On Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ : A Realm of Shadows — part forty three.
‘Reflections’
by Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (1862–1949)
Under the rising water of the dream,
My soul is afraid, my soul is afraid.
And the moon shines in my heart
Plunged into the well-springs of the dream!
Under the mournful boredom of the reeds,
Only the profound reflection[s] of things,
Of lilies, of palms, and of roses,
Still weep at the bottom of the waters.
The flowers drop their petals one by one
On the reflection of the sky
In order to sink eternally
Under the water of the dream and into the moon.
‘Reflets’
Sous l’eau du songe qui s’élève
Mon âme a peur, mon âme a peur.
Et la lune luit dans mon cœur
Plongé dans les sources du rêve !
Sous l’ennui morne des roseaux.
Seul les reflets profonds des choses,
Des lys, des palmes et des roses
Pleurent encore au fond des eaux.
Les fleurs s’effeuillent une à une
Sur le reflet du firmament.
Pour descendre, éternellement
Dans l’eau du songe et dans la lune.
====
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, (1771–1831), ‘The Science of Logic’.
Judgement of Reflection.
Judgement of Reflection
The Judgment of Reflection
In the therapeutic fields of Judgment, Notion slowly reestablishes an obliterated reality. The Judgment of Existence rehearsed the development of Quality. The Judgment of Reflection replays the development of correlative Essence. Whereas the subject previously announced what it is, now the subject announces what it is not. It concedes that it is nothing but its predicates. In the Judgment of Reflection, the predicate is subject. Some examples of the Judgment of Reflection: Men are mortal; things are perishable or useful. In such Judgments, the predicate is Universal and the subject is subsumed under the predicate. Judgment now differs from its earlier form. Universality is no longer abstract. Here, we first have, strictly speaking, a determinate content.
‘In the judgment that has now arisen, the subject is a singular as such; and similarly, the universal is no longer an abstract universality, or a singular property, but is posited as a universal that has collected itself together into a unity through the connection of different terms, or, regarded from the standpoint of the content of diverse determinations in general, as the coalescing of manifold properties and concrete existences. — If examples of predicates of judgments of reflection are to be given, they must be of another kind than for the judgments of existence. It is only in the judgment of reflection that we first have a determinate content strictly speaking, that is, a content as such; for the content is the form determination reflected into identity as distinct from the form in so far as this is a distinct determinateness — as it still is as judgment. In the judgment of existence, the content is merely an immediate, or abstract, indeterminate content. — These may therefore serve as examples of judgments of reflection: the human being is mortal, things are perishable, this thing is useful, harmful; hardness, elasticity of bodies, happiness, etc., are predicates of this particular kind. They express an essentiality which is however a relational determination, or a comprehensive universality. This universality, which will further determine itself in the movement of the judgment of reflection, is still distinct from the universality of the concept as such; although it is no longer the abstract universality of the qualitative judgment, it still has a connection to the immediate from which it proceeds and has the latter at the basis of its negativity. — The concept determines immediate existence, in the first instance, to relational determinations that extend across the diverse multiplicity of concrete existence, so that the true universal is indeed the inner essence of that multiplicity, but is such in the sphere of appearance, and this relative nature or even its mark is not as yet the element of the multiplicity that exists in and for itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
That is to say, the subject (content) is the predicate (form), or, as Hegel puts it, the content is the form determination which is reflected into identity as distinct from the form. In other words, the predicate (form) is reflected back into the subject (content); the content is identical to and yet separate from its form. The predicate now expresses an essential determination, but one which is in a relationship or is a unifying universality. ‘The copula … begins here to express connexion instead of mere relation’, as G. R. G. Mure explains.
The Universality on display in the predicate, however, is flawed. No longer abstract, it represents a genuine relation to a subject, but it is still itself an immediacy. That is to say, the predicate (and hence the subject) is a mere Appearance. It genuinely bodies forth from the subject, but neither it nor the subject has being-in-and-for-self. Accordingly, subject and predicate succumb to the law of Appearance. According to this law, they must disappear. Justus Hartnack draws from such examples as ‘this plant is wholesome’ the view that Reflective Judgments ‘are about the relations the subject has to other objects or persons’. But Judgment is about the Notion’s own judgment of self — not about which objects are useful. What the Reflective Judgment represents is the subject’s assignment of being to its other — in imitation of Reflection generally.
In the Judgment of Existence, all movement was in the predicate. The subject remained unaffected by predication because it was an abstraction — an immediacy. Now the reflective subject does the dancing. The predicate stands pat. Because it is the fixed Universal. As Universal, the predicate applies not only to this subject, but to many subjects. And many subjects implies a generic subjecthood — a genus of subjects. The Judgment of Existence was qualitative. Especially in light of the multiplying subject, shall we now say that the Judgement of Reflection is quantitative? Hegel warns no. Whereas Quality as such was external immediacy, Quantity is mediated, but it is the most external determination belonging to mediation.
