II. Hegel on external and internal purposiveness

Following Kant, Hegel entertains two accounts of purposiveness: internal and external purposiveness. Whereas the teleology chapter focuses foremost on what Hegel calls external purposiveness, the following chapter on the Idea of Life deals with the structures of internal purposiveness.

Hegel's conception of external purposiveness exemplifies a structure according to which the purpose is external to the object that is the product of purposive activity. There are three structural features that characterize external purposiveness: a subjective purpose, a means, and a realized purpose. According to this conception, purpose is an initially subjective phenomenon, in that it is bound to a subject, and it is mediated by a means in order to be realized as an object. The production of artefacts by intentional subjects for example does illustrate this structure of external purposiveness. Take a sword. It is a product created in a forging process initiated by a subject's activity. The final product completes the process of purposive activity. In fact, as examples of purposive products of external purposiveness, Hegel repeatedly takes up artefacts, such as a plough (WL: 663/12:166), a clock, or a house (WL: 666/12:169).

Note, however, that Hegel's conception of external purposiveness is not tantamount to a subjective-intentional model of purposiveness. There are more primitive forms of external purposiveness. Animals also instantiate structures of external purposiveness, for example in building houses or nests. Likewise, according to my reading, ‘subjective purpose’ is a notion entailing different kinds of subjectivity such as drives and needs but also wishes and, on a more sophisticated level, intentions. In the following, however, I only take examples from the most sophisticated case of external purposiveness, that is subjective-intentional purposiveness.

Now, throughout the teleology chapter, Hegel argues that subjective purpose remains a subjective phenomenon even though there are realizations of its subjective content. He claims that the product of purposive activity is not the objectified or realized purpose itself: ‘what we have is not an objective determination but a relative one, external to the object itself’ (WL: 666/12:168). To say that the subjective purpose is external to the object, to the product of purposive activity is nothing other than to say that its realization results in a product that is not itself the purpose. Take again the sword. First, the purpose to create the sword is not the sword itself. The purpose to create the sword originates rather in the need to defend oneself or to have a piece for exhibition, for example. The sword itself is a means. Second, the product is something different from the purposive activity itself, which was only a means to produce it. Third, the purposive form is only imposed on the material that is used to produce the sword. The material is not by itself purposive to produce the sword but only mechanical-chemical material. To put it another way: the stuff used to produce the sword does not exist because of its being purposive to the subjective purpose in question.

Thus, according to the conception of external purposiveness, purpose is characterized as ‘an external, subjective determination’ (WL: 666/12:169) and it remains such an external determination even though there are realizations of its subjective content. That is why Hegel calls this kind of purpose also ‘an ought’ (WL: 669/12:172), and therefore, it may be also called ‘the subjective model of purposive causality’.

According to the conception of internal purposiveness, by contrast, the purpose is internal to its product. Therefore, the purpose displays another relation to objectivity in general. This is immediately clear from the three features that characterize internal purposiveness: the living individual, the life-process and the genus. They reveal that the inner purpose determines its product from within: the realized product consists of sustaining itself due to its specific inner purposive organization (the living individual), by its assimilating relation to its environment (life-process), and by reproducing itself in terms of reproducing an entity of the same kind (the genus). Hegel takes an organism to be a product and process of internal purposiveness: an organism maintains itself through the beneficial organization of its members to each other, by transforming the environment in a way that is adequate to its needs and by reproducing offspring.

Hence, to say that purpose is internal to its product is to say that the product of the purpose is the purpose itself. First, the purpose of the preservation of the organism is the preservation of the organism itself. It is therefore essentially self-preservation. Second, the purpose is a product of a means-ends-relation of which it itself consists. The individual members of an organism are mutually purpose and means to each other and at the same time nothing else than the organism itself. Third, the purposive form of the organism is not imposed on it, but it is the very reason why the organism exists. According to this conception of purpose, the heart, for instance, exists because it is a means to sustain the organism.

Thus, according to internal purposiveness, the purpose ‘is the realized purpose in which the side of being a means is the reality of purpose’ (WL: 667/12:170). In other words: it is a self-reproducing entity.

III. The standard reading: internal purposiveness as the truth of mechanism

It is common to read Hegel's claim that teleology is the truth of mechanism as the claim that inner purposiveness is the truth of mechanism. However, such readings usually do not sufficiently consider the role of external purposiveness, or they fail to consider it altogether. In what follows, I discuss three accounts of the relation of mechanism to teleology that I take to be representative of such readings.

Christopher Yeomans, Karen Ng and James Kreines defend the thesis that teleology is the truth of mechanism by showing how, on Hegel's account, teleology has explanatory priority over mechanism. While Yeomans and Ng give a negative account of external purposiveness in claiming that it only provides a deficient form of explanation, Kreines does not engage in an explicit discussion of the role of external purposiveness at all. In what follows, I elaborate on Yeomans's account first.

