Hegel's A Priori and the Critique of Three Aprioristic Readings of the Science of Logic

The goal of my essay is to clarify the status of the a priori in Hegel's Science of Logic. My claim is that in order to make possible an appreciation of the originality of Hegel's position we need to map a context of discussion and to dissolve a set of preconceptions about Hegel's idea of philosophy. My argument will be articulated in two parts. In the first part, I will analyse four possible positions regarding the issue of the aprioricity of the Logic, I will defend a fifth position, and I will draw a distinction between apriorism and a priori. In the second part, I will examine three distinct charges of apriorism against Hegel's Logic: the charge of assuming God's point of view of the universe, the charge of vicious circularity between the beginning and the end of the Logic, the charge of self-sufficiency of the Logic. As a result, I hope to show that these charges are unfounded, and to clear the ground for an adequate evaluation of Hegel's own sublation (Aufhebung) of the a priori/a posteriori divide.

MODAL LOGIC BETWEEN TRADITIONNAL (ARISTOTLE, IBN SINA) AND CONTEMPORARY APPROACH

Aristotle founded the science of logic in order to control language source of fallacies and sophistry. He built his syllogistic on two basic principles: non-contradiction and the excluded middle. He distinguished between different types of statements: declarative and non-declarative, only the first type was used in syllogism’s theory, because it is a tool of demonstrative science. He divided them, declarative statement, into two categories: Assertorics, and modals (necessary, possible, contingent, impossible) which he encountered difficulties in his logical analysis, because it is out of frame two valued according to the two principles, such as propositions that occur in the future whose cannot be determined now. This kind of statement was also treated by the Muslims logicians, especially Ibn Sīnā who expanded the modal concept to other field like Temporal modalities (always, sometimes, never), but he could not get out the Aristotelian context. The concept expended in contemporary logic system to include other sort of modality like: epistemological, deontic, tense … This resulted the emergence of contemporary logical systems, (epistemic logic, deontic logic, tense logic), whose approach differs from the traditional one. The propose of the article is to show the difference between the approaches Keywords: Logic; Modality; Epistemological; Deontic, Temporal; Truth; False.

What Is a Logical Concept of Life? Reply to Critics

I am very grateful to Karen Koch and Sebastian Rand for their generous and thoughtful engagement with some of the core arguments of my book. Whereas Koch raises a number of questions concerning the purposiveness theme and Hegel's relation to Kant, Rand's questions revolve around the interpretation of Hegel's Science of Logic, asking after the status of the a priori, singularity, and death in relation to the logical concept of life. Their critical questions provide an opportunity for me to both clarify and defend one of the central claims of my book, namely, that there is a distinctly logical concept of life at work in Hegel's philosophy that is key for understanding his philosophical method. In the book, I argue that this concept, operative in Hegel's writings from the Differenzschrift through the Phenomenology to his Science of Logic, is primarily inherited from Kant, specifically from problems surrounding the concept of inner purposiveness developed in the Critique of Judgement. I will begin by replying to Koch, followed by a response to Rand.

Guarding Thought against Self-Destruction. Contradiction and Identity in Cohen and Hegel

Hermann Cohen's Logic of Pure Knowledge and G. W. F. Hegel's Science of Logic each use in their way the means of thought of negation and contradiction to unfold the philosophical dynamic: a fragile interplay between self-endangerment and self-preservation of thought. Here, the proximity and difference of the two authors are extended. The proximity lies in methodological negativism. The difference is in the significance of the principle of continuity. According to Cohen and Hegel as well, thinking proceeds exclusively, as Kant called it, synthetically. The exclusion of contradiction, limited to analytical judgments, has only marginal significance. But the commonality does not eliminate the differences. As Hegel puts it, contradiction is a principle of mediation and finally results in "self-dissolution"; it carries within itself a direction of logical "reconciliation." Per Cohen, contradiction is a principle of "annihilation" (annihilatio) of approaches to a determination that threatens any form of "identity." The turn Hegel put in contradiction itself, regarding in it a unity of positivity and negativity, has no direct counterpart in Cohen. Nevertheless, for him, too, the "judgment of contradiction" becomes the active basis of all cognitive thought. By exercising a contradiction-destroying "activity," the judgment of contradiction "protects," indeed "generates," the real possibility of cognition. The annihilation of the non-identical sets free the fundamental "judgment of origin" with which cognition finds its beginning. The principle of continuity taken over from Leibniz corresponds to it. Just this principle has now again no direct correspondence with Hegel.

Hegel’s Answer to the Agrippian Trilemma

In his Encyclopedia, the late Hegel makes the highest demands on truth and justification from the first paragraph onward. With this, Hegel takes up the skeptical challenge and believes that he can overcome this problem. However, it is not easy to see how Hegel tries to meet this challenge in the Science of Logic, which plays a fundamental role in Hegel’s encyclopedic project. The present article argues that the question of the justification of the claim to truth is a fruitful perspective for the interpretation of the Science of Logic. For this purpose Hegel’s answer to the Agrippan Trilemma is examined, which P. Franks analyzed as a basic problem for Classical German Philosophy. One possible interpretation of Hegel sees him solving the skeptical trilemma at the beginning of the Logic. The article argues against this possibility that the Logic of the Concept contains Hegel’s actual solution. This solution consists in (1) that the concept represents the principle of logic and (2) that the concept itself must be presented in the form of an apagogical argument. Finally, the article gives a reason why Hegel sees an analogy to the ontological argument in this attempt of an ultimate justification.

On Hegel’s Ground

Climate change is not just about rising sea levels and greenhouse gases. It is also an intensive process of real-time terraforming without any obvious subject verbing the process. This is most visibly underway at the ablation zone of the Earth’s cryosphere. Is it reasonable to situate our understanding of ecological crisis at this new ground? What would it mean to take anthropogenic climate change as the ground for reason amid the ecological crises careening toward the present? This essay returns to the second half of part one of Hegel’s The Science of Logic —the culmination of the Objective Spirit — where something appears from nothing, and it does so in and as “Ground.” I argue that recent conceptual basins of attraction in climate and earth sciences —namely, the feedback loop and the tipping point —intimate a return to elemental philosophy, and that the dialectic of nonidentity that marks Hegel’s philosophy of nature interfaces with the form-matter-content triad thrumming at the culmination of the Objective Spirit. The nonidentity of the earth has been unearthed.

Rethinking the relationship between Marx’s Capital and Hegel’s Science of Logic: The tradition of creative Soviet Marxism

This article sheds light on the little known and poorly understood extensive discussion on the relationship between Marx’s Capital and Hegel’s Science of Logic in the tradition of creative Soviet Marxism. The exploration of the mechanism of ascending from the abstract to the concrete and its relation to the movement of thought from the concrete to the abstract was one of the key points of this discussion. The ascending from the abstract to the concrete is a crucial issue of the dialectical logic developed in German Classical Philosophy, especially in Hegel’s Science of Logic. Marx implemented the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete to investigate a historically concrete object (the capitalist mode of production) as an organic whole.