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Introduction_part2_of_Hegel_The_Science_of_Logic.mp3
To get at least some inkling of this, one must put aside the notion that truth must be something tangible. Such tangibility, for example, is carried over even into the ideas of Plato which are in Gods thought, as if they were, so to speak, things that exist but in another world or region, and a world of actuality were to be found outside them which has a substantiality distinct from those ideas and is real only because of this distinctness. The Platonic idea is nothing else than the universal, or, more precisely, it is the concept of the subject matter; it is only in the concept that something has actuality, and to the extent that it is different from its concept, it ceases to be actual and is a nullity; the side of tangibility and of sensuous self-externality belongs to this null side. But on the other side one can appeal to the representations typical of ordinary logic; for it is assumed that in definitions, for example, the determinations are not just of the knowing subject but are rather determinations of the subject matter, such that constitute its innermost essential nature. Or in an inference drawn from given determinations to others, the assumption is that the inferred is not something external to the subject matter and alien to it, but that it belongs to it instead, that to the thought there corresponds being. Everywhere presupposed by the use of the forms of the concept, of judgment, inference, definition, division, etc., is that they are not mere forms of self-conscious thinking but also of objective understanding. Thought is an expression which attributes the determination contained in it primarily to consciousness. But inasmuch as it is said that understanding, that reason, is in the objective world, that spirit and nature have universal laws to which their life and their changes conform, then it is conceded just as much that the determinations of thought have objective value and concrete existence. Critical philosophy did indeed already turn metaphysics into logic but, like the subsequent idealism, it gave to the logical determinations an essentially subjective significance out of fear of the object, as we said earlier; for that reason, these determinations remained affected by the very object that they avoided, and were left with the remains of a thing-in-itself, an infinite check, as a beyond. But the liberation from the opposition of consciousness that science must be able to presuppose elevates the determinations of thought above this anxious, incomplete standpoint, and demands that they be considered for what they are in and for themselves without any such cautious restriction, as the logical, the purely rational. Kant thought further of logic, that is, the aggregate of definitions and propositions that ordinarily passes for logic, as fortunate because, as contrasted with other sciences, it was its lot to attain an early completion; since Aristotle, it has taken no backward step, but also none forward, the latter because to all appearances it seems to be finished and complete. If logic has not undergone change since Aristotle and in fact, judging from the latest compendiums of logic, the usual changes mostly consist only of omissions then surely the conclusion to be drawn is that it is all the more in need of a total reworking; for the two thousand years of spirits continuous labor must have procured for it a higher consciousness about its thinking and the purity of its inner essence. A comparison of the shapes to which the spirit of the practical and the religious world, and of science in every form of real or idealized consciousness, has raised itself, with the shape in which logic, spirits consciousness of its own pure essence, finds itself, reveals too wide a difference that one would not be struck, even on the most superficial observation, by the disproportion and the unworthiness of the latter consciousness as contrasted with spirits other elevations. As a matter of fact, the need for a reformation of logic has long been felt. In the form and content in which it is found in the textbooks, it must be said that it has fallen into disrepute. It is still being dragged along, more from a feeling that one cannot dispense with a logic altogether and the persisting traditional belief in its importance, than from any conviction that such a commonplace content and the occupation with such empty forms are of any value or use. The additions of psychological, pedagogical, and even physiological material which logic was at one time given, have later been almost universally recognized as disfigurations. A large part of these psychological, pedagogical, or physiological observations, of these laws and rules, whether they occur in logic or anywhere else, must appear in and for themselves to be quite shallow and trivial. The rule, for instance, that one should think through and personally test what one reads in books or hears by word of mouth; or, if one has poor sight, that one should aid the eyes with spectacles rules which were offered for the attainment of truth in the textbooks of so-called applied logic, and even pompously set out in paragraphs these must immediately strike everyone as superfluous apart from the writer or the teacher who is in the embarrassing position of having to pad with extra material the otherwise too short and lifeless content of logic. Regarding this content, the reason why it is so spiritless has already been given above. Its determinations are accepted in their undisturbed fixity and are brought together