Table Of ContentFROM CONCEPT TO OBJECTIVITY
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From Concept to Objectivity
Thinking Through Hegel’s Subjective Logic
RICHARD DIEN WINFIELD
University of Georgia, USA
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First published 2006 by Ashgate Publishing
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Winfield, Richard Dien, 1950-
From concept to objectivity : thinking through Hegel’s subjective logic. —
(Ashgate new critical thinking in philosophy)
1 .Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831 2.Logic
I.Title
160.9*2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Winfield, Richard Dien, 1950-
From concept to objectivity : thinking through Hegel’s subjective logic / Richard
Dien Winfield,
p. cm.
Includes index.
1. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770^1831.2. Logic, Modem—19th century.
I. Title.
B2949.L8W56 2006
160.92—dc22
2005032001
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-5536-7 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-4724-8414-7 (pbk)
Contents
Introduction viii-x
1 Formal, Transcendental, and Systematic Logic 1
The Problem of Prescriptive Logic 1
Formal Logic and the Self-Justification of Reason 2
The Impasse of Transcendental Logic 6
Systematic Logic and Self-Determination 10
Systematic Logic and the Question of Determinacy 14
2 Method in Systematic Logic 19
Method As Determined From the Requirements of Logic 20
The Reflexivity of Prescriptive Logic 25
The Method of Philosophy as the Method of Logic 27
3 Determinacy Without Appeal to the Given 31
The Self-Evidence of the Category of Something 31
The Lure of the Irreducibility of Determinacy 3 3
Dilemmas of the Theory of Substance 33
The Justifications of Substance 34
The Fatal Enigma of Substance 35
The Dilemma of Rooting Determinacy in a Privileged
Determiner 36
Conceiving Something Without Privileged Givens or
Conceptual Schemes 39
From Indeterminacy to Determinate Being 40
Being, Nonbeing, and Being Determinate 43
Quality, Otherness, and Relation 44
Something and Other 46
The Logic of Determinacy and the Logic of the Concept 49
4 Concept, Individuality, and Self-Determination 51
The Concept in Philosophy 51
vi From Concept to Objectivity
The Concept in Systematic Logic 53
Freedom, Individuality, and the Requirements of
Conceptual Truth 57
The Logic of Self-Determination as the Logic of the Concept 58
The Concept, Objectivity, and the Logic of Truth 59
5 From Concept to Judgment 67
The Challenge of A Non-Formal Determination of Concept,
Judgment, and Syllogism 69
Principal Guiding Theses in Hegel’s Subjective Logic 70
Universality, Particularity, and Individuality in Anticipated
Connection 74
The Concept of the Concept 78
From Concept to Judgment 84
6 The Forms of Judgment and the Types of Universals 89
Preliminary Overview of the Forms of Judgment and the
Types of Universality 91
Qualitative Judgment and Abstract Universality 94
Quantitative Judgment and Class Membership 96
Judgments of Necessity and Genus and Species 98
Categorical Judgment 99
Hypothetical Judgment 100
Disjunctive Judgment 101
Judgments of the Concept and the Universal of Normativity 102
Assertoric Judgment 103
Problematic Judgment 103
Apodeictic Judgment 103
Beyond Judgment 104
7 The System of Syllogism 107
Reason and Syllogism 107
From Judgment to Syllogism 110
Differentiation of the Forms of Syllogism 111
The Minimal Form of Syllogism: the Syllogism of
Determinate Being 113
The Syllogism of Reflection 118
The Syllogism of Necessity 122
Why There is No Syllogism of the Concept 127
From Syllogism to Objectivity 128
Contents vii
8 Objectivity in Logic and Nature 131
The Perplexity of Subjectivity and Objectivity as Logical
Categories 131
Subjectivity and Objectivity as Logical Categories 132
What is Logical and What is Subjective in Logical
Subjectivity 133
What is Logical and What is Objective in Logical
Objectivity 138
The Distinction Between Objectivity in Logic and
Objectivity in Nature 140
Works Cited 145
Index 147
Introduction
Reason has come to be regarded as either opposed to objectivity or all too
immersed within it. As opposed, reason confronts an independently given
otherness never conceivable as it is in itself. As immersed within objectivity,
reason stands conditioned by particular practices that render thought powerless
to grasp reality in its own right. On either account, truth remains beyond
reason, which at most can judge the consistency of claims whose veracity it can
never establish. Nonetheless, both views offer their thoughts about reason
without questioning how an impotent reason can know itself with any
authority.