Yeomans's account of Hegel's claim that teleology is the truth of mechanism is to be understood as stating that mechanical structures always already presuppose teleological ones, in that mechanical terms are characterized teleologically (Reference Yeomans2012: 190).Footnote ⁴ To be more concrete, he argues that the belief that ‘teleology is the truth of mechanism, is the claim that the identities of mechanisms are teleologically determined and thus that the relation of end to mechanism is one of intrinsic norm to the process of behavior’ (Reference Yeomans2012: 233).

With respect to this, Yeomans puts forward two points: first, to the extent that mechanism relies on laws, it relies on theoretical constructs that cannot be understood in a mechanical way. Far from themselves being what Hegel claimed to be a defining feature of mechanism,Footnote ⁵ namely aggregates or arrangements of mechanical objects, laws represent ‘ideal states’, towards which mechanical systems tend, as instantiations of these laws (Reference Yeomans2012: 228). The planets in the solar system and their planetary orbits, for instance, instantiate the law of gravity and it is the realization of such a law that grants equilibrium in such a mechanical system. The law itself, however, is not a mechanical object but a theoretical construct.

Second, Yeomans stresses with Hegel that even proponents of a pure mechanistic view of reality use implicitly teleological notions of mechanisms’ functioning, that is, of the laws of functioning of that mechanism (Reference Yeomans2012: 231). He refers to the notion of striving towards equilibrium that he thinks mechanists need to use to explain the behaviour of the parts of mechanical systems, the behaviour of the planets for example (Reference Yeomans2012: 231). Yeomans argues that striving is the defining feature that distinguishes a mechanical system governed by laws from a mere mechanical aggregate. The notion of striving, however, implies that there is goal-directed behaviour. Along these lines, a law is to be understood as an ideal state that a mechanical ‘system attempts to achieve’ (Reference Yeomans2012: 231). Now, to the extent that there is a goal-directed process immanent to mechanism that constitutes the mechanical system in the first place, this process must be described as a form of self-determination. Self-determination in turn must be understood in a teleological way (Reference Yeomans2012: 232).

Yeomans's conception of lawlikeness and his description of mechanical system is certainly worth discussion, for it seems to be a defining feature of lawlikeness as such that objects or systems that obey certain laws do not tend to instantiate laws, but they simply do or do not instantiate them.Footnote ⁶ However, I refrain from such a discussion in order to proceed directly to the point most important regarding the systematic question of this paper. By using the term ‘teleology’ or ‘teleological’, Yeomans refers to the conception of internal purposiveness, not external purposiveness. For—as pointed out—according to Yeomans's Hegel, laws must be understood as immanent norms of the functioning of mechanical systems that constitute their particular makeup in that they direct the behaviour of their parts. In fact, Yeomans downplays the role of external purposiveness to understand the priority of teleology over mechanism. He argues that mechanism provides more immanent explanations of reality than external purposiveness does, whereby he refers to the term ‘external purposiveness’ only when he means theological teleology, i.e. the idea of a God setting up reality according to its own purposes (Yeomans Reference Yeomans2012: 189, 218, 229), and that the structure of internal purposiveness however provides the immanent explanation mechanists cannot provide on their own account.

It is true that Hegel refutes a theological teleology. The structures exposed in the teleology chapter under the heading of external purposiveness, however, pertain to every subject, not only to a God. Yet Yeomans does not discuss the relevance of other subjects expressing structures of external purposiveness in his account of the priority of teleology over mechanism.Footnote ⁷

Karen Ng's account is in the same vein. In her book, she focuses on the thesis that internal purposiveness ‘opens up the space of reason’ (Reference Ng2020: 234), that is, the intelligibility of reality. According to Ng, the structure of internal purposiveness is a necessary condition for the possibility of judgments and more generally of the exercise of cognitive capacities.Footnote ⁸ She argues that internal purposiveness represents the form of conceptual self-determination and thus sets the standard for understanding conceptual self-determination. The understanding of conceptual self-determination in turn provides us with an understanding of how reality is intelligible and structured such that we can successfully exercise our cognitive capacities. Along these lines, mechanism, chemism and external purposiveness represent lesser forms of conceptual self-determination that presuppose internal purposiveness. Thus, Ng reads the objectivity section as developing an argument that finally culminates in internal purposiveness and not in external purposiveness. While I agree with Ng that internal purposiveness in the form of the Idea does in fact ground all the other conceptual determinations of the Logic (cf. Ng Reference Ng2020: 165), in contrast to Ng, I think that the structure of external purposiveness has a more substantial upshot for the objectivity section.

