J. B. Baillie. The Origin and Significance of Hegel’s Logic 1901
The deficiencies and uncritical assumptions of his earliest view we should expect to be gradually removed in the course of Hegel’s development. And this is what to some extent is found in the next period, to which we now pass. The more prominent defects are removed in the first instance. The difficulties and ambiguities underlying the distinction of Being (Seyn) and Thought (Begriff) are met, and a definite interpretation is arrived at regarding the nature and relation of these two notions. The distinction of form and content as previously understood, and used as the basis of the separation of logic from metaphysic, is dropped; and while the distinction itself is still in a sense maintained, we shall find that it is determined in another way. The discussion, therefore, of Logic and Metaphysic on this new view is in decided contrast to the earlier. With this change the tentative and uncritical adoption of the results, both in metaphysic and in logic, of preceding thinkers, to which we referred, vanishes. The breaking down of the abrupt distinction of content from form leads likewise to an assimilation of Logic to Metaphysic; the latter becomes more “formal,” the former more concrete. The incompleteness in systematic connexion between the parts of philosophy, as also between the various elements which make up these parts, is in a measure removed, not so much by the adoption of a Philosophical method as by determining more definitely his philosophical principle. A method in the strict sense he has not yet obtained. How far completeness of system could have been realised by means of this principle we cannot decide, as no detailed scheme similar to that found in his early view is presented in this period. What we have at this stage is rather the analysis of terms and principles. We shall find, therefore, greater precision and definiteness in his conceptions, which come from a reconsideration and examination of ideas and facts hitherto simply accepted and assumed. We thus have before us the elements and fundamental principles of a system rather than an actual connected scheme.
The material at our disposal for this period will only enable us to determine Hegel’s general attitude and the main influences which dominate his thinking. The period is one of criticism. Hegel becomes conscious of his Philosophical position and master of his terms. But still the principles adopted at this time are not worked out, and some of his positions are in his later treatment modified or even abandoned. We might, perhaps, expect that Hegel in such a period of criticism would systematically establish and defend the position he actually adopts; but this is not the case. True to his characteristic manner of exposition he works from the principle adopted as ultimate, and we are left simply to state what this is without being informed as to why or how he came to adopt it. Hence to bring out Hegel’s view of Logic at this stage of its development, our only plan is first of all to indicate his general philosophical position, and then state the place and meaning assigned to Logic.
The period we are considering falls between 1801 and 1807, between the departure of Hegel from Frankfurt for Jena and the publication of the Phänomenologie. Hegel was drawn to Jena in the first place because he felt that his apprenticeship was ended, and that he was capable of sharing, what also his further development demanded, the larger intellectual life of a university; and in the second place because Schelling, with whom he had for years kept up friendly correspondence, and with whose work and thinking he was thoroughly familiar was teaching at Jena and advised his going thither, the university being at that time the literary and philosophical centre of Germany.
Such a step meant much intellectually as well as practically for Hegel. The hitherto dominant interest in religion pure and simple soon becomes almost wholly supplanted by his interest in philosophy; the religious view of the world gives place to a purely philosophical interpretation of it; the indeterminate concepts of religious thinking are exchanged for the accuracy, definiteness, and explicitness of systematic thought. And with this entire abandonment to philosophy comes a corresponding revulsion from the vague mysticism in which he had hitherto sought light and satisfaction. Mysticism he now[1] characterises as a pictorial imaginative medium for the expression of the Idea or the Absolute; it is neither feeling nor science, but a trübes Mittelding between both; it is a “speculative feeling,” or again it is the Idea bound by fantasy and emotion. He describes it roundly as a “splendid rhetoric,” which itself confesses the impotence of the medium through which it seeks to express the essence of Reality. He will have this essence brought into definiteness, and that solely through the “clear element” of thought, through the medium of determinate conception; for the “clear element” is the universal, the concept, the notion (Begriff).
The all-importance of the purely philosophical interpretation of Reality does not, however, imply the entire absence of that religious “attitude” which we saw to be the source and characteristic form of his interest in philosophy. This appears not merely from the fact that philosophy is to him a “speculative science,” whose object is absolute Reality as such, but also from the nature of the supreme principle of Reality which he adopts, and from the place assigned to religion in his philosophy.
He still holds Spirit to be the principle of Reality,[2] and in one sketch of philosophy he makes religion the final and highest moment of it.[3] The change of attitude may perhaps be best described by saying that whereas formerly he had a religious interest in the object of philosophy, he has now a purely philosophical interest in the object of religion, the object in both cases being ultimately the same.
It is impossible to appreciate the position he adopts on certain points (more especially the place assigned to Mind or Spirit), or to connect the view of the present period both with what succeeds or with what preceded it, unless we keep in mind that all along the Absolute for Hegel is Spirit. Ultimate Reality seems never to have meant anything else for him. We have already indicated the origin of this position which Hegel consistently holds from first to last, and we need not insist further on its significance.
The problem of philosophy as a speculative science is to determine the ultimate Reality, and to interpret finite reality in the light of it. It is not one reality among other realities; if so, it would be a finite reality; it is rather the ground Reality of all realities. Hegel had therefore to deal in the first instance with the most general forms and kinds of finite realities that presented themselves; thereby he would specify more particularly the problems and aspects of philosophy. And he has no difficulty in determining what these realities are; that had already been done, and was in fact an obvious commonplace in philosophy. The most general and distinct finite realities are Nature and Mind. He takes these as palpably different facts of experience, and seeks speculatively to systematise their contents and to connect them with each other and with the Absolute Reality.
We need seek no other reason or origin than that just given for this distinction of these philosophical sciences, which indeed we have already met with in a certain form in the early period, and which becomes a permanent part of Hegel’s philosophy in its final form. He simply takes Nature and Mind as distinct facts, and shapes them into a speculative scheme of the universe. It is both untrue and unnecessary to treat them merely as “deductions” from “ideas.” For Hegel they are, and seem always to have been, the primary realities of the universe, dependent for this reality solely on the Absolute. It was in these finite forms that Reality exhibited itself, and where it was immediately present and known. There is little doubt that in the lectures repeatedly given at Jena on “Philosophy of Nature” and “Philosophy of Mind,"[4] he discussed these facts not as “applications” of abstract notions but as they are immediately presented, and sought merely to interpret them from the absolute point of view. Each is in itself so far independent of the other, and can be treated separately. They are and must be also connected as aspects of Absolute Reality, and such connexion is necessary to the completeness of speculative science. But the determination of this latter connexion, while it occupies Hegel in the present stage more than in the preceding, and occupies him still more in the later form of his philosophy, is simply a necessity for a complete system, but does not exclude their peculiar character, does not transform their nature. They have and preserve their own reality, and they, as distinct realities, are of interest in themselves, and must be treated by concepts peculiar to their specific contents.[5] We have little of distinctive importance regarding his explicit interpretations and conceptions of each of these philosophical sciences. We have, however, some indication of the relation of Mind to Nature as forms of Absolute Reality. There is, indeed, incorporated in Hegel’s works[6] an article from the Kritisches Journal der Philosophie, edited by Schelling and Hegel together at Jena, which deals specifically with the Verhültniss der Naturphilosophie zur Philosophie überhaupt;. but this article cannot be admitted to have been Hegel’s production.[7] In another article, however, in the same volume, Ueber d. wissenschaft.
