The secret of Hegel: being the Hegelian system in origin, principle, form, and matter

Front matter

m

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

CHAPTER I. Preliminaries of the Struggle to Hegel

Difficulty of Hegel .....

Those that succumb and those that triumph in regard to it ,These Notes on occasion of this difficulty First Impressions of the System, and of German Philosophy in general .....

The Encyclopaedia .....

Rosenkranz' Life of Hegel ....

Reinhold and other Commentators

The Literature of the Subject

Zymoses ......

History, Principals, and Outcome of these Relative Places of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel Elimination of Fichte and Schelling . Hegel and Schelling at Jena ....

Coleridge ......

What Works of Kant and Hegel are specially studied

2 3

VI

CONTENTS OF THE

Chapter II

A. 1. Cosmogony, &o.

2. A Beginning, &c.

3. Plato's ravTOV and Barepov

B. Purpose of the Logic, and a Summary of its early Portions

C. 1. A Beginning again

2. Tlie Strangeness of the System

4. Objections to Kant and the rest

D. 1. Objections to Hegel continued .

2. The Process of Self-consciousness, &c.

3. The General Idea, &c.

4. Knowledge and the All

5. Origin of Hegel Kant and the rest

6. Objections to Hegel B. 1. Explanations ....

2. A Hegelian Dictum histolically put Remark general on these Notes and the Value of Hegel

PAGE

97 101 111

CHAPTER HI.

Notes continued : The Secret of Hegel

A. Affirmation .

B. Difficulty and Suspicion Causality

The System of Kant Hegel on Causality, and Hegel's System

C. The Rationale of Generalisation .

D. Hegel in earnest with Kant

E. The Notion in itself and for itself . E. Finite Things and their Notion G. The absolute Affirmation, &c.

118 150 156 157

161 166 176

178 181

Chapter IV

A. Idealism and Materialism .

B. Reciprocity

C. The Notion

D. Genesis of the Notion

182 196 202 215

FIRST VOLUME.

Vll

CHAPTEE V.

A. Special Origin and peculiar Nature of the Hegelian Prin-

B. Same Subject ...... 255

Christianity . . . . . .

Historic Side . . . . . . —

C. More particular Derivation .... 264

D. A short Formula . . . . 301

E. Further Explanations . ... —

F. Additional Illustration ..... 308 Remark ...... 315

II

A TRANSLATION FROM THE COMPLETE LOGIC OP THE WHOLE FIRST SECTION, QUALITY.

CHAPTER I. Being

A. Being

B. Nothing .

C. Becoming

1. Unity of Being and Nothing Remark 1. The Antithesis of Being and Nothing in

Conception ....

2. Defectiveness of the Expression — Unity,

Identity of Being and Nothing .

3. The isolating of these Abstractions

4. The Incomprehensibleness of the Beginning

2. Momenta of Becoming ....

3. Sublation of Becoming ....

Remark. The Expression — Sublation .

331 336 351 353

355 356

CHAPTER IL

There-being .

A. There-being as such vin

COXTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

a. There-being in general

b. Quality

Remark. Reality and Negation 0. Something B. Finitude . ■ ■ •

a. Something and Another

b. Qualification, Talification, and Limit .

c. Finitude . • • • (a) The Immediacy of Finitude

(/3) Limitation and To-be-to

Remark. To-be-to . (y) Transition of Finitude into Infinitude C. Infinitude . . . •

a. The Infinite in general I b. Alternation of Finite and Infinite

c. Affirmative Infinitude Transition . . . • •

Remark 1. The Infinite Progress 2. Idealism .

PAGE

CHAPTER III. Being-for-self

A. Being-for-self as such

a. There-being and Being-for-self

b. Being-for-One Remark. The Expression — Was fur eines ?

B. One and Many ....

a. The One in itself

b. The One and the Void Remark. Atomistic

0. Many Ones. Repulsion

Remark. The Leibnitzian Monad

C. Repulsion and Attraction .

a. Exclusion of the One .

Remark. The Unity of the One and the Many ,

b. The one One of Attraction

c. The Reference of Repulsion and Attraction Remark. The Kantian Construction of Matter

Forces of Attraction and Repulsion .

from

440 443 444

447 449 450

PRELIMINARY NOTICE.