On James Kreines's account of the relation between mechanism and teleology, there is no real discussion at all of the role of external purposiveness. Kreines offers a reading of teleology as the truth of mechanism in terms of explanatory completeness (Reference Kreines2015). He argues that i) mechanical explanations cannot rely on mechanical structures alone and that ii) teleology has priority over mechanism because it provides explanations of greater explanatory completeness. To elaborate on the first point: Kreines argues that even philosophers who defend a pure mechanism—that is, an account of mechanism that does not rely on concepts at all (Kreines Reference Kreines2015: 325–65)Footnote ⁹—must, in their unfolding of mechanical structures, rely on mechanical laws that explain why mechanical objects are as they are. To the extent that these mechanical laws are themselves conceptual and not mechanical structures anymore, there cannot be a pure mechanism. With respect to the second point, Kreines initiates his argument by showing that on the basis of mechanism alone—or what Kreines calls ‘pure mechanism’ (Reference Kreines2015: 38)—what a lawful or mechanical object does cannot be comprehended in terms of their own kind but must be comprehended in terms of its underlying parts. This, however, leads to a regress problem (Kreines Reference Kreines2015: 37–41, 200f.) since the underlying parts must be explained by presupposing further underlying parts and so forth. Thus, there is no last mechanical part that can serve as a first explainer for the whole network of mechanical objects.

In contrast to that, explanations of living beings refer to their concept—that is, to their kind: Kreines argues that ‘there is a kind of stopping point’ (Reference Kreines2015: 201) in these explanations, for they refer to the concept of the living being itself. He utilizes the example of a tiger to illustrate this. The specific makeup of the body of a tiger contributes to the tiger's own end, which is immanent to the tiger, i.e. its self-preservation. This end explains why the makeup of a tiger is the way it is (cf. Kreines Reference Kreines2015: 201). This, however, is nothing other than claiming that its internal purposiveness explains its specific constitution. Thus, internal purposiveness or the Idea of Life ‘accounts for a kind of greater explanatory completeness’ (Kreines Reference Kreines2015: 202) than the lawful, i.e. mechanism.

In Kreines's account, external purposiveness, however, is not even considered. Kreines claims that in the teleology chapter, the disclosed structures are still desiderata that need to be overcome by the Idea of Life (Kreines Reference Kreines2015: 201, n.4). There is no discussion of the role and relevance of external purposiveness. For Kreines, Hegel's teleology chapter only seems to have negative value: it represents a structure of purposiveness that needs to be overcome.

Now, I think there are at least three reasons that speak against readings that deal with Hegel's account of external purposiveness in a rather dismissive way. First, these accounts are not doing justice to the fact that the objectivity section culminates in a chapter that focuses extensively on external and not on internal purposiveness, the latter structure rather being the subject matter in the Idea of Life.Footnote ¹⁰

The second point is a rather terminological one: Hegel understands the Idea explicitly as exemplifying the structure of internal purposiveness (EL: §204/20:279f.).Footnote ¹¹ In the chapter on the Idea of Life he never even uses the term ‘teleology’ when referring to internal purposiveness. This only makes sense, for the title that Hegel gave to the chapter in which he discusses what external purposiveness is: teleology. I therefore understand the notion ‘teleology’ to refer primarily to the structure of external purposiveness. This does not mean that according to my reading, Hegel does not deal with the structure of internal purposiveness in the teleology chapter at all. By contrast, the last part of the teleology chapter is already about the structure of internal purposiveness, but this part represents a transition to the section of the Idea and to the chapter on the Idea of Life respectively. Thus, when Hegel claims teleology to be the truth of mechanism, he quite clearly also refers to external purposiveness.Footnote ¹²

Third, Hegel claims that ‘purposive connection has proved to be the truth of mechanism’ (WL: 652/12:155), right at the beginning of the teleology chapter, which then deals with external purposiveness. Only the end of the teleology chapter represents the transition to the Idea of Life and therefore the transition to the structure of internal purposiveness. Along these lines, one expects teleology, i.e. external purposiveness, to play a major role in understanding the claim of teleology as truth of mechanism, and thus, to represent the highest form of objectivity. This coincides with internal purposiveness, i.e. the Idea, as already being the unity of ‘the concept and objectivity’ (WL: 671/12:174). Thus, it is external purposiveness that must play the important role for the structures of objectivity as such, because internal purposiveness is already not only about objectivity but about the specific unity of concept and objectivity.

In the following sections I elaborate on my positive account of external purposiveness. I first turn to the discussion of mechanical structures that will lay the groundwork for my reading of the claim that teleology is the truth of mechanism in that I show how mechanical structures do not provide the conditions for object individuation.

