Hegel's Modal Ontological Argument

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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

Hegel’s Modal Ontological Argument

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Philosophy Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

David Pensgard

Washington, D.C.

2019 Hegel’s Modal Ontological Argument David Pensgard, PhD Director: Antón Barba-Kay, PhD

A recent trend in Hegel scholarship has recognized an irreducibly metaphysical component.

Unlike traditional metaphysical views, this trend, sometimes referred to as the revised metaphysical view, accepts significant Kantian influence on Hegel, but also sees a rebuttal and counter-critique. Such a Hegel avoids the excesses of traditional metaphysics, including ontotheological speculation, but does not avoid metaphysics altogether. To extend this effort to understand Hegel’s metaphysics, without suggesting an argument for the existence of God, I here point to Hegel’s ontological argument as the one, indispensable interpretational key that he himself has provided for this purpose. Unfortunately, this argument is not only hard to detect because of the way Hegel presents it, but it is also difficult to accept because it takes a very unexpected form; it is a deduction in the ordinary sense. Perhaps without exception, scholars today think that Hegel could not possibly be using a deduction because deductive logic is considered to be antithetical to his project. It is true that Hegel criticized logic’s traditional practice for being dogmatic, and he did detect oppositional themes within the method of deduction itself, but Hegel neither condemned nor abandoned deduction. Instead, he worked to redeem it by purging its practice of two errors: presupposition and finitude. This is accomplished by means of the special properties of the Disjunctive Syllogism, a deduction that Hegel takes pains to develop as a circular and self-mediating concept. Using this form, Hegel developed the science of logic in such a way that it could be understood as healing its own internal divisions deductively. This form of thought thus restores to itself its capacity to deduce. Hegel tells us that Thought thinks itself. The form of this thought is the disjunctive syllogism, the content of this form is Thought itself, and the result is an argument that unifies this concept with this object. A deduction that does this is an ontological argument. Hegel leverages this form in his bid to meet what has been called the holistic condition, the view popular in Hegel’s day that a monism could ground philosophy by overcoming Kantian dualism.

This dissertation by David Pensgard fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in

Philosophy approved by Antón Barba-Kay, PhD, as Director, and by Timothy Noone, PhD, and

Michael Rohlf, PhD as Readers.

______Antón Barba-Kay, PhD, Director

______Timothy Noone, PhD, Reader

______Michael Rohlf, PhD, Reader

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv ABBREVIATIONS vii INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER I DETECTING A FORMAL ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT IN HEGEL’S WORKS 18

A. Searching for Signs of Hegel’s Ontological Argument 29 B. Educing the Latent Argument 35

CHAPTER II HEGEL’S CRITIQUE OF FORMAL LOGIC 127

A. Hegel’s Study and Use of Past Logical Advancements 142 B. Hegel’s Criticisms of Traditional Logic: Finitude and Presupposition 169 C. Hegel’s Redemption of Traditional Logic: A Place for Abstraction and Remedies for Finitude and Presupposition 192

CHAPTER III THE PREEMINENCE OF THE DISJUNCTIVE SYLLOGISM WITHIN HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY AND ITS CONNECTION TO THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 228

A. From Sublation to Universal 233 B. From the Universal to Objectivity 263 C. Summary of Chapter 317

CHAPTER IV THE MODAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEGEL’S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 321

A. Formal Proof of Hegel’s Modal Ontological Argument 322 B. The Strategy of the Proof and its History 356 C. Hegel’s Lapse and a Suggestion for a Hegelian-Style Resolution 363 D. Conclusions 380

BIBLIOGRAPHY 383

APPENDIX ANALYSIS OF GREGOR DAMSCHEN’S NEO-HEGELIAN ARGUMENT 392

INDEX 403

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project has become a major milestone in my life and as I think of those who made it possible, who supported and encouraged me, who gave me a chance, and even those who resisted me in a constructive way, I find that the list is longer than I expected. I am very grateful to the many who have been a part of my life, whose friendship and guidance are detectable within these pages.

Though I am the author, I want the people listed below to know that they have played a major role in making this book what it is. To these fine people I offer my sincerest and most heartfelt thanks.

First, to my parents, Richard and Linda Pensgard, who provided me with a sound foundation upon which I have been able to build all of my subsequent accomplishments. Their careful and encouraging input has made me who I am today and this work is a reflection of the creativity and courage that they first instilled in me. I thank them also for their ongoing prayers and support.

To Sara, my wife and “personal academic librarian,” whose encouragement and support, both emotional and intellectual, has been instrumental in the completion and quality of this and many other projects. Her dutiful patience and loving support have lent me strength and encouragement for over 20 years. Without her, this project and the doctorate degree that it embodies, would not have come to fruition. I gladly share credit for this project and whatever benefits that may come from it with her.

For the Reverend Dr. Kurt J. Pritzl, O.P., Dean of the School of Philosophy at the Catholic

University of America (2000-2011), who, as one of his final acts as Dean, and in this life, generously

iv saw fit to give me a chance in his school, providing admission and full tuition, two graces that have made this present project possible. I will never forget meeting and corresponding with him in my first year at the school, and I regret his passing and the fact that he did not live to see my graduation.

To the current Dean of the School, my teacher and adviser John C. McCarthy, whose guidance during the earliest stages of this project proved vital to its acceptance. While he was still acclimating to his position, treading water and, in his own words, “swatting at tennis balls,” he still managed to maintain a steady hand on the tiller, to my great benefit. He has left his mark on this project.

To my dissertation director Antón Barba-Kay, who not only gave excellent advice but who set a high and consistent standard. He also helped me to meet that standard while we worked together over many years on this project. His patience, I think, has been unusually great. He has helped me to collect and communicate my thoughts on Hegel’s philosophy and he has permitted me space enough to develop a new and unusual interpretation. I hope that he is pleased with the result.

To Michael Rohlf, my teacher, long-time advisor, and member of my dissertation committee, who spent many hours helping me as I struggled to master German and who early steered me into a more useful topic of study than the one I had naively pursued at the start. His consistent kindness and generosity has made all the difference.

To my teacher and final dissertation committee member Timothy Noone, who has proven indispensable to me through his knowledge of Scholastic logic and who has pointed me to key resources along the way. I think I have never met a professor who was more genuinely and cheerfully interested in the well-being and progress of his students.

To Edward Martin, my first professor of both metaphysics and symbolic logic, and to

Thomas Provenzola. Their patience in education and their own passion for these subjects allowed a newcomer to philosophy to get a solid foothold. Their work in educating me has become my

v foundation in the field, and they have both been a pleasure to know. I also count it an honor to be their friend.

And finally, I extend a place of special honor at the conclusion of this list to my good friend and supportive “sounding board” Sean Turchin. His feedback and friendship have put wind in my sails many times. He has listened to my theories with genuine interest and has encouraged me as I explored this and many other projects.

May these fine individuals share the credit, but none of the blame, for what follows.

ABBREVIATIONS AND WRITING STANDARDS

CM The consequentia mirabilis argument; AKA Clavius’ Law.

DS Disjunctive Syllogism.

IDT Absolute Identity Thesis.

OA Ontological Argument.

UPI This abbreviation is used to refer collectively to the various relations that Hegel notices between Universal, Particular, And Individual.

***

GW Gesammelte Werke. [The Collected Works of Hegel in German] Edited by the Rheinisch- Westfälischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1968–. All German quotations, unless otherwise identified, will come from this set.

PhG Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford University Press, 1977. This book will also be referred to as “the Phenomenology.”

EL Encyclopedia Logic (1830). Translated by W. Wallace. Oxford University Press, 1975. (Encyclopedia vol. 1)

EN Philosophy of Nature (1830). Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford University Press, 1970. (Encyclopedia vol. 2)

EM Philosophy of Mind (1830). Translated by W. Wallace and A. V. Miller. Oxford University Press, 1971. (Encyclopedia vol. 3)

WL Science of Logic. Translated by A. V. Miller. George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1969.

VBDG Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God. Edited and Translated by Peter C. Hodgson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

OB The German text for VBDG will be taken from: “Der ontologische Beweise: nach der Vorlesung von 1831 (Sekundäre Überlieferung).” In Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. Vol. 3, Die vollendete Religion, edited by Walter Jaeschke. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1984.

vii These abbreviations for Hegel’s works will be used in parenthetical comments and footnote citations. Where possible, Hegel’s works are cited by section (§) number. In rare instances, an additional letter is added to the section/paragraph number as follows: an “a” for Anmerkung, which is a remark (Hegel’s remarks or notes); and a “z” for Zusatz, which is an addition (taken from lecture notes). Walter Kaufmann, a well-known German-American Hegel scholar, has suggested that the former be called “the wit and wisdom of Hegel in quotations from his lectures,” and he also indicates that Hegel gave permission for his publishers/editors to make improvements as they saw fit.1 These points elevate both of these kinds of notes somewhat, but Kaufmann cautions that they can be very early and can be manipulated significantly by editors. Scholars have labored in the intervening years to correct editorial alterations.

A Word About Capitalization, Italicization, and American English

Several of the topics of discussion in this dissertation, and the applicable conventions of capitalization and italicization, are complicated enough to warrant a careful up-front declaration and clarification. These deal with the distinctions between terms and referents such as: Logic and logic and Logic; Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia; Ontological Argument and ontological argument; and

Disjunctive Syllogism and disjunctive syllogism.

If a discussion deals with more than one kind or instance of a referent, then references to them by a categorical title will not be capitalized, thus “ontological arguments.” These circumstances are also appropriate for use of the indefinite article: “an ontological argument,” or a possessive form:

“Hegel’s ontological argument.”

However, when referring to the Ontological Argument itself, either as a category or as that

1 Walter Kaufmann, Hegel: A Reinterpretation (Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1965), 219-220, 233-234.

viii which Hegel intends to be the mother of all ontological arguments, then this is a proper noun and will thus be capitalized. In such cases, regardless of whether or not the philosopher (Hegel) or this author is correct about his understanding of the referent to the noun in question, a proper noun is intended, and so a capitalization is in order. Similarly, discussions of any number of disjunctive syllogisms, instances of the syllogism itself or variations of form or formalism within a larger category, should be distinguished from discussions about the Disjunctive Syllogism.

Regarding titles of books, in several cases, there is a distinction between a work by Hegel and the titular subject of that work. In such cases, when the need arises, references to the work will be italicized, indicating that it is a book title, but references to the subject of that work will not. For example, references to Hegel’s Encyclopedia are meant to point out the circular (encyclical or en- cyclo-pedic) structure of Hegel’s argument as given in the Encyclopedia, which title refers to Hegel’s three-volume work. Likewise, references to Hegel’s Logic are meant to indicate the first part of the structure of the Progression of Thought that is described in Hegel’s major work: the Encyclopedia.

The two books, the Encyclopedia (or “shorter”) Logic and the Science of Logic, are sometimes referred to collectively as the Logics; I will follow this convention on occasion. These are two descriptions of the one Logic, which is the conceptual structure that Hegel is attempting to describe in the two Logics.

Finally, I will modify some quotations by altering spellings to match the standards of

American English.

INTRODUCTION

It was not long after Hegel’s death in 1831 that philosophers began the struggle to understand his philosophy. It is a surprise that this effort continues today. It is often admitted that this long discussion has been factious and confusing. The study of Hegel is understandably singled out for its difficulty and obscurity. Something fundamental must be missing. We lack the definitive interpretive key, one that is able to unlock Hegel’s philosophy unambiguously and render it intelligible. Such a key would find ample support in Hegel’s mature texts and rise above other options for the clarity it lends in our efforts to comprehend his system.

To find this key, I will be doing something new with Hegel. I will be digging into a long overlooked aspect of his thought, one that I think will make all the difference in the effort to unlock his philosophy from indecipherability. That aspect is Hegel’s effort to purify and use deduction.

I begin by presenting an introductory narrative, an extremely abbreviated review of the history of philosophy starting with the dream of unity as presented early by Parmenides, as it was more recently given by Spinoza, and as it came to the youthful idealists Schelling and Hegel in the late 18th Century. German Idealists of this time were living in the shadow of Kant’s Critical

Philosophy, but they were also entranced by Spinoza’s monism.2 In this context, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel had their famous disagreement about the Parmenidean One. Schelling’s version of this absolute unity removed all distinctions in the One. It did this to such an extent that it became

2 Paul Franks, All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2005), 4. See also, Robert Pippin, The Persistence of Subjectivity on the Kantian Aftermath (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), 32-33.

1 2 impossible to differentiate anything within it. At first Hegel defends Schelling, but later, in the introduction to his Phenomenology, Hegel turns against his friend; he almost mocks Schelling’s conception of the One by saying that it is like a dark night in which, “all cows are black.”3 Thus, they all agreed that unification was the goal, but they disagreed about how to differentiate it internally by its own resources, as any successful monism must find a way to do transparently.4

Hegel’s answer to this problem was to differentiate the One by means of a series of negations. This absolute Idea, as Hegel would come to call the One, is differentiated first into the following two halves: abstract logic and contingent object.5 Negations determine what each half is by means of specifying what it is not. Thus, the abstract logic is that part of the Absolute that is not the contingent object, and vice versa. Each of the two halves is characterized by what it is not, and these become their defining features. So, the logic is abstracted from the object and this makes it what it is.

And the object, in parallel, is contingent because it is considered apart from the logical forms that would otherwise eternalize it and make its structures necessary.

This determination by negation can be seen in reverse, and that is the direction that Hegel’s own analysis most often takes. In that direction, the disunified halves can be negated in their defining themes, and this leads to the unity of the whole. Thus, the abstract logic is defined before all else as an abstraction, which is its separation from its object. The negation of abstraction removes it as a modification and this prevents abstraction from keeping the halves apart. Since abstraction is the principle that differentiates this part of the unified whole from the other part, its negation leads to reunification with the whole.6

3 PhG, 9. GW, Band 9, 13: “. . . alle Kühe schwarz sind, . . .” 4 Cf., Robert Stern, Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit (New York: Routledge, 2002), 15. Stern, for one, acknowledges that this is also, specifically, Hegel’s goal. He writes that Hegel’s approach is “a new, non-dualistic, way” of restoring to philosophy its “exalted role.” Thus, monism is the goal and philosophy is the way to access this unified reality. 5 Hegel will devote a whole book to each of these halves, the first two volumes in his Encyclopedia: The Logic and the Philosophy of Nature. 6 The point of the exercise, lest we forget, is to differentiate the One. Because the Logic can be distinguished,

This becomes a general pattern of interaction for concepts. If a whole is divided into two halves, A and B, such that A is distinguished by principle 1, and B is distinguished by principle 2, then the negation of principles 1 and 2 will reproduce the unity of the whole. This is a differentiation when viewed in one direction, and a unification when viewed in the other. This allows the philosopher to unify and diversify as needed, all while enjoying the benefits of the comprehensive whole and the transparent interconnectedness of all concepts within that whole.

That this addresses the problem of differentiation for the otherwise indivisible One is what fits Hegel’s project into his immediate historical context. But, what distinguishes Hegel most of all, and what has been overlooked for almost two centuries, is that this trio of principles forms a disjunctive syllogism.

This is easy to miss. Its simple structure has three parts: the whole and its two halves. Each half is defined by what it is not, which are the negative principles of their definitions. The negation of these negative principles leads to unification. But, this does not simply happen; it is deduced. As such, the structure can be understood in the following way: “not the first half; not the second half, therefore the whole.” The negations of the principles of differentiation of two of the three members of the triad not only leads to an obvious reunification in a mereological sense, but also to a disjunctive elimination in a logical sense. This makes the process into a deduction and fits Hegel’s project with Leibniz’s, both of whom use the name “encyclopedia” to describe their deductive and universally comprehensive systems.7

This three-part relationship is also recognizable as sublation, which is nothing new, but I think that it is an insight to recognize a sublation as a disjunctive syllogism. It is Hegel’s intention from the start to develop the simple structure of sublation into the Disjunctive Syllogism, revealing

we can have our cake and eat it too—we can have the unifying One to make sense of it all, and we can use the Logic to think and analyze. 7 William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 321.

4 the latter from within the development of the former. Hegel does this by further differentiating the halves by the same methodology over and over again toward the end of deriving and connecting new concepts. Each division produces conceptual entities that Hegel sees as original derivations of concepts. In the direction of differentiation, the One is divided into Logic and Nature; the Logic is divided into Being and Essence; and so on without end. Each new division produces a triad when it is related back to the original part from which the two new parts are differentiated. The halves become quarters; the quarters become eighths. In this manner, Hegel continues until he has given us a reason to think that all possible concepts can be derived through this process.

The result is a kind of chain of deductions.8 The goal of making such a structure is to connect concepts to one another and to anchor them in the One. It had long been the Dream of

Reason to do this deductively,9 not only because deduction is the strongest form of reason, but it also keeps the One from being a dark impenetrable night due to the traceability of its connections.

Hegel works toward this end by this means. He pursues the goal of interconnection by the method described above for differentiating the One. Hegel uses this method to deduce the unity of the whole from the parts. But as it was described above, it also works as a system of differentiations from the One to the parts.

This specific deductive method, however, is not new. Hegel noticed that someone had pursued this same logical method 750 years earlier. Hegel takes us to this realization slowly by suggesting that the Parmenidean One, the Absolute Idea, can also be thought of as God. Though

Hegel uses this term very differently from Spinoza and Anselm, “God” becomes Hegel’s connection to the traditional arguments for the existence of God, arguments that he considers repeatedly in

8 This is not quite right because each link produces two links and each of these produces two more. We might think of this, therefore, more as a kind of chain mail, but I prefer to think of it as a Sierpinski Triangle, a fractal that divides endlessly into three. I use the phrase, “chain of deductions,” however, because of the connection this will make to the “Encyclopedia” of Leibniz. See Chapter II. 9 This is arguably the goal of Aristotle, the Stoics, the Scholastics, Newton, and Leibniz. This issue can very profitably be used as a historical axis that clarifies much of the history of philosophy.

5 most of his major works. This has been hard to reconcile with the expectations that most Hegel scholars have,10 but it makes good sense in the context of the revival of Spinoza’s holistic monism just mentioned, which proposed a pantheistic One in a way that had become attractive to Hegel and his peers. Spinoza produced an ontological argument, and this may help to explain why Hegel thinks so highly of it. Hegel praises the Ontological Argument most highly, among the historical options, as the optimal method for pursuing philosophy.11 This is not just history for Hegel. This proof fits well with the rest of his philosophy. In fact, as will be shown, Hegel uses the Disjunctive Syllogism as an ontological argument, one that unifies concept with object through negations of negations. Or, to put this in a more revealing way, he is unifying argument with ontology by eliminating options in a disjunctive list.

As a unification of concept and object, this is clearly not an argument for the existence of a transcendent God. Whatever we may think of historical versions of the “God of the philosophers,”

I do not think of Hegel as bolstering theism, not even pantheism. Nonetheless, Hegel used the term and had very good reasons for doing so. It not only connected his project to the deductive form that he wanted to use (Anselm’s), but it connected him also to an ancient philosophical tradition, one that joins Aristotle to the then popular Spinoza,12 with many helpful logical metaphysicians between.

Despite these points of connection, however, Hegel will also distinguish himself from Christian

(monotheistic) and Spinozistic (pantheistic) themes. He stands apart from them because he uses his argument not to bridge a gap between thought and transcendent object, but quite the opposite, to rule out transcendence itself, the ultimate goal being to overcome Kantian dualism by denying the other side.

10 See, for example, Dieter Henrich, Der ontologische Gottesbeweis: Sein Problem und seine Geschichte in der Neuzeit, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr, Siebeck, 1967), 218-219. 11 EL, 80-85, §§50-51. Hegel is critical of the abstractness of this kind of thinking in the next section. This does not mean, however, that Hegel is abandoning the proof. As I will labor extensively to show, Hegel will find a way to use the argument, and the logical moment on which it is based, without invoking the perils of abstraction, which are finitude and presupposition, which normally leads to the dogmatic practice of deduction. 12 Franks, 32-33.

