On Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ : A Realm of Shadows — part forty four.
‘An Essay on Criticism’ (excerpt)
by Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
INTRODUCTION. That it is as great a fault to judge ill as to write ill, and a more dangerous one to the public. That a true Taste is as rare to be found as a true Genius. That most men are born with some Taste, but spoiled by false education. The multitude of Critics, and causes of them. That we are to study our own Taste, and know the limits of it. Nature the best guide of judgment. Improved by Art and rules, which are but methodized Nature. Rules derived from the practice of the ancient poets. That therefore the ancients are necessary to be studied by a Critic, particularly Homer and Virgil. Of licenses, and the use of them by the ancients. Reverence due to the ancients, and praise of them.
’Tis hard to say if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But of the two less dangerous is th’offence
To tire our patience than mislead our sense:
Some few in that, but numbers err in this;
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;
A fool might once himself alone expose;
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.
’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
In Poets as true Genius is but rare,
True Taste as seldom is the Critic’s share;
Both must alike from Heav’n derive their light,
These born to judge, as well as those to write.
Let such teach others who themselves excel,
And censure freely who have written well;
Authors are partial to their wit, ’tis true,
But are not Critics to their judgment too?
Yet if we look more closely, we shall find
Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind:
Nature affords at least a glimm’ring light;
The lines, tho’ touch’d but faintly, are drawn right:
But as the slightest sketch, if justly traced,
Is by ill col’ring but the more disgraced,
So by false learning is good sense defaced:
Some are bewilder’d in the maze of schools,
And some made coxcombs Nature meant but fools:
In search of wit these lose their common sense,
And then turn Critics in their own defence:
Each burns alike, who can or cannot write,
Or with a rival’s or an eunuch’s spite.
All fools have still an itching to deride,
And fain would be upon the laughing side.
If Mævius scribble in Apollo’s spite,
There are who judge still worse than he can write.
Some have at first for Wits, then Poets pass’d;
Turn’d Critics next, and prov’d plain Fools at last.
Some neither can for Wits nor Critics pass,
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.
Those half-learn’d witlings, numerous in our isle,
As half-form’d insects on the banks of Nile;
Unfinish’d things, one knows not what to call,
Their generation’s so equivocal;
To tell them would a hundred tongues required,
Or one vain Wit’s, that might a hundred tire.
But you who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a Critic’s noble name,
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,
How far your Genius, Taste, and Learning go,
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where Sense and Dulness meet.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1770–1831). ‘The Science of Logic’.
The Judgment of the Notion. So far, genus is really connected to species. Indeed, it is one of the species. The subject now corresponds to and is separate from its Universal, objective Notion. The Understanding therefore proposes that empirical species have a connection with the Notion (or genus), leaving open the possibility that “inessential” differences may exist between the species. Species therefore can be judged normatively, based on their genetic (i.e., notional) purity. Judgment of the Notion vindicates Robert Berman’s thesis that Hegelian Individuality most resembles the virtuosic connotation in common usage. According to Berman Individualism commonly means the virtuosity model (‘the ideal city’), inclusivist (‘New York, Hoboken, etc., are all cities’), and exclusivist (‘Hoboken’s no city; New York, now that’s a city’).
The Assertoric Judgment. Assertoric Judgment proclaims: this house is good, this man is bad. ‘When reading Hegel one must be like a detective and search for clues, for Hegel does not leave the reader with any familiar objects … The house symbolizes the human desire to make the world habitable, to be at home in the world, to be free’, said David Lamb. I don’t usually give precise citations for the quotes I give, well these are not articles written for an academic journal so I judge it best not to bog them down with footnotes and references, but I will give a plug in Lamb’s case: ‘Teleology: Kant and Hegel’, in ‘Hegel’s Critique of Kant’, Stephen Priest ed., 1987. I make the exception because he was a supervisor for my MPhil thesis back in the 1990s for the Open University, he was then teaching at the University of Manchester. A dog lover, he used to enter dogs in the Crufts dog show, perhaps he still does, and when I first went to meet him I was greeted by two enormous dogs, no idea what breed. Anyway, my thesis, on free will, centred on Jean-Paul Sartre and his theory of Act-libertarianism, I was so much into Sartre then, I had just finished a three year philosophy course at the University of Leeds during which time Hegel never came up. Apart from a brief mention in the ‘Modern Continental Philosophy’ module, which included Sartre’s ‘Being and Nothingness’ when we were informed in passing y our tutor that Sartre criticized Hegel for giving Bring and Nothingness the same ontological status but of course I now know that if you want to understand Hegel forget anything Sartre says about him, a good deal he lifted from Hegel anyway and distorted it into something that makes little sense. And how did I come to realise that? Because Lamb is an Hegelian and we did spend quite a bit of time discussing Hegel whom I knew nothing about in those days when we should have been discussing Sartre. And so the seed was planted. I haven’t seen him since such a long time ago I wonder what he would think if he saw me now?
