56 results in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Science of Logic
Book Two - The Doctrine of Essence
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
- Edited and translated by George Di Giovanni, McGill University, Montréal
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Summary
ESSENCE
The truth of being is essence.
Being is the immediate. Since the goal of knowledge is the truth, what being is in and for itself, knowledge does not stop at the immediate and its determinations, but penetrates beyond it on the presupposition that behind this being there still is something other than being itself, and that this background constitutes the truth of being. This cognition is a mediated knowledge, for it is not to be found with and in essence immediately, but starts off from an other, from being, and has a prior way to make, the way that leads over and beyond being or that rather penetrates into it. Only inasmuch as knowledge recollects itself into itself out of immediate being, does it find essence through this mediation. – The German language has kept “essence” (Wesen) in the past participle (gewesen) of the verb “to be” (sein), for essence is past – but timelessly past – being.
When this movement is represented as a pathway of knowledge, this beginning with being and the subsequent advance which sublates being and arrives at essence as a mediated term appears to be an activity of cognition external to being and indifferent to its nature.
But this course is the movement of being itself. That it is being's nature to recollect itself, and that it becomes essence by virtue of this interiorizing, this has been displayed in being itself.
If, therefore, the absolute was at first determined as being, now it is determined as essence. Cognition cannot in general stop at the manifold of existence; but neither can it stop at being, pure being; immediately one is forced to the reflection that this pure being, this negation of everything finite, presupposes a recollection and a movement which has distilled immediate existence into pure being. Being thus comes to be determined as essence, as a being in which everything determined and finite is negated. So it is simple unity, void of determination, from which the determinate has been removed in an external manner; to this unity the determinate was itself something external and, after this removal, it still remains opposite to it; for it has not been sublated in itself but relatively, only with reference to this unity.
Chapter 1 - Life
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
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The idea of life has to do with a subject matter so concrete, and if you will so real, that in dealing with it one may seem according to the common notion of logic to have overstepped its boundaries.Needless to say, if the logic were to contain nothing but empty, dead forms of thought, then there could be no talk in it at all of such a content as the idea, or life, are. But if the subject matter of logic is the absolute truth, and truth as such lies essentially in cognition, then cognition at least would have to come in for consideration. – It is common practice to have the so-called pure logic be followed by an applied logic – a logic that has to do with concrete cognition, quite apart from all the psychology and anthropology that is commonly deemed necessary to interpolate into logic. But the anthropological and psychological side of cognition is concerned with the form in which cognition appears when the concept does not as yet have an objectivity equal to it, that is, when it does not have itself as object. The part of the logic that deals with this concrete cognition does not belong to applied logic as such; if it did, then every science would have to be dragged into logic, for each is an applied logic in so far as it consists in apprehending its subject matter in forms of thought and of concepts. – The subjective concept has presuppositions that are exhibited in psychological, anthropological, and other forms. But the presuppositions of the pure concept belong in logic only to the extent that they have the form of pure thoughts, of abstract essentialities, such as are the determinations of being and essence. The same goes for cognition, which is the concept's comprehension of itself: no other shape of its presupposition but the one which is itself idea is to be dealt with in the logic; this, however, is a presupposition which is necessarily treated in logic. This presupposition is now the immediate idea; for while cognition is the concept, in so far as the latter exists for itself but as a subjectivity referring to an objectivity, then the concept refers to the idea as presupposed or as immediate. But the immediate idea is life.
Chapter 2 - Existence
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
- Edited and translated by George Di Giovanni, McGill University, Montréal
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Summary
Existence is determinate being; its determinateness is existent determinateness, quality. Through its quality, something is opposed to an other; it is alterable and finite, negatively determined not only towards an other, but absolutely within it. This negation in it, in contrast at first with the finite something, is the infinite; the abstract opposition in which these determinations appear resolves itself into oppositionless infinity, into being-for-itself.
