Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic Chapter 1 part 1 by John McTaggar.mp3

Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic.

John McTaggart & Ellis McTaggart 1896

Chapter I:

The General Nature of the Dialectic

1. HEGEL'S primary object in his dialectic is to establish the existence of a logical connection between the various categories which are involved in the constitution of experience. He teaches that this connection is of such a kind that any category, if scrutinised with sufficient care and attention, is found to lead on to another, and to involve it, in such a manner that an attempt to use the first of any subject while we refuse to use the second of the same subject results in a contradiction. The category thus reached leads on in a similar way to a third, and the process continues until at last we reach the goal of the dialectic in a category which betrays no instability. If we examine the process in more detail, we shall find that it advances, not directly, but by moving from side to side, like a ship tacking against an unfavourable wind. The simplest and best known form of this advance, as it is to be found in the earlier transitions of the logic, is as follows. The examination of a certain category leads us to the conclusion that, if we predicate it of any subject, we are compelled by consistency to predicate of the same subject the logical contrary of that category. This brings us to an absurdity, since the predication of two contrary attributes of the same thing at the same time violates the law of contradiction. On examining the two contrary predicates further, they are seen to be capable of reconciliation in a higher category, which combines the contents of both of them, not merely placed side by side, but absorbed into a wider idea, as moments or aspects of which they can exist without contradiction. This idea of the synthesis of opposites is perhaps the most characteristic in the whole of Hegel's system. It is certainly one of the most difficult to explain. Indeed the only way of grasping what Hegel meant by it is to observe in detail how he uses it, and in what manner the lower categories are partly altered and partly preserved in the higher one, so that, while their opposition vanishes, the significance of both is nevertheless to be found in the unity which follows. Since in this way, and in this way only so far as we can see, two contrary categories can be simultaneously true of a subject, and since we must hold these two to be simultaneously true, we arrive at the conclusion that whenever we use the first category we shall be forced on to use the third, since by it alone can the contradictions be removed, in which we should otherwise be involved. This third category, however, when it in its turn is viewed as a single unity, similarly discloses that its predication involves that of its contrary, and the Thesis and Antithesis thus opposed have again to be resolved in a Synthesis. Nor can we rest anywhere in this alternate production and removal of contradictions until we reach the end of the ladder of categories. It begins with the category of Pure Being, the simplest idea of the human mind. It ends with the category which Hegel declares to be the highest the Idea which recognises itself in all things.

2. It must be remarked that the type of transition, which we have just sketched, is one which is modified as the dialectic advances. It is only natural, in a system in which matter and form are so closely connected, that the gradual changes of the matter, which forms the content of the system, should react on the nature of the movement by which the changes take place. Even when we deal with physical action and reaction we find this true. All tools are affected, each time they are used, so as to change, more or less, their manner of working in the future. It is not surprising, therefore, that so delicate a tool as that which is used by thought should not remain unchanged among changing materials. "The abstract form of the continuation or advance says Hegel is, in Being, an other (or antithesis) and transition into another; in the Essence, showing or reflection in its opposite; in the Notion, the distinction of the individual from the universality, which continues itself as such into, and is as an identity with, what is distinguished from it. This indicates a gradual increase in the directness of the advance, and a diminished importance of the movement from contrary to contrary. But this point, which Hegel leaves undeveloped, will require further consideration.

