第14章 对现代生活的全面思考：自然、宗教、艺术和绝对(1)

14 Thinking through Modern Life: Nature, Religion, Art, and the Absolute

The Philosophy of Nature

第14章 对现代生活的全面思考：自然、宗教、艺术和绝对(1)

自然哲学

The Motivations for the Philosophy of Nature

Hegel lectured on the “philosophy of nature” several times in his Berlin period, using his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences as his basis and relying on his extensive notes on the subject to give long expositions on the themes treated otherwise quite sparsely in his textbook. His own interest in the “philosophy of nature” went back to his schoolboy days in Stuttgart, where (according to his sister) physics and mathematics were among his favorite subjects. At Tubingen he attended lectures on physics, and he read extensively, wrote extensively, and lectured on topics in the “philosophy of nature” during his years in Jena. Although he never published anything on it outside of his “habilitation” thesis on the orbits of the planets and in the numbered sections of the Encyclopedia, the topic itself was clearly something near and dear to his heart. The extensive lecture notes and student notes compiled by his students after his death and published as “additions” to the numbered paragraphs of the Encyclopedia in the volume in his collected works display a wide-ranging interest and erudition regarding topics in physics, optics, chemistry, geology, biology, and the like - yet another testament to Hegel’s prodigious energy and intellectual curiosity.

关于自然哲学的兴趣

    黑格尔在柏林时期多次以《哲学科学全书》为基础，结合大量关于自然哲学的讲稿，就“自然哲学”展开讲演，对以往讲稿中零散论述的论题进行了详细阐释。他对“自然哲学”的兴趣，可追溯至斯图加特中小学时代。据他妹妹说，当时物理和数学是他最喜爱的学科。在图宾根，他修习物理学课程，广泛阅读并勤于记录。耶拿时期，他还以“自然哲学”为题开设课程。除了《论行星轨道》这篇申请大学“授课资格”的论文，以及《哲学科学全书》中编号的段落外，他从未发表过自然哲学方面的其他作品。但显然，自然哲学是他钟爱的话题。他逝世后，学生整理的大量讲稿和听课笔记，作为《哲学科学全书》卷编号段落的“附释”发表，这些内容展现了他广泛的兴趣，以及在物理学、光学、化学、地质学、生物学等学科方面的渊博知识，再次证明了黑格尔旺盛的精力和强烈的求知欲。

Although he invested a great deal of time and energy into developing his “philosophy of nature,” it was also unfortunately the least successful of all his ventures. Ignored for the most part in his own time (despite his own high intellectual standing), it fell into complete disrepute im- mediately after his death and has rarely been looked at since by anybody other than dedicated Hegel scholars.

    尽管黑格尔投入大量时间和精力阐述他的“自然哲学”，可惜这些探索几乎付诸东流。在他生前，大部分时间里，他的自然哲学备受冷落（尽管他学术地位颇高）。他辞世后，自然哲学更是迅速声名狼藉，此后，除了专门研究黑格尔的学者，鲜有人再去探究。

Hegel clearly thought, however, that the “philosophy of nature” was crucial to his whole project. If a comprehensive view of the modern world was to be constructed, there had to be an understanding of how we as free agents fit into the natural world as that world was described and explained by modern science. That particular problem was especially acute for those working in post-Kantian philosophy, since Kant’s own resolution of the issue - through his distinction of the world as an appearing, causally determined unity and the world regarded as composed of unknowable things-in-themselves, and the practical necessity of regarding ourselves as free - had been accepted by virtually no postKantian thinker at all. Early on in his career, Hegel had become convinced that Schelling’s great insight had been correct, that for the idealist project to work, one had to show that nature was such that it had room in it for the kinds of free beings that we were.

    然而，黑格尔显然认为“自然哲学”对他的整个哲学事业至关重要。在黑格尔所处的时代，若要对现代世界形成全面且合乎逻辑的看法，就必须理解作为自由主体的我们，如何融入现代科学所描述和解释的自然世界。对于后康德哲学时期的哲学家而言，这个问题尤为关键，因为康德对该问题的解决方式——通过区分受因果关系决定的现象世界与由不可知自在之物组成的世界，并在实践上认为我们必须将自己视为自由的——并未被任何后康德哲学家真正接受。在早年的哲学研究中，黑格尔就坚信谢林的见解伟大且正确，即对于唯心主义研究计划，人们必须证明自然本身为自由的人类留有空间。

In that light, Hegel also found particularly disturbing two different conceptions at work in the milieu of his time. On the one hand, he could not abide the popular mystical conceptions of nature that relied on religious or pseudo-religious conceptions to develop a conception of nature that put it outside the realm of rational inquiry; to him, that represented both a restoration of premodern dogmatism and a possibly dangerous threat to the modern social order, since it was clear that since the old feudal social and political order could not underwrite itself by reason, the temptations to claim that the old order rested therefore on “nature” were immense, and an irrational conception of nature just might be the thing to help that reactionary cause along. On the other hand, he did not think that the post-Enlightenment mechanistic conception of nature was itself feasible as the whole story about nature; even Kant had seen that such a conception was incompatible with our necessary sense of ourselves as free, rational agents. Yet modern natural science seemed to demand such a view of nature (or so Kant had famously argued in his first Critique)-, if one was not to reject modern science therefore or make it subordinate to the quasi-mystical obscurantism of the followers of Romantic Naturphilosophie, one had to construct something that was neither mystical nor “Enlightenment” in its outlook.

