Logic and Metaphysics in Hegel. Rethinking the Identity Principle

254 Pages·2022·2.716 MB·English

by  Horațiu M. Trif‐Boia

HORAȚIU M. TRIF‐BOIA 
LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN HEGEL 
RETHINKING THE IDENTITY PRINCIPLE

H M. T ‐B  
ORAȚIU    RIF OIA
LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN HEGEL 
RETHINKING THE IDENTITY PRINCIPLE 
PRESA UNIVERSITARĂ CLUJEANĂ 
2020
* This work was supported by a grant of Ministry of Research and Innovation, CNCS ‐
UEFISCDI, project number PN‐III‐P1‐1.1‐PD‐2016‐0886, within PNCDI III. — Publicarea 
acestei lucrări este sprijinită de un grant al Ministerului Cercetării și Inovării, CNCS ‐ 
UEFISCDI, cod proiect PN‐III‐P1‐1.1‐PD‐2016‐0886, în cadrul PNCDI III. 
Scientific review: 
PhD. Univ. Prof. Emer., Princ. Res. Sci. Virgil Ciomoș ‐ Philosophy Department, 
History and Philosophy Faculty, Babeș‐Bolyai University, Cluj‐Napoca & Socio‐
Humanities Research Department, “George Bariț” Institute of History of the 
Romanian Academy, Cluj‐Napoca Branch 
PhD. Princ. Res. Sci. Ionuț Isac ‐ Socio‐Humanities Research Department, “George 
Bariț” Institute of History of the Romanian Academy, Cluj‐Napoca Branch 
Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naţionale a României 
TRIF‐BOIA, HORAȚIU MARIUS 
        Logic and metaphysics in Hegel : rethinking the identity 
principle / Horaţiu M. Trif‐Boia. ‐ Cluj‐Napoca: Presa Universitară 
Clujeană, 2020 