IV. The cause-and-effect relation and mechanism

The mechanism chapter is the first one of the objectivity section, in which Hegel not only deals with the structure of mechanism, but also with those of chemism and teleology. In the objectivity section, Hegel is primarily concerned with the role these structures fulfil in the constitution of objects. He unfolds the structures that must be established for something like objects to come about at all.

According to Hegel, objects are not to be identified with atoms or simple substances. They are rather unities composed of several components (WL: 632/12:134). In the objectivity chapter, Hegel is concerned with the unity of objects. Along these lines, mechanical objects are unities whose components are held together by pressure, impact, or magnetic and gravitational forces. Mechanical components are to be understood to exist independently from each other. Chemical objects are unities consisting of components that are held together by bases or acid relations, or more generally consisting of components that are oriented towards each other and that do not sustain themselves independently from each other.Footnote ¹³ With respect to objects that are purposes, relations of purpose and means determine the composition of the unity.Footnote ¹⁴

Now, regarding mechanical structures, the first thing to note is that it is essential for mechanical structures to consist of cause-and-effect relations. Mechanism centrally consists in the ‘communication’ (WL: 635/12:137) of cause-and-effect relations, for example in the communication of movement through impact or pressure between objects. In what follows, I will not deal separately with the part of the Logic in which Hegel discusses cause-and-effect relations or what one could also just call efficient causality.Footnote ¹⁵ For the sake of my argument, it is important to deal only with the three features of efficient causality that also pertain to mechanism: i) cause-and-effect relations are characterized by an identical content that is transmitted in cause-and-effect processes, ii) cause-and-effect relations are characterized by being external to the objectsFootnote ¹⁶ that they involve, and iii) a cause is always also produced by another cause and therefore, always also effect. As we will see, my reading of ‘external’ here implies that causal relations alone do not constitute the specific objects they involve.

With respect to the structure of mechanism, it is important to specify already here that these features pertain to what Hegel calls terrestrial mechanism. For, motion in accordance with gravitational laws is not external to mechanical objects and mechanical objects with mass respectively are not independent of gravitational relations as Hegel himself holds in his account of absolute mechanics. For the scope of this paper, however, I concentrate only on Hegel's account of terrestrial mechanics to which these features above apply. I will come back to this point in the fifth part of this paper.

To elaborate on the first feature: Hegel describes the relation that characterizes efficient causality as a transition in which a cause ceases to be a cause as soon as its effect has occurred (WL: 664/12:167). To be a cause is essentially to pass into the effect and to disappear in it. According to Hegel, the disappearance of cause into effect is a consequence of the fact that the cause-effect relation is only a formal relation (WL: 494/11:398). That means that it essentially consists of a content that does not change within the very transmission of the cause into the effect. In other words: that which is the cause is also the effect. Hegel uses the following example to illustrate this. Rain causes the wetness of the street. The wetness of the street is nothing other than the wetness of the rain. So, rain is the cause of wetness which is its effect. According to Hegel, rain only functions as cause in so far as it has an effect that sublates the cause, while the content of the cause-and-effect relation remains the same. The example already brought up helps to unpack this sentence: the rain, which falls on the street, ceases to be the cause as soon as it turns into the effect, and that means as soon as it becomes the wetness on the street (WL: 494/11:399). In the scholarship, there are efforts to spell out this theory of causality as an identity theory of causality and thus to make it more plausible.Footnote ¹⁷

Secondly, cause-and-effect relations are external to the objects that they involve. That is, cause-and-effect relations consist in the transmission of an identical content to an object external to this very content, such as the street in the example given above. It is true that there are cause-and-effect processes taking place with respect to the street, but these relations do not illuminate what is characteristic of a street being a street. It is not essential to the very being of a street to get wet. As Hegel states, these objects on which cause-effect relations take place are ‘relationless—an immediate concrete existence’ (WL: 497/11:401). In contrast, it is inherent to cause-and-effect relations that the objects being external to them form ‘their substrate, that is to say, their essential subsistence’ (WL: 497/11:401). In the following, I will call this claim Hegel's externality thesis.

Turning to the third feature, it is important to note that in efficient causality, an individual cause is itself an effect of another cause. It presupposes there being another cause of which it is the effect. The object, that one which communicates a movement to another object, cannot in the strict sense be identified only as a cause, because it is itself caused by another cause. The rain is the cause of the wetness of the streets but the rain itself is caused by water vapor that condenses when risen high enough in the air. Thus, the wetness of the rain has already been communicated to certain air particles and is therefore also effect—not only cause. One should, however, not conclude that a singular cause, as exemplified in the example, cannot itself actually be the cause of a certain event because the entire chain of cause-effect relations has to be included in an explanation of the event. In the given example, the rain can be identified as the cause, even if the event itself remains in a way underdetermined. Rather, Hegel's argument consists in showing that, on the basis of external causation, no object can itself be a first cause. Being a cause is not—as Hegel puts it—an ‘originary determination’ (WL: 635/12:137) of an object. Being a cause is something that happens to the object. In other words: the object is not the origin of cause-effect relations, but only the—as one may call it—carrier of them.Footnote ¹⁸ In the following, I will call this claim the ‘non-originariness’ thesis.