One thing he told me that has stuck concerned Kant. David Lamb is the author of ‘Science, Religion, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence’, 1994. He explained how we should really read through the great philosopher’s works directly, rather than secondary sources, for then we come across passages we wouldn’t otherwise no about because scholars pass them by. Kant critiquing pure reason, for instance, pure reason that can attain no speculative knowledge, and yet read the Critique and you will come across speculating about life on other planets.
‘Now, in cases where we cannot enter upon any course of action in reference to some object, and where, accordingly, our judgement is purely theoretical, we can still represent to ourselves, in thought, the possibility of a course of action, for which we suppose that we have sufficient grounds, if any means existed of ascertaining the truth of the matter. Thus we find in purely theoretical judgements an analogon of practical judgements, to which the word belief may properly be applied, and which we may term doctrinal belief. I should not hesitate to stake my all on the truth of the proposition — if there were any possibility of bringing it to the test of experience — that, at least, some one of the planets, which we see, is inhabited. Hence I say that I have not merely the opinion, but the strong belief, on the correctness of which I would stake even many of the advantages of life, that there are inhabitants in other worlds’.
- ‘Critique of Pure Reason’
Anyway I digress. Where was I? Assertoric Judgement. It affirms that there is a notion and that the empirical Individual has a quantitative relation to it. That house is better than this house, because it is closer to the Notion of house. Admittedly, the empirical house is never perfect; the truly notional house is an ought-to-be to which the reality may or may not be adequate. This is the realm of more or less — determinations possessed by a universal in relation to a particularity coming under it.
‘To know how to form judgments of existence, such as ‘the rose is red’, ‘the snow is white’, etc., hardly counts as a sign of great power of judgment. The judgments of reflection are more in the nature of propositions; to be sure, in the judgment of necessity the subject matter is present in its objective universality, but it is only in the judgment now to be considered that its connection with the concept is to be found. The concept is at the basis of this judgment, and it is there with reference to the subject matter, as an ought to which reality may or may not conform. — This is the judgment, therefore, that first contains true adjudication; the predicates, ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘true’, ‘right’, etc., express that the fact is measured against the concept as an ought which is simply presupposed, and is, or is not, in agreement with it’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
In the Assertoric Judgment we find true appreciation. When we say a thing is good or beautiful, the empirical thing compares itself against its Notion. It is not we but the subject — the house — that ‘provides the criterion for its own assessment’, says Burbidge. The Judgment of the Notion is that the concrete Individual is only an ought-to-be. Kant called the Judgment of the Notion the judgment of modality.
Assertoric Judgement
Kant located modal judgments in an external understanding. Hegel’s Judgment of the Notion follows Kant’s modal judgments in his Table of Logical Functions in Judgment. The modal forms are problematic, assertoric, and apodeictic. Hegel alters the order: assertoric leads, dialectical problematic judgment is second. According to this view, the problematical judgment is one where affirmation or denial is optional. It is compared to the assertoric (taken as true) and the apodeictic (taken as necessary). Because Kant thought modal judgment to be subjective, his entire theory of Notion was likewise subjective, Hegel says. For Kant, Notion (subjectivity) stands in relation to a dead, external reality. But Notion, as it reemerged from the Disjunctive Judgment, is no such contingency.
