Introduction_part1_of_Hegel_The_Science_of_Logic.mp3

Introduction

general concept of logic

In no science is the need to begin with the fact itself, without preliminary reflections, felt more strongly than in the science of logic. In every other science, the matter that it treats, and the scientific method, are distinguished from each other; the content, moreover, does not make an absolute beginning but is dependent on other concepts and is connected on all sides with other material. It is therefore permitted to these sciences to speak of their ground and its context, as well of their method, in the form of lemmas; to apply presupposed forms of definitions and the like without further ado, as known and accepted; and to make use of customary ways of argumentation in order to establish their general concepts and fundamental determinations. Logic, on the contrary, cannot presuppose any of these forms of reflection, these rules and laws of thinking, for they are part of its content and they first have to be established within it. And it is not just the declaration of scientific method but the concept itself of science as such that belongs to its content and even makes up its final result. Logic, therefore, cannot say what it is in advance, rather does this knowledge of itself only emerge as the final result and completion of its whole treatment. Likewise its subject matter, thinking or more specifically conceptual thinking, is essentially elaborated within it; its concept is generated in the course of this elaboration and cannot therefore be given in advance. What is anticipated in this Introduction, therefore, is not intended to ground as it were the con- cept of logic, or to justify in advance its content and method scientifically, but rather to make more intuitable, by means of some explanations and reflections of an argumentative and historical nature, the standpoint from which this science ought to be considered. Whenever logic is taken as the science of thinking in general, it is thereby understood that this thinking constitutes the mere form of a cognition; that logic abstracts from all content, and the so-called second constitutive piece that belongs to the cognition, namely the matter, must be given from elsewhere; hence that logic, since this matter does not in the least depend on it, can give only the formal conditions of genuine knowledge, but does not itself contain real truth; or again, that logic is only the pathway to real knowledge, for the essential component of truth, the content, lies outside it. But, first, to say that logic abstracts from all content, that it only teaches the rule of thinking without being able to engage in what is being thought or to take its composition into consideration, this alone is already inadequate. For, since thinking and the rules of thinking are supposed to be its subject matter, in these logic already has a content specifically its own; in them it has that second constituent of knowledge, namely a matter whose composition is its concern. But, second, the notions on which the concept of logic has generally rested so far have in part already passed away, and for the rest, it is time that they disappear altogether, that the standpoint of this science were grasped at a higher level, and that the science gained a completely altered shape. The concept of logic has hitherto rested on a separation, presupposed once and for all in ordinary consciousness, of the content of knowledge and its form, or of truth and certainty. Presupposed from the start is that the material of knowledge is present in and for itself as a ready-made world outside thinking; that thinking is by itself empty, that it comes to this material as a form from outside, fills itself with it, and only then gains a content, thereby becoming real knowledge. Further, these two component parts (for they are supposed to be related to each other as component parts, and cognition is compounded from them in a mechanical, or at best chemical, manner) are said to stand to each other in this order: the object is complete and finished all by itself and, for its actuality, can fully dispense with thought; thought, for its part, is something deficient and in need of a material in order to complete itself, and also, as a pliable indeterminate form, must adapt itself to its matter. Truth is the agreement of thought with the subject matter, and in order to produce this agreement for it is not there on its own account thought is expected to be subservient and responsive to the subject matter. Third, when the difference of matter and form, of subject matter and thought, is not left in this nebulous indeterminacy but is more specif- ically defined, each turns out to be a sphere divorced from the other. Consequently, as thought receives and informs the material, it does not transcend itself but its reception of this material and its responsiveness to it remain modifications of itself; thus thought does not become its other; the self-conscious determining, at any rate, belongs only to it; even as it refers to the subject matter, therefore, it does not reach out to it outside itself; the subject matter remains a thing in itself, utterly a beyond of thought. These views on the relation of subject and object to each other express the determinations that constitute the nature of our ordinary, phenomenal consciousness. However, when these prejudices are carried over to reason, as if in reason the same relation obtained, as if this relation had any truth in and for itself, then they are errors, and the refutation of them in every part of the spiritual and natural universe is what philosophy is; or rather, since they block the entrance to philosophy, they are the errors that must be removed before one can enter it. The older metaphysics had in this respect a higher concept of thinking than now passes as the accepted opinion. For it presupposed as its principle that only what is known of things and in things by thought is really true in them, that is, what is known in them not in their immediacy but as first elevated to the form of thinking, as things of thought. This metaphysics