/RJLFVRI3RZHU/RJLFVRI9LROHQFH$FFRUGLQJWR+HJHO

5RFtR=DPEUDQD

&57KH1HZ&HQWHQQLDO5HYLHZ9ROXPH1XPEHU)DOOSS
$UWLFOH
3XEOLVKHGE\0LFKLJDQ6WDWH8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV

)RUDGGLWLRQDOLQIRUPDWLRQDERXWWKLVDUWLFOH
KWWSVPXVHMKXHGXDUWLFOH

Access provided by University College Dublin (8 Sep 2016 16:36 GMT)

Logics of Power, Logics of

Violence (According to Hegel)
Roco Zambrana
University of Oregon, Eugene

HANNAH ARENDT,

WHO HAD LITTLE SYMPATHY FOR

HEGELIAN

DIALECTICS,

makes an important observation about the need to draw a distinction between power and violence in her book On Violence. Arendt laments that
political science . . . does not distinguish among such key words as power,
strength, force, authority, and finally violence, all of which refer to distinct,
different phenomena and would hardly exist unless they did (Arendt 1969,
43). Getting clear on the conceptual distinction between power, authority,
and violence is important, because it allows a precise grasp of political
phenomena that are otherwise obscured. These distinctions allow us to differentiate and assess logics of power from logics of violence that political
phenomena express.
Along these lines, Arendt draws her famous, albeit controversial, distinction between power and violence. The core of Arendts distinction is the
CR: The New Centennial Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2014, pp. 1128. ISSN 1532-687X.
2014 Michigan State University. All rights reserved.

11

12

Logics of Power, Logics of Violence

instrumental logic of means and ends. Power, according to Arendt, is the

human ability not just to act, but to act in concert (44). It is what springs up
when people come together and begin something new. Power is thus an end
in itself (51). Rather than to an actions goal or consequence, its legitimacy is
tied to action itselfto new beginnings made possible by acting with others
(52). In contrast, violence is by nature instrumental and relies on implements (51, 42). It is ruled by the means-end category (4). Ends justify the
means. Means can override the ends. Power becomes not just something else,
but its very opposite when it becomes a means, when it is led by external
ends (56). It becomes violence. Accomplishing an end by implementing means
displaces the legitimacy of action in a foregone past or a future beyond.
As elsewhere, in On Violence Arendt signals Hegelian and Marxist dialectics as exemplary of a dangerous intersection between philosophy, history,
and politics. On Arendts view, Hegels signature notion of negativity sustains
a teleological conception of reason, which yields an understanding of history
that follows a means-ends logic. History is a slaughter bench that accomplishes the aims of reason. Hegel and Marxs great trust in the dialectical
power of negation, Arendt points out, rests on a much older philosophical
prejudice: that evil is nothing more than a privative modus of the good, that
good can come out of evil; that, in short, evil is but a temporary manifestation
of a still-hidden good. For Arendt, such time-honored opinions have become
dangerous. They displace the end of action from acting in concert. They are
shared by many who have never heard of Hegel or Marx, Arendt writes, for
the simple reason that they inspire hope and dispel feara treacherous hope
used to dispel legitimate fear (56).
My aim in what follows is not to provide a defense of the textbook interpretation of Hegelan understanding of Hegel that Arendt leans on. Rather,
my aim is to examine Hegels own insistence on making a conceptual distinction between power and violence. My assessment reveals surprising overlaps
between Hegel and Arendt, in addition to dispelling common misunderstandings of Hegel. To be sure, Hegel understands reason as purposive activity
(1977, 22; 1969b, 24). Hegel indeed argues that the unfolding of natural and
historical processes exhibits a logic or rationality. Attention to Hegels distinction between power (Macht, Kraft) and violence (Gewalt), however, suggests