    据此，黑格尔发现当时环境中存在两种令他烦恼的观念。一方面，他无法认同流行的神秘自然观念。这种观念借助宗教和伪宗教概念，将自然排除在理性研究范畴之外。在他看来，这既代表着前现代独断论的复辟，也对现代社会秩序构成潜在威胁。因为旧的封建社会和政治秩序无法得到理性认可，所以声称旧秩序依赖“自然”的诱惑难以抗拒，而非理性的自然观念恰好可能为反动的因果论推波助澜。另一方面，他认为后启蒙运动的机械论自然观，作为对自然的整体描述并不成立。甚至康德也早已指出，这种观念与我们必然意识到自己是自由、理性的行动者这一点不相容。然而，现代自然科学似乎又需要这样一种自然观（康德在其第一《批判》中对此有著名论证）。如果既不能拒绝现代科学，也不能使其隶属于浪漫主义自然哲学追随者类似神秘的蒙昧主义，那就必须构建一种既非神秘主义，也非“启蒙运动”式的自然观。

For his mature philosophy of nature, Hegel brought the basic concep- tions of his Nuremberg Logic into play. According to that scheme, in thinking rationally about “being” at all, we logically commit ourselves to the claim that nature contains the three following structures. First, we are committed to the view that nature must have mechanical systems in it, namely, those whose explanations come from their external interactions with each other; more determinate ideas, such as “force” and “gravitation,” are only specifications of this abstract form of “externality,” of explaining the determinateness of individual things in terms of their interaction with other individual things that are “external” to them; and the paradigm of such “externality” of “mechanical” systems is the planetary system. Second, it must have “chemical” systems in it, namely, a conception of some things as having a natural “affinity” for each other, of their being drawn toward each other into various combinations; more particular explanations in the science of chemistry only explain how this affinity comes about and what kinds of affinities there are. Third, it must also have some conception of “living systems,” of those whose activities are to some extent self-directed, whose elements are not “external” but “organic,” in the sense that the determination of what they are (hearts, livers, lungs) depends on our seeing them as fulfilling certain functions and purposes. In addition to all of these, nature must have some place in it for the self-directing, norm-governed creatures that we as humans are, for the idea of an organism that gives itself laws instead of merely following them.

    在其成熟的自然哲学中，黑格尔运用了纽伦堡《逻辑学》中的基本概念。按照这一计划，从根本上对“存在”进行理性思考时，我们在逻辑上认可自然包含以下三种结构。第一，自然必然包含自身的机械系统，即对这些机械系统的解释源于它们外部的相互作用。更确切地说，诸如“力”和“引力”等概念，是基于与其他“外部”个体的互动，对“外在性”这一抽象形式的详细阐释，以及对依据与“外部”个体相互作用来解释个体事物确定性的抽象形式的明确说明。而行星系统就是这种“机械”系统“外在性”的范例。第二，自然必须具有自身的“化学”系统，即某些事物彼此具有自然的“亲和力”，并因相互吸引形成各种不同的结合体。化学科学的具体内容，就是解释这种亲和力如何产生以及存在哪些类型的亲和力。第三，自然还必须具备“生命系统”概念。“生命”系统的行为在某种程度上是自我指向的，其元素并非“外在的”，而是“有机的”。从特定意义上讲，这些元素（如心、肝、肺）的定义，取决于我们将它们视为发挥某些作用、达成某些目的的事物。除此之外，自然本身还必须为我们人类这类具有自我指向、受支配性规范的生物，以及为那种能够赋予自身法则而非仅仅遵循法则的有机体概念，留出一定空间。

Hegel’s “philosophy of nature” thus built on Kant’s own investigations into the a priori construction of matter and Schelling’s ebullient extension of that program. We cannot gather all our knowledge of nature from experience; we are already committed to a prior idea of nature in its totality by virtue of our commitment to our view of ourselves as rational beings; we must, that is, have a view of nature as a whole to guide whatever investigations we pursue of it, and that prior idea of nature as a whole, if it is to be rational, commits us to the claim that nature can be coherently understood as a whole that includes mechanical, chemical, and living systems within itself.

    黑格尔的“自然哲学”，基于康德对先天建构的研究，以及谢林对这一计划的热情拓展。我们不能仅从经验中积累关于自然的所有知识。通过认同自己是理性的存在者，我们已然认同了自然总体性的先天概念，即我们必须将自然视为一个整体，以此引导我们对自然进行任何研究。而自然作为整体的先天概念，若要合理，就应使我们认为自然能够被连贯地理解为一个包含机械系统、化学系统和生物系统的整体。

There were also personal and professional reasons for Hegel vigorously to pursue the “philosophy of nature.” When Hegel came to Berlin, the dominant strains in German philosophy had to do with those people influenced by his old rival Fries (who endorsed a more or less mechanistic view of nature) and an even larger group who had con- structed a shadowy form of Romantic Naturphilosophie on the basis of Schelling’s early reflections on the topic. The natural scientists of Germany quite rightfully viewed that latter form of Naturphilosophie with complete disdain, and it was therefore crucial for Hegel to be able to show that he was not committed to that debased form of Schellingian thought. It was also the case that the natural scientists were in the process of making a play to become the dominant faculty at the university and to arrogate to themselves the exclusive authority to interpret nature for the modern world; this was something that Hegel resisted as strongly as he could, since he thought it undermined the whole thrust of the modern university, with philosophy at its core and Btldung as its central ideal. He even opened his Berlin lectures on the “philosophy of nature” by reminding his audience that “philosophy must constitute the indispensable introduction and foundation for all further scientific education and professional study f even as he also bemoaned how philosophy was falling into disfavor in this regard.'