only in external connection. Since in judgments and syllogisms the operations are mostly reduced to, and founded upon, the quantitative aspect of the determinations, everything rests on external differentiation, on mere comparison, and becomes a completely analytical procedure and a calculus void of concept. The deduction of the so-called rules and laws, of inference especially, is no better than the manipulation of rods of unequal lengths for sorting them out in groups according to size than a childrens game of fitting together the pieces of a colored picture puzzle. Not incorrectly, therefore, has this thinking been equated with reckoning, and reckoning again with this thinking. In mathemat- ics, numbers have no conceptual content, no meaning outside equality or inequality, that is, outside relations which are entirely external; neither in themselves nor in connection are they a thought. When one mechanically calculates that three-fourths multiplied by two-thirds makes one-half, this operation contains about as much and as little thought as estimating whether in a logical figure this or that kind of syllogism applies. For the dead bones of logic to be quickened by spirit and become substance and content, its method must be the one which alone can make it fit to be pure science. In the present situation of logic, hardly a trace of scientific method is to be seen in it. It has roughly the form of an empirical science. The empirical sciences did find a method of defining and classifying their material specifically suited, such as it is, to what they are supposed to be. Pure mathematics, too, has its method suited to its abstract objects and the quantitative form in which alone it considers them. In the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, I have said what is essential regarding this method and, in general, the derived form of scientific procedure proper to mathematics, but we shall return to it in more detail within the logic itself. Spinoza, Wolff, and others, have let themselves be led astray into applying that method also to philosophy and in making the conceptually void external course of quantity, the course of the concept a move contradictory in and for itself. Hitherto philosophy had yet to find its method but looked with envy at the systematic edifice of mathematics and, as we have said, borrowed it from it or helped itself with the method of sciences which are only an admixture of given material, propositions of experience and thoughts or it even resorted to the crude rejection of all method. But the exposition of that which alone can be the true method of philosophical science falls within the treatment of logic itself; for method is the consciousness of the form of the inner self-movement of the content of logic. In the Phenomenology of Spirit, I have presented an example of this method with respect to a concrete object, namely consciousness.d At issue there are shapes of consciousness, each of which dissolves itself in being realized, has its own negation for result and thereby has gone over to a higher shape. The one thing needed to achieve scientific progress and it is essential to make an effort at gaining this quite simple insight into it is the recognition of the logical principle that negation is equally positive, or that what is self-contradictory does not resolve itself into a nullity, into abstract nothingness, but essentially only into the negation of its particular content; or that such a negation is not just negation, but is the negation of the determined fact which is resolved, and is therefore determinate negation; that in the result there is therefore contained in essence that from which the result derives a tautology indeed, since the result would otherwise be something immediate and not a result. Because the result, the negation, is a determinate negation, it has a content. It is a new concept but one higher and richer than the preceding richer because it negates or opposes the preceding and therefore contains it, and it contains even more than that, for it is the unity of itself and its opposite. It is above all in this way that the system of concepts is to be to erected and it has to come to completion in an unstoppable and pure progression that admits of nothing extraneous. How could I possibly pretend that the method that I follow in this system of logic, or rather the method that this system itself follows within, would not be capable of greater perfection, of greater elaboration of detail? Yet I know that it is the one and only true method. This is made obvious by the very fact that this method is not something distinct from its subject matter and content for it is the content in itself, the dialectic which it possesses within itself, which moves the subject matter forward. It is clear that no expositions can be accepted as scientifically valid that do not follow the progression of this method and are not in tune with its simple rhythm, for it is the course of the fact itself. Later, with respect to other concrete objects and corresponding parts of philosophy. In keeping with this method, I remind the reader that the divisions and the headings of the books, the sections and chapters given in this work, as well as the explanations associated with them, are made for the purpose of a preliminary overview, and that strictly speaking they only are of historical value. They do not belong to the content and body of the science but are rather compilations of an external reflection which has already gone through the whole of the exposition, therefore knows the sequence of its moments in advance and