thus held that thinking and the determination of thinking are not something alien to the subject matters, but are rather their essence, or that the things and the thinking of them agree in and for themselves (also our language expresses a kinship between them); that thinking in its immanent determinations, and the true nature of things, are one and the same content. But the reflection of the understanding seized hold of philosophy. We must know exactly what is meant by this saying which is otherwise often used as a slogan. It refers in general to an understanding that abstracts and therefore separates, that remains fixed in its separations. Turned against reason, this understanding behaves in the manner of ordinary common sense, giving credence to the latters view that truth rests on sensuous reality, that thoughts are only thoughts, that is, that only sense perception gives filling and reality to them; that reason, in so far as it abides in and for itself, generates only mental figments. In this self-renunciation of reason, the concept of truth is lost, is restricted to the knowledge of mere subjective truth, of mere appearances, of only something to which the nature of the fact does not correspond; knowledge has lapsed into opinion. Yet there is something deeper lying at the foundation of this turn which knowledge takes, and appears as a loss and a retrograde step, something on which the elevation of reason to the loftier spirit of modern philosophy in fact rests. The basis of that conception now universally accepted is to be sought, namely, in the insight into the necessary conflict of the deter- minations of the understanding with themselves. The reflection already mentioned consists in transcending the concrete immediate, in determining and parting it. But this reflection must equally transcend its separating determinations and above all connect them. The conflict of determinations breaks out precisely at the point of connection. This reflective activity of connection belongs in itself to reason, and to rise above the determinations and attain insight into their discord is the great negative step on the way to the true concept of reason. But, when not carried through, this insight runs into the misconception that reason is the one that contradicts itself; it fails to see that the contradiction is in fact the elevation of reason above the restrictions of the understanding and the dissolution of them. At that point, instead of making the final step that would take it to the summit, knowledge flees from the unsatisfactoriness of the determinations of the understanding to sensuous existence, believing that there it will find stabil- ity and accord. On the other hand, since this cognition is self-admittedly a cognition only of appearances, the unsatisfactoriness of the latter is admitted but at the same time presupposed: as much as to say that although we do not have cognition of things in themselves, nevertheless, within the sphere of appearance we do have correct cognition; as if, so to speak, there were a difference only in the kind of subject matters and one kind, namely the things in themselves, does not fall within the scope of knowledge whereas the other kind, namely the appearances, does. This is like attributing right insight to someone, with the stipulation, however, that he is not fit to see what is true but only what is false. Absurd as this might be, no less absurd would be a cognition which is true but does not know its subject matter as it is in itself. The critique of the forms of the understanding has arrived precisely at this result, namely that such forms do not apply to things in themselves. This can only mean that they are in themselves something untrue. However, since they have been allowed to remain valid for reason and experience, the critique has not altered them in any way but rather has let them be for the subject in the same shape as they formerly applied to the object. But if they are inadequate for the thing in itself, still less must the understanding to which they supposedly belong have to put up with them and rest content with them. If they cannot be determinations of the thing in itself, still less can they be determinations of the understanding, to which one ought to concede at least the dignity of a thing. The determinations of finite and infinite run into the same conflict, whether they are applied to time and space, to the world, or are determinations internal to the spirit just as black and white yield gray, whether they are mixed on a wall or on a palette. If our representation of the world is dissolved when we carry over to it the determinations of the infinite and finite, still more is spirit itself, which contains both determinations within itself, something inwardly self-contradictory, self-dissolving. It is not the nature of the material or of the subject matter to which they are applied or in which they are found that can make a difference; for it is only through such determinations, and in accordance with them, that the subject matter has contradiction within it. The said critique has therefore removed the forms of objective thinking only from the thing, but has left them in the subject as it originally found them. That is to say, it did not consider them in and for themselves, according to their proper content, but simply took them over from subjective logic in the manner of lemmas. There was no question, therefore, of an immanent deduction of such forms, or also of deducing them as logico-subjective forms, still less, of a dialectical treatment of them. In its more consistent form, transcendental idealism did recognize the nothingness of the spectral thing-in-itself, this abstract shadow divorced from all content left over by critical philosophy, and its goal was to destroy it completely. This philosophy also made a start at letting reason produce its determinations from itself. But the subjective attitude assumed in the attempt prevented it from coming to fruition. This attitude and, together with it, the attempt and the cultivation of pure science were eventually abandoned. But what is commonly understood by