Hegel is thus using the form of the Ontological Argument, as he interprets it, to deduce unity, to fulfill the holistic condition that his peers were seeking to meet. This perspective on Hegel’s philosophy makes sense of his apparent obsession with the ontological argument. This argument is therefore the preeminent interpretational guide for Hegel’s readers. It is, I think, the guide that

Hegel himself puts forward for this purpose. Nonetheless, it will be difficult, I expect, to accept that

Hegel’s system employs a deductive ontological argument because this requires us to see him as a logician. I am thus recommending a very large shift in thinking about a very fundamental aspect of

Hegel’s philosophy.

This shift, because it so widely diverges from expectations, threatens to render my discussion of Hegel incomprehensible to readers who are used to dealing with alternative views. I must therefore warn the reader to expect that my analysis, my topics and arguments both, will diverge significantly from what is typical in studies of Hegel’s philosophy. I must therefore beg an unusual amount of charity from my readers. As a promissory note, on this point, I can only extend reassurances that a logical axis of interpretation simplifies and clarifies Hegel’s project to a remarkable degree.13 It makes Hegel’s philosophy accessible and comprehensible more than any other interpretational strategy that I have encountered. In short, I think Hegel gives us the interpretational principle that he wants us to use, and so overlooking it produces unavoidable confusion—hence the history of Hegel interpretation. The promise and the prize, I suggest, is a much more interesting Hegel than we have seen before.

13 Cf., Clinton Tolley, “Hegel and Kant on Reason and the Unconditioned.” Hegel Studien 50 (2017): 131. Clinton Tolley has given us the pithy realization that several recent books are both surprisingly readable and also about Hegel. I have also noticed this, but I credit this recent shift toward comprehensibility to the reconsideration of Hegel as a metaphysician. I hope to add to this trend by suggesting here that interpreting Hegel as a logician (and also a metaphysician) clarifies Hegel’s philosophy even more than the metaphysical reading does alone. The end result is a Hegel that is more accessible than ever.

My thesis therefore is that Hegel has an ontological argument, it is central to his philosophy, but it is not an argument for the existence of God. Rather than having discovered a new argument for the existence of a transcendent source for all things, Hegel thinks that he has discovered the conceptual structure that unifies all things, a parent concept that connects, and thus also removes a barrier between, the philosopher’s subjective starting place and the truth14 of all things whatsoever.

This kind of truth is unique, however, because it does not involve transcendence of the objects to which concepts correspond. In a complete reversal from other ontological arguments, as a consequence of its unifying function, Hegel’s argument concludes that transcendence itself can be ruled out. If Hegel succeeds, this means that the argument, which is the whole, is itself the only possible ground for the concepts it contains because there is no other option. It is an ontology by default. Coherence then becomes a sufficient condition for grounding.

This removal of transcendence makes Hegel’s philosophy into a form of atheism. Unlike all other ontological arguments, including Spinoza’s,15 Hegel’s argument is thoroughly atheistic, even a- pan-theistic, because even a pantheistic God, in some sense, is inscrutable. Epistemologically,16 therefore, a dualism is unavoidable in pantheisms. In Hegel’s philosophy, there is no cosmic overlord that creates or governs the natural and conceptual worlds. There is no great mind for

Hegel, but there is a conceptual connectedness that knows no limitations and is thus able to reconcile the mind-world divide and overcome the limits of subjectivity by bringing the world of

14 By “truth,” I here refer most generally to an object, whether conceptual or material, to which concepts correspond. At this early point, I must remain ambiguous about the character of the object and thus the nature of the “truth” with which Hegel works. 15 With regard to ontological arguments, it will be a point of logical interest later in the present project that Spinoza argues from the starting place of the possibility of God’s existence to God’s necessary existence. Hegel's version of the argument is somewhat different because he rules out starting places via circularity, and he finds his point of entry into the circle, not with possibility, but with the self-negating necessity of the Logic. From there, Hegel moves to possibility, and then to a self-deducing necessity at the point where the circle closes. With regard to metaphysics, both Hegel and Spinoza are monists. However, as I will explain later, Spinoza's specific kind of Monism (neutral) is rejected by Hegel, whose monism is conceptual. Finally, Hegel’s monism does not suggest the existence of a great mind or self- conscious entity. I see it more as a conceptual version of reductionism in which the structure of reality is composed of atom-like concepts held together deductively. 16 Hegel’s reduction of ontology to the immanent system of concepts causes an unusual overlap between epistemology and metaphysics. In this sense, I speak here of “epistemological dualism.”

8 objects into the subjective world. This conceptual absolute is not conscious or self-aware,17 but it is nonetheless, to Hegel, the underlying structure of all things whatsoever, without exclusion. It is the principle of unity for and the entire constitution of the material and logical worlds.

Hegel’s ontological argument is thus the basis for his ontology, which is a conceptual reductionism in the context of an idealism,18 a reduction of all things whatsoever to concepts, and a unification of all concepts into a single, logical system that is the logical-metaphysical basis for itself

(involving coherence plus elimination of transcendence). It is an argument, infinitely dense and exhaustively complete, that, according to Hegel, accounts for its own existence by means of its peculiar, negative onto-deductive properties.

For precisely these reasons, Hegel thinks that separation and transcendence are the difficulties that ontological arguments overcome. So, they cannot properly be the conclusion of an ontological argument. Transcendence threatens not only access to reality from the subjective starting place, but due to this very uncertainty, it leads to skepticism because a lack of access to objects like

God and World calls their existence into question. By Hegel’s day, philosophers had become worried that philosophy could not even establish the reality of the external world, let alone God.19

This so-called “scandal of philosophy” is also closely related to the Modernist Predicament that arises as a consequence of Descartes’ methodological doubt and that grew to excessive proportions in the aftermath of Kant’s skeptical philosophy. This is the impetus behind the turn toward a

Spinozistic solution in German Idealism after Kant. And so, this is Hegel’s environment and his problem.

17 The absolute, the Idea, is described by Hegel as “thinking itself.” However, this is not the kind of thinking that self-aware subjects enjoy and so this is only a reference to the far more basic “mechanical” and non-subjective manner of existence that concepts must minimally possess. 18 Hegel’s idealism is not a kind of “conceptual realism” that proposes a parallel world of ideas alongside the material world, it is an idealism that reduces the material world to concepts. 19 Frederick C. Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism 1781-1801 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2002), 567. Beiser thinks that this is the problem “central to all German Idealism.”

The problem that transcendence produces for philosophy is inaccessibility. If correspondence between concepts and their objects is the basis for truth, and if inaccessibility between concept and object makes correspondence impossible to deduce or verify, then transcendence is philosophy’s fundamental obstacle because it renders truth-claims untenable. For

Hegel, transcendence must lead to skepticism. Negation of transcendence is the only solution.

Hegel concluded that ontological argumentation was the only method that could address the problem of transcendence.20 He even referred to the method of ontological argumentation as the

Ideal of Reason21 because he believed that the unity of concept and object was achievable only by that means. For this reason, an argument that connects the concept with its object, purely on the basis of properties internal to the argument, is not about proving the existence of God from the resources available within the definition of God. Hegel understood that the application for this kind of argument is much wider, and that within its jurisdiction lay the solution to the preeminent philosophical mystery.

Such a unification of concepts is generally recognized as Hegel’s primary goal, even if it is not recognized as being part of the frenzy for systematicity that was in vogue among German

Idealists of the time.22 Hegel’s solution is referred to today either as the Identity Theory or as the

Absolute Identity Thesis.23 My contention here is that Hegel thought of his absolute identity thesis as an ontological argument and that, in turn, this insight is helpful in determining what Hegel was doing with his philosophy. Hegel’s ontological argument is therefore no tangential or minor issue for

Hegel scholarship, which after nearly 200 years of interpretative efforts is still attempting to settle

20 EL, 80-85, §49-51. 21 EL, 80, §49. GW, Band 20, 86: “das Ideal der Vernunft.” 22 Franks, 4. See also, Pippin, Persistence, 32-33. 23 The origin of this terminology lies with Robert B. Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism: Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), 79-87. Pippin prefers the shorter “identity theory,” but Michael Forster calls it the “absolute identity thesis”; I will adopt the latter terminology, but with capitalization. See, Michael N. Forster, Hegel and Skepticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989), 117.

10 what Hegel’s philosophy is even about.24 The difficulty lies both in determining Hegel’s goals and in understanding his methods. The Ontological Argument provides a satisfying answer to both difficulties at once. Yet, the value of this interpretive solution and a clear application of it seems to have eluded interpreters up to the present day.

One reason for this difficulty is that the Ontological Argument has always been tied to a

“right-Hegelian” or “ontotheological”25 interpretation of Hegel, and such an interpretation has proven unpopular and unsatisfactory. Consequently, Hegel’s ontological argument is not typically studied as a means to understanding his overall philosophy and so its status as the proper interpretational framework for his philosophy has not yet been fully appreciated.

Nonetheless, very promising developments have recently been made in under-recognized26 circles, most notably in the work of Vittorio Hösle, Paul Redding, and Gregor Damschen.27 This group has made a significant advance in Hegel interpretation by separating his system-argument from the old “right” interpretation, and this will be my own stepping stone. It is within this line of investigation that the current project labors to make the crucial, final connections between Hegel’s ontological-argument methodology and his philosophy as a whole. I believe that this approach can finally bring interpretation of Hegel to a satisfactory starting point.

A premature dismissal of Hegel’s ontological argument has been the cause of this

24 James Kreines, “Hegel’s Metaphysics: Changing the Debate,” Philosophy Compass 1 (2006): 475-476. This claim, that Hegel is not currently well understood, is a perspective common to scholars who take the “revised metaphysical” view of Hegel. More on this later. 25 This second term refers only to interpretations of Hegel that see him as accepting or arguing for the transcendent existence of God. This “right” is contrasted with “left” Hegelians who are represented by Marx, Engels, and Feuerbach. Robert Stern, for one, sees this as the original divide between scholars interpreting Hegel just after his death. See his, Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit, xi. 26 Franks, 4, n.6. I should mention here that Franks recognizes Vittorio Hösle as one of the few who see systematics as important to Hegel. Hösle’s argument will turn out to be an important factor in bridging my project with Franks’. 27 The works of these philosophers will be discussed at length in other chapters and in the appendix. See, Vittorio Hösle, Morals and Politics, trans. Steven Rendall (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004); Objective Idealism, Ethics, and Politics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998); Paul Redding, Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Paul Redding and Paolo Diego Bubbio, “Hegel and the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God,” Religious Studies 50 (2014): 465-486; and Gregor Damschen, “Are There Ultimately Founded Propositions?” Universitas Philosophica 54 (2010): 163-177.

11 longstanding confusion over what his philosophy is about. And the cause of this dismissal is a misunderstanding of Hegel’s redemption and use of deduction. Both of these are deeply rooted in

Hegel scholarship, but the second is more entrenched than the first. Specifically, full appreciation and use of Hegel’s ontological argument requires the interpreter to detect and acknowledge Hegel’s careful restoration and advanced use of “traditional” formal logic.28 This is an extremely fortified presupposition. Yet, a logical Hegel is not completely unheard of; the small group just mentioned has taken the first steps toward reassessing Hegel’s critique of formal logic.

I now take this reassessment further by unearthing Hegel’s own highly qualified formal- logical approach to metaphysics. On this basis, I argue that Hegel’s own version of the Ontological

Argument is a true syllogism, a formal deduction, and this means that, contrary to the expectations of virtually every Hegel scholar today,29 this argument does not employ a discursive or “dialectic” alternative to logic that Hegel paradoxically describes with traditional terminology (e.g., “syllogism,”

“deduction,” “demonstration,” “proof,” etc.). It is in fact the same kind of logical entity that was conceived first by Aristotle and developed by the Stoics, the Scholastics, and Leibniz, to name just a few. It is the general logic that Kant used to deduce his categories within the phenomena.30

Although Hegel certainly criticizes this “logic of the Understanding,”31 he neither destroys it by his criticisms, nor does he render it useless for philosophy. To the contrary, his own development of the science of logic involves relatively minor and external repairs32 that were never meant to overwrite or

28 Various terms can be used to describe this kind of logic (formal, deductive, syllogistic, traditional, etc.), and various periods of history, names of logicians, and philosophical schools can be connected to it (Aristotle, the Peripatetics, Stoics, Scholastics, etc.). For reasons that will be made clear in Chapter II, I will avoid the term “Classical Logic.” 29 As a leading example, consider the analysis of Dieter Henrich (see below for further comment and citation). However, this list also includes those who see value in Hegel’s ontological argument, notably, Paul Redding and Paolo Bubbio. 30 Harold R. Smart, “Two Views on Kant and Formal Logic,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 16 (1955): 157; See also, Clinton Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, Division of the Humanities, Department of Philosophy, 2007), 567. 31 EL, 113, §79-80. GW, Band 20, 118-119: “Das Logische . . . die abstracte oder verständige, . . .” See also EL, 245, §182. GW, Band 20, 193: “der Verstandesschluß.” 32 Hegel’s alternate approach to logic involves a difference in external attitudes that are brought to the practice

12 cancel past advancements in the field, many of which, I will argue, Hegel understood, accepted, and advanced even further.33

It is most often thought that Hegel condemned the logic of Aristotle and that he worked to supersede its ineliminable dogmatism. Hegel’s new version of logic, the “dialectic” alternative, is then believed to have little in common with the traditional logic that it is seen as replacing. On this interpretation, Hegel’s extensive discussion and repeated defense of the Ontological Argument makes little sense and is difficult to explain. An influential proponent of this interpretation, Dieter

Henrich, explains Hegel’s defense of the Ontological Argument as a kind of imposture, as something forced upon him by the circumstances, a necessary pedagogical prerequisite for eventually doing away with traditional logic entirely.34 Hegel, Henrich concludes, is thus accommodating us, his uninitiated readers, by taking his time to address a syllogism that his new,

“dialectic” logic has already surpassed. Others, writing on the subject of Hegel’s ontological argument, unanimously concur.35

Because of this attitude about Hegel’s approach to logic, most scholars today think that

Hegel either has no ontological argument of his own, or, if he does, then it is not an argument as such. This is why one cannot find a reconstruction or simplification of Hegel’s deductive ontological argument anywhere in the scholarly literature of the past two centuries. Nor for that matter does one even find a helpful clarification. Descriptions of Hegel’s argument always seem to muddy the waters and to put words into Hegel’s mouth rather than consolidate their meaning. The formal deductive characteristics that are mentioned by Hegel, regardless of how consistently or repeatedly he gives of logic, thus the “repairs” are minor in the sense that they do not alter the forms of deduction in themselves. 33 This will be the task of the first half of my second chapter. 34 Henrich, 218-219. 35 See, Patricia Marie Calton, Hegel’s Metaphysics of God: The Ontological Proof as the Development of a Trinitarian Divine Ontology (Burlington: Ashgate, 2001), 38-39, n. 3; Kevin J. Harrelson, The Ontological Argument from Descartes to Hegel (Amherst: Humanity Books, 2009), 209, 221; Quentin Lauer, Hegel’s Concept of God (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), 225; Michael Inwood, A Hegel Dictionary (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1992), 137; and Richard Dien Winfield, Hegel and the Future of Systematic Philosophy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 81. See further discussion in my second chapter.

13 them, are explained away rather than reconstructed. Hence, even among those who think Hegel has an ontological argument, and even among those who think that the argument is important, it is presupposed that the argument’s form can have little in common with the ontological arguments of

Anselm, Descartes, Spinoza, or Leibniz, all of whom provide recognizably and straightforwardly formal deductions that are reconstructable with a contemporary formalism.36 If these presuppositions hold true, then Hegel’s argument simply cannot be understood as a formal deductive syllogism in the traditional sense regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Yet, the decision to rule out the possibility that Hegel’s philosophy is a deductive syllogism seems to presume an understanding of his philosophy that, even today, remains insufficient.37

These presuppositions have become a dogma of their own, a dogma that warns of dogmatism. We must therefore ask anew whether Hegel really meant to reject and replace formal deductive logic. In contrast to the nearly universal expectation, therefore, I will be working to show that Hegel’s ontological argument does in fact possess the characteristics of a deductive syllogism.

Specifically, I will show that there is ample evidence to conclude that Hegel not only has his own ontological argument, but also that it is specifically identifiable as a modal disjunctive syllogism.38

Moreover, this deductive form can be fully formalized39 and tested with a formal proof.40 In the

36 Regarding Spinoza’s proof, for example, see the reconstruction of Ruth Barcan Marcus, Modalities: Philosophical Essays (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), 163-176. 37 Kreines, “Hegel’s Metaphysics,” 475-476. 38 The term “modal” can have multiple meanings. The meaning adopted here will be the logical meaning. Specifically, logics that deal with possibility and necessity. Although Hegel does use the term in non-logical ways, e. g., EL, 153, §104, his logical usage of the term and his modal-logical inferences, both direct and by implication, are common and meaningfully used in the Encyclopedia and VBDG. Moreover, modal characteristics are indispensable for the validity of Hegelian-type arguments. Vittorio Hösle, Miriam Ossa, and Gregor Damschen, especially when taken collectively, make this point at some length. See Chapter IV and the appendix. 39 Some attention will be paid to the meaning of the terms “formal” and “formalize” in Chapter II. At this point, I am simply defining a formal argument as a deduction. 40 This proof will adopt the contemporary, Boolean algebra and proceed under the axioms of S5 modal logic. Before this proof is implemented, however, I will defend my own use of S5 in my proof of Hegel’s argument by showing that Hegel’s philosophy generates internally all of the requisite theorems required for this system of logic. More on this in Chapter IV.

14 middle of my fourth chapter, therefore, I will present a formalized Hegelian ontological argument followed by a proof of its validity,41 something that no other analysis of Hegel’s ontological argument has previously provided.42

Such an analysis will require getting deeply into Hegel’s writings, a large task that will be reduced somewhat by focusing attention primarily on the Encyclopedia Logic (EL) and the Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God (VBDG) as the best texts for this specific endeavor.43 This will be the task of the first chapter, which will set the evidence before the reader in raw form and show that

Hegel gives us good reasons to think, or to start thinking, that he is arguing deductively with a modal syllogism. This is the first step of an extended argument.

Of course, the conclusion that Hegel’s ontological argument is a modal disjunctive syllogism can be sustained only if Hegel’s critique of formal logic can be understood to allow it. Consequently, after presenting ample evidence in the first chapter that Hegel appears to be arguing deductively, the second chapter will engage in a sustained defense of Hegel’s intention to repair and utilize rather than destroy and abandon formal logic. The second chapter will also uncover the surprising depth of

Hegel’s comprehension of past logical advancements including those of the ancient Greeks, the medieval Scholastics, and especially the work of Leibniz. In addition, key aspects of certain specific, preexisting formal syllogistics, even advanced modal syllogistics, will be recognized in Hegel’s

Progression of Thought.44 It will be concluded that Hegel had access to a sufficient body of formal- logical knowledge and that he labored to rid it of two specific impurities, which he himself identifies

41 This is not to say that Hegel has achieved his goals, for this proof of validity must then be followed by an analysis of the argument’s soundness. 42 It has even been said that such an effort is impossible. See, Robert C. Solomon, In the Spirit of Hegel: A Study of G.W.F. Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit,” (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), 230. 43 The VBDG is the text that directly addresses this argument as such and by name, thus it is an obvious choice, and, as Tom Rockmore acknowledges, the EL text is the clearest and most mature source for questions of circularity, a key feature of the self-sufficient capacity of Hegel's version of the OA. See Tom Rockmore, Hegel's Circular Epistemology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 82. In addition, the EL text is the one place that puts the OA’s many features together in one work. It is therefore arguable that Hegel gave considerable thought to the way these facets come together in that work. This is what I have found. 44 “Progression of Thought” is my term for the structure of concepts that Hegel begins to assemble first in the Logics. I coin this new term because I will repeatedly need to refer to the work done by the entire Encyclopedia.

