hegel_dialectic_ch01_part3.mp3

This ideal it cannot, as Hegel maintains, reach by its own exertions, because it is the nature of the Understanding to treat the various finite categories as self-subsistent unities, and this attempt leads it into the various contradictions pointed out throughout the dialectic, owing to the inevitable connection of every finite category with its contrary. Since, then, it postulates in all its actions an ideal which cannot be reached by itself, it is obliged, unless it would deny its own validity, to admit the validity of the Reason, since by the Reason alone can the contradictions be removed, and the ideal be realised. And, when it has done this, it loses the false independence which made it suppose itself to be something different from the Reason.

14. One of the most difficult and important points in determining the nature of the Hegelian logic is to find its exact relation to experience. Whatever theory we may adopt has to fall within certain limits. On the one hand it is asserted by Hegel's critics, and generally admitted by his followers, that, rightly or wrongly, there is some indispensable reference to experience in the dialectic so that, without the aid of experience it would be impossible for the cogency of the dialectic process to display itself. On the other hand it is impossible to deny that, in some sense, Hegel believed that the dialectic process takes place in pure thought, that, however incomplete the Logic might be without the Philosophy of Nature, and the Philosophy of Spirit, however much the existence of Nature and Spirit might be involved in the existence of pure thought, yet nevertheless within the sphere of logic we had arrived at pure thought, unconditioned in respect of its development as thought. And both these characteristics of the dialectic are, independently of Hegel's assertion, clearly necessary for the validity of any possible dialectic. The consideration of pure thought, without any reference to experience, would be absolutely sterile, or rather impossible. For we are as unable to employ empty pure thought (to borrow Kant's phrase) as to employ blind intuition. Thought is a process of mediation and relation, and implies something immediate to be related, which cannot be found in thought. Even if a stage of thought could be conceived as existing, in which it was self- subsistent, and in which it had no reference to any data and it is impossible to imagine such a state, or to give any reason for supposing thought thus to change its essential nature at any rate this is not the ordinary thought of common life. And as the dialectic process professes to start from a basis common to everyone, so as to enable it to claim universal validity for its conclusions, it is certain that it will be necessary for thought, in the dialectic process, to have some relation to data given immediately, and independent of that thought itself. Even if the dialectic should finally transcend this condition it would have at starting to take thought as we use it in every-day life as merely mediating, and not self-subsistent. And I shall try to show later on that it never does transcend, or try to transcend that limitation. On the other hand it is no less true that any argument would be incapable of leading us to general conclusions relating to pure thought, which was based on the nature of any particular piece of experience in its particularity, and that, whatever reference to experience Hegel may or may not have admitted into his system, his language is conclusive against the possibility that he has admitted any empirical or contingent basis to the dialectic.

15. The two conditions can, however, be reconciled. There is a sense in which conclusions relating to pure thought may properly be based on an observation of experience, and in this sense, as I believe, we must take the Logic in order to arrive at Hegel's true meaning. According to this view, what is observed is the spontaneous and unconditioned movement of the pure notion, which does not in any way depend on the matter of intuition for its validity, which, on the contrary, is derived from the character of the pure reason itself. But the process, although independent of the matter of intuition, can only be perceived when the pure notion is taken in conjunction with matter of intuition that is to say when it is taken in experience because it is impossible for us to grasp thought in absolute purity, or except as applied to an immediate datum. Since we cannot observe pure thought at all, except in experience, it is clear that it is only in experience that we can observe the change from the less to the more adequate form which thought undergoes in the dialectic process. But this change of form is due to the nature of thought alone, and not to the other element in experience the matter of intuition. Note: Since I am here dealing only with the question of epistemology, it will be allowable, I think, to assume that there is a matter of intuition, distinct from thought, and not reducible to it, (though incapable of existing apart from it,) since this is the position taken up within Hegel's Logic. Whether the dialectic process has any relation to it or not, its existence is, in the Logic, admitted, at least provisionally. If Hegel did make any attempt to reduce the whole universe to a manifestation of pure thought, without any other element, he certainly did not do so till the transition to the world of Nature at the end of the Logic. Even there I believe no such attempt is to be found. The presence of this other element in experience is thus a condition of our perceiving the dialectical movement of pure thought. We may go further. It does not follow, from the fact that the movement is due to the nature of pure thought alone, that pure thought can ever exist, or ever be imagined to exist by itself. We may regard pure thought as a mere abstraction of one side of experience, which is the only concrete reality, while the matter of intuition is an abstraction of the other side of the same reality each, when considered by itself, being false and misleading. This, as we shall see, is the position which Hegel does take up. Even so, it will still remain true that, in experience, the dialectic process was due exclusively to that element of experience which we call pure thought, the other element that of intuition being indeed an indispensable condition of the dialectic movement, but one which remains passive throughout, and one by which the movement is not determined. It is only necessary to the movement of the idea because it is necessary to its existence. It is not itself a principle of change, which may as fairly be said to be independent, as the changes in the pictures of a magic lantern may be ascribed exclusively to the camera, and not at all to the canvas on which they are reflected, although without the canvas, the pictures themselves, and therefore the transition from one to another of them would be impossible.

