1

Pragmatist Themes in Van Fraassen’s Stances and

Hegel’s Forms of Consciousness

The aim of this paper is to establish a substantial

positive philosophical connection between Bas van Fraassen and

Hegel, by focusing on their respective notions of ‘stance’ and

‘form of consciousness’. In Section I, I run through five ways

of understanding van Fraassen’s idea of a stance. I argue that

a ‘stance’ is best understood as an intellectual disposition.

This, in turn, means that the criteria for assessing a stance

are ones which ask whether or not a stance adequately makes

sense of things. In Section II, the discussion turns to Hegel’s

notion of a ‘form of consciousness’. I argue that Hegel’s

notion of a ‘form of consciousness’ is best understood as

comprising a worldview. The principal advantage of

articulating stances in a Hegelian way is that such an

interpretation explicitly details both the theoretical and

affective attitudes that van Fraassen is after. Therefore, why

Hegel is potentially an especially illuminating source of

understanding stances is that, unlike the other accounts,

forms of consciousness most clearly illustrate the pragmatist

elements of a stance.

I

Bas van Fraassen’s The Empirical Stance (van Fraassen (2002))

has received considerable attention from philosophers. After

all, as Richard Rorty wrote in his review of the work, “[the

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book is an] ambitious, absorbing, iconoclastic,

metaphilosophical treatise”.1 One particular ambitious,

absorbing, iconoclastic, and metaphilosophical feature of The

Empirical Stance is van Fraassen’s presentation of a novel

conception of a philosophical position. A philosophical

position, according to van Fraassen, is understood as a

‘stance’; and each stance is composed of a specific set of

propositional attitudes, such as beliefs, and “something

other than factual theses: attitudes, commitments, values,

goals”.2 What exactly van Fraassen means by this has been the

subject of various discussions by philosophers of science.3 Of

course, though, the concept of a stance is not intended by van

Fraassen and these philosophers to be restricted to philosophy

of science. As Darrell Rowbottom & Otavio Bueno note, the idea

of a ‘stance’ bears important relations to “rationality, and

issues such as voluntarism, the rationality of theory change

(and theory construction), rational belief formation (and

Bayesianism), and the relationship between a posteriori and a

priori forms of inquiry”.4 In what follows in this paper, I

offer a new way of understanding the very idea of a stance –

one which is rooted in the work of Hegel.

However, before moving to articulating stances in a

Hegelian fashion, I would first like to begin with a

discussion of the passage in which van Fraassen introduces the

empiricist stance: 1 http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23164-the-empirical-stance/ 2 B. Van Fraassen, 2002: 48. 3 See Teller (2004), Rowbottom (2005), Monton (2007), and the special issueof Synthese in 2011 that is devoted to the topic of ‘Stance and Rationality’.4 D. P. Rowbottom & O. Bueno, 2011: 2.

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A philosophical position can consist in something otherthan a belief in what the world is like. We can, forinstance, take the empiricist’s attitude toward sciencerather than his or her beliefs about it as the morecrucial characteristic. […] A philosophical position canconsist in a stance (attitude, commitment, approach, acluster of such—possibly including some propositionalattitudes such as beliefs as well). Such a stance can ofcourse be expressed, and may involve or presuppose somebeliefs as well, but cannot be simply equated with havingbeliefs or making assertions about what there is.5

What van Fraassen appears to be mean by a ‘stance’ here is a

kind of orientation in thinking that is composed of various

propositional attitudes, such as ‘I believe that human beings

evolved from single-celled amoeba’, but is not ultimately

composed of those various propositional attitudes. This is

because what properly constitutes each stance is the specific

set of attitudes, commitments, approaches each enquirer has in

addition to their various beliefs.

Though we can grant a clear distinction between beliefs

and stances, it is still not entirely clear what a stance is.

We can perhaps dispel some of the mystery by reflecting on

five ways of understanding the notion of a stance. The first

of which involves interpreting ‘stance’ in terms of Kuhn’s

famous concept of a paradigm: according to Kuhn, paradigms

refer to disciplinary matrixes that involve “the entire

constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared

by members of a given community”.6 As Rowbottom argues, “[w]hen

we look at van Fraassen’s characterisation of a stance, we5 Van Fraassen, 2002: 47-8. 6 T. Kuhn, 1996: 175.

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should be struck by the considerable similarity”.7 Rowbottom’s

