Autor: Schmitz, Kenneth L.

Buch: The Gift: Creation

Titel: The Gift: Creation

Stichwort: Schöpfung - Geschenk; vom einfach Gegebenen zur Selbst-Gabe (Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx); Hegel: Begehren ist wesentlich Selbst-Begehren; Unmöglichkeit eines Geschenkes an sich selbst

Kurzinhalt: The absolute release of the given that characterizes the earlier outlook ("Simply given") has been transferred to the absolute power of the transforming agency ("man alone")... we can't really give anything to ourselves.

Textausschnitt: 41a At the beginning of the nineteenth century a radical shift from the empiricist-phenomenalist epistemology brought with it a drastic revision in the meaning of evidence. Thus, according to Hegel, nothing is simply given; everything is the result of a self-giving carried through from first to last by Absolute Spirit (Geist). In this sense, everything is self-given. The anthropocentric turn taken immediately after Hegel by Feuerbach, Marx and others gave rise to humanisms in which the self at the root of the self-given was humanity itself, either as a totality (mankind) or as a part (a nation, or a class, or especially significant individuals). Liberal belief in progress and socialist faith in revolutionary praxis could both become humanist ideals once it was assumed that the existing social order has been brought about solely by the same sort of agency as modern men possess; so that what has been made by that agency alone is able to be improved upon or destroyed and remade by it alone.1 This is the prinicple of human autonomy that is shared by liberal and revolutionary ideologies alike. Their differences are important, to be sure; for they disagree about the type of man who will be the agent for all of mankind, and they disagree over what means are to be used to accomplish the goal. Nevertheless, in at least one important aspect, they share a trait already present in the earlier sense of the given; for the cast of mind is still emphatically oriented towards the future, towards strictly human possibilities and towards means with which man is fully competent. The absolute release of the given that characterizes the earlier outlook ("Simply given") has been transferred to the absolute power of the transforming agency ("man alone"). This is the root of the justification of the claims made for both liberal progress and revolutionary action. But although these two anthropomorphic forms of self-givenness are the most effective today, Hegel has put the issue of self-givenness with greater power and comprehension; for in addition to the secular sphere which includes human discourse and action along with natural processes, he has claimed to sublate into a single all-embracing process of self-activity the religious sphere of divine action and discourse as well. (Fs)

43a We might ask whether such self-activity ought to be characterized as self-giving? It seems that the terms "self-giving" and "self-given" are somewhat forced. Perhaps that is why many of us react with misgiving when an advertiser urges us "to give yourself the best," by which is meant: "Buy something you don't really need." But after all of the word-magic is over, buying is simply not giving, nor is taking possession receiving. Perhaps the huckster is counting on an old amalgam of greed and the attractiveness of giving and receiving. The magic spell is broken once we realize that we can't really give anything to ourselves. If the gift we receive is wholly at our command and within our power, it is not in any strict sense a gift. In his analysis of desire Hegel insists that the self and not the object desired is the primary term of desire, so that all desire is desire of self, precisely, the self as satisfied.2 And he characterizes self-desire and the activity which strives for self-satisfaction as a struggle to take possession of another. In his general articulation of the process of absolute self-determination he does not characterize it as a "self-giving," but appeals to other categories of action, viz., to positing, self-causation and self-determination. Through these categories he seeks to bring to discourse the movement of reality understood as a process of absolute self-determination, and to express that process as a fully coherent and adequate system of conceptual knowledge.3 Now to talk the language of self-determination is not to talk the language of gift, for to give a gift properly speaking is neither to posit oneself nor to determine oneself in the articulation of a system; it is to embark upon an originative activity that is radically non-systematic. (Fs)