Behandlungsarten d. Naturrechts, we find the relation of Nature and Spirit as forms of the Absolute determined. From this it appears that the supreme expression discoverable for the Absolute is Sittlichkeit (Ethicality[8]), that form of Spirit in which the freedom of a people most completely appears, in which legality as such, and morality as such, are fused and identified.[9] For here alone are body and soul through and through united; here only is subjectivity also objectivity; ideality and reality posited as identical; individuality, the union of universality and particularity, completely realised. And these are the characteristics of the Absolute. He distinguishes[10] within the Absolute its actual finite appearance and existence for and in finite empirical consciousness (the body, the visible side of Ethicality), and “the living Spirit, the absolute consciousness, the absolutely undifferentiated union of the ideal and the real found in Ethicality.” It is the latter which is the absolute unity above spoken of; the former does not completely attain to the “divinity” of the latter, though it still contains “its absolute idea” and is necessarily bound up with it; and hence the place and significance of religion. But this distinction, as he himself indicates, does not affect the determination of the Absolute as above given; it is merely a difference of aspect of Sittlichkeit. This, then, is the essential nature of Absolute Spirit; in it absolute intuition (Anschauung) of itself is one and the same with selfknowledge of itself; its absolute reality and its absolute ideality (reflexion) are identified. Such a union places Spirit (Mind) higher than Nature; for the latter is “absolute self-intuition, and the actualisation of infinite diversity and mediation,” i.e., the endless process of external relation of part with part; it does not know itself, does not intuit or view itself as itself Mind does know itself, and is at once the plurality of the universe, which it grasps, and is the implicit ideality of that plurality.[11] Much more important, however, for our purpose than the determination of the content and relation of the two forms of reality above indicated are the views which Hegel holds at this time on Logic and Metaphysic. An advance on his preceding position is distinctly manifest; and it is here that the influence of Schelling is so pronounced.
Logic and Metaphysic together form again, as in the early period, the first of the triad of philosophical sciences; and, as in the case of the other two sciences (Philosophy of Nature and of Mind), Hegel in the first place treats Logic and Metaphysic simply as an independent and self-subsistent part of philosophy, without immediate reference to either of the other two sciences. He does indeed seek more particularly, and perhaps more successfully, to connect the first part of philosophy with the second (Philosophy of Nature),[12] and tries to establish the “transition” from the “Idea” to Nature as the real, to pass in thought from Metaphysic to a Realphilosophie; but what we must observe is that this for Hegel is another and a different problem from the independent systematic treatment of the science in itself; the latter (Philosophy of Nature) does not depend on or wait for the former, nor are the results and contents of the latter deduced from, or even in this period derived by, the same method as the conclusions of the former inquiry. It is very important to keep this in mind, for the “transition from Logic to Nature” in his later philosophy, when thus regarded historically, ceases to be the riddle and the enigma which it is usually considered. The Philosophy of Nature is all along a distinct branch of philosophy, just as Nature is from the first a distinct form of reality. Nature occupies a sphere of its own, and the treatment of it is as such distinct from that of the others. It is not a dependent branch of philosophy, but a self-dependent, self-contained exposition; its distinctiveness of subject-matter ensures that independence.
It is no more independent than the other parts of philosophy; but it is no less. It is so from the start, and it remains so to the end. Thus, as we shall find, even at the last there is no attempt to sink any one part of philosophy in another, or to evolve one part from and out of the content of another (say Nature out of the Logic as such). The three parts of philosophy are moments of a single whole, but self-dependent moments, contained in and depending on that whole, but not on each other in their separateness. But this is anticipating.
The independence of this first part of philosophy of the other two parts appeared also, as we saw, in the early period; and that Logic and Metaphysic should be a separate branch of philosophy, and should be in the first instance treated independently, seems obvious enough. They had always formed a part of philosophy, and the nature of philosophy demanded it. For clearly a science is needed to state in the most general way the fundamental character and nature of Reality as a whole; and such an expression of the Absolute in formal “pure,” “simple” universality is what this part of philosophy specifically furnishes. Neither philosophy of Nature nor of Mind does this; each deals with a certain aspect or definite content of reality, not Reality in its completeness. In a sense these two sciences themselves demand the other investigation, for only by its results can it be determined where and in what form the Absolute is most concretely revealed. And we find as a matter of fact that the nature of the Absolute as determined by Metaphysic is that which the Absolute possesses in the concrete form of Sittlichkeit above mentioned.[13] It seems, again, to be in virtue of this character which Metaphysic possesses that it is treated as the first of the triad of philosophical disciplines, and this not merely in the earlier schemes, but in his later philosophy; it furnishes the most universal and essential determinations of Reality, not as this appears in any particular aspect (in Nature or in Mind), but as it is in itself.
The name which Hegel assigns to this part of speculation varies a little in the course of the period we are considering, and this variation is partly significant of the development he goes through. At first he calls it simply Logic and Metaphysic, on which in 1802 he proposes to publish a treatise.[14] This either became a part of, or gave place to, a proposed compendium[15] dealing with the whole of philosophical science, on which he repeatedly lectured. This compendium, mentioned in 1803, was to be a complete exposition of his “System of Philosophy.” He calls it a “system of speculative philosophy,” and includes under it – (1) Logic and Metaphysic or Transcendental Idealism; (2) Philosophy of Nature; (3) Philosophy of Mind. The two last he designates later (1805) as Realphilosophie.[16] In 1806 Speculative Philosophy contains Phenomenology of Mind, Logic, and Philosophy of Nature and of Mind; Metaphysic as a distinct discipline being significantly omitted. With this change agrees a division of his system[17] which must have appeared late in this period, and in which the first part of his system is given as “Logic or the Science of the Idea as such.” His own statements, too, in the course of his development during this period[18] indicate that gradual identification of Logic with Metaphysic which became his final position.
But this position is not specifically established nor made explicit in such of Hegel’s writings as fall within the period with which we are now concerned.
Hegel’s views on Logic and Metaphysic are contained in his various articles in the above mentioned Journal, which are all, with one exception, on subjects falling within the first of the philosophical sciences (“Transcendental Idealism”).