justification for this claim is that a stance is characterised

by the following: attitudes, commitments, approaches, beliefs,

and other propositional attitudes; whilst a disciplinary

matrix is characterised by the following: values, techniques,

beliefs, and exemplars. He goes on to claim that attitudes are

effectively the same as values; approaches are effectively the

same as techniques; the beliefs involved in a stance

effectively amount to the beliefs involved in a disciplinary

matrix; and that commitments are connected to disciplinary

matrix beliefs.8

The second way of understanding what exactly is a stance

is one which adopts a Kantian-McDowellian interpretation of

‘stance’. Under such an account, a ‘stance’ is understood as a

perspective or standpoint or a way in which we have the world in view. What

this involves goes beyond adopting certain propositional

attitudes or even adopting certain values – it principally

consists in the exercise of our conceptual capacities in such

a way so as to grasp the mind-world relation in a manner which

settles sceptical questions. For example, the main thrust of

the Critical Philosophy is to persuade rational enquirers to

abandon the standpoint of transcendental realism in favour of

the standpoint transcendental idealism. Likewise, one of John

McDowell’s principal interests in Mind and World is to reject

7 D. P. Rowbottom, 2011: 112. 8 Cf. Rowbottom, 2011: 113. I wish to note two things here: firstly, that aparadigm operates at the group level, whereas a stance operates at theindividual level; secondly, while Rowbottom draws an analogy between Kuhnianparadigms and Van Fraassenian stances, Rowbottom regards paradigms to bedifferent from stances principally insofar as the former involve exemplars.

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both ‘bald naturalism’ and ‘rampant Platonism’ and to

successfully avoid an “interminable oscillation”9 between the

Myth of Given and the absence of any external constraint on

our judgements.10

The third way of understanding what exactly is a stance

is one developed by Paul Teller (2004). We can think of

stances as epistemic policies. By conceiving of each stance as

a specific epistemic policy, a stance is not judged to be

truth-apt: a stance is not a belief. Rather, it is a “certain

attitude of investigation”.11 As such, the criterion of

assessment for stances is crucially different to the criteria

of assessment of beliefs. For, we do not judge policies as

being true or false, but as being successful or unsuccessful.12

The fourth way of understanding what exactly is a stance

is one proposed by Rowbottom & Bueno. They argue that a stance

is characterised by the combination of three components: “(a)

a particular mode of engagement, (b) a style of reasoning, and (c)

certain propositional attitudes (such as beliefs, desires, and

hopes)”.13 By a ‘mode of engagement’, I take them to mean

adopting a way of understanding the world. Such a mode of

engagement can be

active/passive/critical/dogmatic/scientific/non-scientific/sys

tematic/piece-meal. By a ‘style of reasoning’, Rowbottom &

Bueno just mean a way of making inferences or providing

9 J. McDowell, 1994: 9. 10 Cf. McDowell, 1994: 8-9. 11 Rowbottom & Bueno, 2011: 8. 12 This also points to a convergence between Teller and Rowbottom, sinceparadigms, like policies, cannot be true or false. 13 Rowbottom & Bueno, 2011: 9.

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justifications for certain claims or describing facts about

thus-and-so. For example, meteorologists will

characteristically use various images of weather fronts and

use certain computation models to describe current

climatological situations and predict further climatological

developments. Intuitionists in the philosophy of mathematics

will characteristically use particular inference rules when

coming up with various mathematical proofs. And Formula 1

engineers will characteristically reason about the current

state of a car during practice/qualifying/race situations

basing their analysis of data received by their computer

networks and general observation of the car’s performance. To

put this more simply, a style of reasoning “incorporates

patterns of inference, diagrams, templates, and other useful

devices that are invoked when reasoning about a given

situation”.14

With regard to adopting certain propositional attitudes,

one way of understanding what this involves can be seen by

grasping the kinds of beliefs that are characteristic of

various philosophical positions. Consider, for example, the

propositional attitudes that appear to be characteristic of

scientism: proponents of scientism, such as Alex Rosenberg,

believe that the empirical and natural sciences are the only

authoritative intellectual disciplines and the only

intellectual disciplines to be properly valued. Rosenberg, in

particular, also has various hopes as additional propositional

attitudes in his variety of scientism – namely, he hopes that

14 Ibid., p. 9

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many abandon (i) their commitments to the manifest image of

man, (ii) the belief that the humanities represent a

substantive and valuable contribution to human knowledge, and

(iii) the belief that religion is a respectable and serious

form of life. Not adopting these specific propositional

attitudes would thereby constitute not adopting the

scientistic stance. This is because these specific

propositional attitudes are commitments. And what distinguishes

commitments from ordinary propositional attitudes is that as

long as two or more adherents of, say, scientism, share all the

commitments of scientism, then any difference between their

respective ordinary propositional attitudes does not involve a

difference in stance. For example, Rosenberg may think that

ospreys are more interesting than nightingales; whereas

Patricia Churchland may think that nightingales are more

interesting than ospreys. This difference would not mean that

they adopt different stances. However, by contrast, it could

well be that both Rosenberg and Alvin Plantinga agree that

nightingales are more interesting than ospreys, but one would

hardly think that sharing the same ordinary propositional

attitude means that Rosenberg and Plantinga have the same

stance.

