Hegel’s Realm of Shadows: Logic as Metaphysics in “The Science of Logic”

348 Pages·2018·2.353 MB·English

by  Robert B. Pippin

Hegel’s Realm of Shadows

Hegel’s Realm
of Shadows
Logic as Metaphysics in
The Science of Logic
Robert B. Pippin
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2019 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical
articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press,
1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2019
Printed in the United States of America
28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 58870- 4 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 58884- 1 (e- book)
DOI: https:// doi .org /10 .7208 /chicago /9780226588841 .001 .0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Pippin, Robert B., 1948– author.
Title: Hegel’s realm of shadows : logic as metaphysics in the Science of logic /
Robert B. Pippin.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018014784 | ISBN 9780226588704 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780226588841 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770–1831. Wissenschaft der Logik. |
Logic. | Philosophy, German.
Classification: LCC B2942.Z7 P545 2018 | DDC 193—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014784
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1 992 (Permanence of Paper).
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Part I
1 The Significance of The Science of Logic 3
2 Logic and Metaphysics 39
3 The Role of Self- Consciousness in The Science of Logic 101
4 Logic and Negation 139
Part II
5 The Logic of Being: The “Given” as a Logical Problem 183
6 Essence as Reflected Being 217
7 The Lives of Concepts 251
8 Life as a Logical Concept 273
9 The True and the Good 299
Reference List 323
Index 333

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a very great debt to the Friedrich von Siemens Foundation of Munich,
and to its director, Heinrich Meier, for a generous fellowship that allowed me
to spend the year in Munich in 2012–1 3. I had begun a book on the Logic two
years before, and this fellowship allowed me an invaluable opportunity to
begin the writing of several chapters and to intensify my reading of the litera-
ture on Hegel’s most important book. I am especially indebted personally to
Heinrich and Wiebke Meier for many acts of kindness and generosity to me
and my wife during our stay there.
I am also grateful to many conference and colloquium audiences over the
past eight years for patiently helping me work my way through several early
versions of chapters, and for several years of dedicated graduate students in
a series of seminars about the Encyclopedia Logic and The Science of Logic.
Earlier, in some cases much earlier, and very different or truncated versions
of chapters have appeared elsewhere, and I am grateful to editors either for
permission to retain copyright for publication of the versions in this book or
for permission to reprint here passages of, specifically, The Oxford Handbook
of Hegel, ed. D. Moyar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 114, part 2, 2014; a German version of part of
chapter 4, “Die Logik der Negation bei Hegel,” in 200 Jahre Hegels Wissen-
schaft der Logik, ed. C. Wirsing, A. Koch, F. Schick, and K. Vieweg (Ham-
burg: Felix Meiner, 2014); a version of chapter 6 appeared in Schelling Stud-
ien, vol. 1, 2013; and a version of chapter 7 is collected in Kant on Persons and
Agency, ed. Eric Watkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
viii Acknowledgments
The cover photo is of Anthony Caro’s great piece, Sculpture Two. I take
it to be a visual way of making the Hegelian point that an abstraction can
be concrete, even weighty, and that what appears to be a contingent assem-
blage of parts can be a dynamic, organic unity, no aspect of which can be sub-
tracted, to which nothing can be added. I am most grateful to Barford Sculp-
tures in London for permission to reprint the photograph, and to Michael
Fried for many discussions about Caro’s sculptures.
Finally, I am grateful yet again to my friend Terry Pinkard for invaluable
and detailed comments on the penultimate draft of the book. The anony-
mous readers for the University of Chicago Press were also generous and
very helpful.
PART I