Science of Logic

L1Prefaces and Introduction · Vorrede, Einleitung

1832: GW 21:5–49 · 1812: pp. III–X, I–XXVIII, 1–5 · front matter of the objective logic

Context and aim

The book opens differently in its two editions. The 1812 print has a Preface dated "Nürnberg, den 22. März 1812", one undivided Introduction (pp. I–XXVIII) and a short piece headed "Logik. Ueber die allgemeine Eintheilung derselben" (pp. 1–5).^T2 The 1832 Doctrine of Being reprints the old Preface as "Vorrede zur ersten Ausgabe" (GW 21:5–9), adds a new Preface dated "Berlin den 7 November 1831" (GW 21:10–20), and splits the Introduction into "Allgemeiner Begriff der Logik" (GW 21:27–43) and "Allgemeine Eintheilung der Logik" (GW 21:44–49).^T3 Hegel died on 14 November 1831; the revised volume appeared after his death.^H16,40

The 1812 Preface diagnoses a crisis. Metaphysics has been "mit Stumpf und Styl ausgerottet", partly by Kant's teaching that the understanding may not fly beyond experience (GW 21:5). Logic, "welche die eigentliche Metaphysik oder reine speculative Philosophie ausmacht", has been neglected, and it must begin again "von vorne" (GW 21:7).^T About 86% of this Preface's wording survives in 1832. The changes are small but telling: 1812 calls consciousness "der Geist als concreter Gegenstand" (1812 p. IX); 1832 says "der Geist als concretes und zwar in der Aeusserlichkeit befangenes Wissen" (GW 21:8), and two footnotes are new.^T2,3

ein gebildetes Volk ohne Metaphysik zu sehen; – wie einen sonst mannigfaltig ausgeschmückten Tempel ohne Allerheiligstes.

to see an educated people without metaphysics; like a temple richly adorned in other ways, but without a holy of holies. rendering for this page

GW 21:6 · 1812 p. IV · Preface to the first edition

The 1831 Preface admits the "Unvollkommenheit" of the first edition. Earlier metaphysics and logic offered only "äusserliches Material", so the realm of thought had to be presented "von Vorne"; yet the inherited thought-forms remain a necessary presupposition, even if they give only "die leblosen Knochen eines Skeletts" (GW 21:10).^T German is praised because some of its words have opposite meanings, "so daß darin selbst ein speculativer Geist der Sprache nicht zu verkennen ist" (GW 21:11). The Preface names no example; the Logic's own is aufheben (GW 21:94; L3).^T The Preface ends with Plato, said to have reworked the Republic seven times, and Hegel's wish for the leisure to rework his book "sieben und siebenzig mal" (GW 21:20).^T

The Introduction argues that logic cannot define its object first: its concept is a result. The concept of "pure science" is presupposed here because "die Phänomenologie des Geistes nichts anderes als die Deduction desselben ist" (GW 21:33; "hier" for "in gegenwärtiger Abhandlung" in 1812 p. XII).^T2,3

Key terms

• Verstand / Vernunft (understanding / reason). The Verstand fixes determinations; reason dissolves them and produces the universal (GW 21:8).^T
• Methode: not borrowed from mathematics, but "die immanente Seele des Inhalts selbst" (GW 21:7–8).^T
• reines Wissen, reine Wissenschaft (pure knowing, pure science): the standpoint freed from the opposition of consciousness (GW 21:33–34).^T
• objectives Denken (objective thinking): the content of pure science (GW 21:34).^T
• Reich der Schatten (realm of shadows): "Das System der Logik ist das Reich der Schatten, die Welt der einfachen Wesenheiten, von aller sinnlichen Concretion befreyt" (GW 21:42; same sentence 1812 p. XXVII).^T

Structure

The Prefaces have no subheadings; the 1832 Introduction has two parts, drawn here.

A passage, step by step

Hegel's own short account of what "dialectic" is, from the first Preface (1832 text). The 1812 wording (1812 p. VIII) is close, with two changes: where 1832 says reason "das Besondere darin begreift", 1812 has "darunter subsumirt"; and 1832 adds that the universal is one "das in sich concret ist" (GW 21:8).^T2,3

Der Verstand bestimmt und hält die Bestimmungen fest; die Vernunft ist negativ und dialektisch, weil sie die Bestimmungen des Verstands in Nichts auflöst; sie ist positiv, weil sie das Allgemeine erzeugt, und das Besondere darin begreift. … Aber in ihrer Wahrheit ist die Vernunft Geist, der höher als beydes, verständige Vernunft, oder vernünftiger Verstand ist.

The understanding determines and holds the determinations fast; reason is negative and dialectical, because it dissolves the understanding's determinations into nothing; it is positive, because it produces the universal and grasps the particular within it. … But in its truth reason is spirit, which is higher than both: understanding reason, or rational understanding. rendering for this page

GW 21:8 · 1812 p. VIII · Preface to the first edition

Note what is absent: Hegel names the understanding and two sides of reason, negative and positive, not thesis, antithesis and synthesis.^T

Remarks and digressions

The front matter has no Anmerkungen. The 1832 reprint of the first Preface adds two footnotes, both absent from the 1812 print (1812 p. VIII says only "wie ich anderwärts erinnert habe"): one names the Preface of the Phenomenology as that "elsewhere" (GW 21:7), the other is the note of 1831 below.^T2,3 The 1832 Introduction gains two footnotes, absent from the 1812 print: one on the method in the other parts of philosophy (GW 21:37 n.), one on the phrase "objectivirendes Thun" (GW 21:47 n.; cf. 1812 p. 3).^T2,3

Dieser Titel wird der zweyten Ausgabe, die auf nächste Ostern erscheinen wird, nicht mehr beygegeben werden. – An die Stelle des im folgenden erwähnten Vorhabens eines zweyten Theils, der die sämmtlichen andern philosophischen Wissenschaften enthalten sollte, habe ich seitdem die Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften, voriges Jahr in der dritten Ausgabe, ans Licht treten lassen

This title [System of Science] will no longer be given to the second edition [of the Phenomenology], which will appear next Easter. In place of the plan, mentioned below, of a second part that was to contain all the other philosophical sciences, I have since published the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, last year in its third edition rendering for this page

GW 21:9 n. · "Anmerkung zur zweyten Ausgabe" (1831)

Debates

Misconceptions

• "The Science of Logic is a formal logic textbook."Hegel says pure science is "so wenig formell" that its content is "die wahrhafte Materie" (GW 21:34), and he faults the school logic for divisions made "ohne irgend eine Deduction und Rechtfertigung" (GW 21:39).^T
• "Hegel's dialectic is thesis–antithesis–synthesis."His own account names a negative (dialectical) and a positive side of reason (GW 21:8). On "Synthesis" see L3.^TI65

Connections

Encyclopaedia. Enc. 1830 §79 gives the same structure as three "sides": "(α) the Abstract side, or that of understanding: (ß) the Dialectical, or that of negative reason: (y) the Speculative, or that of positive reason" (Wallace 1892, § text, Greek letters as printed in the e-text).^L10

Phenomenology. Hegel's own statements: the Phenomenology presents consciousness by this method (GW 21:8); it led consciousness "bis zum absoluten Wissen" (GW 21:32) and is the "Deduction" of the Logic's standpoint (GW 21:33); it is an example of the method on "einem concretern Gegenstande" (GW 21:37).^T From the other side, the Phenomenology calls the movement of the moments in the element of knowing "die Logik oder speculative Philosophie" (¶37).^T1 How the two books relate after 1817 is taken up in L2.

Sources for L1: 1–3, 10, 15–16, 40, 65, 85, 126–127.

L2With what must the science begin? · Womit muß der Anfang der Wissenschaft gemacht werden?

1832: GW 21:53–65 · 1812: pp. 6–18 · J&S I, 79 · head of Book One, before the division of being

Context and aim

This short essay, at the head of Book One in both editions, asks where a science that is to justify everything can start. In 1832 it opens with the history of the problem: "In neuern Zeiten erst ist das Bewußtseyn entstanden, daß es eine Schwierigkeit sey, einen Anfang in der Philosophie zu finden." The beginning must be either mediated or immediate, and it is easy to show that it can be neither (GW 21:53).^T3 Hegel then separates a principle, "das Wasser, das Eine, Nus, Idee, – Substanz, Monade", from the act of beginning, which earlier philosophy treated as indifferent (GW 21:53).^T

The 1812 essay opened instead with the Phenomenology, and placed the "modern difficulty" sentence only after its two opening arguments (1812 p. 7).^T2

Aus der Phänomenologie des Geistes, oder der Wissenschaft des Bewußtseyns, als des erscheinenden Geistes wird vorausgesetzt, daß sich als dessen letzte, absolute Wahrheit das reine Wissen ergibt.

From the Phenomenology of Spirit, or the science of consciousness as appearing spirit, it is presupposed that its last, absolute truth turns out to be pure knowing. rendering for this page

1812 p. 6 · first sentence of the 1812 essay

Hegel's answer has two halves. Taken as mediated, the beginning is made in pure knowing, "die letzte, absolute Wahrheit des Bewußtseyns"; the Logic "hat insofern die Wissenschaft des erscheinenden Geistes zu ihrer Voraussetzung" (GW 21:54).^T Taken as immediate, it can only be pure being (GW 21:56). The sentence about a "resolve" (Entschluß) in that second half was added in 1832: the 1812 essay has no "Entschluß" at all.^T2,3

Key terms

• Anfang (beginning), as against Princip (GW 21:53).^T
• Vermitteltes / Unmittelbares (mediated / immediate): see Unmittelbarkeit. Hegel says nothing "im Himmel oder in der Natur oder im Geiste" lacks either (GW 21:54).^T
• reines Wissen (pure knowing): the result of the Phenomenology, which "hat alle Beziehung auf ein Anderes und auf Vermittlung aufgehoben" (GW 21:55).^T
• Entschluß (resolve): 1832 only (GW 21:56).^T
• Kreis (circle): by its progress the beginning becomes mediated, and "die Linie der wissenschaftlichen Fortbewegung macht sich damit zu einem Kreise" (GW 21:58; 1812 p. 10).^T

Structure

The essay has no subheadings.

Its steps: the dilemma (GW 21:53–54); the two answers (GW 21:54–56); "weitere Reflexionen" on Reinhold's hypothetical beginning, named only in 1832, and on the circle (GW 21:56–58); an analysis of the bare idea of a beginning, "Es ist noch Nichts, und es soll etwas werden" (GW 21:59–61); and objections to beginning with "I", intellectual intuition or God (GW 21:62–65).^T

A passage, step by step

Soll aber keine Voraussetzung gemacht, der Anfang selbst unmittelbar genommen werden, so bestimmt er sich nur dadurch, daß es der Anfang der Logik, des Denkens für sich, seyn soll. Nur der Entschluß, den man auch für eine Willkühr ansehen kann, nemlich daß man das Denken als solches betrachten wolle, ist vorhanden. So muß der Anfang absoluter oder was hier gleichbedeutend ist, abstracter Anfang seyn; er darf so nichts voraussetzen … Der Anfang ist also das reine Seyn.

But if no presupposition is to be made, and the beginning itself is to be taken immediately, then it is determined only by this: that it is to be the beginning of logic, of thinking for itself. All there is is the resolve, which can also be regarded as arbitrary, namely that one wants to consider thinking as such. So the beginning must be an absolute, or what here means the same, an abstract beginning; it may thus presuppose nothing … The beginning is therefore pure being. rendering for this page

GW 21:56 · 1832

Oder zweytens umgekehrt der Anfang der absoluten Wissenschaft muß selbst absoluter Anfang seyn, er darf nichts voraussetzen.

Or secondly, conversely, the beginning of absolute science must itself be an absolute beginning; it may presuppose nothing. rendering for this page

1812 p. 7 · the 1812 counterpart, without the resolve

Remarks and digressions

The essay has no Anmerkungen; it is itself a preliminary discussion. Digressions added in 1832 include a reference to the Encyclopaedia's "Vorbegr. §. 61.ff." (GW 21:54) and the naming of Reinhold (GW 21:57).^T3 As a "Vorschlag zur Güte" Hegel analyses the bare idea of beginning; it too yields the unity of being and nothing (GW 21:60–61).^T

Debates

Denn um zu abstrahiren, muss etwas vorausgesetzt sein, von dem man abstrahirt. Das reine Sein als die reine Abstraktion ist daher nur zu verstehen, inwiefern das Denken schon die Welt in sich besass und sich aus derselben in sich allein zurückzog.