The treatment of existence is therefore in three divisions:
A. existence as such
B. something and other, finitude
C. qualitative infinity.
EXISTENCE AS SUCH
In existence (a) as such, its determinateness is first (b) to be distinguished as quality. The latter, however, is to be taken in both the two determinations of existence as reality and negation. In these determinacies, however, existence is equally reflected into itself, and, as so reflected, it is posited as (c) something, an existent.
Existence in general
Existence proceeds from becoming. It is the simple oneness of being and nothing. On account of this simplicity, it has the form of an immediate. Its mediation, the becoming, lies behind it; it has sublated itself, and existence therefore appears as a first from which the forward move is made. It is at first in the one-sided determination of being; the other determination which it contains, nothing, will likewise come up in it, in contrast to the first.
It is not mere being but existence, or Dasein [in German]; according to its [German] etymology, it is being (Sein) in a certain place (da). But the representation of space does not belong here. As it follows upon becoming, existence is in general being with a non-being, so that this non-being is taken up into simple unity with being. Non-being thus taken up into being with the result that the concrete whole is in the form of being, of immediacy, constitutes determinateness as such.
The whole is likewise in the form or determinateness of being, since in becoming being has likewise shown itself to be only a moment – something sublated, negatively determined. It is such, however, for us, in our reflection; not yet as posited in it. What is posited, however, is the determinateness as such of existence, as is also expressed by the da (or “there”) of the Dasein.
Section I - Subjectivity
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
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The concept is, to start with, formal, the concept in its beginning or as the immediate concept. – In this immediate unity, its difference or its positedness is, first, itself initially simple and only a reflective shine, so that the moments of the difference are immediately the totality of the concept and only the concept as such.
But, second, because it is absolute negativity, the concept divides and posits itself as the negative or the other of itself; yet, because it is still immediate concept, this positing or this differentiation is characterized by the reciprocal indifference of its moments, each of which comes to be on its own; in this division the unity of the concept is still only an external connection. Thus, as the connection of its moments posited as self-subsisting and indifferent, the concept is judgment.
Third, although the judgment contains the unity of the concept that has been lost in its self-subsisting moments, this unity is not posited. It will become posited by virtue of the dialectical movement of the judgment which, through this movement, becomes syllogistic inference, and this is the fully posited concept, for in the inference the moments of the concept as self-subsisting extremes and their mediating unity are both equally posited.
But since this unity itself, as unifying middle, and the moments, as selfsubsisting extremes, stand at first immediately opposite one another, this contradictory relation that occurs in the formal inference sublates itself, and the completeness of the concept passes over into the unity of totality; the subjectivity of the concept into its objectivity.
Translator’s Note
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
- Edited and translated by George Di Giovanni, McGill University, Montréal
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Chapter 2 - Judgment
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
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Judgment is the determinateness of the concept posited in the concept itself. The determinations of the concept, or, what amounts to the same thing as shown, the determinate concepts, have already been considered on their own; but this consideration was rather a subjective reflection or a subjective abstraction. But the concept is itself this act of abstracting; the positioning of its determinations over against each other is its own determining. Judgment is this positing of the determinate concepts through the concept itself.
Judging is therefore another function than conceiving; or rather, it is the other function of the concept, for it is the determining of the concept through itself. The further progress of judgment into a diversity of judgments is this progressive determination of the concept. What kind of determinate concepts there are, and how they prove to be necessary determinations of it – this has to be exhibited in judgment.
Judgment can therefore be called the first realization of the concept, for reality denotes in general the entry into existence as determinate being. More precisely, the nature of this realization has presented itself in such a way that the moments of the concept are totalities which, on the one hand, subsist on their own through the concept's immanent reflection or through its singularity; on the other hand, however, the unity of the concept is their connection. The immanently reflected determinations are determinate totalities that exist just as essentially disconnected, indifferent to each other, as mediated through each other. The determining itself is a totality only as containing these totalities and their connections. This totality is the judgment. – The latter contains, therefore, the two self-subsistents which go under the name of subject and predicate.What each is cannot yet be said; they are still indeterminate, for they are to be determined only through the judgment. Inasmuch as judgment is the concept as determinate, the only determination at hand is the difference that it contains between determinate and still indeterminate concept. As contrasted to the predicate, the subject can at first be taken, therefore, as the singular over against the universal, or also as the particular over against the universal, or the singular over against the particular; so far, they stand to each other only as the more determinate and the more universal in general.
