All of Life is Communion

“It is the nature of humanity to press onward to agreement with others; human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds. The anti-human, the merely animal, consists in staying within the sphere of feeling, and being able to communicate only at that level.” – G.W.F. Hegel

I only wanted Truth to appear; why was this so very difficult?

I remember being eight years-old in third grade when Kung Fu Panda 2 came out. A friend of mine, Austin, approached me, “Have you seen it yet?” he said, nearly out of breath. “I saw it yesterday!” I exclaimed, eager to vindicate myself as cool enough to have watched the movie. Austin squinted his eyes, “If you saw it then— what happens right after Po rescues the Furious Five?”. I hesitated thinking to myself, is he thinking about the resolution of the scene or like, what literally happens when they are freed? I decided to go with the latter. “They start fighting Lord Shen!” “You didn’t watch Kung Fu Panda!”, his words tore into my soul, “That’s in the trailer, anyone would know that!”. 

My thoughts became rapid. What should I say? He doesn’t believe me, but I literally saw it yesterday. I tried telling him that the question was ambiguous (obviously lacking though in my articulative capacity as an eight year-old), leading me to try proving myself by recounting other scenes to no avail. From his ambiguous question, Austin had denied me recognition as a valuable human being, and in retaliation, I denied him. I accused him of not seeing Kung Fu Panda 2, while openly referencing different scenes to other kids just loud enough that he could hear.

I remember all these days quite fondly. The time of childhood where everything is transfigured alight. It composes the first learned moments of what will be everyday: how to be yourself with others, how to verify certain claims, when and how to effectively disagree with others, and how to reconcile differences.

Another day of recess ended and we both bolted to the water fountain. As things are in third grade, Austin identified himself as the fast one. So, when I got to the water fountain first, I can recall something he kept telling me— I wasn’t trying by the way.

It is telling about what our society values, that the go-to excuse is to say ‘I wasn’t trying anyway‘ (Something I especially witnessed throughout school, similar to the fear of being found stupid). We may have similar anxieties in being questioned, especially about those beliefs or thoughts we hold near and dear, considered to be essential to our identity. Who among us can have our essential identity and way of life questioned, even indirectly, without feeling at least slightly provoked? I think the only honest response, at least to oneself when being called stupid is: ‘you know what, maybe you’re right, I am stupid, and that’s ok.’ Similarly: ‘You know what? Maybe I’m not as fast as I thought and should practice running more.’ After all, what is wrong with being stupid? Being slow? Is identifying something not the first step towards transcending it?

Although all these anecdotes took place in childhood, on a nearly day to day basis do I still perceive these kinds of interactions, most of all in myself. I take it that these moments in life where the self-image and another’s image of oneself are in conflict, where our defensive guard is flared up, originate from a fear of vulnerability, a fear of either being considered as (or even truly being) stupid or slow.

This fear of vulnerability is itself a conditioned attitude from a distorted emotional relationship with risk or error, best understood as trauma; a condition where making mistakes is bad instead of an opportunity for learning (itself perhaps a result of heavy negative-reinforcement). 

Analogously, it is this feedback loop of trauma and fear that Kierkegaard calls despair, the inhibition to become a fully realized human self. It was this very inhibition that he feared was becoming increasingly common with the rapid decay of cultural and religious values downstream of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution. For him, the most dangerous kind of despair was one in which it lingered undetected— someone in despair without even knowing it, and thereby relegated as an invisible victim to this cycle.

“No, despair [trauma] is verily not something which appears in the young, something out of which one grows as a matter of course… – It overlooks the fact that the majority of men do never really manage in their whole life to be more than they were in childhood and youth, namely, immediacy with the addition of a little dose of self-reflection.” – S. A. Kierkegaard

“The fool who persists in his folly shall become a wise man.” – William Blake

The fear of being vulnerable may coalesce into the attitude known as dogmatism. Have you ever asked someone a question, to be responded to with a ‘cuz’? Dogmatism is this natural brushing off, a kind of dismissiveness toward scrutiny.

This is why Hegel describes dogmatism as “…nothing else but the opinion that the True […] is immediately known.” Hegel goes on to say that justifications like, ‘Cuz’ or among parents, ‘Because I said so’ or any other similar answer constitute the weakest justifications precisely because they are the most immediate (unmediated). For the reason that ‘Because I said so’ is immediate, it is equally applicable to any possible claim. 