Though this way of explicating the intimate connection

between propositional attitudes and stances is helpful to an

extent, such an interpretation of Rowbottom and Bueno’s

account crucially neglects how their articulation of stances

is meant to be compatible with Van Fraassen’s

metaphilosophical critique of ‘Principle Zero’, namely the

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idea that to hold a philosophical position X is to hold some

essential dogma or doctrine X+ required to believe position

X:15 central to Van Fraassen’s project of replacing talk of

philosophical positions in terms of adopting essential

dogmatic propositional attitudes with talk of philosophical

positions in terms of stances is his wish to avoid the idea

that empiricism necessarily involves a dogmatic commitment to

a thesis such as ‘All knowledge begins in experience’. For,

according to van Fraassen, conceiving of empiricism as

comprising a central thesis not only makes empiricism

dogmatic,16 but also prevents empiricism from being

consistently articulated. As Teller writes, “[i]t is required

only that [X]+ says or implies that experience is the only

source of contingent information, that [X]+ itself cannot be

supported by appeal to experience, and that [X]+ is itself

contingent. All of these are very plausible conditions for a

wide range of candidates for [X]+. But if all these conditions

obtain, it seems plain that any effort to maintain [X]+ would

be self-defeating”.17 Furthermore, I think an additional

concern about construing stances exclusively in terms of

collections of specific propositional attitudes is that

philosophical positions, such as empiricism and naturalism,

are transformed from historically contingent ideas into

‘natural’, timeless, hermetically sealed group identities

which foster illiberal pressures towards conformity against

15 Cf. Van Fraassen (2002: 41). 16 See Rowbottom (2005); especially p. 216. 17 Teller, 2004: 159-60.

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supposedly inauthentic members.18 The move, then, from doctrine

to stance seems to be Rortyan, insofar as to conceive of a

philosophical position as a stance rather than just as some

collection of propositional attitudes come what may appears to

democratic in its explicit insistence on fallabilism and

revisability.

The fifth and final way of illustrating what exactly is

a stance can be provided by Matthew Ratcliffe’s Husserlian

notion of a stance. As Ratcliffe writes, “[Husserl’s theory of

a natural attitude] is not akin to the propositional attitude

of believing that some x, called the world, exists. Rather it

is something that we already inhabit when we adopt propositional

attitudes. It comprises a pre-articulate sense of (a) there

being a world, (b) what the world is like and (c) the nature

of one’s relationship with the world”.19 Under such an

interpretation of the notion of a stance, we are invited to

understand stances in more phenomenologico-metaphysical ways

than in the previous four accounts: stances are now conceived

as conveying existential orientations.20

Of course, it is reasonably clear that all five ways of

conceiving stances share lots of things in common and arguably

merely differ in verbal idiosyncrasies rather than in

substantive philosophical matters. However, a proper

comparison of these five means of interpreting the idea of a

stance is the task of another paper. The various ways of

18 The different advocates of scientism may well differ in any of hopes Ihave listed. 19 M. Ratcliffe, 2011: 122. 20 Cf. Van Fraassen (1994).

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articulating the notion of a stance all appear to share an

underlying concept: a stance is not a typical belief; it is

more of a normative disposition to one’s cognitive environment. By virtue of

it being a normative disposition/outlook/Weltanschauung, it

requires a different standard of assessment than an ordinary

truth-apt standard. I take the ubiquity of normativity in the

various layers of a stance to signify that stances are judged

on the basis of their claims to adequately make sense of things, to

use Adrian Moore’s term.21 In other words, a stance is judged

to be good or bad in terms of how best it makes sense of

things. Or, to put this in more Sellarsian terms, the best

stance is the one which satisfies the Sellarsian dictum of

establishing how things (in the broadest sense of the term)

hang together (in the broadest sense of the term).22

In our discussion thus far, we have looked at various

ways of construing the very idea of a stance. What this has

enabled us to conclude is that the notion of a stance is a

rich and multi-layered, one which blends together certain

metaphysical, methodological, epistemic, and phenomenological

concepts: stances are normative dispositions towards our

cognitive environment and are typified by their attempts to

21 Cf. Moore (2012). One may well be rather surprised at how I have appearedto construe stances as various instances of sense-making enterprises. For,part of the drive of The Empirical Stance is in fact a critique of metaphysics.However, I think there is compelling reason to think that just because vanFraassen is highly critical of various analytic versions of metaphysics,such as Australian materialism, it does not necessarily follow that vanFraassen abjures metaphysics simpliciter. However, even if van Fraassenbelieves that the way metaphysics aims to make sense of things does notreally make sense of anything much, he can still accept Moore’s basic thoughtof sense-making, which is needed to characterise a stance. 22 Cf. W. Sellars, 1963: 35. See Jones (2011) for a discussion on thisSellarsian-esque theme.

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make the world rationally intelligible to human mindedness and

our intellectual endeavours of critically understanding

reality as a whole. Given what is characteristic of stances, I

think there is a very fruitful and philosophically significant

connection to be drawn between van Fraassen and Hegel. This is

because there is a remarkable parallel between van Fraassen’s

concept of a stance and Hegel’s concept of a form of

consciousness. In what follows in the next section of this

paper, I shall explain the specific ways in which a stance and

a form of consciousness relate to one another; and I shall

argue that because the concept of a form of consciousness

brings about explicitly the connection between theoretical and

affective attitudes, the Hegelian articulation of stances is

especially illuminating.