For in order to abstract, something must be presupposed from which one abstracts. Pure being, as pure abstraction, can therefore be understood only insofar as thinking already possessed the world within itself and withdrew from it into itself alone. rendering for this page

Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, 3rd ed. (Leipzig 1870), vol. I, p. 37

Die Begriffe als solche existiren in der That nirgends als im Bewußtseyn, sie sind also objektiv genommen nach der Natur, nicht vor derselben; Hegel nahm sie von ihrer natürlichen Stelle hinweg, indem er sie an den Anfang der Philosophie setzte.

Concepts as such in fact exist nowhere but in consciousness; taken objectively, then, they come after nature, not before it. Hegel took them from their natural place when he set them at the beginning of philosophy. rendering for this page

Schelling, Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, Sämmtliche Werke I/10 (1861), p. 140

Misconceptions

• "The Logic presupposes nothing" or "the Logic rests on the Phenomenology".Hegel says both, in different respects (GW 21:54–56). The 1812 essay already gives both (1812 p. 6–7); only the "Entschluß" is new in 1832 (GW 21:56).^T
• "Hegel begins with God or the Absolute."Whatever richer name is used, at the beginning it is "nur leeres Wort, und nur Seyn" (GW 21:65).^T

Connections

Encyclopaedia. Enc. 1830 §86 (§ text): "Pure Being makes the beginning: because it is on one hand pure thought, and on the other immediacy itself" (Wallace 1892).^L10 With §78 Wallace prints: "in the resolve that wills pure thought, this requirement is accomplished by freedom"; whether as Hegel's Remark or an editor's Zusatz is not settled in our research.^L10

Phenomenology. Pure knowing is the result of the last chapter, Absolute Knowing (¶788–808); the Logic itself says so (GW 21:54–55).^T The analysis continues in L3.

Sources for L2: 2–3, 10, 59, 62, 64, 128–130.

L3Being, nothing, becoming · Seyn, Nichts, Werden

1832: GW 21:68–95 · 1812: pp. 22–46 · J&S I, 94–120 · Book One, Sec. 1 (Quality), Ch. 1

Context and aim

After the essay on the beginning (L2) and a short division of being (GW 21:66–67), the Logic proper starts: "Seyn, reines Seyn" (GW 21:68).^T3 Being, taken without any determination, proves to be nothing; nothing proves to be the same as being; their truth is the movement in which each vanishes into the other, becoming (GW 21:68–70). Becoming then settles into a "ruhiges Resultat", determinate being (GW 21:93–94; L4).^T "A. Seyn" is word for word the 1812 text (1812 p. 22).^T2,3

Key terms

• Seyn / Nichts (being / nothing): "das unbestimmte Unmittelbare" (GW 21:69); see Unmittelbarkeit.^T
• Werden (becoming), with its two moments Entstehen and Vergehen, coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be (GW 21:92–93).^T
• Aufheben (to sublate): to preserve and to make cease (GW 21:94). See aufheben; what is sublated may be called a Moment (GW 21:95).^T

Structure

Three short sections and, attached to "1. Einheit des Seyns und Nichts", four long Remarks; in 1812 that subsection carries no number.

A passage, step by step

Seyn, reines Seyn, – ohne alle weitere Bestimmung. In seiner unbestimmten Unmittelbarkeit ist es nur sich selbst gleich, und auch nicht ungleich gegen anderes, hat keine Verschiedenheit innerhalb seiner, noch nach Aussen. … Es ist nichts in ihm anzuschauen, wenn von Anschauen hier gesprochen werden kann; oder es ist nur diß reine, leere Anschauen selbst. … Das Seyn, das unbestimmte Unmittelbare ist in der That Nichts, und nicht mehr noch weniger als Nichts. … Nichts ist somit dieselbe Bestimmung oder vielmehr Bestimmungslosigkeit, und damit überhaupt dasselbe, was das reine Seyn ist.

Being, pure being, without any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself, and also not unequal to anything else; it has no difference within itself, nor outwardly. … There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak of intuiting here; or it is only this pure, empty intuiting itself. … Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing. … Nothing is thus the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and so altogether the same as what pure being is. rendering for this page

GW 21:68–69 · A. Seyn; B. Nichts · 1832 (A. identical with 1812 p. 22)

The two editions differ at steps 5 and 6. In "B. Nichts", 1832 inserts "beyde werden unterschieden, so ist (existirt) Nichts in unserem Anschauen oder Denken" (GW 21:69), where 1812 has only "Nichts ist in unserem Anschauen oder Denken" (1812 p. 22).^T2,3 In the unity sentence, 1832 adds "also" and makes the difference explicit: "daß sie nicht dasselbe, daß sie absolut unterschieden, aber eben so ungetrennt und untrennbar sind" (GW 21:69).^T The 1812 sentence:

Das reine Seyn und das reine Nichts ist dasselbe. … Aber eben so sehr ist die Wahrheit nicht ihre Ununterschiedenheit, sondern daß sie absolut unterschieden sind, aber eben so unmittelbar jedes in seinem Gegentheil verschwindet. Ihre Wahrheit ist also diese Bewegung des unmittelbaren Verschwindens des einen in dem andern; das Werden

Pure being and pure nothing are the same. … But equally the truth is not their lack of distinction; it is that they are absolutely distinct, and yet each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is therefore this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one in the other: becoming rendering for this page

1812 p. 23 · "Einheit des Seyns und Nichts", first edition

Remarks and digressions

• Remark 1 (GW 21:70–77; 1812 pp. 23–33). Parmenides: "nur das Seyn ist, und das Nichts ist gar nicht"; Heraclitus: "Alles fließt" (GW 21:70). Then the objection that it would be all the same whether I am or not, or whether "diese hundert Thaler" are in my fortune: "Dieser Schluß oder Anwendung jenes Satzes verändert dessen Sinn vollkommen" (GW 21:72).^T
• Remark 2 (GW 21:77–80): the proposition "Seyn und Nichts ist eins und dasselbe" is an imperfect expression: the stress falls on sameness, so the difference seems denied. The topic was 1812 Remark 3 (pp. 38–40), rewritten almost entirely.^T2,3
• Remark 3 (GW 21:80–90): against isolating the abstractions; Spinoza ("Spinotza", GW 21:82) and Jacobi (GW 21:82–85) are new in 1832.^T
• Remark 4 (GW 21:90–92): the dialectic against a beginning of the world holds being and nothing apart.^T
• Remark on aufheben (GW 21:94–95; 1812 pp. 45–46, 70% the same). The Logic's own definition of the term:

Aufheben hat in der Sprache den gedoppelten Sinn, daß es so viel als aufbewahren, erhalten bedeutet, und zugleich so viel als aufhören lassen, ein Ende machen.

Aufheben has a double sense in the language: it means to keep, to preserve, and at the same time to let cease, to put an end to. rendering for this page

GW 21:94 · Remark to "3. Aufheben des Werdens"

Translators differ: J&S render aufheben "transcend" (I, p. 119); in the Encyclopaedia Zusatz to §96, compiled by Henning for the 1840 Werke, Wallace has "to put by, or set aside".^I13E10,55

Debates

Das reine Sein, sich selbst gleich, ist Ruhe; das Nichts — das sich selbst Gleiche — ist ebenfalls Ruhe. Wie kommt aus der Einheit zweier ruhenden Vorstellungen das bewegte Werden heraus?

Pure being, equal to itself, is rest; nothing, the self-equal, is likewise rest. How does moving becoming come out of the unity of two resting representations? rendering for this page

Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, 3rd ed. (1870), vol. I, p. 38

Indessen ist mit jenem eingeschalteten noch schon ein künftiges, das noch nicht ist, in Aussicht gestellt, und mit Hülfe dieses noch gelangt also Hegel zum Werden

Yet with that interpolated "yet" (noch) something future, which is not yet, has already been put in view; and with the help of this "yet" Hegel thus arrives at becoming rendering for this page

Schelling, Sämmtliche Werke I/10 (1861), p. 135

Misconceptions

• "If being and nothing are the same, it makes no difference whether I exist."Hegel's reply: that inference "verändert dessen Sinn vollkommen"; the proposition concerns pure abstractions, not determinate existents (GW 21:72; 1812 p. 25).^T
• "Becoming is the synthesis of thesis and antithesis."Hegel calls becoming "diese immanente Synthesis des Seyns und Nichts", then adds that the name "Synthesis" has rightly fallen out of use, because it suggests putting together things external to each other (GW 21:83, 1832 only).^T SEP (Maybee, §§2–3) calls Mueller's 1958 paper on the "legend" a classic criticism of the triadic reading.^I65,133

Connections

Encyclopaedia. Enc. 1830 §§86–89; §88 (§ text): "The truth of Being and of Nothing is accordingly the unity of the two: and this unity is Becoming" (Wallace 1892).^L10

Phenomenology. Hegel does not tie this chapter to Sense-certainty (¶90–110); in Absolute Knowing he pairs the object as "unmittelbares Seyn" with immediate consciousness (¶789).^T1 Redding (SEP §3.1.2) notes a parallel between the two beginnings; that link is an interpretation.^I15

Spinoza. Those who insist that "Nichts ist eben Nichts" side, Remark 1 says, with Eleatic pantheism, "der Sache nach auch dem spinozistischen" (GW 21:71, 1832 only); see the Spinoza page.^T

Sources for L3: 1–3, 10, 13, 15, 55, 62, 65, 128–133.

L4Determinate being; the finite and the infinite · Das Daseyn

1832: GW 21:96–143 · 1812: pp. 47–90 · J&S I, 121–169 · Book One, Sec. 1, Ch. 2

Context and aim

Becoming has settled into Daseyn, being with a determinateness; determinateness taken as being is quality (GW 21:96–99).^T3 The chapter then runs through something and other, determination and limit, finitude with its limitation and "ought", and the infinite. The main thing about infinity, in Hegel's words at the head of the section on it, is "den wahrhaften Begriff der Unendlichkeit von der schlechten Unendlichkeit … zu unterscheiden" (GW 21:124; same sentence 1812 p. 80).^T It ends with the claim that the finite is ideal, which "macht den Idealismus aus" (GW 21:142).^T

No chapter of Book One was rebuilt more. In 1812 its parts are A. Daseyn als solches (with "Realität"), B. Bestimmtheit, C. (Qualitative) Unendlichkeit (pp. 47–90); in 1832, A. Daseyn als solches (with "Qualität"), B. Die Endlichkeit, C. Die Unendlichkeit, then "Der Uebergang" and two Remarks (GW 21:96–143). "Endlichkeit" becomes a section of its own only in 1832.^T2,3 See 1812/1832.

Key terms

• Qualität, Realität, Negation: quality taken as being is reality; taken as a lack, it is Negation (GW 21:98–99).^T
• Etwas / Anderes (something / other), with Seyn-für-Anderes (GW 21:106) and Ansichseyn, being-in-itself (GW 21:107); see an sich.^T
• Bestimmung, Beschaffenheit, Grenze (determination, constitution, limit), heading at GW 21:110; see Bestimmung.^T
• Schranke, Sollen (limitation, ought), heading at GW 21:118.^T
• schlechte / wahrhafte Unendlichkeit (bad / true infinity): see Unendlichkeit. J&S say "bad infinite" (I, p. 152); Wallace's §94 "the wrong or negative infinity".^I13L10

Structure

Three parts, a transition and two Remarks (1832).

A passage, step by step

Nur das Schlechtunendliche ist das Jenseits, weil es nur die Negation des als real gesetzten Endlichen ist … Diese Unerreichbarkeit ist aber nicht seine Hoheit, sondern sein Mangel, welcher seinen letzten Grund darin hat, daß das Endliche als solches als seyend festgehalten wird. … Das Bild des Progresses ins Unendliche ist die gerade Linie … als wahrhafte Unendlichkeit, in sich zurückgebogen, wird deren Bild der Kreis, die sich erreicht habende Linie, die geschlossen und ganz gegenwärtig ist, ohne Anfangspunkt und Ende.