    黑格尔热衷于探索“自然哲学”，还有个人和专业方面的原因。黑格尔抵达柏林时，德国哲学界存在两种主要思潮的张力。一种受他的宿敌弗里斯影响（弗里斯或多或少赞同机械的自然观），另一个更大的群体则基于谢林早期对该主题的反思，构建出一种模糊的浪漫主义自然哲学。德国自然科学家对后一种自然哲学极为鄙夷，因此对黑格尔来说，明确表明自己不赞同这种被贬斥的谢林哲学思想至关重要。此外，自然科学家在强调自身应成为大学重要教员的过程中，宣称唯有他们有权为现代世界解释自然，这遭到黑格尔的强烈抵制。他认为，这种做法会逐渐偏离以哲学为核心、以教化为主要理想的现代大学总体方向。他甚至在柏林公开讲授“自然哲学”，提醒听众牢记“哲学必须构成所有进一步科学教育和专业学习必不可少的入门和基础”，同时也哀叹哲学在这方面陷入的尴尬境地。

Hegel thus needed, so he thought, to construct a more or less a priori conception of nature that would precede any empirical investigation of it; and for that conception of nature to be properly modern, it had to eschew any religious or old-fashioned metaphysical explanation of its phenomena - it could not, for example, rely on something like the argument from God’s design to have the structures that it did - and it had to be more or less consistent with what modern natural science (as it stood in the early nineteenth century) said of it. That is, it had to see what could be developed out of a conception of nature - what followed from the “Idea” of nature, as Hegel put it - that was self-contained, developing within itself (requiring, that is, no extra-natural or supernatural explanations), that was consistent with the scientific description of it, and that had a place in it for the kinds of agents who constructed those explanations of it. Hegel tried, that is, to combine the ordinary experience of nature, the poetic descriptions and evocations of nature, and the modern natural scientific explanations of nature into one overall conception of nature that would be required of modern, free, rational agents.

    因此，黑格尔认为需要构建一种或多或少先天的自然概念，该概念应先于对自然的任何经验主义研究。就自然概念具有现代性而言，它必须避免对自然现象进行任何宗教或旧式形而上学的阐释，例如，不能依靠像依据上帝设计来论证自然结构这类观点。同时，它也必须在一定程度上与19世纪早期现代自然科学的观点相一致。也就是说，它必须认识到，从自然概念（如黑格尔所说，从自然“观念”）中推导出来的内容，应是自给自足、自我发展的（即无需自然之外或超自然的解释），与科学描述相符，并为构建对自然的解释的行动者留出空间。换言之，黑格尔试图将关于自然的日常经验、诗意描述与现代自然科学的解释，整合为一个自然总概念，这个总概念应是现代、自由和理性的行动者所需要的。

In all this, the relation between his “philosophy of nature” and the natural sciences was clearly the touchy point. Hegel was simply not willing to yield any pride of place to the natural sciences with regard to the authority to interpret the world, but he was also by no means willing or inclined to write off the natural sciences merely as illusions or as distortions of God’s creation (as some of the Romantic followers of Naturphilosophie tended to do). He put it bluntly: “Not only must philosophy be in agreement with our empirical knowledge of nature, but the origin and formation of the philosophy of nature presupposes and is conditioned by empirical physics” - to which, however, he immediately added the qualification, “However, the course of a science’s origin and the preliminaries of its construction are one thing, while the science itself is another. In the latter, the former can no longer appear as the foundation of the science; here, the foundation must be the necessity of the concept.”^ The empirical sciences are only, in Hegel’s terminology, “finite” in that they study the ways and formulate the laws through which natural (“finite,” non-self-determining) objects condition each other; they cannot claim the authority to study nature as a whole, which is to study it in terms of its “Idea,” the structure of the “space of reasons” in general. We can make judgments about nature only in terms of orienting ourselves in terms of that whole, and the sciences cannot nondogmatically make any claim to formulate that whole - that would be exclusively the province of a (post-Kantian) metaphysics of nature. Or, as he put it, “it is because the method of physics does not satisfy the concept that we have to go further,” which consists in part in taking “the material which physics has prepared for [philosophy] empirically, at the point to which physics has brought it, and reconstitute it so that experience is not its final warrant and base.”^ Thus, rather than explore the methods and rationality of natural science, Hegel preferred instead to look at the more basic conception of nature itself that underlies all scientific investigation in the first place; for those reasons, Hegel was much more interested in constructing a “philosophy of nature” than in anything like a “philosophy of science.”

    综上所述，黑格尔“自然哲学”与自然科学的关系颇为棘手。黑格尔既不愿让自然科学凭借解释世界的权力而独大，也绝不想或倾向于否定自然科学，更不会像一些浪漫主义自然哲学追随者那样，将自然科学仅仅视为上帝造物的幻象或歪曲。他明确表示：“不仅哲学必须与我们关于自然的经验知识相一致，而且自然哲学的起源和形成是有先决条件的，并受经验物理学的制约。”不过，他立刻补充道：“但是，科学起源的过程和它建构的先决条件是一回事，而科学本身则是另一回事。在后者中，前者不再是科学的基础，这里的基础必须体现概念的必要性。”用黑格尔的术语来说，经验科学只是“有限的”，因为它们研究自然中（“有限的”、非自决的）对象相互制约的方式，并系统阐述这些对象相互制约的法则。它们不能以权威姿态研究作为整体的自然，这意味着要依据自然的“观念”或通常所说的“理性空间”的结构来研究自然。我们只能通过明确自身在整体中的地位来对自然作出判断，而科学不能非独断地主张系统阐述整体——这应属于自然的（后康德）形而上学范畴。或者如他所说：“这是因为物理学方法无法满足我们必须进一步阐述的概念。”自然哲学部分在于“在物理学所达到的基础上”，接受“物理学从经验上为（哲学）准备的材料，并对其重新加以改造，所以经验并非它的最终证明和基础”。因此，黑格尔并非探索自然科学的方法和合理性，而是更倾向于考察构成一切科学研究基础的自然本身的更基本概念。基于这些原因，黑格尔对构建“自然哲学”感兴趣，而非像对“科学哲学”那样的东西感兴趣。