Introduction
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
- Edited and translated by George Di Giovanni, McGill University, Montréal
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GENERAL CONCEPT OF LOGIC
In no science is the need to begin with the fact [Sache] itself, without preliminary reflections, felt more strongly than in the science of logic. In every other science, the matter that it treats, and the scientific method, are distinguished from each other; the content, moreover, does not make an absolute beginning but is dependent on other concepts and is connected on all sides with othermaterial. It is therefore permitted to these sciences to speak of their ground and its context, as well of their method, in the form of lemmas; to apply presupposed forms of definitions and the like without further ado, as known and accepted; and to make use of customary ways of argumentation in order to establish their general concepts and fundamental determinations.
Logic, on the contrary, cannot presuppose any of these forms of reflection, these rules and laws of thinking, for they are part of its content and they first have to be established within it. And it is not just the declaration of scientific method but the concept itself of science as such that belongs to its content and even makes up its final result. Logic, therefore, cannot say what it is in advance, rather does this knowledge of itself only emerge as the final result and completion of its whole treatment. Likewise its subject matter, thinking or more specifically conceptual thinking, is essentially elaborated within it; its concept is generated in the course of this elaboration and cannot therefore be given in advance.What is anticipated in this Introduction, therefore, is not intended to ground as it were the concept of logic, or to justify in advance its content and method scientifically, but rather to make more intuitable, by means of some explanations and reflections of an argumentative and historical nature, the standpoint from which this science ought to be considered.
Whenever logic is taken as the science of thinking in general, it is thereby understood that this “thinking” constitutes the mere form of a cognition; that logic abstracts from all content, and the so-called second constitutive piece that belongs to the cognition, namely the matter, must be given from elsewhere;
List of Abbreviations
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
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Dedication
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
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Chapter 3 - The Absolute Idea
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
- Edited and translated by George Di Giovanni, McGill University, Montréal
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The absolute idea has shown itself to be the identity of the theoretical and the practical idea, each of which, of itself still one-sided, possesses the idea only as a sought-for beyond and unattained goal; each is therefore a synthesis of striving, each possessing aswell as not possessing the ideawithin it, passing over from one thought to the other without bringing the two together but remaining fixed in the contradiction of the two. The absolute idea, as the rational concept that in its reality only rejoins itself, is by virtue of this immediacy of its objective identity, on the one hand, a turning back to life; on the other hand, it has equally sublated this form of its immediacy and harbors the most extreme opposition within. The concept is not only soul, but free subjective concept that exists for itself and therefore has personality – the practical objective concept that is determined in and for itself and is as person impenetrable, atomic subjectivity – but which is not, just the same, exclusive singularity; it is rather explicitly universality and cognition, and in its other has its own objectivity for its subject matter. All the rest is error, confusion, opinion, striving, arbitrariness, and transitoriness; the absolute idea alone is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and is all truth.
It is the sole subject matter and content of philosophy. Since it contains all determinateness within it, and its essence consists in returning through its self-determination and particularization back to itself, it has various shapes, and the business of philosophy is to recognize it in these. Nature and spirit are in general different modes of exhibiting its existence, art and religion its different modes of apprehending itself and giving itself appropriate existence. Philosophy has the same content and the same purpose as art and religion, but it is the highest mode of apprehending the absolute idea, because its mode, that of the concept, is the highest. Hence it seizes those shapes of real and ideal finitude, as well of infinity and holiness, and comprehends them and itself. The derivation and cognition of these particular modes are now the further business of the particular philosophical sciences.
Chapter 3 - Ratio or the Quantitative Relation
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
- Edited and translated by George Di Giovanni, McGill University, Montréal
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The infinity of quantum has been determined up to the point where it is the negative beyond of quantum, a beyond which quantum, however, has within it. This beyond is the qualitative moment in general. The infinite quantum, as the unity of the two moments, of the quantitative and the qualitative determinateness, is in the first instance ratio.
