The Logic of Hegel · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

A.--THE SUBJECTIVE NOTION.

173.] This negation of a particular quality, which is the first negation, still leaves the connexion of the subject with the predicate subsisting. The predicate is in that manner a sort of relative universal, of which a special phase only has been negatived. [To say, that the rose is not red, implies that it is still coloured--in the first place with another colour; which however would be only one more positive judgment.] The individual however is not a universal. Hence (3) the judgment suffers disruption into one of two forms. It is either (a) the Identical judgment, an empty identical relation stating that the individual is the individual; or it is (b) what is called the Infinite judgment, in which we are presented with the total incompatibility of subject and predicate. Examples of the latter are: 'The mind is no elephant:' 'A lion is no table;' propositions which are correct but absurd, exactly like the identical propositions: 'A lion is a lion;' 'Mind is mind.' Propositions like these are undoubtedly the truth of the immediate, or, as it is called, Qualitative judgment. But they are not judgments at all, and can only occur in a subjective thought where even an untrue abstraction may hold its ground.--In their objective aspect, these latter judgments express the nature of what is, or of sensible things, which, as they declare, suffer disruption into an empty identity on the one hand, and on the other a fully-charged relation--only that this relation is the qualitative antagonism of the things related, their total incongruity.

175.] (1) Firstly then the subject, the individual as individual (in the Singular judgment), is a universal. But (2) secondly, in this relation it is elevated above its singularity. This enlargement is external, due to subjective reflection, and at first is an indefinite number of particulars. (This is seen in the Particular judgment, which is obviously negative as well as positive: the individual is divided in itself: partly it is self-related, partly related to something else.) (3) Thirdly, Some are the universal: particularity is thus enlarged to universality: or universality is modified through the individuality of the subject, and appears as allness Community, the ordinary universality of reflection. * * * * * The subject, receiving, as in the Singular judgment, a universal predicate, is carried out beyond its mere individual self. To say, 'This plant is wholesome,' implies not only that this single plant is wholesome, but that some or several are so. We have thus the particular judgment (some plants are wholesome, some men are inventive, &c). By means of particularity the immediate individual comes to lose its independence, and enters into an inter-connexion with something else. Man, as _this_ man, is not this single man alone: he stands beside other men and becomes one in the crowd, just by this means however he belongs to his universal, and is consequently raised.--The particular judgment is as much negative as positive. If only some bodies are elastic, it is evident that the rest are not elastic.

On this fact again depends the advance to the third form of the Reflective judgment, viz. the judgment of allness (all men are mortal, all metals conduct electricity). It is as 'all' that the universal is in the first instance generally encountered by reflection. The individuals form for reflection the foundation, and it is only our subjective action which collects and describes them as 'all.' So far the universal has the aspect of an external fastening, that holds together a number of independent individuals, which have not the least affinity towards it. This semblance of indifference is however unreal: for the universal is the ground and foundation, the root, and substance of the individual. If _e.g._ we take Caius, Titus, Sempronius, and the other inhabitants of a town or country, the fact that all of them are men is not merely something which they have in common, but their universal or kind, without which these individuals would not be at all. The case is very different with that superficial generality falsely so called, which really means only what attaches, or is common, to all the individuals. It has been remarked, for example, that men, in contradistinction from the lower animals, possess in common the appendage of ear-lobes. It is evident, however, that the absence of these ear-lobes in one man or another would not affect the rest of his being, character, or capacities: whereas it would be nonsense to suppose that Caius, without being a man, would still be brave, learned, &c. The individual man is what he is in particular, only in so far as he is before all things a man as man and in general. And that generality is not something external to, or something in addition to other abstract qualities, or to mere features discovered by reflection. It is what permeates and includes in it everything particular.

176.] The subject being thus likewise characterised as a universal, there is an express identification of subject and predicate, by which at the same time the speciality of the judgment form is deprived of all importance. This unity of the content (the content being the universality which is identical with the negative reflection-in-self of the subject) makes the connexion in judgment a necessary one. The advance from the reflective judgment of allness to the judgment of necessity is found in our usual modes of thought, when we say that whatever appertains to all, appertains to the species, and is therefore necessary. To say all plants, or all men, is the same thing as to say _the_ plant, or _the_ man. (γ) _Judgment of Necessity._ 177.] The Judgment of Necessity, _i.e._ of the identity of the content in its difference (1), contains, in the predicate, partly the substance or nature of the subject, the concrete universal, the _genus_; partly, seeing that this universal also contains the specific character as negative, the predicate represents the exclusive essential character, the _species._ This is the Categorical judgment. (2) Conformably to their substantiality, the two terms receive the aspect of independent actuality. Their identity is then inward only; and thus the actuality of the one is at the same time not its own, but the being of the other. This is the Hypothetical judgment.