Mechanics (contra Newton)

Hegel’s discussions in his “philosophy of nature” range through multifarious expositions of, for example, general issues in mechanics, optics, and biology to specific discussions of, for example, the formation of granite, disturbances in the weather, and the nature of fevers. The whole panoply must be left to one side here; only the very general structure of Hegel’s thoughts on the “philosophy of nature” can be given here; and a look at how Hegel’s thoughts changed as he developed his philosophy of nature must, alas, also be neglected here.

（与牛顿力学相对立的）力学

    黑格尔对“自然哲学”的探讨涉猎广泛，涵盖从力学、光学、生物学等学科一般问题的多种阐释，到诸如花岗岩构成、大气扰动、发烧本质等具体问题的讨论。在此，我们暂且搁置黑格尔对“自然哲学”的系统阐述，仅向大家呈现其“自然哲学”思想的大致框架。很遗憾，我们也不再考察黑格尔在阐发“自然哲学”时思想所发生的变化。

Hegel begins his “philosophy of nature” with a discussion of mechanics and, coupled with a defense of Kepler’s theories, a sharp rejection of Newtonianism. Hegel’s animus against Newton is directed mainly at what he sees as the purely mechanical outlook contained in Newton’s works. Nature cannot, so Hegel wanted to argue, be conceived purely as a mechanical system; despite his distaste for the Romantics, Hegel shared with them the view that we had to see the universe in terms of the metaphor of an “organism” and not in terms of the metaphor of a “machine.” Hegel thus entered into what ultimately amounted to a losing battle with the Newtonians about the self-sufficiency of Newtonian explanations.'* Hegel’s quarrel against the Newtonians basically had to do with his view that they claimed to be able to explain the movements of the planetary system mechanically in terms of a number of irreducible elementary (and therefore unexplained) forces; he, on the other hand, argued that the whole conception of “force” itself had to be traced back to more “logical” conceptions of attraction and repulsion (building on Kant’s and Schelling’s arguments to that effect). Since, so Hegel thought (following Kant), “true motion” can only be ascertained by reference to an ideal common center of mass, the whole construction of the elementary forces rests on the a priori conception of what this common center of mass could be, and that itself rests on an a priori understanding of the way in which these ideas can be constructed mathematically. We thus must think of such mechanical systems as “striving” to reach this ideal common center, even though this striving is not in any sense at all conscious, the parts do not “aim” at it, and even though we cannot empirically determine where, as it were, this center would be. However, once we begin thinking in those terms, Hegel argued, we find ourselves no longer simply doing Newtonian mechanics but instead involved in something like Kant’s antinomies, that is, caught in the contradictions that characterize thought when it tries to apply such “finite” distinctions to the totality, the “Idea,” when it leaves the realm of individual investigation and ventures into metaphysics.  黑格尔的“自然哲学”开篇便探讨力学，他在为开普勒理论辩护的同时，对牛顿学说展开了激烈批判。黑格尔反对牛顿，主要是针对他所认为的牛顿作品中蕴含的纯粹机械观点。因此，黑格尔试图论证，自然不能单纯被设想为机械体系。尽管他不喜欢浪漫主义作家，但在这一点上，他与他们观点一致，即我们应依据“有机体”的比喻，而非“机器”的比喻来看待宇宙。于是，黑格尔与牛顿学说的信奉者就牛顿学说解释的自洽性展开了一场最终几乎注定失败的争论。黑格尔对牛顿学说信奉者的不满，主要源于他的一种看法，即他们宣称能够依据许多微小的基本（且因此难以理解的）力，机械地解释行星系统的运行；而黑格尔坚称，“力”这一完整概念应追溯至更为“合乎逻辑”的引力和斥力概念（这种观点建立在康德和谢林大致持有的论证基础之上）。正如黑格尔（追随康德之后）所认为的，“真实的运动”只有相对于物质的理想共同中心才能得以明晰，所以基本力的整个构建依赖于关于物质共同中心可能为何的先天概念，而这一概念本身又依赖于对这些概念在数学上如何构建的先天理解。因此，我们必须将这种机械系统视为“努力”趋向这一理想的共同中心，尽管这种努力从任何意义上讲都是完全不自觉的，这些部分并非“有意”趋向这样的中心，即便我们无法从经验上确定这个中心的位置。然而，黑格尔强调，一旦我们开始以这些术语进行思考，当我们的思考试图将这种“有限的”区分应用于总体或“观念”，当我们的思考脱离对个体的研究领域，涉足形而上学领域时，我们就会发现，自己不再仅仅是在思考牛顿力学，而是陷入了类似康德二律背反的困境，即涉及那些体现思想特征的矛盾。

In this light, Hegel tried to show that in doing mechanics, we begin with a spatial point, which as it becomes elaborated is characterized as both spatial and nonspatial; and that we dislodge that elemental contra- diction by thinking of the point as becoming “other” than itself in further points (as constructing a “line”). From that original unity of points and lines, Hegel then claims to derive the unity of both spatial and temporal divisions of such “points,” which in turn have their unity further specified in the concept of a “place,” which itself then requires a concept of “matter,” whose essential feature is that of “weight,” to fill it. Matter, Hegel argued, is therefore just our abstract, ideal conception of what it means to be at a spatio-temporal “place”; and these are all rational, a priori conceptions whose justification lies in their being necessary components of a rational view of nature as a whole. They are not fictions, nor are they empirically determined; rather, all empirical investigation presupposes them. Newtonians, so Hegel thought, simply ignore this and claim to have derived these concepts from mathematics or from induction, something he thinks simply begs the question of what constitutes our prior grasp of these conceptions. 

