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The Science of Logic
This new translation of The Science of Logic (also known as 'Greater Logic') includes the revised Book I (1832), Book II (1813), and Book III (1816). Recent research has given us a detailed picture of the process that led Hegel to his final conception of the System and of the place of the Logic within it. We now understand how and why Hegel distanced himself from Schelling, how radical this break with his early mentor was, and to what extent it entailed a return (but with a difference) to Fichte and Kant. In the introduction to the volume, George di Giovanni presents in synoptic form the results of recent scholarship on the subject, and, while recognizing the fault lines in Hegel's System that allow opposite interpretations, argues that the Logic marks the end of classical metaphysics. The translation is accompanied by a full apparatus of historical and explanatory notes.
865 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1812
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About the author
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2,179 books2,532 followersGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a German philosopher and one of the founding figures of German Idealism. Influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism and Rousseau's politics, Hegel formulated an elaborate system of historical development of ethics, government, and religion through the dialectical unfolding of the Absolute. Hegel was one of the most well-known historicist philosopher, and his thought presaged continental philosophy, including postmodernism. His system was inverted into a materialist ideology by Karl Marx, originally a member of the Young Hegelian faction.
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October 11, 2021
Nothing So Practical As a Good Theory
I read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit almost a half-century ago. I can recall its poetic beauty but none of its content. I have never read The Science of Logic, a definite gap in my education but one I will have to live with, at least in part. My purpose in consulting The Science of Logic at this late date is only to understand Hegel’s conception of measurement. Since everything in Hegel’s work is intimately connected to everything else, I will undoubtedly make substantive interpretive errors. Nonetheless I hope my reading is adequate to establish if my own theory of measurement (see below) is compatible with his, and if not where it differs.
Like the Phenomenology, I take the Logic as a treatise about language and language-using more than about reasoning or science as it is or should be conducted. Hegel’s concern is inquiry in general not specific issues in any scientific discipline. Language, unavoidably, mediates all inquiry. So Hegel developed a somewhat complex language about language. And language about language always seems somewhat dense if not cramped and arbitrary. But since I am not attempting to re-establish Hegel’s language system, I feel entitled to ‘translate’ the terms relevant to my inquiry into terms which are in more or less everyday use.
Hegel begins his discussion of measurement with the statement: “Abstractly expressed in measure, quality and quantity are united.” Quality and quantity do have technical categorical meaning in the Logic. But they seem to me to near enough in denotation to be used colloquially. I consider this statement therefore to be in my Propositions (1) & (2). That is, measurement requires the qualitative choice of a metric or scale, which is itself quantitative. Thus quality and quantity are indeed united in the establishment of a metric.
Hegel’s definitional argument then brings in his category of ‘mode’, a term to which there is no convenient colloquial term. Modes are forms of ‘productive expression’, in other words, of meaning. There are two modes, relative and absolute. A relative mode has an indeterminate meaning since there is no established link between possibility and necessity. In absolute mode there is no contingency, or more precisely, contingency and necessity are congruent because of what he calls the “initial conditions of productive expression.” “Mode,” he says, “has the specific meaning of measure.”
The modal character of a metric, I believe, corresponds to my Proposition (3). Metrics are defined, that is, their initial conditions are established, so that they are absolute in Hegel’s sense. There is no question, for example, that the choice of a linear numerical metric means that the number 1 is always less than the number 2, which is twice 1. This is not contingent but necessary as part of the metric.
After a digression into Spinoza’s (faulty) consideration of mode, he returns to his own theory, and says, “everything depends on the kind and manner of the mode; such an admission means that the mode itself is declared to belong essentially to the substantial nature of a thing.” Despite its degree of abstraction, which is absolute, a metric nevertheless exists. Metrics are, in other words, real objects even though their tires cannot be kicked nor their attributes described except in terms of a definition. This is implicit in my Propositions (2), (3), & (4), but probably should be made explicit.
Hegel then gets to the heart of his theory when he says, “Measure... is an external kind and manner of determinateness, a more or less, but at the same time it is equally reflected into itself, a determinateness which is not indifferent and external but intrinsic; it is thus the concrete truth of being. That is why mankind has revered measure as something inviolable and sacred.” Unpacking this a bit: measure, in my terms a metric, is ‘external’, that is to say it is not an attribute or a property of an object other than the metric itself. It is, in a sense, sovereign because of its existence as absolute mode.
This externality of the metric is explicit in my first two Propositions. Measurements are not properties of objects other than the metric. Rather objects become properties of the metric. They are assigned a specific place or space on a metric in the act of measurement. On the other hand, metrics are also intrinsic to themselves, that is, any part of the metric is representative of the whole, and is fundamentally unchanged by the assignment of extrinsic properties of the objects that are measured. To summarise: measured objects do not have the properties measured; measurements are properties only of the metric employed.
This is why the metric is “reflected into itself... and has a determinateness which is intrinsic.” A measurement may be made at various degrees of precision, but at whatever degree it is made, it is determinate. This too is implicit in Proposition (3) but also needs to be made explicit. Among other things this determinateness of measurement solves a number of quasi-problems such as those of Chaos Theory in which very small measurement errors involve large systems changes. This will be discussed further in subsequent reviews.
Another way of speaking about the definiteness or modal character of a metric is to say that a metric is its own verification. Once a metric has been established it cannot be corrected or gainsaid by any other metric. It becomes its own standard of correctness. One can speak of error ‘on’ a metric but not error ‘of’ a metric in any meaningful quantitative way. As Hegel says, a metric is “the concrete truth of being.” There certainly may be other truths, but not within the truth of a metric which has been chosen for measuring. This is covered in my Proposition (5)
Hegel’s reference to the quasi-divine nature of measurement I interpret in two ways. In the first instance, numbers, from at least Ancient Greece onwards, have had a mystical connotation. In fact in several mystical traditions, Stoicism and Kabbalah for example, numbers themselves are considered divine. Since metrics are composed of numbers, they share in their transcendental character. Platonist philosophy considered them as Eternal Forms. But whatever terminology is employed, numbers and metrics have a distinctive ontology or mode of being.
Secondly, in philosophical terms “The absolute, God, is the measure of all things.” I take him to mean by this that God includes all possible metrics. In fact God is the reconciliation of all metrics, each of which is a sort of ‘spark’ of the divine. Within God alternative metrics are not contraries but ‘track’, as it were, consistently with one another. I think this is parallel to my Propositions (7) & (8) in which I attempt to articulate the possibility for ‘larger’ metrics. God is the largest, most encompassing metric of all. There is, I believe, a political implication, or at least a possibility, which arises from this, namely what I term below the Ethical And Political Principles of Propositions (7) & (8).
There is obviously much more to be said about metrics, numbers, aesthetic choice, and the politics of measurement from others parts of the Phenomenology and the Logic. But I think that I have made a sufficient argument that my outline theory can at least be interpreted as consistent with the Hegelian concept. Onward and upward.
An Outline Aesthetic Theory of Measurement
Illustration of the relative importance of the choice of metric
Below is a simple graph showing a strait forward linear metric on the x axis and the natural logarithm of the values of this metric on the y axis [y = f(x) = ln(x)]. Each is a very distinct metric despite the fact that both are expressed in the same numerical scale of 1,2,3 etc. Measurements taken on one will be dramatically different from measurements taken on the other. Any error in measurement on either metric will likely be insignificant in comparison with the difference in measurements between the two metrics.
Students of economics will recognise this graph as indicating the declining marginal utility of money, an established principle of micro-economics. Yet the declining marginal utility is rarely used in analysis because it is difficult to estimate and to use in calculations. Therefore it is presumed in all of financial and risk analysis that there is constant marginal utility of wealth and income - an example of the many times that economics and other social sciences look for their keys under a lamp post simply because there is light there.
I read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit almost a half-century ago. I can recall its poetic beauty but none of its content. I have never read The Science of Logic, a definite gap in my education but one I will have to live with, at least in part. My purpose in consulting The Science of Logic at this late date is only to understand Hegel’s conception of measurement. Since everything in Hegel’s work is intimately connected to everything else, I will undoubtedly make substantive interpretive errors. Nonetheless I hope my reading is adequate to establish if my own theory of measurement (see below) is compatible with his, and if not where it differs.
Like the Phenomenology, I take the Logic as a treatise about language and language-using more than about reasoning or science as it is or should be conducted. Hegel’s concern is inquiry in general not specific issues in any scientific discipline. Language, unavoidably, mediates all inquiry. So Hegel developed a somewhat complex language about language. And language about language always seems somewhat dense if not cramped and arbitrary. But since I am not attempting to re-establish Hegel’s language system, I feel entitled to ‘translate’ the terms relevant to my inquiry into terms which are in more or less everyday use.
Hegel begins his discussion of measurement with the statement: “Abstractly expressed in measure, quality and quantity are united.” Quality and quantity do have technical categorical meaning in the Logic. But they seem to me to near enough in denotation to be used colloquially. I consider this statement therefore to be in my Propositions (1) & (2). That is, measurement requires the qualitative choice of a metric or scale, which is itself quantitative. Thus quality and quantity are indeed united in the establishment of a metric.
Hegel’s definitional argument then brings in his category of ‘mode’, a term to which there is no convenient colloquial term. Modes are forms of ‘productive expression’, in other words, of meaning. There are two modes, relative and absolute. A relative mode has an indeterminate meaning since there is no established link between possibility and necessity. In absolute mode there is no contingency, or more precisely, contingency and necessity are congruent because of what he calls the “initial conditions of productive expression.” “Mode,” he says, “has the specific meaning of measure.”
The modal character of a metric, I believe, corresponds to my Proposition (3). Metrics are defined, that is, their initial conditions are established, so that they are absolute in Hegel’s sense. There is no question, for example, that the choice of a linear numerical metric means that the number 1 is always less than the number 2, which is twice 1. This is not contingent but necessary as part of the metric.
After a digression into Spinoza’s (faulty) consideration of mode, he returns to his own theory, and says, “everything depends on the kind and manner of the mode; such an admission means that the mode itself is declared to belong essentially to the substantial nature of a thing.” Despite its degree of abstraction, which is absolute, a metric nevertheless exists. Metrics are, in other words, real objects even though their tires cannot be kicked nor their attributes described except in terms of a definition. This is implicit in my Propositions (2), (3), & (4), but probably should be made explicit.
Hegel then gets to the heart of his theory when he says, “Measure... is an external kind and manner of determinateness, a more or less, but at the same time it is equally reflected into itself, a determinateness which is not indifferent and external but intrinsic; it is thus the concrete truth of being. That is why mankind has revered measure as something inviolable and sacred.” Unpacking this a bit: measure, in my terms a metric, is ‘external’, that is to say it is not an attribute or a property of an object other than the metric itself. It is, in a sense, sovereign because of its existence as absolute mode.
This externality of the metric is explicit in my first two Propositions. Measurements are not properties of objects other than the metric. Rather objects become properties of the metric. They are assigned a specific place or space on a metric in the act of measurement. On the other hand, metrics are also intrinsic to themselves, that is, any part of the metric is representative of the whole, and is fundamentally unchanged by the assignment of extrinsic properties of the objects that are measured. To summarise: measured objects do not have the properties measured; measurements are properties only of the metric employed.
This is why the metric is “reflected into itself... and has a determinateness which is intrinsic.” A measurement may be made at various degrees of precision, but at whatever degree it is made, it is determinate. This too is implicit in Proposition (3) but also needs to be made explicit. Among other things this determinateness of measurement solves a number of quasi-problems such as those of Chaos Theory in which very small measurement errors involve large systems changes. This will be discussed further in subsequent reviews.
Another way of speaking about the definiteness or modal character of a metric is to say that a metric is its own verification. Once a metric has been established it cannot be corrected or gainsaid by any other metric. It becomes its own standard of correctness. One can speak of error ‘on’ a metric but not error ‘of’ a metric in any meaningful quantitative way. As Hegel says, a metric is “the concrete truth of being.” There certainly may be other truths, but not within the truth of a metric which has been chosen for measuring. This is covered in my Proposition (5)
Hegel’s reference to the quasi-divine nature of measurement I interpret in two ways. In the first instance, numbers, from at least Ancient Greece onwards, have had a mystical connotation. In fact in several mystical traditions, Stoicism and Kabbalah for example, numbers themselves are considered divine. Since metrics are composed of numbers, they share in their transcendental character. Platonist philosophy considered them as Eternal Forms. But whatever terminology is employed, numbers and metrics have a distinctive ontology or mode of being.
Secondly, in philosophical terms “The absolute, God, is the measure of all things.” I take him to mean by this that God includes all possible metrics. In fact God is the reconciliation of all metrics, each of which is a sort of ‘spark’ of the divine. Within God alternative metrics are not contraries but ‘track’, as it were, consistently with one another. I think this is parallel to my Propositions (7) & (8) in which I attempt to articulate the possibility for ‘larger’ metrics. God is the largest, most encompassing metric of all. There is, I believe, a political implication, or at least a possibility, which arises from this, namely what I term below the Ethical And Political Principles of Propositions (7) & (8).
There is obviously much more to be said about metrics, numbers, aesthetic choice, and the politics of measurement from others parts of the Phenomenology and the Logic. But I think that I have made a sufficient argument that my outline theory can at least be interpreted as consistent with the Hegelian concept. Onward and upward.
An Outline Aesthetic Theory of Measurement
1. Measurement is not the quantification of the properties of an object, event or phenomenon. Nothing has the property of being, say, 1 yard square. Such a designation runs into all sorts of philosophical problems having to do with human sensory perceptions and the epistemological difficulties of determining the inherent properties of what Kant called “the thing in itself.”
2. Rather measurement is the establishment of the position of a thing, event or phenomenon, on a scale. The thing is a property of the scale, not vice versa. When we measure we are ordering things on a scale not determining the properties of a thing. This is the primary Ontological Principle of measurement
3. The scale used in measurement is called a metric, and can have a variety of properties. Metrics, unlike other things, can have properties because they are mathematically defined to have them. Metrics, like all numbers, have a unique mode of existence. We do not ‘find’ metrics in the natural world, we create them. They are both imaginary and incontrovertibly real at the same time. GDP is a metric, economic utility can be a metric if it is specified mathematically, price and costs are metrics.
4. Metrics are expressed in terms of a numeraire, that is a unit of measurement like feet, dollars, utiles, but these should no be confused with the nature of the metric itself which is purely mathematical. For example, the metric of price is one of constant proportions: $2 is exactly twice $1 and half of $4. But $4 of income may not be twice as many utiles as $2. The metric of utility recognizes what economists call declining marginal utility.
5. A metric is what economists call an aesthetic, the more general term used for a criterion for judging value, worth, importance etc. GDP, for example, is an aesthetic that treats increases as beneficial. Unlike utility, benefit is directly proportionate to the ‘place’ an economy is placed on that metric. Such a metric is not required by any scientific or moral method, but it is an aesthetic choice, the most fundamental choice that all economists make. The choice of metric is a work of art.