15 as presupposition and finitude. To Hegel, they are the sources and hallmarks of dogmatism, which had long plagued the use of deduction. These were the fatal flaws in the practice of formal logic that led to a dogmatic application of syllogistics before Hegel’s day. Yet their removal, perhaps unexpectedly, purifies rather than obliterates formal deduction and leaves syllogistic reasoning intact. Chapter II will thus free Hegel’s interpreters to acknowledge a straightforward reading of the raw data given in

Chapter I. This is the second step of the extended argument.

A third leg will then be added to this case in the third chapter where the connection between the Ontological Argument and Hegel’s overall philosophy will be drawn. This connection is made by the Disjunctive Syllogism, Hegel’s preeminent formal mediator. Hegel took great pains to derive and ground this specific kind of syllogism. It is not only the form that his ontological argument takes, but it is the form that always mediates concepts with their objects in Hegel’s philosophy at every level, whether it is called sublation or syllogism. It is therefore also the form of the Absolute Idea itself, the Encyclopedia; Hegel’s overall system is recognizable as a modal disjunctive syllogism. The third chapter will trace Hegel’s work in developing and grounding that syllogism, starting from the first sublation, and show how its special features enable it to function as the preeminent mediator of concept and object because it operates as its own self-mediator by mediating its form with its content deductively. This is the third step of the extended argument.

And so, by the end of the third chapter, a specific formal syllogism will have been uncovered and reconstructed. Subsequently, a fourth and final chapter will test the validity and soundness of this argument. Yet, because it will have been established as a genuine deductive syllogism, it should be acceptable at that point that there is no better way to put Hegel’s Absolute Identity Thesis through its paces. After this, the newly uncovered philosophical system’s strengths, weaknesses, and relevance will be explored and then a criticism and a way forward will be offered.45 This will

45 I should mention here that I do not agree with Hegel’s conclusions even though the charitableness of my

16 conclude the extended argument.

By the end of the final chapter, Hegel’s philosophy will be comprehensible as an ontological argument that he himself presents in the form of a modal disjunctive syllogism. It will be reconstructed as a provably valid deduction that unifies its form with its contents, which is to say, its concept with its object (itself). And, this will be understood as Hegel’s solution to the primary philosophical problem of his day, the aforementioned “scandal” of philosophy.

A quick word about the categories of Hegel interpretation: Because my approach is, in a sense, a radical departure from current thinking about Hegel’s philosophy, a unique name is needed that orients it within the existing theories of interpretation. With this project, I intend to open a new subcategory in Hegel scholarship on the basis of Hegel’s careful restoration and use of formal deductive logic. This emphasis on Hegel’s restoration of logic leads me to name it, in part, “Logical.”

However, this interpretation is not a complete departure; it also has much in common with what has been called the Revised Metaphysical school of interpretation, a broad category of strategies that looks more to the influence of Spinoza’s metaphysical monism on the German Idealists of Hegel’s day than it does to the influence of Kant’s pursuit of the conditions of human consciousness.46 To signal this affiliation, I retain the name “Metaphysical.” Thus, it is a Logical-Metaphysical interpretation. The contention here is that Hegel’s logic is not only straightforwardly deductive, but, with regard to interpreting his philosophy, this aspect of his system is even more fundamental than

interpretation may seem, at times, to indicate otherwise. 46 That Hegel was well aware of Kant’s project but was nonetheless more concerned to ground Philosophy in a Spinozistic monism is also the position of Paul Franks. See, Franks, 9-10. According to Clinton Tolley, this Spinozan focus is at the root of what I am calling the “revised metaphysical” interpretative tradition. He names James Kreines, Rolf-Peter Horstmann, and Frederick Beiser as fitting within this tradition. See, Clinton Tolley, “Hegel and Kant,” 132. James Kreines names Paul Guyer, Klaus Düsing, and Ludwig Siep. See, Kreines, Reason in the World: Hegel’s Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2015.), 20, n.29. To these lists, I would also add Stephen Houlgate, Robert Stern, Kenneth Westphal, and Christopher Yeomans. See the bibliography for their works.

17 his metaphysics; it is even the gateway to his metaphysics. Understanding Hegel’s approach to logic is thus a the prerequisite to accessing his metaphysics. And, both together are needed to properly interpret his philosophy as he intended, as an ontological argument.

CHAPTER I

DETECTING A FORMAL ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT IN HEGEL’S WORKS

It does no good to put on airs against the Ontological Proof, as it is called, and against Anselm thus defining the Perfect. The argument is one latent in every unsophisticated mind, and it recurs in every philosophy, even against its wish and without its knowledge— . . .47

This notion of philosophy is the self-thinking Idea, the truth aware of itself . . . the logical system, but with the signification that it is universality approved and certified in concrete content as in its actuality.48

The Idea, as unity of the Subjective and Objective Idea, . . . embraces all characteristics in its unity. This unity is consequently the absolute and all truth, the Idea which thinks itself . . .49

In his Republic, Plato introduces the analogy between the Sun and the form of the Good. Just as the Sun illuminates the world and allows us to see physical objects, so too does the form of the

Good “illuminate” the space of reason.50 Given that Plato uses forms to organize the chaos of objects in the world and render them intelligible, it seems best to interpret his sunlight analogy in the same way. As the forms are the unifying principles that make sense of the world of physical objects, the Good is the unifying principle that makes sense of the many forms. There are fewer forms than physical objects, and there is only a single form at the top. This hierarchy of unifying

47 EL, 259, §193. GW, Band 20, 203: “Alles Vornehmthun gegen den sogenannten ontologischen Beweis und gegen diese Anselmische Bestimmung des Vollkommenen hilft nichts, da sie in jedem unbefangenen Menschensinne eben so sehr liegt, als in jeder Philosophie selbst wider Wissen und Willen, . . .” 48 EM, 313, §574. Hegel Werke, Band 10, 392 (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970): “Dieser Begriff der Philosophie ist die sich denkende Idee, die wissende Wahrheit . . . das Logische mit der Bedeutung, daß es die im konkreten Inhalte als in seiner Wirklichkeit bewährte Allgemeinheit ist.” 49 EL, 292, §236. GW, Band 20, 228: “Die Idee als Einheit der subjectiven und der objectiven Idee . . . in welches alle Bestimmungen zusammengegangen sind. Diese Einheit ist hiemit die absolute und alle Wahrheit, die sich selbst denkende Idee., . . .” 50 Plato, Republic, VI, 508e-509b, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. and trans. John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis: Hackett), 1129.

18 19 principles terminates with a single entity and for this reason Plato’s system is a monism; this is

Plato’s Absolute.51

Plato was attempting to solve the problems of unity and differentiation, the One and the

Many, a problem that he inherited from Parmenides. A differentiable monism has great explanatory power, a fact that also explains this strategy’s longevity, but it has also been under constant attack because it always seems to presuppose its access to the One before venturing off to find it. Even if such a principle is available, it is useless to us if we presuppose access to it. Just because we see order in our world does not mean that it must be explained in terms of superior categories leading up to a unifying One.

These are ancient topics and problems, but they sound familiar in the context of German

Idealism because they were resurfacing in Hegel’s day. Due to the pantheism controversy (1785-

1789) in which Spinoza’s views were gaining fresh exposure, monism was being considered as a general strategy for tackling Kant’s critical philosophy. German Idealists were in agreement that monism was the answer to Kant’s challenge,52 but were struggling to find a way to complete the project. This problem and its difficulties were not new, and neither were the common shortcuts.

Most of these idealists were pursuing their versions of the One by means of intellectual intuitionism.

They were doing this because Kant seemed to have blocked metaphysics through deduction once and for all. This had been Plato’s presupposition, and his shortcut. He imagined that he could simply intuit or “see” the forms by the “light” of the Good, and now the German Idealists were treading the same ground 2000 years later. Intelligibility was being used to infer access to the One, and, in turn, the One was seen as a guarantor of knowledge. This house of cards was destined to fall.

Nonetheless, this means that Hegel and his peers were part of an older conversation, and this allows me to use the themes and terms of the ancient debate in my own descriptions. I will do

51 W. T. Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel: A Systematic Exposition (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1955), 79. 52 Franks, 32-33.

20 so here as an introduction to my interpretation of Hegel’s system in terms that are, perhaps, more accessible. In a few more paragraphs, however, I will return to the terminology and themes that are normal to Hegel scholarship (or as normal as I can muster given the unusual nature of my thesis), but I think that running the circuit in the ancient dialect will help clear up some possible misconceptions early.

Hegel seems to have understood the link with ancient forms of philosophy better than anyone else in his day. He saw the more recent conflicts among Empiricists, Rationalists, Kantians, and Intuitionists, as part of a much older dialog and he did his due diligence to familiarize himself with the original texts. Hegel was circumspect. He looked all the way back to the beginning of the conversation, investigated the many steps taken along the way, and it was this exposure that allowed him to detect a pattern. And, in this pattern he found a new solution.

Hegel detected this pattern in the attitudes that philosophers and logicians held regarding the

One. He tells us that there are three attitudes about the possibility of connecting deductively to the

One. In a very original twist, Hegel notices that these three attitudes form a syllogism themselves.

This syllogism is an ontological argument. It is, in fact, an argument for the One.

This is not a transcendent One, however, because, in another mind-bending twist, Hegel concludes that this argument for the One also is the One. It is a self-proof. This then becomes the basis for Hegel’s logical metaphysics, a system held entirely within this unifying syllogism.

This is how Hegel reached his conclusion. In his research, Hegel examined all past attempts at monism in addition to the skeptics that opposed them. He categorized these into two groups, the positive system builders and the negative skeptics. Hegel detected problems with both approaches.

The positive side was presupposing its axioms and the forms of its deductions despite the fact that presupposition produces a disunity that stands in contradiction to the unity of the conclusion. They were using the resources of the One in a way that contradicted the character of the

One. That was the source of this side’s dogmatic character. It is the classic problem of pre-critical metaphysics: a deduction of the One requires a strength that presuppositions cannot support.

Yet, things were no better on the skeptical side. Despite noticing the flaws of the positive side, the negative side was making a strikingly similar mistake. They were using the resources of unity to doubt unity. This is the classic problem of skepticism: it asserts with confidence that knowledge is either impossible, or at least dubitable.

These mistakes came from attitudes and presuppositions that were added to the practice of philosophical reasoning. The first group’s attitude was confident presupposition; the second group’s attitude was confident doubt. Both lacked the resources to justify their confidence. Yet, to everyone but Hegel, there appeared to be no other option. Even the Intuitionists, who were pursuing the first strategy under another name, were unable to find a new approach.

Hegel was the first to see a third alternative. He believed that there was a way to achieve the exalted goal of the first attitude while overcoming the weighty critique of the second. Hegel does this by seeing a third option, a completely new attitude about access to the One: necessary unity.

This new option is different from the first attitude, which presupposes its access to the principle of unity. Presupposition introduces a disunity because it disconnects the reasoning of the first attitude from its ground. It concludes with unity, but it cannot guarantee its conclusions.

Hegel’s approach is similar in goal—he wants to reach the principle of unity—but Hegel intends to deduce this conclusion without presupposition.

Hegel’s new attitude is also different from the second attitude, which doubts that access to the One is possible. Doubt introduces a disunity as well because it disconnects the reasoning of the second attitude from its ground. It concludes with doubt, with rigorous reasoning, but it cannot establish the ground for its rigor. Hegel’s attitude sees the need for grounding and the flaw of presupposition, like the second attitude and unlike the first, but it does not surrender to skepticism.

Hegel changes the historical debate itself into a solution by transforming the warring factions into the first two premises of a syllogism that compares presuppositions about unity. There are only three possible options, which, when taken together, form a three-way disjunct: (1) either we can presuppose access to the One via abstraction, or (2) we cannot presuppose access to the One via abstraction, or (3) we can deduce access to the One with necessity and without abstraction.53

The three together form a syllogism when the appropriate negations are applied to the first two premises. The finished syllogism then becomes:

A. We cannot presuppose access to the One via the presupposition of abstraction (because the presupposition of abstraction is a separation that contradicts the unity that is being reached in the conclusion), ~(1);

B. And, we cannot even doubt access to the One because this too is done via the presupposition of abstraction, ~(2);

C. So there is only one option left: we can deduce access to the One without presupposition, and this very sentence is that deduction because it is a self- sufficient disjunctive syllogism (3).

Either 1 or 2 or 3; not 1 and 2; therefore 3. Premise 3 is also the whole because the whole is the deduction that 3 references.

The premises can be related back to the mereological themes that were described in the

Introduction. There, the One was differentiated into two parts. The third premise is the whole, the

One, and the first and second premises are defined by what part of the whole they lack. Hegel divides his account of the whole (the Encyclopedia) into three parts: Logic; Nature; and Mind. These represent abstraction, contingency, and unity, respectively. Premise 1 above (prior to its negation) is the Logic; it is the part of the whole considered apart from its object, which is the thesis of abstraction. And, premise 2 is Nature (prior to its negation); it is the part of the whole considered apart from the necessity of its concept, which is the thesis of contingency and the hallmark of the natural world. The whole is the third premise; it is never negated, but it is differentiated by means of

53 By “access” I mean a deductive link or connection. Such a link would be a necessary conceptual connection.

23 a deductive structure that contains negations through double negation.

Hegel uses this syllogism to ground all other concepts deductively by nesting other syllogisms within this syllogism. It becomes the head of a hierarchy of deductions. Each of the three premises of the above syllogism are further differentiated into disjunctive syllogisms of their own, and then those are divided in the same way, without end. This leads to an infinitely dense and nested structure of concepts that eventually includes all concepts whatsoever. So, the syllogism is not just its own ground, it is the ground for all its contents. It is a circular system of syllogisms that includes all concepts without exception. The end result is a syllogism that acts as the single unifying principle for all other concepts, the utter unity and infinite differentiation of the One.

Hegel thinks this overcomes the limitations placed upon metaphysicians by the Critical

Philosophy. Kant’s prohibition against doing naive metaphysics, and of using a syllogism to do it, is dealt with in three ways. First, Kant’s critique negates itself as the second premise of Hegel’s argument; efforts to doubt unity must use the resources of unity, a contradiction between meaning and status for such a proposition. Second, the proof acts as its own ground, so it does not presuppose, a basis for the accusation of dogmatism. Third, the proof is dense with concepts, and these concepts are interconnected by means of deductive syllogisms; this allows us to know by the epistemological transparency of the structure of the syllogism that no external concept is excluded from the whole, so dualism is no longer a danger— even the possibility of a transcendent or noumenal God, thinks Hegel, is ruled out by this deduction. This is the other basis for the accusation of dogmatism, disconnectedness (which are also known as abstraction and finitude).

Therefore, the proof avoids presupposition and finitude. But, these are the flaws that plagued the practice of deductive logic and made it dogmatic.

So, there is no longer any reason to think that deduction is off limits in metaphysics (just so long as we do it this way). Hegel’s solution is being put forward by him as a presuppositionless self-

24 proof that rules out all external possibilities, that includes all things absolutely, and that negates

Kant’s thesis internally. This is very important because external reference of any kind, even the mere possibility of anything external, reproduces the noumenon, a dualism that destroys monism. By being utterly internal and self-sufficient, therefore, this proof is meant to escape the threat of the

Critical Philosophy.

What about objects in the real world? As I hinted earlier, Hegel is not simply giving us a deductive structure that mirrors the natural world. As even the analogy of reflection indicates, the image is not really there. If it were, this would be a dualism, and doubts about the similarity between image and object could never be eliminated. Hegel deals with this approach in his second premise.

Additionally, the conceptual world is utterly and exhaustively complete. The world of physical objects is then redundant. Redundancies are dualisms.

Hegel is thus giving us a conceptual structure that includes the natural world. In fact, it includes all possible worlds within itself because it includes all possible combinations of all possible concepts. All possibilities become necessities in this monism.

Perhaps this last issue has taken us out of the platonic context, with its more familiar terms and topics, and placed us into the territory of Leibniz’s possible worlds. Or, perhaps it has taken us further still, into the semantics of possible-worlds and contemporary modal logic. I will not be able to avoid such things as I labor to flesh out the details of Hegel’s ontological argument. Thus, as I leave the clearer waters of those ancient discussions behind, I must now enter relatively muddier waters.

In this chapter I will tackle the following four tasks. I will begin first by determining the best way to search for relevant texts on Hegel’s ontological argument. I will then address and remove the obstacles that have blocked and hidden the argument. I will, thirdly, connect the argument with

Hegel’s Absolute Identity Thesis. And, finally, I will explore a large number of the most relevant

25 texts to uncover the argument’s features and educe its deductive form.

Regarding that first task, even though Hegel’s ontological argument is very important to him, it is unexpectedly difficult to find a terse and clear expression of his argument within his writings and published lectures. It is not that the argument is never mentioned; Hegel mentions the argument in many ways throughout his works.54 And, it is not that the argument is mentioned with too much subtlety; a great many of the texts that deal with the argument do so by direct reference. The problem is that interpreting Hegel’s comments about this one argument is just as difficult as interpreting his entire philosophy. The reason for this, in my opinion, is that the two issues are intimately linked together. A position taken with regard to Hegel’s overall philosophy will far more often than not, drive one to a matching position with regard to Hegel’s ontological argument.

This argument, it should be remembered, arises within a medieval Christian context. It makes sense, as a result of this, that scholars tend to tie the argument to its original context whenever and however it appears.55 So, interpreters see ontological arguments as efforts to prove the existence of God, and therefore as attempts to verify monotheistic religions, or minimally, some form of transcendent monism.56 Thus, it might be expected that, if Hegel is a metaphysical or

“spirit” monist57 of some sort, then he would have seen value in historic ontological arguments,

54 The EL, for example, directly references the Ontological Argument in one fifth of its sections. 55 For example, see Peter C. Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Theology: A reading of the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2005), 123. 56 Because the unifying principle is a deduction, it follows that Hegel’s monism is conceptual. This is what distinguishes Hegel's system from other, similar monisms. Spinoza’s and Pseudo-Dionysius’s versions, for example, are not idealistic and this has significant epistemological consequences. As an idealism, Hegel’s monistic system views the whole of “God” as cognizable. This differentiates him from Spinoza and Pseudo-Dionysius, both of whom conceive of God as a unifying substance underlying all things, but also as an unknowable non-conceptual entity. This epistemic darkness becomes a mode of unbreachable transcendence or dualism for these other monisms, epistemologically speaking, the fact that they are sometimes seen as pantheisms notwithstanding. Hegel has much in common with Spinoza, but on this point they part ways. Spinoza’s is a neutral monism, meaning that his version of the one unifying substance is neither mental nor physical, whereas Hegel’s monism is idealistic. Thus, Hegel's philosophy offers access to the one substance that the other monisms block. 57 This spirit monism is another way of referring to a kind of pantheism. “Pantheism” is an ambiguous term, however. The relevant idea in this context is that a spirit monist thinks there is a master entity, usually self-aware to some degree, that is constituted by all other existing entities. On this line of thought, some have interpreted Hegel as a kind of Christian apologist, e.g., Stephen Crites, “The Gospel According to Hegel,” Journal of Religion 46 (1966): 246-263; and Emil Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension in Hegel’s Thought (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1967). The Post-Kantian

26 possibly prepared his own version, and possibly made some use of it in his own philosophy.

Conversely, if Hegel rejected metaphysics outright, if he respected and worked to verify Immanuel

Kant’s limitations on metaphysics, then he would not have seen as much value in this argument and would have probably only criticized it, thinking of it only as a historical curiosity. These are the associations to expect in Hegel scholarship, and for the most part, these expectations are met.

