'Portrait of Lady Charlotte Campbell', 1789, Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein
First, the internal evaluation. The status of animal organisms as subjects of normative evaluation is closely connected to their teleological structure for an organism is as it ought to be when its parts function properly, that is to say, when they benefit or advantage or serve the ends of, the whole, at a minimum, self-preservation or survival, and further it appears that inorganic nature, a stone for instance, is not an appropriate subject of normative evaluation precisely because its parts are not teleologically structured, they have no ends or purposes that they can attain or fail to attain. As Hegel explains:
'In the two relationships considered above, the self-mediation of the genus with itself is the process of its diremption into individuals and the sublation of its differences. However, as the genus also assumes the shape of an inorganic nature which is opposed to the individual, it brings forth its existence within it in an abstract and negative manner. The determinate being of the individual organism is therefore involved in a relationship of externality, and while the organism preserves itself by returning into itself in its genus, it may also, and with equal facility, fail to correspond to it. -The organism is in a diseased state when one of its systems or organs is stimulated into conflict with the inorganic potency of the organism. Through this conflict, the system or organ establishes itself in isolation, and by persisting in its particular activity in opposition to the activity of the whole, obstructs the fluidity of this activity, as well as the process by which it pervades all the moments of the whole'.
- 'Philosophy of Nature'
An organism is hence defective or more precisely diseased when one or more of its parts obstructs the fluidity of the activity of the whole, that is to say, when the functioning of those parts is not conducive but obstructive to the end or ends of the organic whole to which they belong. Although teleology plays a role in the normative evaluation of animals the story benefit or conduciveness to the end of biological survival or self-preservation is not by itself sufficient to account for the ways in which we judge animal parts and accordingly the organic wholes to which they belong to be well or malfunctioning, normatively successful or defective. In particular benefit by itself cannot account for the sense in which the evaluation of animals is internal or proceeds in accordance with those animals' own concept. An account of the normativity of animal life based solely upon the idea of advantage must be incomplete. Why is a three-legged wildebeest but not a four-legged wildebeest that lacks wings defective? The answer cannot rely on benefit or conduciveness to biological survival or self-preservation, for the possession of wings might well we may suppose be more beneficial or assist wildebeests more efficiently attain the end of self-preservation than any number of legs, three or four, in the absence of wings. For instance we might imagine that a winged wildebeest would more quickly and safely escape predators than any of its three- or four-legged yet wingless counterparts.
Hegel's considerations concerning the normativity of animal life in occur more specifically in the context of his discussion of the Gattungsprozess. Reflecting more closely upon the relation between teleology on the one hand and membership in a species via reproduction on the other we can understand how exactly the evaluation of organisms is internal or proceeds by comparing an object with its own concept and is not a matter of judging it in accordance with some external standard. An animal is characterized by having parts that are structured in a purposive or end-directed way. For instance the function of a human liver is to cleanse blood in order to help guarantee the survival of the organic whole of which it is part, a part of some specific organism, this particular human liver for instance, owes its function to the role that parts of that sort play within the kind or species as a whole, more precisely if human livers in general did not serve the function of cleansing blood and in this way contributed to the biological survival of the species or kind specimens or exemplars of that kind would not have managed to survive and reproduce to give rise to other exemplars with similarly functioning parts, human livers. In brief the existence of animal specimens endowed with parts with specific functions or purposes depends upon the existence of prior organisms with similarly functioning parts and more generally upon a species, kind or concept of which those animal specimens are exemplars.
