Editing Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (section)

=== ''Science of Logic'' ===
{{Main article | Science of Logic}}
Hegel's concept of logic differs greatly from that of the ordinary English sense of the term. This can be seen, for instance, in such metaphysical definitions of logic as "the science of ''things'' grasped in [the] ''thoughts'' that used to be taken to express the ''essentialities'' of the ''things''."{{sfn|Hegel|1991b|loc=§24}} As [[:de:Michael Wolff (Philosoph)|Michael Wolff]] explains, Hegel's logic is a continuation of Kant's distinctive logical program.{{sfn|Wolff|2013}} Its occasional engagement with the familiar [[Aristotelian logic|Aristotelian]] conception of logic is only incidental to Hegel's project. Twentieth-century developments by such logicians as [[Frege]] and [[Bertrand Russell|Russell]] likewise remain logics of formal validity and so are likewise irrelevant to Hegel's project, which aspires to provide a metaphysical logic of truth.{{sfn|Houlgate|2005|p=30}}

There are two texts of Hegel's ''Logic''. The first, ''The Science of Logic'' (1812, 1813, 1816; bk.I revised 1831), is sometimes also called the "Greater Logic." The second is the first volume of Hegel's ''Encyclopedia'' and is sometimes known as the "Lesser Logic." The ''Encyclopedia'' Logic is an abbreviated or condensed presentation of the same dialectic. Hegel composed it for use with students in the lecture hall, not as a substitute for its proper, book-length exposition.{{sfn|Houlgate|2006|pp=xvii–xix}}{{efn|The opening section, entitled "Preliminary Conception," also provides a historical examination of philosophical "positions on objectivity" as quite a different sort of "introduction" to the logic than what Hegel earlier gave in the ''Phenomenology of Spirit''. To what extent Hegel preferred this approach over that of his earlier book is a matter of ongoing debate.{{sfn|Collins|2013|p=556}}}}

Hegel presents logic as a presuppositionless science that investigates the most fundamental thought-determinations [''Denkbestimmungen''], or [[Category (Kant)|categories]], and so constitutes the basis of philosophy.{{sfn|Houlgate|2006}}{{sfn|Wandschneider|2013|p=105}} In putting something into question, one already presupposes logic; in this regard, it is the only field of inquiry that must constantly reflect upon its own mode of functioning.{{sfn|Burbidge|1993|p=87}} ''[[The Science of Logic]]'' is Hegel's attempt to meet this foundational demand.{{efn|For further discussion of what it means for logic to be presuppositionless see, in particular, {{harvnb|Houlgate|2006|loc=part I}} and {{harvnb|Hentrup|2019}}.}} As he puts it, "''logic'' coincides with ''metaphysics''."{{sfn|Hegel|1991b|loc=§24}}{{sfn|Beiser|2005|p=53}} In the words of scholar Glenn Alexander Magee, the logic provides "an account of pure categories or ideas which are timelessly true" and which make up "the formal structure of reality itself".{{sfn|Magee|2011|p=132}}

This is not, however, a return to the [[Leibnizian]]-[[Wolffian]] rationalism critiqued by Kant, which is a criticism Hegel accepts.{{sfn|Beiser|2005|p=55}} Hegel rejects any form of metaphysics as speculation about the transcendent. His procedure, an appropriation of Aristotle's concept of [[substantial form|form]], is fully immanent.{{sfn|Beiser|2005|pp=53–57, 65–71}} More generally, Hegel agrees with Kant's rejection of all forms of dogmatism and also agrees that any future metaphysics must pass the test of criticism.{{sfn|Beiser|2008|p=156}}

Philosopher [[Béatrice Longuenesse]] holds that this project may be understood, on analogy to Kant, as "inseparably a metaphysical and a transcendental deduction of the categories of metaphysics."{{sfn|Longuenesse|2007|p=5-6}}{{efn|Kant's "metaphysical deduction" of the categories is a derivation of categories from the Aristotelian table of "the twelve ''logical functions'' or forms of judgments." The "transcendental deduction" advances the more ambitious argument that these a priori categories do, in fact, "apply universally and necessarily to the objects that are given in our experience."{{sfn|Guyer|Wood|1998|pp=8–9}}}} This approach insists, and claims to demonstrate, that the insights of logic cannot be judged by standards external to thought itself, that is, that "thought... is not the mirror of nature." Yet, she argues, this does not imply that these standards are arbitrary or subjective.{{sfn|Longuenesse|2007|p=5-6}} Hegel's translator and scholar of [[German idealism]] [[George di Giovanni]] likewise interprets the ''Logic'' as (drawing upon, yet also in opposition to, [[Kant]]) ''immanently'' [[Transcendental idealism|transcendental]]; its categories, according to Hegel, are built into ''life itself'', and define what it is to be "an object in general."{{sfn|di Giovanni|2010|p=liii n.100}}