II

Unfortunately, there has not been much scholarly

attention devoted to clarifying Hegel’s concept of a form of

consciousness. This is made all the more perplexing when one

considers how such a notion occupies so central a role in the

Phenomenology of Spirit. Hegel introduces the notion of a form of

consciousness in the Introduction to the Phenomenology. Having

sketched the dialectical method in some detail in §s 85 and

86, Hegel makes the following claim:

In each and every case of a non-truthful knowledge, allthe results which come about may not simply converge intosome kind of empty nothingness; rather, each result mustnecessarily be apprehended as the nullity of that of which it is

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the result, a result which contains whatever truth thepreceding knowledge has in itself. Here it presents itselfas follows. Since what at first appeared as the object forconsciousness descends into a knowledge of the object, andthe in-itself becomes a being-for-consciousness of the in itself, thislatter is the new object. As a result, a new shape ofconsciousness also emerges for which the essence issomething different from what was the essence for thepreceding shape. (PS: §87)

In this passage, Hegel explains how the idea of sublation is

supposed to work with regard to the examination of failed

attempts at knowledge. However, what is disappointing in

Hegel’s writing here is a lack of any significant

clarification or explanation of the term ‘form of

consciousness’. All we appear to be able to conclude from

Hegel here is that a form of consciousness is obviously some

kind of understanding of the content of experience. Not only

that, forms of consciousness appear to be revisable. Thus far,

we can say that a form of consciousness is something epistemic

and revisable in the face of experience. Of course, this is

hardly satisfactory as a working definition of the term. We

then have to wait until §369 for the term to be re-introduced.

Fortunately, however, it seems that matters are slightly

clearer in this passage, where Hegel is discussing ethical

concerns about how self-consciousness understands the good

life:

An actuality confronts this heart, for within the heart,the law exists initially merely on its own, not yetactualized, and thus at the same time it is something otherthan the concept. As a result, this other is determined asan actuality which is the opposite of what is to be

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actualized, and it is thus the contradiction between the lawand individuality. On the one hand, actuality is thus a law bywhich singular individuality is oppressed, a violent orderof the world which contradicts the law of the heart – andon the other hand, it is humanity suffering under thatorder, a humanity that does not follow the law of theheart, but which is instead subjected to an aliennecessity. This actuality, which appears in the presentshape of consciousness as confronting it, is, as it has becomeclear, nothing but the preceding estrangement betweenindividuality and its truth, that is, a relationship ofdreadful necessity by which individuality is crushed. (PS:§369)

Although Hegel provides no ostensible definition of the term

in this passage, there is good reason to regard it as

illuminating what he means by a form of consciousness. The

language of confrontation, contradiction, estrangement, and suffering

seems to suggest that a form of consciousness is not simply a

belief about certain things in the world, but more of a

complex set of beliefs about the world that constitute a

normative attitude towards one’s cognitive environment. A form

of consciousness that treats something as confronting it or

being in conflict with it does so on the grounds that it

treats the relevant phenomenon as opposed to its understanding of

the world itself. But the conflict is not a mere

acknowledgement of a difference between the form of

consciousness and the ‘problematic’ phenomenon. Such a

conflict can potentially cause the form of consciousness to

abandon its pretences to knowledge. I think the only

reasonable explanation for why a form of consciousness would

regard something in such a manner is due to that form of

consciousness having a set of attitudes to the world of

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experience. And these attitudes are normatively significant.

For, the reason why a form of consciousness will feel in

conflict with the world or will enter into a state of

alienation or estrangement is that consciousness recognises

that the world is forcing it to question its understanding of

the world. To put this differently, what is at stake for

someone when they adopt a form of consciousness is more than

just how representationally accurate, how descriptively

accurate a form of consciousness is; they are also putting

their entire worldview before the tribunal of experience.

Perhaps the final clue to grasping what a form of

consciousness is can be found in ‘Absolute Knowing’, where

Hegel discusses the historical and cognitive development of

Spirit. The irony here is that we have to look at the end of

the Phenomenology of Spirit, in order to understand the beginning

of the text as well as the meaning of ‘form of consciousness’

– and this may well have been Hegel’s intention. At the end of

§789, Hegel writes:

Rather, it [absolute knowledge] is in part a shape ofconsciousness per se and in part a number of such shapesthat we gather together, within which the totality of themoments of the object and of the conduct of consciousnesscan be pointed out merely as having been dissolved in thetotality’s moments. (PS: §789)

The crucial term in this passage is ‘conduct’, for this adds

an extra dimension to what we have already seen when

reflecting on what a form of consciousness is. One should

readily accept that ‘the conduct of consciousness’ refers to

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the entire development of thought through human history.

However, how this is related to the forms of consciousness is

by understanding each form of consciousness as having a

conduct of their own. What I mean here is that every form of

consciousness, in addition to having certain beliefs about the

world and certain normative attitudes towards the cognitive

environment, provides the phenomenological subject with a set

of affective dispositions. These dispositions, moreover, are based on

the theoretical commitments of the relevant form of

consciousness. In order to see what this means, I want to

briefly discuss two forms of consciousness – Stoicism and

Absolute Knowing.

