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Chapter 2 diagnoses the operation of constitutive exclusion in hegemonic or closed systems, using Hegel’s philosophical system as a model. I argue that Hegel’s totalized philosophical system relies on a more radical, heterogeneous negativity and difference that it constitutively excludes. The Science of Logic—and by extension the whole of the Hegelian system—relies on the constitutive exclusion of a multiple negativity that exceeds the logic of determinate negation and contradiction that organizes the Hegelian system. However, while this multiple negativity is necessary to the system, because it cannot be recognized by the system it operates in an epistemological “blind spot.” I show that the ontological account of the Logic is arrived at by means of the disavowal of a multiple negativity with its roots in contingent empirical differences, and that this is an ultimately political operation. This irruption of politics into ontology is the hallmark of constitutive exclusion.

Judging these early attempts to be inadequate, Hegel turns to post-Kantian philosophy as the only adequate basis for addressing the cultural and political problems of the modern world. Chapter Two sets out Hegel's confrontation with Kant's legacy and its centrality to his philosophical project as a whole. Hegel's reworking of the implications of thought's spontaneity and self-determination constitute a central task of his most daunting work, The Science of Logic. Articulating the task of Hegel's logic provides the systematic context essential to the interpretation of the philosophy of religion. In elaborating Hegel's relationship to Kant, this chapter bears the core of the argument that Hegel's thought is best interpreted as a distinctly post-Kantian project. It thus builds upon the work of scholars such as Robert Pippin and Terry Pinkard to engage vibrant debates in contemporary Hegel scholarship over the nature of Hegel's idealism

“Hegel, Identity and Constructivism,” the fifth chapter, examines the relationship of Hegel, beginning in the so-called Differenzschrift, his first philosophical publication, to Kant, Fichte and Schelling, his great idealist predecessors. I further discuss the emergence of Hegel’s constructivist theory of cognition in the Phenomenology as well as its application in his Philosophy of Nature. The chapter finally considers Hegel’s understanding of the link between dialectical logic and cognitive constructivism in both the smaller and greater Logics.

Hegel famously says in the “Preface” to The Philosophy of Right that that outline or Grundriss presupposes “the speculative mode of cognition.” This is to be contrasted with what he calls “the old logic” and “the knowledge of the understanding” (Verstandeserkenntnis), a term he also uses to characterize all of metaphysics prior to his own. He makes explicit that he is referring to his book, The Science of Logic, but he does not explain the nature of this dependence anywhere in the book. This chapter attempts to explain the nature of this dependence, and to show that it is indeed crucial to understanding the argument of the work.

Like Kant, Carnap holds that many traditional philosophical controversies are actually ill-posed pseudo-problems. In Carnap's eyes, for example, there's no fact about which the skeptic and the non-sceptic are disagreeing. The only real question in the vicinity concerns the best kind of linguistic framework to adopt — in particular, whether or not to adopt evidential rules strong enough to allow the existence of physical objects to be confirmed — and this is a matter of conventional, pragmatic choice, not of truth or falsity. When the Second Philosopher insists she has good evidence for the existence of ordinary objects, and even of unobservable atoms, Carnap's response echoes Kant's: for her purposes, operating inside the linguistic framework of science, she's quite right, but there is another inquiry, the Logic of Science, where other concerns (ending the pseudo-debate between the sceptic and his opponent or the scientific realist and his opponent) are addressed by other methods (rational reconstruction). Like Kant, Carnap sees two distinct levels of inquiry, the Second Philosopher only one.

This chapter examines the difference between subjective and objective logic, as well as the notion that the science of logic is devoid of presupposition. To this end, the details of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s logic as he explains in detail in his Science of Logic are discussed. It first considers Hegel’s claim that to speak of beings that are cognized as they exist independently of cognition is to contradict oneself, and how this contradiction of the natural consciousness leads to the development of dialectical logic. The chapter then restates the development leading up to the science of logic, the concept of experience in the context of traditional rationalism, and Hegel’s view of essence as appearance and vice versa. The chapter concludes by analyzing Hegel’s preliminary sketch of the universal division of the treatment of being.

