Logic and System: A Study of the Transition from “Vorstellung” to Thought in the Philosophy of Hegel

225 Pages·1971·5.815 MB·English

by  Malcolm Clark (auth.)

LOGIC AND SYSTEM
A STUDY OF THE TRANSITION FROM "VORSTELLUNG"
TO THOUGHT IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEGEL
by
M. CLARK
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V
LOGIC AND SYSTEM
LOGIC AND SYSTEM
A STUDY OF THE TRANSITION FROM "VORSTELLUNG"
TO THOUGHT IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEGEL
by
MALCOLM CLARK
•
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V
© 1971 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Ursprünglich erschienen bei Martinus NijhojJ, The Hague,
Netherlands 1971
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN 978-94-011-9713-7 ISBN 978-94-011-9711-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-9711-3
T ABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE IX
INTRODUCTION
I. Three contemporary studies of Hegel 2
a. J. Hyppolite 2
b. Theodor Litt 7
c. G. R. G. Mure 9
d. Summary 14
2. The situation ofthis study 15
a. The purpose 15
b. The title 16
c. The method 18
PART I
"VORSTELLUNG" AND THOUGHT
21
CHAPTER I THE DESCRIPTION OF VORSTELLUNG 23
I. The meaning ofmeaning 23
2. Thought as Vorstellung 26
a. "Das mittlere Element" 27
b. Contingent and abstract 29
c. Space and time 30
d. Meaning as "Meinung" 32
3. Thought and Vorstellung 35
a. Transition to formal thought 35
b. "Verstand" and "Vernunft" 37
c. The return to Vorstellung 38
CHAPTER II THE PLACE OF VORSTELLUNG IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT 40
I. Meaning and place 40
VI T ABLE OF CONTENTS
2. The dialectic in nature and spirit 44
a. Soul and nature 45
b. Space and time 46
The double character of time (47) - The appearance of space (48) - The
appearance oftime (49)
c. Place 50
3. Intuition (Anschauung) 51
a. The place of intuition 5 I
b. The totality of intuition 53
c. Attention (Aufmerksamkeit) 54
4. Vorstellung 55
a. Recapitulation 55
b. Transition to Vorstellung 56
c. Recollection (Erinnerung) 57
Temporality of the subject (58) - Verification: the synthesis of Vorstel-
lung (59)
d. Imagination (Einbildungskraft) 60
Recapitulation (60) - The syntheses ofimagination (62) -Verballanguage
(63) -Dimensions oftime (64)
e. Memory (Gedächtnis) 65
f. Transition to thought 66
CHAPTER III THE LOGIC OF ESSENCE 68
I. Vorstellung and essence 68
2. The place of essence 71
a. The two principles of division in the Logic 71
The three "Books" (71) - Objective and subjective logic (72) - Externality
within the Logic (74)
b. The logic ofbeing 75
Dialectic without relations (76) - Intuition and indifference (77) - The
totality ofbeing (78)
c. Transition to essence 79
Essence and common sense (79) - Transition as reflection (80) - Double
sense of reflection (83) - Language and the double categories of essence
(84)
d. Development to actuality 86
The growth of a totality (87) - Veri/ication and recognition (88)
e. Transition to the notion 89
3. Essence as reflection into itself 91
a. Essential and unessential: "Schein" 93
The presupposition of being (94) - The positing of being (95)
b. Positing reflection 96
Positing and presupposing (97) - The "in so far" (99)
c. External reflection 101
The origin of Vorstellung (10 I) - Thought as historical (102)
T ABLE OF CONTENTS VII
d. Contradiction lOS
The principle of contradiction (lOS) - The final stage ofthought (107)
e. Ground 11 0
Self-grounding of the totality (111) - The nature and element of spirit
(114) - Transition (I IS)
PART 11
LOGIC AND SYSTEM 117
CHAPTER IV DEVELOPMENT TOWARD SYSTEM 119
I. The problem re-stated 119
2. Dualism and system 121
3. The "Jugendschriften" and origins ofthe system 124
a. Tübingen, Berne, Frankfurt 124
First attitude to positivity (124) - Second attitude to positivity (12S) -
Reconciliation (126) - "Glauben und Sein" (127) - "Systemfragment"
(128)
b. Publications at Jena 129
Transition to philosophy (129) - Philosophy as system (129) - Scepti-
cism, common sense, and philosophy (131) - Attitude to Fichte and
Schelling ("Differenzschrift") (133) - Attitude to Kant ("Glauben und
Wissen") (13S)
c. The Jena "systems" 137
Their content (137) - The principles of division (138) - Conc1usions (141)
d. Origin of the Phenomenology 142
CHAPTER V TIm SYSTEM IN THE ELEMENT OF VORSTELLUNG 146
I. Recapitulation 146
2. Absolute spirit in the form ofVorstellung ISI
a. Transition to absolute spirit ISI
Finite and absolute spirit (ISI) - Identity of subjective and objective
(I S3) - Identity of form and content (I SS)
b. Development in absolute spirit I S6
Religion as development (IS6) - Temporal development (IS8)
c. The "other" of thought IS9
The three elements of religion (IS9) - Relation to the duality of essence
(162)
d. Spirit as result and as origin 16S
"Offenbarung" and "Erhebung" (16S) - Logic and Phenomenology (166)
3. System in the form ofVorstellung 168
a. The notion of system 168
b. Thethreeelements 16g
c. The element of thought 172
Transition in thought and from thought (172) - The ontological argu-
VIII TADLE OF CONTENTS
ment (174) - Relation to essence (176) - Result and origin (177)
d. The element ofVorstellung 178
The "other" of thought (179) - The need of reconciliation (180) - Trans-
ition to spirit (182)
e. The element of spirit 183
The situation of philosophy (184) - The final identity (187)
f. System and history 189
CHAPTER VI THE SYSTEM IN THE ELEMENT OF THOUGHT: CONCLUSION 194