6. The error in choosing an aesthetic is always greater than the error of measurement on or within an aesthetic. The aesthetic of GDP for example is not necessarily correlated with a metric of ‘National Happiness.’ As GDP increases, National Happiness could conceivably decrease due to pollution, and other environmental degradation. A 1% error in the measurement of GDP (that is enough to make it useless for policy-making purposes) would be far less significant than the error of choosing GDP over the National Happiness measure, for example.
7. An aesthetic itself has a value, that is, is better or worse, depending on how effective it is in expressing the experience of a population. To the degree that an aesthetic is accepted politically as such an expression, it is more or less verified for that population for the purposes of the issues at hand. This can be called the Ethical Principle of the aesthetic. The art of the economic aesthetic is, like all aesthetics, social. In a sense the aesthetic is ‘true’ to the degree it represents the sentiment of a population.
8. The Ethical Principle of the aesthetic implies that its choice can neither be objective nor subjective, only communal. Any attempt to restrict the politics of a community in its choice of aesthetic is the primary source of aesthetic error. The only way in which contrary aesthetics can be reconciled within any community is the the discovery of a synthetic or ‘larger’ aesthetic that recognises the conditions in which these ‘lesser’ aesthetics are relevant. Thus, for example, measurement with a everyday yardstick is perfectly sensible so long as what is measured is not too small or too fast, in which case quantum measures are necessary. This is the Political Principle of measurement.
Illustration of the relative importance of the choice of metric
Below is a simple graph showing a strait forward linear metric on the x axis and the natural logarithm of the values of this metric on the y axis [y = f(x) = ln(x)]. Each is a very distinct metric despite the fact that both are expressed in the same numerical scale of 1,2,3 etc. Measurements taken on one will be dramatically different from measurements taken on the other. Any error in measurement on either metric will likely be insignificant in comparison with the difference in measurements between the two metrics.
Students of economics will recognise this graph as indicating the declining marginal utility of money, an established principle of micro-economics. Yet the declining marginal utility is rarely used in analysis because it is difficult to estimate and to use in calculations. Therefore it is presumed in all of financial and risk analysis that there is constant marginal utility of wealth and income - an example of the many times that economics and other social sciences look for their keys under a lamp post simply because there is light there.
February 21, 2024
At the beginning of his Three Studies on Hegel, Adorno chastises Croce for asking the question, What is still alive in Hegel's philosophy and what is dead? Adorno sees this question as arrogant, since it implies that the critic is in a position far above Hegel, a vantage point from which the great German Idealist can be summarily judged. The very idea of writing a review of a text like the Science of Logic -- complete with star ratings -- is the arrogance of Croce multiplied by a million. For that reason this "review" will just contain a few notes about my own experience of the text, which hopefully will prove useful to others. I cannot really review such a book.
First off, I found the Greater Logic to be an easier read than the Shorter Logic. Although the Greater Logic is considerably bulkier than the latter work, which is a lecture course appended with student notes, Hegel's exposition is more fluid and generous in the Greater Logic. The extra text is there because Hegel gives us more of his reasoning; and compared with the Greater Logic, the Shorter Logic seems, at times, economical to the point of being aphoristic. Those who have read the Shorter Logic and found some passages mystifying may find clarification in the Greater Logic.
The Greater Logic also has many nuggets that readers of the Shorter do not get: Hegel's belaboring of the question as to where logic should begin; his explanation as to why the Logic must be circular; extended sections on his view of the infinite; the determinations of reflection section, wholly absent from the Shorter Logic; and more. Additionally, there are numerous passages in which Hegel, taking the space to make his reasoning more explicit, corrects some all-too-common misunderstandings and stereotypes of his philosophy. For example: note his apprehensions about the term "synthesis" in the section on becoming and his claim, in the final chapter of the book (picked up on by Žižek in For They Know Not What They Do), that triplicity is privileged as the shape of the notion -- but quadruplicity and duality may be regarded as equally adequate shapes!
I have friends who are interested in dialectics but suspicious of Hegel, the systematizer. They prefer Adorno, or maybe Derrida, to Hegel, whose system, they claim, knows no loss and arrests the movement of dialectic in the ominous figure of the motionless Absolute. A reading of the Greater Logic -- as well as other texts by Hegel, but I single this one out -- may disabuse these friends of these false beliefs. This is Hegel at his most dynamic: as soon as a category emerges, it begins to deconstruct itself. And although it may be that later categories sublate previous ones, any talk of the relentless progress of the dialectic must be qualified by noting that previous categories constantly re-emerge in Hegel's narrative.
The Greater Logic is a compelling read insofar as it mixes grand metaphysical vision with nitty-gritty treatment of specific metaphysical topics. Even when Hegel is discussing seemingly scholastic issues, one is never far from his central idea: that the universe is a whole, which he calls the absolute; that the absolute is not a stable supra-entity outside the particulars of the world but is nothing but those particulars, taken as a whole; that the absolute relates itself to itself and therefore has the structure of a subject; and that, as part of the absolute ourselves -- the part that can and does know -- our knowledge of the absolute is the absolute's knowledge of itself. Those who object to Hegel on the grounds that putting the movement of the categories in the absolute freezes them, puts them in a beyond, a giant thing, miss Hegel's radicality. These critics have separated what Hegel thinks together: the absolute IS nothing but its own movement, its own particularization; it is that movement, those particularizations, taken together, as one.
First off, I found the Greater Logic to be an easier read than the Shorter Logic. Although the Greater Logic is considerably bulkier than the latter work, which is a lecture course appended with student notes, Hegel's exposition is more fluid and generous in the Greater Logic. The extra text is there because Hegel gives us more of his reasoning; and compared with the Greater Logic, the Shorter Logic seems, at times, economical to the point of being aphoristic. Those who have read the Shorter Logic and found some passages mystifying may find clarification in the Greater Logic.
The Greater Logic also has many nuggets that readers of the Shorter do not get: Hegel's belaboring of the question as to where logic should begin; his explanation as to why the Logic must be circular; extended sections on his view of the infinite; the determinations of reflection section, wholly absent from the Shorter Logic; and more. Additionally, there are numerous passages in which Hegel, taking the space to make his reasoning more explicit, corrects some all-too-common misunderstandings and stereotypes of his philosophy. For example: note his apprehensions about the term "synthesis" in the section on becoming and his claim, in the final chapter of the book (picked up on by Žižek in For They Know Not What They Do), that triplicity is privileged as the shape of the notion -- but quadruplicity and duality may be regarded as equally adequate shapes!
I have friends who are interested in dialectics but suspicious of Hegel, the systematizer. They prefer Adorno, or maybe Derrida, to Hegel, whose system, they claim, knows no loss and arrests the movement of dialectic in the ominous figure of the motionless Absolute. A reading of the Greater Logic -- as well as other texts by Hegel, but I single this one out -- may disabuse these friends of these false beliefs. This is Hegel at his most dynamic: as soon as a category emerges, it begins to deconstruct itself. And although it may be that later categories sublate previous ones, any talk of the relentless progress of the dialectic must be qualified by noting that previous categories constantly re-emerge in Hegel's narrative.
The Greater Logic is a compelling read insofar as it mixes grand metaphysical vision with nitty-gritty treatment of specific metaphysical topics. Even when Hegel is discussing seemingly scholastic issues, one is never far from his central idea: that the universe is a whole, which he calls the absolute; that the absolute is not a stable supra-entity outside the particulars of the world but is nothing but those particulars, taken as a whole; that the absolute relates itself to itself and therefore has the structure of a subject; and that, as part of the absolute ourselves -- the part that can and does know -- our knowledge of the absolute is the absolute's knowledge of itself. Those who object to Hegel on the grounds that putting the movement of the categories in the absolute freezes them, puts them in a beyond, a giant thing, miss Hegel's radicality. These critics have separated what Hegel thinks together: the absolute IS nothing but its own movement, its own particularization; it is that movement, those particularizations, taken together, as one.
March 5, 2021
This is my second time having read this book. Hegel is less abstract with this book than he is with his Phenomenology of Spirit, and he is trying to take himself more seriously with this book. When Heidegger said that ‘philosophy ended with Hegel’ and ‘by logic, Hegel meant metaphysics’ he is referring to this book. I do realize latter Heidegger will say that ‘philosophy ended with Nietzsche’, during his Nietzsche phase.
‘Contraries do not exist’ while us humans do even with our own internal contradictions keeping us removed from our own authenticities and Hegel is trying to reconcile that as best as he can. Hegel credits Kant more in this book than he does in PoS and Kant is the very first person who demolishes the certainty of truth outside of us by creating his Copernican Revolution of the mind by placing the nexus of truth within us through a ‘faculty of understanding with a transcendental deduction’, Hegel will place certainty outside of us and truth within us and reconciles them through his dialectic while making absolute knowledge not a certain truth.
I really enjoyed reading this book for the second time. Hegel is wrong on calculus and chemistry with its affinities and the infinity getting swallowed by the finite, but overall, there is a message that is explicit within this book that is foundational to modern thought and as Hegel will say ‘the ground of the ground is without ground’, or the cause and effect get entangled through convolution, and ‘spirit’ is not nature and every determination is a negation of the infinite and is a consideration in its own right. The world that we are thrown into has no meaning except for the meaning that we attach to it. The existentialists, the phenomenalists, and the anti-realist all go through Hegel one way or another and this book is a good place to start with learning Hegel for those who don’t mind hearing abstract thoughts making abstract concepts that stray away from the concrete reality. (6/5/2020).
My first review is below:
Which way does the sun rise in the morning? Most people will say in the east, dummy. They are of course wrong. The sun doesn't rise in the morning but we think of the earth as rotating around a relatively fixed sun (even though the sun is moving too, that's why I say 'relatively fixed sun').
I enjoyed this book immensely and know it can be hard going because the way the author writes. Instead of reading this book, one could watch the second season of Mr. Robot and walk away with some of the major themes contained in this book ('Mr Robot' is definitely very Hegelian). The alienation of the individual within the society because of the qualitative and quantitative dichotomy present in the world or as Hegel would say, 'it is the other in its own self, the other of an other; therefore it includes its own other within it and is consequently as contradiction" (you just have to love someone who writes like that). Also, in particular the second season completely plays with Appearance and Reality to the point of view where the viewer gets misled. Come on, even one of the episodes this season was labeled "master slave'.
There is a difference between 'appearance' and 'reality' between the objective and the subjective. Hegel will say in his 'objective' part of the Logic that 'being is the indeterminate immediate'. I'll unpack that statement from Hegelian speak to English. But, first I must make a couple of digressions.
I ended up reading Parmenides as I was reading the Logic. It's by far the best of Plato's dialogs that I've read so far and it's the most important. It's only an hour and a half long and I would strongly recommend it. It's unique for Plato. It's the only dialog where Socrates comes out not winning (with the possible exception of the Symposium, but that is about love, and that's not really my cup of tea anyways). The Logic is a response to the 'One' within Parmenides. Hegel must create the 'Notion' (the dialectic of the Idea) in order to bring back the absolute knowledge because if Parmenides is right (and I definitely am on his side) then we are forced into relative truth that must be contingent, particular and uncertain when we apply the knowledge to reality.
The second digression is that one should not only read Parmenides but also Spinoza's Ethics. Otherwise a lot of the arguments won't make sense to the reader and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason needs to be read also. Now I can start to unpack 'being is the indeterminate immediate'. Spinoza will say that 'every determinate is a negation'. For Spinoza we all live within 'the mind of god' (my words) and there is only one substance but two attributes (but probably infinitely more) and those attributes, mind and body, are infinite because they are god and every limitation is a determinate and they are therefore finite and are a negation of the infinite. The immediate is the thing itself with out the filter of the mind. BTW, Hegel really loves Leibniz (and who among us doesn't except for Voltaire and Newton) and I would recommend reading the Monadology (easily found for free of the net) before reading the Logic.
I guess it's really not hard to realize why I love Hegel so much. He puts many different thoughts together and talks in such a dense language and I'm just surprised that everyone doesn't love him as much as I do. Of his two books, Phenomenology of Spirit (Mind) is the funner book to read. He didn't always take himself so seriously as he does in this book.
I like the way Hegel writes. He deals with the changeless, the necessary (or as Heidegger refers to it the 'atemporal'). Plato refers to the study of mathematics as the study of the changeless. Ultimately, math is the study of abstract entities which get their meaning from their relationship with other abstract entities by appealing to the relationships of 1) identity, 2) consistency and 3) coherence [and also set theory, but I don't won't to bring up Godol because that would be an anachronism]. This book is written as if the universe is universal, necessary and certain. After all, Newton and his physics are given to be absolute at the time of the book. (another aside: Wittgenstein in his Tractatus is obviously influenced by this book, but only acknowledges Frege not Hegel. BTW, Sartre in his Being and Nothingness does a fine job when he talks about Hegel. Though, I don't recommend B&N because Sartre is not really a philosopher. You be the judge).
Most of Hegel's chapters and subdivisions are divided into threes for a reason He's always relating his 'Notion' by those three laws of logic. He cleverly restates them as 1) the thing must always equal itself, 2) likes never exist (or no two things are exactly alike), and 3) opposites never can be. He'll take this concept apply it to the 'syllogism' and make each part of the syllogism the 1) individual, 2) particular and 3) the universal. He constantly brings his thought back to the rules of logic.
Ayn Rand really hated Hegel. I don't think she ever read him and I know she never understood what he was saying. Her comic book religion (oops, I mean philosophy), Objectiveism, is an obvious kindergartners response to Hegel. Hegel is obviously responding to Hume but he never mentions him. Hume says: You never see the gravity; You never see the cause; You can only see the effect. Hegel comes up with his Notion with his dialectic to end all skepticism because he would say we construct the reality that is real and it accords with reality and Gravity must be real and Newton is absolutely right because f=ma can not not possibly be true. (Einstein will disagree because he will put in the relativistic constant, i.e. if you are going at or near the speed of light it makes a difference).
‘Contraries do not exist’ while us humans do even with our own internal contradictions keeping us removed from our own authenticities and Hegel is trying to reconcile that as best as he can. Hegel credits Kant more in this book than he does in PoS and Kant is the very first person who demolishes the certainty of truth outside of us by creating his Copernican Revolution of the mind by placing the nexus of truth within us through a ‘faculty of understanding with a transcendental deduction’, Hegel will place certainty outside of us and truth within us and reconciles them through his dialectic while making absolute knowledge not a certain truth.
I really enjoyed reading this book for the second time. Hegel is wrong on calculus and chemistry with its affinities and the infinity getting swallowed by the finite, but overall, there is a message that is explicit within this book that is foundational to modern thought and as Hegel will say ‘the ground of the ground is without ground’, or the cause and effect get entangled through convolution, and ‘spirit’ is not nature and every determination is a negation of the infinite and is a consideration in its own right. The world that we are thrown into has no meaning except for the meaning that we attach to it. The existentialists, the phenomenalists, and the anti-realist all go through Hegel one way or another and this book is a good place to start with learning Hegel for those who don’t mind hearing abstract thoughts making abstract concepts that stray away from the concrete reality. (6/5/2020).