Now, according to Hegel, the non-originary nature of these objects also defines mechanical relations.Footnote ¹⁹ For the main feature of mechanism relevant to my argument is that the objects subject to mechanism serve as carrier objects. That is, they are not originated by mechanical structures. The following example shall illuminate this point: according to Hegel, the spread of warmth in the atmosphere represents a mechanical process (WL: 636/12:138). In his philosophy of nature, Hegel states that warmth has an expanding character. It therefore consists in the communication of attraction among particles or carrier objects that does not tear the particles apart, but instead brings them into a permanent connection (EL: §303A/24:3:1301). I ignore how this interpretation of heat must be understood specifically and to what extent it can be brought into harmony with the contemporary theory of expansion of heat. The object of my interest is rather that this example clarifies that heat presupposes the existence of particles—or better, of carrier objects—for its own existence, since according to Hegel, heat essentially consists in a transfer of mechanical movement. Along these lines, it is illuminating that Hegel also turns against the idea, quite common in his time, of the existence of something like a warmth substance. This idea presupposes the ‘material independence of warmth’ (EL: §305). According to Hegel, it is characteristic of the spread of warmth as a mechanical process that it consists in a transfer of forces that takes place on objects and thus requires the existence of these carrier objects than rather being itself one.

In the next section, I show how these features generate the problem that mechanism cannot provide for object individuation.

V. The structure of mechanism and the possibility of mechanical objects

The results of the last section imply that to mechanism also applies the externality described in efficient causality. According to Hegel, also in mechanism, the carrier objects remain presuppositions. They are themselves not constituted by the causal relations that they involve. Thus, the ‘non-originariness’ thesis implies the externality thesis: in a mechanical object, the components of a mechanical whole are given independently of this whole because no object itself is constituted by the cause-and-effect relations they carry. They are only related to one another through external forces carried out by efficient causality, but they are not related to one another through their own constitutive being. For Hegel, this externality inscribed in mechanism has the consequence that an object held together by mechanical forces is only a ‘composition, mixture, aggregate’:

Aggregates are characterized by the fact that the nature of the supporting objects of the aggregate is not changed substantially when they form a unit through mechanical forces that we call an aggregate. Furthermore, if an aggregate falls apart, the unity, i.e. the mechanical object in question, has disappeared, but the nature of the carrier objects that made up this unity does not change. This immutability of the nature of the carrier objects through mechanism is what Hegel also describes as the indifference of these objects to one another (WL: 632f./12:135).

Thus, the non-originary nature, which implies the positing of an object by another object, essentially characterizes a mechanical object: ‘the mechanical object is as such, an object only as product, for what it is, is only by virtue of the mediation of an other in it’ (WL: 637/12:139). In this sense, mechanism is an expression of such a mediation of movements between objects; to come back to the example used to describe mechanism: warmth is a property of an aggregate, which is a state of carrier objects that are connected through mechanical transmissive forces. To sum up: cause-and-effect relations that are essential for mechanism require carrier objects for their own occurrence. The nature of these carrier objects is not determined by the mechanical processes they carry. To put it in Hegel's wording: they are indifferent to these mechanical processes.

Now, Hegel definitely has a more nuanced account of efficient causality and therefore also of mechanism. Along these lines, one could object that I concentrate too much on the first paragraph on mechanism. Thus, on my account it looks like, on the basis of the features of mechanism I presented, no durable constructions are possible since mechanism seems to consist only in the communication of movement between objects. But, of course, more durable constructions, that is natural constructions like mountains or artificial ones like houses or bridges, also involve efficient causality and are in that sense forms of mechanism. Over the course of the next two sections I argue, however, that these constructions are already informed by external purposiveness and are in this respect not formed by efficient causality alone.

We can now consider the argument that mechanism cannot provide for the individuation of objects. Note, that on the basis of mechanism alone, these carrier objects are themselves mechanical objects—objects that are also held together by mechanical forces. Note also that carrier objects, in so far as they are mechanical objects themselves, presuppose again carrier objects. Consequently, in mechanical explanations of these carrier objects one must assume again carrier objects. If these are in turn understood as mechanical objects, we assume carrier objects on a further level. Thus, due to the structure inherent to mechanism, we will not arrive at an end point here, but rather enter an infinite regress based on the previous analysis of mechanism: being a cause is not an original determination of a mechanical object, because the object is always also the product of mechanical relations. Note that this does not mean that mechanical objects do not have a causal, material origin. It only follows that mechanical structures alone do not to constitute mechanical objects.