Justifications get their value from being mediated or determinate i.e. giving reasons for particular claims over other particular claims— a justification that can be used both to prove and disprove God is useless for the reason that it is can equally be applied to either side.

Dogmatism is this same attitude that asks why they should believe in God with a time limit of three minutes (something I have been challenged to do), or similarly, considers only what is immediately visible (in sense-perception) to be real, both because it takes what is True to be demonstrated as True immediately, and more ironically, having made up one’s mind before any justifications are given, it takes whatever its default beliefs are (whatever is most immediate), as already True.

How then am I to make sense of Austin telling me I didn’t watch Kung Fu Panda 2? Recollecting what happened, I stated that I did watch the movie, a claim I was held accountable for by his criterion, which I failed to meet, with the consequence of any further opportunity to communicate shut down by his “You did not watch it!”.

In the experience of encountering something that appears to be alien to oneself, ie. the false or the wrong, Hegel distinguishes two possible attitudes. The first attitude is one which asks: Why bother with the false? It views whatever content that is alien to itself with a purely negative gaze. At its most vulgar, it refutes things by calling them stupid or slow, and at its best, it merely knows how to refute and destroy whatever is opposed to it. Hegel fleshes this out, “That something is not the case, is merely a negative insight, a dead end which does not lead to a new content beyond itself.” It is “… the vanity of its own knowing”, a scrutiny that gloats at its capacity to raze every argument it comes across. Hegel terms it either as the French-Enlightenment term for “argumentation”, Raisonnement, or more lucidly, as abstract negation¹.

That the vast history of philosophy until him, as well as a fair amount of ordinary communication, both tragically take the shape of abstract negation, is a bold interpretive claim that Hegel commits his entire career to healing. It is certainly easy to see how my interaction with Austin was so unsatisfying as it was doomed by this same attitude.

Even for circles (e.g. political) with more significant arguments to make, I must ask: have you ever witnessed an argument that ended in one side going, you know what that’s a good point, you’re right. It is in noticing the poverty of these kinds of interactions that Hegel writes, “It is not difficult to see that the way of asserting a proposition, adducing reasons for it, and in the same way refuting its opposite by reasons, is not the form in which truth can appear.”

His reasoning follows thusly, “[T]ruth does not lie in this partly narrative exposition, and is therefore just as little refuted by asserting the contrary, by calling to mind and recounting conventional ideas, as if they were established and familiar truths, or by dishing up something new with the assurance that it comes from the shrine of inner divine intuition.” By the assurance coming from some inner divine intuition, Hegel is commenting on the equally destitute method of responding, for example, to the child who is critical of their families faith with ‘just have more faith honey‘, or saying to anyone, ‘Be a good person’. He terms these kinds of responses as bare assurances and underscores their immediacy— One bare assurance is [worth] just as much as another.

What precisely was it then in my interaction with Austin where the breakdown in communication occurred? I take it that disregarding the emotional insecurity or trauma underlying his particular reactions, the mutual dissatisfaction of the interaction consisted in being held to a standard that was not my own. The fundamental flaw of abstract negation consists in its one-sidedness, its “partly narrative exposition”, it is the inability to refute another on their own terms.

In essence, it is a failure to undertake another’s point of view as just as significant to one’s own, a failure I shall be the first to admit being guilty of. Hegel describes this failure as “…usually the first reaction on the part of [oneself’s] knowing to something unfamiliar; it resists it in order to save its own freedom [from vulnerability] and its own insight, its own authority (for this is the guise in which what is newly encountered first appears), and to get rid of the appearance that something has been learned and the sort of shame this is supposed to involve”.

It is here the second attitude is revealed. If abstract negation sees not-me in everything it disagrees with, all disagreement as merely false, then the second attitude, determinate [mediated] negation, sees not-not-me (the mediated form of saying itself) in everything it comes across, whether or not it agrees or disagrees.

If the failure of abstract negation is in failing to see anything positive or reasonable in another, then the success of determinate negation is in fully recognizing the validity, the positivity in everything, and taking it completely seriously— in my opinion, it is treating every question as though it honestly is one’s own. This methodology is known as the immanent critique.

For Hegel, “The Truth is the Whole”, that is, the Truth is a totality, present in everything, albeit present in different moments for each thing. The old man can see himself in the baby as his past, and the baby can see the old man as his future. So is it the same with the evolution and history of thinking, Philosophy. The religious person may see their own inquiries in the skeptic, and the skeptic likewise may see their own prior uncritical nature (or future faith) in the religious person. What is characteristic of Love is that they may all see themselves in one-another. To love one another, they must treat each other as they would have treated their past selves, earnestly trying to sort out claims together.

