Hegel’s Logic: An Essay in Interpretation. John Grier Hibben 1902
The fundamental conception of the Hegelian system of philosophy is that of universal reason dominating all thoughts and all things. It is necessary, therefore, at the very beginning to appreciate the inherent relation between thoughts and things in general, or more specifically between the thinking mind and the objective world. In order to understand fully the Hegelian attitude of thought to the objective world, the world which furnishes us the materials of knowledge, and of which we ourselves are but a part, it will be worth our while to examine somewhat in detail the doctrines of other philosophical systems upon this subject in the light of Hegel’s criticism of them. Their divergence from the Hegelian system will serve by contrast to mark the characteristic features of that system itself. There are four typical views as to the relation of the thinking subject to the objective world. They are as follows: –
1. The metaphysical systems.
2. The empirical schools.
3. The critical philosophy.
4. The theory of intuitive or immediate knowledge.
The first of these attitudes of thought regards the external world as perfectly pictured in though. The question is not raised as to the difficulty of passing from the object which is perceived to the thinking subject which perceives it. The way is regarded as open and free. The objective reality of the outer world is assumed as a matter of fact. The testimony of the senses is taken as unquestionable. It is the standpoint of naive realism, which rests upon the assumption that all things are in their essence what they seem to be in our perception of them. A natural result of this point of view and of this method of interpreting the world of experience was that abstract and empty phrases refined metaphysical distinctions, in short, the terminology of the schools came to be used instead of living words in tire description of living experience. No wonder that philosophy became sterile and dry as dust when the truth of the world of reality was expressed in the desiccated formulae of metaphysical speculation. In other words, the actual world of living experience was forced in a purely artificial and arbitrary manner into metaphysical molds. For these molds were east with no consideration whatsoever of the patterns which the real world might have furnished. They were fashioned according to the caprice of speculation, and the demands of certain postulates of thought which had no basis in reality. In respect to all this, Hegel’s contention is that a genuine knowledge of the external world must come through a process in which the particular objects of knowledge are allowed actually to characterize themselves; in other words, we must interrogate tire facts of experience and allow them to tell their own story. We must act take for granted certain characteristics and certain relations as necessarily obtaining because our speculations seems to demand them. We dare not apply to concrete objects of thought predicates which have been derived elsewhere, and without any consideration of the nature of the objects themselves. We should not anticipate experience, but faithfully interpret it. Take for example the supreme object of all thought, God Himself. It is but a poor and inadequate conception of God which results merely from ascribing to him a series of predicates which have been deduced from certain metaphysical necessities.
However many such predicates may be, they together fail utterly to exhaust His infinite nature. The Orientals appreciated this when in the Hindoo philosophy God is declared to be the many-named or the many-sided, and this without remit of any kind or degree, so that if the resulting names should be formed together to constitute a series, the result would of necessity be an infinite series.
Moreover, Hegel insists that the various metaphysical schools all adopted a wrong criterion in that they are content to derive their definitions from popular conceptions. Any popular conception of God, of the world, or of the soul is necessarily inadequate and therefore false, for it mast he colored necessarily by the nature of the age, or of the race whence it emerges, and so far forth it is particular, local, and misleading. Any definition of God which embodies a popular conception of him, however complete that conception may be, fails to sound the depths of his being and nature. It is Hegel’s most vehement contention that the only true method of building up the world of knowledge is to allow the objects of thought freely and spontaneously to expound their own characteristics.
Thus God’s being is known only as revealed in the continuous unfolding of Himself in the cosmic processes, in nature, in history, in man. And so we may define man as a rational animal; but ut best this is only a vague groping in the dark, for our knowledge of man cannot be compressed into a single judgment. That was the snare of the metaphysical schools, the belief that all objects of knowledge could be expressed completely within the scope of a formal definition or a stereotyped formula. What man is, in all the possibilities of his development as artisan, mechanic, scholar, soldier, citizen, statesman, martyr, or reformer, and so on without limit, that the complete history of humanity alone can reveal. The term “rational,” as used in the traditional definition of man conceals a vast territory of knowledge which lies behind it.
We appreciate the limitless extent of this region when we even superficially meditate upon the many-sided manifestations of which the idea of rationality is capable. It is only in the free activity of the constructive principle working within an object of knowledge that its essential characteristics are revealed.