This is the last fruit, though first pubhshed, of a long and earnest labour devoted, in the main, to two men only — ^Kant and Hegel, and more closely, in the main also, to the three principal works (The Kritiken) of the one, and the two principal works (The Logic and the Encyclopaedia) of the other. Tlris study has been the writer's chief — not just to say sole — occupation during a greater number of years, and for a greater number of hours in each day of these years, than it is perhaps prudent to avow at present. The reader, then, has a good right to expect something mature from so long, unintermitted, and concentrated an endeavour : it is to be feared, however, that the irregularity of the very first look of the thing will lead him to beheve, on the contrary, that he is only deceived. The truth is, that, after a considerable amount of time and trouble had been employed on an exposition of Kant and a general introduction to the whole subject of German Philosophy, it was suddenly perceived that, perhaps, the most pecuhar and important elements to which the study had led, were those that concerned Hegel, while, at the same time, the reflection arose that it was to Hegel the Pubhc probably looked with the greatest amount of expectant interest, if also of bafHed irritation. This indicates the considerations which led to the hope

X PKELIMINAEY NOTICE.

that the importance of the matter might, in such a case, obtain excuse for a certain extemporaneousness that lay in the form — that, in short, the matter of years might compensate the manner of months.

What I am most in pain about is the Translations that relate to the more technical parts of the System. Perhaps, in that regard, when speaking of certain translations of another German as reading so that they seemed to have been executed in the dark, I have only extended a rod for my own pain. The Comments and Interpretations will, perhaps, extract the admission, however, that, be these translations as dark as they may, something of hght cannot be denied to the translator. It will be seen in the end that the Logic of Hegel is as technical as the Principia of Newton, and that a translation, while necessarily no less teclinical, could not be much — or indeed at aU — less difficult, than the original. It is hoped, then, that the translations in this reference, vsoll prove at last much more satisfactory than they can possibly appear at first, though they AviU always manifest probably something of that crippled gait which we find, for example, in the commoner translations of the Classics. It may be added here, that the sad waste of capitals, into which the German has betrayed, was seen too late for anything but the smcere apology which is here tendered : lector benevolus condonabit.

I do not think it worth while to make any observations here on the different sections or parts contained in these two volumes ; I remark only that if the reader — who probably, nevertheless, AviU take his own way — would read this book in tlie order and manner its own composer would prescribe, he will begin with the part

PEELIMINAKY NOTICE. XI

marked 'II., A Translation from the Complete Logic of the whole Pirst Section, Quality,' and force himself to dwell there the very longest that he can. Only so will he reahse at the vividest the incredulity with which one first meets the strangeness and unintelhgibleness of Hegel. Again, in reading the chapters of the ' Struggle to Hegel,' which he will take next, he ought to retain this translation still in his hands. The various . portions of this struggle will, in fact, be fully inteUigible only to him who endeavours, repeatedly, to advance as far as ' Limit,' either in the translation or in Hegel's own Logic. Finally, after such preliminaries, the translation H., or the correspondent original, should, in company with the commentary and interpretation III., be rigorously, radically, completely studied, and then the rest taken as it stands.

It would certainly have been very desirable to have been able to present more of the Particular of Hegel ; but for that, as the competent reader wiU see for himself in the end, space failed. Imperfect as these volumes are, however, I have no hesitation in stating it as my conviction that in them Hegel is once for all open, and what we may call his ' Secret ' for the first time disclosed. That Secret may be indicated at shortest thus : As Aristotle — with considerable assistance firom Plato — made explicit the abstract Universal that was i7nplicit in Socrates, so Hegel — with less considerable assistance from Pichte and ScheUing — made explicit the concrete Universal that was implicit in Kant.

In conclusion, to preclude at once an entire sphere of objections, I remark that Kant and Hegel are the xil I'KELIMINAEY NOTICE.

very reverse of the so-called 'German Party' with which m England they are, perhaps, very generally confounded. It is the express mission of Kant and Hegel, in effect, to replace the riegative of that party, by an affirmative: or Kant and Hegel — all but wholly directly both, and one of them quite wholly directly — have no object but to restore Faith — Faith in God — Faith in the Immortahty of the Soul and the Freedom of the Will — nay. Faith in Christianity as the Eevealed Eehgion — and that, too, in perfect harmony with the Eiglit of Private Judgment, and the Eights, or Lights, or Mights of Intelhgeiice in general.