Only the bad infinite is the beyond, because it is only the negation of the finite posited as real … But this unreachability is not its grandeur but its defect, whose last ground is that the finite as such is held fast as being. … The image of the progress to infinity is the straight line … as true infinity, bent back into itself, its image becomes the circle, the line that has reached itself, closed and wholly present, without beginning-point or end. rendering for this page

GW 21:136 · C. c. Die affirmative Unendlichkeit · 1832

Both images are new in 1832: neither "Kreis" nor the straight line occurs in the 1812 infinity section (pp. 79–90), though the distinction of bad and true infinity is already there (1812 p. 80).^T2

Remarks and digressions

Remark to "b. Qualität" (GW 21:99–102). "Reality" is ambiguous; God as the sum of all realities is only abstract being. The 1832 Remark merges parts of three 1812 Remarks (on reality, pp. 54–57; on quality, pp. 68–69; on negation, pp. 75–78), and so the Spinoza formula moves.^T2,3

Die Bestimmtheit ist die Negation als affirmativ gesetzt, ist der Satz des Spinoza: Omnis determinatio est negatio, dieser Satz ist von unendlicher Wichtigkeit;

Determinateness is negation posited as affirmative; this is Spinoza's proposition, omnis determinatio est negatio, a proposition of infinite importance; rendering for this page

GW 21:101 · Remark to "b. Qualität" · 1832

Die Bestimmtheit überhaupt ist Negation, (Determinatio est negatio) sagte Spinoza; — ein Satz, der von durchgängiger Wichtigkeit ist;

Determinateness in general is negation (determinatio est negatio), said Spinoza, a proposition of thoroughgoing importance; rendering for this page

1812 p. 75–76 · Remark to "c.) Negation" · 1812

Both editions draw the same consequence: the unity of Spinoza's substance, "daß nur Eine Substanz ist", follows from this proposition (GW 21:101; 1812 p. 76).^T Omnis enters the Logic only in 1832.^T

Remark to "β. Die Schranke und das Sollen" (GW 21:120–123): the "ought" of recent moral philosophy. "Du kannst, weil du sollst" lies in the concept of the ought, "aber umgekehrt ist es eben so richtig: Du kannst nicht, eben weil du sollst" (GW 21:121); then Leibniz's magnet that, if conscious, would take its pointing north for free will (GW 21:122).^T

Remark 1 (GW 21:137–142): the progress to infinity expresses a contradiction that passes itself off as its solution; 47% of the 1812 Remark (pp. 87–90) survives.^T Remark 2 (GW 21:142–143) is new in 1832:

Der Satz, daß das Endliche ideell ist, macht den Idealismus aus. Der Idealismus der Philosophie besteht in nichts anderem, als darin, das Endliche nicht als ein wahrhaft Seyendes anzuerkennen.

The proposition that the finite is ideal constitutes idealism. The idealism of philosophy consists in nothing else than this: not recognizing the finite as a truly existing being. rendering for this page

GW 21:142 · Anmerkung 2 · 1832 only

Debates

Our suggestion, not a claim of the sources: how one reads "idealism" in Remark 2, as a thesis about what is or about what makes the finite intelligible, may track the camps described in L1.

Misconceptions

• "Omnis determinatio est negatio is a quotation from Spinoza."Spinoza wrote "determinatio negatio est" about figure; even the 1812 Logic lacks "omnis" (1812 p. 75).^TI67,134
• "Hegel's idealism says that only minds exist."Idealism here is the thesis that the finite is not truly a being; subjective idealism, which concerns only the form of representation, is called "formell" (GW 21:142–143).^T

Connections

Encyclopaedia. Enc. 1830 §§89–95. §94 (§ text): "This Infinity is the wrong or negative infinity: it is only a negation of a finite".^L10 In the Zusatz to §91, compiled by Henning for the 1840 Werke: "The foundation of all determinateness is negation (as Spinoza says, Omnis determinatio est negatio)."^E10,134 After §95 Wallace prints "every genuine philosophy is idealism"; Remark or Zusatz is not settled in our research.^L10

Spinoza and the series. In the Doctrine of Essence (1813) the principle returns in German only: "Die Bestimmtheit ist Negation, ist das absolute Princip der Spinozistischen Philosophie" (GW 11:376).^T42 For Spinoza's own text see the Spinoza page and ↔.

Sources for L4: 2–3, 10, 13, 42, 67, 134.

L5Being-for-itself · Das Fürsichseyn

1832: GW 21:144–172 · 1812: pp. 91–129 · J&S I, 170–197 · Book One, Sec. 1, Ch. 3

Context and aim

"Im Fürsichseyn ist das qualitative Seyn vollendet; es ist das unendliche Seyn" (GW 21:144).^T3 Determinate being was "die Sphäre der Differenz, des Dualismus, das Feld der Endlichkeit"; in being-for-itself the difference between being and determinateness is posited and evened out (same page).^T Hegel announces three steps: the one; the passing of the one into many ones, repulsion, whose otherness is sublated as attraction; and the interplay of the two, in which quality "in Quantität übergeht" (GW 21:144).^T He starts from ordinary speech: we say something is "for itself" when it has set aside its relation and community with others (GW 21:145).^T

Das Selbstbewußtseyn dagegen ist das Fürsichseyn als vollbracht und gesetzt; jene Seite der Beziehung auf ein Anderes, einen äussern Gegenstand ist entfernt. Das Selbstbewußtseyn ist so das nächste Beyspiel der Präsenz der Unendlichkeit

Self-consciousness, by contrast, is being-for-itself as accomplished and posited; the side of relation to an other, an external object, is removed. Self-consciousness is thus the nearest example of the presence of infinity rendering for this page

GW 21:145 · A. Das Fürsichseyn als solches · 1832

Key terms

• Fürsichseyn (being-for-itself): Wallace "Being-for-self"; J&S "Being for Self" (I, 170).^L10I13
• Seyn-für-eines (being-for-one), heading at GW 21:146: the other is in it only as sublated, as its moment; Hegel calls this "Idealität" (GW 21:146–147).^T
• Eins, das Leere (the one, the void): GW 21:150, GW 21:153.^T
• Repulsion, Attraction: the one repels itself into many ones; the many are each one, and so relate to one another (GW 21:155–162).^T

Structure

1832 divides the chapter into A. Das Fürsichseyn als solches, B. Eins und Vieles, C. Repulsion und Attraction; 1812 had A. Fürsichseyn als solches (with a long "c.) Idealität", pp. 95–99), B. Das Eins, C. Attraktion.^T2,3

A passage, step by step

The long Remark that closes the chapter examines Kant's dynamical "construction" of matter in the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft. It is the most stable long text of the section: 61% of the 1812 Remark (pp. 119–128) survives in 1832.^T2,3

Kants Verfahren ist nemlich im Grunde analytisch, nicht construirend. Er setzt die Vorstellung der Materie voraus, und fragt nun, welche Kräfte dazu gehören, um ihre vorausgesetzten Bestimmungen zu erhalten. … so ist der Grundgedanke immer sehr zu schätzen, die Materie aus diesen zwey entgegengesetzten Bestimmungen als ihren Grundkräften zu erkennen.

Kant's procedure is in fact at bottom analytic, not constructive. He presupposes the representation of matter and then asks which forces are needed to obtain its presupposed determinations. … yet the basic thought is always to be highly prized: to know matter from these two opposed determinations as its fundamental forces. rendering for this page

GW 21:167–169 · Remark to "c. Die Beziehung der Repulsion und Attraction" · 1832

Remarks and digressions

• To "b. Seyn-für-eines" (GW 21:147–150): the German question "was für ein Ding" is idealistic in origin; Malebranche and Leibniz; "das eleatische Seyn oder die Spinozische Substanz nur die abstracte Negation aller Bestimmtheit" (GW 21:148); Kant and Fichte do not get beyond the "Sollen" (GW 21:150). Much of this stood in the main text of 1812 ("c.) Idealität").^T2,3
• To "b. Das Eins und das Leere" (GW 21:153–155): the ancient atomism of the atom and the void as this stage of the category.^T
• To "c. Viele Eins. Repulsion" (GW 21:157–158): Leibniz's representing monad reaches only as far as repulsion, plurality.^T
• To "a. Ausschließen des Eins" (GW 21:160–161), new in 1832:

Die Selbstständigkeit auf die Spitze des fürsichseyenden Eins getrieben, ist die abstracte, formelle Selbstständigkeit, die sich selbst zerstört; der höchste, hartnäckigste Irrthum, der sich für die höchste Wahrheit nimmt; – in concreteren Formen als abstracte Freyheit, als reines Ich, und dann weiter als das Böse erscheinend.

Self-subsistence driven to the point of the one that is for itself is abstract, formal self-subsistence, which destroys itself: the highest, most stubborn error, which takes itself for the highest truth; appearing in more concrete forms as abstract freedom, as pure I, and further as evil. rendering for this page

GW 21:160 · 1832 only

Debates

Misconceptions

• "Hegel simply dismisses Kant's theory of matter."He rejects the claim to "construct" matter but calls the basic thought "sehr zu schätzen" (GW 21:167–169).^T
• "Being-for-itself is self-consciousness."Self-consciousness is "das nächste Beyspiel", the nearest example; the category itself is the one, its repulsion and attraction (GW 21:145, GW 21:144).^T

Connections

Encyclopaedia. Enc. 1830 §§96–98. §98 (§ text): "The repulsion therefore has an equal right to be called Attraction".^L10 In the Zusatz to §96, compiled by Henning: "The readiest instance of Being-for-self is found in the 'I.'"^E10,55

Phenomenology. In Absolute Knowing Hegel pairs "Seyn für anderes, und Fürsichseyn, die Bestimmtheit" with perception (¶789; Perception is ¶111–131).^T1 The transition to quantity follows in L6.

Sources for L5: 1–3, 10, 13, 55, 135.

L6Quantity · Die Größe (Quantität)

1832: GW 21:173–322 · 1812: pp. 130–263 · J&S I, 198–344 · Book One, Sec. 2

Context and aim

The interplay of repulsion and attraction (L5) has turned quality into quantity. Hegel's definition opens the section:^T3

Die Qualität ist die erste, unmittelbare Bestimmtheit, die Quantität die Bestimmtheit, die dem Seyn gleichgültig geworden, eine Grenze, die eben so sehr keine ist

Quality is the first, immediate determinateness; quantity is the determinateness that has become indifferent to being, a limit that is just as much no limit rendering for this page

GW 21:173 · opening of the second section · 1832

His example comes in the first Remark: if a field changes its quantitative limit, "so bleibt er Acker vor wie nach"; if its qualitative limit changes, it becomes meadow or wood (GW 21:174).^T The section has three chapters: quantity (pure, continuous and discrete, limited), quantum (number, extensive and intensive magnitude, quantitative infinity), and quantitative ratio (direct, inverse, of powers), which leads into measure (GW 21:173–322).^T It keeps its 1812 skeleton; headings are renamed and numbered "a./b./c." instead of "1./2./3.", and the long calculus Remark is re-cut (1812/1832).^T2,3

Key terms

• Quantität, Größe (quantity, magnitude) (GW 21:173). J&S title the section "Magnitude (Quantity)" (I, 198).^TI13
• Continuität / Discretion (continuity / discreteness): moments of pure quantity (GW 21:177–191). Continuous and discrete magnitude "können als Arten der Quantität betrachtet werden", but each has both moments; they differ by which moment is posited (GW 21:190–191, Remark).^T
• Quantum, Zahl (a determinate quantity, number) (GW 21:193).^T
• extensive / intensive Größe, Grad (degree) (GW 21:208–218).^T
• quantitativer unendlicher Progreß, heading at GW 21:220: the quantitative form of the bad Unendlichkeit.^T
• Verhältniß (ratio) (GW 21:310).^T

Structure

Three chapters, with fourteen Remarks in 1832.

A passage, step by step

The opening of the first calculus Remark, "Die Begriffsbestimmtheit des mathematischen Unendlichen".