(3) If, in this self-surrender and self-alienation of the notion, its inner identity is at the same time explicitly put, the universal is the genus which is self-identical in its mutually-exclusive individualities. This judgment, which has this universal for both its terms, the one time as a universal, the other time as the circle of its self-excluding particularisation in which the 'either--or' as much as the 'as well as' stands for the genus, is the Disjunctive judgment. Universality, at first as a genus, and now also as the circuit of its species, is thus described and expressly put as a totality. * * * * * The Categorical judgment (such as 'Gold is a metal,' 'The rose is a plant') is the un-mediated judgment of necessity, and finds within the sphere of Essence its parallel in the relation of substance. All things are a Categorical judgment. In other words, they have their substantial nature, forming their fixed and unchangeable substratum. It is only when things are studied from the point of view of their kind, and as with necessity determined by the kind, that the judgment first begins to be real. It betrays a defective logical training to place upon the same level judgments like 'gold is dear,' and judgments like 'gold is a metal.' That 'gold is dear' is a matter of external connexion between it and our wants or inclinations, the costs of obtaining it, and other circumstances. Gold remains the same as it was, though that external reference is altered or removed. Metalleity, on the contrary, constitutes the substantial nature of gold, apart from which it, and all else that is in it, or can be predicated of it, would be unable to subsist. The same is the case if we say, 'Caius is a man.' We express by that, that whatever else he may be, has worth and meaning, only when it corresponds to his substantial nature or manhood.

But even the Categorical judgment is to a certain extent defective. It fails to give due place to the function or element of particularity. Thus 'gold is a metal,' it is true; but so are silver, copper, iron: and metalleity as such has no leanings to any of its particular species. In these circumstances we must advance from the Categorical to the Hypothetical judgment, which may be expressed in the formula: If _A_ is, _B_ is. The present case exhibits the same advance as formerly took place from the relation of substance to the relation of cause. In the Hypothetical judgment the specific character of the content shows itself mediated and dependent on something else: and this is exactly the relation of cause and effect. And if we were to give a general interpretation to the Hypothetical judgment, we should say that it expressly realises the universal in its particularising. This brings us to the third form of the Judgment of Necessity, the Disjunctive judgment. _A_ is either _B_ or _C_ or _D._ A work of poetic art is either epic or lyric or dramatic. Colour is either yellow or blue or red. The two terms in the Disjunctive judgment are identical. The genus is the sum total of the species, and the sum total of the species is the genus. This unity of the universal and the particular is the notion: and it is the notion which, as we now see, forms the content of the judgment.

179.] On the part of its at first un-mediated subject, the Assertory judgment does not contain the relation of particular with universal which is expressed in the predicate. This judgment is consequently a mere subjective particularity, and is confronted by a contrary assertion with equal right, or rather want of right. It is therefore at once turned into (2) a Problematical judgment. But when we explicitly attach the objective particularity to the subject and make its speciality the constitutive feature of its existence, the subject (3) then expresses the connexion of that objective particularity with its constitution, _i.e._ with its genus; and thus expresses what forms the content of the predicate (see § 178). [This (_the immediate individuality_) house (_the genus,_) being so and so constituted (_particularity,_) is good or bad.] This is the Apodictic judgment. All things are a genus (_i.e._ have a meaning and purpose) in an _individual_ actuality of a _particular_ constitution. And they are finite, because the particular in them may and also may not conform to the universal. 180.] In this manner subject and predicate are each the whole judgment. The immediate constitution of the subject is at first exhibited as the intermediating ground, where the individuality of the actual thing meets with its universality, and in this way as the ground of the judgment. What has been really made explicit is the oneness of subject and predicate, as the notion itself, filling up the empty 'is' of the copula. While its constituent elements are at the same time distinguished as subject and predicate, the notion is put as their unity, as the connexion which serves to intermediate them: in short, as the Syllogism.

The Syllogism, like the notion and the judgment, is usually described as a form merely of our subjective thinking. The Syllogism, it is said, is the process of proving the judgment. And certainly the judgment does in every case refer us to the Syllogism. The step from the one to the other however is not brought about by our subjective action, but by the judgment itself which puts itself as Syllogism, and in the conclusion returns to the unity of the notion. The precise point by which we pass to the Syllogism is found in the Apodictic judgment. In it we have an individual which by means of its qualities connects itself with its universal or notion. Here we see the particular becoming the mediating mean between the individual and the universal. This gives the fundamental form of the Syllogism, the gradual specification of which, formally considered, consists in the fact that universal and individual also occupy this place of mean. This again paves the way for the passage from subjectivity to objectivity.