Hegel scholars today are in disagreement about whether and how Hegel pursued metaphysics. And, among those who think that he did, there is disagreement about what metaphysics might mean in the Hegelian context. It appears that Hegel redefines the parts and the whole of metaphysics in such a way that it is difficult to relate him to this category without qualification. It is therefore unwise to stick doggedly to this distinction between metaphysics and non-metaphysics. However, for the purposes of establishing some initial categories to divide the field, I note a tendency for scholars to take sides between a qualified and multifaceted metaphysical interpretation and a fairly straightforward non-metaphysical interpretation,58 and these tend to make complementary decisions about Hegel’s ontological argument, when the argument is mentioned at all. It is strange that some scholars do not even see a Hegelian ontological argument while others see some aspects of it throughout his works, for example, Paul Redding and Peter C. Hodgson.59 Those who take a metaphysical perspective on Hegel tend to elevate his ontological argument when it is directly addressed, e.g., Hodgson; and those who take a non-metaphysical or post-Kantian

interpretations of Hegel rejected this understanding. See, Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism, 4-5, 10, 92, 99, 194, 199. Other Post- Kantians include: Terry Pinkard; Robert Brandom; and John McDowell. See the bibliography for their relevant works. Additionally, the newer Revised-Metaphysical interpretation also rejects this interpretation. 58 I accept the deconstruction of this dichotomy offered by Allegra de Laurentiis and the thirteen Hegel scholars she represents as editor of Hegel and Metaphysics: On Logic and Ontology in the System (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 3. Given the degree to which Hegel redefines and nuances metaphysics and ontology, it is difficult to pin him down. Nonetheless, the point being made here is not useless because these two general options do tend to serve as functional groupings of scholars. That is, scholars tend to align together in these two camps even while debating the legitimacy of the labels being used. These two groupings also tend to reflect the specific tendency being referred to here on Hegel’s OA. 59 See, Redding, Analytic Philosophy; Redding and Bubbio; and Peter C. Hodgson, “Hegel’s Proofs of the Existence of God.” In A Companion to Hegel, edited by Stephen Houlgate and Michael Bauer, 414-429. Balden: Wiley- Blackwell, 2011; and Hegel and Christian Theology, 121-123.

27 perspective on the argument, if they mention it at all, tend to disregard the argument as merely a historical investigation and to deny that Hegel has his own argument at all, e. g., Calton, Harrelson.60

Another prominent example of the latter tendency can be seen in one insightful interpreter, Paul

Franks, who understands Hegel’s effort, along with almost every other German Idealist after Kant, as an attempt to achieve the completion of a project left by Spinoza, an obsessive effort to ground philosophy in the system, making holism the sine qua non of philosophy.61 However, Franks does not recognize the role of the Ontological Argument in this context.62

Despite the expectations and the natural affinity between these sets of interpretations, alternative associations have been made. At least one Hegel scholar on the revised metaphysical side,

James Kreines, has begun to see a way to reconcile the two interpretations.63 And, perhaps more surprisingly, there are two who interpret Hegel as post-Kantian/non-metaphysician and who also see great value in his ontological argument, Paul Redding and Paolo Diego Bubbio. On the present topic, these last two scholars have even begun to notice that the Ontological Argument should affect how we interpret Hegel’s philosophy.64 Specifically, they think that Hegel’s ontological argumentation can be understood in parallel with Kantian and Fichtean reasoning, which they describe as a non-representationalist version that fits better with Hegel’s rejection of the Moderns’ representationalist metaphysics. This, they argue, uses Kant’s tools against his own refutation of the

60 See, Calton, 39, n. 3; and Harrelson, 209, 221. 61 Franks, 1, 3. 62 Franks, 13. Even though Franks quotes Hegel from a letter in, Wie der gemeine Menschenverstand die Philosophie nehme—dargestellt an der Werken des Herrn Krug (1802), (2:195), where Hegel writes: “. . . the task that touches the interest of philosophy most nearly at the present moment: to put God back again at the peak of philosophy . . . as the one and only ground of everything, . . .” a statement that relates the obsession to achieve the systematic whole to the search for God, the connection is not made by Franks. 63 Kreines, “Metaphysics without Pre-Critical Monism: Hegel on Lower-Level Natural Kinds and the Structure of Reality,” Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 57/58 (2008): 50-52. See also his, Reason in the World, 260. In this latter work, Kreines explicitly rejects the idea that Hegel has “anything that would ordinarily be called an ontological argument.” I cite him here only to indicate that some interpreters are not only open to the idea that Hegel was pursuing metaphysics, but that the non-metaphysical interpretation may not be entirely incorrect or incompatible. 64 Redding and Bubbio, 483.

Ontological Argument and assists Hegel in making his ontological “argument” clearer.65 Yet, they do not think that Hegel’s “syllogism” could be understood legitimately as “a formal articulation,” preferring instead to think of Hegel’s “concrete” syllogism in terms of his notion of recognition, as an exploration of purely human acts of judging and communicating effectively.66 Redding and

Bubbio have thus started down a fruitful and promising path. Unfortunately, they overlook Hegel’s actual use of deductive reasoning.

So, it is unusual, but not unheard of, to see the connection between Hegel’s philosophy and his ontological argument. And in addition, due to the great frequency with which Hegel mentions the argument, it is not easily dismissed. However intimately it may seem to be linked to

Scholasticism, and however unpopular its origins and form had become by his day, Hegel saw much value in the argument, and this is hard to dismiss. In fact, rather than being repelled by the argument as his peers had been, Hegel seems to have embraced it.67 He praised aspects of various forms of the argument, defended it against Kant’s well-known criticism, and found it relevant in multiple contexts throughout his two Logics with loud echoes of it appearing in the remaining two volumes of his

Encyclopedia. He also linked the argument’s methods and goals to his own project as the only way to escape Agrippa’s Trilemma, as the consummation of philosophy, and as the means of achieving the unity of the whole system.68 Despite the argument’s apparent importance to Hegel and prevalence in his writings, especially in the context of systematicity, very few interpreters have discovered its true role in Hegel’s philosophy; it is either left disconnected from his philosophy, or it is ruled irrelevant.

The reasons for this oversight are many and so the next step in the present analysis is to categorize

65 Ibid., 465-466, 483. 66 Ibid, 481. See also, Paul Redding, Hegel’s Hermeneutics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 156-158. 67 I see this as Hegel’s means of meeting the demand that Paul Franks recognizes in the German Idealists of this time period. That is, the belief that was accepted widely by these philosophers made the achievement of systematicity paramount to grounding any knowledge whatsoever. See Franks, 3-4. 68 Franks, 3-4, 9, 192-193. The German Idealists looked to Spinoza for the means to solve the Agrippan Trilemma, the belief that grounding involves three equally undesirable options: arbitrary assumption of starting place; infinite regress; and circularity. Franks points this out, but does not see this as the goal of Hegel’s ontological argument.

29 and begin to explain these reasons.

The first is that, to contemporary eyes, formal arguments are easy to overlook when they are not presented in the expected way. So, some thought must be given to the way that formal arguments in discourse are to be recognized. The second issue is that the text that is typically seen as the primary text on Hegel’s interpretation of the Ontological Argument, the Lectures on the Proofs of the

Existence of God (VBDG), is commonly read exclusively as a critique of the views of other, historical forms of the argument and not as containing Hegel’s own argument. The third issue is a potential red herring, a misleading and false distinction between Hegel’s ontological argument and what has been called his “absolute identity thesis,”69 which is Hegel’s argument for the identity (or unity) of concept and object. This mistaken distinction hides the primary texts on Hegel’s ontological argument from view. And finally, the fourth issue is the common assumption that Hegel rejected formal logic and so would never have produced a formal argument himself, and that even if he had used formal logic as an accommodation, a formal argument could not possibly occupy a central place in his philosophy.

The first three of these difficulties will be covered here in Chapter I. After these are given some discussion, the chapter will then begin the search for relevant texts and begin the work of educing Hegel’s ontological argument from them. The fourth difficulty will be the topic of my second chapter.

A. Searching for Signs of Hegel’s Ontological Argument

There are at least three reasons why Hegel’s ontological argument has gone unnoticed. First,

69 Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism, 79-87. Pippin understands Hegel to very consistently pursue the goal of unifying thought and object throughout his career and relates this project to Kant and Fichte. I note here also that Hegel shared this strategy of unification with Schelling. Pippin refers to this as the “identity theory,” Michael Forster calls it the “absolute identity thesis”; I will adopt the latter terminology. See, Forster, Hegel and Skepticism, 117. Note also, Forster characterizes this absolute identity thesis via multiple additional term-pairs: “rational concept and object,” “thought and being,” “subject and object”; he says that these are all “More or less equivalent in Hegel’s eyes . . .” I adopt the same practice, but will go on to develop some distinctions between different kinds of pairs.

Hegel does not employ any of the formalisms that prompt contemporary readers to expect deductions. Second, the primary text for Hegel’s ontological argument is extremely subtle. And third, Hegel often presents his ontological in an unexpected context and by other names, specifically, this is the context and terminology associated with Hegel’s Absolute Identity Thesis. I will now discuss each of these in turn.

1. Detecting Formal Significance of Arguments in Discourse

Hegel provides no formalized, line-by-line proofs of his ontological argument; formalisms are completely absent. This has helped to hide the argument from view even though such an expectation amounts to an anachronism.

Formal arguments70 need not be formal-ized in order to be formal, but when an argument is not formalized, contemporary eyes tend to overlook its formal (deductive) characteristics. This may seem obvious enough to go without saying, but such oversights may be easier to commit than expected, so a brief discussion is warranted to ensure that this oversight does not occur with Hegel.

Thus, I hope to say without controversy, a formal argument can take various presentational formats, but some of those formats are easy to overlook. Generally, there are two options with regard to presentation: an argument can appear within a dialog using ordinary language (or language that appears ordinary despite being a logical meta-language); or contents can be removed and replaced with variables so that only the form remains in place. Yet, whether expressed in ordinary language with particular contents or expressed with unusual formatting conventions and variables, it remains the same form of argument. And, if it is the same argument, then that argument is formal regardless of the mode of presentation. Ordinary-language formats, however, can seem almost conversational.

70 I will use “formal” as a reference to deductive syllogistic forms of argument to the exclusion of induction, abduction, etc. Any and all deductions already invoke a basic formal system, syllogistics simpliciter. For this reason they are “formal” and this term refers to their logical features and not to their presentational features.

In such cases, an argument’s formal robustness is easy to miss. It nevertheless remains a deductive argument regardless of the format that is used to express it.

To reflect this distinction, I will adopt the following terminological habits: a formal argument, as in “formal logic,” is one that uses deductive syllogistic reasoning regardless of the more superficial aspects of its expression, and a formalism is any one of the conventional ways of expressing a deduction so that its logical characteristics are more easily seen.71

The point at hand is that some formal arguments can be difficult to recognize when they are not formalized. If a reader has reasons to think that the author of an argument rejects deductive logic, then this can compound the obscurity of an argument’s form. Yet, if anyone were to make a claim that a formal argument (a deductive syllogism) is present, it should be easy enough to produce evidence that such an argument lies implicit within a text. It need only be indicated as I have done preliminarily in the Introduction above.

The conventions involved with formalisms are also subject to the changing preferences of logicians. Moreover, the conventions that we are currently accustomed to seeing, must be absent from Hegel’s arguments because they were invented after him. While contemporary formalisms would be helpful to us, they would be anachronistic in Hegel. So, Hegel cannot be expected to deliver a contemporary formalism. However—and let the lack of contemporary formalisms mask this possibility—it would not be anachronistic for Hegel to understand and work within a very advanced syllogistic system. I have found that Hegel is very advanced in his understanding and use of formal deduction, even advanced modal syllogistics. This latter point has been recognized before,72 but it has never been connected to Hegel’s ontological argument or to the Absolute

71 Two more helpful points: First, the formal-formalism distinction is similar to the proposition-sentence distinction. Second, not all arguments are formally deductive. So, not all arguments are formal. Nevertheless, an inductive argument can be formalized. This adds an additional reason to distinguish formal from formalism. 72 Martin Kusch and Juha Manninen, “Hegel on Modalities and Monadology,” in Modern Modalities: Studies of the History of Modal Theories from Medieval Nominalism to Logical Positivism, ed. S. Knuuttila, 109-177 (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), 109-111.

Identity Thesis, which is, of course, one of the major themes of this present work. Both points,

Hegel’s advanced understanding of formal syllogistics and also his extensive use of them in his philosophy, are likely to be unexpected because few in Hegel scholarship believe that these things are possible. If one thinks of history according to the Whig Interpretation, expecting to see continuous and unabated progress at every turn, then this encourages a prejudice against the possibility of advancements that come earlier than expected. If advanced syllogistics are present in

Hegel, then one must both learn to see these formal elements beneath their modes of presentation and be capable of believing that they could possibly arise earlier than expected.

2. The Primary Text Is Very Subtle

The second reason that Hegel’s ontological argument has been difficult to identify is that his most concise and direct text on the subject (VBDG) does not present his own argument in a straightforward manner, but instead this text exemplifies, or “acts out,” Hegel’s argument. On the surface, therefore, this text seems only to discuss past versions of the ontological argument, but as might be expected from Hegel, there is more going on in this text than first appearances indicate.

In the VBDG, Hegel begins with Anselm and then proceeds to vet the arguments of

Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz; he then ends with a criticism of Kant’s famous counter-argument.

After this, however, and most unexpectedly, there is no obvious and distinct presentation of his own argument as such.

Nevertheless, the VBDG does contain a full presentation of Hegel’s own version of the argument. Even though, on this reading, his argument is disguised as mixed criticism and praise of the arguments of others, it only requires a few well-placed emphases to bring formal features of a unique argument to the surface. Details will be pursued later on, but here the point is that this has

33 been a reason why many have claimed that Hegel does not offer his own version of the argument.73

Although the characteristics of a formal argument are detectable within the VBDG, clues are ambiguous enough to require the context provided by other texts, and by an understanding of

Hegel’s system overall—recall that Hegel had already published his Encyclopedia by the time he gave these lectures. The difficulty therefore lies in learning to recognize the formal features of this specific kind of argument so that it can be seen even where it is not announced explicitly. In what follows, I will continue to enhance the capacity for recognition in advance of my textual exegesis.

3. The Absolute Identity Thesis Can Act as a Red Herring

The third and perhaps the most significant factor that leads to the misidentification of

Hegel’s ontological argument is the decision made by interpreters to distinguish it from ‘another’ well-known Hegelian argument. This distinction acts as a red herring that has camouflaged Hegel’s ontological argument. Sometimes called the Absolute Identity Thesis,74 this other argument expresses and is meant to achieve the main goal of Hegel’s philosophical project overall. Yet, if the two are the same argument in different contexts with merely superficial differences, then the features of one can be useful in clarifying the other. But, if the two are viewed as separate and unrelated, this interpretational decision has the potential to obscure them both. It is therefore important to examine Hegel’s own descriptions of his methods and goals because it is there that he makes the connection himself and appropriates the Ontological Argument. I will not pursue a complete analysis of this contention here, but it should be introduced at this time in order to prepare for the upcoming exegesis of texts on the Ontological Argument and to justify the exploration of texts that

73 Redding and Bubbio, 465. While denying it themselves, these authors notice this same propensity among Hegel scholars, citing a few names specifically, Graham Oppy and Kevin Harrelson. See, Graham Oppy, Ontological Arguments and Belief in God (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 74 This is the argument, mentioned earlier, that identifies thought and being. Alternatively, it is the unification of subject and object, or subjectivity and objectivity, etc. Michael Forster says that many such pairings are “More or less equivalent in Hegel’s eyes . . .” See, Forster, Hegel and Skepticism, 117.

34 deal with the Identity Thesis as if they were about the Ontological Argument.

Hegel reveals the deep connection between these arguments himself in the early sections of his Encyclopedia Logic, §§49-51. There, Hegel explains the connection between the Ontological

Argument and what he sees as the main goal of philosophy. He does this by calling the search for

God the “Ideal of Reason,”75 a rational process that unifies “abstract identity” and “Being.”76 This rational unity is the culmination of the search for God and the ideal of reason; this is Hegel’s absolute identity thesis, and Hegel next tells us that the best way to pursue this ideal of reason is the method of the “Ontological Proof.”77 The connection between these arguments is therefore early and fundamental. Nonetheless, one might still struggle to see them as the same because they appear to differ so much in their goals. That is, Hegel’s conclusion and Anselm’s appear to diverge.

Clearly, Hegel has altered the Ontological Argument to suit his own purposes. This does not mean, however, that Hegel’s ontological argument is not genuine or that it has become something altogether different. There is a legitimate parallel between traditional arguments and Hegel’s appropriated version. Instead of altering the traditional proof into something unrecognizable, Hegel has generalized the argument for a wider range of applications. Hegel is therefore recognizing that the traditional proof employs a peculiar method that allows for the unification of concepts with their objects generally. Just as in the traditional proof, the concept (of God) is unified with its object (the being of God), in Hegel’s version, concepts will also be unified with their objects by means of a deduction. Thus, concepts other than the concept of God will be unified with their objects via

Hegel’s ontological proof. In this way, Hegel aims to overcome the so-called scandal of philosophy and ground knowledge, generally.

If Hegel has gotten rid of the original conclusion and application of the Ontological

75 EL, 79-80, §49. GW, Band 20, 86: “das Ideal der Vernunft.” 76 EL, 80, §49. GW, Band 20, 86: “Abstracte Identität” and “Seyn” respectively. 77 EL, 84, §51. GW, Band 20, 90: “ontologischer Beweis vom Daseyn gottes.”

Argument with this generalization of its method, then we might wonder what has been retained. I have just mentioned that the unifying function is retained despite being widened in application.

Hegel also retains the means to this unity. That means is a deductive syllogism. Hegel tells us that the method of the Ontological Proof is the only way to achieve the Ideal of Reason (unity), and he will never jettison or alter this aspect of the method that he is adopting. Hegel’s repair and use of deductive reasoning will be the subject of Chapter II, but for now I should mention that Hegel retains the method of the Ontological Argument primarily because of its logical capabilities. As I will show, this deductive form is his most useful tool and he uses it at every point in his system.

Hegel shares with the old proof both its means (deduction) and a version of its goal (unity).

And, because this goal is also the goal of the Absolute Identity Thesis, which is synonymous with

Hegel’s entire philosophy, and because Hegel has announced that the epitome of philosophy is the achievement of this goal through the method of the Ontological Argument, it should seem quite plausible that Hegel’s entire philosophy is an ontological argument. Despite appearances and much scholarship to the contrary, and based solely on Hegel’s description of the fundamentals of his approach, it should start to look as if Hegel is about to attempt to achieve his goal through systematic application of deduction. This would be a natural expectation given Hegel’s descriptions of the beginnings of his own philosophy.

B. Educing the Latent Argument

Having now addressed the preliminary and background issues needed in order to identify and interpret relevant texts, and having provided a scent of the prey, the presentation and analysis of texts that contain the argument now begins. This will take up the remainder of the chapter.

To proceed, five categories of texts will be defined. Following this, several representative texts within each category will be presented and discussed in depth. As a conclusion to each text’s

36 analysis, where relevant, latent arguments or premises or any characteristic that sheds light on

Hegel’s ontological argument will be reconstructed with a formalism. At the conclusion of the chapter, all of these discoveries pertaining to a formal ontological argument will be assembled into a single, formal argument. Specific key aspects of this result (its formality, its disjunctivity, and its modality) will then be addressed at greater length in the following three chapters respectively.

1. Categories of Texts

Selections from Hegel’s works and lectures that address some aspect of the Ontological

Argument can be divided profitably into four categories (plus an introductory category):

A. Introductory texts dealing with the argument’s context, definitions, and methodology.

1. Direct texts that use a clear and specific term that identifies the Ontological Argument or God explicitly.

2. Indirect texts that make a less specific reference to the Ontological Argument or are relevant to that argument without it or God being explicitly mentioned by name, most often by reference to the Absolute Identity Thesis.