My first review is below:
Which way does the sun rise in the morning? Most people will say in the east, dummy. They are of course wrong. The sun doesn't rise in the morning but we think of the earth as rotating around a relatively fixed sun (even though the sun is moving too, that's why I say 'relatively fixed sun').
I enjoyed this book immensely and know it can be hard going because the way the author writes. Instead of reading this book, one could watch the second season of Mr. Robot and walk away with some of the major themes contained in this book ('Mr Robot' is definitely very Hegelian). The alienation of the individual within the society because of the qualitative and quantitative dichotomy present in the world or as Hegel would say, 'it is the other in its own self, the other of an other; therefore it includes its own other within it and is consequently as contradiction" (you just have to love someone who writes like that). Also, in particular the second season completely plays with Appearance and Reality to the point of view where the viewer gets misled. Come on, even one of the episodes this season was labeled "master slave'.
There is a difference between 'appearance' and 'reality' between the objective and the subjective. Hegel will say in his 'objective' part of the Logic that 'being is the indeterminate immediate'. I'll unpack that statement from Hegelian speak to English. But, first I must make a couple of digressions.
I ended up reading Parmenides as I was reading the Logic. It's by far the best of Plato's dialogs that I've read so far and it's the most important. It's only an hour and a half long and I would strongly recommend it. It's unique for Plato. It's the only dialog where Socrates comes out not winning (with the possible exception of the Symposium, but that is about love, and that's not really my cup of tea anyways). The Logic is a response to the 'One' within Parmenides. Hegel must create the 'Notion' (the dialectic of the Idea) in order to bring back the absolute knowledge because if Parmenides is right (and I definitely am on his side) then we are forced into relative truth that must be contingent, particular and uncertain when we apply the knowledge to reality.
The second digression is that one should not only read Parmenides but also Spinoza's Ethics. Otherwise a lot of the arguments won't make sense to the reader and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason needs to be read also. Now I can start to unpack 'being is the indeterminate immediate'. Spinoza will say that 'every determinate is a negation'. For Spinoza we all live within 'the mind of god' (my words) and there is only one substance but two attributes (but probably infinitely more) and those attributes, mind and body, are infinite because they are god and every limitation is a determinate and they are therefore finite and are a negation of the infinite. The immediate is the thing itself with out the filter of the mind. BTW, Hegel really loves Leibniz (and who among us doesn't except for Voltaire and Newton) and I would recommend reading the Monadology (easily found for free of the net) before reading the Logic.
I guess it's really not hard to realize why I love Hegel so much. He puts many different thoughts together and talks in such a dense language and I'm just surprised that everyone doesn't love him as much as I do. Of his two books, Phenomenology of Spirit (Mind) is the funner book to read. He didn't always take himself so seriously as he does in this book.
I like the way Hegel writes. He deals with the changeless, the necessary (or as Heidegger refers to it the 'atemporal'). Plato refers to the study of mathematics as the study of the changeless. Ultimately, math is the study of abstract entities which get their meaning from their relationship with other abstract entities by appealing to the relationships of 1) identity, 2) consistency and 3) coherence [and also set theory, but I don't won't to bring up Godol because that would be an anachronism]. This book is written as if the universe is universal, necessary and certain. After all, Newton and his physics are given to be absolute at the time of the book. (another aside: Wittgenstein in his Tractatus is obviously influenced by this book, but only acknowledges Frege not Hegel. BTW, Sartre in his Being and Nothingness does a fine job when he talks about Hegel. Though, I don't recommend B&N because Sartre is not really a philosopher. You be the judge).
Most of Hegel's chapters and subdivisions are divided into threes for a reason He's always relating his 'Notion' by those three laws of logic. He cleverly restates them as 1) the thing must always equal itself, 2) likes never exist (or no two things are exactly alike), and 3) opposites never can be. He'll take this concept apply it to the 'syllogism' and make each part of the syllogism the 1) individual, 2) particular and 3) the universal. He constantly brings his thought back to the rules of logic.
Ayn Rand really hated Hegel. I don't think she ever read him and I know she never understood what he was saying. Her comic book religion (oops, I mean philosophy), Objectiveism, is an obvious kindergartners response to Hegel. Hegel is obviously responding to Hume but he never mentions him. Hume says: You never see the gravity; You never see the cause; You can only see the effect. Hegel comes up with his Notion with his dialectic to end all skepticism because he would say we construct the reality that is real and it accords with reality and Gravity must be real and Newton is absolutely right because f=ma can not not possibly be true. (Einstein will disagree because he will put in the relativistic constant, i.e. if you are going at or near the speed of light it makes a difference).
May 29, 2017
This is a book about the knowing of knowing, the logic of logic, and the thinking of thinking itself. Within you will not find any arguments in the traditional form of propositions leading to a conclusion, there are no justifications in this work. Instead you will find yourself in a journey of explanation, of finding just what can possibly be meant when we speak of Being, of Existince, of Essence, Concept, etc.
Because this is a work about the nature of thought as thought, all the concepts found are merely the relations of thought itself to itself. Part of what people miss is this precise point: the Logic is about thought as thought, and what its categories reveal are the possible relations of thought to itself through itself. The most basic thing about thought is its immanent and immediate self-mediating, self-othering, power. To think is always to already think difference in a unity. Every thought is already filled and formed by the negative. A thought as such is then a thinking, a conceptual chain that cannot by its very nature stop at a single determination, a fixed definition, it must and always has already moved.
This book teaches logic like no other, it teaches not "critical thinking", not "formal logical validity," but instead forces us to stand back and reflect on just what thinking itself is and how it moves. How can one be a critical thinker when one has never considered what thought itself is?
Because this is a work about the nature of thought as thought, all the concepts found are merely the relations of thought itself to itself. Part of what people miss is this precise point: the Logic is about thought as thought, and what its categories reveal are the possible relations of thought to itself through itself. The most basic thing about thought is its immanent and immediate self-mediating, self-othering, power. To think is always to already think difference in a unity. Every thought is already filled and formed by the negative. A thought as such is then a thinking, a conceptual chain that cannot by its very nature stop at a single determination, a fixed definition, it must and always has already moved.
This book teaches logic like no other, it teaches not "critical thinking", not "formal logical validity," but instead forces us to stand back and reflect on just what thinking itself is and how it moves. How can one be a critical thinker when one has never considered what thought itself is?
April 17, 2024
I tried to post my review here, but it's too long for Goodreads. If you're interested, you can read it here: Fragments on Hegel's Science of Logic.
Quick preview:
One has to marvel at the breathtaking ambition and stupendous folly of the Science of Logic; that Hegel, armed only with his idiosyncratic method of immanent deduction and dialectic, would dare attempt to trace the logical structure of experience from its lowest foundations in empty, indeterminate abstraction all the way to its uttermost peak; through the vast manifolds of nature and objectivity and at last unto the Godhead itself, all in one great, self-consistent, and architectonically-complete demonstration. Science of Logic is a Tower of Babel built by one man.
The absurdity of the endeavor and the complete inadequacy of his intellectual toolkit makes itself felt on every page as his system struggles to hold itself together under its own enormous weight. It does so largely by relying on a core set of titanic, nebulous categories. In a single paragraph, I counted Hegel using the word Grund in at least four different ways (cause, reason, ground, and basis), as though the fact that one German word includes this diversity of meanings can do the work for us of binding together all of its manifold registers into a single concept.
Here, I think Hegel fully earned Schopenhauer’s scorn, who remarked in his own infinitely clearer, infinitely more reasonable, infinitely less profound treatment of Grund that Hegel can’t even keep straight the difference between reason and cause....
Quick preview:
One has to marvel at the breathtaking ambition and stupendous folly of the Science of Logic; that Hegel, armed only with his idiosyncratic method of immanent deduction and dialectic, would dare attempt to trace the logical structure of experience from its lowest foundations in empty, indeterminate abstraction all the way to its uttermost peak; through the vast manifolds of nature and objectivity and at last unto the Godhead itself, all in one great, self-consistent, and architectonically-complete demonstration. Science of Logic is a Tower of Babel built by one man.
The absurdity of the endeavor and the complete inadequacy of his intellectual toolkit makes itself felt on every page as his system struggles to hold itself together under its own enormous weight. It does so largely by relying on a core set of titanic, nebulous categories. In a single paragraph, I counted Hegel using the word Grund in at least four different ways (cause, reason, ground, and basis), as though the fact that one German word includes this diversity of meanings can do the work for us of binding together all of its manifold registers into a single concept.
Here, I think Hegel fully earned Schopenhauer’s scorn, who remarked in his own infinitely clearer, infinitely more reasonable, infinitely less profound treatment of Grund that Hegel can’t even keep straight the difference between reason and cause....
February 23, 2025
As a teen I was indirectly influenced by Karl Popper and his attacks on what was then to me the mysterious and dangerous ‘Hegelian logic’. Attacks have since come from very many angles. I understand why. Much of what can be said of Hegel is undeniably justified. His style is impenetrable, and one wonders if he really couldn’t have expressed himself differently.
At university as a philosophy undergraduate I took a course were we read Nietzsche’s genealogy in combination with Hegel’s phenomenology. I suppose the idea was to get us used to a more processual, organic, dynamic, fluid, flowing, unfolding, evolutionary, synthetic, circular way of thinking. As opposed to the Aristotelian, syllogistic, analytic, ‘logical’, deductive, stagnant, sterile, discrete and boring style which otherwise characterised the university courses in philosophy.
It makes sense to get your Aristotelian mind in order first. Chronologically speaking, in the order of the unfolding and development of ideas, starting there is both necessary and good. It’s good to understand how the metaphysical categories which became the sciences was forged out of the chaos of the immediate and indetermined chaos of early Man.
Yet Aristotelian logic taken to the extreme is a sickness, and it climaxed with scholasticism, and the Question of the nature of God with Aquinas and his 5000 pages, proofs and refutations. Which he ultimately said was of no worth at all. So what is the issue with this scholasticism, this sterile Aristotelianism? This seems to be Hegels quest. He wants to go beyond Aristotelian logic. All philosophy is downstream from its a priori axiomatic assumptions, and the meta linguistic assumption of all assumptions, is that the law of identity and the syllogistic form is universally valid. Hegel challenges these assumptions. Thus he challenges all of metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, psychology, and every other -ogy you can think of. That’s why he is dangerous.
But is he wrong? No. Is he right? At least directionally. No one is ‘right’, such categorical thinking as right or wrong represents a regression. What Hegel is though, is an improvement. A step ahead, a freedom. He did manage, I believe, to break the shackles of Aristotle. I guess it represents a return to Plato. While also of course surpassing Kant and his unreachable ‘thing-in-itself’, which fundamentally isolated the I from the world, locked in a mirror of only phenomena. A return to Plato in the sense of how to think. What is it to think? To think is to enter in a back and forth, to partake in something, a somewhich cannot be put forth in its totality in the beginning, but which has to be gone though. Something to which a stagnant form such as the syllogism cannot always be applied. Something which is active and alive and in progression, which cannot be reduced to symbols or smaller parts. Some such as doesn’t comply to the ordinary way of approaching thinking at all.
Reading Hegel is simply very strange. No review can say anything useful of the substance of Hegel, but from them you may derived and deduce some of the many effects being exposed to his thoughts cause.
Take being. We tend to think of it existing two kind of categories. That is to say, when the Universal I comes to conceptualise its own existence, that is, when I becomes self conscious, the question arises: is existence eternal? Did it all come from nothing? What am I? So supposedly there’s these two categories. There’s being and nothingness. But what is nothingness? It’s just the negation of being, it is non-being. But non-being is indeterminate, it doesn’t structure, nor does it contain being, since it is what it is not. But being also contains non-being, it is a dichotomous category which implies its other. The negation of being is implied in being. Nothingness is a moment of being, logic, thought, moves itself, develops itself, from being to nothing. As such they are inseparable, and they are synthesis. They are apart, yet they are one. But what is this oneness? This is becoming. Being and nothingness is becoming. This is the synthetic nature of Hegelian logic. A thesis is put forth, being, which implies or brings forth from its own self its opposite, its negation, nonbeing, and through the forms and unfolding and dynamic of logic, these two supposed opposites are seen to be one. Etcetera. And so forth. And on and on.
What does it all mean? This really cannot be said. Hegel trains us to think otherwise than we normally do. It can’t be summarised, you can only partake. And the takeaway isn’t something concrete, it’s not something particular or determinate, it’s simply a new way of thinking. Like installing new software. It gives thought freedom. Of course Hegel applies his logic to all sorts of phenomena, mainly abstract entities of pure thought, but it mainly is meant to change the way we think. To get out of the syllogistic.
Hopefully that gives you 1 or 2 thoughts about what this is. I can only encourage you to jump in. It is very hard and it does demand a lot from the reader, but I don’t think you need to read a to z.
I read the lesser logic and the science of logic together, since I found that some passages and paragraphs where explained good and succinctly in one, and long and necessarily outdrawn in the other, without it being consistent - at least not to my mind. Good luck!
———————-
Demonstration:
I am here, immediate, pure presence. This is the starting point - but what is this "is"? What is this immediate presence that I claim?
I find myself in pure being, indeterminate and simple. Yet in trying to grasp this pure being, to think it, I find it slipping away. For what is pure being without determination? It is nothing. The very attempt to think pure being reveals its emptiness.
So I am thrown into nothingness. But this nothingness is not separate from the being I started with - it arose from my very attempt to grasp pure being. The nothingness is itself a kind of being, and the being was itself a kind of nothingness. They pass into each other ceaselessly.
What then is this movement, this passing back and forth? It is becoming. I find that I am neither pure being nor pure nothing, but rather this constant movement between them. My consciousness, in attempting to grasp its own immediacy, discovers itself as movement, as process.
But now I must ask - what am I that observes this movement? I have separated myself from this process in order to describe it. I am no longer immediate but have entered into reflection. The observer and the observed split apart. My pure immediacy has developed into mediation.
Yet this very splitting reveals something new - that I am both the immediate and the mediated, both the observer and the observed. I am the unity that contains this difference within itself. My self-consciousness emerges as this unity-in-difference.
This unity-in-difference that I've discovered reveals itself as more than static being - it is activity, self-relation. In observing my own thought, I am relating to myself. But what is this self that relates?
I find I am determinate being - a specific "something" that has emerged from the pure flux of becoming. Yet this determinacy immediately implies its own limit, its own otherness. To be something specific is also to not be everything else. My determination contains its own negation.
This limit is not external to me but is part of my very nature. I am what I am precisely through what I am not. The limit is both barrier and connection - it separates me from my other while simultaneously relating me to it.
Moving deeper, I discover quality - the immediate unity of being and determinacy. But quality points beyond itself to quantity. The "what" of my being opens into questions of "how much." These categories interpenetrate - changes in quantity lead to qualitative leaps, and qualities themselves admit of degrees.