182.] In the 'immediate' Syllogism the several aspects of the notion confront one another abstractly, and stand in an external relation only. We have first the two extremes, which are Individuality and Universality; and then the notion, as the mean for locking the two together, is in like manner only abstract Particularity. In this way the extremes are put as independent and without affinity either towards one another or towards their mean. Such a Syllogism contains reason, but in utter notionlessness,--the formal Syllogism of Understanding. In it the subject is coupled with an _other_ character; or the universal by this mediation subsumes a subject external to it. In the rational Syllogism, on the contrary, the subject is by means of the mediation coupled with itself. In this manner it first comes to be a subject: or, in the subject we have the first germ of the rational Syllogism. In the following examination, the Syllogism of Understanding, according to the interpretation usually put upon it, is expressed in its subjective shape; the shape which it has when _we_ are said to make such Syllogisms. And it really is only a subjective syllogising. Such Syllogism however has also an objective meaning; it expresses only the finitude of things, but does so in the specific mode which the form has here reached. In the case of finite things their subjectivity, being only thinghood, is separable from their properties or their particularity, but also separable from their universality: not only when the universality is the bare quality of the thing and its external inter-connexion with other things, but also when it is its genus and notion.

And yet the several forms of syllogism make themselves constantly felt in our cognition. If any one, when awaking on a winter morning, hears the creaking of the carriages on the street, and is thus led to conclude that it has frozen hard in the night, he has gone through a syllogistic operation:--an operation which is every day repeated under the greatest variety of conditions. The interest, therefore, ought at least not to be less in becoming expressly conscious of this daily action of our thinking selves, than confessedly belongs to the study of the functions of organic life, such as the processes of digestion, assimilation, respiration, or even the processes and structures of the nature around us. We do not, however, for a moment deny that a study of Logic is no more necessary to teach us how to draw correct conclusions, than a previous study of anatomy and physiology is required in order to digest or breathe. Aristotle was the first to observe and describe the different forms, or, as they are called, figures of syllogism, in their subjective meaning: and he performed his work so exactly and surely, that no essential addition has ever been required. But while sensible of the value of what he has thus done, we must not forget that the forms of the syllogism of understanding, and of finite thought altogether, are not what Aristotle has made use of in his properly philosophical investigations. (See § 189.)

184.] This syllogism is completely contingent (α) in the matter of its terms. The Middle Term, being an abstract particularity, is nothing but any quality whatever of the subject: but the subject, being immediate and thus empirically concrete, has several others, and could therefore be coupled with exactly as many other universalities as it possesses single qualities. Similarly a single particularity may have various characters in itself, so that the same _medius terminus_ would serve to connect the subject with several different universals. It is more a caprice of fashion, than a sense of its incorrectness, which has led to the disuse of ceremonious syllogising. This and the following section indicate the uselessness of such syllogising for the ends of truth. The point of view indicated in the paragraph shows how this style of syllogism can 'demonstrate' (as the phrase goes) the most diverse conclusions. All that is requisite is to find a _medius terminus_ from which the transition can be made to the proposition sought. Another _medius terminus_ would enable us to demonstrate something else, and even the contrary of the last. And the more concrete an object is, the more aspects it has, which may become such middle terms. To determine which of these aspects is more essential than another, again, requires a further syllogism of this kind, which fixing on the single quality can with equal ease discover in it some aspect or consideration by which it can make good its claims to be considered necessary and important.

Little as we usually think on the Syllogism of Understanding in the daily business of life, it never ceases to play its part there. In a civil suit, for instance, it is the duty of the advocate to give due force to the legal titles which make in favour of his client. In logical language, such a legal title is nothing but a middle term. Diplomatic transactions afford another illustration of the same, when, for instance, different powers lay claim to one and the same territory. In such a case the laws of inheritance, the geographical position of the country, the descent and the language of its inhabitants, or any other ground, may be emphasised as a _medius terminus._ 185.] (ß) This syllogism, if it is contingent in point of its terms, is no less contingent in virtue of the form of relation which is found in it. In the syllogism, according to its notion, truth lies in connecting two distinct things by a Middle Term in which they are one. But connexions of the extremes with the Middle Term (the so-called _premisses,_ the major and the minor premiss) are in the case of this syllogism much more decidedly _immediate_ connexions. In other words, they have not a proper Middle Term. This contradiction in the syllogism exhibits a new case of the infinite progression. Each of the premisses evidently calls for a fresh syllogism to demonstrate it: and as the new syllogism has two immediate premisses, like its predecessor, the demand for proof is doubled at every step, and repeated without end.