Roco Zambrana

that Hegel is as concerned as Arendt with means-ends rationality. Arendt and

Hegels shared worry stems from the suspicion that an external end leads to a
logic of means that does violence to the unfolding of matters themselves. For
Hegel just as much as for Arendt, concrete matters are ends in themselves.
Power, according to Hegel, is the capacity that natural and social things
and processes have to become what they are. The power of matters or things
themselves (die Sache selbst) is their rationality or, as we will see, their subjectivity. Violence, in contrast, is what is suffered when a thing, person, or
natural and social process is subjected to an end and/or a means external to it.
Violence is suffered when a thing, person, or process is subjected to an unfolding that is not its own, which is to say, an unfolding that is not based on the
concrete conditions producing the matter in the first place. The rationality of
things themselves can be thought of as their power when their unfolding is an
end in itself. This is why Hegel argues that the power of what he calls the
concept (der Begriff) does not do violence to reality. He goes as far as arguing
that both mechanistic and teleological understandings of natural and social
phenomena are intrinsically violent.
In what follows, I examine Hegels critique of violence in the Science of
Logic to clarify his insistence on making a conceptual distinction between
logics of power and logics of violence (2010). I focus on the Subjective Logic
and contrast Hegels critique of violence in his accounts of Mechanism, Teleology, and the Idea of the Cognition with his characterization of power in his
account of the Idea as Method. As we will see, Hegels critique of violence in
the Logic is crucial for understanding his lifelong insistence on articulating a
concrete conception of rationality.1 Through a consideration of the Logic,
then, we can appreciate the surprising proximity between Arendt and Hegel,
in addition to gaining a clearer understanding of Hegels insistence on the
power of reason.
Before engaging the Logic, it is helpful to recall the central argument of
Hegels idealism. In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel famously
argues that everything hinges on understanding substance as subject (1977,
25; 1969b, 2728). To be is to be intelligible, according to Hegel. Hegel gives the
commitment to intelligibility a distinctively post-Kantian twist. He moves
away from Kants insistence on the first person perspective for an account of

13

14

Logics of Power, Logics of Violence

knowledge, truth, and moral worth. He argues that intelligibility is the result
of historically specific practices of rendering intelligiblewhat he calls Geist
(spirit). Geist is a notion that privileges history for understanding the nature of
intelligibility. What is, then, is always already historically mediated. Everywhere in his corpus, Hegel establishes that substance is subject formally by
arguing that the work of negativity (Negativitt) is irreducible. Intelligibility is
the result of distinctions that establish what some thing is and what it should
be on the basis of what it is not. Rendering intelligible is thus based on
historically specific distinction making and remaking.
That what is is always already mediated, and means that a thing, event, or
process depends on its externality for its determinacy (its unity) and hence its
uerlichkeit) refers us to existent condiintelligibility. A things externality (A
tions that produce the thing, event, process in the first place. This will be
important for distinguishing between the power exhibited by anything to
become what it always already is from the violence experienced by anything
that is beholden to a norm, institution, or process that imposes an alien logic
on it. That a thing is always already outside of itselfdetermined by material,
social, historical conditions that exceed itis not to the detriment of the
thing. Rather, it is the things way of becoming what it is. Hegels signature
argument is, accordingly, that the self-negation of any thing makes possible its
actuality (Wirklichkeit). Reasons purposiveness is for this reason expressed by
its power to move, Hegel says, and hence by being pure negativity (1977, 22;
1969b, 23). Indeed, negativity makes possible being-for-self. The tremendous
power of the negative, then, is the capacity of things to unfold in and through
conditions that exceed it thereby exhibiting their own rationalitytheir
subjectivity.
This is the main thought of the closing volume of the Science of Logicthe
Doctrine of the Concept. Substance is subject, Hegel reiterates in the Logic, in
being absolute power or self-referring negativity (2010, 509; 1969c, 246).
Actuality, Hegel argues in the last part of the Doctrine of Essence, is the result
of a totality of existent conditions that are established as necessary after the
fact. The ideality of any thing is dependent on existent conditions. Concrete
conditions rather than an epistemic faculty or a metaphysical principle external to the phenomenon at hand produce the thing itself. Hegels move from