‘Stoicism’ represents the first attitude to coping with

the dialectic of mastery and servitude: having been subjugated

at the hands of another self-consciousness, the slave is

compelled to seek an alternative means of achieving at

homeness in the world.23 Aware of their position as a slave,

and so aware of their status as not free, Hegel argues that

the slave must aim to achieve a notion of freedom to cope with

their current state of non-freedom: the first notion is a

sense of mastery of the surrounding environment, for the slave

can manipulate and change the objects around him to suit his

various purposes. However, this notion of freedom is obviously

unsatisfying. The slave then moves on to the following

position: even though they are not free to do certain things,

what the master and what the world cannot do is force the

slave to think in certain ways or to even have beliefs. And this

23 See Pinkard (2012).

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notion of freedom is used by the slave to make themselves

indifferent to their state of servitude – they achieve

‘freedom’ by regarding themselves as cognitively autonomous,

and such cognitive autonomy is designed to not just enable the

slave to look past their status but to also provide conditions

for them to realise their rational self-consciousness. So,

under the Stoical form of consciousness, we have a set of

theoretical commitments about the world: (a) the world

manifests a form of rationality, insofar as we are able to work

well in our environment, cf. Taylor (1975: 157) and Stern

(2002: 88); (b) given the successful nature of our labour in

general, we can start to see ourselves as being at home in our

environment. Crucially, though, these commitments possess

immense normative and existential significance, for thinking

about the mind-world relation in this way serves as a

structuring principle for how we interact with our environment.

Since Stoicism focuses on seeing the rationality of nature,24

the slave is led to ignore their status, and being indifferent

to their status is meant to enable the slave to cope in the

world. Nevertheless, despite the Stoics’ insight into the

rationality of the world as a whole, Hegel is explicitly

critical of the content of Stoic rationalism: firstly,

conceiving of freedom as cognitive autonomy appears to amount

to a slave Weltanschauung; and secondly, the Stoic idea of

living in accordance with reason lacks any specific content,

and as such is mere platitude, cf. PS: §200. Ultimately,

Stoicism fails to make us at home with the world, given the

24 Cf. PS: §197.

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dogmatic nature of their rationalism and their insistence on

indifference as a path to achieving eudaimonia. Thus, what is

relevant here is how the Stoics’ theoretical commitments

determine their attitude towards themselves, the world, and

the community.

By contrast, when the phenomenological subject arrives

at the final form of consciousness, Absolute Knowing, their

orientation in thinking dramatically changes. Because

consciousness now has a network of beliefs that suggest

communion with the world and a kind of intimate embeddedness

in one’s cognitive environment, then thinking as being at home in

the world translates into genuinely feeling at home in the

world. This is the ultimate accomplishment of consciousness in

Absolute Knowing, where the Stoics’ abstract rationalism and

their inchoate notion of being in the world is perfected by

the concrete universal. By this, I mean that the

phenomenological subject now conceives of the world as

fundamentally intelligible in itself; and that because the

world is fundamentally intelligible in itself, consciousness

is able to reconcile its own rationality with the intrinsic

rationality of the world. As such, Absolute Knowing is not

just a “form of holistic explanation, which shows how all

finite things are parts of a wider whole”,25 it also crucially

involves a set of affective attitudes which determine how one

feels about themselves, their community, and reality as a whole.

What the discussion of these forms of consciousness

should enable us to see is that there seems to be a remarkable

25 F. C. Beiser, 2005: 165.

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parallel between van Fraassen and Hegel: stances and forms of

consciousness appear to share more or less everything in

common: both are characterised by the relevant values,

commitments, norms, attitudes, and propositional attitudes.

Both are ultimately existential orientations, to use an

expression from van Fraassen. Given their nature as

existential orientations in thinking, the criteria for

assessing forms of consciousness, as with the criteria for

assessing stances, is one which tests their success at sense-

making. For, the dialectical movement of the phenomenological

subject through the various forms of consciousness, ranging

from sense-certainty to absolute knowing, is the rational

enquirer’s laboured and often-fraught attempt to understand

reality as a whole, to make sense of things. The

phenomenological subject transitions from one form of

consciousness to the next when they find reasons that the form

of consciousness they initially adopted fails to give them

rational satisfaction;26 this is because that form of

consciousness contained contradictory elements and therefore

26 It is important to note here that there is a very interesting debate tobe had between Hegelians and Kuhnians on this subject: both Hegel and Kuhnwould agree that a movement from one form of consciousness to another / aparadigm shift is caused by encountering anomalies that contradict thecurrently accepted form of consciousness / currently accepted paradigm.However, it is not obviously clear that both Hegel and Kuhn would agreethat what underwrites the dynamical relation from one form of consciousnessto another / one paradigm to another is a concern for rationalsatisfaction. To put this more simply, Hegelians will want to claim thatthe structure of scientific revolutions is a rational one, in the sensethat we move from paradigm to paradigm as part of a grand teleologicalnarrative, whereas Kuhnians are less inclined to claim that the structureof scientific revolutions is rational in this sense of the term. However, Ithink it is also worth mentioning that some post-Kuhnians, such as LarryLaudan (1977, 1981), are more rationalistic and even sound quite Hegelian.