Speculative science, he maintains, must start from the Absolute.[19] This is nothing less than an axiom with Hegel; philosophy, he declares, has not and never had any other object. And this is not a postulate in the sense of being that which is never proved, but which must always be begged in order to make all “proof” possible. Rather it is present in every “proof,” and the whole of philosophy is just a laying bare of the content of the Absolute. Nor, again, does it appear as a “demand” or a “problem” at the end of philosophy, in which we are merely to “believe,” it is real throughout, and from the first in all philosophy.[20] The Absolute has a necessary character; it is the one, the unity, the identity of all that is finite. The Absolute means simply absolute identity, that into which every finite is refunded, which contains all opposites, that in and by which all opposition is conserved, and, at the same time, as opposition, removed. The opposites so united are expressible in various ways; in one form they appear as Body and Soul, in another Necessity and Freedom, in a third as Nature and Ego, again as Subject and Object, or finally as Thought (Begriff) and Being. These, as the most fundamental forms of opposition we know, Hegel treats as all involving one another, and uses, for instance, the opposition between Subject and Object to express the same as that between Thought and Being.
The Absolute, then, is the identity of Subject and Object; and the identity of Subject and Object is the supreme principle of speculation, of all philosophical knowledge. But it is likewise presupposed in “common life” as well as in all philosophy; it lies at the basis of the “common sense” of the ordinary understanding.[21] And in this fact lies the possibility and the need for philosophy. Philosophy is a necessity of consciousness, because, in “common sense” and the “culture” (Bildung) to which it gives rise, this underlying identity is lost sight of, but yet, like the silent destiny of man’s Spirit, is implicitly present, and is demanded even though, or rather for the very reason that, the opposites have been fixed as separate and their reciprocal connexion overlooked. Whenever that which is only an appearance of the Absolute is wrenched out of connexion with its source, becomes isolated, independent, and fixed, the power and sense of unity has vanished from man’s life, and can only be reinstated by philosophy.[22] “Disruption, isolation, division, is therefore the source of the need of philosophy.” Such a need, says Hegel, is the only “presupposition” philosophy can have; it is all that presupposition means for it; and in strictness there is no logical “presupposition,” for the reason that if there were, this would lie inside philosophy itself. As we see, this “need” is determined by two elements – (a) the Absolute itself, the ultimate identity above named; (b) the fact that consciousness has passed out of or away from this totality, has ceased to be aware of itself as only in and for this totality, has therefore “fixed” itself as separate from it, and thereby also splits the Absolute into fundamental but finite opposites reciprocally limiting each other.
Now this position which we have described is the general intellectual situation out of which Hegel’s philosophical (logico-metaphysical) position at this time took its form, from which all his philosophy in fact proceeded, and by which it is to the last continued. His conception of this starting is later on deepened and modified, but it remains substantially the same to the end. It is the terra firma of his entrance into pure philosophy, and the groundwork of the mature philosophical convictions to which he now began to give utterance. This we shall find as we proceed.
Such being, then, the raison d’être of philosophy, its business is simply to restore and reveal to consciousness that basal identity,[23] to reassert the supremacy and primacy of the Absolute by explicitly exhibiting its actual presence in every finite and fixed reality, to show that all finite relative identities are merely “repetitions” of one and the same ultimate Identity,[24] to reduce all appearances of the Absolute (which are limited and finite expressions of it, and are set over against it, as also against each other) to that one “true” and only Reality. There are thus two moments in the procedure of philosophy; the one is the negation of the finite realities as such by the unlimited, infinite Reality, the other the assertion, the preservation of the finite by virtue of its sharing in, and being determined by, infinite Reality.
Now the medium through which this task and procedure of philosophy are carried out is Reason. Reason alone is adequate to the Absolute; “it is the manifestation of the Absolute."[25] The activity of reason is the activity of the Absolute. Hegel’s expressions warrant us in even asserting that reason is simply the Absolute in us, and therefore in philosophy.
For, as we found the Absolute to be always the immanent principle of all philosophy, so he maintains philosophy is one in all ages because reason is one and single. The Absolute Identity is a “reason-identity”; the principle of Absolute Identity at the root of all philosophy is a “principle of reason”; philosophy is solely the “activity of reason."[26] Hence the statement that philosophy is the knowledge of the Absolute is made equivalent in all respects to the statement that philosophy is the self-knowledge of reason. The business of philosophy is therefore merely put in another form when it is expressed as the resolution of all finite opposites, fixed and determinate (a determinateness due, as we shall presently see, to the action of understanding), into the one identity, the one infinite of reason. As there is only one reason, and as “every reason which has directed itself upon itself, and come to know itself, has produced a true philosophy,"[27] every philosophy is in itself a constitutive and essential mode or form of reason. And this is the only significance which the various Philosophies which have appeared from time to time possess; and consequently, as far as the inner essence of philosophy is concerned, there is neither before nor after in philosophy, “neither forerunners nor successors.” Every philosophy, therefore, finds its place in the one totality of reason, and the most opposed and contradictory forms of philosophy are the result of opposed factors or functions which are constitutive of reason itself. Particular concrete instances of such opposed philosophies we shall presently furnish.
Having, then, established what the aim and purpose of philosophy is, we must now determine by what process it is to attain its result. We have already indicated the two processes by which philosophy attains its end – the resolution or reduction of determinate opposites into the absolute unity of all opposition, the negation of the finite by the infinite, and the positing or assertion of that Identity in all finite opposites, in all relative identities. To these two forms correspond two processes of reason[28] by which they are realised: to the first, Reflexion; to the second, Transcendental Anschauung, intuition, the direct immediate insight by reason. It must be borne in mind all along that the processes are not processes of our reason merely, in which case they would be distinct from the result, and even from that which is “reflected,” and could be thrown aside when the result was obtained. Such conception of reflexion is necessarily false, because the whole meaning of Hegel’s point of view is that all such distinctions as that between process of our reason and process of the object are merely finite, are not, and cannot be absolute, but are themselves identified, their opposition overcome, in the Absolute, in the “Identity of reason.” It were therefore a manifest fatuity if these processes by which philosophy systematically construes the content and nature of the Absolute Identity of all opposites, all distinction, were themselves based on, or were merely a form of the finite distinctions which fall inside that Identity itself. Consequently the one alternative left is that reflexion is absolute reflexion, reason-reflexion, reflexion which is one with, is the same as that which is reflected, reflexion as indifferent to subjective and objective, which appertains to both equally and neither specially. And similarly of Anschauung. This will become clear as we proceed.
