The Logic of Hegel. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

But after 1827 this religious appropriation of philosophy becomes more apparent, and in 1829 Hegel seemed deliberately to accept the position of a Christian philosopher which Göschel had marked out for him. 'A philosophy without heart and a faith without intellect,' he remarks[16], 'are abstractions from the true life of knowledge and faith. The man whom philosophy leaves cold, and the man whom real faith does not illuminate may be assured that the fault lies in them, not in knowledge and faith. The former is still an alien to philosophy, the latter an alien to faith.'

This is not the place—in a philological chapter—to discuss the issues involved in the announcement that the truth awaits us ready to hand[17] 'in all genuine consciousness, in all religions and philosophies.' Yet one remark may be offered against hasty interpretations of a 'speculative' identity. If there is a double edge to the proposition that the actual is the reasonable, there is no less caution necessary in approaching and studying from both sides the far-reaching import of that equation to which Joannes Scotus Erigena gave expression ten centuries ago: 'Non alia est philosophia, i.e. sapientiae studium, et alia religio. Quid est aliud de philosophia tractare nisi verae religionis regulas exponere?'

[1] Christian Märklin, cap. 3.

[2] Hegel's Briefe, i. 141.

[3] Ibid. i. 172.

[4] Hegel's Briefe, i. 138.

[5] Ibid. i. 339.

[6] Hegel's Briefe, i. 328.

      [7] Ibid. i. 273.

      [8] Ibid. i. 373.

      [9] Hegel's Briefe, ii. 204.

      [10] Ibid. ii. 230.

      [11] Jacobi's Werke, iv. A, p. 63.

[12] Hegel's Briefe, ii. 54.

[13] Ibid. ii. 276.

[14] Hegel's Briefe, i. 13.

[15] Hölderlin's Leben (Litzmann), p. 183.

[16] Verm. Sehr. ii. 144.

[17] Hegel's Briefe, ii. 80.

      The following Errata in the Edition of the Logic as given in the Collected Works (Vol. VI.) are corrected in the translation. The references in brackets are to the German text.

      Page 95, line 1. Und Objektivität has dropped out after der Subjektivität. [VI. 98, l. 10 from bottom.]

      P. 97, l. 2. The 2nd ed. reads (die Gedanken) nicht in Solchem, instead of nicht als in Solchem (3rd ed.). [VI. p. 100, l. 3 from bottom.]

      P. 169, l. 13 from bottom. Instead of the reading of the Werke and of the 3rd ed. read as in ed. II. Also ist dieser Gegenstand nichts. [VI. p. 178, l. 11.]

      P. 177, l. 3 from bottom. Verstandes; Gegenstandes is a mistake for Verstandes; Gegensatzes, as in edd. II and III. [VI. p. 188, l. 2.]

      P. 231, l. 19. weiten should be weitern. [VI. p. 251, l. 3 from bottom.]

      P. 316, l. 15. Dinglichkeit is a misprint for Dingheit, as in Hegel's own editions. [VI. p. 347, l. 1.]

      P. 352, l. 14 from bottom, for seine Realität read seiner Realität. [VI. p. 385, l. 8.]

      THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC

       Table of Contents

      (THE FIRST PART OF THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL SCIENCES IN OUTLINE)

BY

CHAPTER I.

      INTRODUCTION.

      1.] Philosophy misses an advantage enjoyed by the other sciences. It cannot like them rest the existence of its objects on the natural admissions of consciousness, nor can it assume that its method of cognition, either for starting or for continuing, is one already accepted. The objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is the Truth. Both in like manner go on to treat of the finite worlds of Nature and the human Mind, with their relation to each other and to their truth in God. Some acquaintance with its objects, therefore, philosophy may and even must presume, that and a certain interest in them to boot, were it for no other reason than this: that in point of time the mind makes general images of objects, long before it makes notions of them, and that it is only through these mental images, and by recourse to them, that the thinking mind rises to know and comprehend thinkingly.

      But with the rise of this thinking study of things, it soon becomes evident that thought will be satisfied with nothing short of showing the necessity of its facts, of demonstrating the existence of its objects, as well as their nature and qualities. Our original acquaintance with them is thus discovered to be inadequate. We can assume nothing, and assert nothing dogmatically; nor can we accept the assertions and assumptions of others. And yet we must make a beginning: and a beginning, as primary and underived, makes an assumption, or rather is an assumption. It seems as if it were impossible to make a beginning at all.

      2.] This thinking study of things may serve, in a general way, as a description of philosophy. But the description is too wide. If it be correct to say, that thought makes the distinction between man and the lower animals, then everything human is human, for the sole and simple reason that it is due to the operation of thought. Philosophy, on the other hand, is a peculiar mode of thinking—a mode in which thinking becomes knowledge, and knowledge through notions. However great therefore may be the identity and essential unity of the two modes of thought, the philosophic mode gets to be different from the more general thought which acts in all that is human, in all that gives humanity its distinctive character. And this difference connects itself with the fact that the strictly human and thought-induced phenomena of consciousness do not originally appear in the form of a thought, but as a feeling, a perception, or mental image—all of which aspects must be distinguished from the form of thought proper.

      According to an old preconceived idea, which has passed into a trivial proposition, it is thought which marks the man off from the animals. Yet trivial as this old belief may seem, it must, strangely enough, be recalled to mind in presence of certain preconceived ideas