Against the background of the connection between the teleological structure of particular organisms and their membership in a kind via reproduction let us consider the wildebeest. What is it if not benefit or advantage alone that makes a three-legged yet not a four-legged but wingless wildebeest defective? How is the verdict concerning these two wildebeests the upshot of an internal evaluation of them, of a comparison of each of them with some internal standard? The answer is that the four legs unlike the hypothesized wings of any particular wildebeest owe their existence and function to the existence of parts with that same role in other prior wildebeest and ultimately and more generally in the species or kind to which that particular wildebeest specimen belongs. Hence a three-legged wildebeest but not a four-legged wildebeest that lacks wings is defective in as much as it lacks a feature without which its species or kind would not have been able to survive and reproduce to give rise to that specific three-legged wildebeest. Which is to say, the three-legged wildebeest specimen is defective or not as it ought to be in that it fails to exhibit a feature without which its kind or species and so also a limp wildebeest would not have survived at all. The evaluation of animal organisms is internal in that it is thus the features or characteristics of each animal kind or species that set the standard or criterion by which we judge specimens of that very kind to be successful or defective, and the features or the determinations of a kind or concept constitute a rule or ought against which animal specimens of that kind are measured.
As Hegel explains:
'The general determinations must be made to rule therefore, and the natural forms compared with them. If the natural forms do not tally with this rule, but exhibit certain correspondences, agreeing with it in one respect but not in another, then it is not the rule, the determinateness of the genus or class etc. which has to be altered. The rule does not have to conform to these existences, they ought to conform to the determinateness, and this actuality exhibits deficiency in so far as it fails to conform. Some Amphibia are viviparous for example, and like Mammals and Birds, breathe by means of lungs; in that they have no breasts, and their heart has a single ventricle, they resemble Fish however. If one is prepared to admit that the works of man are sometimes defective, it must follow that those of nature are more frequently so, for nature is the Idea in the mode of externality. In man, the basis of these defects lies in his whims, his caprice and his negligence, e.g. when he introduces painting into music, paints with stones in mosaics, or introduces the epic genre into drama. In nature, it is the external conditions which stunt the forms of living being; however, these conditions produce these effects because life is indeterminate, and also because it is from these externalities that it derives its particular determinations. The forms of nature cannot be brought into an absolute system therefore, and it is because of this that the animal species are exposed to contingency'.
- 'Philosophy of Nature'
Hence regarding the normativity of animal life in this manner whether or not some feature of an animal species for instance a certain number of limbs qualifies as essential depends upon the contribution that that feature makes to the survival and reproduction of the species and an animal specimen is defective if it lacks an essential feature so characterized. So what precisely is the role that reproduction plays in animal normativity? Not all features of an organism that are causally dependent upon the existence of ancestors with similar features should qualify as essential features, the essential features of an animal organism are just a subset of those transmitted via reproduction, that is to say, those features of a species without which a current animal organism defective or otherwise could not have come about in the first place. What features figure within this subset, exactly, and how long it would take for a species to cease to survive and reproduce in their absence, are empirical and contingent matters and not ones that can be settled on the basis of a priori reflection on the concept of animal life alone. And what of the question concerning contradictory existence? How is an existence in disagreement with itself so much as possible? How more specifically can animal organisms exist as exemplars of a kind with which they do not correspond? Inorganic nature is incapable of this feat, for a stone cannot fail to correspond to its concept or kind without ceasing to exist as a specimen of its kind altogether, it 'is unable to survive chemical decomposition'.
'A Woman with Cows on a Road', Du Jardin, Karel (c. 1622 - 1678)
In dealing with this second issue, the connection between the teleological structure of a current animal organism and the Gattungsprozess that is to say its membership in a species by way of reproduction proves once again to be a great assist, think about for example such things as alchemy or transubstantiation (ok quite a jump but bear with me).
'Sonnet 33'
by William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.
Even so my sun one early morn did shine
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow;
But out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath mask'd him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.
The morning sun is flattering the lowly mountains in a turnaround of the typical flattery of the baseborn towards those of higher station and the sun thereby is akin to an artist who osculates with golden light to bring forth a brighter green and akin to an alchemical artist who would blanket the natural world with gold. The artist (and the poet is alchemist too) and the flatterer are connected by way the alchemical art but then soon after all is transformed by way of a reversal of effect and the ignoble things associated with the world darken and degrade the countenance which is to say an ugly rack of clouds are allowed to ride the sun and darken the desolate world, but the poet is then involved, my sun, an all too brief possession on the poet's part who is now revelling in a brightening and a gilding not so far removed from that experienced by the lowly mountains and streams, but then he goes through another reversal and the region cloud maybe a rival in love intervenes between the poet and his sun leaving him to observe a merely masked or splendour now covered over.