Earlier Judgments may have been merely subjective, to the extent they relied upon externality. ‘These define only scheniatic possibilities, not specific actualities’, explains Burbidge. The Judgment of the Notion, however, is an objective Universality. Harris complains that ‘Hegel here gives the modal forms an odd and somewhat arbitrary interpretation as judgements of value’. But in fact this follows naturally from Disjunctive Judgment, where Speculative Reason sees that one of the Species is notional but not the others. To the extent the Individual is not notional, it is not what it ought to be. There is nothing arbitrary about this progression. Harris goes on to say that, ‘for Hegel, the criterion of truth is value’. This is accurate, if we understand that the closer our judgments are to the notion of things, the closer we are to the truth. Assertoric Judgment, however imperfectly, puts forth this as its criterion of truth.
In Assertoric Judgment, Notion is posited as the identity of genus and species; concretion of universality and particularization has been achieved. At first this is a simple result. This is Assertoric Judgment’s defect. The moments must not be swallowed up in this way. The unity and the moments must endure in a true totality: “although objective universality has completed itself in its particularization, yet the negative unity of the [particularization] merely returns into [Universality] and has not yet determined itself to the third moment, that of individuality. In other words, the species generated by genus, so far, are only accidents and have no objective worth of their own. From this perspective, the subject is indifferent to its Universal nature; it so far refuses to become what it ought to be.
‘In the disjunctive judgment, the concept was posited as the identity of universal nature and its particularization, and with that the relation of the judgment was sublated. This concretion of universality and particularization is at first a simple result; it must now further develop itself into totality, for its moments have at first collapsed into it and do not as yet stand over against each other in determinate self-subsistence. — The shortcoming of that result may also be stated more incisively by saying that although in the disjunctive judgment the objective universality has attained completion in its particularization, the negative unity of the latter has only retreated into it and has not as yet determined itself as the third moment, that of singularity. — But to the extent that the result is itself negative unity, it is already this singularity; it is then this one determinateness alone that must now posit its negativity, that must part itself into extremes and in this way concludes its development in the syllogistic conclusion’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Note: There is in German a play on words here. Schluß means both conclusion and syllogism.
‘An Essay on Criticism’ (excerpt)
by Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
Nature to all things fix’d the limits fit,
And wisely curb’d proud man’s pretending wit.
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while Memory prevails,
The solid power of Understanding fails;
Where beams of warm Imagination play,
The Memory’s soft figures melt away.
One Science only will one genius fit;
So vast is Art, so narrow human wit:
Now only bounded to peculiar arts,
But oft in those confin’d to single parts.
Like Kings we lose the conquests gain’d before,
By vain ambition still to make them more:
Each might his sev’ral province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand.
First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same;
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of Art.
Art from that fund each just supply provides,
Works without show, and without pomp presides.
In some fair body thus th’informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole;
Each motion guides, and every nerve sustains,
Itself unseen, but in th’ effects remains.
Some, to whom Heav’n in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more to turn it to its use;
For Wit and Judgment often are at strife
Tho’ meant each other’s aid, like man and wife.
’Tis more to guide than spur the Muse’s steed,
Restrain his fury than provoke his speed:
The winged courser, like a gen’rous horse,
Shows most true mettel when you check his course.
Those rules of old, discover’d, not devised,
Are Nature still, but Nature methodized;
Nature, like Liberty, is but restrain’d
By the same laws which first herself ordain’d.
The empirical Individual, Hegel says, is constituted. This constitution is the individuality, which lies beyond the necessary determination of the universal in the disjunctive judgement. Constitution is the negative principle of the genus.
