Life as the Immediate Idea
Chapter 7 explores Hegel’s chapter on “Life,” focusing on the discussion of logical life as “original judgment.” It argues that the Idea must be understood in two senses: as ground and as “doubled.” Returning to a passage from Faith and Knowledge, this chapter argues that the doubling of the Idea is Hegel’s attempt to replace Kant’s doctrine of the two stems of knowledge, where life and cognition take the place of intuitions and concepts. To understand how this works, this chapter provides a detailed account of Hegel’s chapter on “Life,” suggesting that it provides an a priori schema that at once enables and constrains the activities of self-conscious cognition. The three processes of logical life—corporeality (Leiblichkeit), externality (Äußerlichkeit), and genus (Gattung)—are interpreted as three a priori form-constraints presupposed by the actualization of self-conscious cognition—three processes without which cognition would be “empty,” or without actuality.