Distillation alchemical or otherwise operates as a very effective metaphor whereby the poet takes something he likes, subjects it to alchemical fire in the alembic of his imagination, out of which comes forth a higher concentration of the thing the poet liked about the thing the poet liked. And as for the plays if we compare the Bard's source material with what he created out of it it really is a case of transmuting base metals into purest gold. Chrysopoeia, the making of gold, chryso, gold, poeia, making part, poetry, to make, poiein, the poet transmutes of base metals into gold, which is to say, turning the diurnal and the painful into the sublime and healing. And contrast modernist inclinations towards straightforward one to one compartmentalised analogies and isolated symbols with concomitant separated disciplines, an unambiguous conception and visualisation of the world whereas the truth of the matter is that each individual thing is connected to everything else in a network of metaphor and analogy. (Das geistige Tierreich. The spiritual animal kingdom. All the different varieties of animal life, all with their own distinct qualities and their connection with each other). Shakespeare by way of his exquisitely distilled sonnet wherein multiple and contradictory readings are possible entertains himself with contradictions ingrained in the human heart and purposively leaves us remaining in a state of uncertainty.
'Theres scares knud in this gnarld warld a fully so svend as dilates for the improvement of our foerses of nature by your very ample solvent of referacting upon me like is boesen fienns'.
- James Joyce, (1882 – 1941), 'Finnegans Wake'
The forces of nature in the Wake are the faeces of nature and there is more to that than meets the eye. In the Wake the ridiculing and disparaging of Shem the Penman (Joyce himself) by his brother Shaun the Post culminates in a Latin passage:
‘Primum opifex, altus prosator, ad terram viviparam et cuncti- potentem sine ullo pudore nec venia, suscepto pluviali atque discinctis perizomatis, natibus nudis uti nati fuissent, sese adpropinquans, flens et gemens, in manum suam evacuavit (highly prosy, crap in his hand, sorry!), postea, animale nigro, exoneratus, classicum pulsans, stercus proprium, quod appellavit deiectiones suas, in vas olim honorabile tristitiae posuit, eodem sub invocatione fratrorum gemino- rum Medardi et Godardi laete ac melliflue minxit, psalmum qui incipit: Lingua mea calamus scribae velociter scribentis: magna voce cantitans (did a piss, says he was dejected, asks to be exonerated), demum ex stercore turpi cum divi Orionis iucunditate mixto, cocto, frigorique exposito, encaustum sibi fecit indelibile (faked O'Ryan's, the indelible ink)’.
- 'Finnegans Wake'
Which may be translated thus:
‘First the artisan, the profound progenitor, approaching the fruitful and all-powerful earth, without shame or pardon, put on a raincoat and ungirded his pants, and with buttocks naked as they were on the day of his birth, while weeping and groaning, defecated into his hand. Next, having relieved himself of the black, living excrement, he – while striking the trumpet – placed his own excrement, which he called his scatterings (purgation), into a once honourable vessel (chalice) of sadness, and into the same place, under the invocation of the twin brothers Medardus and Godardus, he pissed joyfully and melodiously, continuously singing with a loud voice the psalm that begins: ‘My tongue is a scribe’s quill writing swiftly’. Finally, he mingled the odious excrement with the pleasantness of the divine Orion, and, from this mixture, which had been cooked and exposed to the cold, he made for himself indelible ink’.