But what persists through these changes? I find myself as measure - the unity of quality and quantity. Yet measure too proves unstable. Push any measure to its extreme and it transforms into its opposite. Everything that is measured contains the seeds of its own overcoming.
This drives me into essence - the realm of reflection and mediation. The immediate being I started with now shows itself as mere seeming, grounded in something deeper. But what is this ground? Every attempt to find an ultimate ground leads to infinite regress or circular reference.
I discover that essence is not some hidden substrate behind appearance, but rather the movement of appearing itself. The truth is the whole process - the way being shows itself through its successive determinations.
Identity emerges, but immediately splits into difference. Unity divides into opposition. Yet these oppositions prove internally related - each side contains its other within itself. They are moments of a larger process.
Form and content, inner and outer, force and expression - each pair reveals itself as a unity of distinctions rather than absolute opposites. Everything finite points beyond itself to its relations with others and to the infinite whole that contains these relations.
I am driven toward the Concept - the self-determining unity that contains all these moments within itself while remaining free. The Concept is not an abstract universal floating above particulars, but the concrete universal that realizes itself through particular determinations while maintaining its unity.
Through all this, I discover myself as Spirit - self-conscious reason knowing itself in and through its own self-development. The immediacy I began with has not been left behind but rather enriched and comprehended. Freedom emerges not as arbitrary choice but as the recognition of necessity - understanding my own nature as this self-developing whole.
Yet even this exposition falls short - it becomes another object for consciousness to examine. The true movement can never be fully captured in static descriptions. Each attempt to grasp the absolute whole becomes a new moment to be transcended.
In discovering myself as Spirit, I find I am not just individual consciousness but universal self-consciousness. The "I" that thinks is not merely particular but participates in universal thought. Yet this universality is not abstract - it lives and moves through particular determinations.
What emerges is a new understanding of truth. Truth is not correspondence between thought and object, for this presupposes their separation. Rather, truth is the whole movement of Spirit coming to know itself. Each moment of this movement is both true and false - true as a necessary stage, false as merely partial.
But what drives this movement? I discover necessity transforming into freedom. What first appeared as external constraint reveals itself as internal self-determination. The Concept moves through its determinations not by external force but by its own inner logic.
Life emerges as a category of logic itself. The living is what maintains itself through change, what relates to itself through its other. But mere life points beyond itself to knowing, and knowing to absolute knowing.
In absolute knowing, subject and object, knower and known, are no longer opposed. Their unity was present implicitly from the beginning - it was I who was doing the thinking all along. But this unity had to develop itself through all its moments of opposition and mediation.
The circular nature of the movement becomes explicit. The end returns to the beginning, but transformed. Pure being is now comprehended being. Immediacy is now mediated immediacy. The circle closes but opens simultaneously onto new dimensions.
Yet even as I grasp this circularity, new questions emerge. If thought thinking itself is inherently dialectical, what of nature? What of history? The logical idea must alienate itself into otherness, must externalize itself to truly know itself.
I find myself driven beyond pure logical categories into the philosophy of nature, where the idea exists in the form of externality. But nature too shows itself as a system of stages, each pointing beyond itself toward Spirit.
And in history - ah! Here the movement becomes concrete. The development of human consciousness through time mirrors the logical development of the categories. Freedom realizes itself not just in thought but in institutions, in the actual world.
The state emerges not as mere external authority but as the rational organization of freedom. Art, religion, and philosophy appear as progressively more adequate forms of absolute Spirit knowing itself.
Yet even this grand synthesis generates new oppositions to be reconciled. The very attempt to systematize generates resistance. The finite cannot fully grasp the infinite, yet must continue trying.
I find that every end is a new beginning. Each achievement of self-consciousness opens new depths to be explored. The movement is infinite not because it never reaches its goal, but because the goal itself is infinite self-development.
At university as a philosophy undergraduate I took a course were we read Nietzsche’s genealogy in combination with Hegel’s phenomenology. I suppose the idea was to get us used to a more processual, organic, dynamic, fluid, flowing, unfolding, evolutionary, synthetic, circular way of thinking. As opposed to the Aristotelian, syllogistic, analytic, ‘logical’, deductive, stagnant, sterile, discrete and boring style which otherwise characterised the university courses in philosophy.
It makes sense to get your Aristotelian mind in order first. Chronologically speaking, in the order of the unfolding and development of ideas, starting there is both necessary and good. It’s good to understand how the metaphysical categories which became the sciences was forged out of the chaos of the immediate and indetermined chaos of early Man.
Yet Aristotelian logic taken to the extreme is a sickness, and it climaxed with scholasticism, and the Question of the nature of God with Aquinas and his 5000 pages, proofs and refutations. Which he ultimately said was of no worth at all. So what is the issue with this scholasticism, this sterile Aristotelianism? This seems to be Hegels quest. He wants to go beyond Aristotelian logic. All philosophy is downstream from its a priori axiomatic assumptions, and the meta linguistic assumption of all assumptions, is that the law of identity and the syllogistic form is universally valid. Hegel challenges these assumptions. Thus he challenges all of metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, psychology, and every other -ogy you can think of. That’s why he is dangerous.
But is he wrong? No. Is he right? At least directionally. No one is ‘right’, such categorical thinking as right or wrong represents a regression. What Hegel is though, is an improvement. A step ahead, a freedom. He did manage, I believe, to break the shackles of Aristotle. I guess it represents a return to Plato. While also of course surpassing Kant and his unreachable ‘thing-in-itself’, which fundamentally isolated the I from the world, locked in a mirror of only phenomena. A return to Plato in the sense of how to think. What is it to think? To think is to enter in a back and forth, to partake in something, a somewhich cannot be put forth in its totality in the beginning, but which has to be gone though. Something to which a stagnant form such as the syllogism cannot always be applied. Something which is active and alive and in progression, which cannot be reduced to symbols or smaller parts. Some such as doesn’t comply to the ordinary way of approaching thinking at all.
Reading Hegel is simply very strange. No review can say anything useful of the substance of Hegel, but from them you may derived and deduce some of the many effects being exposed to his thoughts cause.
Take being. We tend to think of it existing two kind of categories. That is to say, when the Universal I comes to conceptualise its own existence, that is, when I becomes self conscious, the question arises: is existence eternal? Did it all come from nothing? What am I? So supposedly there’s these two categories. There’s being and nothingness. But what is nothingness? It’s just the negation of being, it is non-being. But non-being is indeterminate, it doesn’t structure, nor does it contain being, since it is what it is not. But being also contains non-being, it is a dichotomous category which implies its other. The negation of being is implied in being. Nothingness is a moment of being, logic, thought, moves itself, develops itself, from being to nothing. As such they are inseparable, and they are synthesis. They are apart, yet they are one. But what is this oneness? This is becoming. Being and nothingness is becoming. This is the synthetic nature of Hegelian logic. A thesis is put forth, being, which implies or brings forth from its own self its opposite, its negation, nonbeing, and through the forms and unfolding and dynamic of logic, these two supposed opposites are seen to be one. Etcetera. And so forth. And on and on.
What does it all mean? This really cannot be said. Hegel trains us to think otherwise than we normally do. It can’t be summarised, you can only partake. And the takeaway isn’t something concrete, it’s not something particular or determinate, it’s simply a new way of thinking. Like installing new software. It gives thought freedom. Of course Hegel applies his logic to all sorts of phenomena, mainly abstract entities of pure thought, but it mainly is meant to change the way we think. To get out of the syllogistic.
Hopefully that gives you 1 or 2 thoughts about what this is. I can only encourage you to jump in. It is very hard and it does demand a lot from the reader, but I don’t think you need to read a to z.
I read the lesser logic and the science of logic together, since I found that some passages and paragraphs where explained good and succinctly in one, and long and necessarily outdrawn in the other, without it being consistent - at least not to my mind. Good luck!
———————-
Demonstration:
I am here, immediate, pure presence. This is the starting point - but what is this "is"? What is this immediate presence that I claim?
I find myself in pure being, indeterminate and simple. Yet in trying to grasp this pure being, to think it, I find it slipping away. For what is pure being without determination? It is nothing. The very attempt to think pure being reveals its emptiness.
So I am thrown into nothingness. But this nothingness is not separate from the being I started with - it arose from my very attempt to grasp pure being. The nothingness is itself a kind of being, and the being was itself a kind of nothingness. They pass into each other ceaselessly.
What then is this movement, this passing back and forth? It is becoming. I find that I am neither pure being nor pure nothing, but rather this constant movement between them. My consciousness, in attempting to grasp its own immediacy, discovers itself as movement, as process.
But now I must ask - what am I that observes this movement? I have separated myself from this process in order to describe it. I am no longer immediate but have entered into reflection. The observer and the observed split apart. My pure immediacy has developed into mediation.
Yet this very splitting reveals something new - that I am both the immediate and the mediated, both the observer and the observed. I am the unity that contains this difference within itself. My self-consciousness emerges as this unity-in-difference.
This unity-in-difference that I've discovered reveals itself as more than static being - it is activity, self-relation. In observing my own thought, I am relating to myself. But what is this self that relates?
I find I am determinate being - a specific "something" that has emerged from the pure flux of becoming. Yet this determinacy immediately implies its own limit, its own otherness. To be something specific is also to not be everything else. My determination contains its own negation.
This limit is not external to me but is part of my very nature. I am what I am precisely through what I am not. The limit is both barrier and connection - it separates me from my other while simultaneously relating me to it.
Moving deeper, I discover quality - the immediate unity of being and determinacy. But quality points beyond itself to quantity. The "what" of my being opens into questions of "how much." These categories interpenetrate - changes in quantity lead to qualitative leaps, and qualities themselves admit of degrees.
But what persists through these changes? I find myself as measure - the unity of quality and quantity. Yet measure too proves unstable. Push any measure to its extreme and it transforms into its opposite. Everything that is measured contains the seeds of its own overcoming.
This drives me into essence - the realm of reflection and mediation. The immediate being I started with now shows itself as mere seeming, grounded in something deeper. But what is this ground? Every attempt to find an ultimate ground leads to infinite regress or circular reference.
I discover that essence is not some hidden substrate behind appearance, but rather the movement of appearing itself. The truth is the whole process - the way being shows itself through its successive determinations.
Identity emerges, but immediately splits into difference. Unity divides into opposition. Yet these oppositions prove internally related - each side contains its other within itself. They are moments of a larger process.
Form and content, inner and outer, force and expression - each pair reveals itself as a unity of distinctions rather than absolute opposites. Everything finite points beyond itself to its relations with others and to the infinite whole that contains these relations.
I am driven toward the Concept - the self-determining unity that contains all these moments within itself while remaining free. The Concept is not an abstract universal floating above particulars, but the concrete universal that realizes itself through particular determinations while maintaining its unity.
Through all this, I discover myself as Spirit - self-conscious reason knowing itself in and through its own self-development. The immediacy I began with has not been left behind but rather enriched and comprehended. Freedom emerges not as arbitrary choice but as the recognition of necessity - understanding my own nature as this self-developing whole.
Yet even this exposition falls short - it becomes another object for consciousness to examine. The true movement can never be fully captured in static descriptions. Each attempt to grasp the absolute whole becomes a new moment to be transcended.
In discovering myself as Spirit, I find I am not just individual consciousness but universal self-consciousness. The "I" that thinks is not merely particular but participates in universal thought. Yet this universality is not abstract - it lives and moves through particular determinations.
What emerges is a new understanding of truth. Truth is not correspondence between thought and object, for this presupposes their separation. Rather, truth is the whole movement of Spirit coming to know itself. Each moment of this movement is both true and false - true as a necessary stage, false as merely partial.
But what drives this movement? I discover necessity transforming into freedom. What first appeared as external constraint reveals itself as internal self-determination. The Concept moves through its determinations not by external force but by its own inner logic.
Life emerges as a category of logic itself. The living is what maintains itself through change, what relates to itself through its other. But mere life points beyond itself to knowing, and knowing to absolute knowing.
In absolute knowing, subject and object, knower and known, are no longer opposed. Their unity was present implicitly from the beginning - it was I who was doing the thinking all along. But this unity had to develop itself through all its moments of opposition and mediation.
The circular nature of the movement becomes explicit. The end returns to the beginning, but transformed. Pure being is now comprehended being. Immediacy is now mediated immediacy. The circle closes but opens simultaneously onto new dimensions.
Yet even as I grasp this circularity, new questions emerge. If thought thinking itself is inherently dialectical, what of nature? What of history? The logical idea must alienate itself into otherness, must externalize itself to truly know itself.
I find myself driven beyond pure logical categories into the philosophy of nature, where the idea exists in the form of externality. But nature too shows itself as a system of stages, each pointing beyond itself toward Spirit.
And in history - ah! Here the movement becomes concrete. The development of human consciousness through time mirrors the logical development of the categories. Freedom realizes itself not just in thought but in institutions, in the actual world.
The state emerges not as mere external authority but as the rational organization of freedom. Art, religion, and philosophy appear as progressively more adequate forms of absolute Spirit knowing itself.
Yet even this grand synthesis generates new oppositions to be reconciled. The very attempt to systematize generates resistance. The finite cannot fully grasp the infinite, yet must continue trying.
I find that every end is a new beginning. Each achievement of self-consciousness opens new depths to be explored. The movement is infinite not because it never reaches its goal, but because the goal itself is infinite self-development.
December 5, 2015
The Science of Logic has been completed. Now, the next thing I intend on doing is going back and rereading particular sections I've marked (in order to gain better familiarity with concepts that were, at first, rather hazy). And then after that (that in itself could take months), I'm starting it over from the beginning. Suffice it to say in the meantime that this is undoubtedly my favorite book.
"This is the common view of so-called sound common sense which takes its stand on the evidence of the senses and on customary conceptions and judgments. Sometimes it takes this dialectic lightly, as when Diogenes the Cynic exposes the hollowness of the dialectic of motion by silently walking up and down; but often it flies into a passion, seeing it in perhaps a piece of sheer foolery, or, when morally important objects are concerned, an outrage that tries to unsettle what is essentially established and teaches how to supply wickedness with grounds. This is the view expressed in the Socratic dialectic against that of the Sophists, and this is the indignation which, turned in the opposite direction, cost even Socrates his life." § 1793
"This is the common view of so-called sound common sense which takes its stand on the evidence of the senses and on customary conceptions and judgments. Sometimes it takes this dialectic lightly, as when Diogenes the Cynic exposes the hollowness of the dialectic of motion by silently walking up and down; but often it flies into a passion, seeing it in perhaps a piece of sheer foolery, or, when morally important objects are concerned, an outrage that tries to unsettle what is essentially established and teaches how to supply wickedness with grounds. This is the view expressed in the Socratic dialectic against that of the Sophists, and this is the indignation which, turned in the opposite direction, cost even Socrates his life." § 1793
December 4, 2025
I write this as a long-time “Hegelian.” I’ve been reading Hegelians and Hegel for years, but never had the time to get to this major book. After seeing its influence in virtually every interesting school of thought, for (Marx, Lenin, Lukacs, Ilyenkov, Lacan, Zizek, etc.) or against it (Deleuze, Nietzsche, Bergson, etc.) I decided it was finally time to read this.