    据此，黑格尔试图表明，在思考力学时，我们从一个空间点出发，这个点（如详细阐述的那样）通常被描述为既具有空间特征，又具有非空间特征。黑格尔试图说明，我们通过思考将这个点视为变成更多点中的“其他点”（比如构成一条“线”的其他点），而非消除其基本矛盾。基于点和线最初的统一，黑格尔接着声称要追溯这些“点”在空间和时间上分隔统一的起源，这些点又依次通过“地点”这一概念，使其统一得到更详细的阐释，而“地点”本身继而需要“物质”概念，“物质”的基本特征是“重量”，物质占据空间。黑格尔坚称，物质不过是我们对其在时空“地点”所成之物的抽象且理想的概念；这些都是完全合理的先天概念，它们之所以合理，是因为它们构成了对自然整体的合理看法的必要部分。它们既非虚构，也非由经验决定；确切地说，一切经验研究都以它们为前提条件。之后，黑格尔认为，牛顿学说的信奉者完全忽视了这个问题，声称这些概念是从力学或归纳中获得的，黑格尔觉得他们的某些观点简直是在回避“什么构成了我们对这些概念的先天把握”这一问题。

Hegel also tried to show (in retrospect, without much success) that some of the Newtonian mathematical derivations of the basic laws of mechanics fail, and that their failure is explained precisely by both the mechanical worldview underlying Newtonianism and by Newtonianism’s commitment to there being a plurality of basic forces instead of a commitment to understanding the necessity of deriving all those forces from the requirements of a more general, unitary conception of nature.  That more general conception of nature, in turn, requires us to think of the planetary system not as a purely mechanical system but as something held together by an ideal striving for a “middle point” of mass.  In that respect, Hegel simply drew out some of the conclusions he had already reached in his Logic.

    黑格尔还试图证明（从事后看，未达预期效果）：牛顿学说中对力学基本法则的某些机械推导并不成功。其失败原因既在于构成牛顿学说基础的机械世界观，也在于牛顿学说承认存在多种基本力，却不承认应从更普遍、更单一的自然概念中推导出所有这些力。更普遍的自然概念转而要求我们不应将行星系统视为纯粹的机械系统，而应看作是被物质“中间点”的理想所凝聚的东西。在这方面，黑格尔只不过得出了他早已在《逻辑学》中得出的某些结论。

Physics

In the development of the philosophy of nature, Hegel moved from “mechanics” to “physics,” which he distinguished (as many still did in the fluid situation in which physics found itself in Germany in the early nineteenth century) in terms of its being more of an empirical science as opposed to the strictly nonempirical, mathematical inquires of “mechanics.” Hegel’s arguments there have a kind of charming quaintness to them (in the sense that virtually none of his views on any of the subjects managed to hold their own). Light, he thinks, is the way in which matter (which essentially possesses weight) manifests itself to an other as “weightless,” as “simple being-external-to-itself,” the way, that is, in which matter manifests itself to living creatures inhabiting that same world.^ As such, light is only artificially divisible, and the idea that light is a bundle of particles or “discrete, simple rays” is, Hegel says, another one of those “barbarous categories for whose prevalence in physics Newton is chiefly responsible.”^’ This conception of light, Hegel argued, is more basic and fundamental than any of the more empirical determinations of light obtained in physical investigation, and no physical investigation of things can undermine the sense that light is fundamentally the indivisible manifestation of matter to us as embodied beings.

物理学

    在阐发自然哲学的过程中，黑格尔从“力学”转向“物理学”。他将物理学和力学加以区分，认为物理学是更具经验性的科学，与严格的非经验性的数学式“力学”研究相对立（就像19世纪初德国许多物理学家在物理学所处的动荡环境中所做的那样）。在他们看来，黑格尔的这些观点具有一种迷人而奇特有趣的特质（从这个意义上说，实际上他关于所有这些问题的看法都未能善始善终）。他认为，光是（实质上具有重量的）物质向作为“没有重量的”其他事物显露自身的方式，向作为“简单的它自身之外的存在”者显露自身的方式，也就是说，通过这种方式，物质向居住在同一世界的生物展现自身。就此而言，光仅在人为情况下可分，黑格尔指出，关于光是一大批粒子或“离散的简单光线”的概念，是“主要由牛顿使其在物理学中盛行的那些荒谬范畴”之一。黑格尔争辩道，光这一概念，相较于物理学研究中获得的关于光的任何其他更具经验确定性的概念，都更为基本和根本。一切关于事物的物理学研究都无法削弱这样一种意义，即在作为存在者的我们看来，光基本上是物质不可分割的显现。

The earth is the point at which light and weight come together, and it itself should be viewed as an interconnected whole constituted out of a “meteorological process” of fire, water, and air, which together create the conditions for the kind of life that can ultimately give a rational account of those conditions themselves. The line of argument is intended to provide a nonmechanical explanation of how mechanics is itself possible; the planetary system “strives” for its center, which leads the matter in it to manifest itself to itself as light. Thus, the laws of gravitation serve not merely to govern matter in motion but to lay the foundations for a living earth. If those laws were different, life would not be possible; but the nature of those laws is written in the structure of things themselves that in itself forms part of the way in which rational agents must necessarily come to think of the natural world in which they live. (In one of his typically idiosyncratic asides in his lectures, Hegel noted that in providing the conditions for life, the earth thus avoids becoming a heavenly body that is purely crystalline, such as the moon, or purely water, such as a comet; it is instead the unity of crystal and water.)