‘The judgment of the concept is at first immediate; as such, it is the assertoric judgment. The subject is a concrete singular in general, and the predicate expresses this same singular as the connection of its actuality, its determinateness or constitution, to its concept. (‘This house is bad’, ‘this action is good’.) More closely considered, it contains, therefore, (a) that the subject ought to be something; its universal nature has posited itself as the self-subsistent concept; (b) that particularity is something constituted or an external concrete existence, not only because of its immediacy, but because it expressly differs from its self-subsisting universal nature; its external concrete existence, for its part, because of this self-subsistence of the concept, is also indifferent with respect to the universal and may or may not conform to it. — This constitution is the singularity which in the disjunctive judgment escapes the necessary determination of the universal, a determination that exists only as the particularization of the species and as the negative principle of the genus. Thus the concrete universality that has come out of the disjunctive judgment divides in the assertoric judgment into the form of extremes to which the concept itself, as the posited unity connecting them, is still lacking’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
That is, if species differ from each other, it is because there is some inessential difference, external to the Notion. This idea hearkens back to chapter 2, where Constitution stood for the role of externality in Determination. Its reappearance here shows that, at this late stage of the Logic, Hegel has by no means shut out contingency and chance from the Notion. In the Assertoric Judgement, the Disjunctive Judgement is sundered into extremes. Clark Butler errs in suggesting that Assertoric Judgement ‘asserts that the absolute in whatever real existence it has satisfies its concept. But the judgment makes this assertion dogmatically, without any ground’. This overlooks the fact that Assertoric Judgment is an interpretation of Disjunctive Judgment, according to which there are notional and non-notional predicates. Therefore, Assertoric Judgment never asserts that a thing satisfies its concept. Quite the opposite is true. The empirical thing inherently betrays its concept and therefore is a mere ought-to-be.
‘Unifying Notion, however, is lacking; verification is a subjective assurance. For this reason the judgment is so far only assertoric; its credential is only a subjective assurance. That something is good or bad, right, suitable or not, hangs on an external third. But to say that the connectedness is thus externally posited is the same as saying that it is still only in itself or internal. — When we say that something is good or bad, etc., we certainly do not mean to say that it is good only in a subjective consciousness but may perhaps be bad in itself, or that ‘good and bad’, ‘right’, ‘suitable’,” etc. may not be predicates of the object itself. The merely subjective character of the assertion of this judgment consists, therefore, in the fact that the implicitly present connectedness of subject and predicate has not been posited yet, or, what amounts to the same thing, that it is only external; the copula still is an immediate abstract being’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
If something is either good or bad, wishing makes it so. Subject (empirical house) and predicate (notional house) are related by a third factor — namely the wisher. Hegel laments, the Assertory judgement, although rejected by society as out of place when it claims authority on its own showing, has however been made the single and all-essential form of doctrine, even in philosophy, through the influence of the principle of immediate knowledge and faith.
‘The judgment of the Concept has the Concept, the totality in simple form, as its content, the universal with its complete determinacy. The subject is first (1) something-singular which has as its predicate the reflection of the particular that is thereupon its universal: the agreement or disagreement of these two determinations. This is the assertoric judgment about what is good, true, correct, etc. This is the first type of judging that is called ‘judging’ in ordinary life as well: whether an object, an act, etc., is good or bad, true, beautiful, etc. We never attribute the ‘power of judgment’ to anyone because he knows how to make positive or negative judgments such as: ‘This rose is red’ or ‘This painting is red, green, dusty’, etc. Because of the principle of immediate knowledge and faith, the assertoric judgment has been made the sole and essential form of doctrine even in philosophy. Yet in society it is regarded as improper when it pretends that it ought to have validity just as it stands. In the so-called philosophical works that uphold the principle of immediate knowledge and faith one can read hundreds and hundreds of assurances about reason, knowing, thinking, etc. ; and since external authority does not count for much any more, they seek to gain acceptance for themselves through endless repetitions of one and the same [statement]’.
- ‘The Encyclopaedia Logic’
Obviously, the subjective assurance on which Assertoric Judgment depends is confronted with equal right by its contradictory.
‘Thus the assurance of the assertoric judgment can with right be confronted by an opposing one. When the assurance is given that ‘this action is good’, the opposite, ‘this action is bad’, has equal justification. — Or, considering the judgment in itself, since its subject is an immediate singular, in this abstraction it still does not have, posited in it, the determinateness that would contain its connection with the universal concept; it still is a contingent matter, therefore, whether there is or there is not conformity to the concept. Essentially, therefore, the judgment is problematic’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
External connection implies that the true connection is still implicit. In the Assertoric Judgment, the copula is still an immediate, abstract being.
