Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T16:17:26.075Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hegel’s Treatment of Predication Considered in the Light of a Logic for the Actual World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2018

Paul Redding
Paul Redding*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney, Australiapaul.redding@sydney.edu.au
Get access

Abstract

One prominent feature of analytic metaphysics in the second half of the twentieth century was the revival of metaphysical debate over modality, and in this paper I suggest that a particular position that emerged within this debate, ‘modal actualism’, bears a striking resemblance to the way that Hegel discusses modal notions in the final chapter of Book 2 of the Science of Logic, ‘Wirklichkeit’ or ‘Actuality’. Modal actualists opposed David Lewis’s counter-intuitive claims about the existence of alternate possible worlds, and aimed to reconcile the reality of alternate possibilities with the common-sense idea of the actual world as all there is. Like Hegel in the chapter ‘Actuality’, they thus argue that possible alternatives to the actual world must, somehow, exist within the actual world. Here I approach these issues via the ideas of John N. Findlay who, in the 1950s, had attempted to reintroduce Hegel into an Anglophone philosophical culture, but who also influenced the later development of modal actualism via his influence on the modal logician, Arthur Prior. Like certain actualists, Findlay distinguished between two modes of predication in order to distinguish, but relate, judgements about the actual from those about the possible. This predicative dualism is strikingly similar to the way Hegel distinguishes two types of predication in his treatment of judgement in Book 3 of the Science of Logic. Reading Hegel’s dualistic account of judgement structure against this background enables us to see how it was meant to provide a logical framework for the ‘actualist’ metaphysics he earlier sketched in the chapter, ‘Actuality’.

Type
Articles
Information
Hegel Bulletin , Volume 40 , Special Issue 1: Science of Logic , April 2019 , pp. 51 - 73
Copyright
© The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bechler, Z. (1995), Aristotle’s Theory of Actuality. Albany NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Bobzien, S. (2003), ‘Stoic Logic’, in B. Inwood (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Stoic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brandom, R. B. (1994), Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brandom, R. B. ( forthcoming), A Spirit of Trust: A Semantic Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Accessed at: http://www.pitt.edu/~brandom/spirit_of_trust.html.Google Scholar
Copeland, B. J. (2002), ‘The Genesis of Possible Worlds Semantics’, Journal of Philosophical Logic Vol. 3: 99–137.Google Scholar
Findlay, J. N. (1933), Meinong’s Theory of Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Findlay, J. N. (1963), Meinong’s Theory of Objects and Values. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Findlay, J. N. (1951 (1941)), ‘Time: A Treatment of Some Puzzles’, in A. Flew (ed.), Logic and Language. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Findlay, J. N. (1942), ‘Goedelian Sentences: A Non-Numerical Approach’, Mind 51: 259–265.Google Scholar
Findlay, J. N. (1955–6), ‘Some Merits of Hegelianism: The Presidential Address’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series Vol. 56: 1–24.Google Scholar
Findlay, J. N. (1958), Hegel: A Re-Examination. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Findlay, J. N. (1963), Language, Mind and Value: Philosophical Essays. London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Findlay, J. N. (1985), ‘My Life: 1903–1973’, in R. S. Cohen, R. M. Martin and M. Westphal (eds.), Studies in the Philosophy of J. N. Findlay. Albany NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Fine, K. (1994), ‘Essence and Modality’, in J. Tomberlin (ed.), Logic and Language: Philosophical Perspectives vol. 8. Atascadero CA: Ridgeview.Google Scholar
Fine, K. (2005), Modality and Tense: Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hartmann, N. (2013), Possibility and Actuality , trans A. Scott and S. Adair. Berlin: Walter de Grueter.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1968), Gesammelte Werke. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1977), Phenomenology of Spirit, trans A. V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (1991), The Encyclopaedia Logic: Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze, trans T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting and H. S. Harris. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (2006), Lectures on the History of Philosophy 1825–6, in 3 volumes, ed. R. F. Brown, trans R. F. Brown and J. M. Stewart, with H. S. Harris. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. (2010), The Science of Logic , trans. G. di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hinkikka, J. (1973), Time and Necessity: Studies in Aristotle’s Theory of Modality. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Johnson, W. E. (1921), Logic. Part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kreines, J. (2015), Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and its Philosophical Appeal. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, C. I. (1930), ‘Logic and Pragmatism’, in G. P. Adams and W. P. Montague (eds.), Contemporary American Philosophy Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. K. (1986), On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Linsky, B. and Zalta, E. N. (1991), ‘Is Lewis a Meinongian?, Australasian Journal of Philosophy Vol. 69: 438–453.Google Scholar
Mally, E. (1912), Gegenstandstheoretische Grundlegung der Logik und Logistik. Leipzig: Barth.Google Scholar
Mally, E. (1926), Grundgesetze des Sollens. Elemente Der Logik des Willens. Graz: Leuschner & Lubensky.Google Scholar
Meinong, A. (1904), ‘Über Gegenstandstheorie’, in A. Meinong (ed.), Untersucheungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie. Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth.Google Scholar
Meinong, A. (1910), Über Annahmen. Leipzig: Barth.Google Scholar
Plantinga, A. (1974), The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Prior, A. N. (1957), Time and Modality: Being the John Locke Lectures for 1955–6 delivered in the University of Oxford. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Prior, A. N. (1967), Past, Present, and Future. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Prior, A. N. (1968), ‘Intentionality and Intensionality’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes Vol. 42: 91–106.Google Scholar
Prior, A. N. and Fine, K. (1977), Worlds, Times and Selves. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Redding, P. (2009), Continental Idealism: Leibniz to Nietzsche. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Redding, P. (2017), ‘Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy’, in D. Moyar (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Hegel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ramsey, F. P. (1925), ‘Universals’, Mind 34: 401–417.Google Scholar
Russell, B. (1903), Principles of Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Russell, B. (1914), Our Knowledge of the External World. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Stalnaker, R. C. (2003), Ways a World Might Be: Metaphysical and Anti-Metaphysical Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Stalnaker, R. C. (2012), Mere Possibilities: Metaphysical Foundations of Modal Semantics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Stern, R. (2009), Hegelian Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tahko, T. (2011), Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zalta, E. N. (1988), Intensional Logic and the Metaphysics of Intentionality. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar