Science of Logic
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Science of Logic

G W F Hegel

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eBook - ePub

Science of Logic

G W F Hegel

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This is Volume VII of seven in a collection of works on Hegel in the Library of Philosophy which was designed as a contribution to the History of Modern Philosophy under the heads: first of Different Schools of Thought-Sensationalist, Realist, Idealist, Intuitivist; secondly of different Subjects-Psychology, Ethics, Political Philosophy, Theology. Originally published in 1969, this volume is a new translation of Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2014
ISBN
9781317832188
Volume One
The Objective Logic
Preface to the First Edition
The complete transformation which philosophical thought in Germany has undergone in the last twenty-five years and the higher standpoint reached by spirit in its awareness of itself, have had but little influence as yet on the structure of logic.
That which, prior to this period, was called metaphysics has been, so to speak, extirpated root and branch and has vanished from the ranks of the sciences. The ontology, rational psychology, cosmology, yes even natural theology, of former times—where is now to be heard any mention of them, or who would venture to mention them? Inquiries, for instance, into the immateriality of the soul, into efficient and final causes, where should these still arouse any interest? Even the former proofs of the existence of God are cited only for their historical interest or for purposes of edification and uplifting the emotions. The fact is that there no longer exists any interest either in the form or the content of metaphysics or in both together. If it is remarkable when a nation has become indifferent to its constitutional theory, to its national sentiments, its ethical customs and virtues, it is certainly no less remarkable when a nation loses its metaphysics, when the spirit which contemplates its own pure essence is no longer a present reality in the life of the nation.
The exoteric teaching of the Kantian philosophy—that the understanding ought not to go beyond experience, else the cognitive faculty will become a theoretical reason which by itself generates nothing but fantasies of the brain—this was a justification from a philosophical quarter for the renunciation of speculative thought. In support of this popular teaching came the cry of modern educationists that the needs of the time demanded attention to immediate requirements, that just as experience was the primary factor for knowledge, so for skill in public and private life, practice and practical training generally were essential and alone necessary, theoretical insight being harmful even. Philosophy [Wissenschaft] and ordinary common sense thus co-operating to bring about the downfall of metaphysics, there was seen the strange spectacle of a cultured nation without metaphysics—like a temple richly ornamented in other respects but without a holy of holies. Theology, which in former times was the guardian of the speculative mysteries and of metaphysics (although this was subordinate to it) had given up this science in exchange for feelings, for what was popularly matter-of-fact, and for historical erudition. In keeping with this change, there vanished from the world those solitary souls who were sacrificed by their people and exiled from the world to the end that the eternal should be contemplated and served by lives devoted solely thereto—not for any practical gain but for the sake of blessedness; a disappearance which, in another context, can be regarded as essentially the same phenomenon as that previously mentioned. So that having got rid of the dark utterances of metaphysics, of the colourless communion of the spirit with itself, outer existence seemed to be transformed into the bright world of flowers—and there are no black flowers, as we know.
Logic did not fare quite so badly as metaphysics. That one learns from logic how to think (the usefulness of logic and hence its purpose, were held to consist in this—just as if one could only learn how to digest and move about by studying anatomy and physiology) this prejudice has long since vanished, and the spirit of practicality certainly did not intend for logic a better fate than was suffered by the sister science. Nevertheless, probably for the sake of a certain formal utility, it was still left a place among the sciences, and indeed was even retained as a subject of public instruction. However, this better lot concerns only the outer fate of logic, for its structure and contents have remained the same throughout a long inherited tradition, although in the course of being passed on the contents have become ever more diluted and attenuated; logic shows no traces so far of the new spirit which has arisen in the sciences no less than in the world of actuality. However, once the substantial form of the spirit has inwardly reconstituted itself, all attempts to preserve the forms of an earlier culture are utterly in vain; like withered leaves they are pushed off by the new buds already growing at their roots.
Even in the philosophical sphere this ignoring of the general change is beginning gradually to come to an end. Imperceptibly, even those who are opposed to the new ideas have become familiar with them and have appropriated them, and if they continue to speak slightingly of the source and principles of those ideas and to dispute them, still they have accepted their consequences and have been unable to defend themselves from their influence; the only way in which they can give a positive significance and a content to their negative attitude which is becoming less and less important, is to fall in with the new ways of thinking.
On the other hand, it seems that the period of fermentation with which a new creative idea begins is past. In its first manifestation, such an idea usually displays a fanatical hostility toward the entrenched systematization of the older principle; usually too, it is fearful of losing itself in the ramifications of the particular and again it shuns the labour required for a scientific elaboration of the new principle and in its need for such, it grasps to begin with at an empty formalism. The challenge to elaborate and systematize the material now becomes all the more pressing. There is a period in the culture of an epoch as in the culture of the individual, when the primary concern is the acquisition and assertion of the principle in its undeveloped intensity. But the higher demand is that it should become systematized knowledge.
Now whatever may have been accomplished for the form and the content of philosophy [Wissenschaft] in other directions, the science of logic which constitutes metaphysics proper or purely speculative philosophy, has hitherto still been much neglected. What it is exactly that I understand by this science and its standpoint, I have stated provisionally in the Introduction. The fact that it has been necessary to make a completely fresh start with this science, the very nature of the subject matter and the absence of any previous works which might have been utilized for the projected reconstruction of logic, may be taken into account by fair-minded critics, even though a labour covering many years has been unable to give this effort a greater perfection. The essential point of view is that what is involved is an altogether new concept of scientific procedure. Philosophy, if it would be science, cannot, as I have remarked elsewhere,1 borrow its method from a subordinate science like mathematics, any more than it can remain satisfied with categorical assurances of inner intuition, or employ arguments based on grounds adduced by external reflection. On the contrary, it can be only the nature of the content itself which spontaneously develops itself in a scientific method of knowing, since it is at the same time the reflection of the content itself which first posits and generates its determinate character.
The understanding determines, and holds the determinations fixed; reason is negative and dialectical, because it resolves the determinations of the understanding into nothing; it is positive because it generates the universal and comprehends the particular therein. Just as the understanding is usually taken to be something separate from reason as such, so too dialectical reason is usually taken to be something distinct from positive reason. But reason in its truth is spirit which is higher than either merely positive reason, or merely intuitive understanding. It is the negative, that which constitutes the quality alike of dialectical reason and of understanding; it negates what is simple, thus positing the specific difference of the understanding; it equally resolves it and is thus dialectical, But it does not stay in the nothing of this result but in the result is no less positive, and in this way it has restored what was at first simple, but as a universal which is within itself concrete; a given particular is not subsumed under this universal but in this determining, this positing of a difference, and the resolving of it, the particular has at the same time already determined itself. This spiritual movement which, in its simple undifferentiatedness, gives itself its own determinateness and in its determinateness its equality with itself, which therefore is the immanent development of the Notion, this movement is the absolute method of knowing and at the same time is the immanent soul of the content itself. I maintain that it is this self-construing method alone which enables philosophy to be an objective, demonstrated science. It is in this way that I have tried to expound consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Consciousness is spirit as a concrete knowing, a knowing too, in which externality is involved; but the development of this object, like the development of all natural and spiritual life, rests solely on the nature of the pure essentialities which constitute the content of logic. Consciousness, as spirit in its manifestation which in its progress frees itself from its immediacy and external concretion, attains to the pure knowing which takes as its object those same pure essentialities as they are in and for themselves. They are pure thoughts, spirit thinking its own essential nature. Their self-movement is their spiritual life and is that through which philosophy constitutes itself and of which it is the exposition.
In the foregoing there is indicated the relation of the science which I call the Phenomenology of Spirit, to logic. As regards the external relation, it was intended that the first part of the System of Science2 which contains the Phenomenology should be followed by a second part containing logic and the two concrete [realen] sciences, the Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit, which would complete the System of Philosophy. But the necessary expansion which logic itself has demanded has induced me to have this part published separately; it thus forms the first sequel to the Phenomenology of Spirit in an expanded arrangement of the system. It will later be followed by an exposition of the two concrete philosophical sciences mentioned. This first volume of the Logic contains as Book One the Doctrine of Being; Book Two, the Doctrine of Essence, which forms the second part of the first volume, is already in the press; the second volume will contain Subjective Logic or the Doctrine of the Notion.
Nuremberg, March 22, 1812.
1 Phenomenology of Spirit, Preface to the first edition. Strictly, the exposition is the cognition of the method and it has its place in logic itself. [1831.]
2 Bamberg and Würzburg, Göbhard, 1807. This title will not be repeated in the second edition which will be published next Easter. In place of the projected second part mentioned in the rest of the sentence, which was to contain all the other philosophical sciences, I have since brought out the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, the third edition of which appeared last year. [1831.]
Preface to the Second Edition
When I undertook this fresh elaboration of the Science of Logic of which this is the first volume, I was fully conscious not only of the inherent difficulty of the subject matter and of its exposition, but also of the imperfection of its treatment in the first edition; earnestly as I have tried after many years of further occupation with this science to remedy this imperfection, I feel I still have reason enough to claim the indulgence of the reader. One title to such claim in the first instance may well be based on the fact that in the main there was available for the contents of the science only external material in the older metaphysics and logic. Though these two sciences have been universally and abundantly cultivated, the latter even up to our own day, the interest taken in the speculative side has been only slight; in fact, on the whole, the same material has been just repeated over and over again, sometimes being thinned out to the point of being trivial and superficial and sometimes more of the old ballast has been hauled out afresh and trailed along with logic. From such efforts, often purely mechanical, the philosophical import of the science could gain nothing. To exhibit the realm of thought philosophically, that is, in its own immanent activity or what is the same, in its necessary development, had therefore to be a fresh undertaking, one that had to be started right from the beginning; but this traditional material, the familiar forms of thought, must be regarded as an extremely important source, indeed as a necessary condition and as a presupposition to be gratefully acknowledged even though what it offers is only here and there a meagre shred or a disordered heap of dead bones.
The forms of thought are, in the first instance, displayed and stored in human language. Nowadays we cannot be too often reminded that it is thinking which distinguishes man from the beasts. Into all that becomes something inward for men, an image or conception as such, into all that he makes his own, language has penetrated, and everything that he has transformed into language and expresses in it contains a category—concealed, mixed with other forms or clearly determined as such, so much is logic his natural element, indeed his own peculiar nature. If nature as such, as the physical world, is contrasted with the spiritual sphere, then logic must certainly be said to be the supernatural element which permeates every relationship of man to nature, his sensation, intuition, desire, need, instinct, and simply by so doing transforms it into something human, even though only formally human, into ideas and purposes. It is an advantage when a language possesses an abundance of logical expressions, that is, specific and separate expressions for the thought determinations themselves; many prepositions and articles denote relationships based on thought; the Chinese language is supposed not to have developed to this stage or only to an inadequate extent. These particles, however, play quite a subordinate part having only a slightly more independent form than the prefixes and suffixes, inflections and the like. It is much more important that in a language the categories should appear in the form of substantives and verbs and thus be stamped with the form of objectivity. In this respect German has many advantages over other modern languages; some of its words even possess the further peculiarity of having not only different but opposite meanings so that one cannot fail to recognize a speculative spirit of the language in them: it can delight a thinker to come across such words and to find the union of opposites naïvely shown in the dictionary as one word with opposite meanings, although this result of speculative thinking is nonsensical to the understanding. Philosophy therefore stands in no need of a special ...

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