This also means that every supposedly complete explanation of the constitution of an object based on mechanism only turns out to be an arbitrary break in the chain of explanation:

Also in mechanism, the object is never the origin, but merely the carrier of these relations. If we try to consider an explanation based on mechanism to be the most fundamental one, on which all other cause-effect relations are based, we do not explain to what extent the corresponding object, which we take to be most fundamental, is actually the origin of the cause-and-effect relation, but we only postulate it. So, on the basis of pure mechanism alone, nothing remains but an ‘empty word’, since we try to give an explanation that is blocked due to the structure of mechanism.

As already emphasized in the section on efficient causality, this does not mean that explanations based on causal mechanical structures become inadequate for what they set out to explain. Mechanical explanations are explanations of the corresponding event. They just do not completely determine the event.

Now, the regress argument leads to a second argument. It clarifies that on the basis of mechanical structures alone, it is unclear what an individual mechanical object actually is. We said that a mechanical object should be one that is held together by, for instance, pressure and impact relations that result from mechanism. On the basis of mechanism, the components that are put together to form such an object are themselves objects that are put together again by further components. Against this background, however, it is unclear what a single object actually is, or as Stern puts it: ‘not only is the structure of the object itself a merely external unity; mechanics also views the relation between objects as equally external, so that they form an unqualified plurality’ (Reference Stern1990: 80). In other words: the individuation conditions of mechanical objects are unclear. It is external to them to be part of a mechanical object, just as it is external to them to be mechanical objects themselves. This, however, is not an epistemic thesis. The individuation conditions of mechanical objects are not unclear due to epistemic limits of rational subjects. It is an ontological thesis: the structure of mechanism is of such a structure that it does not provide the conditions for object individuation.

In this vein, it is striking that Hegel determines matter to be concrete and continuous. In §298 of his natural philosophy he writes:

The claim of matter to be concrete and continuous has two implications: first, what a material part is is not just dependent on the object it is currently a constituent of, but also on the objects it could be a constituent of.Footnote ²⁰ Second, that which is a material object and that which has to be regarded as part of a material object is not given by the basic structure of matter.Footnote ²¹ Now, the basic structure of matter, according to Hegel, is based on the basic structure of mechanism. The mechanical forces of repulsion and attraction are constitutive for the creation of matter (EL: §262/20:254), i.e. the essential determinations of matter are mechanical relations, which underlines the argument given here.Footnote ²²

Note that I do not take this unclearness of the individuation conditions of mechanical objects in any way to be a defect of mechanism. It merely expresses the ontological structure of mechanism and as such it is this ontological structure that opens up the possibility of understanding in which way mechanism is permeated by teleology in that it is teleology that provides the conditions for the individuation of mechanical objects.

Now, in the mechanism chapter, Hegel distinguishes between terrestrial mechanics and celestial or absolute mechanics. The structures I have outlined so far pertain only to terrestrial and not to celestial mechanics. Thus, one could object that I do not do justice to this distinction, and that this distinction, however, is relevant in so far as the latter mechanics has ‘the true singularity of the object [the mechanical one]’ (WL: 640/12:142) as its object. Whereas in terrestrial mechanics, objects are in fact mere aggregates on the basis of mechanism alone, in celestial mechanics, they form a somewhat organized entity. So, one could assume that there is object individuation on the basis of mechanism itself—at least in celestial mechanics. On the one hand, however, the structural relations attributed to celestial mechanics do not undermine what has been said so far, for the scope of terrestrial mechanics is not abolished by celestial mechanics but integrated into a broader structure. Terrestrial mechanical objects do remain in a relation towards each other that is characterized by the features described in section IV. Thus, the externality thesis remains intact: ‘Externality’ is the fundamental feature of mechanical objects of terrestrial mechanics (WL: 641/12:143). According to Hegel, the structures of terrestrial mechanics do have validity on their ownFootnote ²³, and I provided an argument about the way these structures alone do not constitute mechanical objects. On the other hand, even in absolute mechanism, the question of object individuation is not sufficiently answered by structures of mechanism alone. As we have seen in section three, there are efforts to give a plausible reading of why even absolute mechanism relies on structures of purposiveness. Even if we might need to refer to an account of internal purposiveness in this case, however, this does not undermine the role of external purposiveness developed here.