Long story short, this is a 5-star book that wears itself down. The worst thing are Hegel’s “proofs,” essentially changing determinations/concepts but mechanically repeating the same tripartite form or “method” a million times. The book feels rushed, most of the book (80%) feels like a last minute rushed undergraduate paper.
When Hegel is convincing, he is the master of philosophy. He deals with abstraction for its own sake better than anyone else I’ve ever read. He navigates thought at a level that’s very difficult to sustain. That being said, when his “method” is applied to a subject matter that resists it, he simply avoids concrete examples. While his critique of calculus is brilliant and leaves a lot to think about, his entire section, “Essence,” is probably the most empty, near useless thing I’ve ever read.
When you finally get to “Notion” it feels like the death-knell of classical thought, it doesn’t actually feel like he’s “proven” the Notion, or the method, or that concepts develop themselves, move, or imply each other, which is the basis of the entire work. I’m not sure he succeeds in going beyond Kant, it feels more like he successfully rearranges the terms to improve them (but not always, I don’t think he proves that objects themselves undergo the same kinds of change…thus maybe corroborating Lukacs’s critique of Engels).
Unfortunately, without “method,” the book is simply the longest list of “categories” (following Aristotle and Kant) ever written. Without his “proof,” which feels more like a copy and paste job, the book feels like the opposite of the “soul” it’s supposed to develop. The “movement” it’s supposed to express feels rather like an algorithm, empty, dead. It is telling, but I do think Hegel is overall an incredible thinker, and his Logic really only serves as an organon for his other works (Encyclopedia may actually be better overall, even though it doesn’t go into mathematics as much).
Long story short, this is a 5-star book that wears itself down. The worst thing are Hegel’s “proofs,” essentially changing determinations/concepts but mechanically repeating the same tripartite form or “method” a million times. The book feels rushed, most of the book (80%) feels like a last minute rushed undergraduate paper.
When Hegel is convincing, he is the master of philosophy. He deals with abstraction for its own sake better than anyone else I’ve ever read. He navigates thought at a level that’s very difficult to sustain. That being said, when his “method” is applied to a subject matter that resists it, he simply avoids concrete examples. While his critique of calculus is brilliant and leaves a lot to think about, his entire section, “Essence,” is probably the most empty, near useless thing I’ve ever read.
When you finally get to “Notion” it feels like the death-knell of classical thought, it doesn’t actually feel like he’s “proven” the Notion, or the method, or that concepts develop themselves, move, or imply each other, which is the basis of the entire work. I’m not sure he succeeds in going beyond Kant, it feels more like he successfully rearranges the terms to improve them (but not always, I don’t think he proves that objects themselves undergo the same kinds of change…thus maybe corroborating Lukacs’s critique of Engels).
Unfortunately, without “method,” the book is simply the longest list of “categories” (following Aristotle and Kant) ever written. Without his “proof,” which feels more like a copy and paste job, the book feels like the opposite of the “soul” it’s supposed to develop. The “movement” it’s supposed to express feels rather like an algorithm, empty, dead. It is telling, but I do think Hegel is overall an incredible thinker, and his Logic really only serves as an organon for his other works (Encyclopedia may actually be better overall, even though it doesn’t go into mathematics as much).
December 31, 2020
Það er hálfpartinn gagnslaust að skrá bók sem þessa sem "lesna" — ég er búinn að skrifa bachelorsritgerð OG meistararitgerð um hana og mér finnst ég samt ekki vera búinn að rétt krafsa nema í yfirborð hennar. Þrátt fyrir það varði ég hartnær öllu árinu í að lesa hana og mér finnst því viðeigandi að skrá hana sem "lesna" fyrir þetta afskaplega asnalega og ólundarlega ár. Þetta er meistaraverk sem öllum þeim sem telja sig vera alvara um heimspeki ber að kynna sér og ég segi það ekki af léttúð. Ekki að hvert og eitt okkar verði að lesa frá kápu til kápu, heldur bara að gera sér grein fyrir því hvert markmið og aðferð Hegels innan verksins er og hvaða þýðingu það hefur frumspekilega og fyrir heimspekina og heimspekileg kerfi í stóru samhengi. Ég er ekkert "búinn" að lesa þessa bók, ef eitthvað er ég rétt nýbyrjaður. Hún mun eflaust koma aftan að mér einhverntímann skömmu síðar og koma mér á óvart — eins og þegar Marx var að hefjast handa við að skrifa Das Kapital og fékk eintak Bakúníns af Rökvísindunum — sem veitti honum víst mikinn innblástur, ef ég man þetta rétt, hann talar um þetta í bréfi til Engels einhversstaðar.
April 29, 2016
This is the second book I've read by Hegel. He isn't really breaking new ground here. It really is just a greater elucidation of ideas he put forth in the Phenomenology; where he is fleshing it out and applying it in different ways. Again, you have him discoursing on the process of optimum consciousness. It seems that a lot of the ideas expressed here were formulated after the Phenomenology and the debate it (and Idealism in general) had sparked in Germany, had occurred. He refers regularly to contemporary philosophers, as well as to more antiquated ones.
One thing that I noticed early on in his refutation of philosophers like Jacobi, he seems to vacillate when dealing with the subject of immediation and mediation. He attempts to refute philosophers that emphasize immediate experience, but while doing this he apparently forgets an essential component of his philosophy that he expresses later in the book. As far as I could tell, Hegel attempts to put mediation ahead of immediation in this section -an idea so ridiculous it doesn't merit refutation. While attempting to play up the idea of mediation in order to refute his critics, he doesn't note the fact that there are specific nuances to the idea of mediation and immediation that should be taken into account. He seems to selectively forget that self mediation is really equal to immediation. There is no other form of immediation possible in life, really. What is surprising is the fact that later in this book he seems aware of the fact that self mediation and immediation are really equal in practice. To illustrate this for Christian readers of this review, one can look at Saint Paul's letter to the Galatians (specifically chapters 3 and 4). Paul illustrates the idea of mediation and immediation and it's subtle nuances in this book rather well. He compares the revelation and covenant given through Moses and that given by Christ. He notes that the revelation and covenant that passed through Moses came from God to the angels, and then to Moses and then to the people; so, the people of Israel were twice removed from God in this relationship; where as the revelation through Christ is a one to one immediate relationship. Although, Christ is an intermediator, and thus an example of mediation, because Christ Himself is divine, this mediate relationship is really immediate because it is self mediation and not mediation through an other as the revelation of Moses was. Hegel, in his attempt to refute his critics, seems to forget these nuances in this section. He is entirely aware of them as made manifest in later chapters, but because he is dealing with his critics, he selectively forgets them.
The ins and outs of his philosophy were already formulated in the Phenomenology. Largely, it deals with dichotomous aspects of being and the process of uniting them into consciousness; e.g. individuality/universality; subjectivity/objectivity, mediation/immediation etc etc. Through the Absolute Idea these dichotomies are reconciled and united after a process of ambivalent interplay. I don't know what the underlying German word was for the term here translated as "idea", but undoubtedly it's background is the Greek term "eidos" which plays an essential role in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Not exactly sure as to what differentiates Hegel's use of "idea" in this work and his use of "geist" (spirit/mind) in the Phenomenology. The difference seems to be semantic as far as I can tell. I couldn't see what it was that distinguishes "idea" from "geist" in the two works. It seems that for all intents and purposes their role is largely the same, practically speaking.
My criticisms are largely the same as they were for the Phenomenology; namely, that Hegel overly conflates theological/philosophical distinctions. This is somewhat understandable when one notes that universality for Hegel seems to preclude all difference and distinction. This is certainly difficult to square with Christianity though, where distinction is not just formal, but substantially found in the Godhead itself as a Trinity. Indeed, one cannot rationalize how it is that the Son is distinct from the Father and both from the Holy Spirit, but it is a confession of faith that is not accorded only formal reality in theology. It's hardly surprising that Aristotle is the ancient philosopher that Hegel is in accord with the most. Aristotle overly conflates philosophical distinctions as well. I definitely found Aristotle's philosophy, as found in the Metaphysics, less than convincing. I find Hegel's philosophy also less than convincing in all of it's points. I did, however, like certain aspects and parts of this work. It was worth reading. I will continue reading Hegel through his Philosophy Of Nature and Philosophy of Mind and will then discontinue reading him for a while.
One thing that I noticed early on in his refutation of philosophers like Jacobi, he seems to vacillate when dealing with the subject of immediation and mediation. He attempts to refute philosophers that emphasize immediate experience, but while doing this he apparently forgets an essential component of his philosophy that he expresses later in the book. As far as I could tell, Hegel attempts to put mediation ahead of immediation in this section -an idea so ridiculous it doesn't merit refutation. While attempting to play up the idea of mediation in order to refute his critics, he doesn't note the fact that there are specific nuances to the idea of mediation and immediation that should be taken into account. He seems to selectively forget that self mediation is really equal to immediation. There is no other form of immediation possible in life, really. What is surprising is the fact that later in this book he seems aware of the fact that self mediation and immediation are really equal in practice. To illustrate this for Christian readers of this review, one can look at Saint Paul's letter to the Galatians (specifically chapters 3 and 4). Paul illustrates the idea of mediation and immediation and it's subtle nuances in this book rather well. He compares the revelation and covenant given through Moses and that given by Christ. He notes that the revelation and covenant that passed through Moses came from God to the angels, and then to Moses and then to the people; so, the people of Israel were twice removed from God in this relationship; where as the revelation through Christ is a one to one immediate relationship. Although, Christ is an intermediator, and thus an example of mediation, because Christ Himself is divine, this mediate relationship is really immediate because it is self mediation and not mediation through an other as the revelation of Moses was. Hegel, in his attempt to refute his critics, seems to forget these nuances in this section. He is entirely aware of them as made manifest in later chapters, but because he is dealing with his critics, he selectively forgets them.
The ins and outs of his philosophy were already formulated in the Phenomenology. Largely, it deals with dichotomous aspects of being and the process of uniting them into consciousness; e.g. individuality/universality; subjectivity/objectivity, mediation/immediation etc etc. Through the Absolute Idea these dichotomies are reconciled and united after a process of ambivalent interplay. I don't know what the underlying German word was for the term here translated as "idea", but undoubtedly it's background is the Greek term "eidos" which plays an essential role in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Not exactly sure as to what differentiates Hegel's use of "idea" in this work and his use of "geist" (spirit/mind) in the Phenomenology. The difference seems to be semantic as far as I can tell. I couldn't see what it was that distinguishes "idea" from "geist" in the two works. It seems that for all intents and purposes their role is largely the same, practically speaking.
My criticisms are largely the same as they were for the Phenomenology; namely, that Hegel overly conflates theological/philosophical distinctions. This is somewhat understandable when one notes that universality for Hegel seems to preclude all difference and distinction. This is certainly difficult to square with Christianity though, where distinction is not just formal, but substantially found in the Godhead itself as a Trinity. Indeed, one cannot rationalize how it is that the Son is distinct from the Father and both from the Holy Spirit, but it is a confession of faith that is not accorded only formal reality in theology. It's hardly surprising that Aristotle is the ancient philosopher that Hegel is in accord with the most. Aristotle overly conflates philosophical distinctions as well. I definitely found Aristotle's philosophy, as found in the Metaphysics, less than convincing. I find Hegel's philosophy also less than convincing in all of it's points. I did, however, like certain aspects and parts of this work. It was worth reading. I will continue reading Hegel through his Philosophy Of Nature and Philosophy of Mind and will then discontinue reading him for a while.
February 5, 2017
Mein Gott in Himmel, I could sit you too few intrepid reviewers around a dinner table. Weltschmerz = vindicated. Cuz surely wherever the most unflagging exertion in the search for truth is will also be the clamor of crowds.
In striving to re-view the Logic, true to form, I would have to re-view not only my own Life and the contingencies which necessarily led me to finally tackle this tome, but literally everything else from the first known susurrations of historical self-consciousness, to Plato and Aristotle, to Kant and Fichte, to Zizek and Badiou, and back to me in my pajamas feeling omni-science. What a shock, I know, a boring white heterosexual lowermiddleclass cismale with delusions of universality, how gauche. In an exquisite twist Hegel would adore, those very contextual particularities that appear to explode any pretensions to totality have been made possible only by the Hegelian philosophical lineage as it has moved through the centuries and continents. For years I arrogantly presumed I didn't need Hegel because I had Marx and critical theory. Since the I that is not yet the I=I remains a thing among things and penetrable to the movement of Geist, by such errors are we restlessly impelled to develop through contradiction and with the mighty power of the negative repel ourselves from ourselves for the sake of ourselves. That ramshackle positing will make no sense until you've read the Logic.
The words of others here on GR are perfectly adequate. If you, Dear Browser, require more forceful solicitation, there are tens of thousands of volumes of Hegelian commentary, criticism, and interpretation in almost every earthly language. But none of that really matters until you actualize the Logic and realize the big Idea. Summaries will not bestow the faintest notion.
In striving to re-view the Logic, true to form, I would have to re-view not only my own Life and the contingencies which necessarily led me to finally tackle this tome, but literally everything else from the first known susurrations of historical self-consciousness, to Plato and Aristotle, to Kant and Fichte, to Zizek and Badiou, and back to me in my pajamas feeling omni-science. What a shock, I know, a boring white heterosexual lowermiddleclass cismale with delusions of universality, how gauche. In an exquisite twist Hegel would adore, those very contextual particularities that appear to explode any pretensions to totality have been made possible only by the Hegelian philosophical lineage as it has moved through the centuries and continents. For years I arrogantly presumed I didn't need Hegel because I had Marx and critical theory. Since the I that is not yet the I=I remains a thing among things and penetrable to the movement of Geist, by such errors are we restlessly impelled to develop through contradiction and with the mighty power of the negative repel ourselves from ourselves for the sake of ourselves. That ramshackle positing will make no sense until you've read the Logic.
The words of others here on GR are perfectly adequate. If you, Dear Browser, require more forceful solicitation, there are tens of thousands of volumes of Hegelian commentary, criticism, and interpretation in almost every earthly language. But none of that really matters until you actualize the Logic and realize the big Idea. Summaries will not bestow the faintest notion.
May 20, 2018
أعتقد أنها خلاصة لشرح محور ارتكاز الفلسفة الهيجلية ألا وهو تحقق العقل البشرى وهو العملية الجدلية الكبرى فى فلسفة هيجل والذى انبثقت منه الجدل التاريخى والمادية التاريخية فيما بعد .
فعملية تكون العقل الانسانى تمضى فى تطور مستمر للوعى بالذات الذى يتخبط على مر الزمن بين جدارين أحدهما خالى من الموضوعية والاخر يخلو من التحقق الفعلى اللامشروط وهما الانا المحض والانا المتعين .