We saw that philosophy arose out of, or because of, the fixing, absolutising, of finite opposites. This “fixing,” “positing,” is the work of understanding.[29] Reality or aspects of reality are isolated, and while set over against each other, and limited by each other, are still taken by understanding to be independent and self-sufficient. Beyond them understanding does not seek to go, and indeed by its very nature cannot go; they are not, therefore, related to anything beyond or more ultimate than themselves. By understanding, then, the task of philosophy could not be accomplished, for it does not attempt to construe the Absolute; there is no Absolute for it, there are only finite limited realities opposed to each other, and all existing simply side by side. Understanding is indeed a kind of reflexion, but it is “isolated, isolating reflexion,” and is therefore distinguished from reflexion above named. What distinguishes the reflexion of philosophy is just the presence in it, and relation to it, of the Absolute. Since, therefore, the impossibility of construing the Absolute was due to the isolating and establishing of opposites in it, this problem is only solved through negating these by, and connecting them with, the Absolute. Philosophical reflexion is necessarily therefore negative, and this in virtue of the relation to the Absolute; it is “the power of the negative Absolute,” “the negative side of the Absolute,” “absolute negativity.” Reason indeed is active even in understanding; for though the finite factors are fixed, yet one is limited by another, and this other requires a third to limit it, and so on endlessly. Precisely this forced progress to a complete totality sought by understanding is the work of reason. Understanding is rooted in finitude, and never reaches infinity; yet it isolates the former, and, placing the latter over against it, leaves the two side by side, and thereby finitises infinity. But in so positing infinity, understanding in its “conceit” is simply “imitating” reason, for it negates the finite (as reason does) by the infinite, which none the less is itself for understanding a finite, and exists side by side with the finite negated (which is not the case with the negation of reason). But when understanding does oppose finitude to infinity it destroys itself, for the maintenance of the one means the removal of the other. Reason alone, however, knows this, and thereby it destroys understanding, and translates its products simply into negatives.
This applies, of course, to all the finite isolated products of understanding.
All are left, therefore, with merely reason without any opposites within it, pure reason with all finitudes resolved in it and negated by it. Now this self-identical totality of reason with which they can be resolved may in the last resort be one of two orders determined as distinct by the kind[30] of reality contained in each, or the way in which the Absolute is expressed in each. These are the objective totality or infinity, and the subjective totality, the “objective world” and the kingdom of “freedom.” These are the final opposites presented to reason and by reason.[31] But they are still not independent and self-subsistent; they are related to and subsist in the Absolute. Reason, therefore, must destroy their opposition and unite them. And that is effected in one and the same act, for it unites them by negating them both. This is the only union they possess, for they only exist by being not united. Both are related to and exist for the Absolute; and the Absolute is one and is the Identity; they are therefore identical, and each is posited as the Identity.[32] The Absolute is that which negates the fixed finitudes in the “objective world” (world of sense), as also in the subjective world (intellectual world, world of freedom). These apparently different worlds taken in their entirety are simply the totalities of finite realities which qu finite are undoubtedly distinct. But the one Absolute determines them as totalities, and hence they are different forms of the same Identity, and are therefore essentially identical, and their apparent difference is negated by that Reason-Identity which constitutes each.
Thus we see that reflexion from first to last is purely negative, and the Absolute in reflexion is simply the synthesis of opposites. The law of reflexion is therefore “that everything destroys itself”; the life of each finite reality is its death. And this, as we saw, applies universally to everything except the Absolute Identity itself. It would apply even to reflexion itself, if this opposed itself to the Absolute as a fixed element of Reality. It must negate itself likewise, for if it did not, “it would be determining itself by the law of contradiction”; it would assert itself to be reason, and would be obeying the law of understanding only.[33] It would posit itself absolutely against the Absolute, and yet maintain that the Absolute is the only identity. The only law to which it can rightly conform must therefore be that of self-annihilation. This self-annihilation just means that synthesis of opposites which constitutes the nature of the Absolute Identity. But synthesis of opposites is not really contradiction, but rather the contradiction which abolishes, sublates itself. And this is the signification of antinomy. Antinomy, therefore, is the supreme law of reason as reflexion, of the negative side of speculation.
But, as we saw, there is another moment in the process of “construing” the Absolute. Reflexion maintains throughout that opposites must be negated, that their being cancelled in and by the Absolute is their truth. But it does no more than this. There is a process which it even demands and presupposes, and yet which it does not and cannot perform, viz., bring to the light of philosophic knowledge the positive side of reason. This aspect which defies all negation and endures throughout it, is the Identity itself which maintains and preserves the content negated; and this side of reason is Anschauung.[34] Anschauung does not “fix” one opposite over against another; if it did so it would perform the work of understanding. And it cannot make “real,” or, so to say, “precipitate,” which is “ideal,” for this would be simply to determine the other side of an opposition, which only exists as an antinomy, and has already been negated in reflexion. Anschauung is concerned with the Identity per se, as reflexion is concerned with finite opposites as such; and is present not merely in the case of the Absolute Identity, but also in that of those relative identities into which the Absolute Identity differentiates itself. For these relative identities, e.g., the objective as such, are antinomial; they are not primarily “fixed” identities of understanding, but are related to the Absolute.[35] And what Anschauung does is to assert and insist upon what is merely indicated by reflexion, to substantiate and preserve what reflexion only demands and postulates. In the identity as such antinomy is immanently present, and in antinomy as such the identity is implied. Anschauung expresses the immediate oneness of the identity of reason to reason itself. It may function apart from reflexion; but in this case it is simply empirical, unconscious, the merely “given”; the relative identity of the objective, e.g., is accepted in this way as divided from the subjective. Similarly reflexion may operate by itself and produce pure antinomy; in which case it furnishes indeed knowledge, but “mere” knowledge, formal negative knowledge, knowledge which refers the content of the Absolute to that identity constituting its substance, but can do no more than produce this reference; it produces, therefore, antinomies and not the Identity. Consequently, if we are to have the truth of speculation in its completeness, we must not have either reflexion without Anschauung or vice versa. The One is as absolutely necessary as the other. And the union of these two is what speculation seeks; this union is “transcendental knowledge,” which alone fully satisfies philosophy. For by it the union of subjective and objective, intelligence and nature, consciousness and the unconscious, thought and being is accomplished, and this is philosophic knowledge, or, as we have put it, the construing of the Absolute. What, therefore, is known or “seen” through Anschauung (Angeschaut) belongs to both worlds at once; the one world is essentially identical with the other being, looked at from the standpoint of thought, is the scheme of intelligence; intelligence, from the standpoint of being, is the scheme of absolute being.
And obviously in philosophy, transcendental knowledge and transcendental Anschauung are one and the same, for in both that Identity is completely present; the difference of expression “denotes merely the preponderance of the ideal (formal negative) or real factor” in the Absolute Identity.
In the construction of the system of philosophy it is, however, maintained that the production of this system is the work of reflexion.[36] For it alone is concerned with finitudes, the different forms of identity, the manifold content of the Absolute; and it is simply out of this plurality that system is constructed, and owing to which, indeed, philosophy is required. Reflexion therefore, being the means by which this manifold of finitude is finally revealed as a limited determination of the Absolute Identity, is the instrument used in the shaping of the system, and its formal procedure is the synthesis of opposites.
