Hegel’s Logic: An Essay in Interpretation. John Grier Hibben 1902
Hegel identifies the idea with truth. By truth he means the complete correspondence of any object with its notion. That is only a formal truth, mere correctness, which consists solely in a reference to our consciousness.
Truth in a deeper sense is the identification of subject and object.
In this sense the Absolute is the idea, the truth itself. Every individual object of knowledge represents a phase of the Absolute, but a partial and imperfect phase. Every finite object fails to realize its notion completely, and therefore is so far forth limited and defective. All objects are true so far as they prove to be what they ought to be. The true man is the ideal man, – that is, one who perfectly realizes the idea of a man. So also the true state, the true work of art, are such so far only as they realize their ideal.
The idea, moreover, as we have already seen, is not merely the underlying substance of all things. It is essentially the subject. It is personal and conscious as well as intelligent. All individuals find their truth in this one universal mind which upholds all things by His wisdom, power, and love. Far from being a mere abstract conception, the idea is the most concrete of all possible manifestations, for it embraces the totality or all objectivity. The categories of being, essence, and the notion find their truth only in this supreme category of the idea.
The mere understanding would criticise the doctrine of the idea as containing inconsistencies and contradictions, such as are expressed in the terms, “subject and object,” “finite and infinite,” “the ideal and the real,” “the one and the many.” Yet it must be remembered that it is of the very nature of the dialectic that the idea, inasmuch as it embraces the totality of the universe, should involve contradictions; but which, however, at the same time it is sufficient to overcome, and to present in a profounder unity. The activity of the idea is eternal. The cosmic process is fundamentally the manifestation of reason; it is the idea revealing itself in objectivity. The idea represents an infinite judgment whose several terms constitute an independent totality of such a nature that each term growing to the fulness of its own being passes over into its other and advanced form, thus providing for a progressive evolution of the one central idea which is eternally self-complete and self-sufficient. None of the other categories exhibits this totality as complete in its two essential aspects of subjectivity and objectivity.
Hegel refers to the dialectic process of the manifestation of the idea as an absolute negativity (absolute Negativität), – that is, a process in which there is an antagonism of opposites, which is the first negative; but this antagonism is overcome by means of the negation of the first negative, which is the absolute negation or real affirmation. Thus the notion as subjective is arrayed against the notion as objective, but this contradiction is overcome by an immanent dialectic which finds its way back again to a subjectivity which embraces objectivity as well. This state is something more than the mere unity of subjective and objective, or of the infinite and finite; for as Hegel insists, the idea is essentially a process which implies the idea of movement, whereas the term unity implies rest. Moreover, it is not a mere unity in which the infinite has been neutralized by the finite, the subjective by the objective, thought by being; but in the absolute negative function of the idea, – that is, the overcoming of antithesis by a more profound synthesis, – the infinite is to be regarded as overlapping and embracing the finite; so also thought embraces being, and subjectivity embraces objectivity. The idea in its process of development passes through three distinct stages: –
(1) The Idea as Life. (Das Leben.)
(2) The Idea as Knowledge. (Das Erkennen.)
(3) The Absolute Idea. (Die absolute Idee.)
In the first form the idea is revealed in its simplest state as immediate, – that is, without manifesting the underlying ground by which it is constituted and the relations which it is capable of sustaining.
In the second form the idea appears in its state of mediation or differentiation, – that is, it has become specified and definite by the manifestation of its particular characteristics and relations. It is in this stage that the idea becomes conscious of itself. Its essential form is that of knowledge, both theoretical and practical. The process of knowledge leads to a final synthesis which embraces all of the specific differences revealed in the process of development. This gives the third form of the idea, the absolute idea which as the last term of the evolution proves itself to be the first also, and the underlying basis of the process as a whole. it is the source, ground, consummation all in one. In its primary form the idea is manifested immediately as life. This is the initial point in the objectifying of the subjective notion. As a beginning, it is to be merely accepted as immediately given. Starting, therefore, with this datum of a living being, Hegel proceeds to analyze its nature. Every living being is an individual, preserving its individuality through all the various changes of bodily growth, and the indefinite variety of its particular moods and activities. Moreover, all particular manifestations are to be referred to a central principle which is the ground of their unity and the source of their being and activity. This central principle is by nature essentially a universal. Thus in a living body we have exhibited the universal principle of its being, its soul centre, also its particular activities and phenomenal manifestation, and the individuality which is self-preserved in the midst of all possible variations. The living body, therefore, embraces in the simplest possible form the three moments of the notion, individuality, particularity, and universality. All of its component parts form a complex system exhibiting, as Hegel styles it, a negative unity (negative Einkeit), – that is, a unity which combines within itself differentiated, opposed, but at the same time essentially related parts; it is a unity in the midst of difference.