In ratio, quantum no longer has amerely indifferent determinateness but is qualitatively determined as simply referring to its beyond. It continues in its beyond, and this beyond is at first just an other quantum. Essentially, however, the two do not refer to each other as external quanta but each rather possesses its determinateness in this reference to the other. In this, in their otherness, they have thus returned into themselves; what each is, that it is in its other; the other constitutes the determinateness of each. – The quantum's self-transcendence does not now mean, therefore, that quantum has simply changed either into some other or into its abstract other, into its abstract beyond, but that there, in the other, it has attained its determinateness; in its other, which is an other quantum, it finds itself. The quality of quantum, its conceptual determinateness, is its externality as such, and in ratio quantum is now posited as having its determinateness in this externality, in another quantum – as being in its beyond what it is.
It is quanta that stand to each other in the connection that has now come on the scene. This connection is itself also amagnitude; quantum is not only in relation, but is itself posited as relation; it is a quantum as such that has 21.311 that qualitative determinateness in itself. So, as relation (as ratio), quantum gives expression to itself as self-enclosed totality and to its indifference to limit by containing the externality of its being-determined in itself: in this externality it is only referred back to itself and is thus infinite within. Ratio in general is:
1. direct ratio. In this, the qualitative moment does not yet emerge explicitly as such; in no other way except still as quantum is quantum posited as having its determinateness in its externality.
Chapter 1 - The Absolute
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
- Edited and translated by George Di Giovanni, McGill University, Montréal
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Summary
The simple solid identity of the absolute is indeterminate, or rather, every determinateness of essence and concrete existence, or of being in general aswell as of reflection, has dissolved itself into it. Accordingly, the determining of what is the absolute appears to be a negating, and the absolute itself appears only as the negation of all predicates, as the void. But since it must equally be spoken of as the position of all predicates, it appears as the most formal of contradictions. In so far as that negating and this positing belong to external reflection, what we have is a formal, unsystematic dialectic that has an easy time picking up a variety of determinations here and there, and is just as at ease demonstrating, on the one hand, their finitude and relativity, as declaring, on the other, that the absolute, which it vaguely envisages as totality, is the dwelling place of all determinations, yet is incapable of raising either the positions or the negations to a true unity. – The task is indeed to demonstrate what the absolute is. But this demonstration cannot be either a determining or an external reflection by virtue of which determinations of the absolute would result, but is rather the exposition of the absolute, more precisely the absolute's own exposition, and only a displaying of what it is.
THE EXPOSITION OF THE ABSOLUTE
The absolute is not just being, nor even essence. The former is the first unreflected immediacy; the latter, the reflected immediacy; further, each is explicitly a totality, but a determinate totality. Being emerges in essence as concrete existence, and the connection of being and essence develops into the relation of inner and outer. The inner is essence, but as a totality whose essential determination is to be referred to being and to be being immediately. The outer is being, but with the essential determination of being immediately connected with reflection and, equally, in a relationless identity with essence. The absolute itself is the absolute unity of the two; it is that which constitutes in general the ground of the essential relation which, as only relation, has yet to return into this its identity and whose ground is not yet posited.
The Science of Logic
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
- Edited and translated by George Di Giovanni, McGill University, Montréal
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Chapter 1 - Being
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
- Edited and translated by George Di Giovanni, McGill University, Montréal
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BEING
Being, pure being – without further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself and also not unequal with respect to another; it has no difference within it, nor any outwardly. If any determi- nation or content were posited in it as distinct, or if it were posited by this determination or content as distinct from an other, it would thereby fail to hold fast to its purity. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. – There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure empty intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or, it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.
NOTHING
Nothing, pure nothingness; it is simple equality with itself, complete emptiness, complete absence of determination and content; lack of all distinction within. – In so far as mention can be made here of intuiting and thinking, it makes a difference whether something or nothing is being intuited or thought. To intuit or to think nothing has therefore a meaning; the two are distinguished and so nothing is (concretely exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is the empty intuiting and thinking itself, like pure being. – Nothing is therefore the same determination or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as what pure being is.