But this being so, it is important to observe that we are thereby debarred from attempting to express through reflexion the Absolute in the form of a single proposition, which shall be the fundamental ground-principle of the system, valid for understanding, and from which the whole system may be known and constructed.[37] Such an attempt is indeed impossible. For propositions of this kind are limited, conditioned, and do not contain a contradiction. If the expression of the principle contradicts itself it is not a proposition; if it do not contradict itself it is conditioned and limited. Now the Absolute is the unconditioned ground of reflexion; its expression, therefore, must contain contradiction, and cannot be given in a single proposition. Its only expression is in antinomy.
What in the Absolute Identity is united, the synthesis and the antithesis, must be expressed in two propositions, one expressing the identity, the other the opposition. Hence, e.g., either the propositions A = A and A = B are quite inadequate to the Absolute, or else each expresses an antinomy, and indeed the same antinomy.
From the foregoing it is easy to see that what philosophy furnishes is nothing short of a totality of knowledge produced by reflexion, and constituting in itself “a system, an organic whole of concepts whose highest law is reason and not understanding."[38] It is an organic whole whose ground lies in itself, an organisation of moments or forms of knowledge (Erkenntnisse), every part of which contains the whole (through its implication of the Absolute). As he elsewhere puts it, “every unit of knowledge is a truth, every particle of dust an organisation.” The method by which this result is to be obtained is neither synthetic nor analytic, but rather development – development, that is, of reason itself, and by itself.[39] It is not, therefore, the simple negation of its appearance, and mere resumption of it into its essence, but rather the construing of every appearance as a relative identity, and its own identity. No precise account of this method, however, is given, though its purport is sufficiently evident.
In such a system it is clear, on the one hand, how the history of philosophical systems will be regarded, and, on the other, what place will be assigned to particular distinct modes of philosophising which have appeared in the course of that history. For we see that the consequence of maintaining that the problem and object of philosophy have at all times been one and the same, that philosophy is the self-knowledge of reason, is that the history of philosophy is itself one philosophy in different forms. This point of view enables Hegel to give a meaning to the history of thought, and find it other than simply a collection of individual opinions. And thereby, also, we can judge a given system, for we can distinguish what it tried to do from what it actually accomplished, can distinguish the philosophy of the system from the system itself,[40] and determine its nature and result accordingly. And, in particular, directly opposite forms of philosophy, e.g., Scepticism and Dogmatism, will thus be not absolutely disconnected and irreconcilable modes of thinking, but rather constituent aspects of the one content of reason.
This must necessarily be the case, and an analysis of both the forms would show that neither the one nor the other can exhaust the whole of philosophy, but that they really imply and require each other. All philosophy is sceptical and dogmatical at once. Scepticism as opposed to Dogmatism is itself dogmatical, the complementary side to Dogmatism; as an “absolute” philosophy it is simply the negative side of own reflexion.[41] Dogmatism as an absolute scheme is the assumption by a finite conditioned element of the nature and forms of the Absolute Identity itself. It would be outside our purpose, however, to exhibit in greater detail the position which Hegel here takes up; its general significance is all that here concerns us.
Of great importance is it for us to note that of the foregoing ground-plan of a system of philosophy Hegel assigns the name Logic to that part which forms the content of reflexion proper, and per se, and Metaphysic to that which we designated transcendental knowledge, which was convertible, as we saw, with transcendental Anschauung. This is made quite clear from a short statement of the content and character of Logic and Metaphysic respectively, which is extracted by his biographer from the manuscript Lectures of this period.[42] Here he distinguishes between infinite knowledge, knowledge of the Absolute, and finite knowledge, knowledge of finitude. The former is the knowledge of Reason without qualification (Vernunfterkenntniss); the latter is knowledge of reason as qualified by Understanding. By this he means that what is finite is in the Absolute, has its source in reason; but as it is for reason, presents itself to reason, it is negated by it, has no self-subsistency, is related to the Absolute Identity, and to other finite facts. But in its finitude it can be and is abstracted from the Absolute Identity of reason, and thus, in a sense, robbed of its reason-character; and being thereby fixed in its finiteness becomes finite knowledge, knowledge of finite as such. This is the work of understanding. This knowledge of the finite determines the problem of Logic. For a “true Logic” will seek to state systematically the forms of finitude, the formal elements of finite knowledge.
It will include an exposition of those products of understanding, in which, by its abstracting and fixing of finite elements of the content of reason, it “imitates” reason, though the identity it does produce is merely “formal.” Further, since these forms of finite knowledge are really in and for reason, a constituent part of Logic must be to determine the significance possessed by those forms in this reference to reason. Such a significance we have seen all along is purely negative; hence this concluding portion of Logic consists in the negative knowledge of reason, the sublating of finite knowledge by reason-knowledge.
The Logic falls thus into three parts.[43] The first states the universal forms, laws, or categories of finitude in general (regarded as objective as well as subjective, or apart from their being objective or subjective), taken simply in their finiteness, as reflexes of the Absolute.[44] We must keep in mind that these forms are not in the first instance determined as categories of reason. Hegel is stating in this and the successive part the elements which are for understanding per se, the content of finite knowledge, knowledge as it is determined by understanding. Taken by itself, therefore, it embodies, as we shall see presently, no philosophical conclusions; it is the work of “isolating reflexion,” not of philosophical reflexion, which we saw was purely negative. These categories are thus not real identities but formal identities; not identities which are at once subjective and objective, but identities which contain no inner difference, no inner opposition. They are not relative identities in the sense we defined above, but identities which, as against each other, are absolutely fixed. They therefore are taken as formal identities of understanding to be qualitatively different, and each merely self-identical. And these finite forms are reflexions from the Absolute; the one light of the Absolute is passed through the angular prism of finitude; all reality is thus broken up by it and separated into finite elements. But such finite determinations are only ideally[45] opposed to each other by understanding; they are not real opposites, for real opposites understanding cannot construe; this can, as we saw, only be done by reason.
The second part of the Logic is still concerned with finite knowledge, “isolated reflexion,” understanding as such. In this part are considered the subjective forms of finitude, i.e., finite thought itself, understanding and its processes. These are the usual forms of Concept, Judgment, and Syllogism. It is, in the first instance, the concept, judgment, and syllogism in their purely formal character that he has here in view.