‘For this reason the judgment is so far only assertoric; its credential is only a subjective assurance. That something is good or bad, right, suitable or not, hangs on an external third. But to say that the connectedness is thus externally posited is the same as saying that it is still only in itself or internal. — When we say that something is good or bad, etc., we certainly do not mean to say that it is good only in a subjective consciousness but may perhaps be bad in itself, or that ‘good and bad’, ‘right’, ‘suitable’, etc. may not be predicates of the object itself. The merely subjective character of the assertion of this judgment consists, therefore, in the fact that the implicitly present connectedness of subject and predicate has not been posited yet, or, what amounts to the same thing, that it is only external; the copula still is an immediate abstract being’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The immediate Individual does not yet possess a relation to the subject’s Notion. Judgment, therefore, is Problematic. According to Burbidge, the Problematic Judgment constitutes a step of Speculative Reason. The Assertoric Judgment is the Understanding’s move. The dialectic move is the observation that, in the Assertoric Judgment, the subject is not self-contained and is therefore incomplete. The Problematic Judgment then mediates these two views — an external reflection must decide whether a judgment of goodness or badness is external or internal. In contrast, the Problematic Judgment has been portrayed here as itself merely a dialectical moment.
The Problematic Judgment. Problematic Judgment is simply the Assertoric Judgment taken negatively. Assertoric Judgment claimed a relation between concrete Individual and Notion. Notion was taken by the Assertoric Judgment as predicate. Dialectical Reason states that, given notionality is the predicate, whether it can be linked to a given subject is contingent; so far the indeterminateness falls in the copula.
‘Whether the predicate ought to be or not to be coupled with a certain subject appears at first only as problematic, and to this extent the indeterminateness falls on the side of the copula. The predicate has no determination to gain from this coupling, since it is already the objective, concrete universality. The problematic element falls, therefore, on the immediacy of the subject, which is thereby determined as a contingency. — But further, we must not for that reason abstract from the singularity of the subject; purified of such a singularity, the subject would be only a universal, whereas the predicate entails precisely this, that the concept of the subject ought to be posited with reference to its singularity. — We may not say, ‘the house or a house is good’, but, ‘so indeed it is in the way it is made’. — The problematic element in the subject itself constitutes its moment of contingency, the subjectivity of the fact it expresses as contrasted with its objective nature or its concept, its mere mode and manner or its constitution’.
- The Science of Logic’
The critique of the Problematic Judgement — the prior step is really subjective — was also the same critique levelled by the Particular and the Hypothetical Judgments about the prior step. The Particular Judgment was the point that the Singular Judgment, ‘This man is useful’ implies that some men are not useful. Usefulness was revealed to be a subjective — not a Universal — quality. But if Problematic Judgment asserts that the goodness of the house might be unconnected to its Notion (i.e., subjective), it admits that the house might well be notional (ie., objective). This means the house itself mil determine what it is. Thus it contains the ground of its being or not being what it ought to be.
‘Consequently the subject is itself differentiated into its universality or objective nature, that is, its ought, and the particularized constitution of immediate existence. It thereby contains the ground for being or not being what it ought to be. In this way, it is equated with the predicate. — Accordingly, the negativity of the problematic character of the judgment, inasmuch as it implicates the immediacy of the subject, only amounts to this original partition of the latter into its moments of universal and particular of which it is already the unity — a partition which is the judgment itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Problematic judgment. The subject is now split between its objective nature (what it ought to be) and what it is — the particular constitution of its existence. The subject is the ground of its being (or not) what it ought to be. In this sense it is the same as the predicate, which is where Assertoric Judgment placed the Notion. Both extremes are a Universal continuity into its other, a Particular resistance to that continuity, and the unity of these two. In short, each extreme is the whole of Judgment itself, which is the Notion split into its constitutive moments. Zizek claims that subjectivity is achieved only with the advent of the Judgment of the Notion. Judgment, he writes, is ‘a matter of the relationship of the object itself to its own Notion — the radical conclusion to be drawn that there is no Subject without a gap separating the object from its Notion’. Yet the gap between the empirical Notion and the notional Notion is already apparent in the Individual, which is both abstract and notional. Therefore one could rightly say that the subject emerges at the beginning of the Judgment chapter. One may also complain that it is not just the subject, in Hegel’s logic, that is split. Everything is split — subject, object, Idea itself.
Problematic Judgement
‘An Essay on Criticism’ (excerpt)
by Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man’s erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is Pride, the never failing vice of fools.