anticipates them before they are brought on by the matter at issue itself. Similarly in other sciences, preliminary definitions and divisions are by themselves nothing other than such external indications; but also within the science they never exceed this status. Even in logic, for example, we are told something like this, that logic has two main parts, the doctrine of the elements and methodology, and under the doctrine of the elements we then immediately find such headings as Laws of Thinking, followed by Chapter One, On Concepts, Section One, On the Clarity of Concepts, etc. These definitions and divisions, made without any deduction and justification, constitute the systematic framework and the entire connectedness of such sciences. Such a logic considers it its vocation to talk about the necessity of deducing concepts and truths from principles; however, of what they call method, there is not the shadow of a deduction. Order consists in something like grouping together what is alike, in bringing in the simple ahead of the composite, and in other such external considerations. But as regards any internal, necessary connectedness, the list of headings is all that there is, and a transition is made simply by saying that now we are at Chapter Two, or that we now come to judgments, and the like. Also the headings and divisions that appear in the present system are not intended to have for themselves any other significance than that of an indication of content. But then the necessity of the connectedness and the immanent emergence of distinctions must be found in the treatment of the fact itself, for it falls within the concepts own progressive determination. What propels the concept onward is the already mentioned negative which it possesses in itself; it is this that constitutes the truly dialectical factor. Dialectic, once considered a separate part of logic and, one may say, entirely misunderstood so far as its purpose and standpoint are concerned, thereby assumes a totally different position. Even the Platonic dialectic, in the Parmenides itself and elsewhere even more directly, on the one hand only has the aim of refuting limited assertions by internally dissolving them and, on the other hand, generally comes only to a negative result. Dialectic is commonly regarded as an external and negative activity which does not belong to the fact itself but is rooted in mere conceit, in a subjective obsession for subverting and bringing to naught everything firm and true, or at least as in resulting in nothing but the vanity of the subject matter subjected to dialectical treatment. Kant had a higher regard for dialectic and this is among his greatest merits for he removed from it the semblance of arbitrariness which it has in ordinary thought and presented it as a necessary operation of reason. Because dialectic was held to be merely the art of practicing deceptions and producing illusions, it was straight away assumed that it plays a false game; that its whole power rests solely on hiding its deception; that its results are only deviously obtained, a subjective shine. True, Kants dialectical displays in the antinomies of pure reason, when examined more closely as will be done at length in the course of this work, do not deserve great praise; but the general idea to which he gave justification and credence is the objectivity of reflective shine and the necessity of the contradiction which belongs to the nature of thought determinations: of course, this he did above all with reference to the way in which these determinations are applied by reason to the things in themselves; nevertheless, what such determinations are in reason, and with reference to what is in itself, this is precisely their nature. This result, grasped in its positive aspect, is nothing else but the inner negativity of the determinations which is their self-moving soul, the principle of all natural and spiritual life. But if one stays fixed at the abstract negative aspect of dialectics, the result is only the commonplace that reason is incapable of knowing the infinite a peculiar result indeed, for it says that, since the infinite is what is rational, reason is not capable of cognizing the rational. It is in this dialectic as understood here, and hence in grasping opposites in their unity, or the positive in the negative, that the speculative consists. It is the most important aspect of dialectic, but for the still unpracticed, unfree faculty of thought, the most difficult. Such a faculty, if still occupied with breaking itself free of the concrete representations of the senses and of ratiocination, must first practice abstract thinking, hold fast to concepts in their determinateness and learn to gain knowledge by means of them. An exposition of logic to this end would have, in its method, to keep to a subject division as mentioned above, and with regard to the more detailed content, to the definitions given to the single concepts, without getting itself involved in dialectic. In external shape, it would turn out to be similar to the usual presentation of this science, yet would also depart from it in content and, though of no use for the practice of speculative thinking, it would however serve abstract thinking, and this is a purpose which can never be realized by a logic popularized with the additions of psychological and anthropological materials. What it would give to the mind is the picture of a methodically ordered whole, even though the soul of the edifice, the method dwelling in the dialectic, would not itself appear in it.
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