Moreover, the old metaphysic was dogmatic in the extreme. Although the results of such speculation were partial and one-sided, they were nevertheless stoutly maintained as absolute and final. This insistence upon the ultimate nature of partially conceived truth indicates the characteristic spirit of the school. Content with the half truth and the twilight of the understanding they never attained the full knowledge as revealed in the light of reason. In addition to the general point of view and method of the metaphysical systems, their treatment of several special problems is not only a matter of interest in itself, but has an indirect bearing upon some important pellets of the Hegelian system. These problems are four in number.
1. As to the nature of being in general, – ontology.
2. As to the nature of the soul, – rational psychology or pneumatology.
3. As to the nature of the world, – cosmology.
4. As to the being and nature of God, – natural or rational theology.
The doctrine of being, or ontology, resulted from the attempt to answer the question as to how being in general might he adequately characterized. The distinctions raised by the metaphysical schools were largely verbal. Whenever certain absolute terms were feared which seemed to involve no contradiction to the generally received conceptions of the day, then the metaphysician was completely satisfied that he had given expressions to the truth in its fulness. He did not pause to inquire no to the concrete significance of the terms which be used or as to their illustration in actual experience. Such terms, for example, as existence, finitude, simplicity, complexity, and the like, were used as the current coin of expression by the metaphysical school, and with but little thought as to their precise meaning and the definite scope of their application. Hegel’s criticism, at this point, is quite characteristic and illustrative of his general method. He insists that every term which we employ in philosophical thinking should represent a notion, that is, an idea of universal and necessary significance, and that such a notion cannot have a one-sided, abstract, and rigid meaning, but must have a wealth of meaning in itself. Every notion, moreover, most be regarded as a small world within itself, having manifold characteristics connected and interrelated in an indefinite variety of ways. The term which represents such no idea can therefore never be employed in a stereotyped manner as was the custom of the metaphysicians. The very fact that such an idea embodies within itself inner connections or relations renders it necessary that contradictions must arise which can he resolved only by viewing them in the light of the whole body of knowledge. To cut such an idea off as a finished product, incapable of further modification or development, is to deal with it in a manner extremely artificial and unphilosophical as well. Ideas are living processes and not dead products. “Let us avoid, therefore,” Hegel would say, “the use of terms to which we hove attached partial and poor meanings. Let the supreme task of thought be to overcome the superficial and the abstract.” The second question discussed by the metaphysicians was that of rational psychology, or pneumatology; it had special reference to the nature of the soul. The pre-Kantian metaphysic regarded the soul as a thing, an independent entity. This conception at once suggested the question, which proved to be an utterly futile and misleading inquiry, as to the seat of the soul; and the further question as to whether the soul, inasmuch as it is a thing, should be regarded as simple or composite. It was thought that upon the fact of its simplicity depended the truth of the doctrine of immortality, inasmuch as whatever is not composed of parts can suffer no dissolution. Hegel insists at this point that the inner life of the mind or soul cannot be regarded as a finished thing, a product once for all complete, without possibility of development. Such a conception renders impossible also any processes of action and reaction between the several elements which constitute the essence of the soul’s life and varied activity, and leaves unexplained the external phenomena of the mind which are so incalculably complex in all the variety of their many-sided manifestations. The mind must be regarded, according to Hegel, as a concrete reality which is evidenced by its manifestations it is not a “thing,” as the metaphysicians use the term “thing,” but rather an inward constructive force determining the various phases of its external phenomena io an unlimited, progressive development.
The third branch of the traditional metaphysic was that of cosmology.
The topics which it embraced were the world, its contingency or necessity, its eternity or its necessary limitation in time and space, the formal laws of its changes, the freedom of man, and the origin of evil.
The general standpoint of the metaphysician before the time of Kant was that thought presents to us a number of alternative judgments, one of which must be wholly true and its opposite wholly false. Therefore, in reference to the particular questions which arose in the sphere of cosmology, the metaphysicians held that one is of necessity constrained to choose between the theory that the world is created or that it is eternal; that man is the product of the low of necessity or that he is free.
They held, moreover, that the good and evil in the valid are natural opposites, and can never be reconciled. Hegel characteristically opposes this one-sided view of things by maintaining that the world contains on all sides an indefinite number of opposites, and that it is the peculiar function of the reason to reconcile and harmonize them completely. His system is essentially a universal resolution of all the contradictions and inconsistencies of existence in the all-embracing synthesis of tine reason.