Whatever Nature has in worth denied
She gives in large recruits of needful Pride:
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find
What wants in blood and spirits swell’d with wind:
Pride, where Wit fails, steps in to our deference,
And fills up all the mighty void of Sense:
If once right Reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.
Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of ev’ry friend — and ev’ry foe.
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind:
Bur more advanc’d, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endliess science rise!
So pleas’d at first the tow’ring Alps we try,
Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
Th’eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But those attain’d, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen’d way;
Th’increasing prospect tires our wand’ring eyes,
Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
The Apodeictic Judgment. Speculative Reason produces the Apodeictic (i. e., certain) Judgment, Perhaps the concrete Individual does or doesn’t have a relation with its Notion. One thing is certain, however. One of these things is true. Either it is notional or not notional. And, in this certainty, the Individual is in communication with its Notion. That is to say, what is notional about things is that they may or may not be notional. Both are equally true. When the problematic element is thus posited as the problematic of the thing, as the thing with its constitution, then the judgement itself is no longer problematic, but apodeictic.
‘One more comment that can be made is that both sides of the subject, its concept and the way it is constituted, could each be called its subjectivity. The concept is the universal essence of a fact, withdrawn into itself, the fact’s negative self-unity; this unity constitutes the fact’s subjectivity. But a fact is also essentially contingent and has an external constitution; this last may also be called its mere subjectivity, as contrasted with the objectivity of the concept. The fact consists just in this, that its concept, as self-negating unity, negates its universality and projects itself into the externality of singularity. — As this duplicity, the subject of the judgment is here posited; the truth of those two opposite meanings of subjectivity is that they are in one. — The meaning of subjective has itself become problematic by having lost the immediate determinateness that it had in the immediate judgment and its determinate opposition to the predicate. — These opposite meanings of subjectivity that surface even in the ratiocination of ordinary reflection should by themselves at least call attention to the fact that subjectivity has no truth in one of them alone. The duplicity of meaning is the manifestation of the one-sidedness of each when taken by itself. When this problematic character of the judgment is thus posited as the character of the fact, the fact with its constitution, the judgment itself is no longer problematic but apodictic’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
What then is apodeictic about things? Looking forward to Syllogism, Richard Winfield makes the following suggestion. Where U = Universal, P = Particular, and I = Individual, IPU is the basic form of Syllogism in chapter 21. This form is already present in the Apodeictic Judgment, which is therefore nascent Syllogism as Richard Dien Winfield explains. This point can be expressed colloquially as follows. ‘This house is good’ represents the relation of U and P (or UP); the Notion of the house manifests itself in this Particular house. ‘Perhaps this house is not good’ bears the form PI; this house is a Particular, separate from what it ought to be — a Universal house. Apodeictic Judgment joins UP and PI to form the Syllogism UPI; whatever the house is, it must be known from its Particulars. P therefore mediates the house’s connection to its Notion.
The thing itself is just this, that its Notion, as the negative of itself, negates its universality and projects itself into the externality of individuality. In the Problematic Judgment, the subject was still a duality. It was subjective and objective. Hegel later calls this the twofold meaning of subjectivity originating in Apodeictic Judgment, namely the subjectivity of the Notion, and equally of the externality and contingency opposed to the Notion.
‘Mention was made in connection with the apodictic judgment — where judgment attains completion and the subject thus loses its determinateness as against the predicate — of the double meaning of subjectivity originating from it, namely the subjectivity of the concept and equally so of the externality and contingency confronting the concept. A similar objectivity also appears for the double meaning, of standing opposed to the self-subsistent concept yet of also existing in and for itself. In the former sense, the object stands opposed to the ‘I = I’ which in subjective idealism is declared to be the absolute truth. It is then the manifold world in its immediate existence with which the ‘I’ or the concept is engaged in endless struggle, in order, by the negation of the inherently nullity of this other, to give to its first certainty of being a self the actual truth of its equality with itself. — In a broader sense, it means a subject matter in general for whatever interest or activity of the subject’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
But now the subjective element Apodeictic Judgement (Syllogism) itself has become problematic. It has lost the Apodeictic judgement immediate determinateness. In short, Hegel has (Syllogism) turned scepticism on itself. ‘The problematic relation between subject and predicate itself becomes problematic’ says Burbidge. Scepticism about scepticism is the Apodeictic Judgement. Apodeictic Judgement is truly objective.