This chapter examines the two prefaces of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Science of Logic dated March 1812 and November 1831, respectively. It first considers the Hegelian notions of truth, rationalism, and logic, as well as the Hegelian standpoint between the French Revolution of 1789 and the revolution of 1968. It then turns to a discussion of Hegel’s distinction between two different types of reason: dialectical reason and positive reason. It also discusses the laws of deductive thinking, which it argues are “violated” because they cannot themselves be grasped conceptually except as developing dialectically. Finally, the chapter analyzes Hegel’s arguments about language, unification, and the history of philosophy.

Hegel’s theory of the state is the culmination of his practical philosophy that he presents as a philosophy of freedom. However, many substantial contents of the Philosophy of Right remain unexplored unless one draws on the Science of Logic, which constitutes the coordination system of the argument. This chapter examines the fact that Hegel describes the state as a whole of three syllogisms. This does not apply to the structure of internal state law and to the political state (the constitution) only but also elucidates the overall structure of the state. Crucially, the application of the triad of the syllogism is realised in the context of interpreting the state as a single totality, that is as a whole that supplies its own inner logical mediation. So what is at stake is the justification of the individual freedom of all particular actors within the universality of a modern and democratic state.

This chapter examines Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s claim at the end of book 2 of the Science of Logic that the particular, as the identity of universality and individuality, is the concept, “the domain of subjectivity or of freedom.” It analyzes what Hegel means by this statement in terms of conceptual thinking, specifically his argument that being and thinking are the same from the outset with respect to their form or structure of intelligibility. It also considers the Hegelian conception of the absolute and substance as subject before turning to an overview of book 3 of the Science of Logic. In particular, it discusses Hegel’s “objective” logic and its relation to the categorial structure of actuality, his assertion that the Concept is the absolute foundation or subjective presupposition, and the distinction between cognition and sensation. The chapter concludes by commenting on Hegel’s distinction of unity from difference or determination.

This chapter provides an introduction to the main arguments and themes of the book. It presents three central claims: first, that the core tenets of Hegel’s philosophy, and in particular Hegel’s “Concept,” should be understood as developing around a purposiveness theme deriving from Kant’s third Critique; second, that the speculative identity thesis is key for Hegel’s overarching philosophical method and can be understood as a relationship between life and self-conscious cognition; and third, that Hegel’s Subjective Logic can be read as his version of a critique of judgment. This chapter also provides arguments against two prominent interpretations of the trajectory from Kant to Hegel: one that revolves around a self-consciousness theme, and one that revolves around the importance of the intuitive understanding. It then provides chapter outlines for the remainder of the book.

This chapter examines Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s concept of quantitative relation which he explains in detail in his Science of Logic. It begins with an overview of Hegel’s treatment of quantity in relation to quality, as well as his account of essence or substance. Drawing on the earlier work of John Locke and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, it discusses Hegel’s analysis of reflection. It considers Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre or Doctrine of Science (1794), with emphasis on his interpretation of the three laws of thought: identity, difference, and the ground—his version of the law of noncontradiction. The chapter concludes by citing defects in the Fichtean formulation of reflection from a Hegelian perspective.

This chapter aims to argue, contra Charles Taylor, that Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is not ‘an essay in transcendental argument’. To clarify the difference between Hegel’s phenomenology and transcendental argumentation, Kant’s Transcendental Deduction in the first Critique is examined first. Second, a passage from the Introduction to the Phenomenology is considered in which Hegel criticizes what can be called a ‘quasi-transcendental’ approach to ordinary, natural consciousness. Third, Hegel’s own strategy in the Phenomenology itself is examined. The chapter shows that, unlike transcendental philosophy, Hegelian phenomenology never becomes a philosophical theory about consciousness and its conditions, but remains throughout a study of what emerges in and for consciousness. The conclusion considers briefly the consequences of interpreting the Phenomenology as an essay in rigorously phenomenological, rather than transcendental, argument for understanding the relation between the Phenomenology and the Logic.

