Hegel, Vedanta, Dialectics, and Emptiness
( Essay heavily influenced by the Philosophy of Nishida Kitaro)
Western philosophy, both of the realist/empiricist (even materialist) and idealist/subjectivist varieties has been prey to an abstractism, if in different guises.
To “look at the world objectively”, which is usually taken as the point of departure for the empirical sciences is already assuming the position of a self (an intellectual subject) standing outside of the world it purports to describe.
This may, and does have immense practical value to be sure, but it is unreflective of the world as the world. To ‘take the world’s point of view” (to be objective) is already an abstraction from the real world which is present and must account for both the subjective and objective.
Hegel’s dialectical view of the World, as the unfolding of the reason of the World Spirit goes far in ameliorating the seeming fracture (by imputing a subjectivity to the world process in the Spirit). This Great Subject- the World Spirit (or Self) predominates and negates the individual selves by the overpowering force of reason, which tricks the individual will to act in accordance with it’s (the Spirit’s) will. This philosophy accords very well with the Vedanta view where the supreme universal, Brahman, both immanent and transcendent to the individual self attains it’s Self-realisation (Atman) through the negation of the limited individual self (the supreme Brahman predominates, though it lies at the root of the individual self).
Leaving aside the purely religious view though, a philosophical worldview must be able to treat the world as simultaneously subjective and objective since this is the reality of the world. For Hegel as well as Vedanta, the Universal Will forms the kernel of the individual will and manipulates, or works through the individual – eventually realising itself through the negation of the individual.
Still, we have here, albeit in a more subtle form, the problem of the accounting for the relationship of ‘world’ to ‘self’ in a view of the real world that embraces both. Hegel’s dialectic process seems to overcome the difficulty by making of the World Spirit the true Subject and the universal process as a continuity of will lying beneath the individual and eventually negating it.
To give an account of a world assumed to contain individuals with ‘free will’ it needs to be able to include their independence (not manipulated by a higher subjective will) in the universal. In other words, the unfolding of the universal must have the absolute independence of individual wills as part of it’s process. This is sounds like a paradox; independent individual wills must assert their independence by being individual, and yet such individuals must be included in the Real World.
Therefore, the universal process cannot be purely dialectical if we are to posit such independent wills. The universal will must include it’s own negation as part of itself.
This means that in the universal there is a fundamental contradiction that does not proceed to synthesis (in Hegelian terms); a fundamental contradiction between multiple individual wills, between the independence of individuals and their world. This is a description of the Real World. The World unfolds itself in the co-determination of countless individuals. Therefore, the universal root (Reality) from which both the individual selves possessed of independent wills and the objective world they each encounter/push against with their will ( remit of dialectical understanding) can be neither subjective nor objective. It is absolutely empty of dualistic determinations. Emptiness or Undifferentiated or Boundless.