3. Other relevant texts that cover a topic relevant to the Ontological Argument and that adds some meaningful information about Hegel’s version (its formality, its import, or its unifying, circular, reconciling, or mediating function).

4. Texts that pertain to the argument’s modality.

Not every relevant text can be presented and analyzed individually; there are far too many. In what follows, I have selected the best representative passages within each of the five categories above. The main source of these selections will be the three volumes of the Encyclopedia (with special attention paid to the Logic), and the Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God (VBDG). Due mostly to the very large number of texts, but also due to the way that, on some interpretations, including my own, all of Hegel’s writings have something to do with the Ontological Argument, an exhaustive review of all relevant texts will not be attempted. The selected passages will be fairly large in number,

37 however, and should be sufficient to show that they are representative of what remains.

Despite this need to focus on the best texts, it is also helpful to be generally aware of the ubiquity of these issues. In other words, I have suffered from an embarrassment of riches because

Hegel makes these same points repeatedly, voluminously, and he seems to be making few other points besides these. Without this information, it might seem plausible to think that these issues remain minor for Hegel. It is thus important to my case to show that the Ontological Argument is

Hegel’s primary means to his goal, and although only a few key texts will be addressed below, I must give at least some indication by means of quantification that these issues constitute the bulk of

Hegel’s writings, and that this fact is meaningful in itself.

The Ontological Argument is the overwhelmingly prevalent topic of Hegel’s philosophy.

The Encyclopedia Logic contains 244 sections. Of these, roughly one fifth are concerned with the

Ontological Argument explicitly (category 1). More than one half provide discussion of the Absolute

Identity Thesis in a way that is related to the Ontological Argument’s form, method, or goal

(category 2). More than one half involve a discussion of syllogisms, systems, worlds, spheres, or UPI relations, etc., that is relevant to the Ontological Argument (category 3). And finally, more than two thirds (!) of sections contain a recognizable reference to a modal characteristic that is consistent with and thus pertinent to the specific kind of disjunctive syllogism that Hegel spotlights (category 4).78

Of course, a large quantity of comments about an issue is not required for it to be of primary importance, but when the quantity is detected, especially overwhelming quantity, this becomes evidence in its own right. These issues are therefore the primary focus of the Encyclopedia Logic.

My primary source is the Encyclopedia Logic . I have not chosen the Science of Logic as my primary text for several reasons. In comparison, the Encyclopedia Logic, in its latest revision of 1830, is

78 Modality may seem to be the most obscure of my claims. It is therefore quite helpful to note here that it is the subtopic most often referenced by Hegel. The expectation is thus inversely proportional to the evidence.

38 mostly later.79 It is also more concise, better connected to the whole argument (the other two volumes), and better integrated into the preliminary historical analysis (which will turn out to be very consequential). Findlay has concurred, saying that the Science of Logic is superseded by the Encyclopedia

Logic, especially in the areas covering the judgments and the syllogisms.80 He also argues, and I agree, that the shorter and more concise work facilitates a “macroscopic” view of Hegel’s work, and that this view offers a better understanding of Hegel than the “microscopic” view,81 which is all too common and easily misleading. In addition to all of this, in the shorter Logic, I have found the comments that link Hegel to the Ontological Argument to be more frequent and telling. And finally, little that is relevant to my case is missing from the shorter and later work. Nonetheless, I will turn to the larger work as needed.

a) Category A: Context, Method, and Terminology

This category presents statements made by Hegel that report his goals and methods, that clarify important terms, and that establish new and unusual interpretations of fundamental categories such as existence.

Text A.1 - EL, §28z [Context 1: Definition of “Existence”]

Has God existence? The question supposes that existence is an altogether positive term, a sort of ne plus ultra [the greatest of a kind]. We shall see however at a later point that existence is by no means a merely positive term, but one which is too low for the Absolute Idea, and unworthy of God.82

This text is important at the start of this review because it qualifies the goal of the argument, existence. It reveals that the goal of previous forms of the Ontological Argument are not Hegel’s

79 Early parts of the Science of Logic were revised by Hegel in 1831, but this revision is only partial and does not reach to the section on syllogisms. 80 Findlay, J. N., “Foreword,” in Hegel’s Logic, trans. William Wallace (London: Oxford University Press, 1975.), vii. 81 Ibid. 82 EL, 49, §28z. “hat Gott Dasein?, und das Dasein wurde hierbei als ein rein Positives, als ein Letztes und Vortreffliches betrachtet. Wir werden aber später sehen, daß Dasein keineswegs ein bloß Positives ist, sondern eine Bestimmung, die zu niedrig für die Idee und Gottes nicht würdig ist.” Band 8 (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), 94.

39 goals. Instead of aiming to unite God’s definition with God’s existence or being, Hegel here disparages the category of existence, declaring it to be impoverished. For this reason, Hegel has higher appellations in mind for “God.” Of course, by this term, Hegel is invoking the absolute Idea.

Elsewhere in the Encyclopedia Logic, he states “. . . it is a right and proper requirement that God should be defined as absolute spirit.”83 In another place Hegel writes that “definitions of the

Absolute” are “metaphysical definitions of God.”84

There are therefore two important issues at play here in this passage: the meaning of “exist” and related terms; and the meaning of “God.” For now, I will focus on existence. This text introduces us to the fact that existence is not Hegel’s goal, not as it is commonly understood. It is not just a simple empirical or tangible fact to Hegel, but something that has to be developed into a much more robust understanding before it can have any use in philosophy. Hegel is not trying to arrive at so poor a conclusion as existence for God. With what, then, does Hegel replace existence?

Whatever this category is, it must be greater than existence. This takes us to the next text.

Text A.2 - EL, §33 [Context 2: Definition of “Ontology”]

The first part of this [dogmatic] metaphysic in its systematic form is Ontology, or the doctrine of the abstract characteristics of Being. The multitude of these characteristics, . . . are not founded upon any principle. . . . the intrinsic and independent truth and necessity of such characteristics is never made a matter of investigation at all.85

Hegel here is reviewing the methodology of the pre-critical metaphysics with attention paid mainly to its first principles. This passage is a good example of Hegel’s critique of pre-Kantian ways of thinking about existence. It is often assumed that Hegel means to reject this way of thinking

83 EL, 82, §50. GW, Band 20, 89: “... und es wird mit Recht gefordet, daß Gott als absoluter Geist bestimmt werden musse.” 84 EL, 123, §85. GW, Band 20, 121: “... als Definitionen des Absoluten, als die metaphysischen Definitionen Gottes angesehen werden; näher jedoch immer nur die erste einfache Bestimmung einer Sphäre, und dann die dritte, ...” 85 EL, 53, §33. GW, Band 20, 72-73: “Den ersten Theil dieser Metaphysik in ihrer geordneten Gestalt machte die Ontologie aus, – die Lehre von den abstracten Bestimmungen des Wesens. Für diese in ihrer Mannichfaltigkeit und endlichem Gelten mangelt es an einem Princip; .... Es kann dabei blos um die mit dem Sprachgebrauch über einstimmende Richtigkeit der Analyse und empirische Vollständigkeit, nicht um die Wahrheit und Nothwendigkeit solcher Bestimmungen an und für sich zu thun seyn.”

40 entirely. As I have signaled before, I think that this interpretation is mistaken. Traditional ontology is here belittled by Hegel for presupposing and not questioning the nature of its own understanding of concepts like “being, existence, finitude, simplicity, complexity, etc.”86 This second text confirms and adds some depth to what the first text indicated above. Here the message is that being and existence must not to be taken naively, at face value. Near this passage Hegel also criticizes members of this tradition for relying on experience and common use of language rather than thinking about what it might mean for God or anything else to exist.

Note the connotation of error in his use of the term “abstract” in the first sentence. Hegel does not always refer to abstraction in a pejorative manner,87 but here the intention is disparaging.

This double-sided approach is a common pattern for Hegel in passages that compare “the first and third category of every triad.”88 That is, the first is a naive attitude that presupposes its access to truth, and the third is a much more experienced attitude that has demonstrated its access to truth and earned its knowledge.89 Thus, even though the conclusions are the same, an alternate route is taken by

Hegel and this makes all the difference. It is for this reason that Hegel variously criticizes and praises this first attitude. There is a recognizable tendency in Hegel to disparage a past philosophy, and then to rebuild it according to an alternative perspective.

If misunderstood and taken in isolation, however, such strong criticisms can seem like good evidence of Hegel’s utter rejection of these past philosophies. This would be a mistake because

Hegel has no intention of doing away with ontology. He means instead to revise and deepen it. Yet, to see exactly how Hegel intends to pursue this revision, we must first see what it is that he is criticizing, and then notice how he remedies the errors that he finds.

86 EL, 53, §33. GW, Band 20, 73: “. . . Seyn, Daseyn, oder Endlichkeit, Einfachheit, Zusammensetzung u.s.f.” 87 E.g., in EL, 25, §19, Hegel calls abstraction “pure.” GW, Band 20, 61: “reinen.” 88 EL, 123, §85. GW, Band 20, 121: “. . . die erste einfache Bestimmung einer Sphäre, und dann die dritte, . . .” 89 Hegel divides history in to three stages marked by fundamental presuppositions about the relation between concept and its object. Hegel’s position is the third; Kant’s the second; and every one before Kant is takes the first.

One of Hegel’s common criticisms of the traditional attitude is indicated in the above passage. The characteristics of existence are never investigated by the traditional metaphysician.

They are taken at face value; this chair or this cup exist, so existence is no more complicated than presentations of objects in my experience. This amounts to a presupposition of access to the concept of existence, its meaning, and the connection between the concept and its objects. Despite thinking of the concept of existence as abstract and therefore disconnected, Hegel is arguing, these dogmatic metaphysicians attempt to use the concept to forge a connection to an objective reality.

Hegel is therefore seeing multiple errors: presupposition; abstraction; and disconnectedness. Earlier in the Encyclopedia Logic,90 and in the context of the names of God, Hegel talks about the old, dogmatic metaphysics’ tendency to keep concepts separated from one another. And, in the previous section, in this same context, he had likewise criticized assumptions and presuppositions.

Presupposition and disconnectedness (finitude) will later be revealed to be the two major internal flaws of this attitude, leading to flaws in the practice of logic and metaphysics.

All of this is linked to the traditional methodology for doing ontology, a methodology that could not avoid the consequences of its fatal flaws. This “Metaphysic of the Past”91 was, in effect, grasping the existence of God the same way that people experienced the existence of everyday objects. They were dualists who thought of God as an “object set over against the subject, and in this way finite—which is Dualism.”92 And, Hegel is clear that he is rejecting this kind of ontology and this understanding of existence. Neither, he claims, is appropriate for God or the absolute Idea. If

God is infinite, then God cannot be grasped as finite. This old system had turned to dogmatism and was too “narrow and rigid” in its understanding of these fundamental principles.93

90 EL, 50, §29. 91 EL, 47, §27. GW, Band 20, 70: “die vormalige Metaphysik.” 92 EL, 56, §36. GW, Band 20, 74: “. . . oder er blieb als ein Object dem Subject gegenüber, so-mit auf diese Weise ein Endliches (Dualismus).” 93 EL, 52, §32. GW, Band 20, 72: “der endlichen Bestimmungen.”

But what does this really mean for Hegel? It seems clear from this passage that the primary problem Hegel detects is presupposition. Such things “are not founded on any principle.” This is the feature that limits and focuses Hegel’s criticism of past practitioners of metaphysics.

If we see Hegel’s overall philosophy as an ontological syllogism, however, we seem to run squarely into a problem. Dieter Henrich’s interpretation is a very well-known example of this way of thinking. Writing in the context of the Ontological Argument, he concludes that Hegel cannot possibly be employing the traditional, formal argument as such. Nor could Hegel be attempting to reach ontological conclusions. Henrich believes that the present interpretation gets the horse before the cart.94 His thesis is that the Ontological Argument is prior to the beginnings of Hegel’s system, so its goal cannot be the ultimate unity of mind and world, and by implication, it also cannot be the form of the whole system. There would be nothing to unite at the beginning, he argues, so the effort to unify subject and object cannot be found there. If Hegel were to put it there, thinks Henrich, it would be out of place and could not function properly. But if it is not at the beginning, then the mediation of subject and object that it accomplishes is contained within the conceptual structures of logic, and are thus limited to subjectivity just, as logic is. Henrich claims that subjectivity, at the beginning, decides only to pursue pure thought,95 and in this way it has given itself up.96 Because of this the ontological method is easy to understand as the pursuit of objectivity rather than object.97

This is a very Kantian conclusion: “The ontological argument is not at the beginning of logic, but for him who has not reached the standpoint of logical science yet, it is the expression of its idea.”98

Thus, the point of Hegel’s system, thinks Henrich, is to assure Kant’s conclusions that we have access only to a regulative version of objectivity, sufficient but not ultimate. “Therefore the fate of

94 Henrich, 211-212. 95 Ibid., 217. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid., 218. The translation is mine. “Der ontologische Beweis steht also wohl nicht am Anfang der Logik, aber für den, der noch nicht auf den Standpunkt der logischen Wissenschaft gelangt is, ist er der Ausdruck ihrer Idee.”

43 ontotheology is decided between the two [Kant and Hegel].”99

On this reading, Hegel never intended to free thought from its Cartesian captivity, and his homage to Anselm was at best an accommodation, if not outright condescension. So, Henrich allows for Hegel’s use of the ontological method, but he concludes that Hegel uses it only to unify concepts as subjectivities. It has no ontological import. Moreover, the method itself is not syllogistic or deductive in the traditional sense.100 With regard to method, Henrich thinks that Hegel could not possibly be pursuing an ontological argument via a formal proof. However, against this view, if

Hegel is modifying the traditional understanding of formal logic as well as ontology (i.e., both sides of the “ontological” “argument”) and if he is doing this in a way that does not mitigate the key characteristics of formal logic, then Henrich’s conclusion is premature. It remains possible that

Hegel intended to repair formal logic rather than replace it. This remains to be seen, and this will be the subject of Chapter II, but for now, the possibility that Hegel means to argue formally should not be ruled out prejudicially.

In contrast to Henrich, therefore, I see in Hegel’s critique of traditional logic, and of past forms of the Ontological Argument, a merely partial condemnation. It is only certain prejudices about the relation between concept and object that are being rejected, and they are rejected only insofar as they are prejudgments.

It is just such a prejudice that the present passage, A.2, addresses. I notice above all else that it is not the conclusion (ontology) that Hegel criticizes, but the lack of investigation. It is the fact that these things are presupposed that is condemned. The true meaning of existence ought not be presupposed, thinks Hegel. This goes back to Henrich’s point. Early presuppositions about what it means to exist are replaced by Hegel, but contra Henrich, this does not mean that Hegel moves on from both the Ontological Argument and its goal of proving existence. Hegel only dispenses with the

99 Ibid., 219. The translation is mine. “Also entscheidet sich zwischen beiden das Schicksal der Ontotheologie.” 100 Ibid., 218.

44 presupposition of what it means to exist. For this reason, it can be concluded that Hegel has left himself both the opportunity to use the ontological method and also at least some version of its conclusion, some modified form of existence.

Hegel’s own definitions of existence, and related terms, will involve modifications. He looks back upon the traditional metaphysics as an immature attempt at something he now does well. He calls it a “Metaphysics of the Past” (EL, §27) and “dogmatic” (EL, §32), but the warrant for this condescension and his superior perspective is not borrowed from Kant. It comes from his “survey of the whole system,”101 which he has achieved only because he has reached, as he supposes, the absolute standpoint. Along the protracted path of the dialectic Progression of Thought, the notion provides “guidance” to Thought and its principles offer a “secret clue to its movement.”102 One must be initiated into this new way of thinking in order to begin to see past the old mistakes and purify these concepts into something philosophy can use. However, the whole system must be in view comprehensively if these terms (“existence,” “being,” “logic,” “metaphysics,” “ontology,” and

“God”) are to be properly understood. They cannot be adequately defined prematurely. The reader must do the work, Hegel thinks, of attaining this superior attitude by treading the same path that he has traversed. Therefore, even though it is criticized, the “existence” of God cannot be clarified up front. I will therefore postpone my own answer to this question until our final text in this section

(A.6).

For these reasons it is important to avoid thinking of Hegel as abandoning the deductive method and the ontological goals of the Ontological Argument along with the dogmatic presuppositions of the past. This was Henrich’s mistake, he did not see how acutely focused Hegel’s criticism was. Hegel discards only the access that comes by presupposition, almost everything else

101 EL, 25, §19. GW, Band 20, 61: “. . . was von den über die Philosophie überhaupt vorausgeschickten Begreiffen gilt, . . .” 102 EL, 284, §226. GW, Band 20, 223: “. . . unter der Leitung des Begriffs, und dessen Bestimmungen machen den innern Faden des Fortgangs aus.”

45 about the old metaphysics is retained in Hegel’s system.103 And if this is so, then Heinrich has committed a form of equivocation. He has simplified and thus widened Hegel’s criticism of metaphysics well beyond what Hegel intended, and metaphysics and deduction have gone out with the bathwater.

Lastly, before moving on, I note also that there is a subtle indication of one modal characteristic in this passage. Hegel says that the assumption of “being” or “existence” amounts to a presupposition of the “independent truth and necessity” of first principles. Hegel is criticizing the first attitude for presupposing the necessity of its conclusions. As will be shown at the end of my third chapter, this modal property will become very important for Hegel’s ontological argument. The first of the three attitudes posits (or presupposes) the necessity of its axioms, forms, and conclusions, which are used to conclude that there is access to the truth. In comparison and anticipation, the second attitude holds its conclusions in suspense, they are a mere possibility. The third and final attitude, Hegel’s own, returns to necessity with its conclusions, but only after doing away with the first attitude’s reliance upon presuppositions. The result will be a demonstrated necessity, necessity Q.E.D.

For this reason, questions about what it means to determine necessity must precede questions of what existence means, logic before ontology. Before returning to conclude my discussion of existence, therefore, I move next to consider several aspects of Hegel’s methodology as these have been invoked by the questions left behind by the two passages above. Those earlier points left us to wonder what Hegel’s ontology is, but we had to defer the answer to that question until we could understand how Hegel intends to demonstrate what the traditional metaphysicians could only presuppose. To reach this understanding, we must appreciate Hegel’s method, deduction.

103 The remainder of my textual analysis will show that Hegel derives the forms of deduction from within thought and that on particular form will arise as Hegel’s most useful logical tool, the Disjunctive Syllogism. Then, in Chapter II, evidence will be given that Hegel deliberately purifies and redeems deductive syllogistics.

Test A.3 - EL, §36 [Methodology 1: Disparaging the Old Analytic Methodology]

The method of demonstration employed in finite knowledge must always lead to an inversion of the true order. For it requires the statement of some objective ground for God’s being, which thus acquires the appearance of being derived from something else. This mode of proof, guided as it is by the cannon of mere analytical identity, is embarrassed by the difficulty of passing from the finite to the infinite.104

Hegel is here criticizing the “fourth branch of [dogmatic] metaphysics,” which is “Natural or

Rational Theology.” Hegel’s criticism is that this method gets things backward by starting with the ground that it desires to achieve. This inversion is required because it works by “analytic identity.” If it wants to conclude with God’s being, for example, it must begin with a presupposition that implicitly contains it, and so it presupposes the conclusion without warrant. Hegel is not critical of the conclusion itself, but of the means that are used to reach it. In contrast, Hegel’s own method will not presuppose anything. His own method will not be “embarrassed” because he understands his own method and argument to have succeeded in “passing from the finite to the infinite,” any difficulties notwithstanding. Hegel does not think that his own version of the argument falls prey to the errors of the traditional, dogmatic metaphysics. It is not, in his mind, an analytic deduction. Or, it is not merely so. It contains an analytic aspect, but its ontological import exceeds the limits of analytics. His criticism of “analytic identity” here, therefore, is not a rejection of deduction generally.