The defect of life consists in the fact that its notion and its reality do not correspond. It is characteristic of life that soul and body are separable.
The notion of life is the soul, and the soul has the body for its reality. But in its simplest and primary manifestation the soul is, as it were, poured out and diffused into the corporeal elements, and, therefore, the soul is in its earliest stage sentient only, and not yet freely self-conscious.
The process of life consists in overcoming this preliminary stage of being and reaching the stage of self-consciousness. This process, however, has to run through three stages before it attains to the higher level of knowledge.
The first stage is the process of the living being within itself. Its corporeal parts are relatively external, and present an evident distinction and antagonism between its elements which are surrendered to one another, assimilate one another, and persist by reproducing themselves.
All these functions, however, are to be referred to the activity of the architectonic principle within; consequently the underlying unity is preserved in the midst of this indefinite variety of seemingly independent functions. The process of the vital subject within its own limits appears in the three forms of sensibility, irritability, and reproduction.
As sensibility the soul is present in every part of the body, so that their independence and mutual exclusiveness is only a seeming, and they are in reality merely elements of one and the same central and all-pervading subject.
As irritability, the living being seems to break up into separate parts, a process of differentiation.
As reproduction, the living being is perpetually restoring itself out of the inner differentiation of its members.
In the second stage the living being proceeds to exert its power over inorganic nature; it subdues and assimilates it to itself. The result of this process is not a neutral product as in chemism, but the living being embraces the inorganic elements within its own life. The inorganic nature, however, which is subdued by the vital agent, surrenders itself in the process because it is potentially what life is actually. This is in full accord with the fundamental postulate of the Hegelian system that there is but one elemental force in the universe, the mind force, and that it underlies the elements of inert matter as well as the vital forces and activities. When, therefore, a living being assimilates its corporeal elements, matter is raised to a higher level in which is effected the realization of its potential essence. Thus, even in its material elements, the living body may be said to find itself. When, however, the soul is separated from its body in death, the elemental forces of objectivity begin their play upon the lower mechanical and chemical level. There is even in life a constant tendency in these forces to assert their lower functions, and life is a perpetual battle to subdue and elevate them.
The result of this continuous process of assimilation gives us the third stage in the development of life, a combination of particular organs and functions constituting a definite and specific order of the living being, which Hegel characterizes as implicitly a genus or kind (eine Gattung an sich). The living being, regarded as a genus, ranks as a universal. This universal particularizes itself in a number of individuals through the connection of the living subject with another subject of its own kind.
The process of the genus brings it to a being of its own. But the being as an individual is dependent and mediated. The individual is implicitly a universal, but in his immediate existence is merely an individual.
Death shows that the universal is the power that upholds the immediate individual. The mere animal never proceeds so far in its generic life as to have a being of its own. It yields to the domination of the genus. Tennyson has given expression to this Hegelian idea in the lines: –
“Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams, –
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life.”
In the process of life, however, there is a constant struggle to overcome the immediacy which is the defect of life, so that the idea may come to itself, and realize its own truth in a free existence of its own.
That which appears as a generic universal in a lower sphere extricates itself and manifests itself as Ego or consciousness in its higher evolution.
It is the process of the idea coming to a consciousness of itself, and in this higher form it exists free and for itself. In this consciousness, two judgments are involved. The first is a distinguishing of itself in its pure nature as subjectivity; the second, the recognition of an objectivity seemingly external to itself. On the one hand, there is the Ego, the universal reason, and, on the other, the non-ego, or the objective world. The one is spirit, the other is nature. The two are implicitly identical but not yet necessarily recognized as explicitly identical. That the identity of nature and spirit should be only implicit is the mark of finitude. It is the peculiar office of reason to render explicit their fundamental identity. It is in the process of cognition, therefore, in the idea coming to a self-consciousness, that the one-sidedness of subjectivity and of objectivity is overcome. In this process there is, on the one hand, a rationalizing of the objective world, – that is, its translation into subjective conception and thought; and on the other, an assertion of subjective ideals in the midst of the objective phenomena of being, modifying and adapting them to its needs and standards. The tendency of thought to rationalize the universe, – to interpret by reducing it to the simplest forms of description and formulating its fundamental laws, – this is the labor of science in its search for truth, and is, according to Hegel, cognition properly so called, or the theoretical activity of the idea. The tendency to compel the phenomenal world to conform to the ideals of reason, and to realize the ascendency of the good, is the peculiar office of the practical activity of the idea, or volition. Thus cognition is of two kinds: –
(1) Theoretical Knowledge, or Cognition Proper. (Das Erkennen ale solches)
(2) Practical Knowledge, or Volition. (Das Wollen.)