    Conține bibliografie 
    ISBN 978‐606‐37‐0850‐3 
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CONTENTS
Introduction .................................................................................................................. 7
A. Hegelian Onto-Theo-Logy and Heidegger’s Ontological Difference
Problem ................................................................................................................... 21
I. Heideggerian identity ......................................................................................... 23
The word and the deed ............................................................................................ 23
Identity as Principle .................................................................................................. 25
The Origin of Identity. The leap of the spring ................................................. 35
Essence of Being and Essence of Man spring from the Sameness .......... 39
II. Hegelian onto-theo-logy and Heideggerian Unverborgenheit ............ 45
Aufhebung or Schritt zurück? ................................................................................. 45
Why should Being be the Same with Thinking? ............................................. 67
The Speculative Method .......................................................................................... 78
B. Speculative ontology and antinomian theology. Metaphysical
journey with the Hegelian method ............................................................... 85
III. Thinking the metaphysical Absolute. The Real of the Negative ........ 87
Preamble. Truth and premises .............................................................................. 87
Criticist objections ..................................................................................................... 92
Given, reduction and Nothingness ...................................................................... 95
The Real and the homonymy of Absence. The Eleatic objection ........... 102
The transcendental appearance of ontological relativism ...................... 111
5
IV. The Homonymy of the Negative reveals Absolute Indeterminate
Immediacy ........................................................................................................... 133
Pure original Being .................................................................................................. 133
Originary actual “Nothingness” or the over-Being: Absolute
Indeterminate Immediacy ...................................................................................... 144
C. Hegel’s identity .................................................................................................. 159
V. Speculative identity as Being in Absolute self-Mediation ................. 161
Immediacy and (Un)Beginning ........................................................................... 161
Beginning without Being? Or the Unity of Being and Nothing
in Beginning ................................................................................................................ 166
Being, Nothing, Becoming. Reforming the Identity Principle ................. 175
Reforming Identity: absolute abstract effectiveness passing
in Essence .................................................................................................................... 183
VI. Speculative Essence as Being’s Identity in absolute reflection ...... 197
Ineffable Immediacy: Identity of Being and Essence ................................. 197
Hegel’s freedom ......................................................................................................... 201
Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 217
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 227
Index .................................................................................................................................. 241
6
Introduction
Being seized by an instance that brings the opening of its own
transfixion, human spirit has always daunted the impossible. Thus, usually,
any scientific work, and that of philosophy especially, aims at solving issues
that are considered to have the merit of going beyond the present frontiers
of history. But history is, at the same time, the medium or the ground where
human spirit is nurtured or from which it takes its own urge to transcend
it. Transcending history becomes, thus, the pure purpose of man, but history
also is the scene where man must confront his own struggle and work for
this goal of going beyond what is already given to him as immediate. Passing
from immediate to mediation and then finding their mutual reflection into
one another as a moment of unity—that is the scope of thinking or, ultimately,
as the philosophical tradition has known it, “the identity of thought and
being”.
In the Western philosophical tradition, there is a long line of thinkers
who have tried to express this immediate mediation, this coincidence
between the opposites in various fashions. And each time the philosophical
perspective has been hindered by the extreme difficulty of finding the right
words capable to express what such a unity would entail. The difficulty
occurs because the trial of this finding would unmistakably end by trying
to get the words in themselves to be effectively the very unity that they are
intending to suggest. Quite a difficult task, since this unity supposes the
transfixion of the thinking and of its language expression in order to
make them capable to participate to the very transcendence that they invoke.
This was a problem that was very sharply observed by G.W.F. Hegel.
The German thinker developed an entire system around this issue, commencing
7
Horațiu M. Trif-Boia  LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN HEGEL. RETHINKING THE IDENTITY PRINCIPLE
with the Preface to the Phenomenology of the Spirit where he considers the
very important distinction between the ordinary proposition that finds its
end in the predicate, thusly suppressing any possible transfiguration of the
subject, and the speculative proposition which carries with the subject all
the possible predicates of its essence, and ending with the Concept section
of the Science of Logic where he considers the manner through which logic
is to deal speculatively in order to avoid a thinking that is only formal, and,
thus deprived of the richness of the real content experience that would
result from its own form and would be coincident with it. But the problem
of the spoken reference is that, before being put in language, all the elements
of expression belong to the thought that formulates them and thus thinking
is the expression of the essence of that which is intended by the subject. It
is a truism that the reality of the intentions and the true object of the
intention might not coincide. However, when Hegel speaks of the speculative
proposition, he posits a horizon of realization and of efficacy where there
is a boundless and absolute identity that pervades all differences because
they are differences in themselves and, as such, differences are immediate
modes of the actualization of the unbegun immediacy. Moreover, being called
“the philosopher of the negative” not by mistake or caprice, what one finds
in the very heart of the Hegelian system is the absolute coincidence between
one and the other, between absolute identity and absolute difference, absolute
affirmation and absolute negation etc.. In this, if Hegelian thought is correct,
we would have the perfect intelligible and effective instrument of transfiguring
any thought and of bypassing almost any type of limit.
In this respect the present work has undertaken the burden of a
short research in the configuration and occurrence of one of the most basic
aspects of the Hegelian system: his ground postulates and fundamental
developments of the concept of identity. In this endeavor, we approached
Hegel’s Science of Logic where we were concerned with the author’s treatment
of this concept. We found that the concept of identity that is presented in
8
Introduction
the 2nd part of the work, Essence, is already determined in its fundamental
articulations in relation to what the author discusses in the opening of the
1st part, Being.
However, we opened our analysis with the treatment concerning
Hegel’s speculative methodology since it is a systematic prerequisite for
any discussion of his thinking. All the state-of-the-art literature affirms this
as the correct position concerning the relation between subject, object their
articulation within thought and its expression in language. As Stanislas
Opiela has shown (Opiela, 1983), among other commentators, the method
is not a canvas that is externally applied to the content of the speculative
enterprise. But it is the resultant of the immediate-mediated content that
appears with the first considerations that are made about subject and object.
Because speculative appraisal of a fundamental relation begins from zero
premises, thus concerning all prior elements or frames of actualization that
would usually be supposed, all suppositions are already terminated by a
process that turns, then, against itself in the reflection of the antinomy that
such terminality supposes and in this manner the object of the appraisal
becomes its method and it immediately reveals itself being coincidental
with the subject that is delivering it.
This methodological approach committed us to employ any analysis
from the speculative standpoint, owing loyalty once more to Hegel’s dictum
that any estimation of one’s ideas needs to let be developed and judged
from their own standpoint and let be manifest in their own terms, thus any
refutation could be seized in the terms of the system that is under investigation.
But when we set about this endeavor we found that we should, first, deploy
a few checks upon what Heidegger accused as being “die onto-theologische
Verfassung der Metaphysik”—in other words, his roundabout criticism to
the fundamental premise of the identity principle in Western thought. Of
course, given the limitations of our scope and time resources, we could not
adventure at great length into such analysis, but we limited ourselves to
9