Shem must undergo a complete and painstaking purgation of his sins and faults and endeavour to absolve and vindicate himself through his art. Shaun characterises the process of making ink, or writing, as scatological, and Shem 'through the bowels of his misery' is 'the alshemist' who becomes 'transaccidentated' into his art, for amidst the self-mockery Joyce is setting forth a profound and decidely original principle of artistic creativity. First, however, I must say something concerning transaccidentation. In medieval philosophy an accident is an attribute that may or may not belong to a subject, without affecting its essence, were you to lose one of your essential properties rather than one of your accidental properties (becoming a defective organism) you would no longer be you. To put it into the terminology of modality an essential property of an object is a property that it must have, while an accidental property of an object is one that it merely happens to have but that it could not have had. In Catholicism, transubstantiation refers to the miraculous transformation of the substance, but not of the accidents, the accidents being the appearance, of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ during the sacrament of the Eucharist. In transaccidentation, however, a term first introduced by Duns Scotus, (c. 1266 – 1308), it is the accidents of the Eucharistic bread and wine that are changed into the body and blood of Christ at the moment of their consecration.
Shaun thus exploits the term to describe the Eucharistic doctrine of artistic creation whereby Shem's appearance or 'bodily getup' (his accidents) is transmuted into the accidents or appearance of ink or words, within which Shem's spiritual substance continues to dwell, for the notions that are behind the term transaccidentation are used to give expression to Joyce's remarkable insight into the act of literary creation and into the artist's relation to art; as the artist in producing words is 'transaccidentated through the slow fires of consciousness in to a divided chaos, perilous, potent, common to allflesh, human only, mortal', and through these words is thereby present to every reader. The Eucharistic metaphor appears elsewhere in Joyce's work, in 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' the artist is equated with 'a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life'. But in the Wake the Eucharistic imagery attains to a significantly higher level with this use of the term transaccidentation, for now, and somewhat paradoxically, the artist, who must deal with that which is intrinsically human, and therefore with that which is mortal, achieves an everlasting presence in the creation of his or her art and invites all who partake in it to share in a thoroughly extreme and transforming type of liberty that goes well beyond temporal restrictions.
Take heed as we plunge into the question of contradictory existence and of how an animal can endure contradiction, of how an animal organism can continue to exist as a member of its kind while failing to correspond to the concept or kind to which it belongs, an existence in disagreement with itself whereby an animal exists as an exemplars of a kind with which it does not correspond. Put forward whatever moral arguments in support of animal rights you like, and I have covered many in this series, they will be met with counter-arguments, and all both for and against trade upon vague concepts to such a degree that we are not always even sure if what we are talking about is to do with moral issues at all. But now we are in the realm of logical contradiction wherein it can be demonstrated that denying rights to animals is illogical and hence irrational, issues of sentiment, (a common charge against animal rights advocates), comes into it not at all, and who can argue against logic?
'Tierschicksale', ('The fate of the animals'), 1913, Franz Marc
In the instance of lead, to continue with the alchemical theme, its concept or kind consists in a certain chemical structure and if an alleged piece of lead does not correspond to its concept or if it has a chemical structure other than that of lead, that of gold let us say, then the piece of metal in question is not lead at all.
'What belongs to external nature is destroyed by contradiction; if, for example, gold were given a different specific gravity from what it has, it would have to perish as gold. But mind has the power to preserve itself in contradiction and, therefore, in pain (pain aroused by evil, as well as by the disagreeable) . Ordinary logic is, therefore, in error in supposing that mind is something that completely excludes contradiction from itself. On the contrary, all consciousness contains a unity and a separation, hence a contradiction. Thus, for example, the representation of house is something completely contradictory to my I and yet endured by it. But contradiction is endured by mind, because mind contains no determination that it does not recognize as a determination posited by itself and consequently as a determination that it can also sublate again. This power over all the content present in it forms the basis of the freedom of mind.6 But in its immediacy, mind is free only implicitly, in concept or possibility, not yet in actuality; actual freedom is thus not something that is immediately in the mind but something to be produced by mind's activity. So in science we have to regard mind as the producer of its freedom. The entire development of the concept of mind displays only mind's freeing of itself from all the forms of its reality which do not correspond to its concept: a liberation which comes about by the transformation of these forms into an actuality perfectly adequate to the concept of mind'.