BECOMING
Unity of being and nothing
Pure being and pure nothing are therefore the same. The truth is neither being nor nothing, but rather that being has passed over into nothing and nothing into being – “has passed over,” not passes over. But the truth is just as much that they are not without distinction; it is rather that they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct yet equally unseparated and inseparable, and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is therefore this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one into the other: becoming, a movement in which the two are distinguished, but by a distinction which has just as immediately dissolved itself.
Frontmatter
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
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Book One - The Doctrine of Being
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
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WITH WHAT MUST THE BEGINNING OF SCIENCE BE MADE?
It is only in recent times that there has been a new awareness of the difficulty of finding a beginning in philosophy, and the reason for this difficulty, and so also the possibility of resolving it, have been discussed in a variety of ways. The beginning of philosophy must be either something mediated or something immediate, and it is easy to show that it can be neither the one nor the other; so either way of beginning runs into contradiction.
The principle of a philosophy also expresses a beginning, of course, but not so much a subjective as an objective one, the beginning of all things. The principle is a somehow determinate content – “water,” “the one,” “nous,” “idea,” or “substance,” “monad,” etc. – or, if it designates the nature of cognition and is therefore meant simply as a criterion rather than an objective determination, as “thinking,” “intuition,” “sensation,” “I,” even “subjectivity,” then here too the interest still lies in the content determination. The beginning as such, on the other hand, as something subjective in the sense that it is an accidental way of introducing the exposition, is left unconsidered, a matter of indifference, and consequently also the need to ask with what a beginning should be made remains of no importance in face of the need for the principle in which alone the interest of the fact seems to lie, the interest as to what is the truth, the absolute ground of everything.
But the modern perplexity about a beginning proceeds from a further need which escapes those who are either busy demonstrating their principle dogmatically or skeptically looking for a subjective criterion against dogmatic philosophizing, and is outright denied by those who begin, like a shot from a pistol, from their inner revelation, from faith, intellectual intuition, etc. and who would be exempt from method and logic. If earlier abstract thought is at first interested only in the principle as content, but is driven as philosophical culture advances to the other side to pay attention to the conduct of the cognitive process, then the subjective activity has also been grasped as an essential moment of objective truth, and with this there comes the need to unite the method with the content, the form with the principle.
Appendix: Hegel’s Logic in its Revised and Unrevised Parts
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
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It is a matter of speculation how Hegel would have revised Part Two of Volume One (Book Two in the Lasson edition) and Volume Two (Book Three in the Lasson edition) of the Logic if he had lived to complete the planned work of revision. Some clues may, however, be derived from the changes that Hegel brought to the 1817 Encyclopedia Logic in its new edition of 1830. In this last edition, Hegel rearranged the ordering of the categories of “essence.” He replaced the title of the first grouping, which in 1817 was “The Pure Determinacies of Reflection,” with “Essence as the Ground of Existenz”; moved the category of “Existenz,” which in 1817 was in the second grouping under the general heading of “Appearance,” to the first grouping, and replaced it in the second grouping of 1830, still entitled “Appearance,” with “The World of Appearances.” As used by Hegel in all the texts of the Logic that we have, “Existenz” is an ontological term. Like the Scholastic existentia which is the counterpart of essentia, it signifies the being of a thing inasmuch as it is internally grounded by the thing's essence.Within the Logic, Existenz stands reflectively to “essence” as “Dasein” stands immediately to “being.”On the face of it, the 1830 grouping of the categories of essence thus seems to be the more natural one, for it more clearly brings out the close conceptual connection between “essence” and “Existenz.” This connection eventually develops into the idea of an internally cohesive world of variegated appearances, that is, “TheWorld of Appearances” of the 1830 Encyclopedia Logic.One should think, therefore, that a new edition of the “Doctrine of Essence” of the Greater Logic would have followed more closely the headings and groupings of categories of the 1830 Encyclopedia.However, whether these changes would have amounted to a truly substantial conceptual reorientation of the Logic is of course open to question.