Thus the idea of freedom which involves no necessity, and the idea of necessity which involves no freedom, are alike merely the partial obstructions of the understanding. In the actual world, the world in which we live, and move, and have our being, freedom and necessity are not divorced. For there can be freedom only in that community wherein liberty is guaranteed by law, And as regards the necessity which nature everywhere imposes upon us, it must be remembered that the free activity of the individual is possible only to the extent to which he can depend implicitly upon the uniformity of nature’s laws; for there nature without law, and its phenomena the result of the caprice or whim of ruling deities as in the old mythological conception, the free purpose of man would be constantly thwarted and annulled.
The fourth branch of metaphysics is that of natural or rational theology.
It is concerned with the fundamental conception of God, His attributes, and the proof of His existence. The radical error of the metaphysical logic is revealed in their attempt to discover some objective ground for the idea of God. The resulting idea of God thus formed, creates the impression of being derived from something external to God Himself. But God must be conceived as the sole ground of all things visible and invisible, and therefore us independent of anything in the nature of a foundation or support of His being and existence. For if God is regarded as a being, derived from the world, then the very finitude of the world processes would cling to the idea of a God thus conceived. As Hegel suggests, the metaphysician is confronted with the following dilemma: either God is the actual substance of the world, including the mind of man, which is endeavoring to come to a knowledge of Him, – which is pantheism; or God is an object distinct from the apprehending mind, the subject, which is dualism. Hegel in the development of his system endeavors to effect a synthesis of the divine and human consciousness in such a way as to avoid the two extremes of dualism and of pantheism; it is only, however, when the entire system is unfolded before us that we have any basis for judging whether he has succeeded in this difficult undertaking. At this stage of the discussion it is sufficient merely to mark his general purpose in this regard as a radical point of departure front the metaphysical view.
There is a phrase which is often employed in speculations concerning the being of God. It is this, “Consider nature, and nature will lead you to God.” Hegel in this connection enters a vigorous protest, inasmuch as this phrase seems to imply that God is the consummation merely of the great cosmic process, whereas the truth lies in the thought that while God may be regarded in a certain sense as the final consummation of all things, yet nevertheless he must be regarded also as the absolute ground of the initial stage and every subsequent stage of the cosmic development. God is the beginning as well as the end of the world’s evolution. It is only in a very partial sense, therefore, that the are justified in saying that nature lends man to God, for in another and deeper sense we are constrained to believe that it is God Himself who makes nature possible. Nature leads backward as well as forward to God.
As to the attributes of God, they were conceived by the metaphysicians in so indefinite and vague a manner as to he utterly devoid of any genuine significance. These schools of thought seemed to possess a natural dread of assigning to God any attributes whatsoever which were distinctively human upon the ground that to think of God’s nature as at all resembling human nature would be to degrade and dishonor Him, Fearing that they might be come anthropomorphic, they lapsed into a vague indefiniteness which was without any significant content whatever.
Yet they seemed oblivious of this evident defect and satisfied with a summary of the divine attributes in some such vague and unmeaning expression as the following, “God is the most real of all beings.” But Hegel in criticising such a statement as this insists that the most real of all beings of whom, however, nothing is affirmed definitely, is after all the very opposite of what it purports to be, and what the understanding supposes it to be. Instead of a being ample and above all measure, the idea as so narrowly conceived that it is on the contrary poor and altogether empty. It is with reason that the heart craves an answer to its question as to the nature of God which will mean something. When the idea of God is reduced to an indefinite and meaningless formula, God is then removed to a sphere so foreign to our thought nod life as to be reduced to an absolute zero. Without a content possessing any positive significance our thought is shorn of all meaning whatsoever. As Hegel puts it in striking epigram, “Mere light is mere darkness."[5]Notwithstanding Hegel’s radical difference in general point of view, however, and his critical attitude toward the metaphysical schools, nevertheless he frankly acknowledges that there is something of permanent value in one feature at least of their teachings, – namely, in their insistence upon the fundamental truth that thought constitutes the essence of all that is, And this truth he has incorporated in his own philosophical system as its cardinal doctrine. Thought, however, with Hegel does not consist in obstruct definitions and formulae, but is revealed in its fulness only ins the concrete realities of life.