‘The subject of the apodictic judgment (‘the house, as so and so constituted, is good’, ‘the action, as so and so constituted, is right’) includes, first, the universal, or what it ought to be; second, its constitution; the latter contains the ground why a predicate of the judgment of the concept does or does not pertain to it, that is, whether the subject corresponds to its concept or not. This judgment is now truly objective; or it is the truth of the judgment in general. Subject and predicate correspond to each other, and have the same concept, and this content is itself posited concrete universality; that is to say, it contains the two moments, the objective universal or the genus and the singularized universal. Here we have, therefore, the universal that is itself and continues through its opposite, and is a universal only in unity with the latter. — Such a universal, like ‘good’, ‘fitting’, ‘right’, etc., has an ought for its ground, and contains at the same time the correspondence of existence; it is not the ought or the genus by itself, but this correspondence which is the universality that constitutes the predicate of the apodictic judgment’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
A thing is now constituted as it ought to be; the subject now corresponds to its Notion. At this point, the very form of Judgment is suspended. Apodeictic Judgment is ‘the complete sublation of judgement, because value cannot be merely a predicate. What is good, not has but is goodness’, explains Mure. Apodeictic Judgment consists of two moments: the objective Universal and the individualized Universal. “Here, therefore, we have the universal which is itself and continues itself through its opposite and is a universal only as unity with its opposite.” (662) In short, A equals {A, B C} and A does not equal {A, B, C}.
The Apodeictic Judgment has the form, “the house constituted so and so is good” (661) But the Apodeictic Judgment is not about empirical houses. Rather, it is the unity of the Assertoric Judgment and the Positive Judgment. Whereas the former asserts a comparison between the empirical and notional thing, and whereas the latter asserts doubt of that relation, Speculative Reason is now certain that either there is or is not a relation between empirical thing and its notion. This is the absolute judgement on all actuality Hegel writes.
‘The subject likewise contains these two moments in immediate unity as fact. The truth of the latter, however, is that it is internally fractured into its ought and its being; this is the absolute judgment on all actuality. — That this original partition, which is the omnipotence of the concept, is equally a turning back into the concept’s unity and the absolute connection of ‘ought’ and ‘being’ to each other, is what makes the actual into a fact; the fact’s inner connection, this concrete identity, constitutes its soul. Harris’s conclusion is different: ‘all genuine judgement is evaluative, that is, it grasps its subject in its total relationship to the complete system of the real, and ipso facto, to the whole experience of the judging subject, or ego. That is why we say that it takes a person with great experience to judge soundly’. Can we follow Harris into the realm of subjective judging through experience? Hegel’s point is rather that there is definitely a notional connection between subject and predicate, though its empirical identification is problematic. The conclusion that those with experience judge better than those without it is a pragmatic point that seems out of place in Hegel’s Logic.
So much for deconstruction, which maintains that Hegel’s critique of reflection, and his intensification of it to absolute reflection by elevating the major themes of reflection to the level of the concept or Notion, represents a radical completion of subjectivity, freedom, autonomy, self-certitude and certitude, transcendentality, and so on. See Rodolphe Gasché. ‘In Hegel, legislation by totalization is the speculative answer to the aporias of reflection; only by means of a faultless exposition of the system of totality of all determinations of thought could Hegel hope both to overcome the antinomies of reflection’.
The subject of the Apodeictic Judgment contains constitution and the ought-to-be in immediate unity. But it is still split between what it ought to be and what it is. So far, actuality is in a rather ambiguous situation. But then, we are only finishing the second part of Hegel’s Doctrine of Subjectivity. Objectivity is still a chapter away. Original partition culminates in a return to an absolute relation between the ought-to-be and constitutional being. This relation makes what is actual into a fact [Sache], The inner relation of ought and is is the soul of fact. Since relation is the key, the soul of the thing now resides in the copula. We now have before us the determinate and fulfilled copula, which formerly consisted in the abstract ‘is’, but has now further developed itself into ground in general.