    地球是光与重量相结合的点，它本身应被看作是一个由水、火、气的“气象过程”构成的相互关联的整体，这三者共同创造了生命存在的条件，而这些条件最终能够对自身作出理性的阐释。这种论证思路旨在为力学本身何以可能提供一种非机械的解释。行星系统“努力”形成它的中心，这导致其内部物质像光一样不断展现自身。因此，引力法则不仅支配着运动的物质，还为地球上现有生命的存在奠定基础。假如这些法则有所不同，生命便不可能存在；但这些法则的本质通过事物自身的结构得以体现，而事物本身的结构本质上构成了理性行动者必然着手思考其生存的自然界的方式的一部分。（在他的演讲中，黑格尔以其典型的独特插入语强调，在为生命提供条件的过程中，地球因此避免变成像月球那样的纯结晶天体，或像彗星那样的纯水天体；相反，它是结晶体与水的统一体。）

Weightless light and weighted matter come together to form “specific gravity,” cohesion (“a specific mode of the connection of the material parts”), sound, and heat. Each of these individualizes “abstract matter” in a more determinate way than does the “striving” for unity found in planetary systems, such that the full panoply found on the living earth is made possible; and heat tends to dissolve the matter which has been so individualized and make possible what Hegel calls the “meteorological process” that sustains life on earth. Quaint as these view are, it should be remembered that Hegel was not claiming to offer an argument about what causes what, not offering, that is, any kind of alternative to the empirical causal accounts offered by “physics”; instead, he claimed to be offering an account of what kind of view of nature as a whole (as “infinite,” as “Idea”) we are implicitly committed to when we try to make sense of ourselves as the kind of rational creatures that do empirical physics in the first place and try to understand how the nature studied by physics is also the nature in which we are free, rational agents.

    无重量的光与有重量的物质相结合，形成“特殊的引力”、内聚力（“一种将物质各个部分连接起来的特殊形式”）、声音和高温。其中每一种都以更确切的方式使“抽象物质”个体化，而非像在行星系统中那样“努力”实现统一。因此，在有生命的地球上，我们有可能发现十分坚硬的东西；高温易于融化那些已变得极其个体化的物质，并使黑格尔所称的维持地球上生命存在的“气象过程”成为可能。尽管这些观点颇为奇特，但我们应记住，黑格尔并非试图论证是什么促使他提出这些观点，也就是说，他并非要提出针对“物理学”所提供的经验式因果阐释的任何替代方案；恰恰相反，他主张的是，当我们首先试图明确自己作为理性生物研究经验物理学时，当我们试图理解物理学所研究的自然如何也是我们作为自由理性行动者所居住的自然时，我们显然应当阐释的是，我们对作为整体（作为“无限物”或作为“观念”）的自然持何种看法。

The processes of individualization in specific gravity, cohesion, sound, and heat create, according to Hegel’s speculative account, a more complex dynamic system, a whole called the “meteorological process,” which makes up the totality of the earth as relatively self-contained, being driven by its own nonconscious “striving” to maintain the conditions under which life is possible. Hegel argues that our conception of nature as a whole, as concretized in terms of the way we as embodied agents are committed to thinking of ourselves not merely as minds with bodies but as embodied, historical forms of Geist inhabiting a planet on which there is differentiated life, commits us to thinking of that dynamic process as including opposites within itself that are not related purely mechanically (not related merely by the laws governing matter in motion) but in terms of deeper affinities for other things. (Hegel’s account has a more than passing resemblance to some contemporary “ecological” conceptions of life on earth.) It is part of our elemental conception of nature that not everything in it tends to combine with everything else, and thus part of the overall conception of nature is that some things have a natural “affinity” for each other such that in their independent existence, they exhibit dispositions to unite with each other. Within the “meteorological process” that makes up the earth, there are thus the individual processes of magnetism, electricity, and the chemical processes; each represents the way in which some individual elements of the process tend toward union with each other without being pushed from outside (as in a purely mechanical system). The ancient Greeks, Hegel argues, correctly understood the “meteorological process” as thereby fundamentally involving the elements of fire (as the universal agent of destruction), water (as the mutable, neutral element), and air (as “that which is active, which sublates that which is determinate”).7