Das mathematische Unendliche ist einestheils interessant durch die Erweiterung der Mathematik und die großen Resultate, welche seine Einführung in dieselbe hervorgebracht hat; anderntheils aber ist es dadurch merkwürdig, daß es dieser Wissenschaft noch nicht gelungen ist, sich über den Gebrauch desselben durch den Begriff (Begriff im eigentlichen Sinne genommen) zu rechtfertigen. Die Rechtfertigungen beruhen am Ende auf der Richtigkeit der mit Hülfe jener Bestimmung sich ergebenden Resultate, welche aus sonstigen Gründen erwiesen ist; nicht aber auf der Klarheit des Gegenstandes und der Operation

The mathematical infinite is interesting, on the one hand, for the extension of mathematics and the great results its introduction has produced; on the other hand it is remarkable because this science has not yet succeeded in justifying its use by the concept (concept taken in the proper sense). The justifications rest in the end on the correctness of the results obtained with the help of that determination, which is proved on other grounds; not on the clarity of the object and of the operation rendering for this page

GW 21:236 · Remark 1 to "c. Die Unendlichkeit des Quantums" · 1832

The 1812 opening is almost the same (1812 p. 206). 1832 adds "(Begriff im eigentlichen Sinne genommen)" and "am Ende", and writes "mit Hülfe jener Bestimmung" for 1812 "mit seiner Hülfe".^T2,3

Remarks and digressions

• Pure quantity, Remark 1 (GW 21:177–179): Spinoza's distinction of quantity as imagined and as understood (Eth. I P15 Schol., cited GW 21:178). Remark 2 (GW 21:179–189): Kant's antinomy of infinite divisibility, which "besteht allein darin, daß die Discretion eben so sehr als die Continuität behauptet werden muß" (GW 21:179).^T
• Number (GW 21:196–208): geometry and arithmetic, with Kant on "7 + 5 = 12"; Pythagoras and the use of numbers for philosophical thoughts.^T
• Intensive magnitude, Remark 2 (GW 21:216–217), new in 1832: Kant's use of intensive magnitude for the soul in the Paralogisms.^T3
• The progress to infinity (GW 21:222–232): its high repute; Haller's description of eternity, which Kant called "schauderhaft" (GW 21:223); Kant's first antinomy.^T
• The calculus. In 1812 one untitled Remark (pp. 206–247, c. 10,400 words). In 1832 three titled Remarks (GW 21:236–273, GW 21:273–299, GW 21:299–309; c. 26,700 words). About 48% of the 1812 wording survives in Remark 1; Remarks 2 ("Der Zweck des Differentialcalculs aus seiner Anwendung abgeleitet") and 3 share no six-word runs with 1812. Descartes, Taylor and Archimedes are named only in 1832; Newton, Leibniz, Euler, Lagrange, Carnot and Landen in both.^T2,3
• Power ratio (GW 21:321–322): against using power ratios to express concept-determinations.^T

Debates

The calculus Remarks have a literature of their own that our research has barely opened. Terry Pinkard's "Hegel's Philosophy of Mathematics" (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 41.4, 1981, from p. 452) is confirmed as a citation; its argument is not reported here.^I136

Misconceptions

• "Hegel rejected the calculus."He grants "die großen Resultate" and asks for a justification "durch den Begriff" (GW 21:236). Whether his diagnosis is right is a separate question.^T
• "Thesis and antithesis are Hegel's terms for his method."In the Logic the words occur only where Hegel analyses Kant's antinomies (GW 21:181–187, GW 21:228–231; also GW 12:157–158).^TI65

Connections

Encyclopaedia. Enc. 1830 §§99–106. After §104 Wallace prints that the quantitative progress is what "Spinoza rightly calls a mere imaginary infinity (infinitum imaginationis)"; Melamed cites this as a Zusatz ("§104 Addition 2"), i.e. Henning's compilation.^E10,67

Spinoza. The Logic makes the same point in Hegel's own words: "Jenes Unendliche einer Reihe nennt Spinoza das Unendliche der Imagination; das Unendliche hingegen als Beziehung auf sich selbst, das Unendliche des Denkens oder infinitum actu" (GW 21:248; 1812 pp. 219–221). See the Spinoza page.^T The ratio of powers leads into measure (L7).

Sources for L6: 2–3, 10, 13, 65, 67, 136.

L7Measure · Das Maaß

1832: GW 21:323–383 · 1812: pp. 264–334 · J&S I, 345–405 · Book One, Sec. 3

Context and aim

"Im Maaße sind, abstract ausgedrückt, Qualität und Quantität vereinigt" (GW 21:323).^T3 Measure is a quantity on which a quality depends. The section runs from the specific quantum and the rule, through "real measure" (relations of self-subsistent measures, elective affinity, the nodal line, the measureless), to the becoming of essence: absolute indifference and the transition to the Doctrine of Essence (GW 21:329–383).^T The 1832 introduction places measure as the "third" after quality and quantity, and uses the point against Kant:^T

Kant hat die unendlich wichtige Form der Triplicität, so sehr sie bey ihm nur erst als ein formeller Lichtfuncken erschienen, nicht auf die Gattungen seiner Kategorien (Quantität, Qualität u.s.f.) wie auch diesen Nahmen, nur auf deren Arten angewendet; daher hat er nicht auf das Dritte der Qualität und Quantität kommen können.

Kant did not apply the infinitely important form of triplicity, though with him it appeared only as a first formal spark, to the genera of his categories (quantity, quality and so on), nor did he apply this name to them, but only to their species; so he could not arrive at the third of quality and quantity. rendering for this page

GW 21:324 · introduction to the third section · 1832

Spinoza's mode, which follows substance and attribute, is "gleichfalls das Dritte", but only "die Aeusserlichkeit als solche" (GW 21:324). Then, in a sentence new in 1832: "Der Spinozistische Modus, wie das indische Princip der Veränderung ist das Maaßlose" (GW 21:325). The 1812 introduction compares Spinoza's mode as the third (1812 p. 265) but lacks that sentence.^T2,3 Measure was restructured more than Quantity: "C. Das Fürsichseyn im Maaße" (GW 21:341–344) and "a. Verbindung zweyer Maaße" (GW 21:347–348) share no six-word runs with 1812 (1812/1832).^T

Key terms

• Maaß (measure) (GW 21:323), with specifisches Quantum and Regel (rule) (GW 21:329–333).^T
• Wahlverwandtschaft (elective affinity), heading at GW 21:352.^T
• Knotenlinie (nodal line), first mentioned at GW 21:346, heading at GW 21:364.^T
• das Maaßlose (the measureless) (GW 21:325, GW 21:369); Wallace's §109 "the Measureless".^TL10
• Indifferenz (indifference) (GW 21:373), the last shape before Wesen.^T

Structure

Three chapters: the specific quantity, real measure, the becoming of essence.

A passage, step by step

Das ausschliessende Maaß nach dieser nähern Bestimmung nun, in seinem Fürsichseyn sich äusserlich, stößt sich von sich selbst ab, setzt sich sowohl als ein anderes nur quantitatives, als auch als ein solches anderes Verhältniß, das zugleich ein anderes Maaß ist; … Sie bilden auf solche Weise eine Knotenlinie von Maaßen auf einer Scale des Mehr und Weniger.

The exclusive measure, so determined, external to itself in its being-for-itself, repels itself from itself, and posits itself both as another, merely quantitative ratio and as another ratio that is at the same time another measure; … In this way they form a nodal line of measures on a scale of more and less. rendering for this page

GW 21:364–365 · B. Knotenlinie von Maaßverhältnißen · 1832

Es gibt keinen Sprung in der Natur, wird gesagt; … Das Wasser wird durch die Erkältung nicht nach und nach hart, so daß es breyartig würde und allmählig bis zur Consistenz des Eises sich verhärtete, sondern ist auf einmal hart;

There is no leap in nature, it is said; … Water does not become hard little by little as it cools, turning mushy and gradually hardening to the consistency of ice; it is hard all at once; rendering for this page

GW 21:368 · Remark to the nodal line · 1832 (67% of the 1812 Remark, pp. 311–314, survives)

Remarks and digressions

• To "b. Das specificirende Maaß" (GW 21:335–336): temperature as an example. The Remark is new in 1832; the example stood in the 1812 main text of "2. Qualität und Quantum" (1812 p. 276).^T2,3
• To "c. Verhältniß beyder Seiten als Qualitäten" (GW 21:339–341): Galileo's law of fall and Kepler's laws of planetary motion; the merit credited to Newton "im Vorzug gegen Keppler" (GW 21:341).^T
• To "c. Wahlverwandtschaft" (GW 21:354–363): chemical combining proportions; Richter's series as arranged by Fischer, Berthollet (GW 21:355), Berzelius (GW 21:356). Hegel notes how much has been learned "seit diß zuerst geschrieben worden" (GW 21:355) and refers to "der ersten Ausg. dieser Logik" (GW 21:358).^T
• To the nodal line (GW 21:366–369): above.
• To "B. Die Indifferenz als umgekehrtes Verhältniß ihrer Factoren" (GW 21:377–381): elliptical motion of the heavenly bodies; absolute indifference "die Grundbestimmung der Spinozistischen Substanz zu seyn scheinen kann" (GW 21:380).^T

Debates

Misconceptions

• "Hegel calls Spinoza (or Spinoza's substance) 'measureless'."The word is said of Spinoza's mode, and only in 1832 (GW 21:325); substance is compared with absolute indifference (GW 21:380–381).^T
• "Quantity turns into quality: a one-way law."Hegel speaks of transition "vom Qualitativen in das Quantitative und umgekehrt" (GW 21:368), taking place "auf dem Boden ihrer Einheit", the substrate (GW 21:371).^T

Connections

Encyclopaedia. Enc. 1830 §§107–111. After §109 Wallace prints the following. It is not Hegel's § text: in the 1840 Werke (vol. 6) it stands in the Zusatz to §109, compiled by Henning.^E10,55

This process of measure, which appears alternately as a mere change in quantity, and then as a sudden revulsion of quantity into quality, may be envisaged under the figure of a nodal (knotted) line.

Wallace 1892 · Zusatz to §109, compiled by Henning (Werke 6, 1840)

Spinoza. Measure is the last place in Book One where Spinoza is named; the Doctrine of Essence returns to him at length (GW 11:376–379). See the Spinoza page and L4.^T42

Sources for L7: 2–3, 10, 42, 55, 137.

1812/1832The Doctrine of Being in 1812 and 1832

1812: Nürnberg: Schrag, pp. III–X, I–XXVIII, 1–334 · 1832: GW 21:4–383 · a mechanical comparison

Two texts of one book

Only the first book of the Logic, the Doctrine of Being, was revised. Hegel calls the revision "diese neue Bearbeitung der Wissenschaft der Logik, wovon hiemit der erste Band erscheint" (GW 21:10); it appeared in 1832, after his death.^T3H40 The Doctrines of Essence (1813) and of the Concept (1816) exist only in their first editions (GW 11, GW 12).^T42,43 So a reader of Book One meets two texts: the 1812 print and the 1832 revision, which is GW 21 and the text quoted in L1–L7 unless stated.

All figures are our counts from the local transcriptions (method below).^T2,3

Side by side

"Kept" is the share of the 1812 wording (runs of six words) found again in 1832. A low figure means rewriting, not necessarily new doctrine.^T2,3

Sources for each row: the local 1812 and 1832 texts.^T2,3

What reads differently

• The beginning. 1812 starts from the Phenomenology's result (1812 p. 6); 1832 starts from the history of the problem and adds the resolve (GW 21:53, GW 21:56).^T
• Spinoza. Four Spinoza passages in Book One are new in 1832 (GW 21:71, GW 21:82, GW 21:85, GW 21:148), and the sentence on the mode as "das Maaßlose" (GW 21:325).^T
• Idealism. The 1812 discussion of Kantian and Fichtean idealism stood in the main text of "c.) Idealität" (1812 p. 97); 1832 moves it into a Remark (GW 21:150) and adds the Remark "Der Satz, daß das Endliche ideell ist, macht den Idealismus aus" (GW 21:142).^T
• Hegel on the first edition. He admits its "Unvollkommenheit" (GW 21:10) and wishes he could have reworked the book "sieben und siebenzig mal" (GW 21:20).^T

How the comparison was made

Words were counted in the modernized-spelling layers of both transcriptions, without page markers, headings or footnotes, so that an unchanged sentence counts as identical (check: "A. Seyn" gives 100%). Every run of six words in an 1812 section was looked for in the whole 1832 text. Which 1812 heading corresponds to which 1832 heading is our judgment, based on the labels and the shared wording; where 1812 headings were dissolved ("2. Realität", "B. Bestimmtheit", "3. Veränderung") the match is approximate.^T2,3 GW 11 pages for the 1812 text are not in our files, so 1812 is cited by its original pages.

