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04 Jan 10
Shelly MichalkThe most comprehensive collection of the works of Hegel on the Internet, in English, plus a glossary, introductions, illustrations and links to Hegel interpretation and other resources
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This formulation of Hegel's triadic logic is convenient, but it must be emphasised that he never used the terms thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
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28 Mar 06
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contains all the earlier categories of thought merged in it.
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thus possesses at the same time a character of thorough concreteness.
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This external manner of thinking always presupposes motion as already externally present in matter, and it does not occur to it to regard motion as something immanent and to comprehend motion itself in matter, which latter is thus assumed as, on its own account, motionless and inert.
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that through repulsion alone matter would not be spatial
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It is indeed easy to perceive that matter, besides its being-for-self, which sublates the being-for-other (offers resistance), has also a relation between its self-determined parts, a spatial extension and cohesion, and in rigidity and solidity the cohesion is very firm.
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But the forces of attraction and repulsion, in so far as they are regarded as forces of empirical matter, are also based on the pure determinations here considered of the one and the many and their inter-relationships, which, because these names are most obvious, I have called repulsion and attraction.
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each is regarded also as a first, as being in and for itself, and matter, or its determinations, are supposed to be realised and produced by them.
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Conceived as forces, they are regarded as self-subsistent and therefore as not connected with each other through their own nature
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But that there are many ones, this is repulsion itself; any presupposition which it might have is only its own positing
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in place of the atoms which vanish in the centre of attraction, another multitude comes forth from the void, and so on to infinity if one wishes.
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Both repulsion and attraction are in the first place distinct from each other, the former as the reality of the ones, the latter as their posited ideality.
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More specifically, this self-subsistence is the error of regarding as negative that which is its own essence, and of adopting a negative attitude towards it. Thus it is the negative attitude towards itself which, in seeking to possess its own being destroys it, and this its act is only the manifestation of the futility of this act.
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this truth is to be grasped and expressed only as a becoming, as a process, a repulsion and attraction-not as being, which in a proposition has the character of a stable unity.
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It directly follows from this comparison of the many with one another that any one is determined simply like any other one; each is a one, each is one of the many, is by excluding the others — so that they are absolutely the same, there is present one and only one determination.
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In pronouncing an action to be good, we frame a notional judgment. Here, as we at once perceive, there is a closer and a more intimate relation than in the immediate judgment. The predicate in the latter is some abstract quality which may or may not be applied to the subject. In the judgment of the notion the predicate is, as it were, the soul of the subject, by which the subject, as the body of this soul, is characterised through and through.
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The rose however is a concrete thing, and so is not red only: it has also an odour, a specific form, and many other features not implied in the predicate red. The predicate on its part is an abstract universal, and does not apply to the rose alone. There are other flowers and other objects which are red too. The subject and predicate in the immediate judgment touch, as it were, only in a single point, but do not cover each other.
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That a person is sick, or that some one has committed a theft, may certainly be correct. But the content is untrue. A sick body is not in harmony with the notion of body, and there is a want of congruity between theft and the notion of human conduct. These instances may show that an immediate judgment in which an abstract quality is predicated of an immediately individual thing, however correct it may be, cannot contain truth. The subject and predicate of it do not stand to each other in the relation of reality and notion.
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It is one of the fundamental assumptions of dogmatic Logic that Qualitative judgments such as ‘The rose is red’ or ‘is not red’ can contain truth. Correct they may be, i.e. in the limited circle of perception, of finite conception and thought: that depends on the content, which likewise is finite, and, on its own merits, untrue.
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For the subject is a concrete totality, which means not any indefinite multiplicity, but individuality alone, the particular and the universal in an identity: and the predicate too in the very same unity
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the predicate as universal is self-subsistent, and indifferent whether this subject is or not. The predicate outflanks the subject, subsuming it under itself: and hence on its side is wider than the subject.
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Further, as the subject is in general and immediately concrete, the specific connotation of the predicate is only one of the numerous characters of the subject. Thus the subject is ampler and wider than the predicate.
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As the judgment receives further development, the subject ceases to be merely the immediate individual, and the predicate merely the abstract universal: the former acquires the additional significations of particular and universal, the latter the additional significations of particular and individual.
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The abstract terms of the judgment, ‘The individual is the Universal’, present the subject (as negatively self-relating) as what is immediately concrete, while the predicate is what is abstract, indeterminate, in short, the universal. But the two elements are connected together by an ‘is’: and thus the predicate (in its universality) must also contain the speciality of the subject, must, in short, have particularity: and so is realised the identity between subject and predicate; which, being thus unaffected by this difference in form, is the content.
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That is to say, they are individuals which are a universality or inner nature in themselves — a universal which is individualised. Their universality and individuality are distinguished, but the one is at the same time identical with the other.
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Language like this looks upon the subject as self-subsistent outside, and the predicate as found somewhere in our head. > Such a conception of the relation between subject and predicate however is at once contradicted by the copula ‘is’. By saying ‘This rose is red’, or ‘This picture is beautiful’, we declare, that it is not we who from outside attach beauty to the picture or redness to the rose, but that these are the characteristics proper to these objects. >
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To form a notion of an object means therefore to become aware of its notion: and when we proceed to a criticism or judgment of the object, we are not performing a subjective act, and merely ascribing this or that predicate to the object. We are, on the contrary, observing the object in the specific character imposed by its notion.
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This disruption of the notion into the difference of its constituent functions — a disruption imposed by the native act of the notion — is the judgment. A judgment therefore means the particularising of the notion.
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It is equally false to speak of a combination of the two sides in the judgment, if we understand the term ‘combination’ to imply the independent existence of the combining members apart from the combination.
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In its abstract terms a Judgment is expressible in the proposition: ‘The individual is the universal.’
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What are called notions, and in fact specific notions, such as man, house, animal, etc., are simply denotations and abstract representations. These abstractions retain out of all the functions of the notion only that of universality; they leave particularity and individuality out of account and have no development in these directions.
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No complaint is oftener made against the notion than that it is abstract. Of course it is abstract, if abstract means that the medium in which the notion exists is thought in general and not the sensible thing in its empirical concreteness.
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s a mistake to imagine that the objects which form the content of our mental ideas come first and that our subjective agency then supervenes, and by the aforesaid operation of abstraction, and by colligating the points possessed in common by the objects, frames notions of them
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No doubt the notion is not mere Being, or the immediate: it involves mediation, but the mediation lies in itself. In other words, the notion is what is mediated through itself and with itself.
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The notion is generally associated in our minds with abstract generality, and on that account it is often described as a general conception. We speak, accordingly, of the notions of colour, plant, animal, etc. They are supposed to be arrived at by neglecting the particular features which distinguish the different colours, plants, and animals from each other, and by retaining those common to them all.
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And yet, as it was before remarked, the notion is a true concrete; for the reason that it involves Being and Essence, and the total wealth of these two spheres with them, merged in the unity of thought.
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In so far as immediate Being is regarded as a merely "Posited,” it has gone back into essence or into its ground. The former (i.e. Being) is here the first — that from which we started. But in this “going back" we retract that position, and recognise the ground rather as the first and essential.
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