3. The ground of the necessity which the dialectic process claims cannot, it is evident, lie merely in the category from which we start. For in that case the conclusion of the process could, if it were valid, have no greater content than was contained in the starting point. All that can be done with a single premise is to analyse it, and the mere analysis of an idea could never lead us necessarily onwards to any other idea incompatible with it, and therefore could never lead us to its contrary. But the dialectic claims to proceed from the lower to the higher, and it claims to add to our knowledge, and not merely to expound it. At the same time it asserts that no premise other than the validity of the lower category is requisite to enable us to affirm the validity of the higher. The solution of this difficulty, which has been the ground of many attacks on Hegel, lies in the fact that the dialectic must be looked on as a process, not of construction but of reconstruction. If the lower categories lead on to the higher, and these to the highest, the reason is that the lower categories have no independent existence, but are only abstractions from the highest. It is this alone which is independent and real. In it all one-sidedness has been destroyed by the successive reconciliation of opposites. It is thus the completely concrete, and for Hegel the real is always the concrete. Moreover, according to Hegel, the real is always the completely rational. ("The consummation of the infinite aim . . . consists merely in removing the illusion which makes it seem as yet unaccomp ) Now no category except the highest can be completely rational, since every lower one involves its contrary. The Absolute Idea is present to us in all reality, in all the phenomena of experience, and in our own selves. Everywhere it is the soul of all reality. But although it is always present to us, it is not always explicitly present. In the content of consciousness it is present implicitly. But we do not always attempt to unravel that content, nor are our attempts always successful. Very often all that is explicitly before our minds is some finite and incomplete category. When this is so, the dialectic process can begin, and indeed must begin, if we are sufficiently acute and attentive, because the ideal which is latent in the nature of all experience, and of the mind itself, forbids us to rest content with the inadequate category. The incomplete reality before the mind is inevitably measured against the complete reality of the mind itself, and it is in this process that it betrays its incompleteness, and demands its contrary to supplement its one-sidedness. Before the mind there is a single conception, but the whole mind itself, which does not appear, engages in the process, operates on the datum, and produces the result.

4. The dialectic process is not a mere addition to the conception before us of one casually selected moment after another, but obeys a definite law. The reason of this is that at any point the finite category explicitly before us stands in a definite relation to the complete and absolute idea which is implicit in our consciousness. Any category, except the most abstract of all, can be analysed, according to Hegel, into two others, which in the unity of the higher truth were reconciled, but which, when separated, stand in opposition to each other as contraries. If abstraction consists in this separation, then, when we are using the most abstract of the categories, we fall short of the truth, because one side of the completely concrete truth has been taken in abstraction, and from that relatively concrete truth again one side has been abstracted, and so on, until the greatest abstraction possible has been reached. It must therefore cause unrest in the mind which implicitly contains the concrete whole from which it was abstracted. And through this unrest the imperfection will be removed in the manner described above, that is, by affirming, in the first place, that contrary category, the removal of which had been the last stage of the abstraction, then by restoring the whole in which those two opposites had been reconciled, and so on. Thus the first and deepest cause of the dialectic movement is the instability of all finite categories, due to their imperfect nature. The immediate result of this instability is the production of contradictions. For, as we have already seen, since the imperfect category endeavours to return to the more concrete unity of which it is one side, it is found to involve the other side of that unity, which is its own contrary. And, again, to the existence of the contradiction we owe the advance of the dialectic. For it is the contradiction involved in the impossibility of predicating a category without predicating its opposite which causes us to abandon that category as inadequate. We are driven on first to its antithesis. And when we find that this involves the predication of the thesis, as much as this latter had involved the predication of the antithesis, the impossibility of escaping from contradictions in either extreme drives us to remove them by combining both extremes in a synthesis which transcends them.