My suggestion is that, with respect to terrestrial mechanism, what is in each case a mechanical object is dependent on what subjects behaving in a purposive way determine as mechanical objects. Here, external purposiveness provides the conditions for object individuation and that is—so goes my suggestion—why the objectivity section culminates in the teleology chapter: there are no objects without such teleological structures. The constitution of objects is ontologically dependent on teleological structures. It remains to be seen, though, how teleology accounts for the conditions of object individuation of merely material objects, and that is what I aim to show in the next part of the paper.

VI. External purposiveness and the individuation of objects

Coming back to the structure of external purposiveness, and to the three structural moments of external purposiveness, subjective purpose, means and realized purpose, it is easy to see that the intentional activity of subjects to realize their subjective purposes as entities in the objective, i.e. mechanical world is the paradigmatic case of such a kind of purposiveness.

According to this case, a purpose is a subjective-conceptual representation held by a subject, which the subject seeks to realize through its purposive activity. The subjective purpose of a subject is therefore not given in the mechanical world but is first external to it. Thus, in describing subjective purpose as ‘not given’ I refer to the feature of subjective purpose that it is something not yet realized in the mechanical world. Nevertheless, the purpose is related to this world, ‘its activity [is] […] directed to an external objectivity’ (WL: 658/12:161). In other words: it is conceptually true of purposes being purposes that they are drives or strivings to realize themselves in an objective world. Thus, the defining feature of a subjective purpose is the state of not yet being realized and being bound to a subject that strives to realize this very purpose.Footnote ²⁴ The intention to build a house, for example, can be such a purpose. The house is first of all an entity anticipated in a representation that the subject intends to realize in the mechanical world by appropriate means.

Now, we can already understand the conceptual-subjective representation of the house held by the subject as a form of object individuation. Recall that, according to Hegel, an object is not comparable to something like atoms or simple substances, but it is a unity of components arranged in a specific way. It is the representation by a subject that serves as a kind of blueprint of a house to be realized. The blueprint establishes the form of a house, that is guided by its specific purpose—to protect from stormy weather, for instance. Thus, in this blueprint, a house is a certain unity consisting of specific components arranged in such a way that they serve this purpose and thereby determine the form of a house. The blueprint represents what a house essentially is. In choosing specific means to realize a house, the subject then individuates a particular house according to this blueprint as a mechanical object in the world.

One could object that this does not stop the infinite regress as it applies in mechanism. This is correct but does not affect the argument. As I have argued, the infinite regress in mechanism is caused by the mechanical components being externally determined. This does not hinder object individuation by external purposiveness but allows it. It allows us to see in which way mechanism ‘naturally offers itself to the connection of purpose’ (WL: 657/ 12:160). For the structure of external purposiveness is nothing else but the external determining of mechanical components. Teleological structures account for object individuation in such a way that mechanical components are put together in a purposive way that in turn serves as blueprint for constituting the object. Purposive causality is essentially determined by the fact that the concept is the ground of reality or—in Hegel's terminology—‘substance’ of the object (WL: 657/12:160). That is, that which is the object is determined by the concept. The concept is substance of an object in so far as it grounds the determinate unity that makes an object what it is, but the teleological structures do not account for the underlying mechanical components as such.

Now, obviously, not every object and especially not every mechanical object is an artefact. Thus, there is the worry that, according to my reading, the difference between an artefact and a mechanical object might disappear, and consequently, that I run the danger of turning all mechanical objects into artefacts. So, what is the difference between the object individuation that turns artefacts into artefacts and that which turns mere mechanical objects into mere mechanical objects?

It needs to be stressed that the case of object individuation just illustrated is not the only case of object individuation resulting from what I called the paradigmatic case of external purposiveness.Footnote ²⁵ Thus, it does not cover all cases. It is a defining feature of this paradigmatic case that purposive objects, i.e. artefacts, are realized by a structure Hegel calls the ‘cunning of reason’ (WL: 663/12:166). This structure consists in the exploitation of mechanical processes to produce a purposive product. If a subject has the purpose of building a house, for instance, it uses mechanical processes to produce the purposive unity, the house. The realization of this purpose is in the unity of the components from which the house was built, but only in such a way that these components themselves are consumed by mechanical processes, for example by pressure conditions, to which they are exposed in the purposive unity (WL: 666/12:169). They are used up by causal mechanical processes through the unity into which they have been brought by a purposively acting subject. Thus, the cunning of reason consists in using mechanical processes to form something that they are not, that is a purposive unity such as a house.

While in the production of artefacts this structure of the cunning of reason is clearly given, this is not the case in the individuation of mechanical objects as mechanical objects. Here, mechanical objects are not manipulated to realize a specific purpose. The case of theoretical cognition makes this clearest. In scientific experiments subjects individuate mechanical objects and try to gain knowledge of what they are and not to manipulate them.