The finite cognition labors under the difficulty of being unable to overcome the antithesis of subject and object. The reception of the material data of the senses by the cognizing subject seems to be merely an assimilation by the thought process of that which is in a way foreign to it. Its categories never enter into complete union with it. Therefore, while reason is active here as everywhere, it is reason in the form of the understanding merely, and it fails to reach the higher level of reason in two particulars: It presupposes an objective world already given and ready made, and secondly, it views the mind as a tabula rasa, which is perfectly passive in receiving and recording impressions made upon it by the data of sense-perception. The true view of the subject in its cognition of the object is that the mind is an active force not merely confronting the objective world, but in it, and through it, and underlying it as well.
Finite cognition, working even upon the lower level in which a readymade world in antithesis to the knowing subject is the nature of the presupposition framed by the perceiving mind, operates in two distinct forms: –
(1) The Analytic Method. (Die analytische Methode.)
(2) The Synthetic Method. (Die synthetische Methode.)
The analytic method examines every individual phenomenon for the purpose of discovering its various particular characteristics, separating the essential from the unessential, and then referring it to its appropriate genus, cause, or law as the case may be, any one of which would represent its corresponding universal.
The movement of the synthetic method is the reverse of the analytic method. The starting-point of the synthetic method is that of the universal.
Its activity is essentially constructive. It works as an architectonic principle, to produce all the particular manifestations of itself which are possible in accordance with its essential and universal nature, and as revealed ultimately in the organization and completed being of concrete individuals. For the various elements which enter into the constructive activity of the notion, Hegel employs the following terms: – The essential nature of the fundamental universal in its synthetic activity is given by definition.
The particular manifestations of which it is in general capable are given by division.
The concrete individuality, which is always some definite object, constituted by a nexus of complex relations, is called a theorem.
The process which supplies the necessary elements which serve as mediating terms in the nexus of complex relations is called the process of construction. Its function is to fuse into one these different elemental parts.
The process from which cognition derives the necessity of this nexus is called demonstration.
Hegel has taken the names of these familiar logical processes, which in the traditional logic are essentially thought processes, and in the present connection has applied them to the actual dynamic processes operative throughout the entire realm of nature in the production of all beings animate and inanimate, each fashioned in particular forms according to its kind. Moreover, it is the function of cognition to prove that the relations between the different elements in the objective world which it perceives are necessary relations. It is in this process, which Hegel calls demonstration, that an underlying necessity is revealed, whereas in the primary presupposition of finite thought the world is regarded as simply given and, as far as known, its relations contingent and variable. But in the process of cognition itself, there has been a progress towards an appreciation of existent relations as necessary. This necessity, Hegel affirms, is the necessity of reason. It is reached by subjective agency.
This subjectivity was conceived at the starting-point by mere understanding as a tabula rasa. This conception must now give place to the higher conception of the reason. Subjective thought must be regarded as essentially active, as a modifying and determining principle in the midst of the crude data of sense-perception. The knowing mind is essentially active, and in the manifestation of this activity it determines the manner and the end of that activity. Thus the transition is effected from theoretical to practical cognition, – that is, from cognition proper to volition.
The significance of this, according to Hegel, is that a true appreciation of the nature of the universal necessitates its apprehension as subjectivity, as a notion self-moving, active, and imposing modifications. It merely emphasizes in this particular connection the fundamental principle of the entire Hegelian system, the recognition of time ultimate nature of reason as dynamic, – or, in other words, that the all-embracing unitary force in the universe is spirit and not matter.
In volition the subjective idea is ever striving to assert itself and to mould the world, which stands seemingly opposed to it, into a shape conformable to its own ends. The end which is ever dominant in the activity of the universal reason is the realization of the good. At this point in Hegel’s system the dialectic movement reaches a level at which the logical and ethical lines converge. Thus, intelligence takes the world as it finds it; the will proposes to make the world what it ought to be.