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prevented the enquirer from having a rational grip on reality

as a whole. Only absolute knowing is regarded to properly make

sense of things, since only absolute knowledge has the

necessary elements in its normative structure to enable us to

reconcile mind with world and therefore give us rational

satisfaction. As Hegel writes, “this last shape of Spirit –

the Spirit which at the same time gives its complete and true

content the form of the self and thereby realises its Notion

as remaining in its Notion in this realisation – this is

absolute knowing; it is Spirit that knows itself in the shape

of Spirit, or a comprehensive knowing” (PS: §798).

The main question to ask now is what exactly is the

value of claiming there is a clear and substantive parallel

between Hegel and van Fraassen? We have previously seen

various ways of articulating stances, ranging from

understanding stances as epistemic policies to conceiving of

stances as Husserlian natural attitudes. What makes the

Hegelian approach to stances especially illuminating? The answer to

this question lies in how the Hegelian interpretation of

stances is better equipped than the other five interpretations

to make sense of van Fraassen’s pragmatist commitments. This is

because while the other reflections on stances correctly

stress how a stance is effectively a worldview, they do not

seem to bring about the intimate connection between

theoretical attitudes and affective attitudes as explicitly as

Hegel does with his concept of a form of consciousness.

Because Hegel is so adamant about establishing such a

connection, this is compelling reason to think that Hegelian

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forms of consciousness shed great light on van Fraassenian

stances. To see why, I would like to consider Hegel and van

Fraassen in relation to two important features of classical

pragmatism.

If we look back at the structure of a form of

consciousness and the structure of a stance, we will be

reminded of the familiar talk of attitudes, values,

commitments, etc. Now, what is central to the notions of

attitudes, values, and commitments is a distinctively anti-

Cartesian conception of thought. According to both Hegel and

van Fraassen, thought is not a “theoretical detachment”.27 To

be a thinking subject is not to be a disembodied res cogitans that

is separate from the world and is little more than a cognitive

voyeur. Rather, to be a thinking subject is to be an embodied

being embedded in the world.28 As Ratcliffe writes, “[w]e do

not philosophise as disembodied loci of rational thought,

stripped of our practical, affective, bodily attunement to

things”.29 Such anti-Cartesianism is central to classical

pragmatism, and is made most explicit in the work of William

James:

Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at workwhen form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will,

27 Ratcliffe, 2011: 126. 28 See the following: “We are indeed beings of flesh and blood … It meanssimply that we persons manifest ourselves in the first instance through ourbodies and bodily movements and equally, in a seamlessly woven fabric, byhow we choose and arrange our clothes, environments, rooms, houses, thepaths we take to work and the work itself, all the incarnate activities andprocesses into which we enter”. (Van Fraassen, 2002: 192) 29 Van Fraassen, 2002: 126.

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taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practicalaffairs …30

Philosophical enquiry, for James, must not be conceived of in

the way that early modern rationalism characterised

philosophical enquiry. While the Cartesian project of pure

enquiry aimed to provide substantive conceptions of truth and

knowledge by avoiding corporeality and sociality, James

conceived of pragmatism as the philosophical school of thought

to provide substantive conceptions of truth and knowledge by

embedding all human capacities in the world. As he famously wrote, the

most pressing problem with early modern rationalism is that it

“seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a

thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos

with its dread abysses and its unknown tides”.31 Such a

critique appears to be characteristic of opponents of

Cartesianism, ranging from the post-Kantian idealists, through

Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, to Rorty.32 Though all

these philosophers differ from one another in important

respects, they are all committed to the view that the mind-

world relation must be understood in terms of cognitive

intimacy rather than cognitive voyeurism. And to do so

necessarily involves emphasising how thinking is necessarily

bound up with direct bodily engagement with things and

implicit social relations with other rational agents in the

world.

30 W. James, 1956: 92. 31 James, 1912: 277-8. 32 See Taylor (1972) for an excellent discussion of this topic.

22

Van Fraassen himself allies with James in the Third

Lecture in The Empirical Stance,33 by claiming that shifts in stance

involve a kind of multi-layered transformation of the world –

where the transformation of the world involves both shifts in

how we theoretically represent our cognitive environment and

our emotional responses to our cognitive environment. For that

matter, it seems reasonable to suppose that part of what

motivates van Fraassen’s critique of analytic metaphysics is

in fact a Jamesian objection to metaphysics being overly

abstract. As James writes on this subject:

[The abstract philosophical universe is] far less anaccount of this actual world than a clear addition builtupon it, a classic sanctuary in which the rationalistfancy may take refuge from the intolerably confused andgothic character which mere facts present. It is noexplanation of our concrete universe, it is another thingaltogether, a substitute for it, a remedy, a way ofescape.34

Given what James argues in this passage, where he objects to

thinking of abstract metaphysical thinking as an explanation of

the world, we can see why van Fraassen conceives of a movement

away from analytic metaphysics to constructive empiricism in

terms of a shift in stances: the shift is based on the

transformation of our dispositions to metaphysics. And such a

shift in stance is determined by our reflection on both our

33 See, for example, this quote from van Fraassen: “William James camenearest, among the various views I highlighted, to the true character ofour epistemic life”. (Van Fraassen, 2002: 90) 34 James, 1981: 14.