Note, however, that theoretical cognition, according to Hegel's account, is not only an epistemic process of distinguishing objects but there is an ontological tinge to it. Theoretical cognition has—broadly speaking—a structure that consists in comprehending the mechanical world, i.e. mechanical objects, by thinking about them, and by this, theoretical cognition transforms them into concept determinations, that reveal what is essential about them. In this vein, in the passages on the Idea of Cognition of the Science of Logic, Hegel uses the notion ‘transform’ (verwandeln) to describe both theoretical and practical cognition (cf. WL: 696/12:199). Theoretical cognition, however, does not transform its objects according to specific practical purposes and through the cunning of reason.Footnote ²⁶ Thus, there is a clear difference between these two kinds of object individuation but, on Hegel's account, both entail an ontological dimension.

It then remains to be seen how or in which sense theoretical object individuation is still teleological. Note that scientific or theoretical investigation is not only a goal-oriented action itself, but it is also always already embedded in more complex structures of the subject's own needs and drives. Subjects aim to gain knowledge for the sake of truth. The search for truth is embedded in structures of need satisfaction. Consequently, objects are always individuated in accordance with the subject's own needs and drives.

That does not mean, however, that object individuation is completely arbitrary or subjective, in the sense of private. Although I will not argue for this point in this paper, it is worth noting that, according to Hegel, subjective purposes are embedded in a larger social-life world contextFootnote ²⁷ that determines them. Subjective-intentional purposes of a subject are purposes within the social context of life in which the subject finds itself, and are not deliberatively chosen by the subject alone. To this extent, object individuation does not depend on particular subjects alone but on the social structures within a larger life context. Moreover, recall that the form of external purposiveness that I have emphasized is only one form of external purposiveness. Even if in the teleology chapter the subjective-intentional conception of purposiveness is clearly the focus of Hegel's exposure of the structures of external purposiveness, that does not mean that all structures of external purposiveness are such intentional structures. Thus, the examples chosen to explicate the structure of external purposiveness refer only to one case of object individuation. The individuation of mechanical objects does not solely depend on the structures of subjective-intentional purposiveness of individual subjects. It is rather grounded in a more primitive form of external purposiveness. According to Hegel, animals also act purposively in the sense of external purposiveness. Animals also create artefacts such as nests (PN: §362/20:362). An instinct-guided activity is already one in which a subject is externally purposive, in so far as it shapes objects found in its environment according to its needs, ‘it gives the material of these externalities [of the objective world] an outer form appropriate to the purpose [of the animal]’ (PN: §362/20:362) and turns objects from its environment into artefacts. Thus, Hegel attributes the structure of external purposiveness to the living in general and not only to intentional-thinking subjects.

The claim that the structure of external purposiveness is a condition of object individuation does not entail that the individuated object is teleological itself. My thesis rather entails that mechanical stuff is combined by structures of external purposiveness in such a way that it forms a unity in accordance with the needs of subjects.Footnote ²⁸ A tornado, for instance, is individuated in such a way that its individualization fits their need of self-protection. A mechanistic explanation of a tornado is, however, not teleological according to my reading. Rather, it is an explanation about the causal forces at stake in specific natural processes, and thus purely mechanistic.

Even though the needs and drives of subjects are finally embedded in the subject's own self-preservation and therefore in structures of internal purposiveness, object individuation of mechanical objects and artefacts is a case of external purposiveness because material stuff is combined in such a way that it serves the subject's own ends. The material stuff does not exist because it can be individuated by subjects in accordance with their own needs. On Hegel's account of internal purposiveness, however, organic material, the heart for instance, exists precisely because it serves the organism's purpose, its self-preservation.

My thesis thus entails that there are no objects without teleological structures. This is equivalent to saying that there are no objects without subjects. In this latter sense, the thesis might sound quite Kantian, namely in its constructivist take. However, firstly, my claim does not imply that Hegel is committed to the appearance/thing in itself distinction. Second, I think Hegel does take up Kantian features. I believe the teleology chapter covers a critique of the Kantian account of object constitution as well as of his conception of external purposiveness. More precisely, Hegel criticizes Kant's account of object constitution by showing i) that every object constitution is embedded in structures of external purposiveness, and ii) that Kant's main conception of purposiveness, according to which a purpose is bound to a subject and therefore subjective and external to the object and thus is external purposiveness, finally presupposes the reality of inner purposiveness in nature, which Kant denies. Such a discussion, however, is not my focus in this paper. If it is such an immanent critique, though, Hegel himself needs to share the assumptions essential to the Kantian conception of purposiveness, so that he is able to show how they are embedded in structures of life, and that is what, I think, he does in taking the Kantian main account of purposiveness as the paradigmatic case of external purposiveness in the teleology chapter.