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
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