فهذى العملية الجدلية التى لا تلبث ان تعترف بأحد أناتها لتنكر الاخر حتى تتبدل الاوضاع لديها فتجدها فى كل مرة تتكشف مدى قصور كل منهما دون الاخر فالعقل المحض ليس الا مجرد لوحة فارغه للتصورات التى لا توجد الا بوجود ماهية متعينة اى بوجود مستقل ليس من طبيعته فى شىء كما ان الشىء المتعين لا يمكن ان يكون شيئا لذاته وهو مفتقر للتحقق الفعلى للذات .
وهكذا سار الوعى بالذات فى تخبط مستمر بين طرفى نقيض فلن يكتمل هذا الوعى الا إذا أدرك أن تحقق الفكرة فى الوجود هو عين ماهيتها وأنه لا يمكن كذلك للشىء أن يتحقق دون وجود فكرته المحضة التى هى مجرد فكرة لذاتها ولكنها لا تتحقق الا فى موضوعها المتعين وهكذا يكون الوجود وجودا للذات من جهة الفكر المحض ووجودا للآخر من جهة الشىء المتعين وهى علاقة التى مثلها هيجل بعلاقة السيد والعبد والتى يكون فيها الوعى طرفا محايثاً من حيث يستطيع ان ينفى كلاهما. كما ان الوجود وجودا فى الذات من جهة الشىء المتعين او وجودا فى الاخر من جهة الفكر .
هذا الارتداد اللا نهائى بين طرفى نقيض - والذى قد يتخذ أشكالا متعددة لا نهائية - هو منبع القلق الازلى للذات التى تبحث لها عن مستقر إلا أنها فى لحظة تدرك تماهى النقيضين وإئتلافهما ووحدتهما المحورية التى لا تنفصم الا انها لحظة لكنها لحظة لفهم الحياة وماهيتها . هذا الوعى بالذات بما هو ماهية مزدوجة وقلق محض هو ما اطلق عليه هيجل إسم الوعى البائس فهو لا ينى يبحث عن تلك اللحظة من الفهم الا انها تفلت من بين يديه فى كل مرة ليعود ويبحث عنها مجددا .
ومن هنا يشرح تطور الفكر ونشأة المذهب الرواقى وقصوره ونشأة المذهب الشكى والمادية وقصورهما عن إعطاء تفسير منطقى لأهم القضايا الفلسفية الوجودية منها والمعرفية والاخلاقية على الاخص .
أعتقد أنها قراءة مهمة لتسبق قراءة فينومينولوجيا الروح وستجعل هضمه أكثر يسراً.
فعملية تكون العقل الانسانى تمضى فى تطور مستمر للوعى بالذات الذى يتخبط على مر الزمن بين جدارين أحدهما خالى من الموضوعية والاخر يخلو من التحقق الفعلى اللامشروط وهما الانا المحض والانا المتعين .
فهذى العملية الجدلية التى لا تلبث ان تعترف بأحد أناتها لتنكر الاخر حتى تتبدل الاوضاع لديها فتجدها فى كل مرة تتكشف مدى قصور كل منهما دون الاخر فالعقل المحض ليس الا مجرد لوحة فارغه للتصورات التى لا توجد الا بوجود ماهية متعينة اى بوجود مستقل ليس من طبيعته فى شىء كما ان الشىء المتعين لا يمكن ان يكون شيئا لذاته وهو مفتقر للتحقق الفعلى للذات .
وهكذا سار الوعى بالذات فى تخبط مستمر بين طرفى نقيض فلن يكتمل هذا الوعى الا إذا أدرك أن تحقق الفكرة فى الوجود هو عين ماهيتها وأنه لا يمكن كذلك للشىء أن يتحقق دون وجود فكرته المحضة التى هى مجرد فكرة لذاتها ولكنها لا تتحقق الا فى موضوعها المتعين وهكذا يكون الوجود وجودا للذات من جهة الفكر المحض ووجودا للآخر من جهة الشىء المتعين وهى علاقة التى مثلها هيجل بعلاقة السيد والعبد والتى يكون فيها الوعى طرفا محايثاً من حيث يستطيع ان ينفى كلاهما. كما ان الوجود وجودا فى الذات من جهة الشىء المتعين او وجودا فى الاخر من جهة الفكر .
هذا الارتداد اللا نهائى بين طرفى نقيض - والذى قد يتخذ أشكالا متعددة لا نهائية - هو منبع القلق الازلى للذات التى تبحث لها عن مستقر إلا أنها فى لحظة تدرك تماهى النقيضين وإئتلافهما ووحدتهما المحورية التى لا تنفصم الا انها لحظة لكنها لحظة لفهم الحياة وماهيتها . هذا الوعى بالذات بما هو ماهية مزدوجة وقلق محض هو ما اطلق عليه هيجل إسم الوعى البائس فهو لا ينى يبحث عن تلك اللحظة من الفهم الا انها تفلت من بين يديه فى كل مرة ليعود ويبحث عنها مجددا .
ومن هنا يشرح تطور الفكر ونشأة المذهب الرواقى وقصوره ونشأة المذهب الشكى والمادية وقصورهما عن إعطاء تفسير منطقى لأهم القضايا الفلسفية الوجودية منها والمعرفية والاخلاقية على الاخص .
أعتقد أنها قراءة مهمة لتسبق قراءة فينومينولوجيا الروح وستجعل هضمه أكثر يسراً.
April 1, 2022
Eindelijk, na een lange dialectische wandeling, ben ik tot het einde gekomen, het absolute idee dat de waarheid van de methode blijkt te zijn, het volstrekt logische huwelijk van subject en object, en daarbij ook tot het besef dat ik opnieuw bij het begin sta, het onmiddellijke onbepaalde, en dus dat ik het opnieuw ga moeten lezen. Dankjewel, Hegel!
Want to read
March 6, 2015I'm pretty sure the paperback of this was published last month, so you don't have to pay 180 dollars for it anymore:
http://www.amazon.com/Georg-Wilhelm-F...
http://www.amazon.com/Georg-Wilhelm-F...
October 1, 2018
Perhaps the most thorough metaphysical study I've ever seen. Begins simply with the laws of identity and continues to derive everything, essence and Notions and ideas and syllogisms. Beautiful circular and trinitarian ideas, and really a lovely journey in itself.
October 30, 2025
the madman did it again
October 1, 2025
What the helly
October 1, 2015
What more can be said about the SCIENCE OF LOGIC (c. 1817) other than, like many immortal works, that it took on a life of its own, stoked by the fires of Hegel's idiosyncratic genius? This work truly evokes, like no other in philosophy, the image of "adventure," of "experiment." Both are in the very nature of the dialectic, both are so close to its heart, that dialectic, as Hegel journeys with it here, could never be reduced to that cold abstraction of the closed system, that thought-prison to which it is confined by later pedants and opportunists. In reading the Science of Logic once again, one is always conscious that the spirit of speculation which is one with the dialectic often requires us to dispense with the "common-sense" wisdom of pop philosophy; in order to appreciate Hegel's thought for what it is, we must rescue Hegel from his would-be devotees.
I could never pretend to be up to speed on the full diversity of Hegel commentaries and secondary literature, nor on its various vulgarisations and distortions, along with its lucid clarifications; but the most important piece of wisdom to gain from reading Hegel's most challenging work is, in my view, that all concepts contain their own negations within themselves (with Feuerbach and Marx, we can add the historical dimension), no system, history or philosophy is ever closed or complete, nothing free of distortion or finitude (appropos. the most ironic joke in Hegel's system, echoed in the Phenomenology of Spirit as well, that "Absolute Knowledge," the terminal point, is always just a working and reworking up of Spirit over the ruins of the past - anticipating its own transition into ruins itself, and thus the fate of Hegel's system). All of the bombastic jargon, of course, in relation to the God-Plan or World-Spirit in the later Hegel especially, stands as testament to Hegel's own finitude and preservation of his material privileges through the warping of his philosophy; but this does not change the fact that we still feel the rumblings of the French Revolution in the Science of Logic. Schopenhauer was right about Hegel's charlatanry, but he was only right insofar as Hegel accepted the role of a time-server and pandered to the political powers of his time - something that only really came about in all sincerity with the LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY and PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT. And there are even courageous interpretations out there (cf. Gillian Rose) that argue differently about these late texts.
A case in point: the doctrine of the Notion. Notion is not actuality; it is actuality set against itself, against the rational 'could-be.' The concrete intervenes to drive away the spectre of Humean abstraction and the madness of sceptical philosophy's formalisms and sophistic word-games. Indeed: reality is incomplete without its notion, and here is a spectacular comment on the failure of the Revolution to live up to itself. As Hegel writes, "being and Essence are the moments of its becoming; but the Notion is their foundation and truth, as that identity in which they have been submerged and are contained." (vol. 2, p. 211) Likewise, the much maligned concept of the "absolute" is never the final word, but a "new beginning," forever and always; it is essentially, as Marx rightfully corrected it, a *historical* category (due emphasis is made upon this point, notwithstanding her overzealous prose, by Raya Dunayevskaya). The absolute represents a new social totality, a plateau of knowledge secure in its earthly station, a new library erected in the desert, preserving its "absolute knowledge" in anticipation of redemption; but oh, let us hear from Aristotle: “Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.” There is no such thing as an 'End of History,' at least according to Hegel; each end, each lapse of time, is always relative to its own immanent moment and the potentialities contained within it.
I could never pretend to be up to speed on the full diversity of Hegel commentaries and secondary literature, nor on its various vulgarisations and distortions, along with its lucid clarifications; but the most important piece of wisdom to gain from reading Hegel's most challenging work is, in my view, that all concepts contain their own negations within themselves (with Feuerbach and Marx, we can add the historical dimension), no system, history or philosophy is ever closed or complete, nothing free of distortion or finitude (appropos. the most ironic joke in Hegel's system, echoed in the Phenomenology of Spirit as well, that "Absolute Knowledge," the terminal point, is always just a working and reworking up of Spirit over the ruins of the past - anticipating its own transition into ruins itself, and thus the fate of Hegel's system). All of the bombastic jargon, of course, in relation to the God-Plan or World-Spirit in the later Hegel especially, stands as testament to Hegel's own finitude and preservation of his material privileges through the warping of his philosophy; but this does not change the fact that we still feel the rumblings of the French Revolution in the Science of Logic. Schopenhauer was right about Hegel's charlatanry, but he was only right insofar as Hegel accepted the role of a time-server and pandered to the political powers of his time - something that only really came about in all sincerity with the LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY and PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT. And there are even courageous interpretations out there (cf. Gillian Rose) that argue differently about these late texts.
A case in point: the doctrine of the Notion. Notion is not actuality; it is actuality set against itself, against the rational 'could-be.' The concrete intervenes to drive away the spectre of Humean abstraction and the madness of sceptical philosophy's formalisms and sophistic word-games. Indeed: reality is incomplete without its notion, and here is a spectacular comment on the failure of the Revolution to live up to itself. As Hegel writes, "being and Essence are the moments of its becoming; but the Notion is their foundation and truth, as that identity in which they have been submerged and are contained." (vol. 2, p. 211) Likewise, the much maligned concept of the "absolute" is never the final word, but a "new beginning," forever and always; it is essentially, as Marx rightfully corrected it, a *historical* category (due emphasis is made upon this point, notwithstanding her overzealous prose, by Raya Dunayevskaya). The absolute represents a new social totality, a plateau of knowledge secure in its earthly station, a new library erected in the desert, preserving its "absolute knowledge" in anticipation of redemption; but oh, let us hear from Aristotle: “Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.” There is no such thing as an 'End of History,' at least according to Hegel; each end, each lapse of time, is always relative to its own immanent moment and the potentialities contained within it.
April 3, 2020
I have two wishes:
I wish I’d read this one before the Phenomenology.
I wish Hegel weren’t in at least some limited form necessary to understand basically all philosophy that came after him.
Like the Phenomenology, this one really picked up at the end. His analysis of the sublation of mechanism and chemism by teleology was worth the read alone and is, in my mind, one of the best examples of the Hegelian dialectic, which he of course uses for the entire book and then explains in the last fifteen pages, of course accounting for why he had to wait until then, with a logic behind it that is at least internally consistent.
What a dick.
I wish I’d read this one before the Phenomenology.
I wish Hegel weren’t in at least some limited form necessary to understand basically all philosophy that came after him.
Like the Phenomenology, this one really picked up at the end. His analysis of the sublation of mechanism and chemism by teleology was worth the read alone and is, in my mind, one of the best examples of the Hegelian dialectic, which he of course uses for the entire book and then explains in the last fifteen pages, of course accounting for why he had to wait until then, with a logic behind it that is at least internally consistent.
What a dick.
partial-credit
May 21, 2017We are waiting for the more affordable paperback edition of George Di Giovanni's 2010 translation.
December 15, 2023
Since I understood about 15% of the Logic on my first read through, my review is only going to cover 15% of it. Make of it what you will.
The non-reflected, ungrounded, unconditioned--these are some of the many so-called infinite judgements philosophers and non-philosophers alike tend to make about the ‘Absolute’. It is ordinarily conceived of as the womb that contains all realities and negations and embraces all determinatenesses within itself, which it cannot help but do so because it is its nature to quell all unrest. As a result, however, it itself seemingly admits of no predicates.
But there are at least two problems plaguing the usual attempt to gain an intelligible purchase on the Absolute. First of all, ordinary consciousness (or garden-variety mysticism) makes the Absolute out to be a kind of neutralizing medium whose own infinite activity and power consists solely of nourishing, harmonizing and uniting the opposites (including and especially the unity of unity and duality) so that they may continue to logically subsist as contraries. This is because to articulate what the Absolute does, apart from the aforementioned activity of transcendental pacification, is taken as a violation of the presumed status of the Absolute as something unconditioned; ordinary consciousness would, as the narrative goes, run the risk of imputing some activity or determinateness to the Absolute that has nothing to do with the Absolute itself. However, this gesture of humility, usually made by those with an orientation towards negative theologizing, in effect (1) already introduces the predicate of indifference into the Absolute, since the pacifying activity of the Absolute must stand over and above, and so remain indifferent to, the contraries it supposedly embraces and (2) reduces the Absolute into an artificial hypothesis constructed by reversing engineering or tracing back from the data; the absolute activity is nothing other than what it does, and what it does is sustain, in some sort of ‘totality’, the same finite determinations with which we are already familiar. Therefore, when reflection praises the Absolute’s activity of uniting, for instance, rational compulsion and blind instinct, it may yet be incapable of conceiving this activity in a systematic way such that it engenders a “genuine unity” (SoL 466)
Secondly, ordinary reflection that makes all sorts of claims about the Absolute, even modest claims about what the latter is not, appears to stand free and detached from the Absolute. This reflection may certainly fancy itself as being thoroughly connected to or grounded in the Absolute, but there is no guarantee that it is merely ventriloquizing the Absolute as opposed to faithfully presenting or exhibiting the latter as it is. For instance, reflection quite sensibly claims that in the presence of the Absolute all determinatenesses and determinations are displayed for what they are, namely, phantoms whose being is less than nothing were it not for the sustenance they receive from the Absolute. But is not reflection itself one of these irreal or finite determinations? If so, reflection then seemingly ends up euthanizing itself. In order to avoid arbitrariness, whatever form assumed by such a reflection should display its birthmark or ‘transparently’ exhibit the fact that it is conditioned by the Absolute, as recognized by Hegel when he draws attention to the nature of the exposition of the Absolute (467). With what must the exposition of the Absolute begin? Who must be the expositor of the Absolute?