‘It may seem fitting to define the judgment of reflection as a judgment of quantity, just as the judgment of existence was defined also as qualitative judgment. But just as the immediacy in the latter was not just there, but was an immediacy which is also essentially mediated and abstract, so, here also, that same immediacy which is now sublated is not just sublated quality, and therefore not merely quantity; on the contrary, just as quality is the most external immediacy, so is quantity, in the same way, the most external determination belonging to mediation’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Whatever Quantity was, it was so by means of outside determination. By now, the subject infers its own (multiplying) content from the predicate. The subject therefore multiplies itself — from one Individual to some Individuals and finally to all Individuals.
The Singular Judgment. The Understanding first interprets the Judgment of Reflection: this subject is universal. For example, Gaius is bald. This was the same proposition the Understanding offered in Positive Judgment. But this time subject and predicate are more profoundly understood. The predicate is an essential Universal — not an abstract immediacy.
‘Now the immediate judgment of reflection is again, ‘the singular is universal’, but with the subject and predicate in the signification just explained. More accurately, therefore, it can also be expressed thus, ‘this is an essential universal’. But a ‘this’ is not an essential universal. That positive judgment — positive according to form — must as judgment be taken negatively. But inasmuch as the judgment of reflection is not merely something positive, the negation does not directly affect the predicate — a predicate which does not inhere in the subject but is rather its implicit being. On the contrary, it is the subject that is alterable and needs determination. The negative judgment is therefore to be understood as saying: ‘not a this’ is a universal of reflection’; such an in-itself has a more universal concrete existence than it would have in a ‘this’. Accordingly, the singular judgment has its proximate truth in the particular judgment’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
In Positive Judgment, the (not ‘this’) Individual was joined with a not- Universal. By now, however, the predicate is the in-itself b of this subject. Since the predicate is the in-itself, the subject must now discover itself in its fixed predicates as they come into view. Accordingly, the subject, not the predicate, undergoes alteration. The Understanding sees that the subject is not Individual. Rather, the predicate is the Individual.
Singular Judgement
The Particular Judgment. The Understanding proposed that this subject is Universal, but now Dialectical Reason asserts the opposite — the subject is not-Individual, or, the not-Individual is Universal. Yet we know that the abstract Universal is the Particular. Likewise, the isolated not-Individual is the Particular. Hence, we have the Particular Judgment. In the Particular Judgment, the subject is not unique but is some subset in the class of subjects. As Richard Dien Winfield emphasizes, Judgment of Reflection generally concerns class membership. For example, this thing is useful separates out this thing from things that are not useful. The Singular Judgment therefore implicitly refers to a set of things. This useful thing confesses that usefulness is a category broader than this thing.
Predication must be shared with other things. According to this analysis, the predicate (useful) stands pat. It is the true Individual. The number of subjects to which the Universal applies is multiplied. Clark Butler declares, ‘The transition from ‘one and only one’ entity of a given description to ‘some’ (‘at least two’) is clearly not deductive. The transition lies in the introduction of the false assumption that indiscernible entities can be nonidentical, distinguished quantitatively though not qualitatively’. In fact, it is possible to see the many as properly deduced from the one. In Reflective Judgment, the predicate is the Universal. Universal implies more than one. Therefore a universal predicate requires a plurality of subjects.
‘[A]n ever-wider circle of subjects is subsumed under the predicate as an essential determination which exists in itself’, says Slavoj Žižek. John Burbidge makes the Particular Judgment a speculative moment. The Singular Judgment therefore has within it the move of the Understanding. ‘This Individual is Universal’ and also the dialectic opposition ‘This Individual is not Universal’. We need not suppose this to be so, lowed him in this the tone of voice of the Particular Judgment is that of the strictly dialectical which to be precise is not inconsistent with, but simpler than, Burbidge’s view. Burbidge likewise sends the Particular Judgment through the entire cycle. In effect, the Particular Judgment places certain subjects into a class. At first the Particular Judgment (some people are happy) seems like a Positive Judgment. But Positive Judgment was implicitly Negative Judgment, where connection between subject and predicate is denied.
Particular Judgement
Now, however, the Particular Judgment contains both a Positive and Negative Judgment. To judge that some men are happy is to confess that some are not. The positive and negative judgements no longer fall apart, but the particular judgement immediately contains both at the same time.
‘The judgment, ‘some singulars are a universal of reflection’, appears at first to be a positive judgment, but it is just as well also negative; for ‘some’ contains universality and may, accordingly, be regarded as comprehensive; but since it is particularity, it is equally disproportionate with respect to universality. The negative determination which the subject has obtained through the transition of the singular judgment also is, as we have shown above, the determination of the connection, the copula. — Implicated in the judgment, ‘some humans are happy’, is the immediate consequence: ‘some humans are not happy’. When some things are useful, then, precisely for that reason, there also are some that are not useful. The positive and the negative judgment no longer fall outside one another, but the particular immediately contains both at the same time, precisely because it is a judgment of reflection. — But the particular judgment is therefore indeterminate’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The Particular Judgment, then, traffics in some. Some requires a more Universal content than the this of the Singular Judgment. It inherently refers to genus. The content of “some,” however, is a mere empirical content. To this extent, the Particular Judgment must rely on external reflection — a flaw that must be overcome. As Winfield explains: ‘Although extraneous material might be illicitly introduced to further identity which group of individuals belong to the class, particular judgment itself leaves unspecified how the group is defined’. In Singular Judgments, this reigns supreme which signals that the subject was nothing but its predicate. But this has grown into Particularity — into some. Some implicitly refers to an all — the Universal Judgment.
The Universal Judgment. Speculative Reason sees that this and some implicitly refer to all. If some men are happy, then some are not. Both these subsets rely upon the genus man. Universal Judgment adjudicates all. But it does so from the perspective of external reflection. Universal Judgment is only a taking together of independently existing individuals; it is the community of a proposition which only belongs to them in comparison. It is this community that is usually the first thing that occurs to subjective, unphilosophical thinking when universality is mentioned. This Judgment represents the common sense view that Universality is something that belongs to a number of things.
‘The universality of the subject of the universal judgment is the external universality of reflection, ‘allness’; the ‘all’ is the all of all the singulars in which the singular remains unchanged. This universality is therefore only a commonality of self-subsisting singulars, an association of such singulars as comes about only by way of comparison. — This is the association that first comes to mind at a subjective level of representation when there is talk of universality. The most obvious reason given for viewing a determination as universal is because it fits many. — Also in analysis is this conception of universality the one most prevalent, as when, for instance, the development of a function in a polynomial is taken to have greater universal value than its development in a binomial, because the polynomial displays more single terms than the binomial. The demand that the function should be resolved in its full universality would require, strictly speaking, a pantonomial, the exhausted infinity. But here is where the limitation of that demand becomes apparent, and where the display of the infinite number of terms must rest satisfied with the ought it commands, and therefore also with a polynomial. But in fact the binomial is already the pantonomial in those cases where the method or the rule concerns only the dependence of one member on another, and the dependence of several terms on those that precede them does not particularize itself but remains one and the same underlying function. It is the method or the rule which is to be regarded as the true universal; in the progress of the development or in the development of a polynomial, the rule is only repeated, so that it gains nothing in universality through the increased number of terms. We have already spoken earlier of the bad infinity and its deception; the universality of the concept is the achieved beyond, whereas that bad infinity remains afflicted with a beyond which is unattainable but remains a mere progression to infinity. If it is allness that universality brings to mind, a universality that ought to be exhausted in singulars as singulars, then there has been a relapse into that bad infinity; or else it is mere plurality which is taken for allness. But plurality, however great it might be, remains inescapably only particularity: it is not allness. — Yet there is in all this an obscure intimation of the universality of the concept as it exists in and for itself; it is the concept that violently strives to reach beyond the stubborn singularity to which pictorial representation clings and beyond the externality of its reflection, passing off allness as totality or rather as the category of the in-and-for-itself’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Universal Judgement (Judgement of Necessity)
But, as philosophy has always known, Universality is not obtained by generalizing from observed subjects. Empirical universality, derived from observing a subset of the class (induction), is mere plurality taken for allness. Plurality, however, no matter how great, remains unalterably mere plurality, and is not allness. Anticipating Karl Popper, Hegel suggests that empirical science is founded on the principle of falsifiability: an empirically universal proposition rests on the tacit agreement that if only no contrary instance can be adduced, the plurality of cases shall count as allness; or, that subjective allness, namely, those cases which have come to our knowledge, may be taken for an objective allness.
‘This is apparent in other ways as well in the allness which is above all empirical universality. Inasmuch as the singular is presupposed as something immediate and is therefore pre-given and externally picked, the reflection which collects it into an allness is equally external to it. But because the singular, as a ‘this’, is absolutely indifferent to such a reflection, the universality and the collected singularity cannot combine to form a unity. The empirical allness thus remains a task; it is an ought which, as such, cannot be represented in the form of being. Now an empirically universal proposition — for nevertheless such are advanced — rests on the tacit agreement that, if no instance of the contrary can be adduced, a plurality of cases ought to count for an allness; or that a subjective allness, namely the known cases, may be taken for an objective allness’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Compare Karl Popper, (1902–1994):
‘But I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation. In other words: I shall not require of a scientific system that it shall be capable of being singled out, once and for all, in a positive sense; but I shall require that its logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a negative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience’.
- ‘The Logic of Scientific Discovery’
Recall what Popper says about Hegel:
‘There is nothing in Hegel’s writing that has not been said better before him. There is nothing in his apologetic method that is not borrowed from his apologetic forerunners. But he devoted these borrowed thoughts and methods with singleness of purpose, though without a trace of brilliancy, to one aim: to fight against the open society, and thus to serve his employer, Frederick William of Prussia. Hegel’s confusion and debasement of reason is partly necessary as a means to this end, partly a more accidental but very natural expression of his state of mind. And the whole story of Hegel would indeed not be worth relating, were it not for its more sinister consequences, which show how easily a clown may be a ‘maker of history’. The tragicomedy of the rise of German Idealism, in spite of the hideous crimes to which it has led, resembles a comic opera much more than anything else; and these beginnings may help to explain why it is so hard to decide of its latter-day heroes whether they have escaped from the stage of Wagner’s Grand Teutonic Operas or from Offenbach’s farces’.
- ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’
And yet with his ‘principle of falsifiability’ it is Popper who is saying something that has been said better before him, said by Hegel.
So who’s the clown now then? Popper should have read Hegel’s officially published works rather than merely cribbing from his lecture notes which were never meant for publication.
Hegel will define objective Universality as the pervasive gravity that maintains its identity following its particularization.
‘This totality, whose moments are themselves the completed relations of the concept, the syllogisms in which each of the three different objects runs through the determination of the middle term and the extreme, constitutes free mechanism. In it the different objects have objective universality for their fundamental determination, the pervasive gravity that persists self-identical in the particularization. The connections of pressure, impact, attraction, and the like, as also of aggregations or mixtures, belong to the relation of externality which is at the basis of the third of the three syllogisms. Order, which is the merely external determinateness of the objects, has passed over into immanent and objective determination. This is the law’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Nevertheless, in this false derivation of the Universal from empirical research is a vague awareness of the true universality of the Notion. In inductive reasoning, we witness the Notion that forces its way beyond the stubborn individuality to which unphilosophical thinking clings and beyond the externality of its reflection, substituting allness as totality. Induction is not just subjective nostalgia for objective truth. Universality is immanent to induction. When the scientist hypothesizes about all men, the genus (man) is, logically speaking, sundered into individuals.
‘Now a closer examination of the universal judgment before us shows that the subject, as we have just noted, contains the achieved universality as presupposed; it even contains it as posited in it. ‘All humans’ expresses, first, the species ‘human’; second, this species in its singularization, but in such a way that the singulars are at the same time expanded to the universality of the species; conversely, through this conjunction with singularity, the universality is just as perfectly determined as singularity, and the posited universality has thereby become equal to what was presupposed’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Yet what is intended is that all men must become man; the set of all subjects must become genus, which now becomes the Individual. At this moment the posited universality has been equated with the presupposed. Hegel conceives of this moment in which all men become man as the surrender of Individuality by both the subject and predicate to the copula. The copula now becomes the self-related and determinate Individual. As such, it is the third determination of Individuality. The first was the Understanding’s self-identical Individual in the Judgment of Existence. There the Individual was leftward-leaning in our diagram. The second was the reflective Individual in the Judgment of Reflection — a negation of the Judgment of Existence. There, Individuality was present in the predicate, not the subject. But now the Individual is the negation of the negation and, as such, is the Judgment of Necessity. Individuality is now located in the middle term. The result of induction is the inference of a truly objective Universal Individual.
Genus now comes into being — the universality which is in its own self a concrete. Genus does not inhere only in the subject. It is no mere property. It contains all the single determinatenesses dissolved in its substantial solidity.
‘The universality that has thereby arisen is the genus, or the universality which is concrete in its universality. The genus does not inhere in the subject; it is not one property of it or a property at all; it contains all singular determinacies dissolved into its substantial purity. — Because it is thus posited as this negative self-identity, it is for that reason essentially subject, but one that is no longer subsumed under its predicate. Consequently the nature of the judgment of reflection is now altogether altered’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Genus is posited as a negative identity with itself. It is therefore a subject, but no longer one that is merely subsumed in its predicate. T]he nature of the judgement of reflection is altogether changed. One must not, as Michael Inwood (our resident grouch) does, confuse genus with biological incidents. Thus, Inwood claims that Hegel overlooks the fact that genera (i.e., dinosaurs) can become extinct. Hegel’s genus can never become extinct; it is intrinsic to the nature of subject and predicate. Subject and predicate have erased themselves; their being is now in genus or relation. The copula is now front and centre. In other words, the subject, in raising itself to universality has, in this determination become equated with the predicate. Subject and predicate are identical in their self-erasure — they have coalesced into the copula.
‘This sublation of the judgment coincides with what the determination of the copula becomes, as we still have to consider; the sublation of the determinations of judgment and their transition into the copula are one and same. — For inasmuch as the subject has raised itself to universality, it has become in this determination equal to the predicate which, as the reflected universality, also contains particularity within itself; subject and predicate are therefore identical, that is, in the copula they have come to coincide. This identity is the genus or the nature of a thing in and for itself. Inasmuch as this identity, therefore, again divides, it is the inner nature by virtue of which a subject and predicate are connected to each other. This is a connection of necessity wherein the two terms of the judgment are only unessential distinctions. — That what belongs to all the singulars of a genus belongs to the genus by nature, is an immediate consequence. It expresses what we have just seen — that the subject, e.g. ‘all humans’, sheds its form determination and ‘the human being’ is what it should say instead. — This combination, implicit and explicit, constitutes the basis of a new judgment — the judgment of necessity’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Zizek attributes this Hegelian moment to Lacan: ‘Lacan’s basic premiss is that the leap from the general set of ‘all men’ into the universal ‘man’ is possible only through an exception: the universal (in its difference to the empirical generality) is constituted through the exception; we do not pass from the general set to the universality of One- Notion by way of adding something to the set but, on the contrary, by way of subtracting something from it, namely the ‘unary feature’ [trait unaire] which totalizes the general set, which makes out of it a universality’. That is to say, each individual in the set of all men must sacrifice itself if the copula “man” is to come into existence and become the notional individual.