Hegel will go on to derive the judgments and syllogisms and then make extensive use of them, which would be strange if he were ruling them out as part of the old, traditional metaphysics and thus putting them beyond hope. My contention will be that the goal of the series of derivations of concepts in the Logics is not to do away with them, nor to leave some of its parts, like syllogistics, behind, but to reach the ultimate form of Thought, which will be the Disjunctive Syllogism.

Only this form of thought is able to unify form and content, producing a new kind of

104 EL, 56, §36. GW, Band 20, 74: “Das Beweisen des endlichen Erkennens, zeigt überhaupt die verkehrte Stellung, daß ein objektiver Grund von Gottes Seyn angegeben werden soll, welches somit sich als ein durch ein anderes Vermitteltes darstellt. Diß Beweisen, das die Verstandes-Identität zur Regel hat, ist von der Schwierigkeit befangen, den Uebergang vom Endlichen zum Unendlichen zu machen.”

47 immanent (and not transcendent) ontology,105 and in this way to reach beyond analytics into synthetics. This situation lies at the core of Hegel’s third attitude and constitutes the warrant that he thinks he has earned for defining “ontology,” “metaphysics,” “logic,” and even “God” in new ways that overcome the limitations he is describing in the above texts. Thus methodology is the link between our questions about ontology and Hegel’s answers.

Text A.4 - EL, §50 [Methodology 2: Starting Places: “Heaven” vs. Earth; Modality]

. . . merely animated nature is, at the best, incapable of supplying the material for a truthful expression [of] the idea to God. God is more than life: he is Spirit. And therefore if the thought of the Absolute takes a starting-point for its rise, and desires to take the nearest, [then] the most true and adequate starting-point will be found in the nature of spirit alone.106

Hegel connects his methodology to the traditional arguments for the existence of God.

Study of these arguments will somehow reveal his goal and his method. The goal is not a naive understanding of existence, as we saw above, but something less presuppositional, something demonstrated. We must understand how Hegel employs his own version of one of these traditional arguments in order to understand the conclusion he does reach.

Hegel deals with starting places in this text, and at this point is completing his criticism of the “ascent to God” from sense-perception and the natural world among both arguments for the existence of God and among the various systems of thought that take this same strategy. This

“bottom up” approach, Hegel concludes, is poorly equipped to achieve its end. It is “incapable of supplying the material” in its efforts to produce a thought (a “truthful expression”) that adequately describes God. This is similar to the above passage, A.2, which criticizes an understanding of

“existence” that comes entirely from everyday experience of tangible objects.

The specific contrast that Hegel is drawing here, however, is between the approach of “life”

105 This will be the topic of Chapter III. 106 EL, 84, §50. GW, Band 20, 90: “. . . so ist die nur lebendige Natur selbst in der That noch nicht dasjenige, woraus die wahrhafte Bestimmung der Idee Gottes gefaßt werden kann; Gott ist mehr als lebendig, er ist Geist. Die geistige Natur ist allein der würdigste und wahrhafteste Ausgangspunkt für das Denken des Absoluten, in sofern das Denken sich einen Ausgangspunkt nimmt und den nächsten nehmen will.”

48 and the approach of “Spirit.” The first approach is to “begin with Being and proceed to the abstractum of Thought”; the second is to “begin with the abstraction and end in Being.”107 The former is being criticized and the latter endorsed. Hegel prefers the way of “Spirit,” which is to begin with the concept and end with being.108 As it turns out, this is the method of the Ontological

Proof. This is the “other way of unification.” It is not the ascent from the world to God, which is from human perceptions about the world being used to deduce characteristics of God (cf., text A.2), but instead the vector is in some ways reversed. The direction of progress runs from abstract concepts to God.

The wrong way to think about this second option is as another ascent. Hegel will go on to reveal that the concept, the definition of God, is already elevated (and therefore, so is Hegel).

Instead of moving up from the world to the ideal world or to the divine, Hegel wants us to move from the partial to the whole. He is therefore mixing his metaphors, or making a transition from the analogy of ascent to the analogy of exploration. We already have concepts, he thinks; concepts are already elevated; we are already elevated with our concepts; so there is no ascent to be made.

However, we do not have all the concepts; so, we need to work from the concepts we have to the concepts we lack, connecting them together in a unification process. This is the work of the “Spirit,” for only “in the nature of spirit” is the “nearest, the most true and adequate starting-point . . . found.”109 Thus, Hegel does not seek to ascend to God from the mundane, but to explore the divine realm from within.

So, this is the superior method, but it has not been pursued properly in the past, he thinks.

The logic of the first stage, the understanding, comes to this type of proof with presuppositions.

This is the wrong way to pursue this method, he believes. What this attitude presupposes is the

107 EL, 80, §50. GW, Band 20, 86: “. . . von dem Seyn angefangen und von da zum Abstractum des Denkens übergegangen, oder umgekehrt kann der Uebergang vom Abstractum aus zum Seyn bewerkstelligt werden.” 108 Cf., Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Theology, 121. 109 EL, 84, §50. GW, Band 20, 90; quoted above.

49 separation of concept and being, abstraction. This results in a failure of Thought to be able to deduce existence. Hegel thus continues in the next paragraph to examine Kant’s criticism of

Anselm’s argument. Hegel agrees with Kant’s conclusion: if this were the best version of the argument, then it would fail to complete the work for which it was created. “If this were all,” Hegel writes, “we should have only a formal expression of the divine nature which would not really go beyond a statement of the nature of the notion itself.”110 In other words, the logic of the understanding presupposes a separation in its understanding of formality that it cannot overcome and

Kant is correctly critical of this failure. But, the problem was never with the argument itself, but instead with the presupposition of separation. Hegel’s improved argument will be that Thought has no chasm to bridge in the first place, just as there is no ascent to be made.111 Thought is already there, in the heavenly realms, so to speak. This is why the “nearest, the most true and adequate starting-point,”112 is spirit. If one does not presuppose the chasm, then one need not labor to overcome it. If one does not presuppose the heavens, then presumably, one need not ascend to reach it. Yet, this starting point turns out to have been our own thoughts, our subjectivity. Hegel applauds Kant for starting from within thought, with the transcendental “I,” and for producing the categories of thought as a consequence. However, this philosophy leaves the outside world, freedom, the immortal soul, and the transcendent God as mysteries beyond the reach of thought, and this is an intolerable dualism for Hegel. Hegel says of Kant:

There is a dualism in his philosophy also. On one side stands the world of sensation, and of the understanding which reflects upon it. . . . On the other side and independent stands a self-apprehending thought, the principle of freedom, which Kant has in common with ordinary and bygone metaphysic, but emptied of all that it held, . . . . The main effect of the Kantian philosophy has been to revive the consciousness of Reason, or the absolute inwardness of thought.113

110 EL, 85, §51. GW, Band 20, 91: “Es ist diß freilich noch eine formale Bestimmung von Gott, die deswegen in der That nur die Natur des Begriffes selbst enthält.” 111 Rocío Zambrana, Hegel’s Theory of Intelligibility (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 124. Zambrana, despite thinking that Hegel rejects metaphysics, concurs that this is Hegel’s intention. 112 EL, 84, §50. GW, Band 20, 90; quoted above. 113 EL, 93, §60. GW, Band 20, 99: “Die eine Seite ihres Dualismus bleibt die Welt der Wahrnehmung und des

Kant is a dualist in that he “takes the necessity and universality of logical laws not to entail the existence of God, . . . [or] the existence of any other object, necessarily or otherwise.”114 And, on this point, Hegel would agree, but he takes exception to the negativity of the claim. For Kant’s is merely a deduction of the lack of entailment of God’s existence and falls short of being a positive deduction of that conclusion. Kant’s position is a dualism not because it deduces the existence of the other, but because it is decidedly agnostic about it. God might exist, but Kant has concluded that we can never know. In this way, modality arises from within Kant’s position. Hegel will focus on this mere possibility and conclude that even this would be fatal to philosophy. Hegel wants to go further and rule out the very possibility that God exists. To ground knowledge, he wants to deduce the impossibility of the transcendent object. It is in this sense that Hegel rejects Kant’s dualism.

However, despite containing a lingering, negative sort of dualism, Kant’s philosophy does much to empower Hegel in his own goal of eliminating dualism all together. Hegel accepts and even praises Kant’s turn toward inwardness of thought. Others, after Kant and in Hegel’s own time, were also affirming that thought is the proper starting place, and Kant paved the way to making this seem tenable. These were the intellectual intuitionists. Kant was therefore a stepping-stone between the

“bygone metaphysic” and the new form of idealism that begins with thought. This is the new attitude of thought to objectivity, intellectual intuition, to which Hegel turns in the next chapter.115

So, intuition is the means of access that Hegel uses to explore concepts. Concepts are already elevated above the mundane. This is very platonic, and this is a significant clue to what Hegel means to prove with his argument. It is not material existence that is Hegel’s goal, that is too low of

über sie reflectirenden Verstandes. . . . Die andere Seite ist dagegen die Selbstständigkeit des sich erfassenden Denkens, das Princip der Freiheit, welches sie mit der vormaligen, gewöhnlichen Metaphysik gemein hat, aber alles Inhaltes entleert und ihm keinen wieder zu verschaffen vermag. . . . Die Hauptwirkung, welche die Kantische Philosophie gehabt hat, ist gewesen, das Bewußtseyn dieser absoluten Innerlichkeit erweckt zu haben, . . . ” 114 Clinton Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 567. 115 Hegel treats Empiricism and the Critical philosophy in chapter four, then turns to intellectual intuitionism in chapter five.

51 a target. Hegel has something “more real” in mind for the status of concepts and the absolute.

Kant provides a stepping stone to intellectual intuitionism even though it falls far short of intuition’s superior status. Intuitionism is “[t]he extreme theory on the opposite side [from the

Critical philosophy] . . .”116 Intuitionism relies on immediate intuitive access to God/Idea, and in

Hegel’s estimation it is a much better place to begin. “This immediate knowledge, consists in knowing that the Infinite, the Eternal, the God which is in our Idea, really is: or, it asserts that in our consciousness there is immediately and inseparably bound up with this idea the certainty of its actual being.”117 Therefore, it is by intuition that Hegel is reclaiming what was once presupposed by the pre-critical metaphysicians, and which Kant then denied to us, intuitionism is now making the goal cognizable via the method of the Ontological Argument. The ascent to the existence of God has now been converted to the exploration of the absolute Idea by means of intuition. The concepts that make up the Idea are more real than the material objects.

Some issues remain unsettled, however. Intuitionism still errs. It still assumes that it has immediate access. It thus naively returns to the error of the old metaphysics. In contrast to this view, in what Hegel simply calls “philosophy,” the unity of subject and object that is in question, the immediate knowledge of God, is not assumed, but it is proved, demonstrated. Hegel, writing against intuitionism states:

Now it is the endeavor of philosophy to prove such a unity, to show that it lies in the very nature of thought and subjectivity, to be inseparable from being and objectivity. . . . The difference between philosophy and the asseverations of immediate knowledge rather centers in the exclusive attitude which immediate knowledge adopts, when it sets itself up against philosophy.118

116 EL, 95, §61. GW, Band 20, 100: “Der entgegengesetzte Standpunkt ist, . . .” 117 EL, 99, §64. GW, Band 20, 104: “Das, was dieses unmittelbare Wissen weiß, ist, daß das Unendliche, Ewige, Gott, das in unserer Vorstellung ist, auch ist, – daß im Bewußtseyn mit dieser Vorstellung unmittelbar und unzertrennlich die Gewißheit ihres Seyns verbunden ist.” 118 EL, 99-100, §64. GW, Band 20, 105: “Wenn die Philosophie solche Einheit zu beweisen, d.i. zu zeigen bestrebt ist, daß es in der Natur des Gedankens oder der Subjectivität selbst liege, unzertrennlich von dem Seyn oder der Objectivität zu seyn, . . . . Der Unterschied zwischen dem Behaupten des unmittelbaren Wissens und zwischen der Philosophie läuft allein daruf hinaus, daß das nmittelbare Wissen sich eine ausschließende Stellung gibt, oder allein darauf, daß es sich dem Philosophiren entgegenstellt.”

Notice the way that Hegel now focuses on the attitude rather than the starting place itself.

Hegel approves of the starting place, but not the presupposition of the starting place. As Stern notes, according to Hegel, these are little more than beliefs and assumptions that cause some of the

“central problems of philosophy to be pseudo-problems (in that they are generated by our way of looking at the world, . . .)”119 Going beyond Stern, I see much more in these attitudes because it is the attitudes themselves that are the presuppositions that Hegel criticizes.

With regard to the question of existence, the goal of the proof, this passage (A.4) has revealed that Hegel is very platonic in his conceptions of both existence and access because he distinguishes between the material existence of the objects we experience in daily life and the higher level of reality that concepts enjoy. He will eventually subsume the former into the latter, reducing the material to the conceptual. He will also come to refer to the greater kind of existence as

“concrete.” Therefore, the kind of existence that Hegel attributes to God is formal existence and he considers this kind of existence to be superior to the mundane tangibility toward which we tend to gravitate by default.120

Text A.5 - EL, §79 [Methodology 3: Three Sides of Logic; History Transformed to Logic; The Role of Formal Logic]

In point of form Logical doctrine has three sides : (α) the Abstract side, or that of the understanding : (β) the Dialectical, or that of negative reason [and] : (γ) the Speculative, or that of positive reason. These three sides do not make three parts of logic, but are stages or ‘moments’ in every logical entity, that is, of every notion and truth whatever. They may all be put under the first stage, that of understanding, and so kept isolated from each other; but this would give an inadequate conception of them.121

119 Stern, Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit, 17. 120 This is not to say that Hegel envisions two worlds, the physical and the formal. As I will show, Hegel will do away with the physical all together. Only the formal world remains for Hegel. 121 EL, 113, §79. GW, Band 20, 118: “Das Logische had der Form nach drei Seiten [alpha]) die abstracte oder verständige, [beta]) die dialektische oder negativ-vernünftige, [gamma]) die speculative oder positiv-vernünftige. Diese drei Seiten machen nichte drei Theile der Logik aus, sondern sind Momente jedes Logisch-Reellen, das ist jede Begriffes oder jedes Wahren überhaubt. Sie Können sämmtlich unter das erste Moment, das Verständige, gesetzt, und dadurch abgesondert auseinander gehalten werden, aber so werden sie nicht in Wahrheit betrachtet.”

The most fundamental aspect of Hegel’s methodology is his view of logic. By a logical method, Hegel will argue that we have access to the formal world. There are several different attitudes about the metaphysical capacities of logic. By the placement of the above passage between the science of logic that comes after and the historical review that went before, Hegel wants us to see that the three divisions in the logic run in parallel to the three classes of attitudes toward logic represented in history, the attitudes that he has just finished describing. The location of the above passage reveals this intention. The three sides of logic arise in the Encyclopedia Logic at the point where Hegel has finished reviewing the errors of the traditional logic and of the critical philosophy.

These have represented the first and second major categories of attitudes respectively. The first, characterized by Aristotle or Anselm, presupposes a necessary separation of concept and object in its assumption of the abstract truth of certain basic principles; this correlates to the abstract logic, stage 1. The second, characterized by Kant, is critical of presupposition, but also denies the certainty of the first stage and so it leaves us in skepticism; this correlates to the negative logic, stage 2.

Hegel’s realization and reinitialization of the science of logic is then stage 3. The above passage, therefore, sums up what has come before, but transforms the historical epochs into three logical categories. As Hegel says elsewhere in the same work, “The same development of thought that is represented in the history of philosophy is represented also in the System of Philosophy itself.”122

Thus, the primary doctrine to be found in this passage is the ways in which the historical and the logical relate. The synthetic, positive method, which is the third and most complete way of thinking logically, is equated with Hegel’s methodology. This is the same methodology that was earlier associated with the Ontological Proof. We should thus be looking for ways to see this proof as a form of stage-three reasoning.

Hegel uses Anselm’s method to structure the three moments of history. Now he uses it to

122 EL §14. Translation mine. GW, Band 20, 56: “Dieselbe Entwickelung des Denkens, welche in der Geschichte der Philosophie dargestellt wird, wird in der Philosophie selbst dargestellt, . . .”

54 structure the three stages of logical doctrine. This transitional passage, sitting between the historical and the system of logical development, clarifies the method, and places that method into the same three-part structure, a structure that is itself an instance of the deduction that Hegel always uses.

As I mentioned in the Introduction, the Parmenidean One is differentiated into halves and the two halves are defined in terms of what they are not. The historical stages were divided in this same way, and now the logical stages are facing the same principle of differentiation. For the logic of the understanding, stage 1, the defining theme is abstraction. It is the whole logical doctrine minus the other two stages. For the negative dialectical stage of logic, the defining theme is negation. It too is the whole minus the other two parts. And, the third is the principle of their unity, using the method of the first, and the negation of the second to accomplish its unification, just as Parmenides’

One could be differentiated by negation and unified by negation of those negations. Hegel does not abandon any of these stages, nor does he see an evolution from one to the next, as if the older is made obsolete. The first stage is needed because it is the place where the tools of logical reasoning are developed, the syllogisms. The second stage is needed because it is the place where negation is developed. Both are part of the third stage of logic, which unifies by negating the negative programs of the first two stages, not to destroy them, but to be the principle of their unity.

This syllogistic form is seen in the way that Hegel describes how the three stages of logic are compatible with one another. They constitute one another and are thus mutually dependent. Hegel clearly states that “every logical entity” takes part in each of the three sides or moments of logic.

Much earlier, Hegel had claimed that “Speculative Logic contains all previous Logic and

Metaphysics: it preserves the same forms of thought, the same laws of objects—while at the same time remodeling and expanding them with wider categories.”123 He will go on to say that the earlier

123 EL, 13, §9. GW, Band 20, 49: “Die speculative Logik enthält die vorige Logik und Metaphysik, conservirt dieselben Gedankenformen, Gesetze und Gegenstände, aber sie zugleich mit witern Kategorien weiter bildend und umformend.”

55 stages can “be elicited at will”124 from the later stage. This is done “by the simple process of omitting

[negating] the dialectical and ‘reasonable’ element. When that is done, it becomes what the common logic is, a descriptive collection of sundry thought-forms and rules, which finite though they are, are taken to be something infinite.”125 It is the “taken to be” that is of importance here; this characterization-function comes in historical and logical versions.

This historical-logical fusion has been foreshadowed. Hegel had already accepted both perspectives on these three views of logic, the naive historical and the well-informed logical:

The different systems which the history of philosophy presents are therefore not irreconcilable with unity. We may either say, that it is one philosophy at different degrees of maturity: or that the particular principle, which is the ground work of each system, is but a branch of one and the same universe of thought. In philosophy the latest birth of time is the result of all the systems that have preceded it, and must include their principles; and so, if, on other grounds, it deserve the title of philosophy, will be the fullest [reichste], most comprehensive [entfaltetste], and most adequate [concreteste] system of all.126

This indicates that Hegel sees the historical succession of ideas as derivative of Thought’s own structure. These two “universes” (of logic and of history) are unified, non-destructively, in the greater world of Thought. So, the Logic of the Understanding is not “irreconcilable” with the third stage of logic; they are both in the “same universe” which is “Thought”; and the third includes the principles of the first and second. Therefore, the older stage of logic is not detritus; it remains as partially constitutive of the third and absolute stage. It is a part that, when added to the dialectical second stage and the “reasonable” third stage, composes the whole. Historically, the first two stages are errors. Logically, however, they are part of a greater whole, which allows them to be useful. It is not the logical content that causes the problem for finite minds engaging in finite logic, but it is only

124 EL, 120, §82. GW, Band 20, 120: “. . . und kann aus jener sogleich gemacht werden; . . .” 125 EL, 120, §82. GW, Band 20, 120: “. . . es bedarf dazu nichts, als daraus das Dialektische und Vernünftige wegzulassen; so wird sie zu dem, was die gewöhnliche Logik ist, eine Historie von mancherlei zusammengestellten Gedankenbestimmungen, die in ihrer Endlichkeit asl etwas Unendliches gelten.” 126 EL, 18-19, §13. GW, Band 20, 55: “Die Geschichte der Philosophie zeigt an den verschieden erscheinenden Philosophieen theils nur Eine Philosophie auf verschiedenen Ausbildungs-Stufen auf, theils daß die besondern Principien, deren eines einem System zu Grunde lag, nur Zweige eines und desselben Ganzen sind. Die der Zeit nach letzte Philosophie ist das Resultat aller vorhergehenden Philosophieen und muß daher die Principien Aller enthalten; sie ist darum, wenn sie anders Philosophie ist, die entfaltetste, reichste und concreteste.”