Here is what I take Hegel to be doing. He attempts to demonstrate that whatever immediate determination that prompts ordinary reflection to expound on the Absolute and one that initially appears external or arbitrary, or worse still, irreal or ‘illusory’ will turn out to be formally necessary because it is the fate of the Absolute to be caught up in the ebb and flow of contingency of being and in reflection of itself into other, yet in both this brute transition and in the illustration of the utter finitude of this or that condition, to posit itself as absolute Absolute. Therefore, once the Absolute’s self-movement has been posited in this way, by taking the concern raised by ordinary understanding as an immediate starting point and developing it further, we can see how the absolute activity in itself is inseparable yet distinct from the finite determinations haphazardly ascribed to the Absolute by the same understanding. In addition, we can see how the act of self-euthanasia of reflection, i.e. its coming to posit itself as yet another finite determination alongside the multitude of predicates whose finitude and irreality it could demonstrate, is in actuality contiguous with the Absolute’s own necessary reflective act.
Ordinary understanding, alienated from the immanent movement of Logic, does take the
Absolute to be being, externality or outside that thoroughly penetrates our thinking and reflection all the way to the inside, however much it may then go and to protest that the internal nonetheless reserves some measure of autonomy for itself. To this extent, it does think the unity and identity just mentioned. But it this reflection has no assurance that this absolute identity which it takes to be identical with the Absolute is in fact absolutely identical with the Absolute. If any discourse about the Absolute is not to be a mere groping in the dark, the content of whatever hypothesis it proposes about the Absolute must at the same time display, demonstrate or produce its origin in the Absolute. For analogy, a blockchain transaction can be regarded as absolutely transparent (at least according its ought-to-be, ideal or in its Notion) because each transaction contains, recapitulates and displays the complete history of all past transactions. Instead, if the form or presentation of reflection’s hypothesis about absolute is insensitively related to the content of the hypothesis, then it implies that there is something extraneous, arbitrary and given about the hypothesis. But thinking does not want to settle for a representation of the Absolute but wants the Absolute itself. So how does thinking avoid the Scylla of external representation of the Absolute whose content and form are indifferent to each other and the Charybdis of pure insideness or ground that remains eternally ‘hidden’ and never manifest?
The immediate results of the process of Essential Relation’s intensification culminating in the
unity and identity of the inner and outer is the apparent melting of all differences and determinacies into thin air; the Absolute, due to its sheer presence as a totality of all realities and predicates, strips everything else of what little being they had, and renders them less than nothing. This nihilistic point of view is the spirit of what Hegel calls the ‘negative exposition’ of the Absolute that occurs quite naturally to reflection immanent to Logic and to natural consciousness. Not surprisingly, in this process reflection itself comes to posit itself as yet another finite determination to be extinguished in the Absolute (thus the nihilistic despair). On the flipside, this negative exposition has something positive going for it--in thinking through the ensuing destruction of finite determinations and predicates, including itself, reflection is able to salvage these determinations as transient images or products of the Absolute and therefore as many fragmented reflections of the latter.6 This optimism quickly fades way, however. In addition, reflection also comes to doubt that the absolute identity or identity between being and essence and/or outer and inner that it has secured for itself, and which it takes to be an expression of what the Absolute is in itself can withstand the nihilating voracity; perhaps this identity is too yet another external determination that is doomed to vanish as an illusory being.
As a matter of act, the Absolute turns out to be absolute identity only for external reflection
which posits it as a resolute identity and unity of being and essence in contradistinction to realm
of shifting appearances and dualities characterized by manifoldness. So, the doubt entertained by thinking appears to be justified--in thinking absolute identity reflection turns itself into the ground into which the Absolute withdraws which is a heretical turn of events considering what reflection has along maintained. The ambition of thinking is seemingly derailed because it can only arrive at ‘determinate Absolute’ or a conditioned Absolute (that is, conditioned by reflection), not an unconditioned or absolute Absolute. Then, owing to the presence of reflective for-otherness in it, Absolute has been determined as attribute (468-9). But notice that in thinking this ‘relative’ absolute thought has already partially overcome the problem of the gap identified earlier. If to postulate a gap between the Absolute in itself and the reflected Absolute is to pose a problem, then reflection or thinking comes to recognize that one of the necessary conditions of possibility of the problem is the positing of the attribute as a possibility of there being a gap. But is it really justified to think that the thinking of absolute identity immanently progresses to the positing of the attribute in the sense of a gap intrinsic to the Absolute in-itself? Recall the final lesson of essential relation (between inner and outer) which is that mere externality turns itself inside out and manifests itself as pure interiority. If so, then reflection’s external taking-something-to-be of the Absolute, because it is merely external, becomes an act that is immediately internal; the Absolute itself takes-something-to-be of itself and posits a possible gap internal to it. The gap is between the absolute Absolute and the Absolute in the determinateness of [absolute] identity, or attribute.
The formal restlessness of the movement becomes more palpable. Instead of dwelling on the
content of attribute, it immediately sets about working on the attribute as a posited form-determination of the Absolute. In the first place, the Absolute, as has been demonstrated, contracts itself into the transparent totality that is the attribute. In such a totality all determinations are suspended and mediated because they have their ground of being and reflection not in themselves but in the Absolute, but because the attribute has been posited as a form-determination of the absolute, the form of this form once again risks sinking into irreality, finitude or illusory being. Reflection simply has no clue what the shapes and forms assumed by the attribute are or could be, never mind the content of these attributes (469-70). The Absolute in itself may assume the form of the attribute, but then what is the form assumed by this form-determination? Reflective thinking then experiences the form-determination of the Absolute as drifting further and further away from the Absolute, and caught up in the “[...] mutability and contingency of being, the accomplished transition of itself into opposites without the return into itself [...]” (470). But this is to think the original form-determination (i.e. attribute) as yet another finite determination on the chopping block. To think the determinate Absolute as completely splintered into indifferent and externality multiplicity that has nothing to do with the Absolute in-itself is think the attribute as a ‘mere way and manner’ or modality. Hence, the Absolute sheds all reference to form and becomes a formless void yet again.
But in fact, reflection’s positing of illusory and finite determination (i.e. attribute) as an illusory
determination--an act that is tantamount to the dissolution of that determinate Absolute, turns out to be the return of the reflection of the form into itself. The ensuing dissolution of attribute results not in indeterminate Absolute but the Absolute no less determinate than attribute but now posited as equal or identical to itself. When attribute, whose one side constitutes an originary negation, negates itself, this negation of the negation results in the identity that originally thought of the Absolute itself. In other words, the Absolute is truly posited as the identity that it is only in the act of self-immolation of the reflective movement, i.e. mode. Like attribute before it, the Absolute’s own self-externality or mode, is arrived at or posited not arbitrarily, but necessarily. The whole reflective moment from indeterminate Absolute to determinate Absolute to indifferent multiplicity of form and content constitutes one reflective movement of the Absolute. To reiterate, it is only because absolute identity is primarily posited in self-external reflection (posited as something illusory, finite and only possibly true) and because the latter dares to risk being ‘wrong’ that this self-externality turns itself into the Absolute’s instrument for self-return. The transcendental essence-being actually, possibly and even necessarily had to fail, move, contradict itself and risk sinking into its external determinations in order to posit itself as the absolute identity.
Real reflection that initially attempt to grasp the Absolute is a really actual and really possible
action which actually produces transitions and illusory showings in the fold of absolute being. It
is equally a contingent act because it was conditioned by givenness in the shape of a constellation of existing circumstances. But because this contingent act, in persisting through its determinate failures, comes to posit absolute necessity, it in fact presupposes the latter.
However, reflection that belongs to ordinary understanding, because it is divorced from the
immanent movement that is Logic, encounters difficulty in understanding how the problem it
implicitly poses for itself in attempting to access or become equal in-itself to the Absolute, once it has been rendered explicit, contain in itself its own solution, but as a possibility that is yet to be realized or made actual.
The non-reflected, ungrounded, unconditioned--these are some of the many so-called infinite judgements philosophers and non-philosophers alike tend to make about the ‘Absolute’. It is ordinarily conceived of as the womb that contains all realities and negations and embraces all determinatenesses within itself, which it cannot help but do so because it is its nature to quell all unrest. As a result, however, it itself seemingly admits of no predicates.
But there are at least two problems plaguing the usual attempt to gain an intelligible purchase on the Absolute. First of all, ordinary consciousness (or garden-variety mysticism) makes the Absolute out to be a kind of neutralizing medium whose own infinite activity and power consists solely of nourishing, harmonizing and uniting the opposites (including and especially the unity of unity and duality) so that they may continue to logically subsist as contraries. This is because to articulate what the Absolute does, apart from the aforementioned activity of transcendental pacification, is taken as a violation of the presumed status of the Absolute as something unconditioned; ordinary consciousness would, as the narrative goes, run the risk of imputing some activity or determinateness to the Absolute that has nothing to do with the Absolute itself. However, this gesture of humility, usually made by those with an orientation towards negative theologizing, in effect (1) already introduces the predicate of indifference into the Absolute, since the pacifying activity of the Absolute must stand over and above, and so remain indifferent to, the contraries it supposedly embraces and (2) reduces the Absolute into an artificial hypothesis constructed by reversing engineering or tracing back from the data; the absolute activity is nothing other than what it does, and what it does is sustain, in some sort of ‘totality’, the same finite determinations with which we are already familiar. Therefore, when reflection praises the Absolute’s activity of uniting, for instance, rational compulsion and blind instinct, it may yet be incapable of conceiving this activity in a systematic way such that it engenders a “genuine unity” (SoL 466)
Secondly, ordinary reflection that makes all sorts of claims about the Absolute, even modest claims about what the latter is not, appears to stand free and detached from the Absolute. This reflection may certainly fancy itself as being thoroughly connected to or grounded in the Absolute, but there is no guarantee that it is merely ventriloquizing the Absolute as opposed to faithfully presenting or exhibiting the latter as it is. For instance, reflection quite sensibly claims that in the presence of the Absolute all determinatenesses and determinations are displayed for what they are, namely, phantoms whose being is less than nothing were it not for the sustenance they receive from the Absolute. But is not reflection itself one of these irreal or finite determinations? If so, reflection then seemingly ends up euthanizing itself. In order to avoid arbitrariness, whatever form assumed by such a reflection should display its birthmark or ‘transparently’ exhibit the fact that it is conditioned by the Absolute, as recognized by Hegel when he draws attention to the nature of the exposition of the Absolute (467). With what must the exposition of the Absolute begin? Who must be the expositor of the Absolute?
Here is what I take Hegel to be doing. He attempts to demonstrate that whatever immediate determination that prompts ordinary reflection to expound on the Absolute and one that initially appears external or arbitrary, or worse still, irreal or ‘illusory’ will turn out to be formally necessary because it is the fate of the Absolute to be caught up in the ebb and flow of contingency of being and in reflection of itself into other, yet in both this brute transition and in the illustration of the utter finitude of this or that condition, to posit itself as absolute Absolute. Therefore, once the Absolute’s self-movement has been posited in this way, by taking the concern raised by ordinary understanding as an immediate starting point and developing it further, we can see how the absolute activity in itself is inseparable yet distinct from the finite determinations haphazardly ascribed to the Absolute by the same understanding. In addition, we can see how the act of self-euthanasia of reflection, i.e. its coming to posit itself as yet another finite determination alongside the multitude of predicates whose finitude and irreality it could demonstrate, is in actuality contiguous with the Absolute’s own necessary reflective act.
Ordinary understanding, alienated from the immanent movement of Logic, does take the
Absolute to be being, externality or outside that thoroughly penetrates our thinking and reflection all the way to the inside, however much it may then go and to protest that the internal nonetheless reserves some measure of autonomy for itself. To this extent, it does think the unity and identity just mentioned. But it this reflection has no assurance that this absolute identity which it takes to be identical with the Absolute is in fact absolutely identical with the Absolute. If any discourse about the Absolute is not to be a mere groping in the dark, the content of whatever hypothesis it proposes about the Absolute must at the same time display, demonstrate or produce its origin in the Absolute. For analogy, a blockchain transaction can be regarded as absolutely transparent (at least according its ought-to-be, ideal or in its Notion) because each transaction contains, recapitulates and displays the complete history of all past transactions. Instead, if the form or presentation of reflection’s hypothesis about absolute is insensitively related to the content of the hypothesis, then it implies that there is something extraneous, arbitrary and given about the hypothesis. But thinking does not want to settle for a representation of the Absolute but wants the Absolute itself. So how does thinking avoid the Scylla of external representation of the Absolute whose content and form are indifferent to each other and the Charybdis of pure insideness or ground that remains eternally ‘hidden’ and never manifest?
The immediate results of the process of Essential Relation’s intensification culminating in the
unity and identity of the inner and outer is the apparent melting of all differences and determinacies into thin air; the Absolute, due to its sheer presence as a totality of all realities and predicates, strips everything else of what little being they had, and renders them less than nothing. This nihilistic point of view is the spirit of what Hegel calls the ‘negative exposition’ of the Absolute that occurs quite naturally to reflection immanent to Logic and to natural consciousness. Not surprisingly, in this process reflection itself comes to posit itself as yet another finite determination to be extinguished in the Absolute (thus the nihilistic despair). On the flipside, this negative exposition has something positive going for it--in thinking through the ensuing destruction of finite determinations and predicates, including itself, reflection is able to salvage these determinations as transient images or products of the Absolute and therefore as many fragmented reflections of the latter.6 This optimism quickly fades way, however. In addition, reflection also comes to doubt that the absolute identity or identity between being and essence and/or outer and inner that it has secured for itself, and which it takes to be an expression of what the Absolute is in itself can withstand the nihilating voracity; perhaps this identity is too yet another external determination that is doomed to vanish as an illusory being.