23

theoretical representation of the world as well as our

emotional responses to the world.

This pragmatist commitment, namely the idea that

philosophical thinking involves transformation, is also shared

by Hegel, who understands philosophical critique in terms of

transformation: for Hegel, the dialectical critique of the

forms of consciousness is regarded as enabling us to arrive at

the standpoint of Science. This involves two transformative

notions: first, we move from seeing the world as

unintelligible/irrational to seeing the world as fundamentally

intelligible and rationally structured; and second that we

move from conceiving our autonomy in terms of radical

domination over other rational subjects to conceiving our

autonomy in terms of symmetrical recognitive relations with

other rational subjects. Given the transformative dimensions

of the Phenomenology, Hegel’s Phenomenology is a Bildungsroman both

in terms of its function and its hermeneutical presentation:

we are in some sense the protagonist of the Lesedrama, and the

text is designed to reflect how we observe and reflect on our

cognitive development as we progress through the various forms

of consciousness.

We have already seen that Hegel takes the forms of

consciousness to amount to existentially significant

Weltanschaungen. But what we now need to see is what the

relation between existentially significant world-views and

phenomenological critique is for Hegel. The answer to this

question lies in the Introduction to the Phenomenology, where

24

Hegel conceives of philosophical critique in the following

way:

[Philosophical critique] can be taken to be the path ofnatural consciousness which presses forward towards trueknowledge, or it can be taken to be the path of the soulas it wanders through the series of the ways it takesshape, as if those shapes were stations laid out for it byits own nature so that it both might purify itself intospirit and, through a complete experience of itself,achieve a cognitive acquaintance of what it is in itself.(PS: §77)

In this passage, Hegel is making a clear analogy between the

stages of moving through the various forms of consciousness

until arriving at Absolute Knowing and the various Stations of

the Cross that Christ passes through on the road to Calvary

and ultimately his resurrection. Now, Hegel makes this analogy

because of the parallels he sees between subjecting oneself to

complete rational critique and the Passion Christ undergoes in

order to realise himself. A crucial component of both

subjecting oneself to complete rational critique, where one’s

worldview is brought under scrutiny, and Christ’s Passion is

that both phenomena are self-imposed: consciousness forces

itself to question whether or not its conceptual structure is

coherent, and Christ forces himself onto the Via Dolorosa. Both

activities are in some sense self-legislating and authentic,

since no external force or principle or agent is the author of

the respective performance. Additionally, both the rational

enquirer and Christ undergo this pathway of despair in order

to achieve self-transformation: the practice of subjecting

25

oneself to bringing one’s entire worldview under rational

scrutiny, to the extent that one might even believe that one’s

experience of the world only justifies a thoroughly negative

form of life, is designed to make the subject wholly open and

sensitive to what constitutes a good form of social existence.

We change as we reflect on worldviews, because we discover

what counts as a proper and rational justification for certain

ways of thinking and certain ways of acting in the world. As I

understand Hegel, the function of rational enquiry goes

further than just a cognitive isomorphism between mind and

world / thought and being: the principal goal is to provide

the conditions for the subject of experience on their own terms to

achieve at homeness in the world by altering their conception

of their rational agency from one which dissociates them from

their world and prevents them from establishing symmetrical

recognition with other agents. As such, for Hegel, the

‘purification into spirit’, refers to the idea of rational

agents properly understanding who they really are as rational

agents embedded in a social world.

With regard to Christ, his self-transformation occurs

through his being prepared to sacrifice his entire life in

order to redeem mankind. Christ embeds himself in the world to

the ultimate extent, in that when carrying the cross his back

is cowed at all times, his eyes are firmly fixed on the

ground, and he is both bearing the evil of mankind yet

encountering virtue on the road to Golgotha, where virtue is

personified by Simon of Cyrene. His transformation is not some

trans-ontological change in which his material nature is

26

destroyed and he becomes an immaterial being. Rather, he is

transformed in the way that he understands himself and the

world and that in doing so he is able to realise his humanity.

Christ’s divinity, then, is not to be conceived of as being

something in opposition to or distinct from his humanity: his

becoming most human is what constitutes him becoming divine.

As such, the relationship between divinity and humanity ought

to be explicated in terms of an Aristotelian notion of the

actualisation of humanity, rather than in terms which suggest

some form of ontological move from one kind of being to

another kind of being.