16. If this is the relation of the dialectic process to the medium in which it works, what postulate does it require to start from? We must distinguish its postulate from its basis. Its basis is the reality which it requires to have presented to itself, in order that it may develop itself. Its postulate is the proposition which it requires to have admitted, in order that from this premise it may demonstrate its own logical validity as a consequence. The basis of the dialectic is to be found in the nature of pure thought itself, since the reason of the process being what it is, is due, as we have seen, to the nature of the highest and most concrete form of the notion, implicit in all experience. Since pure thought, as we have seen, even if it could exist at all in any other manner, could only become evident to us in experience, the basis which the dialectic method will require to work on, may be called the nature of experience in general. It is only the general nature of experience those characteristics which are common to all of it which forms the basis of the process. For it is not the only object of the dialectic to prove that the lower and subordinate categories are unable to explain all parts of experience without resorting to the higher categories, and finally to the Absolute Idea. It undertakes also to show that the lower categories are inadequate, when considered with sufficient intelligence and persistence, to explain any part of the world. What is required, therefore, is not so much the collection of a large mass of experience to work on, but the close and careful scrutiny of some part, however small. The whole chain of categories is implied in any and every phenomenon. Particular fragments of experience may no doubt place the inadequacy of some finite category in a specially clear light, or may render the transition to the next stage of the idea particularly obvious and easy, but it is only greater convenience which is thus gained; with sufficient power any part, however unpromising, would yield the same result.

17. The basis of the dialectic process, then, is the nature of experience, in so far as the nature of pure thought is contained in it. If the other element in experience has really a primary and essential nature of its own, it will not concern us here, for, as it takes no part in the development of the idea, its existence, and not its particular qualities, is the only thing with which we are at present concerned. The nature of experience however, though it is the basis of the dialectic, is not its logical postulate. For it is not assumed but ascertained by the dialectic, whose whole object is the gradual discovery and demonstration of the Absolute Idea, which is the fundamental principle which makes the nature of experience. The general laws governing experience are the causa essendi of the logic, but not its causa cognoscendi. The only logical postulate which the dialectic requires is the admission that experience really exists. The dialectic is derived from the nature of experience, and therefore if it is to have any validity of real existence, if it is to have, that is to say, any importance at all, we must be assured of the existence of some experience in other words, that something is. The object of the dialectic is to discover the forms and laws of all possible thought. For this purpose it starts from the idea of Being, in which all others are shown to be involved. The application of the results of the dialectic to experience thus depends on the application to experience of the idea of Being, and the logical postulate of the dialectic is no more than that something is, and that the category of Being is therefore valid. It will be noticed that the basis and the postulate of the dialectic correspond to the two aspects of the idea which we mentioned above as the fundamental cause of the process. The basis the nature of pure thought is the complete and concrete idea which is present in our minds, though only implicitly, and which renders it impossible that we should stop short of it by permanently acquiescing in any finite category. The postulate the abstract idea in its highest state of abstraction, which is admitted to be valid is that which is explicitly before the mind, and from which the start is made.