The copula is the genus or absolute nature of a thing. This identity will sunder itself again. Indeed, this pose in which the Individuals erase themselves to produce a Universal Judgment is the uncritical masculine position, which cannot account for its own position via ä vis the complete whole it contemplates, as Sarah Kay has pointed out. But what is now revealed is Judgment’s inner nature. Subject and predicate enjoy a relation of necessity. Subject and predicate differ only unessentially. What belongs to all the individuals of a genus belongs to the genus by its nature’. All men becomes man in the Judgment of Necessity. Butler suggests that these four judgments stand for description, comparison, analysis and evaluation. The claim that Reflective Judgment is comparison, however, is questionable. True, Reflective Judgment deals with induction, in which a property abstracted from all the individuals is taken as a Universal. But the Universal Judgment is not the product of induction. Rather, it is a logical deduction. Abstracting a common property from all men makes sense if and only if there is a genus man. This logical conclusion is not the product of comparison.
The Judgement of Necessity Reflective Judgement yielded genus, an objective Universality. As Judgement replays all the previous steps of the Logic, Hegel suggests that the Judgement of Necessity corresponds to Substantiality, the last part of Essence and postern gate to the Notion. The Judgement of Necessity differs from Substantiality, however. Substantiality was merely inner. Now, substantiality appears in the form of its Notion.
‘The hypothetical judgment can be more closely determined in terms of the relations of reflection as a relation of ground and consequence, condition and conditioned, causality etc. Just as substantiality is present in the categorical judgment in the form of its concept, so is the connectedness of causality in the hypothetical judgment. This and the other relations all recur in it, but they are there essentially only as moments of one and the same identity. — However, in it they are as yet not opposed as singular or particular and universal according to the determinations of the concept, but are only as moments in general at first. The hypothetical judgment, therefore, has a shape which is more that of a proposition; just as the particular judgment is of indeterminate content, so is the hypothetical of indeterminate form, for the determination of its content does not conform to the relation of subject and predicate. — Yet the being, since it is the being of the other, is for that very reason in itself the unity of itself and the other, and therefore universality; by the same token it is in fact only a particular, for it is a determinate being and does not refer in its determinateness merely to itself. But it is not the simple, abstract particularity that is posited; on the contrary, through the immediacy which the determinacies possess, the moments of particularity are differentiated; at the same time, through the unity of these moments as constituted by their connection, the particularity is also their totality. — In truth, therefore, what is posited in this judgment is universality as the concrete identity of the concept whose determinations do not have any subsistence of their own but are only particularities posited in that identity. So it is the disjunctive judgment’.
-’The Science of Logic’
Substance required otherness; it was revealed only in its Accidents. Now, otherness is contained within the Judgment of Necessity. In the judgement of necessity the object appears in its objective universality.
‘In the first instance, the disjunctive judgment has the members of the disjunction in the predicate. But the judgment is itself equally disjoined; its subject and predicate are the members of the disjunction; they are the moments of the concept posited in their determinateness but at the same time as identical — identical, (a) in the objective universality which is in the subject as the simple genus, and in the predicate as the universal sphere and totality of the moments of the concept; and (b) in the negative unity, the developed connectedness of necessity, in accordance with which the simple determinateness in the subject has fallen apart into the difference of the species and these, in this very difference, have their essential connection and self-identity’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
In Substantiality, objective Universality was lacking. And as foreshadowed at the the beginning of the chapter we arrive at the third of four Judgements. The Judgement of Existence was the realm of immediacy for the Notion. The Judgement of Reflection was the correlative mediated moment. There, the subject was nothing. It depended on predication to supply its content. The predicate was the Individual, not the subject. It would seem that the Judgement of Necessity should therefore be overtly notional. It should present itself, its other, and the unity of itself and other.
But this is not so. The notional moment is reserved for the fourth Judgement. The Judgement of Necessity is yet another correlative Judgement. For the first time, Hegel breaks the pattern of dividing his chapters into three moments, corresponding to the Understanding, Dialectical Reason and Speculative Reason. Now we are to have four moments. One is immediate, two dialectical, the fourth speculative. What the Judgement of Necessity supplies is a moment of non-identity between subject and predicate. The final Judgment of the Notion will represent the knowledge that Notion is the author of both the notional and non-notional moments of subject and predicate.
The Categorical Judgment. The Understanding proposes that the Judgment of Necessity is the correlation of Genus and Species. It knows that the aggregate of all subjects implies Genus. Genus has being-for-self and so is a n objective Universality, but it also has an external individuality over against the species.
‘In the categorical judgment, the concept is objective universality and an external singularity. In the hypothetical, the concept manifests its presence in this externality, in its negative identity. Through this identity, the objective universality and the external singularity obtain the determinateness, now posited in the disjunctive judgment, which in the hypothetical they possess immediately. Hence the disjunctive judgment is objective universality at the same time posited in union with the form. It thus contains, first, the concrete universality or the genus in simple form, as the subject; second, the same universality but as the totality of its differentiated determinations. ‘A is either B or C’. This is the necessity of the concept in which, first, the self-identity of the two extremes is of the same extent, content, and universality. Second, they are differentiated according to the form of conceptual determination, but, because of that identity, this determination is a mere form. Third, the identical objective universality appears for that reason reflected into itself as against the non-essential form, as a content which however has the determinateness of form in it — once as the simple determination of genus; then again, as this determinateness developed in its difference, and in this way it is the particularity of the species and their totality, the universality of the genus. — The particularity constitutes in its development the predicate, because, in containing the whole universal sphere of the subject, and in containing it, however, also in the articulation of particularity, it is to that extent the greater universal’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
The Individuality of Genus is the immediate proposition of the categorical judgment Understanding.
Categorical Judgement
In Categorical Judgment, subject and predicate are substantially identical, but they are also (unessentially) different. Though by now objective, Universality still suffers from immediate particularization.
‘The genus essentially divides or repels itself into species; it is genus only in so far as it comprehends the species under it; the species is a species only in so far as, on the one side, it exists in singulars, and, on the other side, it possesses in the genus a higher universality. — Now the categorical judgment has for predicate such a universality as in it the subject possesses its immanent nature. But the categorical judgment is itself the first or the immediate judgment of necessity; consequently, the determinateness of the subject, by virtue of which the latter is a singular as contrasted to the genus or the species, belongs to the immediacy of external concrete existence. — But objective universality also has here only its first immediate particularization; on the one hand, therefore, it is itself a determinate genus with respect to which there are higher genera; on the other hand, it is not the most proximate genus, that is, its determinateness is not directly the principle of the specific particularity of the subject. But what is necessary in it is the substantial identity of subject and predicate, in view of which the distinguishing mark of each is only an unessential positedness or even only a name; in its predicate, the subject is reflected into its being-in-and-for-itself. Such a predicate ought not to be classed with the predicates of the preceding judgments. For example, to throw together into one class these judgments:
The rose is red,
The rose is a plant,
or This ring is yellow,
It is gold,
and thus to take such an external property as the colour of a flower as a predicate equal to its vegetable nature, is to overlook a difference which the dullest mind would not miss. — The categorical judgment, therefore, is definitely to be distinguished from the positive and the negative judgment; in these, what is said of the subject is a singular accidental content; in the former, the content is the totality of the form reflected into itself. In this content, therefore, the copula has the meaning of necessity, whereas in that of the other two it has only the meaning of abstract, immediate being’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
Nevertheless, the Categorical Judgment is an advance over the earlier Judgments. Hegel bids us to distinguish the rose is red (Positive Judgment) from the more profound claim that the rose has a vegetable nature. In the lesser Judgments, the predicate (red) is a single contingent content of the subject. Furthermore, not all roses are red. Yet all roses do have a vegetable nature. In the Judgments of Existence, subject and predicate were not necessarily related. Now, in the Categorical Judgment, the copula has the meaning of necessity.
These are among the remarks Hartnack overlooks in accusing Hegel of confusion: ‘Hegel fails to distinguish between the ‘is of predication’ and the ‘is of class membership.’. To list the two sentences (1) ‘the rose is red’ and (2) ‘gold is a metal’ as both being subject-predicate propositions (and judgments) is clearly mistaken. If instead of taking the two sentences ‘the rose is red’ and ‘gold is a metal’, we take the two sentences ‘the rose is red’ and ‘red is colour’ and regard both sentences as subject predicate sentences, we should be able to infer that the rose is a colour — an absurdity that reveals that we have committed a logical error, the error namely of failing to see that the sentence ‘red is a colour’ is not a subject-predicate sentence but a sentence stating that the colour red is a member of the class of colours’. In making this remark, Hartnack completely misses the profound change that has occurred between Judgments of Existence (which are not even true Judgments) and Judgments of Necessity, which pertain to class membership. The last thing Hegel is guilty of is failing to note the difference between the is of predication and the is of class membership.
At first, genus is taken as a level higher than the species — a flaw. Genus and species should be on the same level. When genus is simply one of the species, we have proximate genus (since, for Hegel, there is no transcendent beyond). Burbidge calls this ‘predicated genus’, the subject (Genus) necessarily renders itself into an external predicate. For the moment, however, external reflection declares genus to be higher than the other species. Determinateness of the Universal is not yet the subject’s true principle. Whether genus has been induced from the species is a contingency. This is the flaw of induction. But Universality must not be so posited. The Categorical Judgment must exhibit the necessity of its being.
The Hypothetical Judgment. In Categorical Judgment, the Understanding proposed that genus is the species. Dialectical Reason counters that this supposed unity is in fact a relation between genus and species. Recalling that genus (Individuality) is one of the species of Notion and that these two concepts are on the same level, Dialectical Reason suggests that the predicate (species) is just as entitled to claim for itself the title of subject (genus) as the subject is. In fact, Dialectical Reason proposes that we don’t know which extreme is subject and which is predicate.