Sources for 1812/1832: 2–3, 40, 42–43.

L8Essence as reflection · Der Schein

GW 11:241–257 · 1813 · Book II, opening and Sec. 1, ch. 1 · J&S II, 15–34 · Enc. 1830 §§112–114

Context and aim

Book Two of the Science of Logic, the Doctrine of Essence, appeared in 1813 and exists in that edition only; unlike Book One, it was never revised.^T42 It opens with the sentence: the truth of being is essence (GW 11:241).^T Knowing, Hegel says, does not stay with what is immediate; it goes "through" it, presupposing that something other than being stands behind being. He adds at once that this path is not only our doing: "dieser Gang ist die Bewegung des Seyns selbst" (GW 11:241).^T

Hegel announces the plan of the whole book in three verbs. Essence first shines within itself (scheint), and is reflection; second, it appears (erscheint); third, it reveals itself (offenbart sich) (GW 11:243).^T This chapter covers the first verb. Chapters L9 and L10 continue Section One, L11 treats appearance, and L12 actuality. Essence, Hegel says, stands between being and concept and is the passage from one to the other (GW 11:243).^T

Key terms

• Wesen (essence). Hegel points to the verb: German keeps Wesen in the past participle of "to be", gewesen (GW 11:241).^T
• Schein (illusory being, seeming, shine). What is left of being once essence has emerged: "der ganze Rest, der noch von der Sphäre des Seyns übrig geblieben ist" (GW 11:246).^T J&S render it "Show"; Wallace uses "show", "shine" and "seeming".^I10,13
• Reflexion (reflection). Schein is the same as reflection, but as immediate; for Schein that has gone into itself "haben wir das Wort der fremden Sprache, die Reflexion" (GW 11:249).^T
• Gesetztseyn (positedness) and Voraussetzen (presupposing): an immediacy that is only as the return of the negative into itself is "das Gesetztseyn" (GW 11:251).^T
• Reflexionsbestimmung (determination of reflection): positedness fixed into a stable, "essential" determinacy (GW 11:256).^T These are the subject of L9.

Structure

The chapter moves from the essential and the unessential, through Schein, to reflection in three forms.

Reflection is first positing (GW 11:250–252), then external (GW 11:252–254, with the chapter's one Remark), then determining (GW 11:255–257).^T

A passage, step by step

Die Wahrheit des Seyns ist das Wesen. … Die Sprache hat im Zeitwort: Seyn, das Wesen in der vergangenen Zeit: gewesen, behalten; denn das Wesen ist das vergangene, aber zeitlos vergangene Seyn.

The truth of being is essence. … In the verb Seyn [to be], language has kept essence in the past tense: gewesen [been]; for essence is past being, but being that is past timelessly. rendering for this page

GW 11:241 · 1813 · Book II, opening

The hard part is the claim that Schein is not something outside essence. Hegel argues it in two pages.

Der Schein ist das Wesen selbst in der Bestimmtheit des Seyns. … Der Schein ist also das Wesen selbst, aber das Wesen in einer Bestimmtheit, aber so daß sie nur sein Moment ist, und das Wesen ist das Scheinen seiner in sich selbst.

Schein is essence itself in the determinacy of being. … Schein is therefore essence itself, but essence in a determinacy, and in such a way that this determinacy is only its moment; and essence is the shining of itself within itself. rendering for this page

GW 11:248–249 · 1813 · Sec. 1, ch. 1, B. Der Schein

Das Werden im Wesen, seine reflectirende Bewegung, ist daher die Bewegung von Nichts zu Nichts, und dadurch zu sich selbst zurück.

Becoming in essence, its reflecting movement, is therefore the movement from nothing to nothing, and thereby back to itself. rendering for this page

GW 11:250 · 1813 · Sec. 1, ch. 1, C. Die Reflexion

Hegel compresses the change since Book One into one proposition:

Das Daseyn ist nur Gesetztseyn; diß ist der Satz des Wesens vom Daseyn.

Determinate being is only positedness; this is the proposition of essence about determinate being. rendering for this page

GW 11:255–256 · 1813 · Sec. 1, ch. 1, C.3 Bestimmende Reflexion

These pages are among the most abstract in the book. Hegel gives almost no examples after step 2, and readers should expect to reread them.

Remarks and digressions

• Remark to "external reflection" (GW 11:254–255). Reflection is usually taken in a subjective sense, as the power of judgment. Hegel cites Kant's distinction between reflecting and determining judgment (Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Einl. S. XXIII f.). Kant's reflection is external reflection, yet it contains the concept of absolute reflection: the universal it seeks counts as the essence of the immediate it starts from.^T Hegel also notes that it was "eine Zeitlang Ton in der neuern Philosophie" to say every evil of reflection and to treat it as the "Antipode und Erbfeind" of the absolute standpoint (GW 11:254–255); he names no one.^T
• Skepticism and idealism (GW 11:246–247): not a Remark, but the chapter's only historical material (step 2 above).^T

Debates

Dieter Henrich devoted an essay to this chapter, "Hegels Logik der Reflexion" (Hegel im Kontext, 2010 ed., p. 95 ff.).^I138

Misconceptions

• "Schein means a mere illusion, an error in our minds."Hegel's first account of it says the opposite: "Allein der Schein ist das eigene Setzen des Wesens" (Schein is essence's own positing) (GW 11:244).^T
• "Reflection here means a thinker thinking about something."The Remark says explicitly that the topic is neither the reflection of consciousness nor that of the understanding, "sondern von der Reflexion überhaupt" (GW 11:254).^T

Connections

• Encyclopaedia 1830 §§112–114. The Encyclopaedia Logic has no separate section on Schein. The next paragraph, §115, begins in Hegel's own words: "The Essence lights up in itself or is mere reflection" (tr. Wallace 1892).^L10
• Phenomenology. In 1816 Hegel recalls that the Phenomenology rose to the understanding through sensuous consciousness and perceiving (GW 12:19). Spirit as perceiving consciousness "sich vom Seyn auf die Stuffe des Wesens oder der Reflexion erhoben hat"; but these concrete shapes, he adds, concern the science of logic as little as nature's forms do (GW 12:20). Perception is ¶111–131.^T
• Spinoza. In the Remark on Spinoza, everything that seems self-standing is reduced "zu einem blossen Gesetztseyn" in substance (GW 11:376); see L12.^T

Sources for L8: 10, 13, 42, 127, 138.

L9Identity, difference, contradiction · Die Wesenheiten oder die Reflexions-Bestimmungen

GW 11:258–290 · 1813 · Book II, Sec. 1, ch. 2 · J&S II, 35–70 · Enc. 1830 §§115–120

Context and aim

Reflection (L8) has fixed itself into stable determinations. Hegel now takes them one by one: first identity, then difference (as diversity and as opposition), and third contradiction, in which opposition "geht in seinen Grund zurück" (GW 11:258).^T Here the Science of Logic meets the traditional laws of thought head on.

The opening Remark states the issue. These determinations used to be put in the form of propositions said to hold of everything, the "allgemeinen Denkgesetze": "Alles ist sich selbst gleich; A = A. Oder negativ: A kann nicht zugleich A und nicht A seyn" (GW 11:258).^T Hegel asks why only these categories are made into such laws (GW 11:258–259), and notes that the several laws, taken as absolute, contradict one another (GW 11:260).^T

Key terms

• Identität (identity): "einfache Identität mit sich", not abstract identity produced by leaving differences aside (GW 11:260).^T
• Unterschied, Verschiedenheit, Gegensatz (difference, diversity, opposition): in diversity the sides fall apart "gleichgültig"; in opposition each is determined "nur durchs andere", as das Positive and das Negative (GW 11:279).^T
• Widerspruch (contradiction): each self-standing side excludes the other "in derselben Rüksicht" in which it contains it (GW 11:279).^T
• zu Grunde gehen: a pun. The opposites "richten sich zu Grunde" (go to ruin) and so go back into their ground (Grund) (GW 11:281–282).^T See L10.

Structure

Three determinations, each with Remarks on the "law" it was supposed to support, after an opening Remark on the laws of thought (GW 11:258–260).

A passage, step by step

The most quoted sentence of the chapter is in Remark 3 to "C. Der Widerspruch", not in Remark 1.

Wenn nun die ersten Reflexionsbestimmungen, die Identität, die Verschiedenheit und die Entgegensetzung, in einem Satze aufgestellt worden, so sollte noch vielmehr diejenige, in welche sie als in ihre Wahrheit übergehen, nemlich der Widerspruch, in einen Satz gefaßt und gesagt werden: Alle Dinge sind an sich selbst widersprechend, und zwar in dem Sinne, daß dieser Satz gegen die übrigen vielmehr die Wahrheit und das Wesen der Dinge ausdrücke.

If the first determinations of reflection, identity, diversity and opposition, have been set up in a proposition, then all the more should the one into which they pass as into their truth, namely contradiction, be put into a proposition: All things are in themselves contradictory; and this in the sense that this proposition, as against the others, expresses rather the truth and the essence of things. rendering for this page

GW 11:286 · 1813 · Sec. 1, ch. 2, C, Remark 3

Denn die Identität ihm gegenüber ist nur die Bestimmung des einfachen Unmittelbaren, des todten Seyns; er aber ist die Wurzel aller Bewegung und Lebendigkeit; nur insofern etwas in sich selbst einen Widerspruch hat, bewegt es sich, hat Trieb und Thätigkeit.

For identity, compared with it, is only the determination of the simple immediate, of dead being; but contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; only insofar as something has a contradiction within itself does it move, have drive and activity. rendering for this page

GW 11:286 · Remark 3

Es bewegt sich etwas nur, nicht indem es in diesem Itzt hier ist, und in einem andern Itzt dort, sondern indem es in einem und demselben Itzt hier und nicht hier, indem es in diesem Hier zugleich ist und nicht ist.

Something moves only, not insofar as it is here in this now and there in another now, but insofar as in one and the same now it is here and not here, insofar as in this here it at once is and is not. rendering for this page

GW 11:287 · Remark 3

Readers weigh steps 1–5 against step 6 differently; that is the dispute below.

Remarks and digressions

• Identity, Remark 1 (GW 11:261–262): thinking that knows only external reflection takes reason for a loom (Webstuhl) that weaves the warp of identity and the weft of difference together from outside.^T
• Identity, Remark 2 (GW 11:262–265): A = A is "der Ausdruck der leeren Tavtologie". Answer "what is a plant?" with "eine Pflanze ist – eine Pflanze" and everyone agrees nothing has been said; such talk "contradicts itself" (GW 11:264). The laws of identity and contradiction are "nicht bloß analytischer, sondern synthetischer Natur" (GW 11:265). Taken as asserting abstract identity against difference, the law is "kein Denkgesetz, sondern vielmehr das Gegentheil davon"; yet it contains more than is meant by it (GW 11:265).^T
• Diversity, Remark (GW 11:270–272): the law that no two things are alike; Leibniz at court, the ladies searching for two identical leaves, and "Glückliche Zeiten für die Metaphysik" (GW 11:271). The Remark to opposition (GW 11:275–278) treats positive and negative magnitudes.^T
• Contradiction, Remark 1 (GW 11:283–285): "Das Positive und Negative ist dasselbe", with light and darkness, virtue and vice, truth and error. Without this insight "läßt sich eigentlich kein Schritt in der Philosophie thun" (GW 11:285).^T
• Contradiction, Remark 2 (GW 11:285–286): the excluded middle. Said of spirit, "sweet or not sweet, green or not green" is "eine Trivialität". In the formula itself A is the third that was to be excluded (GW 11:286).^T
• Contradiction, Remark 3 (GW 11:286–290): the passage above, ending with the ontological proof and the inference from the finite to the absolute.^T

Debates

The SEP entry "Dialetheism" (§2.1) treats Hegel as a possible dialetheist.^I145

Misconceptions

• "Hegel denied the law of non-contradiction."Not a settled error but a live dispute (above). Readers weigh three statements differently: the law as abstract identity is "kein Denkgesetz" yet says more than is meant (GW 11:265); "Alle Dinge sind an sich selbst widersprechend" (GW 11:286); the contradictory "löst sich allerdings in Nichts auf" and becomes ground (GW 11:289).^TI65,139
• "Hegel, like the ancient dialecticians, uses contradiction to show that motion is unreal."He grants their contradictions but reverses the inference: motion is "der daseyende Widerspruch selbst" (GW 11:287).^T

Connections

• Encyclopaedia 1830 §§115–120. Hegel's own §120: "Both Positive and Negative are therefore explicit contradiction" (tr. Wallace 1892).^L10
• Book One. Remark 3 refers back to the infinite, "das der Widerspruch ist, wie er in der Sphäre des Seyns sich zeigt" (GW 11:287).^T
• Logic page. Aristotle's logic (the logic page, ✱1); paraconsistent logics, the formal setting of Priest's view (the logic page, ✱18).^I145,146

Sources for L9: 10, 65, 139–146.