- 'Philosophy of Spirit'
There is thus no defective gold just as, I may add, there is no defective lead. By contrast an animal organism can be defective in that it has a malfunctioning liver to return to the matter of distillation above, well the human animal is certainly noted for harming its liver, and thereby failing to correspond to its concept while nevertheless continuing to exist as a specimen of that concept or kind. This difference between inorganic and organic nature may be accounted for by considering a current animal organism with a malfunctioning liver still as an organism of its kind in that it exists and its parts exist and have or lack certain specific causal roles on account of its being the product of organisms of the same kind or species, a species that could not have survived and reproduced without its parts fulfilling certain causal roles, for instance, without livers cleansing the organisms' blood. A question arises as to how far can a thing's failure to correspond to its concept extends before it stops belonging to that concept altogether, or to put it another way, how defective an organism can be before it stops counting as an instance of its kind. Maybe an organism no matter how defective or malfunctioning counts as a member of its kind insofar as it is brought about as the result of the reproduction of other members of the species.
But within the context of internal evaluation and contradictory existence let us re-consider Rand's claim that by no means within the context of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Nature' can we distinguish between defects like the feeling of thirst and the absence of a limb in a limbed species. We now see the way, the species specific way in which organisms assimilate the environment to overcome Mängel like thirst is part of what characterizes the kind or species in question and assist in guaranteeing the species' survival and reproduction, but in the case of a missing limb the absence of a limb will not figure in the description of that creature's concept or kind and is not conducive but obstructive to the survival and reproduction of the species, more particularly a three-legged wildebeest is defective in that it lacks a feature without which its kind would not have been able to survive, reproduce, and so give rise to that three-legged specimen whereas a healthy, four-legged wildebeest, whether thirsty or not, is normatively sound in that it lacks no such features.
Alznauer contended that essential features which is to say those that serve as a standard by which to appraise organisms as sound or defective are picked out 'by seeing which features play an important role in the way organisms of that kind grow, assimilate, and reproduce' and the connection between Hegel's Gattungsprozess, teleology, and normativity spells out Alznauer's position through delivering a principled way of identifying the features that play that important role in animal life, for a feature of an animal species or kind qualifies as essential just in case it is a feature in the absence of which the species as a whole would not have been able to survive and reproduce so as to give rise to further specimens of the species defective or otherwise, hence only by viewing organisms through the lens of their reproductive process are we able to identify the essential features of the species and in the light of those features normatively evaluate its members.
And so the normativity of animal life. Where does Hegel's view of the functions of animal parts fit if at all within the debate on functions in the philosophy of biology over the past several decades? The debate upon functions can be sorted into historical and non-historical accounts. Matteo Mossio who works principally in philosophical and theoretical issues related to biological autonomy and has inquired into that which makes biological functions teleological spells out such a view by contending that in order for part P of some current organism to have function F that part P must contribute to the self-maintenance of that organism and the organism must be organizationally closed and differentiated into parts that perform different causal roles. On the first causal role account defended by Robert Cummins in order to identify the functions of the parts of some animal organism we need not look any further than that current organism itself so that on this causal role view the function F of some part P of a current animal organism is just whatever causal role P has within the more complex system that contains it. The causal role and so the function of our livers is inter alia to cleanse our blood, the causal role of the liver can itself be explained in terms of the causal roles of its component parts, lobes, ligaments, membranes, the heart has the causal role, and so the function, of pumping blood, but as others have pointed out the heart also causes other effects in the organism of which it is a part, for instance it produces a repeated thumping sound. Is producing a sound thereby also a function of the heart? Many participants in the debate have wanted to resist answering this question in the affirmative as the causal role account seems to commit us to do.
A second, more recent non-historical view attempts to escape the counterintuitive consequences of Cummins's position by restricting the function or functions F of some current organism part P to those causal roles performed by P that contribute to the self-maintenance of that current organism. Roughly part P has a function F just in case P contributes to its own existence as well as that of the organism to which it belongs hence even though both pumping blood and producing thumping sounds are effects caused by the heart, only the former of these two causal roles has a functional character, for only that former causal role contributes to the maintenance of itself and the organism of which it is a part.
