is useful in Hegel as merely a 'radicalization' of Kant, I am willing to listen; however, since absolute idealism has always amounted to an apologia pro mens sua the reader should be forewarned that what you are going to get out of this tract is not quite an argument.
In this book Rödl is spending a relatively great deal of time revisiting the topic of Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, from another direction and in a wholly other spirit. Kant was interested in how we could justify concepts governing empirical knowledge without reference to perfect self-evidence or a naturalistic "genealogy"; Rödl wants to approach the topic of the Urteil ("judgment") and our self-conscious cognizing of it directly, to speak to its essential role in our 'cognitive economy' and the ways in which the role of conscious awareness in judgment about "truths of fact" or truths of reason cannot be "explained away" by someone else's more sophisticated understanding of something. This is obviously a damnably hard thing for anyone to talk about, and I have to say Rödl's words do strike me as too prophetic; his statements are confessedly "judgments without contrary" that do not directly bear the impress of other people's words and ideas, and so it is essentially impossible to judge upon whether he has hit upon the truth or not.
This book is simply a bit too 'advanced' to contribute to the workaday intellectual needs people look to philosophy tempered by logical good sense for. If you want to have something nobody can gainsay your attitudes to, it's there for you, but otherwise it is no solution at all.
Note: I detect many traces in Rödl of things analytic philosophers "don't read", like Hölderlin's "Judgment and Being", Luhmann's "universal theory" (a "knowledge without contrary", to use Rödl's terminology) and later Heidegger's thought on identity and difference, and so it's hard to say counterfactually what discussion would occur if people had backgrounds they proudly aim never to acquire. Furthermore, I think if I am going to offer a positive gloss on this book it is something of a Flaschenpost to a future era's knowledge and discourse, one which might redeem seemingly indelibly obscure aspects of our own. (Then again, that's not that difficult for anybody to type up.)
Self-Consciousness and Objectivity is an odd little book written by Sebastian Rödl, a German philosopher who has spent some time in America. I do not think it is a very good one. The book advertises itself as "An Introduction to Absolute Idealism", a philosophical position which has spent some time on the Anglosphere's agenda (in the persons of, say, Bradley and Brand Blanshard) but has been viewed as a 'non-starter' for quite a while. As a person with quite a bit of time for Hegel's "logic", and someone who does not view what is useful in Hegel as merely a 'radicalization' of Kant, I am willing to listen; however, since absolute idealism has always amounted to an apologia pro mens sua the reader should be forewarned that what you are going to get out of this tract is not quite an argument.
In this book Rödl is spending a relatively great deal of time revisiting the topic of Kant's Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, from another direction and in a wholly other spirit. Kant was interested in how we could justify concepts governing empirical knowledge without reference to perfect self-evidence or a naturalistic "genealogy"; Rödl wants to approach the topic of the Urteil ("judgment") and our self-conscious cognizing of it directly, to speak to its essential role in our 'cognitive economy' and the ways in which the role of conscious awareness in judgment about "truths of fact" or truths of reason cannot be "explained away" by someone else's more sophisticated understanding of something. This is obviously a damnably hard thing for anyone to talk about, and I have to say Rödl's words do strike me as too prophetic; his statements are confessedly "judgments without contrary" that do not directly bear the impress of other people's words and ideas, and so it is essentially impossible to judge upon whether he has hit upon the truth or not.
This book is simply a bit too 'advanced' to contribute to the workaday intellectual needs people look to philosophy tempered by logical good sense for. If you want to have something nobody can gainsay your attitudes to, it's there for you, but otherwise it is no solution at all.
Note: I detect many traces in Rödl of things analytic philosophers "don't read", like Hölderlin's "Judgment and Being", Luhmann's "universal theory" (a "knowledge without contrary", to use Rödl's terminology) and later Heidegger's thought on identity and difference, and so it's hard to say counterfactually what discussion would occur if people had backgrounds they proudly aim never to acquire. Furthermore, I think if I am going to offer a positive gloss on this book it is something of a Flaschenpost to a future era's knowledge and discourse, one which might redeem seemingly indelibly obscure aspects of our own. (Then again, that's not that difficult for anybody to type up.)
March 21, 2022
this book felt like reading what I suspected was implicit in Hegel and Macintyre all along but could never get it out, make it explicit. It’s affected a shift in my thinking that is still ongoing now
February 23, 2023
Judgement is self-conscious, and in knowing itself to be such it knows itself to both walk the path of despair and be the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and of a finite spirit.
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2023 read update: I think the book is still excellent, but I think other than certain standout chapters (esp. ch.8) that many of his standalone papers are superior in terms of rigour and clarity.
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2023 read update: I think the book is still excellent, but I think other than certain standout chapters (esp. ch.8) that many of his standalone papers are superior in terms of rigour and clarity.
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