Anyone who says anything has a reason for saying it. This is a reason that must be loved, understood, all the more intimately. This is what it means to walk the extra mile. Though there is this implicit reason behind anyone uttering anything, it is only determinate negation or Love that fully treats and understands this as explicit. I believe the capacity to see oneself in everyone is a key insight that emerges throughout the history of religion, the pinnacle of which I take to be Christianity (for reasons explored here). 

Not seeing another’s argument as one’s own not only makes disagreements dissatisfying to both parties involved; more fatally, denying others the ability to ever successfully hold you accountable precludes you from all growth. It is the eminent question: if I was wrong (or not going about something in the best way), how would I find out?²

This topic of communication is dear to me as I believe it to be the greatest, if not one of the greatest obstacles to loving one another as we love ourselves— to unconsciously refuse to see something from another’s point of view out of fear of being wrong. I have noticed that this fear presents a kind of despair, an inhibition to become oneself, especially so the older one gets with it becoming easier to convince oneself that one is done with learning. (If you’ve ever tried to convince an older person of something you know what I mean). If for nothing else, I have sought to delineate this obstacle of dogmatism, unconscious or not, as to better be able to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

I juxtapose this dogmatism & fear with the symbol of Communion, those intimate relations to others we depend upon for our identity. Communion is the act of putting one’s defensive guard down, and with vulnerability, eating, walking, and even worshipping together. In essence, Communion is reciprocal Love. It is not refuting an alien point of view through opposing reasons, but rather, it is seeing and taking up the ‘alien’ position as one’s own (even if a past self) and merely developing it to its logical (or existential) conclusion which may or may not be different.

For the reason that our very identity depends upon the vital accountability of others, dismissing or mistreating another’s earnest questions or inquiry is really denying who you really are, specifically in a way that haunts. Misanthropy, if anything, is a denial of oneself.

Ironically, I especially see this mistreatment in comparative religion (& reasonably so, religious-status being one of the most essential and therefore sensitive elements to identities), where many religious, in my own experience, Christians, are seldom willing to entertain the honest scrutiny of others towards their religion, something I take to be a lack of faith, & again, a fear of vulnerability, a fear of being wrong or stupid. St. Augustine comments on this phenomenon, “How can we speak unlovingly about the Trinity?”

The very essence of Faith consists in maintaining itself in the face of scrutiny or desolation. This itself is rooted in the idea that anything genuinely True will, when asked to give an account of itself, will vindicate itself as determinately True, will give a lucid pathway leading to itself from the asker’s point of view³. It goes hand in hand with a kind of hope that William Blake describes of why we would ever attempt to articulate what we believe to be true to anyone, “Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d.”

Hegel’s enduring achievement was in undertaking the immense labor of seriously and charitably engaging with the entire history of philosophy, the history of why’s, which he arranged in the format of a Phenomenology, the gradual emergence of what was implicitly guiding and governing us all along, the Truth, increasingly revealed and made more explicit. 

With Austin, not only was being held to a one-sided criterion a failure in communication, but more significantly, the implosion of the interaction began with his accusation of “You didn’t watch Kung Fu Panda”. It is to entirely cut off any way of relating to one-another to say this, and in more extreme examples this takes the shape of “I am never talking to you again!”, or “I will never forgive you!”. Anyone who has an estranged family member will know the pain in these words. I take it that one of the pragmatic goals of Christianity is to avoid this social rupture with, for instance, the prayer “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. This kind of prayer makes it far easier to maintain the maturity and healing power of humility in the face of any perceived wrongdoing.

In the cases where one truly does have a grievance against another, I have witnessed the most pragmatic way to approach this in a teaching from Christ: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.”⁴ In essence, honestly confess grievance. Where the friend does not give credence to your grievance it is further said, bring a few witnesses to validate what one is saying. And if that does nothing again? Simply leave them be and move on.

What happens when we are the wrongdoing? A prominent example may be seen in intrusive thoughts (you’re stupid or slow), which take the shape of abstract negation. The best attitude towards them is what I find to be determinate negation or Love, of charitably accepting the thoughts as coming from some place of reality which is ok. Perhaps such intrusive thoughts come from an afraid part of oneself that will only grow more afraid if you get upset at them for having the thoughts. Helpful “intrusive” thoughts that have been loved, validated, and understood then reconcile the reason for why one is stupid with, pragmatically what striving one may abide with in order to improve oneself; or else, recognition that one isn’t what one fears one is.