As a matter of act, the Absolute turns out to be absolute identity only for external reflection
which posits it as a resolute identity and unity of being and essence in contradistinction to realm
of shifting appearances and dualities characterized by manifoldness. So, the doubt entertained by thinking appears to be justified--in thinking absolute identity reflection turns itself into the ground into which the Absolute withdraws which is a heretical turn of events considering what reflection has along maintained. The ambition of thinking is seemingly derailed because it can only arrive at ‘determinate Absolute’ or a conditioned Absolute (that is, conditioned by reflection), not an unconditioned or absolute Absolute. Then, owing to the presence of reflective for-otherness in it, Absolute has been determined as attribute (468-9). But notice that in thinking this ‘relative’ absolute thought has already partially overcome the problem of the gap identified earlier. If to postulate a gap between the Absolute in itself and the reflected Absolute is to pose a problem, then reflection or thinking comes to recognize that one of the necessary conditions of possibility of the problem is the positing of the attribute as a possibility of there being a gap. But is it really justified to think that the thinking of absolute identity immanently progresses to the positing of the attribute in the sense of a gap intrinsic to the Absolute in-itself? Recall the final lesson of essential relation (between inner and outer) which is that mere externality turns itself inside out and manifests itself as pure interiority. If so, then reflection’s external taking-something-to-be of the Absolute, because it is merely external, becomes an act that is immediately internal; the Absolute itself takes-something-to-be of itself and posits a possible gap internal to it. The gap is between the absolute Absolute and the Absolute in the determinateness of [absolute] identity, or attribute.
The formal restlessness of the movement becomes more palpable. Instead of dwelling on the
content of attribute, it immediately sets about working on the attribute as a posited form-determination of the Absolute. In the first place, the Absolute, as has been demonstrated, contracts itself into the transparent totality that is the attribute. In such a totality all determinations are suspended and mediated because they have their ground of being and reflection not in themselves but in the Absolute, but because the attribute has been posited as a form-determination of the absolute, the form of this form once again risks sinking into irreality, finitude or illusory being. Reflection simply has no clue what the shapes and forms assumed by the attribute are or could be, never mind the content of these attributes (469-70). The Absolute in itself may assume the form of the attribute, but then what is the form assumed by this form-determination? Reflective thinking then experiences the form-determination of the Absolute as drifting further and further away from the Absolute, and caught up in the “[...] mutability and contingency of being, the accomplished transition of itself into opposites without the return into itself [...]” (470). But this is to think the original form-determination (i.e. attribute) as yet another finite determination on the chopping block. To think the determinate Absolute as completely splintered into indifferent and externality multiplicity that has nothing to do with the Absolute in-itself is think the attribute as a ‘mere way and manner’ or modality. Hence, the Absolute sheds all reference to form and becomes a formless void yet again.
But in fact, reflection’s positing of illusory and finite determination (i.e. attribute) as an illusory
determination--an act that is tantamount to the dissolution of that determinate Absolute, turns out to be the return of the reflection of the form into itself. The ensuing dissolution of attribute results not in indeterminate Absolute but the Absolute no less determinate than attribute but now posited as equal or identical to itself. When attribute, whose one side constitutes an originary negation, negates itself, this negation of the negation results in the identity that originally thought of the Absolute itself. In other words, the Absolute is truly posited as the identity that it is only in the act of self-immolation of the reflective movement, i.e. mode. Like attribute before it, the Absolute’s own self-externality or mode, is arrived at or posited not arbitrarily, but necessarily. The whole reflective moment from indeterminate Absolute to determinate Absolute to indifferent multiplicity of form and content constitutes one reflective movement of the Absolute. To reiterate, it is only because absolute identity is primarily posited in self-external reflection (posited as something illusory, finite and only possibly true) and because the latter dares to risk being ‘wrong’ that this self-externality turns itself into the Absolute’s instrument for self-return. The transcendental essence-being actually, possibly and even necessarily had to fail, move, contradict itself and risk sinking into its external determinations in order to posit itself as the absolute identity.
Real reflection that initially attempt to grasp the Absolute is a really actual and really possible
action which actually produces transitions and illusory showings in the fold of absolute being. It
is equally a contingent act because it was conditioned by givenness in the shape of a constellation of existing circumstances. But because this contingent act, in persisting through its determinate failures, comes to posit absolute necessity, it in fact presupposes the latter.
However, reflection that belongs to ordinary understanding, because it is divorced from the
immanent movement that is Logic, encounters difficulty in understanding how the problem it
implicitly poses for itself in attempting to access or become equal in-itself to the Absolute, once it has been rendered explicit, contain in itself its own solution, but as a possibility that is yet to be realized or made actual.
to-keep-reference
October 18, 2016Recordemos aquí las insuperadas y concisas formulaciones de la Lógica de Hegel sobre cómo la esencia
"se presupone a sí misma y la asunción de esta presuposición es esencia en sí misma; a la inversa, esta asunción de su presuposición es la propia presuposición. Por ello la reflexión encuentra ante sí un inmediato al que trasciende y del que es su regreso. Pero este regreso es solo la presuposición de lo que la reflexión encuentra delante de sí. Lo que de ese modo se encuentra solo llega a ser por medio de ser dejado atrás […] Porque la presuposición del regreso-a-sí-mismo –de la que procede la esencia, y es solo como este regreso– está solo en el propio regreso." (Pág.402)
Cuando Hegel dice que una noción es el resultado de sí misma, que proporciona su propia actualización, hay que abordar esta afirmación –que, inicialmente por lo menos,solo puede parecer extravagante (la noción no es simplemente un pensamiento activado por el sujeto pensante, sino que posee la mágica propiedad del automovimiento)– desde el lado opuesto: el Espíritu como la sustancia espiritual es una sustancia, un En-sí-mismo, que se sostiene a sí mismo solamente a través de la incesante actividad de los sujetos comprometidos en ella. Por ejemplo, una nación existe solamente en la medida en que sus miembros se consideran ellos mismos miembros de esta nación y actúan de acuerdo a ello, fuera de esa actividad no tiene ningún contenido en absoluto, ninguna consistencia sustancial; y lo mismo sucede, por ejemplo, con la noción de comunismo; esta noción «genera su propia actualización» motivando a la gente para que luche por él.
Viviendo en el Final de los Tiempos Pág.242
¿No es esto exactamente lo que hizo Lenin tras la catastrofe de 1914? Se escabulló a un lugar solitario de Suiza, donde «aprendió, aprendió, y aprendió» leyendo La Ciencia de la Lógica de Hegel.
Sobre la violencia Pág.18
La noción de historia ocupa un lugar central en la filosofía de Hegel que da lugar a usos solapados y complementarios del mismo término –“historia”. Uno de esos modos en que emplea el término concierne a su escrito Ciencia de la lógica, en cuya introducción Hegel utiliza “histórico” para referirse a las divisiones y títulos de los libros, secciones y capítulos que presenta la obra en cuestión. Esta observación del autor acerca de su escrito revela su especificidad sobre la base de su tesis de corte metafísico según la cual lo real es racional, y lo racional es real. Esto es, las categorías del pensar se identifican con las del ser. La lógica no constituye para Hegel una disciplina formal independiente de la realidad. Quizás tales términos traicionen el espíritu con el que Hegel escribió la Lógica pues no aparece en él un sujeto (un individuo) que desagregue la realidad, sino que se trata de un texto que carece de marcas personales, en donde el autor pretende que sea leído como una suerte de manifestación del despliegue de la realidad, aquello que describe su movimiento, el movimiento de la Idea.
Filosofía de la Historia. Unidad 1.
"se presupone a sí misma y la asunción de esta presuposición es esencia en sí misma; a la inversa, esta asunción de su presuposición es la propia presuposición. Por ello la reflexión encuentra ante sí un inmediato al que trasciende y del que es su regreso. Pero este regreso es solo la presuposición de lo que la reflexión encuentra delante de sí. Lo que de ese modo se encuentra solo llega a ser por medio de ser dejado atrás […] Porque la presuposición del regreso-a-sí-mismo –de la que procede la esencia, y es solo como este regreso– está solo en el propio regreso." (Pág.402)
Cuando Hegel dice que una noción es el resultado de sí misma, que proporciona su propia actualización, hay que abordar esta afirmación –que, inicialmente por lo menos,solo puede parecer extravagante (la noción no es simplemente un pensamiento activado por el sujeto pensante, sino que posee la mágica propiedad del automovimiento)– desde el lado opuesto: el Espíritu como la sustancia espiritual es una sustancia, un En-sí-mismo, que se sostiene a sí mismo solamente a través de la incesante actividad de los sujetos comprometidos en ella. Por ejemplo, una nación existe solamente en la medida en que sus miembros se consideran ellos mismos miembros de esta nación y actúan de acuerdo a ello, fuera de esa actividad no tiene ningún contenido en absoluto, ninguna consistencia sustancial; y lo mismo sucede, por ejemplo, con la noción de comunismo; esta noción «genera su propia actualización» motivando a la gente para que luche por él.
Viviendo en el Final de los Tiempos Pág.242
¿No es esto exactamente lo que hizo Lenin tras la catastrofe de 1914? Se escabulló a un lugar solitario de Suiza, donde «aprendió, aprendió, y aprendió» leyendo La Ciencia de la Lógica de Hegel.
Sobre la violencia Pág.18
La noción de historia ocupa un lugar central en la filosofía de Hegel que da lugar a usos solapados y complementarios del mismo término –“historia”. Uno de esos modos en que emplea el término concierne a su escrito Ciencia de la lógica, en cuya introducción Hegel utiliza “histórico” para referirse a las divisiones y títulos de los libros, secciones y capítulos que presenta la obra en cuestión. Esta observación del autor acerca de su escrito revela su especificidad sobre la base de su tesis de corte metafísico según la cual lo real es racional, y lo racional es real. Esto es, las categorías del pensar se identifican con las del ser. La lógica no constituye para Hegel una disciplina formal independiente de la realidad. Quizás tales términos traicionen el espíritu con el que Hegel escribió la Lógica pues no aparece en él un sujeto (un individuo) que desagregue la realidad, sino que se trata de un texto que carece de marcas personales, en donde el autor pretende que sea leído como una suerte de manifestación del despliegue de la realidad, aquello que describe su movimiento, el movimiento de la Idea.
Filosofía de la Historia. Unidad 1.
September 13, 2020
This book broke my brain and reassembled it. I found myself disagreeing with Hegel and then swayed over the chapters by the power of his analytic. I still think there are some holes, and this book could definitely have been mercifully shorter had Hegel an editor to force him to speak like an intelligible human being. Nonetheless, this is one of the most worthwhile pieces of philosophy I've ever read. For those without the endurance, I suggest reading the preface, the first section of each chapter, and the final chapter en toto. I was surprised to find that this is just as much a book about metaphysics as it is about logic. The useful insight is that Hegel's method is not merely Fichte's thesis-antithesis-synthesis, nor Kant's syllogisms; but it involves a fourth step (or a synthesis that involves an A and B sub-section, Hegel frames it both ways). The immediate positedness is negated, then the negation is negation. That final positive negation bringing back the fullness of content from an object's other is also immediate and mediated. It's totality is that which is in and for itself containing its own self-negation and immediate and mediated moments.
The Cambridge edition is great, with an excellent introduction and scholarly apparatus.
See my Twitter thread for an overview of the entire text: https://twitter.com/TheVice_Admiral/s...
The Cambridge edition is great, with an excellent introduction and scholarly apparatus.
See my Twitter thread for an overview of the entire text: https://twitter.com/TheVice_Admiral/s...
May 1, 2013
Hegel- you could just study him and have a crazy grasp of the history of philosophy and also a 'thought system' that can compete with the best of them. However you cannot 'just read' Hegel without already having a grasp of the history of philosophy and the various systems he critiques along the way. The LOGIC is really about the actualization of the potential of MIND though nature and human consciousness in its 'blueprint' form of working through what is technically called the relationship of moment/dialectic= speculative unity but what is Popularly (and mistakenly) referred to as thesis/anti-thesis=synthesis. There is for Hegel historical profess, kinda of like how we now recognize human rights (heck animal rights) and stuff in ways that our historical ancestors did not. German Idealism while very analytic, is a historical period to be studied today and not generally the basis for how one makes life decisions. While Hegel loves the number 3- the chapter on Judgement contains a four fold division that kinds ruins the whole trinity thing he had going on.
September 4, 2021
This magnificent encyclopedia of being can be resumed with the following sentence: dialectics step by step.
Hegel was indeed in a bridge between dialectical idealism and dialectical materialism: the thing is the times determined him to take a position.
One could make a book about this book and that is the greatness of german idealism: it is as beautiful as the Phenomenology of Spirit. One can see the full romanticist poetry between the most abstract and determined descriptions.
"Narration without philosophy is empty".
Hegel was indeed in a bridge between dialectical idealism and dialectical materialism: the thing is the times determined him to take a position.
One could make a book about this book and that is the greatness of german idealism: it is as beautiful as the Phenomenology of Spirit. One can see the full romanticist poetry between the most abstract and determined descriptions.
"Narration without philosophy is empty".
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 29, 2016
I have read enough to give a review and a rating, but I will not sit back here and pretend I've read the thing cover to cover. Only a few people in the world have. I respect anyone who has the strength of will to undertake this task. Even trying is a feat in itself. One day, one day I'll sit back and read it all. For now, a quarter will suffice. A teacher of mine called this work "The mind of God before creation" - there's a carrot to chew on.
September 22, 2011
By far the most challenging and rewarding book ever written on Logic.
January 29, 2013
الكتاب هو ترجمة مصطفى صفوان لكتاب هيجل "Phenomenology of the Soul\Spirit)وتوجد ترجمةعربيةأسهل صياغةوأكثر وضوح.ترجمة فتحي العونلي تحت عنوان (فنومينولوجيا الروح)إصدار المنظمة العربية للترجمة، 2006.
November 7, 2021
Long live the concept
August 17, 2023
Denna var egentligen något jag hade tänkt att läsa senare, men Heidegger hänvisade till den på ett sätt som tvingade mig att tidigarelägga. Boken som sådan är vansinnig, men väldigt behjälplig för att förstå Hegels sätt att tänka, och faktiskt användbar för att förstå barn och utveckling.
Hegel börjar med att konstatera att formell logik inte har speciellt mycket att göra med tänkande, och att den kvalitativt är helt beroende av vilka frågor som ställs, och vilken data som används för att besvara frågorna. Från detta försöker han istället formulera en psykologisk logik, vilket i princip blir en tankestruktur för det blivande eller fallande: vilka motsatser används, och hur "upphävandet" av dem mellan sig förändras. Rent utvecklingsteoretiskt är det briljant, men tillsammans med Hegels bild av att vi tillskriver omvärlden dess egenskaper och lever i ett naturligt kaos, förklarar den också varför Hegel kommer till de mörka slutsatser han gör.
Hegel börjar med att konstatera att formell logik inte har speciellt mycket att göra med tänkande, och att den kvalitativt är helt beroende av vilka frågor som ställs, och vilken data som används för att besvara frågorna. Från detta försöker han istället formulera en psykologisk logik, vilket i princip blir en tankestruktur för det blivande eller fallande: vilka motsatser används, och hur "upphävandet" av dem mellan sig förändras. Rent utvecklingsteoretiskt är det briljant, men tillsammans med Hegels bild av att vi tillskriver omvärlden dess egenskaper och lever i ett naturligt kaos, förklarar den också varför Hegel kommer till de mörka slutsatser han gör.
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