Roco Zambrana

the Doctrine of Essence to the Doctrine of the Concept in the Logic is based on
his insistence on understanding actuality in terms of subjectivity. Things
themselves are produced by existent conditions, yet they nevertheless express
a rational form. The intelligibility or universality that matters bear in their
singularity depends on particular conditions at hand. Actuality should therefore be understood as a concrete form of rationality. Because the intelligibility
of any thing depends on the concrete conditions that produce it in the first
place, its form of rationality should be understood in terms of the selfdetermination of the thing itself. The form of rationality that things express,
Hegel argues, is their subjectivity.
The Doctrine of the Concept begins with a section entitled Subjectivity
(Subjektivitt) and ends with a section on the Idea (die Idee). The first section
comprises chapters on The Concept, Judgment, and Syllogism, whereas
the last section comprises chapters on Life, Cognition, and the Absolute
Idea. In both sections, Hegel characterizes the universal in terms of power
(Macht, Kraft). He distinguishes the power of the universal from the violence
of reified notions of the concept. The universal is power insofar as it is the
inner negativity of things themselves (1977, 59; 1969b, 56; 2010, 35; 1969c, 52).
It is power when it expresses the self-negation of the thing as self-subsistent
or, put otherwise, when it expresses the necessary dependence on conditions
that exceed it. The universal is a source of violence if understood as a concept/
category or method/philosophical perspective taken to be fully other and
hence external to the real and the sensuous. Externality here does not refer to
dependence on existent conditions for the actuality of any thing. It refers to a
norm, principle, institution that purports to shape a thing, form of life, so on,
independently of the concrete conditions that produce it in the first place.
In the chapter on the concept, where Hegel discusses universality, particularity, and singularity, he argues that [t]he universal is . . . free power [freie
Macht]; it is itself while reaching out to its other and embracing it, but without
doing violence to it [Gewaltsames]; on the contrary, it is at rest in its other as in
its own (2010, 532; 1969c, 276).2 It is important to keep in mind that Hegels
master category is singularity (Einzelheit) rather than universality (Allgemeinheit). The section on Subjectivity calls into question notions of the concept
that maintain the irreducibility of universality and particularity. Universality,

15

16

Logics of Power, Logics of Violence

according to Hegel, is always already determinate universality (bestimmte

Allgemeinheit). It is necessarily tied to particularity (Besonderheit), since it
only qualifies as a universal based on its function as attribute, class, or genus.3
For this reason, Hegel argues, universality contains difference within it. It
cannot be understood as an absolute self-identity, simple determination
(2010, 530; 1969c, 273). Notions of the concept based on assumptions about its
simplicity, purity, and otherness to the real and the sensuous cannot account
for the concepts purported universality.
For our purposes, the crucial point here is that conceptions of universality
and particularity as irreducible to each other express one of two metaphysical
positions that Hegel finds problematic: a model of instantiation (the Platonic
model) or the model of subsumption (the Kantian model). Notions of universality that treat ideality as a nonempirical constraint exemplified in realty or
that unifies the sensuous given reify the ideal. The dualism of ideality and
reality/sensuousness straightforwardly expresses a violent logic. It leads to an
account of ideality in which the concept, in its self-standing identity, does
violence to the nonidentical.4 The ideal simply determines the real and the
sensuous from beyond. The determinacy of any matter is rather due to its
singularitythat its articulation expresses a rationality germane to existent
conditions. Thus, the universal cannot be understood as mere form. It would
be able to account neither for the determinacy of things themselves nor for its
own activity.
In the closing section of the Logic, in the chapter on the absolute idea,
Hegel argues that what he calls method is the truer meaning of universality
(2010, 737; 1969c, 552). Method, he says, is the universal aspect of the idea
(736; 550). Universality is to be understood at this point as absolute form
(absolute Form) (737; 551). Absolute form is a notion of form that Hegel develops to account for the relation between concept and reality formally
philosophically.5 Idealism must work from the side of form. The sense of any
possible not-I, let us say, any objective content, as Robert Pippin puts it, is
inseparably linked to the structure of our asserting and inferring and justifying practices (our Setzen, let us say) (Pippin 2010, 102). For this reason, Hegel
articulates a conception of form that rivals ideas about an ontological difference between form and reality/sensuousness. As absolute form, then, method