The Hypothetical Judgment has the form ‘If A, then B’ In this form, A does not have its own being. It has the being of B (and vice versa) ‘A and B are necessarily connected, but whether A or B is genus remains contingent. Because A and B are immediacies, Hypothetical Judgment at first has the shape of a proposition.
‘The hypothetical judgment can be more closely determined in terms of the relations of reflection as a relation of ground and consequence, condition and conditioned, causality etc. Just as substantiality is present in the categorical judgment in the form of its concept, so is the connectedness of causality in the hypothetical judgment. This and the other relations all recur in it, but they are there essentially only as moments of one and the same identity. — However, in it they are as yet not opposed as singular or particular and universal according to the determinations of the concept, but are only as moments in general at first. The hypothetical judgment, therefore, has a shape which is more that of a proposition; just as the particular judgment is of indeterminate content, so is the hypothetical of indeterminate form, for the determination of its content does not conform to the relation of subject and predicate. — Yet the being, since it is the being of the other, is for that very reason in itself the unity of itself and the other, and therefore universality; by the same token it is in fact only a particular, for it is a determinate being and does not refer in its determinateness merely to itself. But it is not the simple, abstract particularity that is posited; on the contrary, through the immediacy which the determinacies possess, the moments of particularity are differentiated; at the same time, through the unity of these moments as constituted by their connection, the particularity is also their totality. — In truth, therefore, what is posited in this judgment is universality as the concrete identity of the concept whose determinations do not have any subsistence of their own but are only particularities posited in that identity. So it is the disjunctive judgment’.
-’The Science of Logic’
The extremes of the Judgment are mere possibilities. The relation between them is the main point. Hypothetical Judgment does not establish that A or B is genus. It only asserts that the being of one is located in the other. As to which, between A and B, is genus, the jury is still out. Errol Harris suggests that Hypothetical and Disjunctive Judgments are both ‘undoubtedly scientific judgements at the level of understanding’. This seems to replace a common sense definition for Hegel’s definition. For Hegel, Hypothetical Judgment is dialectical in nature. It asserts only that genus and species are definitely connected, but external reflection must determine which species is genus and which species is merely species.
Hypothetical Judgment entails Finitude. In Hypothetical Judgment, each extreme is for-other, not for-itself. But at this advanced stage, a Finite thing does not alter itself and become other. Nor is the Finite thing a mere Appearance that announces itself to be the reflection of another, deeper being. Rather, the relation of self and other is posited as a necessity. As the form ‘if A then B’ indicates, judgments of causality and ground fall under the Hypothetical Judgment, ‘but here they are no longer relationships of self-subsistent sides. Now — A and B are essentially only moments of one and the same identity.
Hypothetical Judgement
So far, however, the moments are not yet individual or particular to universal. The extremes are contingencies. The Hypothetical Judgment is indeterminate in form; we don’t know if A or B is genus. A and B are not determined as a relationship of subject to predicate. Yet A and B are related necessarily, and the unity on display in the Hypothetical Judgment is an actuality. This unity is in itself a unity of itself and its other, and consequently universality. This unity is a true Particular, because it is a determinate and not purely self-related. But the unity on display is also more than a Particular. The immediacies are determinate. Burbidge emphasizes that A and B in themselves bear the form of Judgments. ‘They are opposed to each other in such a way that each is in some measure complete in itself; they are clauses’, he says.
Through the unity of the moments, the particularity is also their totality. What is therefore truly posited in this judgement is universality as the concrete identity of the Notion, whose determinations have no subsistence of their own but are only particularities posited in that identity. As such, it is the disjunctive judgement.
The Disjunctive Judgment. Disjunctive Judgment is objective Universality posited in union with its form. It represents the unity of genus and species. So genus (A) is both B and C This is the necessity of the Notion, in which first the identity of the two extremes is one and same extent, content and universality. But it is equally true Disjunctive judgment that A is either B or C. Here we have the Judgment of the specific difference of the universal sphere. Genus makes itself into different species. Genus is their unity as determinate particulars. Not only identity between genus and species but the difference between them is present. And since genus is species, genus differentiates itself from itself. Hence the adjective disjunctive. The fact that genus disjoins itself into Particulars proves that genus is now the proximate genus.
‘Through the identity just demonstrated of subject and predicate in accordance with the negative unity, the genus is determined in the disjunctive judgment as the proximate genus. This expression indicates at first the mere quantitative difference of the more or less determinations which a universal contains as contrasted to a particularity coming under it. On this account, which is the truly proximate genus remains contingent. But then, if the genus is taken as a universal arrived at by the mere abstraction of determinations, it cannot strictly speaking form a disjunctive judgment; for it is contingent whether, as it were, there is still left in it the determinateness that constitutes the principle of the ‘either or’; the genus would not be displayed in the species according to its determinateness, and these would only be capable of contingent completeness. In the categorical judgment, the genus stands at first over against the subject only in this abstract form — is not, therefore, necessarily its proximate genus and, to this extent, is external to it. But when the genus is a concrete, essentially determined universality, then, as simple determinateness, it is the unity of the moments of the concept — moments that, only sublated in that simplicity, have their real difference in the species. Hence the genus is the proximate genus of a species, for the latter possesses its specific difference in the essential determinateness of the genus, and the species have as such the determination differentiating them in the nature of the genus’.