L10Ground · Der Grund

GW 11:291–322 · 1813 · Book II, Sec. 1, ch. 3 · J&S II, 71–106 · Enc. 1830 §§121–122

Context and aim

Contradiction ended with the opposites going "zu Grunde", to ruin and into their ground (L9). The chapter opens: "Das Wesen bestimmt sich selbst als Grund" (GW 11:291).^T Ground is still a determination of reflection, but the last one. Hegel contrasts it with reflection: reflection is "die reine Vermittlung", ground is "die reale Vermittlung des Wesens mit sich" (GW 11:292).^T

The plan has three steps (GW 11:292). Ground is first absolute ground, worked out as form and essence, form and matter, form and content. Second, it is determinate ground, the ground of a determinate content. Third, ground and condition presuppose each other; their unity, "die Sache an sich", passes into existence.^T In our gloss, not a sourced reading, the chapter asks what it means to give a reason for something; its Remark on formal ground criticizes one kind of explanation (GW 11:304).^T

Key terms

• Grund, Begründetes (ground, grounded): the two sides of the "Grundbeziehung" (GW 11:292, GW 11:294).^T
• Form, Materie, Inhalt (form, matter, content): the pairs through which absolute ground determines itself (GW 11:294–302).^T
• formeller, realer, vollständiger Grund (formal, real, complete ground) (GW 11:302–314).^T
• Bedingung, das Unbedingte, die Sache (condition, the unconditioned, the matter itself) (GW 11:314–322).^T
• zureichender Grund (sufficient reason): the subject of the opening Remark (GW 11:293).^T

Structure

Absolute ground, determinate ground and condition, with three Remarks.

A passage, step by step

Formal ground has the same content on both sides: "es ist nichts im Grunde, was nicht im Begründeten ist" (GW 11:303).^T The Remark draws the consequence with Hegel's own example from physics.

Die Wissenschaften, vornemlich die physikalischen, sind mit den Tavtologieen dieser Art angefüllt, welche gleichsam ein Vorrecht der Wissenschaft ausmachen. – Es wird z. B. als der Grund, daß die Planeten sich um die Sonne bewegen, die anziehende Kraft der Erde und Sonne gegeneinander angegeben. Es ist damit dem Inhalt nach nichts anders ausgesprochen, als was das Phänomen, nemlich die Beziehung dieser Körper auf einander in ihrer Bewegung, enthält, nur in der Form von in sich reflectirter Bestimmung, von Kraft.

The sciences, especially the physical ones, are full of tautologies of this kind, which are, as it were, a privilege of science. For example, the attractive force of the earth and sun towards each other is given as the ground why the planets move round the sun. As to content, this says nothing other than what the phenomenon contains, namely the relation of these bodies to one another in their motion, only in the form of a determination reflected into itself, of force. rendering for this page

GW 11:304 · 1813 · Sec. 1, ch. 3, B.a, Remark

Leibnitz warf der Newtonischen anziehenden Kraft vor, daß sie eine solche verborgene Qualität sey, als die Scholastiker zum Behuf des Erklärens gebrauchten. Man müßte ihr eher das Gegentheil zum Vorwurf machen, daß sie eine zu bekannte Qualität sey; denn sie hat keinen andern Inhalt, als die Erscheinung selbst.

Leibniz charged the Newtonian attractive force with being an occult quality of the kind the Scholastics used for explaining. One should rather reproach it with the opposite, that it is a too well-known quality; for it has no other content than the appearance itself. rendering for this page

GW 11:305 · same Remark

The chapter ends by letting the ground disappear into what it grounds:

Wenn alle Bedingungen einer Sache vorhanden sind, so tritt sie in die Existenz.

When all the conditions of a matter are present, it steps into existence. rendering for this page

GW 11:321 · 1813 · Sec. 1, ch. 3, C.c Hervorgang der Sache in die Existenz

The matter is thus "eben so, wie sie das Unbedingte ist, auch das Grundlose" (GW 11:322).^T The resulting immediacy is existence, the theme of L11.

Remarks and digressions

• On the principle of sufficient reason (GW 11:293). "Alles hat seinen zureichenden Grund" means that what is should be regarded as posited, not as immediate. "Sufficient" is strictly superfluous. Leibniz, however, opposed the sufficient ground to mechanical causality and meant final causes as well; the teleological ground belongs to the concept and comes later.^T
• On formal ground (GW 11:304–307): the passage above.^T
• On real ground (GW 11:309–312). Once ground and grounded have different content, contingency enters. Gravity grounds the house standing, the stone falling and the projectile's throw against the fall (GW 11:309). Punishment is retribution, a deterrent example, a threat made by law and a means of reform, and each has been taken as its ground (GW 11:310). Any of an official's traits can be named as the ground of his post (GW 11:310–311). "Was Socrates und Plato Sophisterey nennen, ist nichts anderes als das Raisonnement aus Gründen" (GW 11:311). No such ground is "zureichender Grund, d. h. der Begriff" (GW 11:312).^T

Debates

Misconceptions

• "Hegel called Newton's gravity an occult quality."He reports that charge as Leibniz's and turns it round: the force is a "zu bekannte" quality, with no content beyond the appearance (GW 11:305).^T
• "Hegel rejects the principle of sufficient reason."He reinterprets it: what is must be seen as posited (GW 11:293), and the only truly sufficient ground is the concept (GW 11:312).^T

Connections

• Encyclopaedia 1830 §121, Hegel's own paragraph: "The Ground is the unity of identity and difference" (tr. Wallace 1892).^L10
• Later in the Logic. The Remark on sufficient reason points ahead to purpose (Zweck) as the teleological ground (GW 11:293); see L14.^T
• Phenomenology (our comparison, not a cross-reference by Hegel). In "Force and the Understanding" the understanding's explaining is said to explain nothing and only repeat what was already said (¶155; 1807 pp. 85–86).^T

Sources for L10: 10, 15, 126.

L11Appearance · Die Erscheinung

GW 11:323–368 · 1813 · Book II, Sec. 2 · J&S II, 107–159 · Enc. 1830 §§123–141

Context and aim

Section Two opens: "Das Wesen muß erscheinen" (GW 11:323).^T Hegel sums up the book so far in two propositions. The Doctrine of Being contains the first, "being is essence"; Section One of Essence contains the second, "essence is being". The being that essence makes itself into is "die Existenz", and Schein (L8) now "vervollständigt sich zur Erscheinung" (GW 11:323).^T

The section has three chapters (GW 11:323–324). Existence is first a thing with properties. The thing turns into appearance, and over against the world of appearance there arises a world "in itself". The two worlds then stand in an essential relation: whole and parts, force and its expression, inner and outer.^T Appearance here is not a veil over the real: "Die Erscheinung ist das, was das Ding an sich ist, oder seine Wahrheit" (GW 11:323).^T

Key terms

• Existenz (existence): immediacy that has come forth from ground (GW 11:322–323). Hegel coins a matching law: "Alles, was ist, existirt" (GW 11:324).^T
• Ding, Eigenschaft, Materie (thing, property, matter): the thing "has" properties, which then become self-standing matters it "consists of" (GW 11:327–337).^T
• Gesetz der Erscheinung (law of appearance): what stays the same in what appears (GW 11:342–347).^T
• die verkehrte Welt (the inverted world): the world in and for itself is "die verkehrte der erscheinenden" (GW 11:350).^T
• wesentliches Verhältniß (essential relation): whole and parts, force and expression, outer and inner (GW 11:353–366).^T

Structure

Existence, appearance, essential relation, with four Remarks.

A passage, step by step

The thing, made of many matters, is where existence breaks down. Hegel puts it in the body text:

Die Materien sind daher wesentlich porös, so daß die eine besteht in den Poren oder in dem Nichtbestehen der andern; aber diese andern sind selbst porös; in ihren Poren oder ihrem Nichtbestehen besteht auch die erste, und alle die übrigen;

The matters are therefore essentially porous, so that one subsists in the pores, or in the non-subsistence, of the others; but these others are themselves porous; in their pores or their non-subsistence the first subsists too, and all the rest; rendering for this page

GW 11:337 · 1813 · Sec. 2, ch. 1, C. Die Auflösung des Dinges

The Remark that follows examines the physics of his day.

Die Ausrede, durch welche das Vorstellen den Widerspruch des selbstständigen Bestehens der mehrern Materien in Einem, oder die Gleichgültigkeit derselben gegen einander in ihrer Durchdringung abhält, pflegt bekanntlich die Kleinheit der Theile und der Poren zu seyn. … Diß ist widersprechend; aber das Ding ist nichts anderes als dieser Widerspruch selbst; darum ist es Erscheinung.

The excuse by which representation keeps off the contradiction of the self-standing subsistence of several matters in one, or of their indifference to one another in their interpenetration, is, as is well known, the smallness of the parts and pores. … This is contradictory; but the thing is nothing other than this contradiction itself; that is why it is appearance. rendering for this page

GW 11:338–339 · Remark to C

Remarks and digressions

• The thing-in-itself (GW 11:331–332): it is the empty abstraction from all determinacy, so one can know nothing of it. Transcendental idealism puts every determination into consciousness: that leaves are green and not black, that sugar is sweet. The consciousness of freedom contradicts this.^T Hegel's back-reference "I. Abth. S. 64" is a GW page; the 1813 print reads "S. 55", the 1812 Remark at 1812 p. 55.^T147
• Porosity (GW 11:337–340): the passage above.^T
• Whole and parts (GW 11:358–359): Kant's antinomy of the infinite divisibility of matter, treated earlier under quantity (print reference "S. 139 ff.", that is 1812 p. 139 ff.).^T147
• Inner and outer (GW 11:366–368): "Die Bewegung des Wesens ist überhaupt das Werden zum Begriffe" (GW 11:366). At its beginning everything real is only an immediate identity of inner and outer: "So ist das reine Seyn unmittelbar das Nichts" (GW 11:367).^T

The inverted world carries the one reference to the Phenomenology in the whole Doctrine of Essence, a footnote.^T

Der Nordpol in der erscheinenden Welt, ist an und für sich der Südpol, und umgekehrt; die positive Electricität ist an sich negative u.s.f. Was im erscheinenden Daseyn böse, Unglük u.s.f. ist, ist an und für sich gut und ein Glück … (Vergl. Phänomenologie des Geistes. S. 96. ff.)

The north pole in the world of appearance is in and for itself the south pole, and conversely; positive electricity is in itself negative, and so on. What in appearing existence is evil, misfortune and so on, is in and for itself good and good fortune. … [Footnote:] (Compare Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 96 ff.) rendering for this page

GW 11:351 · 1813 · Sec. 2, ch. 2, C. Auflösung der Erscheinung, with Hegel's footnote

Debates

Misconceptions

• "For Hegel, appearance is a mere surface hiding the real thing.""Die Erscheinung ist das, was das Ding an sich ist, oder seine Wahrheit" (GW 11:323). The world "in itself" turns out to be the inverted copy of the appearing world, and their difference vanishes (GW 11:350–351).^T

Connections

• Phenomenology, by Hegel's own footnote. Our text layer records no change to this page number, unlike the back-references at GW 11:331 and GW 11:358, so we read it as 1807 pagination.^T147 1807 p. 96 falls at the end of ¶162 and the start of ¶163, on infinity. The inverted world itself, with the poles and electricity, is ¶157–160 (1807 pp. 88–93).^T Read as a GW 9 page, 96 would point to ¶156–157. Either way Hegel pairs this section with the end of "Force and the Understanding".^T
• Encyclopaedia 1830 §§123–141. §131, in Hegel's own words: "The Essence must appear or shine forth" (tr. Wallace 1892).^L10
• Logic, Book One. The inner/outer Remark recalls the beginning, pure being as nothing (GW 11:367); the whole/parts Remark recalls the antinomy under quantity.^T

Sources for L11: 10, 15, 126, 147.