He does use the term concept (Begriff) as applicable to the Absolute itself, and employs the expression “absolute concept” in this reference;[46] and again he treats judgment as an unconscious Identity of reason.[47] But it is not concept and judgment as elements of reason that he deals with in this part of the Logic, but as finite, isolated, “formal.” He expressly points out that although syllogism expresses more clearly the nature and character of reason, and is indeed commonly ascribed to reason, still in this part of the Logic he means syllogism as a formal process of thought, as it is for finite knowledge, for understanding. Such a syllogism does not express speculative truth any more than the concept of understanding is equal to the nature of the Absolute. To apprehend the Absolute Identity we must, in fact, remove it from the sphere of such concepts.[48] In the third part is stated the relation of reason to the foregoing forms of finite knowledge. The first and second parts contain no reference whatever to reason; they state simply facts concerning finite knowledge, the universal forms in which it appears. By its nature it cannot express philosophical truth, and it is therefore not till we come to this third part that we enter upon philosophy; for only here have we knowledge of or by reason. But it is only knowledge (by reason) of this finite knowledge, is only therefore, as we have seen, purely negative in character, it is “negative knowledge of reason,” it sublates finite knowledge by bringing it into a new relation, which is at once truer than the relations of finite knowledge as such, and the only true knowledge which the finite forms can really possess. This new relation is the relation to the Absolute Identity. Here, then, we have philosophical reflexion as contrasted with the isolated finite reflexion of the first two parts of the Logic. Here, as we saw, the identities are “relative identities,” the opposites real opposites. Reason appropriates concept, judgment, and syllogism, destroys the limited character which they have for understanding, gives them the content and character of the Absolute, and thus elevates them into expressions of infinite truth. In this reference the concept as an expression for the Absolute becomes the “principle of opposition and the opposition itself,” the one concept which differentiates itself into a plurality of determinate concepts, and yet remains one throughout the plurality.[49] So again of judgment. In it the identity of reason is unconscious, but is still operative in it,[50] and is in fact contained in the copula “is,” though by this copula it is not explicitly expressed. Rather this copula tends to obscure the reason element, and in judgment we thus find the predominance of difference.[51] And syllogism he holds to be the very foundation of philosophical knowledge, the explicit expression of the nature of the Identity of reason.
This third part closes the Logic. He mentions, indeed, that there is usually given an “applied” Logic; but the content of this he holds to be partly too general and trivial, and to be, so far as it contains any philosophical significance, a part of the third division of the Logic. This third part introduces us to the Metaphysic or to “Philosophy proper,” where we have the knowledge of reason per se, the sphere of the true Idea, the union of thought and being, reflexion and Anschauung.[52] The distinction, therefore, of Logic from Metaphysic is, at least formally, definite and decided. He maintains it consistently and explicitly, not merely in this sketch but elsewhere.[53] And he does not strictly co-ordinate Logic with Metaphysic as equally parts of philosophy; two parts of Logic, as was pointed out, have no immediate philosophical significance. Logic, he says expressly, is in a sense an introduction to philosophy.[54] This view of Logic, however, while it obviously is justified in a manner by the conception of its subject-matter and that of philosophy, must be accepted in the light of his present treatment of Logic and Metaphysic.
Hegel admits that he takes this distinction between the two, which has been so long maintained, for “the sake of its convenience."[55] It had been customary apparently to make that distinction in philosophy, and to consider one as introductory to the other. Hegel adopted it as a convenient method of distinguishing problems in philosophy, but pointed out in so many words that if Logic is to be so considered, it must, to be an introduction to speculative science, be treated speculatively. He thus at once preserves historical usage and his own view of the subject. Hence the Logic is not introductory in the sense that per se it is outside philosophy; this it cannot be, for one part of it is knowledge, of reason; rather it is a first stage in philosophy.
What philosophy, “transcendental knowledge,” or Metaphysic, to which Logic in that sense is introductory, has to accomplish, we have stated already. “It has,” Hegel says, “primarily to construe completely the principle of all philosophy,” i.e., Absolute Identity, the union of thought and being, of subject and object. This is the essence of philosophy, as of every true science; this is in philosophy the “highest Idea,” the “pure Idea.” Or “the essence of knowledge consists in the identity of universal and particular, i.e., of what is posited under the form of thought and of being."[56] In it all the content of philosophy is taken up and presented in its pure absolute form, determined by its relation to the Absolute Identity. And such a philosophy is necessarily Idealism, because it takes neither of the opposites contained in the identity (subject, object, etc.) abstracted from each other, but holds its highest Idea, its Idea of Reason par excellence, as determining both indifferently, each being by itself unreal.[57] When we seek more definite knowledge as to how this system can be exhibited, and what precisely its result would be, we can furnish from the remains at our disposal no accurate answer.[58] We can, however, state that the conclusion reached in such a system, its final result, is conceived in a distinctly Schellingian form. The “highest Idea,” he says, is die Nacht des göttlichen Mysteriums."[59] “Speculation,” he says, “demands, in its highest synthesis of the conscious and the unconscious, the negation of consciousness itself. And thereby reason buries its reflexion of the Absolute Identity, and its knowledge as well as its very self in its own abyss."[60] There is doubtless a certain degree of mere metaphor in such phraseology, though its philosophical purport is quite evident; it is indeed the legitimate consequence of his principle of Absolute Identity. And it is of significance and importance in view of the intimate relation of philosophy and religion in Hegel’s thought, as already noted, that such a conception is in entire agreement with his attitude in religion, where the principle of resignation, with its abandonment of self, its negation of all “subjectivity” and reference to self, is held to be fundamental.[61] It will have already become evident from the foregoing statement that Hegel in this period has made a decided advance in his conception of Logic. We have, it is true, no systematic exposition of his view, but we have sufficient to enable us to appreciate the distance he has travelled from his earlier position. It remains for us now to conclude this survey of his second period by bringing into relief the main features which characterise this advance. We must also indicate briefly in what essential respects he differed from his chief immediate predecessors, a difference which in this period he already sought to emphasise in his criticisms of Kant, Fichte, etc. And finally, we must point out in what direction his further development proceeds during the next period, the result of which finds its expression in his final systematic construction, the Larger Logic.
We shall find on reflexion that there are four prominent and important results arrived at in this period which chiefly show in what respects he advanced on the preceding. These are – (1) the more complete grasp of his fundamental philosophical principle; (2) the ascertainment of the nature and procedure of the instrument of philosophising; (3) the closer approximation of Logic to Metaphysic, through the assimilation of their content; (4) the naming of the method to be employed in constructing a system.
I. In virtue of the first-named feature Hegel gains an independence of attitude in philosophy which places him outside the direct influence of traditional or current philosophy. The mere repetition of the results of others which was found in the early period is now no longer possible.