What is important to note in the comparison between the

cognitive via dolorosa and Christ’s via dolorosa is that the

progression to a state of hope and flourishing cannot be

understood to be genuinely possible unless this end is bound

up with immense suffering. Hegel is committed to the idea that

the development of rationality from poor or insufficient

philosophical attitudes to correct or sufficient philosophical

attitudes is not something one can realistically achieve

unless the rational enquirer is prepared to force themselves

to be subjected to complete rational critique. As William

Bristow writes, “the development of a human being in relation

to its end is distinguished from that of a natural organism

exactly through its being critical. Since the human subject must

relate itself to its end – that is, must determine its own end – it

must submit itself to the crisis, hence to self-loss and to

transformation, as a condition of attaining its end”.35 For

35 W. F. Bristow, 2007: 246.

27

Hegel, philosophical enquiry faces a particular kind of

crisis: while according to Kant, the crisis is the state of

metaphysics; according to Hegel, the crisis is not just the

state of metaphysics but also the genuine threat of systematic

sceptical irrationalism. Such a threat must therefore compel

us to thoroughly embed ourselves in our environment and

critically reflect on everything that makes us human, both our

cognitive and affective lives.

It should be clear that both Hegel and van Fraassen are

committed to the classical pragmatist anti-Cartesian

conception of thought. However, this is not the only

pragmatist commitment both Hegel and van Fraassen share. For,

what I think partly motivates both philosophers’

metaphilosophical concerns is a commitment to a Deweyean

notion of growth. In other words, the reason why exactly Hegel

spilled so much ink on the notion of a form of consciousness

and the reason why van Fraassen insists on talking about

stances36 is that both Hegel and van Fraassen think that a

failure to get one’s approach to the world and one’s relation

to experience ‘right’ is disastrous for not just our cognitive

lives, but crucially our everyday lives as well. For van

Fraassen, it is clear that he thinks that what is symptomatic

of professional philosophy, namely the kinds of debate had by

academic philosophers and the ways in which those debates are

structured, is deeply problematic. Such is the extent to which

the way philosophy is being practised on van Fraassen’s

36 See his discussion of the conflict between secularism and religion interms of a conflict between stances.

28

understanding of the contemporary philosophic culture that it

warrants substantive revision. As he writes in a Rorty-esque

manner:

But I do think we must change, or change back, the way wedo philosophy. Technical work is required; there are manyproblems to be solved, but this work should be in aid ofan authentic, engaged project in the world, self-consciousand conscious of what sort of enterprise it is. Thatmeans, in the first place, consciousness of its ownlimits.37

What underlies van Fraassen’s powerful message that philosophy

needs to become less abstract and more engaged with the world

appears to be the Deweyean concern for growth and self-

development. Namely, that we fail to become properly rational

agents if we are not disposed to think in certain ways, ways

which promote active, reflective, and critical thinking. It is

unclear from this passage whether van Fraassen is also

committed to Dewey’s view that by becoming properly rational

agents we can thereby become properly civic and democratic

participants. But even so, it is clear that van Fraassen

shares the concern that thinking in abstract and disengaged

manners is debilitating for our cognitive welfare and our

everyday welfare as well. For, the kind of stance one adopts

has normative significance for all aspects of the human

condition; and stances which promote dogmatic or prejudicial

or insensitive modes of reflection are hardly conducive to

have a genuinely adequate grasp of oneself and one’s limits.

37 Van Fraassen, 2002: 195.

29

Perhaps it may well be that Hegel could provide the

model of how we ought to do philosophy. For, not only does

this famous passage from the Phenomenology indicate the kind of

stance we ought to adopt, it also crucially captures the sense

of growth and development beloved by Dewey:

The more that conventional opinion holds that theopposition between the true and the false is itself fixedand set, the more that it customarily expects to finditself in either agreement or in contradiction with anygiven philosophical system, and, if so, then in anyexplanation of such a system, the more it will merely seethe one or the other. It does not comprehend thediversity of philosophical systems as the progressivedevelopment of truth as much as it sees merelycontradiction within that diversity. The bud disappearswhen the blossom breaks through, and one might say thatthe former is refuted by the latter. Likewise, by virtueof the fruit, the blossom itself may be declared to be afalse existence of the plant, since the fruit emerges asthe blossom’s truth as it comes to replace the blossomitself. These forms are not merely distinguished fromeach other, but, as incompatible with each other, theyalso supplant each other. However, at the same time theirfluid nature makes them into moments of an organic unitywithin which they are not only not in conflict with eachother. Rather, one is equally as necessary as the other,and it is this equal necessity which alone constitutes thelife of the whole. However, in part, contradiction withregard to a philosophical system does not usuallycomprehend itself in this way, and, in part, theconsciousness which apprehends the contradiction generallyneither knows how to free the contradiction from its one-sidedness, nor how to sustain it as free-standing bytaking cognizance of its reciprocally necessary moments,which themselves take shape as conflicts and as apparentincompatibilities. (PS: §2)

What I hope to have achieved in this paper is provide

reasons to think that a Hegelian interpretation of stances is

30

illuminating. If such an account has been convincing, then it

seems more than reasonable to suppose that the idealist

tradition and the pragmatist tradition have more in common

than traditionally thought. Furthermore, it would now also

appear that the neo-Hegelians in the analytic world are not

predominantly confined to Pittsburgh, but also have an

important base of operations in San Francisco.

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