L12Actuality · Die Wirklichkeit

GW 11:369–409 · 1813 · Book II, Sec. 3 · with "Vom Begriff im allgemeinen", GW 12:11–16 · 1816 · J&S II, 160–206 · Enc. 1830 §§142–159

Context and aim

"Die Wirklichkeit ist die Einheit des Wesens und der Existenz" (GW 11:369).^T The section has three chapters. The Absolute comes first, with reflection still external to it. Then actuality proper, whose formal moments are actuality, possibility and necessity. Last, the absolute relation, the Absolute as relation to itself: "Substanz" (GW 11:369).^T

Absolute necessity "ist daher blind" (GW 11:391); its blind passing over is "die eigene Auslegung des Absoluten" and is substance (GW 11:392).^T Substance, causality and reciprocity close Book Two with the words: "Diß ist der Begriff, das Reich der Subjectivität oder der Freyheit" (GW 11:409).^T The section is also where Hegel settles accounts with Spinoza.

Key terms

• Absolute (the Absolute) and Auslegung (exposition): presenting the Absolute cannot be an external determining but only "ein Zeigen dessen was es ist" (GW 11:370).^T
• Attribut, Modus (attribute, mode): Spinoza's terms, taken over as the Absolute's moments (GW 11:373–375).^T
• Wirklichkeit (actuality), with Möglichkeit, Zufälligkeit, Nothwendigkeit (possibility, contingency, necessity) (GW 11:380–392).^T
• Substanz, Causalität, Wechselwirkung (substance, causality, reciprocity) (GW 11:394–409).^T

Structure

Three chapters; the only Remark in the section is the one on Spinoza and Leibniz.

A passage, step by step

Dem Begriffe des Absoluten und dem Verhältnisse der Reflexion zu demselben, wie es sich hier dargestellt hat, entspricht der Begriff der Spinozistischen Substanz. … Die Bestimmtheit ist Negation, ist das absolute Princip der Spinozistischen Philosophie; diese wahrhafte und einfache Einsicht begründet die absolute Einheit der Substanz. Aber Spinoza bleibt bey der Negation als Bestimmtheit oder Qualität stehen; er geht nicht zur Erkenntniß derselben als absoluter, das heißt, sich negirender Negation fort;

To the concept of the Absolute, and to the relation of reflection to it, as it has presented itself here, there corresponds the concept of Spinoza's substance. … Determinateness is negation: this is the absolute principle of Spinoza's philosophy; this true and simple insight grounds the absolute unity of substance. But Spinoza stops at negation as determinateness or quality; he does not go on to know it as absolute, that is, self-negating negation; rendering for this page

GW 11:376 · 1813 · Sec. 3, ch. 1, Remark

In 1813 the formula appears in German only. The Latin "omnis determinatio est negatio" enters the Logic with the 1832 Book One (GW 21:101); the 1812 edition has "(Determinatio est negatio)" (1812 p. 75).^T

Three years later, opening the Doctrine of the Concept, Hegel says what this critique was for:

Die wahrhafte Widerlegung muß in die Kraft des Gegners eingehen und sich in den Umkreis seiner Stärke stellen; ihn ausserhalb seiner selbst angreiffen und da Recht zu behalten, wo er nicht ist, fördert die Sache nicht. … Die im letzten Buch enthaltene Exposition der Substanz, welche zum Begriffe überführt, ist daher die einzige und wahrhafte Widerlegung des Spinozismus.

True refutation must enter into the opponent's strength and place itself within the range of his power; to attack him outside himself and to be in the right where he is not does not advance the matter. … The exposition of substance in the last book, which leads over to the concept, is therefore the sole and true refutation of Spinozism. rendering for this page

GW 12:15 · 1816 · Vom Begriff im allgemeinen

Spinoza's standpoint is "nothwendig", and "insofern ist das System vollkommen wahr. – Aber es ist nicht der höchste Standpunkt" (GW 12:14).^T The objective logic is the concept's "genetische Exposition" (GW 12:11), and freedom shows itself as "die Wahrheit der Nothwendigkeit" (GW 12:12).^T

Remarks and digressions

• The Remark on Spinoza, emanation and Leibniz (GW 11:376–379) is the section's only Remark; modality and the absolute relation have none.^T
• "Vom Begriff im allgemeinen" (GW 12:11–28) is the introductory essay of Volume Two, after the Vorbericht (GW 12:5–6). Its back-reference to the Spinoza Remark, "S. 376f." in our GW-based text, reads "S. 225 f." in the 1816 print, the 1813 page.^T147 Besides Spinoza it treats Kant's unity of apperception (GW 12:17–18) and ends with Aristotle (GW 12:28); see L13.^T

Debates

Misconceptions

• "Hegel simply rejected Spinoza."He calls Spinoza's standpoint necessary and "vollkommen wahr", only not the highest; refutation must start by granting it (GW 12:14–15).^T
• "The Logic calls Spinoza an acosmist."The word does not occur in the Logic (search of both corpora).^T42 It comes from the Encyclopaedia (below).

Connections

Acosmism: Hegel's Remark vs Henning's Zusatz. In Hegel's own Remark to Enc. 1830 §50, Spinoza's system is called acosmism rather than atheism.^L55

daß in dem spinozischen Systeme vielmehr die Welt nur als ein Phänomen, dem nicht wirkliche Realität zukomme, bestimmt wird, so daß dieses System vielmehr als Akosmismus anzusehen ist.

it would still be true that the system of Spinoza was not Atheism but Acosmism, defining the world to be an appearance lacking in true reality.

Enc. 1830 §50 Remark · German from Werke 6 (1840), p. 110 (scan OCR) · tr. Wallace 1892

• The long passage on Spinoza after §151 ("should rather be styled Acosmism"; "for that reason certainly pantheistic") is a Zusatz compiled by Henning for Werke 6 (1840), pp. 300–302, not Hegel's text.^E55,67 The §573 Remark (Werke 7.2, 1845, p. 459) sets Krishna's All beside the Eleatic One and Spinoza's substance. Later in the same Remark, referring back to "50. Anm.", Hegel says that philosophies such as the Eleatic or the Spinozist so little identify God with the world that they would more rightly be called "Monotheismen" and, in relation to the idea of the world, "Akosmismen" (p. 463, scan OCR).^L56
• Encyclopaedia 1830 §§142–159. It has no chapter on the Absolute, attribute and mode.^L10
• Series. Substance and attributes are treated on the the Spinoza page page; the hub chapter ↔ gathers the links.

Sources for L12: 10, 42, 55–56, 67, 134, 137, 147–149.

L13Concept, judgment, syllogism · Die Subjectivität

GW 12:31–126 · 1816 · Vol. II, Sec. 1 · J&S II, 233–342 · Macran 1912, pp. 146–283 · Enc. 1830 §§163–193

Context and aim

Book Two ended with the concept as "the realm of freedom" (L12). Section One of the Subjective Logic treats the concept in three steps (GW 12:31). It is first the formal, immediate concept. Second, as absolute negativity it divides itself ("so dirimirt er sich"), and is the judgment. Third, through the judgment's own movement it becomes the syllogism, "zum vollständig gesetzten Begriff". The syllogism's contradiction then carries the concept over into objectivity (L14).^T

This is the part of the Logic that covers the ground of school logic: concepts, judgments, syllogisms. Hegel's introductory essay gives Aristotle "ein unendliches Verdienst" for first describing these forms, but asks that their systematic connection and their value be known (GW 12:28).^T It also credits Kant with "den tiefsten und richtigsten Einsichten": the unity that makes up the essence of the concept is the original synthetic unity of apperception (GW 12:17–18).^T

Key terms

• Begriff (concept) with three moments: Allgemeinheit, Besonderheit, Einzelnheit (GW 12:32).^T Macran (1912) renders "concept" and "universal, particular, singular" ("The Singular is Universal", p. 189); J&S use "Notion" and "Universal, Particular, Individual"; Wallace uses "Notion".^I10,13,71
• Urtheil (judgment): "die ursprüngliche Theilung des ursprünglich Einen" (GW 12:55).^T Macran: "judgement".^I71
• Schluß (syllogism, inference): "Alles Vernünftige ist ein Schluß" (GW 12:90).^T
• E–B–A: Hegel writes the figures with Einzelnes, Besonderes, Allgemeines: E–B–A, B–E–A, E–A–B, and A–A–A, "der mathematische Schluß" (GW 12:93–106).^T Macran prints the first as "S—P—U" (p. 236).^I71

Structure

Concept, judgment and syllogism, each with its own triads; only the concept and the syllogism chapters have a Remark.

The judgments run from those of determinate being (positive, negative, infinite) through reflection and necessity to the judgments of the concept (assertoric, problematic, apodictic) (GW 12:59–89). The syllogisms run from those of determinate being (the figures) through reflection (allness, induction, analogy) to necessity (categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive) (GW 12:92–126).^T

A passage, step by step

Two sentences give the measure of Hegel's claim. A report of fact, "Aristoteles ist im 73ten Jahre seines Alters … gestorben", is "ein blosser Satz, kein Urtheil" (GW 12:55–56).^T And:

Alle Dinge sind der Schluß, ein Allgemeines, das durch die Besonderheit mit der Einzelnheit zusammengeschlossen ist; aber freylich sind sie nicht aus drey Sätzen bestehende Ganzes.

All things are the syllogism, a universal joined together with singularity through particularity; but of course they are not wholes made up of three propositions. rendering for this page

GW 12:95 · 1816 · Sec. 1, ch. 3, A.a Erste Figur

The Remark after the fourth figure (GW 12:106–110) is Hegel's reckoning with logic as calculation.

Der Ploucquetsche Calcul hat ohne Zweifel die consequenteste Verfahrungsweise ergriffen, wodurch das Verhältniß des Schlusses fähig wird, dem Calcul unterworfen zu werden.

The calculus of Ploucquet has beyond doubt seized the most consistent method by which the relationship of the syllogism …

GW 12:110 · 1816 · Remark to A.d · tr. Macran 1912, p. 261

Diese Empfehlung, daß Ungebildeten durch den Calcul mechanisch die ganze Logik beygebracht werden könne, ist wohl das schlimmste, was von einer Erfindung über die Darstellung der logischen Wissenschaft gesagt werden kann.

This recommendation, that the whole of logic could be taught mechanically to the uneducated by means of the calculus, is surely the worst that can be said of an invention concerning the presentation of the science of logic. rendering for this page

GW 12:110 · same Remark

Remarks and digressions

• Remark to the particular concept (GW 12:43–48): against the usual classifications of concepts. Euler and "der trocken verständige Lambert" tried to mark conceptual relations by lines and figures, to raise logic "zu einem Calcul" – "oder vielmehr in der That herabzusetzen" (GW 12:47).^T
• Remark after the fourth figure (GW 12:106–110): the passage above.^T
• Aristotle (GW 12:93, GW 12:103): Aristotle "hat sich mehr an das blosse Verhältniß der Inhärenz gehalten". The usual fourth figure, "die Aristoteles nicht gekannt", concerns "einen ganz leeren, interesselosen Unterschied".^T

Debates

Misconceptions

• "Hegel dismissed formal logic."He calls the syllogism "die Form der Vernünftigkeit" and its study of the greatest interest (GW 12:107–108); what he rejects is treating its terms as conceptless counters (GW 12:109).^T
• "The Science of Logic is a formal logic."Nor that: its interest is the "systematische Zusammenhang" and "Werth" of the forms (GW 12:28), and things themselves are syllogisms (GW 12:95).^T

Connections

• Logic page. Leibniz's universal characteristic and the arithmetic of concepts, Hegel's target at GW 12:109–110: the logic page, ✱8. Aristotle's figures, which Hegel rewrites as E–B–A and the rest: the logic page, ✱1. Hegel's objection to Ploucquet predates Boole (1847); any link to the logic page, ✱9 is thematic only (our comparison).^TI146
• Macran's notes (1912, p. 293) connect the quantified predicate with "Ploucquet and Sir William Hamilton".^I71
• Encyclopaedia 1830 §§163–193. §181, Hegel's own paragraph: "The Syllogism brings the notion and the judgment into one" (tr. Wallace 1892).^L10

Sources for L13: 10, 13, 71, 92, 146, 150.