No philosopher can escape dogmatism without considering why thought
should enjoy the privilege that philosophy confers upon it by relying on reason.
Yet thinking about thinking seems caught in a hopeless circularity. How can
valid thinking be established without employing valid thought from the outset?
But then, how can valid thinking be any more than an assumption,
insusceptible of any validation?
These questions are crucial for logic, whose task is thinking about thinking.
Few logical investigations, however, have seriously addressed these problems,
let alone even tried to account systematically for the concept, judgment and
syllogism, which have played so central a role in logic since Aristotle.
The signal exception to this negligence is Hegel, whose Science of Logic
remains the most radical and thorough attempt to resolve the dilemmas of
thinking about thinking, establish how thought can grasp objectivity, and
secure the truth of philosophy’s reliance upon reason. Ever since the Science of
Logic's publication, critics have focused their attention upon its beginning and
the difficulty of developing thought without taking valid thinking for granted.
This is a key question and it must be addressed. Yet, of no less importance is
Hegel’s groundbreaking attempt in the final part of the Science, the so-called
Subjective Logic, to account for the concept, judgment, and syllogism, and
their relation to the categorization of objectivity. Here, the key elements of
traditional logic become thematic, together with how the universal and self-
determination are conceivable. Although these topics are pivotal for
understanding reason and its role in philosophy, Hegel’s treatment has received
comparatively little attention, either among Hegel scholars or contemporary
philosophers in general.
From Concept to Objectivity seeks to remedy that inattention by thinking
Introduction IX
through the core categorial development of Hegel’s Subjective Logic so as to
uncover the special nature and authority of conceptual determination. This
requires first clarifying the preliminary logical problems that prepare the way
for conceiving the concept. To this end, Chapter 1 examines how systematic
logic can overcome the vicious circularity of thinking valid thinking, enabling
philosophy to proceed without foundations. Chapter 2 next addresses the
perplexities of method as they apply to a science of logic that cannot
presuppose any method without question-begging. Following arguments drawn
from Hegel’s Logic of Being, Chapter 3 shows how systematic logic can
account for something determinate without taking determinacy for granted.
This sets the stage for considering how the determinacy of the concept can be
systematically conceived. Chapter 4 addresses this challenge in view of the
problems of conceiving universality and its connection with self-determination
and the autonomy of reason. Having shown how the concept is determinable in
terms of universality, particularity, and individuality, Chapter 5 examines how
these categories give rise to judgment. With the transition from concept to
judgment accounted for, Chapter 6 systematically conceives the different forms
of judgment in respect of the different types of universality that figure within
them. The conclusion of Chapter 6 shows how the forms of judgment achieve
closure by engendering syllogism. Chapter 7 thereupon thinks through the
successive forms of syllogism that result, showing how they reach exhaustive
determination by paving the way for the categorization of objectivity. The
perplexities of that categorization are the theme of the final Chapter 8, which
shows how subjectivity and objectivity can be logically determined without
casting thought in irrevocable opposition to reality.
A Note on the Text
The above chapters each incorporate previously published material, both
modified and supplemented, with the permissions of the publishers listed
below.
Chapter 1 incorporates in altered form material originally published as,
“Dialectical Logic and The Conception of Truth”, Journal of the British
Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1987, pp. 133-148.
Chapter 2 incorporates in altered form material originally published as,
“The Method of Hegel’s Science of Logic”, in Essays On Hegel’s Logic, ed. by
George di Giovanni (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), pp.
45-57, and then republished with minor alterations in Richard Dien Winfield,
Freedom and Modernity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991)
pp. 3-13.