logic is considered with a total disregard of metaphysical significance. This science, in the state in which it still finds itself, has admittedly no content of the kind which ordinary consciousness would accept as reality, or as a genuine fact. But it is not for that reason a formal science void of any material truth. Besides, the region of truth is not to be sought in that material missing in it a lack to which the insufficiency of logic is usually attributed. More to the point is that the emptiness of the logical forms lies rather solely in the manner in which they are considered and dealt with. Scattered in fixed determinations and thus not held together in organic unity, they are dead forms and the spirit which is their vital concrete unity does not reside in them. Therefore they lack proper content a matter that would in itself be substance. The content which is missed in the logical forms is nothing else than a fixed foundation and a concretion of these abstract determinations, and such a substantial being is usually sought for them outside them. But logical reason is itself the substantial or real factor which, within itself, holds together all the abstract determinations and constitutes their proper, absolutely concrete, unity. There is no need, therefore, to look far and wide for what is usually called a matter; it is not the fault of the subject matter of logic if the latter seems empty but only of the manner in which this subject matter is grasped. This reflection brings us to a statement of the standpoint from which logic is to be considered, of how this standpoint differs from previous treatments of this science and is alone the true base on which the science is to rest in the future. In the Phenomenology of Spirit I have presented consciousness as it progresses from the first immediate opposition of itself and the subject matter to absolute knowledge. This path traverses all the forms of the relation of consciousness to the object and its result is the concept of science. There is no need, therefore, to justify this concept here (apart from the fact that it emerges within logic itself ). It has already been justified in the other work, and would indeed not be capable of any other justification than is produced by consciousness as all its shapes dissolve into that concept as into their truth. A discursive justification or explanation of the concept of science can yield at best a general notion of it and a historical acquaintance; but a definition of science or more precisely of logic has its proof only in the necessity of the manner it is produced by consciousness as just mentioned. Any definition with which a science makes an absolute beginning can contain nothing else than the precise and correct expression of what is represented in ones mind as the traditionally accepted subject matter and purpose of the science. That just this subject matter and this purpose are so represented is a historical warrant for invoking such or such fact as conceded, or, more precisely, only for pleading that such or such fact should be accepted as conceded. There will always be the possibility that someone else will adduce a case, an instance, in which something more and different must be understood by some term or other a term which is therefore to be defined in a narrower or broader sense and the science, too, will have to be refashioned accordingly. Further still, definition is always a matter of argumentation as to what is to be included in it or excluded from it, within which limits and to what extent; but argumentation is open to the most manifold and various opinions, and on these a decision can finally be determined only arbitrarily. In this method of beginning science with a definition, no mention is made of the need to demonstrate the necessity of its subject matter, and hence the necessity of the science itself. The concept of pure science and its deduction is therefore presupposed in the present work in so far as the Phenomenology of Spirit is nothing other than that deduction. Absolute knowledge is the truth of all the modes of consciousness because, as the course of the Phenomenology brought out, it is only in absolute knowledge that the separation of the subject matter from the certainty of itself is completely resolved: truth has become equal to certainty and this certainty to truth. Pure science thus presupposes the liberation from the opposition of consciousness. It contains thought in so far as this thought is equally the fact as it is in itself; or the fact in itself in so far as this is equally pure thought. As science, truth is pure self-consciousness as it develops itself and has the shape of the self, so that that which exists in and for itself is the conscious concept and the concept as such is that which exists in and for itself. This objective thinking is thus the content of pure science. Consequently, far from being formal, far from lacking the matter required for an actual and true cognition, it is its content which alone has absolute truth, or, if one still wanted to make use of the word matter, which alone is the veritable matter a matter for which the form is nothing external, because this matter is rather pure thought and hence the absolute form itself. Accordingly, logic is to be understood as the system of pure reason, as the realm of pure thought. This realm is truth unveiled, truth as it is in and for itself. It can therefore be said that this content is the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and of a finite spirit. Anaxagoras is celebrated as the man who first gave voice to the thought that Nous, thought, is the principle of the world; that the essence of the world is to be defined as thought. In this, he laid down the foundation for an intellectual view of the universe, the pure shape of which must be logic. Logic has nothing to do with a thought about something which stands outside by itself as the base of thought; nor does it have to do with forms meant to provide mere markings of the truth; rather, the necessary forms of thinking, and its specific determinations, are the content and the ultimate truth itself.