Contrary to these two views Ruth Millikan, (1933 - ), contends that in order to identify the function F of some part P of a current animal organism we should not look at the organism's current features and causal dispositions but turn instead to that organism's history. But according to Hegel it is an organism's reproductive past not natural selection or its evolutionary past that explains its possession of some part P with a purpose or function F. According to this historical account a part of P of some current animal organism has a function F just in case that organism exists and is endowed with P in part as a consequence of its ancestors possessing P and having actually performed F in the past. Why this heart exists here now and has the function of pumping blood is causally explained by the contribution of hearts in the current, hearted organism’s ancestors, and using this account of functions Millikan furthermore maintains that we can explain failure of purpose or defect in ways that the non-historical theorists appear to be unable to. Albeit some current animal organism may lack P or be unable to fulfil F it is nevertheless a member of a species or function category defined by F so long as the current organism is the descendant of other organisms endowed with P and that actually performed F.
Hegel's view is similarly historical, a part P of some current animal organism has the purpose or function that it does on account of the existence of past organisms with similarly functioning parts which have reproduced to give rise to the current organism under consideration. If the current organism lacks part P or if P does not fulfil in it the causal role that it fulfilled in its ancestors, then the current organism is on that account defective and this negative appraisal of the current organism is internal in as much as it results from the comparison of some of its parts or features with a subset of the parts or features of its ancestors, namely, those features without which they would not have been able to survive and reproduce to give rise to the current organism.
Such are the questions raised in considering judgments of the concept, in judging a current animal organism to be sound or defective the judgment is internal and not based upon some standard imposed upon it from outside, and further an animal organism unlike inorganic nature can fall under a concept with which they fail to correspond. A current animal organism is defective in as much as it lacks some features or is unable to perform certain functions without which its species or kind would not have been able to survive and reproduce to give rise to that current organism under evaluation, and the evaluation of animal organisms is internal in that it is thus the features or characteristics of each animal kind or species that set the standard or criterion by which we judge specimens of that very kind to be successful or defective. Secondly a defective animal organism is still an organism of its kind or falls under its concept in that it exists as a descendant of organisms of that same kind, these ancestral organisms being ones that could not have survived and reproduced without its parts performing the functions on account of whose lack or malfunction the current organism is deemed defective.
'Portrait of Mrs Decatur Howard Miller (Eliza Credilla Hare)', c. 1850, Alfred Jacob Miller
So where are we now with respect to animal rights? As follows. Nature has a conceptual aspect whereby concepts are not items that only exist in the human mind, they are not merely things we think about, they exist objectively independently of whether human (and non-human?) thinking animals are thinking about them:
'... thoughts can be called objective thoughts; and among them the forms which are considered initially in ordinary logic and which are usually taken to be only forms of conscious thinking have to be counted too. Thus logic coincides with metaphysics, with the science of things grasped in though ts that used to be taken to express the essentialities of the things. ... thinking things over leads to what is universal in them; but the universal is itself one of the moments of the Concept. To say that there is understanding, or reason, in the world is exactly what is contained in the expression 'objective thought'. But this expression is inconvenient precisely because 'thought' is all too commonly used as if it belonged only to spirit, or consciousness, while 'objective' is used primarily just with reference to what is unspiritual. ... In line with what has been said so far, then, the Logical is to be sought in a system of thought-determinations in which the antithesis between subjective and objective (in its usual meaning) disappears. This meaning of thinking and of its determinations is more precisely expressed by the Ancients when they say that nous governs the world, or by our own saying that there is reason in the world, by which we mean that reason is the soul of the world, inhabits it, and is immanent in it, as its own, innermost nature, its universal. An example closer at hand is that, in speaking of a definite animal, we say that it is [an] 'animal'. 'Animal as such' cannot be pointed out; only a definite animal can ever be pointed at. 'The animal' does not exist; on the contrary, this expression refers to the universal nature of single animals, and each existing animal is something that is much more concretely determinate, something particularised. But 'to be animal', the kind considered as the universal, pertains to the determinate animal and constitutes its determinate essentiality. If we were to deprive a dog of its animality we could not say what it is. Things as such have a persisting, inner nature, and an external thereness. They live and die, come to be and pass away; their essentiality, their universality, is the kind, and this cannot be interpreted merely as something held in common'.