He has made up his mind as to what the nature of philosophy is, what is its fundamental principle, a principle which is not only that of a particular philosophy, but is that of all philosophy whatsoever. He does not profess to work out a system. He is rather content to exhibit this principle throughout the history of philosophy than to construct an entirely new system.[62] From this point of view he starts, and by it he judges all that has appeared as philosophy. The principle is not expounded fully, and requires more exact determination, which, however, it does not receive in this period. An Identity which is the ground and unity of all opposites, that which reason (whose identity it is and which determines the activity of reason) seeks to exhibit at the end of its procedure as the essence of all opposed finite elements, is assuredly a wide enough designation for all that philosophy has done or seeks to do. But it was doubtless natural that Hegel in stating this principle for the first time should have laid emphasis rather on the unity, the identity of import in all systems, than on their special differences. And though this principle receives modification and a more definite content later on, it remains none the less in its general form fundamental in his system to the last.
It must be kept in mind, too, that this is not merely for Hegel, at this or at any time, a principle from which to determine the nature of philosophy and its history; it is necessarily also a principle by reference to which all the concepts of philosophy come to possess a really philosophical meaning at all. And if we keep these prima facie quite distinct spheres, to which this same principle applies, clearly in view, we will see how easy it was for Hegel to take up the position, which he as a matter of fact does later on, of finding the actual counterpart of the sequence of the concepts of the Logic in the history of philosophy itself.
It was a common principle which determined the content of both; why then should there not be an exact parallelism between the two? We seem, therefore, warranted in finding one of the clues by which Hegel determined the order and place in the sequence of the concepts of the Logic in this conception of the nature of philosophy and the significance of its history. In passing, we may note that Hegel was thoroughly acquainted with the history of philosophy[63] before he wrote the Phänomenologie, 1806-7, and the Logic did not begin to appear till 1812. He thus knew what the forms were in which the one principle of philosophy had appeared in the course of its history. What more natural than the suggestion that these had a necessary sequence, that this sequence was a logical one (in his later meaning of Logic), and that thus they afforded a clue to determine the sequence of the concepts in the Logic as such, and even put the thinker on the track of discovering the law of this sequence? There seems no doubt whatever that Hegel’s conception of, and profound acquaintance with, the history of philosophy had no slight influence in shaping the actual content of his own system.
It is further of importance to note that Hegel does not work up to this principle which governs his philosophy; it is simply his starting-point and fundamental notion. It arises from his conception of the need and function of philosophy in life, but has no other “presupposition” and no other warrant as a principle. The significance of this lies in the fact that his system thus necessarily works from that principle which is at once its conclusion and goal as well as its starting-point; and hence it is that the specific character which his philosophic method all along assumes is “deductive.” It could not be otherwise with such a beginning.
He did not seem to think it necessary to establish his principle in the sense of finding a ground for it. The only proof of which it admitted was to be found when it was systematically worked out and completely presented, i.e., at the end of the system, not at the beginning.[64] Indeed, it would be futile to try to prove or establish his principle in any other way, as we have already pointed out. And this modus operandi, here for the first time clearly expressed, remains permanent in Hegel’s philosophy.
Thus we see that the securing of a definite point of view can remove two prominent defects of the preceding period – (1) the indeterminateness of the content of his scheme and its arbitrary acceptance of traditional ideas; (2) the absence of systematic connectedness in the content owing to the lack of a central determining point of reference; the various conceptions could not be “deduced.” II. Again, the accurate analysis of the procedure of philosophy, the ascertainment of the significance of reason, of reflexion, and of Anschauung, goes very far indeed to obviate the obscurities and remove the inadequacies of his early view. It is clearly of the first importance as a preliminary to the construction of any system that the fundamental terms, the primary factors and functions necessary to that construction, should be precisely defined. This determination, however, does not give us the system itself, it is merely an essential propaedeutic to it.
Hegel, again, does not connect these factors systematically with each other; they are merely formulated independently. But this analysis has not merely a value for the construction of a system; the determination of these terms indicates the nature of the content of the system.
Formerly, we saw, Hegel distinguished the form from the matter in knowledge, the forms of knowledge from knowledge itself, thought from being.
In this second period these different factors are identified, and in the above terms he signalises this identification, which, though its form is changed, henceforth always characterises Hegel’s system. Reflexion is a process which operates through and by means of this identification; it is a reflexion of opposites, which are relatively identical, are what they are by sharing in the one identity of reason.
It is unnecessary to do more than point out the extreme importance of this step, which not merely gives a greater definiteness, precision, and consistency to Hegel’s thinking than was found in his early view, but stamps Hegel’ s position ever after as a form of Identitätsphilosophie.
For example, it is simply this same notion of identity of opposites which appears when in the later Logic the universals of thought, the categories, are at the same time determinations of reality (of the object, Gegenstand), or where opposed categories are viewed as moments of their own unity.
We must not, however, import more into his present position than is warranted. Reflexion, for example, must not be taken to be the dialectic, in the later use of this term. It is negative, like the dialectic; and it must be viewed also as dealing, like the latter, with what is both form and content, both thought and being. But, unlike the latter, (1) it has not as such a positive side, it does not conserve the negated factors; (2) the negation is produced by relating each to the Absolute Identity, i.e., is produced by what, in the first instance, is external to the process of reflexion itself; (3) the positive side of “philosophical knowledge” is referred to another sphere, that of Anschauung. As a matter of fact, the word “dialectic” is hardly used at all in this period. No doubt it would have been in agreement both with his own previous and with current terminology to have used it as a designation for the process of reflexion in the sense already defined;[65] and from this point of view he could well have called Logic, as understood in this period (Logic of reason (Vernunftlogik)), dialectic. We should still, however, have to distinguish this general use of the term dialectic from the latter characteristic and specific sense. In spite of these reservations we are entitled to find in reflexion as defined in this period the direct anticipation of the later dialectic particularly in its negative aspect. It corresponds at this stage to the dialectic in the later Logic. To this, however, we shall presently return.
III. The divergences from his early views already stated necessitate a change which is also an advance in his explicit schemes of Logic and Metaphysic. We are hardly justified in instituting a point-by-point comparison between the conceptions of the two periods. We cannot find so accurate a correspondence between them. The previous doctrine of “proportion” is simply supplanted by the third part of the new Logic; there is very little connexion or similarity discoverable between them. The second parts of both schemes do indeed correspond somewhat closely; the later seems unquestionably a more definite and precise form of the earlier.
In the case of the first part, however, we are not entitled to affirm a close similarity, owing to the absence of any detailed discussion of this part in the Logic of the second period. Doubtless the content of the two must have been similar, but to what extent we cannot fully determine.
Both contain forms or categories of reality, but whereas in the early Logic these are categories of “being,” in the second Logic they are categories (laws) of finitude in general, both in a subjective and objective reference. Both, again, regard the subject-matter of Logic as belonging to understanding; but while the early Logic is merely Logic of understanding, and is illuminated by no analysis of understanding and its relation to reason, the second Logic can be only in part viewed as a Logic of understanding, contains one division devoted solely to the work of reason, and might, in virtue of the close connexion between reason and understanding as already determined, be considered as entirely a Logic of reason. This is, as we saw, in virtue of the nature of reflexion with which Logic deals, and in which the distinction between knowledge, thought, and being (a distinction vital to the early Logic) is removed.