Books one and two of the ''Logic'' are the doctrines of "Being" and "Essence." Together they comprise the Objective Logic, which is largely occupied with overcoming the assumptions of traditional metaphysics. Book three is the final part of the ''Logic''. It discusses the doctrine of "the Concept," which is concerned with reintegrating those categories of objectivity into a thoroughly [[Absolute idealism|idealistic]] account of reality.{{efn|"In the Doctrine of the Concept, thought reflects for the first time consciously and explicitly on thought itself, and all the preceding categories are understood to have their meaning and significance precisely in being comprehended by a self-aware thought. The concept is thought "In its being-returned-into-itself [''Zurückgekehrtsein in sich selbst''] and its developed being-with-itself [''Beisichsein''] – the concept in-and for-itself" {{bracket|{{harvnb|Hegel|1991b|loc=§83}}}}. The dialectic of Hegel's ''Logic'' demonstrates how the pure thought-categories of being and essence pass over into the categories of the concept; how the concept reveals, again, the fundamental unity of being and essence."{{sfn|Magee|2011|loc=pp. 58–59, caps modified}}}} Simplifying greatly, Being describes its concepts just as they appear, Essence attempts to explain them with reference to opposites, and the Concept explains and unites them both in terms of an internal teleology.{{sfn|Fritzman|2014|p=10}} The categories of Being "pass over" from one to the next as denoting thought-determinations only extrinsically connected to one another. The categories of Essence reciprocally "shine" into one another. Finally, in the Concept, thought has shown itself to be fully self-referential, and so its categories organically "develop" from one to the next.{{sfn|de Laurentiis|2005|pp=14–15}}{{sfn|Hegel|1991b|loc=§161}}

In Hegel's technical sense of the term, the concept (''Begriff'', sometimes also rendered "notion," capitalized by some translators but not others{{efn|George di Giovanni offers this in defense of "concept": "Following Geraets/Suchting/Harris, I have departed from long-standing usage and have translated ''Begriff'' as 'concept' rather than as 'notion.' B. C. Burt also used 'concept' in his 1896 translation of Erdmann's ''Outlines of Logic and Metaphysics'', for the very good reason that 'notion' carries the connotation of being a subjective representation. Its meaning is also much too vague. It should be reserved for precisely such contexts as require a term without too precise a meaning. 'Concept' has the further advantage of being patently connected with 'to conceive,' just as ''Begriff'' is connected with ''greifen'', and can easily be expanded into 'conceptual' and 'conceptually grasped' or replaced, if need be, with 'comprehension' and 'conceptually comprehended.{{'"}}{{sfn|di Giovanni|2010|pp=lxvii–lxviii}}}}) is not a psychological concept. When deployed with the definitive article ("the") and sometimes modified by the term "logical," Hegel is referring to the intelligible structure of reality as articulated in the Subjective Logic. (When used in the plural, however, Hegel's sense is much closer to the ordinary dictionary sense of the term.{{sfn|Inwood|1992|pp=123–25}})

Hegel's inquiry into thought is concerned to systematize thought's own internal self-differentiation, that is, how pure concepts ([[Category (Kant)|logical categories]]) differ from one another in their various relations of implication and interdependence. For instance, in the opening dialectic of the ''Logic'', Hegel claims to display that the thought of "''being, pure being'' – without further determination" is indistinguishable from the concept of ''nothing'', and that, in this "passing back and forth" of being and nothing, "''each'' immediately ''vanishes in its opposite.''"{{sfn|Hegel|2010b|pp=59–60}} This movement is neither one concept nor the other, but the category of ''becoming''. There is not a difference here to which one can "refer," only a dialectic that one can observe and describe.{{sfn|Burbidge|1993}}

The final category of the ''Logic'' is "the idea." As with "the concept", the sense of this term for Hegel is not psychological. Rather, following [[Kant]] in ''[[The Critique of Pure Reason]]'', Hegel's usage harks back to the Greek ''eidos'', [[Plato]]'s concept of [[Theory of forms|form]] that is fully existent and universal:{{sfn|Inwood|1992|p=123}} "Hegel's ''Idee'' (like Plato's idea) is the product of an attempt to fuse ontology, epistemology, evaluation, etc., into a single set of concepts."{{sfn|Inwood|1992|p=125}}

The ''Logic'' accommodates within itself the necessity of the realm of natural-spiritual ''contingency'', that which cannot be determined in advance: "To go further, it must abandon thinking altogether and let itself go, opening itself to that which is other than thought in pure receptivity."{{sfn|Burbidge|1993|p=100}} Simply put, logic realizes itself only in the domain of nature and spirit, in which it attains its "verification."{{efn|"The concept of philosophy is ''the self-thinking'' idea, the knowing truth (§236), the logical with the meaning that it is the universality ''verified'' [bewährte] in the concrete content as in its actuality."{{sfn|Hegel|2010a|loc= §574}}}} Hence the conclusion of the ''Science of Logic'' with "the idea ''freely discharging'' [entläßt] itself" into "objectivity and external life" – and, so too, the systematic transition to the ''Realphilosophie''.{{sfn|Hegel|2010b|p=753}}{{sfn|Burbidge|2006b|pp=125–26}}