But here the finitude of volition is obvious, inasmuch as there exists a constant contradiction between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be. However, in the process of the will itself, it abolishes its own finitude and overcomes the contradiction therein involved, and this is effected by producing a unity between the theoretical and practical idea, – that is, when that which is corresponds perfectly with that which ought to be. The idea possesses the deeper insight which recognizes that the discrepancies between the real and ideal are merely superficial, that essentially they are in accord, and that the world perfectly reveals the full purpose of its immanent notion.
Thus the idea is stripped of all finitude. It is the Absolute Idea; as defined by Hegel, it is the unity of the theoretical idea which regards the world as it is, and the practical idea which endeavors to make the world what it ought to be. Moreover, as cognition implies life, the Absolute Idea is a unity of cognition and life as well. It embraces naturally all the moments which enter into the evolution of the idea. In life, regarded merely as immediate being, the idea appears an sich, – that is, implicitly; in cognition it appears für sich, – that is, the idea as explicitly conscious of itself. In the Absolute Idea it is both an sich und für sich, – that is, self-contained and all-embracing. All the movements of its development fall within the sphere of its own determination. The idea has need of no support upon which to rest; it acknowledges no dependence upon any element outside of itself. In its evolution there are no contingent factors or external conditions. “The idea,” says Hegel, is the nÒhsij no"sewj which Aristotle long ago termed the supreme form of the idea."[38] The true content of this idea, that which it thinks about and acts upon, – for it must be remembered that the idea is both cognitive and active, – must be regarded as the entire system, whose development we have been following. Of this evolution the Absolute Idea is the consummation, – a consummation, however, which is not the resulting product of the process itself; for while the idea is the last term of the series it is also the first term, and the ground of the whole process as well. The true significance of the idea is admirably illustrated by Hegel in the following paragraph, which is well worth quoting in full: –
“With this retrospect of the process of development the Absolute Idea may be likened to an old man, who expresses the same religious convictions as a child, but for whom they possess the added significance of his whole life. Even if the child understands in a measure the truths of religion, still they have value for him only in a limited sphere, outside of which lies the whole span of life and the wide, wide world. Such is the case with human life in general and the various events which constitute its fulness. All labor is directed towards some goal, and when it is reached, we are surprised to discover nothing else save the bare end itself which had been purposed. The interest, however, lies in the whole movement.
“As a man pursues his life’s vocation, the mere end itself may appear to him very circumscribed; but in the attainment, whatever it may be, the whole decursus vitae is comprehended. So, also, the content of the Absolute Idea is the complete sweep of its onward movement which we have followed thus far. There is, finally, the recognition that the development as a whole constitutes both its content and its interest. Moreover, it is peculiarly the philosophical insight which is able to appreciate that while everything, when regarded in its isolation, may appear restricted, nevertheless, its real value consists in its relation to the whole and its function as an essential moment or factor in the Absolute Idea.
“Thus it is that having had the content, we now have the knowledge that this content is the living unfolding of the idea, and that this simple retrospect is contained in the very form of the idea itself. Each of the stages hitherto surveyed is an image of the Absolute, at the beginning, however, with restricted limitations, and consequently it is self-constrained to press forward to a complete revelation, which process is the dialectic method of development."[39]
The exposition of the Logic would be incomplete without a word, at least, in reference to the relation of the Logic to the two other philosophical disciplines of Hegel. The Philosophy of Nature (Die Naturphilosophie), The Philosophy of Mind (Die Philosophie des Geistes). These two form the second and third parts respectively of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.
It would seem at the first glance as though these sciences were arranged in the order of a serial development, so that The Philosophy of Nature would represent an advance upon the first part of the Encyclopaedia, the Logic; and The Philosophy of Mind, the completion and consummation of the two preceding disciplines. This view, however, is erroneous and misleading. A careful student of the Logic cannot fail to be impressed with its fundamental doctrine, that the supreme reason, or the Absolute Idea, is the creative and sustaining principle of all being, and not merely a principle of abstract thought as such. And this present exposition will have failed of its purpose if it has not left a similar impression upon the reader’s mind. This principle, being granted as fundamental and essential to the Hegelian system, – namely, that the rational is also the real and that the laws of thought are the laws of being, – it follows, consequently, that both nature and mind must be regarded as falling within the scope of the all-embracing reason, or idea.