Roco Zambrana

is designed to counter the logic of violence germane to the metaphysics of

classical and transcendental philosophy. It counters the imposition of ideality
on reality that according to Hegel realism, dualism, and critical philosophy
sustain.
Actuality as subjectivity can therefore only be accounted for philosophically with the notion of absolute form. Absolute method contains the notion of
form that makes possible giving an account of the relation between concept
and reality without affirming a notion of form over against reality. Form is
absolute when it articulates the inseparability of concept and reality, form
and content. In being nothing but the power of the negative, the universal
requires reality.6 In being nothing but existent conditions, reality/sensuousness admits of a distinctive form of universality. Ideality and reality always
already express concrete forms of rationality. They always already contain
aspects of each other. Conceptions of reality are conceptionsarticulations by
and within historically specific practices, discourses, and institutions of sense
making (science, art, philosophy, etc.). Conceptions of ideality are expressions
of real commitmentsnotions of truth, beauty, the good, elaborated in historically specific contexts. The power of the concept, then, establishes that the
ideality of any matter is due to its singularity. Ideality expresses a rationality
germane to existent conditions. Absolute form takes stock of the unity of the
concept and reality expressed by a concrete form of rationality.
Now, Hegel glosses absolute method as absolute form quite dramatically
in the closing section of the Logic. Here again he argues that, as the universal
aspect of the idea, method is power. The language that Hegel uses, however,
might suggest that method is a figure of violence rather than a figure of power.
The method, Hegel writes,
is . . . to be acknowledged as the universal, internal and external mode, free of
restrictions, and as the absolutely infinite power [die schlechthin unendliche
Kraft] to which no object that may present itself as something external, removed from reason and independent of it, could offer resistance, or be of a
particular nature opposite to it, and could not be penetrated by it. It is therefore soul and substance, and nothing is conceived and known in its truth
unless completely subjugated [vollkommen unterworfen] to method; it is

17

18

Logics of Power, Logics of Violence

method proper to each and every fact because its activity is the concept
[Ttigkeit der Begriff ist] (2010, 737 [trans. mod.]; 1969c, 55152).

I have argued that the notion of absolute form is designed to rival any conception of form external to the real or the sensuous. Method is the philosophical
perspective that rises to a greater level of formality in accounting for the unity
of the concept and reality from the side of form. It is therefore the philosophical perspective that can give an account of the unity of concept and reality as
a singularity. Before elaborating upon why this establishes that method is a
figure of power rather than violence, it is helpful to turn to Hegels critique of
violence earlier in the Subjective Logic.
There are two moments in the Doctrine of the Concept in which Hegel
pursues a critique of violence: in the chapters on Mechanism and Teleology
and in the chapter on the Idea of Cognition.7 All three discussions are versions
of a critique of the logic of violence that results from an understanding of form
as external. The chapters on mechanism and teleology are two of three chapters on what Hegel calls Objectivity.8 The character of mechanism, Hegel
argues, is that every element in the mechanical relation or process remains
external (uerlich blieben). For Hegel, whatever the connection that obtains between the things combined, the connection remains one that is alien
[fremde] to them, that does not affect their nature (2010, 631; 1969c, 409).
Mechanism contains a functional center, which yields a law that the mechanical process follows (640ff; 423ff). The parts of a mechanical system are
replaceablethe parts of an engine, for example, can be replaced if they break
(Lampert 2011, 143). The relation between the center and the parts is thus one
of indifference. For this reason, Hegel argues that the law that the center
yieldsthe universalis a mere ought (Hegel 2010, 641; 1969c, 423). Relations not only among parts in the mechanical process but between objects in
a mechanical relation only strive toward the center. They are in no way
intrinsically related to the law that determines their value or worth from
beyond.
Hegel is not implying that inanimate objects have moral worth, but rather
that a mechanistic logic is intrinsically violent in not recognizing the significance of the part-whole relation. Violence, Hegel argues, is a feature of the fact