    个体化过程创造出一个更为复杂的动力系统，或创造出一个被称为“气象过程”的整体，这个动力系统构成地球这一总体。该总体相对独立自足，受自身不自觉的“努力”驱动，以维持生命得以可能的条件。黑格尔论证道，按照我们作为行动者，不仅将自己视为身心结合体，而且将自己视为具体历史精神形式体现的方式（并且我们居住在拥有不同生命的地球这颗行星上），我们关于自然整体的概念，或关于具体化自然的概念，使我们认为动力化过程自身包含着对立面，这些对立面并非纯粹机械地相互关联（不仅仅是因支配物质运动的法则而纯粹地相互关联），而是因对其他事物的深层亲和力而相互关联。（黑格尔的阐释与当代关于地球上生命的某些“生态学”观念，比以往更为相似。）并非自然界的一切事物都易于与其他事物相结合，这构成了我们关于自然的基本概念的一部分。因此，关于自然的整体观点的一部分在于，某些事物彼此之间具有一种自然的亲和力，所以在它们独立存在的过程中，会表现出彼此结合的倾向。因此，在形成地球的“气象过程”中，存在着磁力、电力和化学过程等单独过程；每一个过程都代表着过程中的一些个体元素，以某种方式（如同在某种纯机械系统中那样）易于彼此结合而被组合在一起。因此，黑格尔坚称，古希腊人将“气象过程”正确地理解为基本上涉及（作为破坏性普遍中介的）火元素、（作为易变的不确定因素的）水元素和（作为“积极的东西或扬弃确定东西的”）气元素。

In his own elaborate way, Hegel also argued in his lectures that “finite experimental physics” misunderstood what these elements were by virtue of the way in which their experiments necessarily removed these basic elements from the context of the ideal “whole” in which they play their role, and so, he rather quirkily claimed, “finite physics” could not fully explain lightning or heat and certainly could not explain rain; some physicists even thought wrongly, he further claimed, that the sun produces its heat by consuming hydrogen; and, of course, he famously defended Goethe’s theory of color against the Newtonians. To underwrite his assertions on these topics, Hegel cited published instances of anomalies in various experiments in each of these fields. His views, however engaging and sometimes charming they may be, did not exactly help to convince the community of natural scientists that Hegel’s philosophy of nature was worth taking seriously.

    此外，以他自己精心规划的方式，黑格尔在讲演中还论证道，“有限的实验物理学”以一种方式误解了这些元素的本质。这种方式下对元素所做的实验，必然会将这些基本元素从它们在“整体”的理想语境中所扮演的角色中剥离。因此，他颇为神秘地声称，“有限的物理学”无法对闪电、高温做出充分解释，更肯定无法解释雨的形成。他还进一步指出，一些物理学家甚至误以为太阳通过消耗氢气来产生热量。当然，众所周知，他为歌德的色彩理论辩护，反对牛顿学说的追随者。为了让人们支持他关于这些话题的论断，黑格尔引用了各个领域已发表的不同实验中的异常例子。然而，黑格尔的这些观点，无论多么引人入胜，有时甚至充满魅力，却恰恰无法让自然科学家群体相信，黑格尔的自然哲学值得认真对待。

Life on Earth: Science and Religion

But his main point was that the mechanical view of nature was thus only a part of the view of nature that emerges from our embodied, earthbound conception of ourselves and nature; and by virtue of being committed to those views of nature, we are also committed, so Hegel argues, to a view of earth in terms of the way its processes sustain life.  Life is the penultimate stage of a conception of dynamic natural processes that begins with the mechanical conception of bodies naturally constructing themselves around an ideal center of mass, and which in turn require a conception of a more complex meteorological process that involves dynamic systems of individuals bound in affinities with each other, each seeking an ideal “middle point” in its union with its “other”; life, though, is self-directing, and the living organism has its “middle point” within itself. As a complex meteorological process sustaining life, the earth must be seen itself as an organic whole, as something akin to life itself - “springs are the lungs and secretory glands for the earth’s process of evaporation, so are volcanoes the earth’s liver in that they represent the earth’s self-heating-within-itself- even though the earth is not actually alive (“the meteorological process is not the life-process of the earth, although the earth is vivified by it; for this vivification is the real possibility of subjectivity emerging on the earth as a living being”).

地球上的生命：科学和宗教

    不过，他的主要观点是，机械的自然观只是源自我们关于自身和自然的具体、基于现实的观念的自然观的一部分。因此，正如黑格尔所坚称的，基于我们所认同的这些自然观，我们还会依据其维持生命的方式来认识地球。生命是动态自然过程概念的倒数第二个阶段，这个阶段始于机械物体的观念，物体围绕理想的物质中心自然地构建自身，而这转而需要更复杂的气象过程概念。气象过程概念涉及个体的动态体系，这些个体因彼此间的亲和力紧密相连，每个个体都在与“其他个体”的结合中寻找一个理想的“中间点”。然而，生命是自我指导的，活的有机体有其自身的“中间点”。作为一个维持生命的复杂气象过程，地球本身必须被视为一个有机的整体，看作类似于生命本身的事物——“如果泉源对于土地的蒸发如同肺和分泌腺，那么火山就是土地的肝脏，因为火山代表着土地内部的自我散热”——尽管地球实际上并非有生命的东西（“气象过程不是地球的生命过程，尽管地球依靠它才充满生机；因为这种赋予生机的活动只是主观性作为有生命之物在地球上出现的真实可能性”）。

Hegel took over from Schelling’s Naturphilosophie a conception of the living organism as divided into three functions: sensibility, irritability, and reproduction.'® The basic idea, as it was worked out in Hegel’s formulation, was that the concept of a living organism implied that it had to have some way of obtaining information about the world in which it lived (sensibility), it had to have some way of achieving its ends (irritability), and it had to have some way of maintaining itself in its environment (reproduction). All empirical biological investigations, he thought, only served to discover the “finite” factual specifications of what organs and processes fulfilled those functions in what ways.