It is affirmed again and again of the idea that it constitutes the totality of all being, and as such, therefore, it must comprehend the spheres both of nature and of mind.
Moreover, Hegel himself insists that it is a false mode of statement to speak of the transition from the idea to nature, and thence to mind.
The term transition (der Uebergang) has acquired in the Hegelian usage a peculiar significance. It means always an advance from an incomplete stage of development to a higher and more complete. This was found to be the case in every step of the progress from the simplest conception of immediate being to the complete all-embracing idea. The idea, moreover, represents that stage of development which is absolutely sufficient unto itself. It not only completes all defects, removes all limitations, and resolves all contradictions, but it is in the fulness of its own nature incapable alike of supplementation or of deterioration. To speak, therefore, of a transition from the idea to nature, would imply that the idea needed the concept of nature as a necessary complement in order to supply its defects and overcome its contradictions. Hegel expressly states that the idea does not become nature, but that it is nature. From this point of view, therefore, The Philosophy of Nature may be regarded as an attempt to rationalize nature, – that is, to show that throughout all of its processes and underlying all its forces, and forming the essence of all its laws, there is ever present the immanent reason.
Again, the transition from any given stage of development to a higher and complementary stage is always brought about through the inner constraint of thought. The transition is always conceived as a necessary one (gesetzt) The nature of thought is such that it is constrained to proceed onward to perfection. But from the idea to nature there is no transition in such a sense. On the contrary, Hegel insists most emphatically that the entire system of nature is the result solely and simply of the free activity of the idea. As he expresses it, “the idea primarily resolves as the outcome of its own inherent being to allow itself freely to reveal its essential being as nature."[40]We have seen that the idea possesses not merely a knowing function but also a willing function as well. It is essentially an active force. The whole tendency of its being as dynamic is to reveal its activity along the lines of the free manifestation of its own nature. The Absolute Idea, however, by no means exhausts itself or loses itself in its self-revelation as nature and as mind. The supreme reason, the Absolute Idea, God, however He may be named, is in and through all His works, yet nevertheless transcends them. This is unequivocally expressed by Hegel in the larger Logic as follows: -
“The content of the Logic is the revelation of God as He is in His eternal essence before ever the world was formed, or a finite spirit came into being."[41]
We may say, therefore, that it is of the very essence of the divine spirit to reveal Himself, and that such a revelation comprehends both nature and mind, and yet the Absolute Ego is not absorbed in the revelation itself.
But may it not be possible that the revelation itself is illusory, a passing shadow with no corresponding substance? The dialectic movement which we have been following from its beginning to end would seem to confirm this view, inasmuch as all finite beings and all finite relations fail of self-sufficiency and permanency in the various stages of their development, and only in the Absolute Idea is there found a satisfactory resting-place for the thought which has tested all preceding stages and found them wanting. “The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are eternal.” Is, then, the whole cosmic process in time and space a fleeting show? Is the spirit of man but the flashing ray of the central sun, lost forever in the dark and void, or perchance returning again in other forms to be reabsorbed in the primeval light? On the contrary, Hegel in his Philosophy of Nature and his Philosophy of Mind endeavors to ground these essential manifestations of being upon substantial foundations. Nature cannot be illusory, a mere seeming, for there is immanent in it the Absolute Idea. And so also the finite mind does not fall outside of the infinite, but within the area of its being and power. Moreover, inasmuch as the Absolute Idea is essentially a free activity, and as the human spirit partakes of the very nature of this Idea, its freedom is thereby assured and with its freedom, its immortality.
By way of summary, it may be stated that the problem of the Logic is solved in the Absolute Idea, that fundamental principle of reason which is self-explanatory and capable of explaining all lower categories which are to be regarded merely as particular phases of its own self. But in the unfolding of the dialectic process which eventuates in the Absolute Idea, it is discovered that reason is essentially a principle of activity as well as a principle of knowledge. The Absolute Idea, therefore, as the supreme expression of reason, reveals its own nature in the cosmic processes; and in spite of the temporal and spatial contingencies of the great world system, it demonstrates its own eternal nature and purposes as the ground and end of it all. For the enduring and abiding elements in the cosmic order are those which partake of the nature of the Absolute Idea, and which come to a full revelation in the mind of man, disclosing his affinity with the Absolute Mind, and stirring within his breast intimations of divinity and immortality.