The distorted relationship to mistakes— fear of error, the fear of making mistakes, turns out to actually be fear of the Truth, the fear of growth. I may be stupid & slow and that is ok as I am trying. How else would I grow from such potential realities? Making a mistake, unwittingly being a certain way (even a negative way) is the essential moment in learning and developing. Internalizing this negation, this experience of error is accepting Life. This is one reason for why the Crucifixion is so central in Christianity. It is the only means for Resurrection! Hegel describes this vividly-

But the Life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself.

Communion is the precondition for the most significant task of life: becoming yourself. Our implicit individual identity may only be fully realized or made explicit through our relations with others, and it is only Communion that washes away the gradual & seasonal build-up of muck that clogs the pipes of Love. Communion is the attitude towards yourself that allows you to love others & an attitude towards others that allows you to love yourself.

That battle with Austin so long ago slowly served as a spark to my own budding fascination with how to relate to others, which is a question I would like to leave with you my dear reader— how do you relate to others? What does your Communion look like? To this day one attitude stands firm in my mind, 

“For whereas I was free as to all, I made myself the servant of all, that I might gain the more.

And I became to the Jews, a Jew, that I might gain the Jews …

To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might save all.”

All Hegel quotes can be located in the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit; Kierkegaard’s is from ‘The Sickness unto Death’, St. Augustine’s from the Confessions, & William Blake’s from ‘The Proverbs of Hell’.

Here are some more passages from Hegel’s Phenomenology which shed sublime light on communication:

“Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood. The commonest way in which we deceive either ourselves or others about understanding is by assuming something as familiar, and accepting it on that account; with all its pros and cons, such knowing never gets anywhere, and it knows not why. Subject and object, God, Nature, Understanding, sensibility, and so on, are uncritically taken for granted as familiar, established as valid, and made into fixed points for starting and stopping. While these remain unmoved, the knowing activity goes back and forth between them, thus moving only at their surface…” (PG 31)

For the same reason Goethe also says: Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.

“… the individual has the right to demand that Science [Wissenschaft] should at least provide him with the ladder to this standpoint [of the ‘correct’ position on a matter], should show him this standpoint within himself.” (PG 26) – It is sublime to put this next to this passage, “It is this coming to be of Science as such or of knowledge, that is described in this Phenomenology of Spirit.” (PG 27)

“The study of philosophy is as much hindered by the conceit that will not argue, as it is by Raisonnement [A rich French term that has, in Hegel’s time, heavy connotations of a method that merely deconstructs an argument]. This conceit relies on truths which are taken for granted and which it sees no need to re-examine; it just lays them down, and believes it is entitled to assert them, as well as to judge and pass sentence by appealing to them.” (PG 67)

1. In Hegel’s terminology, something that is abstract is interchangeable with the immediate. ↩︎
2. This is actually one major element of Hegel’s critique of Kant’s project: that Kant doesn’t provide an account for how representations (Vorstellungen) faithfully represent what they are a representing of (and therefore are indeterminate or meaningless). Brandom lucidly renders this criterion that Kant fails to meet as the Intelligibility of Error condition (IEC).
   
   Analogically, one of the greatest gifts in life is knowing precisely how we are wrong, such that when we are inevitably wrong— or at least not to the best of our ability, loving our neighbor as ourself, or best fulfilling whatever our overarching goal is— we may grow from such a revelation of error as these determinate lessons pave the life-long journey into becoming the Wise Man, the Holy Man. Taking this up consciously is all the more efficacious.
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3. I take it that one of the conditions of something being True, is that it may give an account of itself as True from any other’s point of view. Hegel vindicates Truth as not merely a static value, yet rather an unfolding process in which history is embroiled. His Phenomenology of Spirit, if anything, is his attempt to recapitulate the Truth as emerging from the most agreeable and basic position whatsoever, which is that of sense-certainty, i.e. the idea that what I can see, hear, taste, and touch, what I can sense is all that is certain. He builds from this most fundamental conception of epistemology to a historical dialogue between almost every conception of subjective epistemological development, and of every conception of objective metaphysical development, as well as their interplay constituting political history, and the development of cultures and religions.
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4. Matthew 18:15 ↩︎