5. It has been asserted that Hegel sometimes declares the contradictions to be the cause of the dialectic movement, and sometimes to be the effect of that movement. This is maintained by Hartmann. No doubt the contradictions are considered as the immediate cause of the movement. But the only evidence which Hartmann gives for supposing that they are also held to be the effect, is a quotation from the second volume of the Logic. In this, speaking of that finite activity of thought which he calls Vorstellung, Hegel says that it has the contradictions as part of its content, but is not conscious of this, because it does not contain das Uebergehen, welches das Wesentliche ist, und den Widerspruch enthält. Now all that this implies seems to be that the contradictions first become manifest in the movement, which is not at all identical with the assertion that they are caused by it, and is quite compatible with the counter-assertion that it is caused by them. Moreover, Hartmann also gives the same account of the origin of the contradictions which I have suggested above. He says Der (im Hegel'schen Geiste) tiefer liegende Grund der Erscheinung ist aber die Flüssigkeit des Begriffes selbst. Flüssigkeit is certainly not equivalent to movement, and may fairly be translated instability. There is then no inconsistency. It is quite possible that the instability of the notion may be the cause of the contradictions, and that the contradictions again may be the cause of the actual motion. Hartmann does not, apparently, see that there is any change in his position when he gives first instability and then motion as the cause of the contradictions, and it is this confusion on his own part which causes him to accuse Hegel of inconsistency. He endeavours to account for Hegel's supposed error by saying that the contradictions were given as the cause of the dialectic movement when Hegel desired to show the subjective action of the individual mind, while the dialectic movement was given as the cause of the contradictions when he wished to represent the process as objective. If, as I have endeavoured to show, there is no reason for supposing that Hegel ever did hold the dialectic movement to be the cause of the contradictions, there will be no further necessity for this theory. But it may be well to remark that it involves a false conception of the meaning in which it is possible to apply the term objective to the dialectic at all. 6. There is a sense of the word objective in which it may be correctly said that the dependence of the contradictions on the instability of the notion is more objective than the dependence of the dialectic movement on the contradictions. For the former is present in all thought, which is not the case with the latter. A contradiction can be said to be present in thought, when it is implied in it, even though it is not clearly seen. But it can only cause the dialectic movement, when it is clearly seen. Whenever a finite category is used it is abstract, and consequently unstable, and, implicitly at least, involves its contrary, though this may not be perceived, and, indeed, in ordinary thought is not perceived. On the other hand, the actual dialectic movement does not take place whenever a category is used, for in that case finite thought would not exist at all. It is only when the contradictions are perceived, when they are recognised as incompatible, in their unreconciled form, with truth, and when the synthesis which can reconcile them has been discovered, that the dialectic process is before us. The contradiction has therefore more objectivity, in one sense of the word, because it is more inevitable and less dependent on particular and contingent circumstances. But we are not entitled to draw the sort of distinction between them which Hartmann makes, and to say that while the one is only an action of the thinking subject, the other is based on the nature of things independently of the subject who thinks them. Both relations are objective in the sense that they are universal, and have validity as a description of the nature of reality. Neither is objective in the sense that it takes place otherwise than in thought. We shall have to consider this point in detail later: at present we can only say that, though the dialectic process is a valid description of reality, reality itself is not, in its truest nature, a process but a stable and timeless state. Hegel says indeed that reason is to be found in actual existence, but it is reason in its complete and concrete shape, under the highest and absolute form of the notion, and not travelling up from category to category. Till the highest is reached, all the results are expressly termed abstract, and do not, therefore, come up to the level of reality. Moreover they contain unsynthesised contradictions, and that which is contradictory, though it may have a certain relative truth, can never exist independently, as would be the case if it existed in the world of fact. The dialectic movement is indeed a guide to that world, since the highest category, under which alone reality can be construed, contains all the lower categories as moments, but the gradual passage from one stage of the notion to another, during which the highest yet reached is for the moment regarded as independent and substantial, is an inadequate expression of the truth.

7. This is not incompatible with the admission that various isolated phenomena, considered as phenomena and as isolated, are imperfect, for in considering them in this way we do not consider them as they really are. Hegel speaks of the untruth of an external object as consisting in the disagreement between the objective notion, and the object. From this it might be inferred that even in the world of real objects there existed imperfections and contradictions. But, on looking more closely, we see that the imperfection and contradiction are really, according to Hegel, due only to our manner of contemplating the object. A particular thing may or may not correspond to the notion. But the universe is not merely an aggregation of particular things, but a system in which they are connected, and a thing which in itself is imperfect and irrational may be a part of a perfect and rational universe. Its imperfection was artificial, caused by our regarding it, in an artificial and unreal abstraction, as if it could exist apart from other things. A diseased body, for example, is in an untrue state, if we merely regard it by itself, since it is obviously failing to fulfil the ideal of a body. But if we look at it in connection with the intellectual and spiritual life of its occupant, the bodily imperfection might in some cases be seen, without going further, to be a part in a rational whole. And, taking the universe as a whole, Hegel declares God alone exhibits a real agreement of the notion and the reality. All finite things involve an untruth. God, however, is held by Hegel to be the reality which underlies all finite things. It is therefore only when looked at as finite that they involve an untruth. Looked at sub specie Dei they are true. The untruth is therefore in our manner of apprehending them only. It would indeed, as Hartmann remarks, be senseless tautology for Hegel to talk of the objective truth of the world. But this Hegel does not do. It is in the nature of the world as a whole that it must be objectively true. But isolated fragments of the world, just because they are isolated, cannot fully agree with the notion, and may or may not agree with a particular aspect of it. According as they do or do not do this Hegel calls them true or false. Hegel's theory that the world as a whole must be objectively true, so rational, and therefore, as he would continue, perfect, comes no doubt in rather rude contact with some of the facts of life. The consideration of this must for the present be deferred.