Roco Zambrana

that in the mechanical process singularity lacks the capacity for what is
communicated to it and is therefore shattered by it, for it is unable to constitute itself as subject in this universal, cannot make the latter its predicate
(2010, 639; 1969c, 420). In being a merely functional logic, parts are dispensable, void of all intrinsic value. A merely functional understanding of nature,
for example, is precisely what sustains nature as something to exploit without
understanding the impact that exploitation may have on a system as a whole.
Power becomes violence, Hegel writes, when power, an objective universality, is identical with the nature of the object, yet its determinateness or negativity is not the objects own immanent negative reflection according to which
the object is a singular (639; 421). Mechanism turns the power of any object
against itself, then. The process to which any object in a mechanical relation is
subjected is one that is indifferent to the object itself, but also to the process
itselfto the way in which any process implicitly pursues ends that go beyond
a merely functional logic.
This is why, surprisingly perhaps, real violence appears in the chapter on
teleology and culminates in the chapter on the idea of cognition.9 The most
important difference between mechanism and teleology is that the latter is
based on a notion of inherent function.10 Unlike mechanism, in teleology the
content becomes important. The relation among the parts and the whole is
a reciprocal relation yielding a unity that is reflected into itself, a unity that is
determined in and for itself and therefore a content (2010, 653; 1969c, 438).
Teleology is thus a candidate for understanding the thing, event, institution in
its singularity. When understood as external rather than internal purposiveness, however, teleology fails to be the appropriate logic for grasping the
part-whole relation germane to any singular thing, event, or process. In contrast to the externality distinctive of mechanism in which the external determinant is itself again just such another object, the pernicious externality of
teleology surfaces as a cause that indeed affects the nature of the object but
from beyond (652; 437).11 For Hegel, this is but a heightened version of the
violence of mechanism.
Initially, the problem with external purposiveness is that this relation
may be regarded as violence inasmuch as purpose appears of an entirely
different nature than the object (2010, 663; 1969c, 452). However, the real

19

20

Logics of Power, Logics of Violence

source of violence has to do with the way in which the end turns into the
means. Violence here is considered not only as the imposition of an external
end on an object. Rather, external purposiveness is violent when the end
becomes the means but can nevertheless shield itself from the violence done
to the object through the means. Hegel is here worried about the violent logic
that results from purposes that remain unscathed throughout the purposive
process. The capacity to remain unscathed reveals that the purposive process
is itself external not only to the object but to the means. The violence of
teleology therefore comes into view with Hegels gloss on the cunning of
reason entailed by the process itself. Hegel writes:
But that the purpose posits itself in a mediate connection with the object, and
between itself and this object inserts another object, may be regarded as the
cunning of reason. . . . But in this way, by sending an object as a means ahead of
it, it lets it do the slavish work of externality in its stead, abandons it to the wear
and tear while preserving itself behind it against mechanical violence (663;
452).

As Jay Lampert explains, the idea here is not that the cunning of reason uses
apparent violence to accomplish legitimate ends, but that there is real violence in a notion of reason that shields the end from the violence that it
perpetuates (2011, 148). The latter is an idea of reason that insofar as it remains
unscathed within the purposive process, it is external not only to the object
that it has transformed into a mere means. It is external to the end itself that
has become a means in the object. For Hegel, this is nothing but the truth of
the mechanical process (Hegel 2010, 663; 1969c, 452). There is no genuine
relation between part and whole, since the parts (the object, the means, the
ends) are sacrificed to an alien whole (the purposive process, the cunning of
reason). As Lampert succinctly puts it, ultimately, it is not just purposes that
do violence to objects; teleology does violence to purposes (150). The point
here is that Hegel calls into question the hierarchy between ends and means.
In Lamperts reformulation of Hegels example, the decay of the stone in a
house amounts to urban decay which in turn destroys the purpose of communal living. When the stone or an urban space is understood as subservient to