    黑格尔从谢林的自然哲学中继承了将活的有机体概念划分为三种功用的观点：敏感性、兴奋性和再生性。这个基本观念，经黑格尔系统阐述后，意味着活的有机体概念暗示着它必须具备获取关于其生存世界信息的某种方式（敏感性），必须具备实现其目的的某种方式（兴奋性），以及必须具备在所处环境中维持自身的某种方式（再生性）。他认为，所有经验生物学研究都只是为了发现何种器官和过程以何种方式发挥这些作用的“有限的”实际细节。

In the other systems of nature (the mechanical system of the planets and the meteorological process), the “principle” of the system induces individuals in the system to “strive” for their center (by being forced by outside causes, as in mechanical systems, or by their natural “affinity” for each other, particularly in “chemical” systems), but that “center” remains partially outside of the identity of the individuals involved.  The “end” that the system serves is “external” to that system. In organisms, so it seems, the “center” is contained within each individual organism, since each organism is its own end - Hegel describes it in Kant’s language as an end unto itself, a Selbstzweck/ and the organism, as a self-maintaining unity, has therefore an “inwardness” of feeling that is lacking in the other systems. The other systems respond only quasi-teleologically to their environments, but the organism responds to its environment by virtue of registering that environment within itself (through sensibility) and adapting itself accordingly (through irritability and reproduction) in terms of its basic ends. The organism senses that it needs things, and, as Hegel puts it, “only what is living feels a /ac/f.”" The organism is not merely stimulated to act by its environment; it “takes it in” and responds accordingly.

    在自然的其他体系（机械的行星系统和气象过程）中，体系的“规则”促使体系中的个体“努力”形成它们的中心（在机械体系中是受外部原因推动，在“化学”系统中特别是由于彼此间自然的“亲和力”），但这个“中心”部分地外在于相关个体的特性。体系所服务的“目的”“外在于”体系本身。因此，在有机体中，似乎“中心”包含在每一个单独的有机体中，因为每个有机体自身就是目的——黑格尔用康德的话将其描述为自身即目的（Selbstzweck）。有机体作为一个自我维持的统一体，因此具有一种“内在”的感觉，这是其他体系所没有的。其他体系仅仅是准技术性地对自身所处环境做出反应，而有机体则通过记录自身所处环境（通过敏感性）来对环境做出反应，并因此根据其基本目的（通过兴奋性和再生性）来适应环境。有机体感觉到自身对某些东西的需求，正如黑格尔所指出的，“只有有生命的东西才能感觉到匮乏”。有机体不仅仅是受环境刺激而行动，它“接受刺激”并相应地做出回应。

As an individual plant or animal, the organism produces the totality of which it is a part by what Hegel calls the “process of the genus,” the way in which the “whole” (the genus) reproduces itself solely in the reproductive activity of the individual members of the genus. Just as the organism is driven to reproduce itself in its daily commerce with its environment, it is also driven to reproduce the genus: as Hegel bluntly puts it, “The genus is therefore present in the individual as a straining against the inadequacy of its single actuality, as the urge to obtain its self-feeling in the other of its genus, to integrate itself through union with it and through this mediation to close the genus with itself and bring it into existence - copulation.

    作为个体的植物或动物，有机体会产生黑格尔所称的“类的发展”的一部分，以这种方式，“整体”（类）仅在作为个体的类成员的繁殖活动中实现自我再生。正如有机体在与所处环境的日常交互中受驱使繁殖自身一样，它同样受驱使繁殖其类。黑格尔坦率地指出：“类因此通过个体表现为与它不适当的单一实在性相对抗，表现为极想在面对同类中的其他个体时获得自我感知，表现为极想通过联合使自身与个体融为一体，通过让自己接近类而与自身融为一体并实现自身的存在——交配。”

In this way, so Hegel argues, we have a conception of the difference of the sexes, whatever empirical biology may tell us about the empirical makeup of that difference. Neither the planet nor the individual element of a chemical pair can “feel” the whole that directs them; the “end” that such systems serve is only an end “for us,” the investigators who make judgments about those systems. Only in the division of the sexes does the individual organism in the living system come to have its own subjective feeling of the totality of nature, of the end for which it is striving. Or, as Hegel describes it, “the process consists in this, that what they are in themselves, they posit as such, namely, one genus, the same subjective vitality. Here, the Idea of nature is actual in the male and female couple; their identity and their being-for-self, which up till now were only for us in our reflection, are now, in the infinite reflection into self of the two sexes, felt by themselves. This feeling of universality is the highest to which the animal can attain.”'-^ In a way completely familiar from Hegel’s attitude toward gender differences in his social philosophy, he also holds that therefore the “Idea” of nature with regard to the different sexes is that the female is passive, the male active, and that this carries over into human life.

    在这方面，黑格尔论证道，我们有性别差异的概念，所有经验生物学都能告诉我们这种差异的经验构成。某颗行星和一对具有化学性质的个体元素都无法“感知”引导它们的整体，这种体系所追求的“目的”仅仅是“对于我们”这些对体系做出判断的研究者而言的目的。只有在性别区分中，生物系统中的个体有机体才开始具有对自然总体的主观感觉，开始具有对它所努力达成目的的主观感觉。或者如黑格尔所描述的：“这个过程在于它们自在的本质，也就是在于它们将自身设定为一个类，作为一个相同主体的活力。在这里，自然观念实际上体现在雌雄的结合中；它们的同一性以及它们为自我的存在，此前仅对我们而言存在于我们的反思中，现在它们自己感觉到无限的反思成为两性的自我。这种对普遍性的感觉是动物所能达到的最高水平。”在某种程度上，黑格尔在其社会哲学中以极为随意的态度对待性别差异，他同样认为，关于不同性别的自然“观念”意味着雌性是被动的，雄性是主动的，并且认为这种情况在人类生活中同样存在。