I. Circularityand criticism 194
2. System and syllogism 197
a. The doctrine ofthe syllogism 197
b. The triad of syllogisms 200
c. The mediating syllogism 202
3. The place ofthe Logic in the system 203
a. System 203
The need of system (203) - The thought of totality (203) - The transitions
(204)
b. Logic 205
Ambiguity and autonomy (205) - Explanation and verification (205) -
Thought and experience (206)
c. Place 206
The situation of man (207) - Man's "element" (207) - The history of
man's thought (209)
BIBLIOGRAPHY 210
ApPENDIX 213
PREFACE
This book will examine one of the oldest problems in understanding what
Hegel was trying to do. What is the place ofthe Logic in the Hegelian system?
That is, how did Hegel see the relation between "pure thought" and its
origins or applications in our many forms of experience?
A novel approach to this old question has been adopted. This book will
study Hegers account of what he regarded as the dosest "illustrations" of
pure thinking, namely the way we find our thought in language and the way
philosophieal truths are expressed in religious talk. The preface will indicate
the problem and the approach. The introduction will examine three recent
works on Hegel and suggest how they invite the sort of study which is pro
posedhere.
There was a time when Hegel was read as the source of all wisdom, a time
also when he was treated only as an occasion of ridicule. Both are now past.
The attitude of metaphysicians is more cautious, that oftheir opponents more
receptive. Each side is better prepared to allow those who hold an assured
place in the history of philosophy to speak for themselves and reveal their
achievements and their limits.
In this atmosphere there is special reason, on both sides, for the study of
Hege!. No one has made such extreme claims for metaphysical thought and
developed it so extensively and systematieally. No one has demanded more
from posterity in the criticism of such thought.
In one sense, Hegers position may be stated quite briefly. For hirn, to be a
metaphysician is to recognize that thinking is not finally distinct from that
about whieh we think. What is "there" is there only as experienced, and our
many ways of experiencing culminate in the pure thought of the philosopher.
Philosophy is not "about" a foreign reality. Philosophy is reality. Better ex
pressed, philosophy is the way we gradually master or see through the many
oppositions we find or assurne. These are not simply denied. Our life is made
up of them. But they remain "within" the final "identity" of thought and its
x PREFACE
object, "overcome" by it. Absolute knowledge is absolved from dependence
on anything merely outside it. The philosopher starts with the totality "ab
stractly" experienced and ends with the totality "concretely" known.
In another sense, Hegel's position is impossible to state. All the words in
the above account draw their meaning from use at stages of the way far
short of the final one they describe. Within, overcome, identity itself, all are
but crude metaphors carrying a wide range of meanings and a rich train of
images. It is only in following the complete way which Hegel prescribes that
his student can hope to understand the final stage and formulate it in less in
adequate language.
Hence, any study of Hegel is condemned, by Hegel's own norms, to a
certain one-sidedness. Unless it try to retrace the full way, it must view his
system from some particular stage or stages. So far, however, as it is cons
cious of its own position within the whole, it should - again by Hegel's own
standards - go some distance toward overcoming this bias.
Hegel's position brings with it a consequence that may, perhaps with gross
over-simplification, be stated as follows. All thinking is confronted sooner or
later with an obstac1e that cannot be mastered, with an "unintelligible".
Philosophical systems may be c1assified crudely according to where they set,
or accept, this obstac1e. The philosopher who advances slowly but surelyon
a "foreign" reality starts with what he can most easily handle and moves to
ward that which is and remains beyond his grasp. A philosopher who claims
to start with the totality may use a similar model to record his progress. Yet
a certain insight into Hegel's thought can be gained by seeing it as drawing
the consequences from a resolute refusal to treat the unintelligible as a
"beyond", as a merely "residual unknown": the firm rejection of any
Jenseits is the mark of Hegel's philosophy and temperament. However, the
corollary - and this Hegel never admitted in such direct terms - is that the
unintelligible must be faced at the beginning. Indeed, if the suggestion is
allowed, Hegel made this the "principle of explanation" in his philosophy.
The very fact ofbeginning so deliberately with the totalityinvolves certain basic
paradoxes, in the "light" of which all else, all within the whole, is "explained".
Perhaps this is caricature. And perhaps such a project sounds absurd. Yet
nonsense is relative, and it is not easy to say what anyone is doing in "ex
plaining", least of all a philosopher. At any rate, those who approach Hegel
for the first time must be struck by an air of paradox about his system in its
entirety and in its parts. We may, then, in trying to indicate the approach
this study of Hegel will make, offer a short account of the paradox of his
system as it confronts anyone who examines it afresh, free from the weight of
commentaries.