Roco Zambrana

the end of living in community or vice versa, the cunning of reason is merely
the violence of external rationality.
Teleology proper, according to Hegel, is not a means-ends relation per se.
It is rather the structure of return of internal purposiveness (Hegel 2010, 667;
1969c, 459). Such return, Hegel writes, requires using no violence against the
object, no reinforcement against it. It is nonviolent in being the self-reflected
negativity of the purposive process itselfthe return of an end or, better
stated, the development of an end through its self-negation as an end into
means and the self-negation of the means in an end (667; 459). The violence of
an end over the means in the object is a self-inflicted violence and vice versa.
The end of achieving equality by eliminating all opposition in a political
community not only does violence to the objectthe dead in the Terror, for
examplebut it does violence to the end of equality itself.12 The purposive
process as a whole must accordingly be understood in light of the inseparability of
means and ends. The ends become means just as means actualize ends. For this
reason, the end relation cannot refer the activity of reason unscathed in the
purposive process. Rather, the end relation is the reciprocal relation of a concrete
form of rationality in which ends are both determined by and determine means,
and vice versa. Violent teleology, Lampert suggests, is just what suffers violence
at the hands of nonviolent teleology (152). Teleology proper is the sublation of
externality, where externality means an end or a means beyond the object. Nonviolent teleology follows the power of the concept.
Hegels unique understanding of teleology is crucial to his notion of the
absolute idea, which he glosses as the unity of the theoretical and the practical
(2010, 735; 1969c, 548).13 The chapter on the Idea of Cognition examines the
violence of a pernicious teleology implicit in Kants theoretical and practical
philosophy.14 The problem with the theoretical idea is that the concept stands
over against an empirical reality that is beyond epistemic reach. Kant sets out
to give an account of the objectivity of epistemic conditions to be applied to
what is given in sensation, to an other that appears as a given. The project of
a transcendental deduction, then, is one of bridging the gap between two
independent orders by overcoming the ideas mere subjectivity, that is, by
establishing the objectivity of cognition. However, on this model, knowledge
remains knowledge of the activity of reflective positing, of transcendental

21

22

Logics of Power, Logics of Violence

conditions, and therefore it does not extend to the thing itselfto reality or
determinateness (2010, 728; 1969c, 540). The contradiction here is that theoretical cognition strives to know a truth that it itself has named unknowable.
The unknowable is considered the true.
With the practical idea we encounter the inverse problem. Practical cognition attempts to bridge the gap between the idea and reality by establishing
the objectivity of willing. Yet the idea of the good that drives the will to its
actualization is not in itself realizable, since it is itself an absolute end
confronted with a world that it takes to be a fundamental limitation. The good
that the will is driven to realize is in itself the objective, Hegel says, and
reality must receive its true being through the ends of the good (2010, 732;
1969c, 54546). The contradiction here is that willing is said to be the source of
objectivity in seeking to realize itself in the world. Yet it is equally fully limited
by reality, because it can never bring about its endthe goodin full. The
postulates of practical reason make morality impossible, since they establish
conditions for the highest good (God, immortality, so on) beyond experience.
The authority of morality must be established in volition, but Kant ends up
merely appealing to a good beyond being.
The theoretical and practical ideas by themselves, then, are one-sided, possessing the idea itself only as a sought-for-beyond and unattained goal; each,
therefore, is a synthesis of endeavor, and an unattained goal (2010, 735; 1969c, 548).
The idea of the true and the good are mere externalities. They represent ends that
cannot be actualized, because their authority derives from their absolute independence from reality/sensuousness. The problem here, however, is not that the
determination is frustrated by the assumption that concept and reality are of
different ontological orders. Rather, the problem is that the true and the good are
impositions of form over against reality/sensuousness. This is a logic of violence
because the ends of reason override the authority of the sensuous particularity of
the object or the singularity of need in the ethical situation.15 In contrast, Hegel
argues that as absolute, the idea is the unity of the theoretical and the practical, which he understands as the unity of the concept and reality/sensuousness that finds its ground in the concept (734, 735; 548). Such ground is more
precisely the concept as absolute form, which is crucial to Hegels notion of
method.

Roco Zambrana

At this point, we are in a position to read the problematic passage on

method that I began to consider previously. Recall that the passage was
problematic in characterizing method as free of restrictions, as the absolutely infinite power to which no object . . . could offer resistance . . . could not
be penetrated by it (2010, 737; 1969c, 55152). That nothing is conceived or
known until it is subjugated to method speaks to the textbook interpretation of Hegel in which the power of the universalthe idea as methodis
nothing but the violence of reason. Although the language here suggests that
method is a figure of violence rather than power, I argue that it is consistent
with Hegels understanding of the power of the concept as the power of
matters themselves. The idea as method addresses two problems at once,
both of which specifically address the violence of externality that Hegel has
tracked in the earlier sections of the Subjective Logic. As a response to these
two problems, the idea as method is Hegels bold attempt to do justice to the
rationality of matters themselves.
First, the idea as method specifies the status of a philosophical account
that gives an account of the relation between concept and reality. Key here is
acknowledging that any such account inevitably works from the side of form
yet at the same time developing a notion of philosophy that does not privilege
the concept at the expense of reality. Hegels strategy is to elaborate a notion
of methodphilosophical reflectionthat contains the notion of absolute
form. As we saw previously, absolute form expresses the unity of concept and
reality from the side of form without affirming form over against reality. It is
with the figure of method that we get a sense of how the latter requirement is
actually met. Method is infinite power, since it is the power of the idea in
accounting for its own activity. What does this mean?
Under the banner of absolute method, Hegel gives an account of the
account of the unity of concept and reality pursued in the Logic. In the last
instance, the Logic accounts for this unity in light of the failures of critical
philosophy.16 Indeed, method specifically counters the violence of the idea of
the true and the good. These figures of violence betray a notion of reason as
powerless. According to Hegel, Kant ultimately affirmed that the unknowable
is the true, that the unrealizable is the moral. If things in themselves are
unknowable, they are cognized irrespective of their sensuous particularity. If