- ‘The Science of Logic’
A genus is proximate to a species if the species has its specific difference in the essential determinateness of genus. When genus is taken as higher than species, we have an empirical disjunctive judgment, which lacks necessity. The empirical species are indifferent to being externally subsumed under genus. Any such genus is not their principle. In Categorical Judgment, genus was abstract vis-ä-vis the subject — not proximate to the subject.
Disjunctive Judgement (Judgement of the Notion)
Now genus is proximate. The identity of the subject, predicate and copula has now been demonstrated in accordance with the negative unity. These sustain themselves only in their inability to sustain themselves. Their self-erasure is the true, proximate genus. Disjunctive Judgment stands for the idea that, when the individual moments appear, they appear because Notion differentiates itself. ‘When the disjunctive judgement is explicitly integrated with its implicit presuppositions it produces a comprehensive structure of internal relation’, says Burbidge.
Notion is the negative unity of subject, predicate and copula, and when these are distinguished, the Notion itself produces them by distinguishing itself from them. In epistemological terms, the Notion is thinking the separate moments of genus and species, and its affirmative thoughts are precisely not the Notion-as-thinker. Notion thus alienates itself from itself. Yet, when the Notion reveals its negativity toward subject and predicate, it equally reveals its fundamental connection to them. Thinkers must think. That is what they do. The being of thinkers is in the thoughts. Yet it is equally true that the thinker is separate from its thoughts.
The unity is now the notional copula that joins and disjoins subject and predicate. The extremes have coalesced there on their own logic. This is the Notion as posited. The mere judgement of necessity has thereby risen into the judgement of the Notion. To summarize, Disjunctive Judgment {A is both/either B and/or C) has joined and disjoined members for its predicate. But the subject (A) is itself one of the members or species. Universality is now both in the subject and the predicate. A = {A, B, C}. And the subject (A) is likewise a negative unity, separate and apart from the predicate. A does not equal {A, B, C}. Disjunctive Judgment reveals necessity; what is necessary is that genus must sunder itself into different species. It must be proximate genus. How can genus cause the species and be indistinguishable from them? The answer is self-erasure. When genus erases itself as an unjustified subjective assumption, genus transfers its being and becomes one of the species. Proximate genus is consistent with Hegel’s thesis that there is no unknowable transcendental beyond. Whatever is can be comprehended.
Not a happy couple …
____
Through the mirror of my mind
Time after time
I see reflections of you and me
Reflections of
The way life used to be
Reflections of
The love you took from me
Oh, I’m all alone now
No love to shield me
Trapped in a world
That’s a distorted reality
Happiness you took from me
And left me all alone
With only memories
Through the mirror of my mind
Through all these tears that I’m crying
Reflects a hurt I can’t control
Although you’re gone
I keep holding on
To those happy times
Oh, girl when you were mine
As I peer through the windows
Of lost time
Keeping looking over my yesterdays
And all the love I gave all in vain
(All the love) All the love
That I’ve wasted
(All the tears) All the tears
That I’ve tasted
All in vain
Through the hollow of my tears
I see a dream that’s lost
From the hurt baby
That you have caused
Everywhere I turn
Seems like everything I see
Reflects a hurt I can’t control
In you I put
All my hope and trust
Right before my eyes
My whole world has turned to dust
Reflections of
The love you took from
Reflections of
The way life used to be
In you I put
All my hope and trust
Right before my eyes
My whole world has turned to dust
Now baby, why did you do it?
Reflections
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Nothing worse than having wasted time with and invested much of one’s self into the wrong one. . which thankfully doesn’t reflect where me and my right One are at … to whom as always I dedicate my article. The future awaits us … 🥂
Your love, lifting me higher
Than I’ve ever, been lifted before
So keep it it up
Quench my desire
And I’ll be at your side
Forever more
You know your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on lifting (love keeps lifting me)
Higher (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)
I said your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on (love keeps lifting me)
Lifting me (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)
Listen
Now once I was down hearted
Disappointment was my closest friend
But then you came and it soon departed
And you know he never
Showed his face again
That’s why your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on lifting me (love keeps lifting me)
Higher (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)
I said your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on (love keeps lifting me)
Lifting me (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)
I’m so glad, I finally found you
Yes, that one in a million girl
And now with my loving arms around you
Honey, I can stand up
And face the world
Let me tell you, your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on lifting me (love keeps lifting me)
Higher (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)
I said your love (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on (love keeps lifting me)
Lifting me (lifting me)
Higher and higher (higher)
Alright, now sock it to me (lifting, lifting, lifting)
Alright, lift me up woman (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep my love going, now (lifting me)
Higher and higher
I said keep on lifting (lifting, lifting,lifting)
Lift me up mama (your love keeps lifting me)
Keep on lifting (lifting me)
Higher and higher
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Jackie Wilson … ( your love keeps lifting me) higher and higher:
Coming up next:
The Judgement of the Notion.
To be continued …