18. We are justified in assuming this postulate because it is involved in every action and every thought, and its denial is therefore suicidal. All that is required is the assertion that there is such a thing as reality that something is. Now the very denial of this involves the reality of the denial, and so contradicts itself and affirms our postulate. And the denial also implies the reality of the person who makes the denial. The same dilemma meets us if we try to take refuge from dogmatic denial in mere doubt. If we really doubt, then the doubt is real, and there is something of whose reality we do not doubt; if on the other hand we do not really doubt the proposition that there is something real, we admit its truth. And doubt, as well as denial, places beyond doubt the existence of the doubter. This is, of course, the Cartesian argument, which is never stated by Hegel precisely in this form, but on which the justification of his use of the category of Being, as valid of reality, appears to depend.

19. The dialectical process thus gains its validity and importance by means of a transcendental argument. The higher categories are connected with the lower in such a manner that the latter inevitably lead on to the former as the only means by which they can be rescued from the contradictions involved in their abstractness. If the lower categories be admitted, and, ultimately, if the lowest of all, the category of Being, be admitted, the rest follows. But we cannot by the most extreme scepticism deny that something is, and we are therefore enabled to conclude that the dialectic process does apply to something. And as whatever the category of Being did not apply to would not exist, we are also able to conclude that there is nothing to which the dialectic process does not apply. It will be seen that this argument is strictly of a transcendental nature. A proposition denied by the adversary in this case the validity of the higher categories is shown to be involved in the truth of some other proposition, which he is not prepared to attack in this case the validity of the category of Being. But the cogency of ordinary transcendental arguments is limited, and they apply only to people who are prepared to yield the proposition which forms the foundation of the argument, so that they could be outflanked by a deeper scepticism. Now this is not the case with the dialectic. For the proposition on which it is based is so fundamental, that it could be doubted only at the expense of self-contradiction, and the necessity of considering that proposition true is therefore universal, and not only valid in a specially limited argument, or against a special opponent. It is doubtful indeed whether a condition so essential as this is correctly termed a postulate, which seems to denote more properly a proposition which it would be at least possible for an adversary to challenge. At any rate the very peculiar nature of the assumption should be carefully remembered, as it affords a clue for interpreting various expressions of Hegel's, which might otherwise cause serious difficulties.

20. Having thus endeavoured to explain the nature of the dialectic, we must ask ourselves at what results we are entitled to arrive by means of that process. These results will be, to begin with, epistemological. For the conditions of the dialectic are, first, the concrete notion, which we are able to examine because it is implicit in all our consciousness, and, second, the category of Being, which we are entitled to postulate, because it is impossible to avoid employing it in judging experience. Our conclusions will therefore relate primarily to the general laws of experience, and will so far be, like those of Kant's Aesthetic and Analytic, concerned with the general conditions of human knowledge. And the result arrived at will be that no category will satisfactorily explain the universe except the Absolute Idea. Any attempt to employ for that purpose a lower category must either accept a gradual transformation of the idea employed until the Absolute Idea is reached, or acquiesce in unreconciled contradictions which involves the rejection of a fundamental law of reason.

21. This position has two results. In the first place it disproves the efforts which are made from time to time to explain the whole universe by means of the lower categories only. Such an attempt lay at the bottom of Hume's scepticism, when he endeavoured to treat the notion of causality as derived from that of sequence, and to consider all that was added as false and illusive. For absolute scepticism is impossible, and his treatment of the higher category as an unwarranted inference from the lower involves the assertion of the validity of the latter. Such an attempt, again, has been made by Mr Spencer, as well as by the large number of writers who adopt the provisional assumptions of physical science as an ultimate position. They endeavour to explain all phenomena in terms of matter and motion, and to treat all special laws by which they may be governed as merely particular cases of fundamental principles taken from physical science. But if we agree with Hegel in thinking that the category of Being is inadequate to explain the world which we know without the successive introduction of the categories, among others, of Cause, Life, and Self- Consciousness, and that each category inevitably requires its successor, all such attempts must inevitably fail. Any attempt, for example, to reduce causation to an unjustifiable inference from succession, to explain life merely in terms of matter and motion, or knowledge merely in terms of life, would involve a fatal confusion. For it would be an attempt at explanation by that which is, in itself, incomplete, unreal, and contradictory, and which can only be made rational by being viewed as an aspect of those very higher categories, which were asserted to have been explained away by its means.