23

24

Logics of Power, Logics of Violence

contradiction is the ultimate test of morality, then the need of an individual is

but an occasion for obedience to the authority of the moral law.17 Method
accounts for this violence as a failure to grasp the inseparability of cognition/
willing and reality/sensuousness.18 Rather than philosophical perspective external to reality/sensuousness, then, method gives an account of the consequences of a philosophical reflection that does not consider its own status. It
points out the fact that philosophy must apply the philosophical problems
germane to specifying the relation between concept and reality to itself.
This hypercritical moment at the end of the Logic leads to the second
problem that method is designed to address. Rather than a conception of
reason that accomplishes its ends unscathed, method is the infinite power
that considers matters according to their singularity. Indeed, absolute
method is the philosophical perspective that can give an account of the unity
of concept and reality as a singularity. Method rivals the violence germane to
a conception of rationality that occludes the fact that concrete matters exhibit their own rationality. Matters are ends in themselves, according to
Hegel. They have the power to move, to become what they are, to exhibit a
universality based on their particularityon particular conditions that exceed them yet that produce them in the first place. Everything is conceived
and known in its truth when subjugated to method, then, insofar as the thing
is understood in terms of its singularityas the unity of concept and reality
expressed by it as a concrete form of rationality. In sum, absolute method is
absolute because it develops a notion of reason that does justice to the rationality of matters themselves by being self-aware of the fact that it itself is the
work of reason.
Hegels conception of the power of reason is thus the very opposite of the
violent logic of an externality. It is specifically designed to rival any conception
of law or purposive process in which reason remains unscathed throughout
the unfolding of matters themselves. Read this way, Arendt would have found
an unlikely ally in Hegel. She would have noticed that the tremendous power
of the negative does not rest on the philosophical prejudice that that evil is
nothing more than a privative modus of the good. The good of negation, for
Hegel, is nothing but the self-articulation of matters themselves. Negation is
the key to understanding things themselves as ends in themselves, because it

Roco Zambrana

clarifies why the universality that matters bear in their singularity depends on
particular conditions at hand. She would have thus realized that she shares
with Hegel the thought that getting clear on the distinction between power
and violence is necessary because it allows us to assess phenomena in their
singularity. Such distinction, according to Arendt and Hegel, allows us to
trace the violence of an abstraction that draws its legitimacy and imposes its
authority from beyond matters themselves.

NOTES

Thanks to Matthew Congdon and Mara del Rosario Acosta for helpful comments on this
essay. I am especially grateful for Mara del Rosarios inspiring work on Hegel and the many
formative conversations we have shared about Hegel and other matters.
1. See Bernstein (2003).
2. He continues: Just as it has been called free power, it could also be called free love and
boundless blessedness, for it relates to that which is distinct from it as to itself; in it, it has
returned to itself.
3. The notion of organism, for example, is necessarily pregnant with content other than
reference to itself. In order to be universal, universal conceptsgeneramust be differentiated into particular determinationsspecies. The genus organism is differentiated into
the species animal, plant, or single-celled life form. Through this self-related negativitythe
division implied by the differentia that differentiates the genus into specieswe are speaking of the being-for-self of this singular. See Hegel (2010, 530ff; 1969d, 274ff).
4. Cf. Adorno 1973, where he argues that Hegels notion of the concept does violence to the
nonidentical. Against Hegel, he develops the preponderance of the object thesis: any concept necessarily depends on that which is wholly other to it. Adorno not only misreads
Hegel but also falls back on the Kantian dualism of appearances and things in themselves
that Hegel is arguing is intrinsically violent.
5. Method is the self-knowing idea (1969d, 551).
6. A philosophical account of intelligibility requires a real exposition of nature, self, or
society if it is going to be a philosophy of nature, a philosophical psychology, or a political
philosophy. The Logic therefore ends by externalizing itself into nature. In less-awkward
language, philosophy can only speak of nature by referring to actual scientific discourses.
7. See also: Violence [Gewalt] is the appearance of power [Macht], or power as external (406,
501).
8. The chapters on objectivity are expositions of the explanatory purport of logics of nature.
See Kreines (2004; 2008).