56 the absence of the other two stages. These other stages, however, do not add to the content, but merely alter the program that encapsulates the content. The logic of the understanding is only at fault if it fails to pay homage to the other stages and give them their due. If it can succeed in doing that, however, then its truth is vindicated by the connectedness delivered through the other stages.

Therefore, it is not that Hegel is denying modus ponens, for example. He is instead preparing the reader for his solutions to the attitudes and presuppositions that tarnished logic and philosophy in the past; these are the errors of finitude and presupposition.127

Avoiding these errors restores the utility of formal logic and allows it to be used as a methodology, as a deduction that does not presuppose. These errors are avoided by their opposites: connectedness and grounding. Hegel sums this up himself when he writes, “The result of Dialectic is positive, . . . because its result is not empty and abstract nothing, but the negation of certain specific propositions . . . . It follows from this that the ‘reasonable’ result, though it be only a thought and abstract, is still a concrete, being not a plain formal unity, but a unity of distinct propositions.”128

Here “Dialectic” has produced a positive result by not stopping with negation, but moving on to unification in the third stage. Hegel indicates that the result is “the negation of certain specific propositions.” Which propositions? The ones that were found to be self-refuting, namely the presupposition of unity in the first stage, and the non-committal suspension of unity in the second.

These are negated by association with the third option of an exhaustive list in a disjunctive elimination. The “three sides of logic” therefore correlate to the three premises of Hegel’s system- argument. Hegel’s philosophy is an ontological argument, a disjunctive syllogism, that unifies not the subjective definition of God with the objective existence of God, but definitions (concepts) generally with a fully immanent ontology of ideas. All of this is needed in advance, and much of it is

127 These will be a major topic in Chapter II. 128 EL, 119, §82. GW, Band 20, 120: “Die Dialektik hat ein positives Resultat, . . . weil ihr Resultat wahrhaft nicht das leere, abstracte Nichts, sondern die Negation von gewissen Bestimmungen ist, . . .” Emphasis added.

57 yet to be established, if we are to answer these preliminary questions about Hegel’s methodology.

Text A.6 - EL, §213 [Context 3: The Character of the Idea Is Reality]

It is no less false to imagine the Idea to be a mere abstraction. It is abstract, certainly, in so far as everything untrue is consumed in it: but in its own self it is essentially concrete, because it is the free notion giving character to itself, and that character, reality.129

This is the conclusion of the system as a whole, which Hegel calls the “Idea” (Idee). The above passage gives an approximation of this in terms of the Logic alone, which has a unity of its own. The Logic thus mimics the properties of the whole even though it is just a part of a larger structure. So, to see the ultimate conclusion in the Logic, we must look to the principle of its unity, the Notion (Begriff). Hegel concludes the Logic with the Notion, but he also provides a glimpse of the not-yet-achieved “Idea.”

The Notion is therefore in itself a certain perspective on concepts, one that reflects a higher understanding of what is real. This takes us back to the question of what it means to exist. There is now enough context to figure out what Hegel is talking about when he says that existence must be demonstrated. The higher kind of existence that Hegel invokes is the unity of the whole, and this unity is held together by its deductive properties. “God’s” existence, to Hegel, can now be seen as the self-deduction of the Ontological Argument. From the perspective of the whole, of the completed ontological argument, the Notion is real. It is a concept, but it is not abstract. This advances the initial understanding of “exists,” as in “God exists,” to something more philosophical.

Hegel’s conclusions about existence are no longer simply abstracted, naive, or presupposed. They now involve a deeper understanding of what it means to be real. It includes abstraction, and that should not be overlooked, but it is not limited to abstraction, nor does it presuppose the nature of the distinction between abstract and real. Hegel’s term for this kind of reality is “concrete,” a term

129 EL, 275, §213. “Eben so falsch ist die Vorstellung, als ob die Idee nur das Abstracte sey. Sie ist es allerdings in sofern, als alles Unwahre sich in ihr aufzehrt; aber an ihr selbst ist sie wesentlich concret, weil sie der freie sich selbst und hiemit zur Realität bstimmende Begriff ist.”

58 which applies primarily to concepts in their unity.

Is God real? Does God exist? To understand what Hegel would see in such questions, we have to take on the perspective of his third stage. Doing this required that we dig into his methodology to see where it leads. From this vantage point, the concrete is the absolute reality of

God, and God is the totality of Thought in the all-inclusive Idea, but this is not to be understood in an objective or transcendent sense. As has been mentioned above, Hegel modifies what he means by

“God,” virtually equating it in his own special understanding with the whole of concrete reality, which is the absolute Idea.

So, to Hegel, God is the same as the method used to prove God. The existence of God, or anything else, is the same as the method of proving existence. The method is the ontological argument. This is the unifying principle, the One.

This concludes the textual review of preliminary issues. What began as a review of preliminary concepts, however, has had to plumb the depths of the system overall. I think no other approach could do it justice. This leads me to a bit of a conundrum in terms of my strategy of explanation. I think Hegel must have faced the same difficulty. The problem is that Hegel’s system is both complex and circular (self-referring). To explain any one part requires reference to most of the other parts. As I proceed, however, I will attempt to pare this down and keep repetition to a minimum, but this relies upon the reader to keep several distantly-mentioned elements in mind.

b) Category 1: Direct References to the Ontological Argument

After covering preliminary and context-setting texts, I move on to category 1, which includes those references to the Ontological Argument that are the most explicit. I begin with the most direct text, the Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God (VBDG). Within this text specifically, I will begin with the lecture of 1831 whose topic was exclusively the Ontological Argument. Due to its very

59 short length and also its importance, I will review this text in its entirety below.

(1) Excerpts from the VBDG

A review of the lecture as a whole will be helpful in setting up the context for specific quotations from this text. Paul Redding and Paolo Bubbio130 offer such a review together with a historical survey of the Ontological Argument and a compact analysis of Hegel’s approach. This provides helpful background to the lecture. I summarize their review just below. After this, my own review and analysis of the text will be offered.

(a) The Analysis of Redding and Bubbio. Hegel’s historical review of the Ontological Argument begins with Anselm. It was he who gave us the first explicit ontological argument, which Hegel of course acknowledges: “[Anselm’s] proof constitutes the abstract, metaphysical foundation of this stage, . . .”131 The argument was then cited as evidence by later philosophers who attempted to reformulate it: Descartes, Leibniz, and Wolff.132 Descartes’ revival of the argument was fragmented, however, being a set of disconnected arguments rather than a unified proof.133 Leibniz attempted to rectify this disunity and set Descartes’ arguments in order. Leibniz also added modality to the proof by showing that Descartes’ argument overlooked the need to first establish the possibility that a being could have all the perfections. Hegel then addresses Kant’s now-famous criticism of the argument, that existence can only be known empirically and not deduced intellectually.

In his running commentary on this historical development, Hegel praises the insight of

Anselm, mostly for having preserved something insightful from ancient Greek philosophy. This

130 Redding and Bubbio, 467-468. 131 VBDG, 188. OB, 271: “. . . er macht die abstrakte, metaphysische Grundlage dieser Stufe aus; . . .” 132 Ibid. 133 Cf., Melvin Fitting, Types, Tableaus, and Gödel’s God (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 134-135. Fitting considers Descartes’ conclusion to be the movement from an assumption of the possibility of God’s existence to the necessity of God’s existence via a logically trivial equivalence. Leibniz picks the same bone with Descartes, as Redding and Bubbio indicate next.

60 proper insight is the unity of thought and being. Although this insight is correct, says Hegel, it was not, unfortunately, demonstrated by Anselm.134 That is, the insight, worthy of praise though it was, was still problematic because it was just a presupposition; it had not been examined or proven. In a reversal of fortunes, so to speak, as compared to Anselm and the Greeks, the modern versions of the argument provided an advancement because they did away with presuppositions, but in doing so, unfortunately, they had given up the unity of thought and being.135 The moderns began not with being, but with possible being, not with presupposed existence but with a concept, one that might relate to an actual existence. To Hegel, this is an advance over Anselm’s and the Greeks’ presupposition.136

This separation, which Redding and Bubbio associate with modernistic representationalism, is therefore a necessary step in the advancement of the Ontological Argument, which is supposed to be able to bridge this very separation. Hegel therefore wants to retain the original Greco-Anselmian insight of the unity of thought and being, but he also wants to avoid presupposing it. He therefore intends to demonstrate this unity.137

With regard to Kant’s critique, Hegel first agrees with him that it is not legitimate to presuppose a disunity between a concept and its object.138 This separation leads to the failure of the proof. And, this is the factor upon which Kant’s criticism correctly focuses. Once the separation is accepted it becomes impossible to reach across the chasm that is produced by it. Hegel therefore agrees with Kant that we cannot deduce from a concept the external existence of a being. The solution, then, is to avoid the separation in the first place. Hegel attacks the presupposition of the chasm, and thereby makes an end-run around Kant’s criticism. So, Kant was wrong that the only

134 Redding and Bubbio, 468. 135 Ibid. 136 Ibid. See also Hegel’s Introduction and the Concept of Religion, vol. 1 of Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, trans. and ed. Peter C. Hodgson, R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart (Berkeley: University of California Press), 434. 137 Ibid. See also EL, §193a. 138 Ibid., 469.

61 way to reach being is through empirical perception.139 Redding and Bubbio clarify this point:

In other words, Kant’s critique [existence is not a predicate] applies only to what we might call ‘concept-representations’ – mental representations that may be applied to external objects – not to proper concepts (Begriffe) as Hegel understands them. As a consequence of this, we argue, Hegel is critical of the conception of the relation of thought to being that follows from this inadequate conception of concept.140

Ironically, the resources needed to attain an adequate conception of the concept, Redding and Bubbio argue, can be derived from Kant’s own philosophy.141 From Kant’s perspective, concepts are different in kind from reality, but, Hegel notices that concepts have begun to take on a reality of their own in the phenomena. He has used Kant’s philosophy as a stepping-stone and has argued as a next step that concepts are not standing in for reality because there is nothing else besides them. Thought is self-sufficient and alone; the noumenon is an unnecessary addition. So, there is no chasm to overcome and consequently there is no difficulty for the ontological argument in unifying a concept with its (conceptual) object.142

The only casualty of this strategy, of course, is the externality of objects; idealism results.

Redding and Bubbio find an alternative way to retain the externality of sensory input, which they contrast with Robert Brandom’s position; but on this matter, Brandom seems correct.143 Redding and Bubbio contend that, if a judgment is to have content, it is not enough merely to stand in inferential relations to other judgments.144 However, the self-sufficiency of the unified structure of

Thought appears to be Hegel’s philosophy’s larger goal, so it seems odd to try to anchor thought in

139 Ibid. 140 Ibid. The authors also call attention to Hegel’s comments about the Kantian philosophy in EL, §50a. 141 Ibid., 470, 475. 142 Redding and Bubbio pursue a course through Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception. Hegel, they argue, produces his own version of the concept based on Kant’s “I think,” a pure concept of reason for Kant, p. 475. Pronouncements of the first-person sort involve the subject, “I,” coinciding with the being of the speaker. Every “I” statement, such as “I am sitting here at my desk,” is therefore already a kind of ontological argument. Here the being coincides with the concept, and this is what Hegel seizes upon. Thought posits its own being in this way, 472. I see an interesting intersection of phenomenology and metaphysics. See Robert Sokolowski, The Phenomenology of the Human Person (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 14-17, 28, 310-311. 143 Ibid., 479. See also, Robert B. Brandom, “Holism and idealism in Hegel’s Phenomenology,” in Tales of the Mighty Dead: Historical Essays in the Metaphysics of Intentionality (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 144 Ibid. This is my term for what Redding and Bubbio call the “weak inferentialist” position.

62 an external, objective world right in the middle of his argument for the unity of concept and object within the absolute concept (Idee), which is capable of producing its own ontological standard.

Redding and Bubbio are correct that Hegel sees value in both of the two previous historical stages in the development of the argument. They have also correctly understood that Hegel approves of the unification of thought and being, which was the achievement of the ancients, and that Hegel also saw the need for another stage in history to posit separation of thought and being, the moderns. This retention of historical value harmonizes with my own interpretation that Hegel sees them not only as historical mistakes with kernels of truth, but also as important logical stages.

Lastly, Redding and Bubbio are correct for seeing that Hegel’s version of the argument must be evaluated in the context of his idealism.145 However, I think that this final insight can be more profitably understood. Although Redding and Bubbio delve deeply into the social, intersubjective dimension of Thought’s self-actualization in the midst of its public acts of self-positing and recognition, I think that this presumes too much about Hegel’s overall project. It mixes the issues that are relevant only within the third stage with aspects of the first two stages and with the argument as a whole. It is true that Hegel goes into these details himself, yet when taken in isolation from the other stages (finitude) or when mistaken for the primary goal of the philosophy overall, they alter interpretation of the system in implausible ways. The social, political, intersubjective dimension should not decide how the Ontological Argument should be interpreted and applied to

Hegel’s philosophy, but in reverse, the features of the intentionally comprehensive Ontological

Argument should determine the interpretations and analyses of these smaller parts. The Ontological

Argument is the larger context, which should set limits on how the lesser parts are understood.146

145 Ibid., 483. 146 For example, see Zambrana, 134, 138. Zambrana serves as a suitable example of what is extremely common in Hegel scholarship. Even though she concludes with a review of the larger syllogism of the Encyclopedic system (138), this does not prevent her from depending on the WL to provide a guiding principle for the entire philosophy. This reverses what I see as Hegel’s intention. It is from the WL that Zambrana learns of the structure of negative determinacy. This structure is then used, it seems to me, to interpret the function and application of the philosophy as a

(b) Discovering a Formal Structure in the VBDG. Much more is going on in this text than what Redding and Bubbio report. For the reasons mentioned above, the formal structure of Hegel’s argument in this text should not be neglected. And, it will be our most useful text on the Ontological Argument because all of the major features of Hegel’s own version are on display in one glance, and are even repeated several times in a very short lecture.

The first instance of Hegel’s argument is seen in the introductory paragraph (given below). It begins with a list of three things to be considered. Hegel numbers them with ordinals, “zuerst . . . . zweite; . . . . dritte.”147 The reader who has been well trained by reading Hegel’s previously-published

Encyclopedia may recognize that these are the three stages or premises of the true Ontological

Argument as Hegel described them in that work. Yet, Hegel sees a similar three-part structure in almost everything, not only in logical and natural structures, but also in history. And here, as a historical analysis of an argument that is itself that very same argument, we will see that Hegel means to show that the argument is considering itself. It contains itself as its own content.148 Toward this end, Hegel will proceed from the introduction to show how various historical forms of the argument run through these same three stages. That which is introduced in the first paragraph without historical connection will next be connected to two historical stages. It should also be noticed that this introductory review of the three stages takes up the entire first paragraph of the lecture, and in this place, it sets the theme for the whole piece:

Text 1.1 - VBDG [The Three Stages in the Introduction] whole. The features of the whole, in this way, are overshadowed by features of the part, which is what Findlay had criticized as the dangers of the microscopic view (Findlay, “Foreword,” in Hegel’s Logic, vii). For more information on the manner in which the whole has priority over the parts, see Michael Morris, “The German Ideology and the Sublation of Idealism,” in Hegel and Metaphysics: On Logic and Ontology in the System, ed. Allegra de Laurentiis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 201-203. 147 OB, 271. Full quotation in the next note. 148 This will be a major theme of the present work. The final three chapters will all touch on this subject in various ways.

The first [zuerst] thing to be considered in the sphere of the revelatory religion is the abstract concept of God; the basis is the free, pure, revelatory concept.

God’s manifestation, God’s being for an other, is God’s determinate being or existence [Dasein], and the soil of God’s determinate being is finite spirit. This is the second [zweite] thing to be considered; finite spirit and finite consciousness are concrete.

The main point in regard to this religion is to recognize this process, that God manifests godself [Gott sich . . . manifestiert] in finite spirit and is identical with godself in it [darin identisch mit sich ist]. The identity of the concept with determinate being is the third [dritte] thing to be considered.149

This is the thesis statement for the lecture and it puts a specific rational structure on display, one that serves a prominent role in all of Hegel’s major writings. He will go on to review multiple historical forms of the argument, and while doing so, he will repeat these three stages from start to finish six more times! This totals seven presentations of the same triadic form. Given the fact that this is a very short lecture—in my copies, it is only six pages in both English and German—the prominent place and repetition of this three-part structure indicates that the VBDG is almost completely consumed with it.

Notice that the first stage of the quotation above involves abstraction (mere subjectivity).

Though it is free and pure, the concept of God is here merely an “abstract concept.” This is problematic because the concept is abstract and not concrete; this is why it is merely a concept. The second stage involves a recognition of the “concrete” nature of the finite thought that contains the concept of God, but this God is determined by something else, an other, and is thus dependent on that other. The resulting finitude is problematic because the concept is not free to be what it is, and so it does not match expectations for God. The freedom enjoyed by the first stage is now lost in the second. This points to the third stage, in which the “identity” (union) of the concept of God with

149 VBDG, 187. OB, 271: “In der Sphäre der offenbaren Religion ist zuerst der abstrakte Begriff gottes zu betrachten; der freie, reine, offenbare Begriff ist die Grudlage. Seine Manifestation, sein Sein für Anderes ist sein Dasein, und der Boden seines Daseins ist der endliche Geist: Dies ist das zweite; der endliche Geist und das endliche Bewußtsein sind konkret. Die Hauptsache in dieser Religion ist, diesen Prozeß zu erkennen, daß Gott sich im endlichen Geist manifestiert und darin identisch mit sich ist. Die Identität des Begriffs und des Daseins ist das dritte.”

65 the being of God is “recognize[d].” So, the pattern is: 1) abstraction; 2) finitude; 3) unity.

It may seem strange that the end result, a demonstrated identity, is so much like the first premise. Did Anselm not deduce the unity of the definition of God with the being of God? This will be the first order of business that Hegel addresses and he does so even in the midst of the introduction to this three-step pattern. He states that the unity is concrete, the unity is God, and the three-fold structure is the means of God manifesting godself. This theme runs across the descriptions of the second and third steps above. It is being announced that the concept is united with its object, and this unity is not merely an abstract concept itself.

Here Hegel refers to his own conclusion, not Anselm’s. Thus, in addition to setting the pattern for the rest of the lecture, Hegel wants us to understand that the conclusion is not simply an abstraction. The danger that he seeks to avoid is a falling back into the first stage. He will be giving us his own argument, a deduction, but it will not be susceptible to the errors of the first stage.