This chapter examines Vladimir Lenin’s commentary on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s The Science of Logic, which is the nucleus of his Notebooks on Philosophy, or, more properly, his notebooks on dialectics. In the context of the development of Hegel’s thought, this chapter elucidates the concepts in which he grounds the science of logic and which Lenin clearly highlights in his commentary. In particular, it clarifies the innovative motif of Lenin’s reading of Hegel with respect to Karl Marx and the relevance of the reading to the concrete development of his revolutionary thought. It also considers Marx’s critique of Hegel’s logic and his attempt to overturn the terms of the science of logic and of Hegelianism in general. Finally, it analyzes Lenin’s claim that in the process of consciousness the form cannot be distinguished from the content of knowledge.

This chapter examines Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s argument that existence is the totality of the categorial determinations of essence, based on his initial statement in section 2 of book 2 of the Science of Logic that “essence must appear.” It also discusses Hegel’s implicit claim that the development of being as essence is the same as the development of subjectivity, as well as his fundamental thesis that being cannot be separated from thinking. For Hegel, essence and existence are distinct logical categories, although the former “goes over” into the latter. The chapter analyzes the debate over the proof of God’s existence based on the Hegelian doctrine before concluding with comments on the idea that existence is the dialectic of appearance.

This chapter summarizes Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s argument on being and nothing which he explains in detail in his Science of Logic. It examines the logic of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell with regards to the distinction between “being” and “existence,” the absence of all content of a concept as opposed to the absence of the concept itself, and Hegel’s analysis of becoming. In particular, it considers the Hegelian account of the two moments of becoming, emergence and departure, and their reciprocal transformation into each other as well as the logical transition to the sublation of becoming in Dasein (that is, determinate being). The chapter concludes with a discussion of Das Fürsichsein or being for itself.

This chapter summarizes Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s concept of quantity which he explains in detail in his Science of Logic. It first provides an overview of the general structure of book 1 of the Science of Logic and its discussion of the three levels of the structure of being, namely, determinateness or quality, magnitude or quantity, and measure. It ten examines Hegel’s account of the infinitesimal in early nineteenth-century versions of the calculus, the distinction between human time and the so-called transcendental activity of the absolute, quantity as a moment of the continuum, and the Hegelian notion of form. The chapter also considers Immanuel Kant’s understanding of the antinomies and Hegel’s insistence that Kant has not attained to dialectical logic. Finally, it analyzes quantum, “how much,” as a moment of quantity.

Whereas book 1 of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Science of Logic can be understood as the analysis of Greek ontology prior to Plato, book 2 deals with the notion of essence and like book 1, is dubbed the objective logic by Hegel. This chapter begins with a discussion of monism and dualism before turning to the Hegelian interpretation of the history of philosophy with respect to the traditional doctrine of essence and attributes. It considers Aristotle’s account of essence and property and the case of points on the logical continuum. It also discusses Hegel’s argument that it is impossible to conceive of pure quantity and restates the central theoretical flaw of pre-Socratic philosophy—that is, quality and quantity can be neither distinguished nor unified. Finally, the chapter interprets the transition from book 1 to book 2 as a shift from being to essence.

This chapter focuses on Johann Gottlieb Fichte as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s immediate predecessor and the second volume of Science of Logic, in which Hegel introduces book 2 on Wesen. It first analyzes Hegel’s general doctrine of the shift from being to essence on the one hand, and from essence to the concept on the other, before turning to Fichte’s account of reflection in his Wissenschaftslehre or Doctrine of Science (1794). In particular, it examines Fichte’s attempts to correct the defect of Immanuel Kant’s version of Kantianism through an intellectual intuition of the working transcendental ego. The chapter then considers Fichte’s notion of the human being before concluding with a discussion of Fichte and Hegel’s search for a version of the law of noncontradiction based on both identity and difference.