It is an obvious and necessary result of all this that Logic should in this period become metaphysical, that the only distinction which obtains between the two should fall inside Metaphysic itself. The distinction, in fact, is that between reason as primarily negative and reason as both positive and negative at once, reason in relation with finitude as such, and reason as dealing with its “infinite” content, the Absolute Identity.
This approximation of Logic and Metaphysic is of vital significance.
Metaphysic itself comes to be dealt with in terminology which holds directly of Logic.[66] The use of such terms as “absolute notion” (Begriff), “absolute idea” (Idee) for the identity of reason indicates this.
All that is required to bring his later position clearly into view is a still further criticism of his terms, and a more thorough systematisation of his fundamental ideas.
IV. Finally, we have the method characterised by which Hegel would establish his philosophical system. This method is described as Development.
As was already stated, we have no complete exposition of the nature and meaning of this method, or of how it actually works in detail.
That it should have been named. Development, “neither analytic nor synthetic,” is a decided advance in precision on the previous period, indicates the form in which his system would appear, and points the direction his further advance will take. The conception of a developmental method (as distinct from the purely “deductive” method of Fichte, and in part of Schelling) was in all probability suggested by Schelling’s Transcendental Idealismus, where “philosophy” is stated to be and is expounded as the “history of the steps or epochs of self-consciousness,” a history which starts from a position “deduced” as ultimate, necessary, and indubitable, and “allows” the various “acts” of self-consciousness to “arise” in a series representing grades of complexity and explicitness of self-consciousness.[67] More than this general connexion, however, we cannot indicate, on account of the incompleteness of our information.
In all these ways, then, Hegel has made distinct and ascertainable progress on his early view. For the rest, it is not difficult to discover the defects and incompleteness of his views at this period, and the next steps of advance. But before doing so it will be well to state as briefly as possible the relation in which Hegel’s views stood to those of his greater contemporaries, more especially to those of Schelling. We say “briefly,” first, because such a statement is rather of the nature of a digression from our main subject, and secondly, Hegel’s views at this time are too generally stated to admit of an indication of any more than general affinities (or the reverse) between Hegel and his contemporaries.
1. Leben, pp. 182 f.
2. Werke, i. 196 (1845); Leben, p. 188.
3. Leben, p. 179.
4.. Ros. p. 161.
5. The above considerations are important in view of the relation between Logic and Nature and Spirit.
6. Werke, i.
7. So also maintain Erdmann, Schmid, Ueberweg, Fischer, Haym.
8. I have rendered Sittlichkeit “Ethicality” after Dr. Stirling; for in spite of its cumbrousness it conveys technically Hegel’s conception of that form of the moral life which has embodied custom in the institutions and order of an organised state or commonwealth. Sittlichkeit is the visible and substantial realisation of moral activity.
9. WW. I. 383 ff.
10. ibid. i. 381 f.
11. WW. I. 385.
12. Leben, pp. 179, 192.
13. WW. I. 384.
14. Leben, p. 161.
15. ibid.
16. This term is preserved in his final view; v. Log. I. Vorrede i. ad fin.
17. Leben, p. 179.
18. Cf. WW. I. 18 f., 315 ff.
19. WW. I. 157 ff.; xvi. 33 ff. (1834). Absolute Here used not as specifically Absolute Spirit.
20. ibid. I. 18 f.
21. WW. xvi. “Verhält d. Scept.” ad fin.; i, 179 ff.
22. ibid. I. 168 ff. It is the absence and the necessity for this unity that gives rise to religion also as well as philosophy. Their difference lies in this that what religion does by immediacy, by “belief,” by “yearning” after the Absolute, philosophy, as we shall see, performs by mediation, by knowledge, by conception (Begriff). Hence the importance of philosophy in modern life. Cf. Leben, pp. 182, 198; WW. I. 7.
23. WW xvi. “Verhält d. Scept.” ad fin.
24. ibid.
25. WW. I. 165.
26. ibid. xvi. “Wesen d. philos. Kritik.”
27. WW. I. 165.
28. ibid. I. 174 ff.
29. WW. I. 169, 174 f.
30. The nature of this distinction in “kind” is determined below.
31. Cf. Spinoza’s Infinite Modes.
32. WW. i. 176.
33. WW i. 176f., 184f.
34. WW. i. 123, 194 f.
35. Cf. WW. xvi. “Verhält d. Scept.”
36. WW. I. 184. It is not at all obvious how Hegel can maintain this, and at the same time hold the views just stated. There is an obvious ambiguity, if not confusion, in the use of the term reflexion in this period as well as in the preceding (v. infra, p. 134, 135).
37. WW. I. 185 ff.
38. WW. I. 179, 185; xvi. “Verhält d. Scept.”
39. ibid. I. 195.
40. WW i. 195 ff.
41. ibid. I. 196 ff.; xvi. “Verhält d. Scept.” passim.
42. Leben, pp. 190.192.
43. The notions with which Logic deals can be found, says Hegel, ready to hand in language; notions are embodied in current terminology (Leben, pp. 183, 184).
44. “Logic presents the picture of the Absolute in, so to say, a reflected form” (Leben, p. 191).
45. By “ideal” must here be understood abstract as opposed to concrete.
46. WW. I 369.
47. ibid. I. 24.
48. WW. I. 205, 206.
49. WW. I. 350, 351.
50. ibid. I. 23.
51. ibid. I. 24.
52. ibid. I. 346 f.
53. e.g., Ibid. I. 177, 315 ff.
54. Leben, p. 191.
55. ibid. p. 190.
56. WW. I. 315 f., 347 f.; xvi. “Verhält d. Scept.” ad fin.
57. ibid. I. 19.
58. Hegel expressly says that in Metaphysic he can give nothing new, but proposes to reproduce Metaphysic as it had historically appeared (Leben, p. 192).
59. Leben, p. 192.
60. WW. I. 184; similarly i. 153, etc.; Leben, p. 170.
61. Leben, pp. 170, 171.
62. Leben, p. 192.
63. He lectured in Jena on the History of Philosophy, 1805; and the published Lectures on the History of Philosophy (WW. xv.) are stated by the editor to be substantially the same as those delivered in Jena.
64. “The principle of a system of philosophy is its result,” is one of his obiter dicta (Leben, pp. 545, 546).
65. Cf. WW. I. 356 ff.
66. In one passage he uses the term logic as convertible with “Idealism,” “Speculative Idea,” “Speculative Philosophy” (Leben, p. 179).
67. v. Trans. Ideal. Absch. iii. Vorerrin, f. xii. ad fin.; also preface.