The Opening of Hegel's Logic: From Being to Infinity (History of Philosophy Series)

The Opening of Hegel's Logic: From Being to Infinity (History of Philosophy Series)

Stephen Houlgate

Language: English

Pages: 456

ISBN: 1557532575

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Hegel is one of the most important modern philosophers, whose thought influenced the development of existentialism, Marxism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. Yet Hegel's central text, the monumental Science of Logic, still remains for most philosophers (both figuratively and literally) a firmly closed book. The purpose of The Opening of Hegel's Logic is to dispel the myths that surround the Logic and to show that Hegel's unjustly neglected text is a work of extraordinary subtlety and insight. Part One argues that the Logic provides a rigorous derivation of the fundamental categories of thought and contrasts Hegel's approach to the categories with that of Kant. It goes on to examine the historical and linguistic presuppositions of Hegel's self-critical, ""presuppositionless"" logic and, in the process, considers several signifi­ cant criticisms of such logic advanced by Schelling, Feuerbach, Gadamer, and Kierkegaard. Separate chapters are devoted to the relation between logic and ontology in Hegel's Logic and to the relation between the Logic itself and the Phenomenology. Part Two contains the text-in German and English-of the first two chapters of Hegel's Logic, which cover such categories as being, becoming, something, limit, finitude, and infinity. Part Three then provides a clear and accessible commentary on these two chapters that both examines Hegel's arguments in detail and relates his insights to those of other philosophers, such as Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, and Levinas. The Opening of Hegel's Logic aims to help students and scholars read Hegel's often formidably difficult text for themselves and discover the wealth of philosophical riches that it contains. It also argues that Hegel's project of a presuppositionless science of logic is one that deserves serious consideration today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

place. The beginning is logical in that it is to be made in the element of thought that is free and for itself, in pure knowing. It is mediated because pure knowing is the ultimate, absolute truth of consciousness. In the Introduction it was remarked that the phenomenology of spirit is the science of consciousness, the exposition of it, and that consciousness has for result the Notion [or concept] of science, i.e. pure knowing.2 Logic, then, has for its presupposition the science of manifested

Derrida, though popular, is in fact quite wrong. Hegel does not reject external criticism of his philosophy from within a dialectical system whose validity he presupposes, nor does he reject such criticism simply because its proponents fail to acknowledge some “higher” principle of dialectic that he himself takes for granted. He cannot be doing this because he does 15. M. Rosen, Hegel’s Dialectic and its Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 42, my emphasis; on determinate

case, but the general idea remains the same: each category in being what it is contains within itself its negative (SL 55/1: 51). The moment of nonbeing or negation is thus not simply opposed to being or “external” to it but is immanent in being itself. To be such and such is at the same time and in the same respect not to be such and such. In this sense for Hegel, the concept of being is profoundly contradictory, but it is no less valid for that. The insight generated by presuppositionless

G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, Zweite Hälfte, ed. G. Lasson (1919) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1923), pp. 842, 856–7; and EL 48/71 (§19 Add. 3). 24. On the relation between reason and contingency in Hegel’s philosophy, see S. Houlgate, “Necessity and Contingency in Hegel’s Science of Logic,” The Owl of Minerva 27, 1 (Fall 1995): pp. 47–9. See also chapter 6, below, p. 118. 70 Chapter Three held assumptions. If, however, that willingness to let go

and literally a firmly closed book. It is rarely taught at either the undergraduate or graduate level, and it is rarely referred to by anyone other than the specialist. Devotees of the Logic may insist that thorough knowledge of the text is indispensable if one is to understand the rest of Hegel’s system properly and that it offers unparalleled insights into the structure of being and human thought. But the Logic nevertheless continues to be (with the Philosophy of Nature) one of the least

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