- 'The Encyclopedia Logic'
There is a structure of forms of thought on which all other beings depend and such forms of thought are not simply subjective categories but rather they objectively exist within the world independently of human thought about them albeit human animals may come to think using categories which have the same content as these objective forms and when this occurs human animals are having thoughts that are true, thoughts that accurately describe the world's independent structure, nevertheless the independent structure itself is not something that only exists within the human animal mind. This is idealism, reality is fundamentally structured by thought that is to say ideas and objective forms of thought structure the natural world, forms of thought or conceptual structures are combined with matter in different ways and as nature develops the forms of thought increasingly pervade and organise matter. Hence too in the spiritual animal kingdom human and non-human animals have their truth which consists in their agreement with their objective concept and there is a normativity to animal life, rights in general have a normative standing, hence denying that animals have rights is a logical contradiction.
Human and non-human animals all have their individuality, so, I return now to where I began with the matter in hand and in the alienation between purpose and action, for here we encounter problems in our activism for the cause of animal rights, for to find the best and most effective way to further the cause requires a deeper understanding of one particular animal, the human animal. On the subject of individuality Hegel as always goes in deep, well, I was wanting to go into some detail over these problems as they are rather important for us to bear in mind but this article is too long so I will just make some brief points. The matter-in-hand while an abstract concept for the unity of purpose and action renders the latter alienated from the individual but the individual is endeavouring to discover what allows purpose and action to be unified and hence what produces the matter-in-hand. Instead what we have now is deceit whereby an honest consciousness cares not for the affairs it claims to be concerned with and at most interferes with the work of others and passes judgment upon them and even were an honest consciousness to approve of that particular work it merely passes upon on contribution as a indicator of generosity in not having interfered in the work through its own censure:
'In showing an interest in the work, it is enjoying its own self; and the work which it censures is equally welcome to it for just this enjoyment of its own action which its censure provides. Those, however, who think or pretend to think that they have been deceived by this interference, wanted really themselves to practise the same kind of deceit. They pretend that their action and efforts are something for themselves alone in which they have only themselves and their own essential nature in mind. However, in doing something, and thus bringing themselves out into the light of day, they directly contradict by their deed their pretence of wanting to exclude the glare of publicity and participation by all and sundry. Actualization is, on the contrary, a display of what is one's own in the element of universality whereby it becomes, and should become, the affair of everyone'.
- 'Phenomenology of Spirit'
Different individuals respond to this alienation in different ways as some will accept in resignation while others will reject in some unhappiness, the former are those we have just referred to, the honest, they accept the alienation between purpose and action and an n as honest, the honest consciousness is able to accept failure of its own actions for it is honest to itself and derives satisfaction from the fact that it has at least willed something to be done, even if nothing were done though it had been resolved to do something the honest consciousness finds consolation in the fact that it had at least willed it. However:
'If this consciousness does not convert its purpose into a reality, it has at least willed it, i.e. it makes the purpose qua purpose, the mere doing which does nothing, the 'heart of the matter', and can therefore explain and console itself with the fact that all the same something was taken in hand and done. Since the universal itself contains subsumed under it the negative moment or the vanishing, the fact that the work annihilates itself, this too is its doing. It has incited the others to do this, and in the vanishing of its reality still finds satisfaction, just like naughty boys who enjoy themselves when they get their ears boxed because they are the cause of its being done'.
- 'Phenomenology of Spirit'
'Or, again, suppose it has not even attempted to carry out the 'matter in hand', and has done absolutely nothing, then it has not been able to; the 'matter in hand' is for it just the unity of its resolve and the reality; it asserts that the rea1ity would be nothing else but what it was possible for it to do'.