Also to be kept in mind is that the Encyclopedia Logic differs from the Greater Logic in sheer size: according to the pagination of the critical edition, there are 168 pages in the 1813 “Doctrine of Essence” as opposed to 30 pages in the equivalent section of the 1830 Encyclopedia. And it also differs in scope.
Chapter 1 - Concrete Existence
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
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Just as the principle of sufficient reason says that whatever is has a ground, or is something posited, something mediated, so there would also have to be a principle of concrete existence saying that whatever is, exists concretely. The truth of being is to be, not an immediate something, but essence that has come forth into immediacy.
But when it was further said that whatever exists concretely has a ground and is conditioned, it also would have had to be said that it has no ground and is unconditioned. For concrete existence is the immediacy that has come forth from the sublating of the mediation that results from the connection of ground and condition, and which, in coming forth, sublates this very coming forth.
Inasmuch as mention may be made here of the proofs of the concrete existence of God, it is first to be noted that besides immediate being that comes first, and concrete existence (or the being that proceeds from essence) that comes second, there is still a third being, one that proceeds from the concept, and this is objectivity. – Proof is, in general, mediated cognition. The various kinds of being require or contain each its own kind of mediation, and so will the nature of the proof also vary accordingly. The ontological proof wants to start from the concept; it lays down as its basis the sum total of all realities, where under reality also concrete existence is subsumed. Its mediation, therefore, is that of the syllogism, and syllogism is not yet under consideration here. We have already commented above (Part 1, Section 1) on Kant's objection to the ontological proof, and have remarked that by concrete existence Kant understands the determinate immediate existence with which something enters into the context of total experience, that is, into the determination of being an other and of being in reference to an other. As an existent concrete in this way, something is thus mediated by an other, and concrete existence is in general the side of its mediation. But in what Kant calls the concept, namely, something taken as only simply self-referring, or in representation as such, this mediation is missing; in abstract self-identity, opposition is left out.
Preface to the First Edition
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
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Summary
The complete transformation that the ways of philosophical thought have undergone among us in the past twenty-five odd years, the higher standpoint in self-awareness that spirit has attained in this period of time, has so far had little influence on the shape of the logic.
What was hitherto called “metaphysics” has been, so to speak, extirpated root and branch, and has vanished from the ranks of the sciences. Where are the voices still to be heard of the ontology of former times, of the rational psychology, the cosmology, or indeed, even of the natural theology of the past, or where are they allowed to be heard? Inquiries, for instance, into the immateriality of the soul, into mechanical and final causes – where is interest in them still to be found? Even the former proofs of God's existence are cited only out of historical interest, or for the purpose of edification and the uplifting of the mind. The fact is that interest, whether in the content or in the form of the former metaphysics, or in both together, has been lost. Remarkable as it is if a people has become indifferent, for instance, to its constitutional law, to its convictions, its moral customs and virtues, just as remarkable it is when a people loses its metaphysics – when the spirit engaged with its pure essence no longer has any real presence in its life.
The exoteric teaching of the Kantian philosophy – that the understanding ought not to be allowed to soar above experience, lest the cognitive faculty become a theoretical reason that by itself would beget nothing but mental fancies – this was the justification coming from the scientific camp for renouncing speculative thought. In support of this popular doctrine there was added the cry of alarm of modern pedagogy, that the pressing situation of the time called for attention to immediate needs – that just as in the ways of knowledge experience is first, so for skill in public and private life, exercise and practical education are the essential, they alone what is required, while theoretical insight is even harmful. – With science and common sense thus working hand in hand to cause the downfall of metaphysics, the singular spectacle came into view of a cultivated people without metaphysics – like a temple richly ornamented in other respects but without a holy of holies.
Acknowledgments
- Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel
- Edited and translated by George Di Giovanni, McGill University, Montréal
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- Book:
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Science of Logic
- Published online:
- 30 September 2021
- Print publication:
- 19 August 2010, pp viii-viii
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