L14Objectivity · Die Objectivität

GW 12:127–172 · 1816 · Vol. II, Sec. 2 · J&S II, 343–394 · Macran 1929 · Enc. 1830 §§194–212

Context and aim

The syllogism has made the concept whole (L13); now the concept "sich zur Objectivität bestimmt" (GW 12:127).^T Hegel says at once what this transition is. It is, in its determination, what the old metaphysics called the inference from the concept of God to his existence, the ontological proof. Descartes' "erhabenste Gedanke", that God is the being whose concept includes his being, sank into the bad form of a formal inference and so fell to Kant's critique that existence cannot be "picked out" of the concept (GW 12:127).^T

Objectivity has three chapters: mechanism, chemism and teleology. The question behind them is old: whether the absolute essence of the world is to be grasped as blind mechanism or as an understanding that determines itself by purposes (GW 12:154).^T Hegel's answer is that purpose (Zweck) "hat sich aber als die Wahrheit des Mechanismus erwiesen" (GW 12:155).^T Macran translated this section and the Idea in 1929 (Hegel's Logic of World and Idea); its text was not available for this page.^H72

Key terms

• Mechanismus (mechanism): objects whose relation is "eine fremde" to them, "Zusammensetzung, Vermischung, Hauffen". There is spiritual mechanism too: mechanical memory, habit (GW 12:133).^T
• Chemismus (chemism): the moment of judgment in objectivity, objectified difference (GW 12:148). Hegel's analogies are the sexual relation, love and friendship (GW 12:148–149); in spirit, the sign and language play the part that water plays as a neutral medium (GW 12:150).^T
• Zweck, Mittel (purpose, means): subjective purpose, means, realized purpose (GW 12:160–172).^T
• List der Vernunft (cunning of reason): first use at GW 12:166.^T J&S: "cunning of Reason".^I13

Structure

Mechanism, chemism, teleology, each in three steps; there are no Remarks in this section.

A passage, step by step

Daß der Zweck sich aber in die mittelbare Beziehung mit dem Object setzt, und zwischen sich und dasselbe ein anderes Object einschiebt, kann als die List der Vernunft angesehen werden.

But that the purpose puts itself into a mediated relation with the object and inserts another object between itself and it, can be regarded as the cunning of reason. rendering for this page

GW 12:166 · 1816 · Sec. 2, ch. 3, C. Der ausgeführte Zweck

der Pflug ist ehrenvoller, als unmittelbar die Genüsse sind, welche durch ihn bereitet werden und die Zwecke sind. Das Werkzeug erhält sich, während die unmittelbaren Genüsse vergehen und vergessen werden. An seinen Werkzeugen besitzt der Mensch die Macht über die äusserliche Natur, wenn er auch nach seinen Zwecken ihr vielmehr unterworfen ist.

the plough is more honorable than the enjoyments it prepares, which are the purposes. The tool lasts, while the immediate enjoyments pass away and are forgotten. In his tools man possesses power over external nature, even though by his purposes he is rather subject to it. rendering for this page

GW 12:166 · same section

The example is the plough, not history. The passage is about how any finite purpose works through means.

Remarks and digressions

• The ontological proof (GW 12:127–128): the passage from concept to objectivity is its true content (see Context). Hegel refers back to Book One on the hundred thalers; the print reads "S. 27. ff." where our GW-based text has "S. 47. f.".^T147
• A syllogism in politics (GW 12:144–145): government, citizens and their needs are three terms, "deren jeder die Mitte der zwey andern ist".^T
• Kant (GW 12:157–159): "Eines der grossen Verdienste Kants" is the distinction between external and inner purposiveness; in the latter Kant opened up the concept of life, the Idea (GW 12:157). Hegel then quotes Kant's third antinomy, here using the words Thesis and Antithesis, and the antinomy of teleological judgment (GW 12:157–158). He objects that Kant assigns the teleological principle to a merely reflecting judgment (GW 12:159).^T

Debates

Kreines (2015), as summarized by Yeomans (NDPR 2016), reads Hegel's metaphysics as an inquiry into explanation. Mechanism, life and spirit are three orders of explanation (Kreines, p. 23), and his reading is inflationary about teleology while deflationary about the unconditioned (p. 150).^I126 No reading opposed to his on these chapters was checked for this page.

Misconceptions

• "The cunning of reason is Hegel's theory of history: reason uses human passions."In the Logic it is a step in finite teleology: a purpose sets a tool between itself and the object (GW 12:166).^T The history version belongs to the lectures on the philosophy of history, edited by Gans and, in the second edition, Karl Hegel (Werke 9, 1840); that passage was not checked for this page.^E151
• "Hegel described his own method with Thesis and Antithesis."Where these words appear in the Teleology chapter, they quote Kant's antinomy (GW 12:157–158).^T See L15 and U5.

Connections

• Encyclopaedia 1830 §§194–212. In Hegel's own §209 the subjective end keeps itself free of the processes in which objects wear one another out: "Doing so, it appears as the Cunning of reason" (tr. Wallace 1892).^L10 The lines Wallace prints next, "Reason is as cunning as it is powerful", extended to Divine Providence as "absolute cunning", are not Hegel's text but the Zusatz compiled by Henning for the 1840 Werke (vol. 6, p. 382: "Zusatz. Die Vernunft ist eben so listig als mächtig").^E55
• Back to Ground. In Book Two Hegel had said that Leibniz's sufficient reason meant final causes, and that "der teleologische Grund" belongs to the concept (GW 11:293); this is where it is treated. See L10.^T
• Forward to the Idea. Kant's inner purposiveness "opened up" the concept of life (GW 12:157), the first chapter of L15.^T

Sources for L14: 10, 13, 55, 72, 126, 147, 151.

L15The Idea · Die Idee

GW 12:173–253 · 1816 · Vol. II, Sec. 3 · J&S II, 395–486 · Enc. 1830 §§213–244

Context and aim

Purpose realized has made the concept identical with objectivity (L14). The last section opens with a definition: "Die Idee ist der adäquate Begriff, das objective Wahre, oder das Wahre als solches" (GW 12:173).^T Hegel notes that Kant reclaimed the word Idee for the concept of reason (GW 12:173).^T

Three chapters follow: life, the idea of cognition (the true and the good), and the absolute idea with the method. Hegel anticipates the objection that life does not belong in a logic. If logic contained only "leere, todte Gedankenformen", he replies, no such content could appear in it; but its object is absolute truth, and truth is essentially in cognition (GW 12:179).^T

Key terms

• Idee (Idea): "Etwas hat nur Wahrheit, insofern es Idee ist" (GW 12:173).^T
• Leben (life): the living individual, the life process, the genus (GW 12:182). The process of the genus ends: "der Tod dieses Lebens ist das Hervorgehen des Geistes" (GW 12:191).^T
• Erkennen (cognition): analytic, then synthetic, cognition through definition, division and theorem (GW 12:202–230); then the idea of the good (GW 12:231–235).^T
• Methode (method): beginning (GW 12:239), progression (GW 12:241), and a whole that is "ein Kreis von Kreisen" (GW 12:252).^T
• Triplicität (triplicity): Hegel's own word for the threefold form of the method (GW 12:247).^T

Structure

Life, cognition, the absolute idea; the section has no Remarks.

A passage, step by step

The absolute idea "allein ist Seyn, unvergängliches Leben, sich wissende Wahrheit, und ist alle Wahrheit" (GW 12:236).^T Its content is the system just traversed; what remains is the form of its movement, the method. At the method's turning point Hegel stops to count.

Diß zweyte Unmittelbare ist im ganzen Verlauffe, wenn man überhaupt zählen will, das Dritte, zum ersten Unmittelbaren und zum Vermittelten. … so kann das als Dritte gezählte auch als Viertes gezählt, und statt der Triplicität die abstracte Form als eine Quadruplicität genommen werden; … Daß es diese Einheit, so wie daß die ganze Form der Methode eine Triplicität ist, ist zwar ganz nur die oberflächliche, äusserliche Seite der Weise des Erkennens;

This second immediate is, in the whole course, if one wants to count at all, the third, to the first immediate and to the mediated. … so what is counted as third can also be counted as fourth, and the abstract form can be taken as a quadruplicity instead of a triplicity; … That it is this unity, and that the whole form of the method is a triplicity, is indeed only the superficial, external side of the manner of knowing; rendering for this page

GW 12:247 · 1816 · Sec. 3, ch. 3, Die absolute Idee

Der Formalismus hat sich zwar der Triplicität gleichfalls bemächtigt, und sich an das leere Schema derselben gehalten; der seichte Unfug und das Kahle des modernen philosophischen sogenannten Construirens, das in nichts besteht, als jenes formelle Schema, ohne Begriff und immanente Bestimmung überall anzuhängen, und zu einem äusserlichen Ordnen zu gebrauchen, hat jene Form langweilig und übel berüchtigt gemacht.

Formalism, it is true, has also seized on triplicity and kept to its empty schema; the shallow mischief and barrenness of modern philosophical so-called construing, which consists in nothing but attaching that formal schema everywhere, without concept and immanent determination, and using it for an external ordering, has made that form boring and notorious. rendering for this page

GW 12:247–248 · same chapter

The passage is short and easy to over-read. Hegel defends the threefold form while calling the counting external, and nowhere in either book does he name its moments thesis, antithesis and synthesis.^T43 The Logic ends when the idea "sich selbst frey entläßt" into nature (GW 12:253).^T

Remarks and digressions

• Spinoza and Wolff (GW 12:228–230): Spinoza's example of the geometrical method "hat noch lange als ein Muster gegolten" until Kant and Jacobi overturned the old metaphysics (GW 12:229). A footnote (GW 12:228) mocks Wolff's Anfangsgründe der Baukunst: its eighth theorem proves that a window must be wide enough for two people to lean in it comfortably side by side.^T
• The idea of the good (GW 12:231–235): the good remains "ein Sollen", an absolute postulate facing an "unaufgeschlossenes Reich der Finsterniß" (GW 12:233). Here Hegel points to the Phenomenology:^T

Die vollständige Ausbildung des unaufgelößten Widerspruchs, jenes absoluten Zwecks, dem die Schranke dieser Wirklichkeit unüberwindlich gegenübersteht, ist in der Phänomenologie des Geistes … näher betrachtet worden.

The full development of the unresolved contradiction, of that absolute purpose which the limit of this actuality faces insurmountably, has been considered more closely in the Phenomenology of Spirit … rendering for this page

GW 12:233 · 1816 · Sec. 3, ch. 2, B. Die Idee des Guten. The omitted page reference reads “S. 548 ff.” in the 1816 print (1807 p. 548, the opening of Morality, ¶596); GW 12 converts it to GW 9:323, the same place (Ph14).

Debates

Misconceptions

• "Hegel's method is thesis–antithesis–synthesis."In the Logic "Thesis" and "Antithesis" occur only where Hegel discusses Kant's antinomies (e.g. GW 21:181–187, 1832; GW 12:157–158).^T43 He counts the moments as three or four and calls the counting external (GW 12:247). The triadic vocabulary is Fichte's, according to SEP (Maybee §3), and the lectures on the history of philosophy, in Michelet's edition, ascribe "thesis, antithesis and synthesis" to Kant.^I65E48 See U5.

Connections

• Phenomenology, by Hegel's own reference at GW 12:233. Our GW-based text has converted the page: the 1816 print reads "S. 548 ff.".^T147 1807 p. 548 (= GW 9:323) is ¶596, the opening of VI.C, "Der seiner selbst gewisse Geist. Die Moralität"; the moral world-view, with its postulates, follows from ¶599 (1807 p. 550).^T
• Phenomenology Preface. In ¶50 (1807 p. LIX; GW 9:36) Hegel calls the Kantian "Triplicität" rediscovered by instinct, still dead and uncomprehended, and condemns reducing it "zum leblosen Schema".^T
• Phenomenology as a science. At GW 12:198 "Phänomenologie des Geistes" names a science standing between the science of natural spirit and that of spirit as such.^T
• Encyclopaedia 1830 §§213–244. §238, Hegel's own paragraph, lists the method's stages: "(a) the Beginning, which is Being or Immediacy" (tr. Wallace 1892).^L10

Sources for L15: 10, 43, 48, 65, 84, 133, 147.