- 'Phenomenology of Spirit'
Anyone can simply say what has to be done, what needs to be done, what one wants to do but actually carrying out upon one's words that is what gives to a person life and saying something without doing it or doing something that was not given word so to do is a form of deceit and ultimately an honest consciousness itself turns out to be dishonest:
'The whole is the spontaneous interfusion of individuality and the universal; but because this whole is present for consciousness only as the simple essence, and thus as the abstraction, of the 'matter in hand' its separate moments far apart outside of that 'matter in hand' and of one another. As a whole, it is only exhaustively exhibited by alternately exposing its moments and retaining them for itself. Since in this alternation consciousness keeps, in its reflection, one moment for itself and as essential, while another is only externally present in it, or is for others, there thus enters a play of individualities with one another in which each and all find themselves both deceiving and deceived'.
- 'Phenomenology of Spirit'
Those who claim to be set about achieving great things or are trailblazers in reality are waiting for others to do their work for them and when the work is done an honest consciousness comes back to claim the merits of the work for itself. And what transpires upon an individual rejecting the alienation between purpose and action? They are dissatisfied with the manner by which their action turns against their original determinate natures for no one likes to be misinterpreted for what they do not intend (like causing the extinction of water voles). However rejecting such alienation does not mean casting the issue of the matter-in-hand to one side. Indeed:
'Rather is its nature such that its being is the action of the single individual and of all individuals and whose action is immediately for others, or is a 'matter in hand' and is such only as the action of each and everyone: the essence which is the essence of all beings, viz. spiritual essence. Consciousness learns that no one of these moments is subject, but rather gets dissolved in the universal' matter in hand'; the moments of the individuality which this unthinking consciousness regarded as subject, one after the other, coalesce into simple individuality, which, as this particular individuality, is no less immediately universal. Thus the 'matter in hand' no longer has the character of a predicate, and loses the characteristic of lifeless abstract universality. It is rather substance permeated by individuality, subject in which there is individuality just as much qua individual, or qua this particular individual, as qua all individuals; and it is the universal which has being only as this action of all and each, and a reality in the fact that this particular consciousness knows it to be its own individual reality and the reality of all'.
- 'Phenomenology of Spirit'
Consciousness learns of its own mistake in conceiving the matter-in-hand and while the matter-in-hand is taken as something like an abstract unity of the individual's actions the matter-in-hand was not supposed to be taken for an individual's in the first place and all the moments within action, that is to say, purpose, means, ends, circumstances, vanish within a single universal matter-in-hand. For the matter-in-hand is abstract only because it has been conceived in such a way as to describe the unity for a single person, when it should have been conceived as a universal, something that everyone can contribute to. For instance the purpose of 'I want to create a world within which the rights of animals are recognised and respected' does not merely consist of an individual’s endeavours to recognise and respect the rights of animals rather it has to be contributed by other individuals who want to recognise and respect the rights of animals. Rather than sharply dividing between oneself and others the dynamics of action require a recognition of the contributions of others to our causes and ours to theirs and evidently this can only be achieved within a harmonious ethical substance.
Finding ourselves in our projects and our work and all that do in the course of it can be narcissistic navel lending itself to self-deception rather than submitting it to a world of others whereas we become actual in relation to other self-conscious beings in our environment, not all of whom are present for part of what it means to be in an harmonious ethical substance or culture is to relate to others most of whom are not in your vicinity at any given time, and some of whom you meet and connect with and they vanish, and most of whom you will never meet in your lifetime:
'In the first place, we have to consider by itself the work produced. It has received into itself the whole nature of the individuality. Its being is therefore itself an action in which all differences interpenetrate and are dissolved. The work is thus expelled into an existence in which the quality of the original nature in fact turns against other determinate natures, encroaches on them, and gets lost as a vanishing element in this general process. Although within the Notion of the objectively real individuality all the moments -circumstances, end,means, and realization - have the same value, and the original specific nature has the value of no more than a universal element, on the other hand, when this element becomes an objective being, its specific character as such comes to light in the work done, and obtains its truth in its dissolution'.
- 'Phenomenology of Spirit'
'Heimkehr vom Feld', ('Returning home from the field'), 1849, Friedrich Eduard Meyerheim
To be continued ....