186.] On account of its importance for experience, there has been here noted a defect in the syllogism, to which in this form absolute correctness had been ascribed. This defect however must lose itself in the further specification of the syllogism. For we are now within the sphere of the notion; and here therefore, as well as in the judgment, the opposite character is not merely present potentially, but is explicit. To work out the gradual specification of the syllogism, therefore, there need only be admitted and accepted what is at each step realised by the syllogism itself. Through the immediate syllogism I--P--U, the Individual is mediated (through a Particular) with the Universal, and in this conclusion put as a universal. It follows that the individual subject, becoming itself a universal, serves to unite the two extremes, and to form their ground of intermediation. This gives the second figure of the syllogism, (2) U--I--P. It expresses the truth of the first; it shows in other words that the intermediation has taken place in the individual, and is thus something contingent. 187.] The universal, which in the first conclusion was specified through individuality, passes over into the second figure and there now occupies the place that belonged to the immediate subject. In the second figure it is concluded with the particular. By this conclusion therefore the universal is explicitly put as particular--and is now made to mediate between the two extremes, the places of which are occupied by the two others (the particular and the individual). This is the third figure of the syllogism: (3) P--U--I.

What are called the Figures of the syllogism (being three in number, for the fourth is a superfluous and even absurd addition of the Moderns to the three known to Aristotle) are in the usual mode of treatment put side by side, without the slightest thought of showing their necessity, and still less of pointing out their import and value. No wonder then that the figures have been in later times treated as an empty piece of formalism. They have however a very real significance, derived from the necessity for every function or characteristic element of the notion to become the whole itself, and to stand as mediating ground.--But to find out what 'moods' of the propositions (such as whether they may be universals, or negatives) are needed to enable us to draw a correct conclusion in the different figures, is a mechanical inquiry, which its purely mechanical nature and its intrinsic meaninglessness have very properly consigned to oblivion. And Aristotle would have been the last person to give any countenance to those who wish to attach importance to such inquiries or to the syllogism of understanding in general. It is true that he described these, as well as numerous other forms of mind and nature, and that he examined and expounded their specialities. But in his metaphysical theories, as well as his theories of nature and mind, he was very far from taking as basis, or criterion, the syllogistic forms of the 'understanding.' Indeed it might be maintained that not one of these theories would ever have come into existence, or been allowed to exist, if it had been compelled to submit to the laws of understanding. With all the descriptiveness and analytic faculty which Aristotle after his fashion is substantially strong in, his ruling principle is always the speculative notion; and that syllogistic of 'understanding' to which he first gave such a definite expression is never allowed to intrude in the higher domain of philosophy.

In consequence of this, the mediating unity of the notion must be put no longer as an abstract particularity, but as a developed unity of the individual and universal--and in the first place a reflected unity of these elements. That is to say, the individuality gets at the same time the character of universality. A mean of this kind gives the Syllogism of Reflection. (β) _Syllogism of Reflection._ 190.] If the mean, in the first place, be not only an abstract particular character of the subject, but at the same time all the individual concrete subjects which possess that character, but possess it only along with others, (1) we have the Syllogism of Allness. The major premiss, however, which has for its subject the particular character, the _terminus medius,_ as allness, pre-supposes the very conclusion which ought rather to have pre-supposed it. It rests therefore (2) on an Induction, in which the mean is given by the complete list of individuals as such,--a, b, c, d, &c. On account of the disparity, however, between universality and an immediate and empirical individuality, the list can never be complete. Induction therefore rests upon (3) Analogy. The middle term of Analogy is an individual, which however is understood as equivalent to its essential universality, its genus, or essential character.--The first syllogism for its intermediation turns us over to the second, and the second turns us over to the third. But the third no less demands an intrinsically determinate Universality, or an individuality as type of the genus, after the round of the forms of external connexion between individuality and universality has been run through in the figures of the Reflective Syllogism.

By the Syllogism of Allness the defect in the first form of the Syllogism of Understanding, noted in § 184, is remedied, but only to give rise to a new defect. This defect is that the major premiss itself pre-supposes what really ought to be the conclusion, and pre-supposes it as what is thus an 'immediate' proposition. All men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal: All metals conduct electricity, therefore _e.g._ copper does so. In order to enunciate these major premisses, which when they say 'all' mean the 'immediate' individuals and are properly intended to be empirical propositions, it is requisite that the propositions about the individual man Caius, or the individual metal copper, should previously have been ascertained to be correct. Everybody feels not merely the pedantry, but the unmeaning formalism of such syllogisms as: All men are mortal, Caius is a man, therefore Caius is mortal. The syllogism of Allness hands us over to the syllogism of Induction, in which the individuals form the coupling mean. 'All metals conduct electricity,' is an empirical proposition derived from experiments made with each of the individual metals. We thus get the syllogism of Induction I in the following shape P--I--U. I . . .

Ideas discussed in this chapter

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