‘The transition from the immediate simplicity of the fact to the correspondence which is the determinate connection of its ought and its being — the copula — now shows itself upon closer examination to lie in the particular determinateness of the fact. The genus is the universal existing in and for itself which, to that extent, appears as unconnected; the determinateness, however, is that which in that universality is reflected into itself but at the same time into an other. The judgment, therefore, has its ground in the constitution of the subject and is thereby apodictic. Consequently, we now have the determinate and accomplished copula which hitherto consisted in the abstract “is” but has now further developed into ground in general. It first attaches to the subject as immediate determinateness, but it is equally the connection to the predicate — a predicate that has no other content than this correspondence itself, or the connection of the subject to the universality’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
At first, Being was an immediate determinateness in the subject; now it is relation of subject to predicate. Being “has no other content than this very correspondence, or relation of the subject to the universality. The form of Judgment has now perished. Subject and predicate have the same content, and the subject loses its determinateness as against the predicate. The subject points beyond itself and relates itself to the predicate. Even the very act of relating has passed over into the predicate. In fact, relation is the content. The copula has rendered itself visible. Subject and predicate are each the whole Notion. So now is the copula. It relates them but is distinct from them and is their equal in its content. It is the copula pregnant with content. The unity that was lost in the extremes has now been recovered.
Apodeictic Judgement (Syllogism)
‘On closer examination, the positive factor in this result which is responsible for the transition of the judgment into another form is that, as we have just seen, the subject and predicate are in the apodictic judgment each the whole concept. — The unity of the concept, as the determinateness constituting the copula that connects them, is at the same time distinct from them. At first, it stands only on the other side of the subject as the latter’s immediate constitution. But since its essence is to connect, it is not only that immediate constitution but the universal that runs through the subject and predicate. — While subject and predicate have the same content, it is the form of their connection that is instead posited through the determinateness of the copula, the determinateness as a universal or the particularity. — Thus it contains in itself both the form determinations of the extremes and is the determinate connection of the subject and predicate: the accomplished copula of the judgment, the copula replete of content, the unity of the concept that re-emerges from the judgment wherein it was lost in the extremes. — By virtue of this repletion of the copula, the judgment has become syllogism’.
Through this impregnation of the copula the judgement has become syllogism. Or to return to Gasché: ‘What is changed by the speculative content in the usual subject-predicate relation of proposition is not only the respective positions of subject and predicate but the very status of the copula in the judgment. The is has radically changed meaning: it no longer secures the attribution of predicates to a subject, of Universals to a particular; instead it expresses an identity that is itself both passive and transitive. The copula of the proposition thus becomes the real subject of the speculative proposition. It expresses the Absolute itself — the Absolute that is the totality of the Concept’.
‘An Essay on Criticism’ (excerpt)
by Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ;
Survey the whole, not seek slight faults to find
Where Nature moves, and Rapture warms the mind:
Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight,
The gen’rous pleasure to be charm’d with wit.
………
…. fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks,
It still looks home, and short excursions makes;
But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks
And never shock’d, and never turn’d aside,
Bursts out, resistless, with a thund’ring tide.
But where’s the man who counsel can bestow,
Still pleas’d to teach, and yet not proud to know?
Unbiass’d or by favour or by spite;
Not dully prepossess’d nor blindly right;
Tho’ learn’d, well bred, and tho’ well bred sincere;
Modestly bold, and humanly severe;
Who to a friend his faults can freely show,
And gladly praise the merit of a foe;
Bless’d with a taste exact, yet unconfin’d,
A knowledge both of books and humankind;
Gen’rous converse; a soul exempt from pride;
And love to praise, with reason on his side?
………
Such shameless bards we have; and yet ’tis true
There are as mad abandon’d critics too.
The bookful blockhead ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head,
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always list’ning to himself appears.
________________________
Dedicated to the One, my Muse, my Love. 🌹 ❤️
There could never be a portrait of my love
For nobody could paint a dream
You will never see a portrait of my love
For miracles are never seen
Anyone who sees her
Soon forgets the Mona Lisa
It would take, I know, a Michaelangelo
And he would need the glow of dawn
That paints the sky above
To try and paint a portrait of my love
It would take, I know, a Michaelangelo
And he would need the glow of dawn
That paints the sky above
To try and paint a portrait of my love ….
Coming up next:
Syllogism.
To be continued …