25

26

Logics of Power, Logics of Violence

9. See Lampert (2011).

10. This discussion is a critique of Kants argument for a regulative understanding of teleology
in the Critique of Judgment. See Hegel (2010, 654ff, esp. 656; 1969d, 440ff, esp. 444).
11. Hegel argues that external purposiveness implies an extramundane intelligence, thereby
necessarily attributing the self-determination of things themselves to a higher being, to an
author of the nature of things themselves (2010, 652; 1969d, 437).
12. See Hegels discussion of the French Revolution and the Terror (1977) and Comay (2010).
13. For a full account of these sections, see Zambrana (2010 and under review).
14. See Comay (2010) for Hegels critique of Kant in terms of violence.
15. See note 4. See Hegels The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate (1971; 1969a) for a critique of
Kantian morality on the basis of life and love in which need figures prominently. See also
Bernstein (2003).
16. The Logic accounts for the unity of concept and reality through an immanent critique of
realism, foundationalism, and transcendental idealism. See Zambrana (2010 and under
review).
17. See Bernstein (2003, 410).
18. See Rose (1981), especially chapters six and seven, for an incisive account of the relation
between Hegels speculative logic and social theory. Rose argues that method grasps the
disunity of concept and reality expressed by bourgeois law and property relations. In other
words, the unity of concept and reality makes possible understanding the violent gap
distinctive of modernity.
REFERENCES

Adorno, T. W. 1973. Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: Seabury Press.
Arendt, Hannah. 1969. On Violence. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Bernstein, Jay. 2001. Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
. 2003. Love and Law: Hegels Critique of Morality. Social Research 70, no. 2: 393432.
Comay, Rebecca. 2010. Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution. Palo Alto: Stanford
University Press.
Hegel, G. W. F. 1969a. Werke in zwanzig Bnden. Vol. 1, Der Geist des Christentums und sein
Schicksal, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp Verlag.
. 1969b. Werke in zwanzig Bnden. Vol. 3, Phnomenologie des Geistes, ed. Eva
Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
. 1969c. Werke in zwanzig Bnden. Vol. 5, Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. Eva Moldenhauer
and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
. 1969d. Werke in zwanzig Bnden. Vol. 6, Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. Eva Moldenhauer
and Karl Markus Michel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
. 1971. Spirit of Christianity and its Fate, trans. T. M. Konx. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.

Roco Zambrana

. 1977. Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

. 2010. The Science of Logic. trans. and ed. George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kreines, James. 2004. Hegels Critique of Pure Mechanism and the Philosophical Appeal of the
Logic Project. European Journal of Philosophy 12, no. 1: 3874.
. 2008. The Logic of Life: Hegels Philosophical Defense of Teleological Explanation of
Living Beings. In The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and 19th Century Philosophy, ed.
Frederick C. Beiser, 34477. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lampert, Jay. 2011. Violent and Nonviolent Teleology in Hegels Science of Logic. In Person, Being,
& History: Essays in Honor of Kenneth L. Schmitz, ed. Michael Baur and Robert Wood,
14055. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.
Pippin, Robert. 2010. Hegels Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rose, Gillain. 1981. Hegel Contra Sociology. London: Humanities Press.
Zambrana, Roco. 2010. Hegels Hyperbolic Formalism. Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great
Britain 61: 10730.
. 2013. Hegels Theory of Determinacy, under review.

27