This is not to be understood as a simple mathematical or logical equivalence. Such abstractions are lifeless and still. Hegel’s unity is instead a living unity; it is the “organic life

[Lebendigkeit] within God.”150 The reader is meant to see these logical functions as living demonstrations that God and God’s concept are the same, and that this overcomes the negative aspects of abstraction. Therefore, even though this is an argument with a deduced conclusion, Hegel is telling the reader at the start that the result is not simply a dead abstraction, it is the living process of thought.151

This is a conspicuous and intriguing beginning to the lecture. A three-part structure, which is recognizable as a deduction after the pattern set in his comprehensive Encyclopedia,152 now sets the

150 Ibid. OB, 271: “Lebendigkeit in Gott.” 151 This is not to say that the absolute Idea is self-aware. As I will show later, this “living” and “thinking” function that concrete concepts have is limited to its form. As it will turn out, Hegel is very reductionistic in his idealistic context. 152 Cf., EL, 254-255, §191; WL, 701-704; EM, 313-315, §§574-577.

66 theme for Hegel’s account of the Ontological Argument. In this account, this triadic structure is up- front, and prominent. Without any warning, the three stages are given immediately, prominently.

This is the lecture’s thesis, and Hegel does not disappoint in delivering content for it. He will follow up with six additional examples of this triadic pattern in the remainder of this very brief text, placing them all in the context of the Ontological Argument.

Each of the following iterations of this three-stage pattern, however, involves an apparent conflation of the premises’ historical forms with the logical premises of a new argument that Hegel is describing. This is an important association for interpreting not only this argument, but Hegel’s philosophy overall. It is no coincidence that historical arguments are modified, incompletely analyzed, and shoehorned into these roles. Hegel is deliberately placing historical instances of the argument into the stages of his analysis of the argument as its premises.

This is the first insight that is needed to access Hegel’s own ontological argument in this lecture: descriptions of historical attitudes and arguments are being transformed into logical premises in Hegel’s own three-part argument. Beginning with Anselm, then, whose argument is characterized as a first stage, it now becomes the first premise. First stages have recognizable characteristics, and Anselm’s proof possesses those characteristics. His form of the Ontological

Argument “constitutes the abstract, metaphysical foundation of this stage, . . .”153 From the perspective of this stage, the argument is “regarded as something subjective and characterized as opposed to the object [Objekt] and to reality.”154

This description bypasses most of the features of Anselm’s argument upon which most philosophers focus. By taking care to distinguish Anselm’s conclusions from his presupposed attitude

153 VBDG, 188. OB, 271: “. . . macht die abstrakte, metaphysische Grundlage dieser Stufe aus; . . . ” 154 VBDG, 188. OB, 272: “Der Begriff wird für etwas Subjektives gehalten und ist so bestimmt, wie er dem Objekt und der Realität entgegengesetzt ist: . . .”

67 about the relation of thought to its object,155 Hegel signals that he is doing something unusual.

Notice the wording in that last quotation: Anselm “regarded [thought] as” and “characterized

[thought] as” distinct from and therefore in opposition to the object. This is contradictory to the goal of the proof, thinks Hegel, and he wishes to correct this error. His goal for the proof is to find the object within the concept, to demonstrate that “being also pertains to this concept.”156 The proof works by showing that the concept (of God) itself cannot be properly understood without being. “[T]o the extent that being is distinguished from the concept, the concept exists only subjectively, in our own thinking. . . . That it is not just our concept but also is, irrespective of our thinking, has to be demonstrated.”157 So, Anselm’s attitude contains presuppositions that fundamentally contradict his proof. This attitude taints Anselm’s proof, reports Hegel, because it represents an internal contradiction of a special kind that derails the proof before it can begin.

Therefore, together with the introductory paragraph, we now have two things to consider: the triadic form itself, recognizable as the Encyclopedia’s Disjunctive Syllogism; and the new focus on presupposing attitude, the attitude specifically about the relation of a concept to its object.

This is Hegel’s first analysis of Anselm’s proof in the lecture, and he recapitulates that proof twice more for a total of three. I give the third below. This third description fashions Anselm’s proof into the three-stage mold that Hegel gave in the introductory paragraph. This time, I add the ordinals myself.

Text 1.2 - VBDG [The Three Stages in Anselm’s Argument; Signs of Modality]

First: “We begin with what is most perfect, defined as the most real being, the sum total of all realities.”

155 Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Theology, 121. Hodgson identifies this as Kant’s original insight, one that Hegel accepts. I add to this that Hegel uses Kant’s insight as part of a deductive demonstration. 156 VBDG, 188. OB, 272: “. . . daß diesem Begriff auch das Sein zukomme.” 157 VBDG, 188. OB, 272: “. . . insofern vom Begriff das Sein unterschieden wird, so ist er nur subjektiv in unserem Denken; . . . ; daß es nun nicht nur unser Begriff ist, sondern daß er auch ist, unabhängig von unserem Denken, das soll aufgezeigt werden.”

Second: “This has been called possibility, the concept as subjective, inasmuch as it is distinguished from being as the merely possible concept—or it should at least, be possible.”

Third: “It can easily be demonstrated that all that is then left is the abstraction of what is one with itself.”158

In this description, the three characteristics of the three stages (abstraction, finitude, unity) are less evident, but clues reveal them to be present. The first stage begins with a definition, a mere posit. It asserts but does not prove. This is a hallmark of the traditional metaphysics of which Hegel is so critical. Abstraction distinguishes one thought from another, and also from its object, but it also presupposes its starting places, its axioms. Beginning with a definition, therefore, indicates that

Hegel is pointing out the error of the first stage using a marker that he links strongly with abstraction, “definition.” The second stage does not mention explicitly that finitude is its topic, but focuses instead on possibility. The possibility in this context concerns the objectivity of God as compared with the concept of God. That is, the relation between Anselm’s definition of God and the question of its mere subjectivity is “possibility.” The second stage asserts that the concept might relate to a real object, and it might not. And finally, the third stage is very directly about unity. The phrase “one with itself” makes this clear.

It is at first puzzling to see the word “abstraction” in the third position, but this is explained by the fact that the entire three-stage argument of Anselm is being placed within the first premise of

Hegel’s argument. The first stage of every triad, for Hegel, involves something akin to the abstractive program. Thus, Anselm’s entire argument is covered by the shroud of abstraction because its conclusion is still abstract. Nonetheless, the typical characteristics of each triad are still detectable within Anselm’s argument. This introduces the characteristic of nesting into Hegel’s argumentation.

Hegel is not only transferring Anselm’s argument into his own first stage, but as a first premise, that

158 VBDG, 189. Bold emphasis added. OB, 272: “[First]. . . Es wird mit dem Vollkommensten angefangen und dieses als das allerrealste Wesen bestimmt, als Inbegriff aller Realitäten; [Second] man hat das die Möglichkeit geheißen; der Begriff als subjektiver, indem man ihn von dem Sein unterscheidet, ist der nur mögliche oder er soll wenigstens der mögliche sin; . . . . [Third] Es ist leicht aufzuzeigen, daß dann nur die Abstraktion des mit sich Einen übrigbleibt: . . .”

69 stage is itself a three-part deduction. This capacity to nest was used by Hegel in the Logics to connect concepts together. Here, in the VBDG, it is used to show that one argument in its entirety, in addition to the historical stage that embodies that argument, can be the premise of another.

At this point, there is another, very surprising characteristic added to Hegel’s account of

Anselm. Modal descriptors are repeatedly and thus explicitly attached to the second of the three premises within Anselm’s argument. There are in fact three in this one medium-sized sentence. A three-fold repetition is a clear means of emphasis, and this makes it conspicuous enough to warrant a closer inspection. In the introductory paragraph, the second stage is called a “manifestation.”

There, “God manifests godself.”159 A representation or appearance of something is dubitable. It is possibly a veridical representation, and possibly not. A manifestation is a mere appearance, suggesting that the concept of God and the being of God are possibly distinct. A mere appearance is aptly described as a possibility. These concepts fit well with the other descriptions of the second stage from the opening paragraph. The second stage describes a separated objectivity that is unstable enough to eventually give way to unity in the next stage. The objectivity that is sought is, in the second stage, considered as possible. But, the separation and disunity that is held in suspense at the second stage is eventually rejected in favor of the unity of the third stage. Possibility is thus a good general characterization for these two descriptions of the second stage. Yet, possibility is a modal characteristic. Since this is an argument, a modal modification like this can function as a modal operator. And, if the second stage is modified modally, then perhaps the other stages are as well. It is not as obvious in this lecture, but as will be shown, there are a few clues that Hegel means to apply necessity to both the first and third stages of his argument. His own conclusion, his own position on the relation of thought to being, is described by him as a demonstration, a proof, and a result. And, the presupposition of Anselm is being described by Hegel as a definition and a posit. Thus, they

159 VBDG, 187. OB, 271: “Gott sich . . . manifestiert.”

70 both carry a connotation of certainty. Yet, because Anselm’s version is being placed inside of

Hegel’s argument, as its first premise, it can be seen that Hegel’s necessity and Anselm’s are contradictory. Though it is only a hint at this point in the lecture, I interpret Hegel here as intending to negate Anselm’s claim to necessity, and vindicate his own. This sets up a contest of sorts between modally modified concepts. Anselm denies that concept and object are unified, and holds this denial as a certainty; the second attitude is unsure of the relation between concept and object; but in contrast to both of them, Hegel concludes that concept and object are unified and considers this result to be a certainty. The pattern is thus modified by modal concepts in the following way: the negated necessity of abstraction; the negated possibility of finitude; and the demonstrated necessity of unity. So far, however, only the first of these stages has been presented. We will see the other stages as the lecture moves forward.

Taking account of what has been done so far in the lecture, I note that, at the surface, Hegel only seems to be describing Anselm’s argument, but the description is unusual because it appears to alter the original argument significantly. Hegel believes that he has dug deeply into Anselm’s argument to discover a self-referential contradiction between Anselm’s attitude and his proof. Hegel then converts Anselm’s argument, with a focus on his attitude, into a triadic form akin to his own description of the disjunctive syllogism. To this form he adds hints indicating that modal operators are in place. Recognition of this structure and these hints are rewarded as the same patterns are repeated multiple times before the brief lecture ends.

(i) The Arguments of Others After Anselm, Before Kant. After Anselm’s proof is analyzed, Hegel reviews other versions of the argument. He mentions Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff, Mendelssohn, and

Spinoza.160 However, he only gives specifics about the argument of Spinoza,161 which, no surprise, is

160 VBDG, 188-189.

71 also modified to take the three-stage form.

Text 1.3 - VBDG [The Three Stages in Spinoza’s Argument; Signs of Modality in all Three Stages]

Spinoza defines the concept of God as that which cannot be conceived without being.

The finite is that whose existence does not correspond to its concept. The genus is realized in existent individuals, but they are ephemeral; . . .

In the inwardly determined infinite, on the other hand, the reality must correspond to the concept—for this is the idea (Idee), the unity of subject and object.162

The argument of Spinoza bears striking resemblance not only to Hegel’s introductory paragraph, but also to the triadic form that Hegel’s philosophy takes. Each of Spinoza’s three stages parallels a stage in Hegel’s argument, at least in Hegel’s description of Spinoza. And so, in first stages, exemplified best by the Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel focuses on abstractions, but by the end of those stages, it is the abstractive program itself that is called into question. In the first volume of the

Encyclopedia, what begins as a consideration of the concept of Being eventually produces its own (still abstract) objectivity, complete with mechanism, chemism, life, etc., a complete world within abstract thought. The concept has produced its object internally, which means, among other things, that the concept cannot be conceived without being. Therefore, Hegel’s report of Spinoza parallels Hegel’s own description of his first stage. And again, as with Spinoza’s ontological argument, the conclusion of the first stage of every triad leads Thought to its next stage. In second stages, Hegel tends to focus on universals (genera), particulars, and individuals just as Spinoza is described as doing just above. This stage focuses on doubt, contingency, temporality, possibility, which are concepts that do

161 The reason for omitting a similar distillation of the arguments of the other thinkers is not given. Perhaps Hegel thinks that their inclusion would be repetitious, and thus unnecessary. If so, then it appears that Hegel skips the second stage for now. The one to which he turns next has much in common with his own view. So, it is likely a representative of the third stage. Despite this, Hegel will conclude his lecture with an extended discussion of Kant. This then does double duty. It will represent the second stage (out of order), but it will also address the most significant critique of the Ontological Argument available to Hegel in his own time. 162 VBDG, 189. Bold emphasis added. OB, 273: “Spinoza bestimmt den Begriff Gottes so, daß er dasjenige ist, was nicht ohne Sein konzipiert werden kann. Das Endliche ist das, dessen Dasein dem Begriff nicht entspricht: Die Gattung ist realisiert in den daseienden Individuen, aber diese sind vergänglich; . . . . Hingegen in dem in sich bestimmten Unendlichen muß die Realität dem Begriff entsprechen – dies ist die Idee, Einheit des Subjekts und Objekts.”

72 not correspond to their object with necessity and thus struggle with that dissociation until some kind of end is reached. These stages terminate with the negation of their contingencies and possibilities; they are therefore “ephemeral,” as Spinoza notes above. Thus, contingency is a characteristic of the second stage for both Hegel and Spinoza. And finally, with regard to third stages in the arguments of both philosophers, no appropriate description can be more brief than the words Hegel uses to describe Spinoza’s third stage above: “. . . this is the idea, the unity of subject and object.” Hence, the correlation between the ontological argument of Hegel’s Spinoza and the oft repeated triadic patterns in Hegel’s system is quite striking.

I should mention at this point that this repurposing of Spinoza’s ontological argument need not mean that Hegel accepts Spinoza’s philosophy any more than he had accepted Anselm’s. He has altered them both to suit his purposes. Yet, the modifications made to Spinoza’s argument may seem minor in comparison to the modifications made to Anselm’s. It is not my intention to make a detailed comparison, but it will be helpful at this point to point out some similarities and differences between Spinoza and my present reading of Hegel. This will be a brief but unavoidable tangent.

Both are monists, which means that all things whatsoever are unified by means of a unifying factor, which is also called “God” by both. Like Hegel’s absolute Idea, Spinoza’s God is synonymous with the whole. Spinoza affirms God’s immanence, as does Hegel. And because the whole is God, with all appropriate caveats, there is nothing beyond the whole. Thus, Spinoza and

Hegel’s formulation of God is not transcendent to the natural world. And so, Spinoza rejects dualism just as Hegel does. In addition, Spinoza’s Whole is a deterministic system, and although this is not a core part of my present argument, I think that Hegel too is a logical determinist, and this follows from a concept that I will develop later, the exhaustive completeness of Hegel’s absolute

Idea. I.e., if all possibilities whatsoever are included in the absolute, then no alternatives can exist

73 outside of it. While this allows for a kind of compatibilistic freedom,163 it does not allow for freedom or contingency at the highest level of consideration. Thus, all possibilities become necessities, at least for Hegel, and this will have inestimable logical value as my final chapter will show. Hegel and

Spinoza, therefore, have much in common, but their monisms can also be distinguished. There are several crucial differences. First, Hegel rejects what is now commonly called Neutral Monism.164 If one is a monist, then one has the option to conceive of the one substance as physical, mental, or neither. The third option describes neutral monism, and the second describes idealistic monism.

Both Hegel and Spinoza reject dualism, and so they are both monists. The neutral monist (Spinoza) conceives of a single substance underlying all mental and physical entities that is itself neither mental nor physical. The idealist (Hegel) thinks that the one unifying substance is fully conceptual.

Second, as a consequence of the first distinction, Hegel’s God is cognizable, a consequence of being deducible. Since Spinoza’s monism is not conceptual, and because our subjectivity limits us to conceptual understanding (Kant), it follows that Spinoza’s God must remain to some degree inscrutable and Spinoza’s philosophy must be considered precritical if it naively presupposes access to information about the whole beyond the conceptual and material. This is Hegel’s innovation: by making the absolute Idea conceptual, he also makes it accessible. And, he works to eliminate all dualisms so that knowledge can be grounded by producing an accessible unity. Not only does Hegel think that God is comprehensible, he thinks he has comprehended God with a single, infinitely dense syllogism. Thus, Hegel’s monism is post-critical and it addresses problems that the Critical

Philosophy raised after Spinoza.

Returning now to the passage above and its recapitulation of Spinoza’s ontological argument, I notice finally the explicit appearance of modal operators in the first and third stages.

163 Christopher Yeomans, Freedom and Reflection: Hegel and the Logic of Agency (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 4-6. Yeomans thinks of Hegel as a compatibilist in some sense, but indicates that it is difficult to fit Hegel into the traditional categories. I have an easier time fitting him into this category as I go on to explain. 164 Cf., C. D. Broad, The Mind and Its Place in Nature (New York: Kegan Paul, 1925), 133.

The concept of God “cannot be conceived without being.” This is equivalent logically to “must not be conceived . . .” and to “necessarily not.” In contrast, for the third stage, reality “must” correspond to the concept. The modal status of the second stage was made explicit in an earlier part of the lecture, and this was seen above as an occasion to look for modal modifications in the other stages, but here the modal status of the first and third stages is made explicit rather than the second.

Necessity is thus appended to the first and third stages, but this is not surprising because the second stage in Anselm’s argument was so prominently peppered with modal terms in Hegel’s description—

“possibility, . . . merely possible . . . possible,”165—that it now appears to have been a foreshadowing.

Hegel has gradually introduced us to the existence of these modal operators and their places in the three stages.

(ii) Kant’s Criticism of Anselm and Hegel’s Response. Having faced his last pre-critical source, Hegel finally addresses the Critical Philosophy through an analysis of Kant’s now-famous rejection of the

Ontological Argument: existence cannot be considered a predicate.166 As was noted above, with the help of Redding and Bubbio, Hegel uses the resources of Kant’s philosophy to defeat Kant’s own criticism at this point.

This is the second premise to Hegel’s own argument. That is, Hegel’s answer to Kant’s rejection of the classical argument is central to his overall goals, overcoming dualism and grounding knowledge, but Hegel’s characterization of Kant’s philosophical program as a whole is also a prominent part of Hegel’s own version of the argument. So, this is not just a tangent or a comment from the sidelines. The Critical Philosophy itself is the historical analog to Hegel’s second premise.

Up to this point, however, this was fairly well hidden. That Hegel is setting up two distinct groupings is only made evident after the appearance of the second group. By contrasting the two

165 VBDG, 189. OB, 272: “. . . Möglichkeit . . . nur mögliche . . . mögliche . . .” 166 VBDG, 189-191.

75 descriptions, Hegel makes the themes of the first and second stages evident.

This also sets up the third premise. Hegel’s descriptions are now detectable as an elevated perspective on the other two, and are thus a third. Hegel’s perspective is at the margin of the other philosophies and this opens up the space of a third “attitude.” And so, it is only from the perspective of Hegel’s own third position that the first two stages gain their logical contexts and meanings. The interactions between the first two stages is thus revealed to be the true, underlying focus of Hegel’s analysis, but that analysis itself becomes a third of three stages. The lecture, therefore, becomes a three-stage deduction in itself.

The first stage, when understood as an attitude of the understanding, “holds being and concept rigidly apart.”167 This is the same criticism that Hegel levels against the traditional metaphysics. This means that Hegel is tying his criticism of Anselm to his criticism of the traditional metaphysics, which is given at much greater length in the early sections of the Encyclopedia. Here,

Anselm’s version of the proof is called a mere “presupposition”; this characteristic makes it

“unsatisfactory.”168 In these respects, the first stage differs markedly from the second, as Kant’s criticism itself points out, but it is this criticism by Kant that bears the hallmarks of the second stage’s own internal contradiction. Hegel will be rejecting the criticism to show that both of the first two stages has a flaw. His third stage will then overcome them both.

Regarding the error of the first stage, the problem for Hegel is not that the argument unifies thought and being, contra Kant, but that it presupposes this unity. Thus, the problem is not that

“being is not a predicate,”169 but that the unity of being and concept cannot simply be a presupposition because what the presupposition proposes is at odds with the nature of concepts.

This explains the movement between the stages. Hegel is describing why and how the first

167 VBDG, 190. OB, 273: “. . . hält Sein und Begriff streng auseinander, . . .” 168 Ibid. 169 Ibid.

76 stage/premise ends and the second begins. The presupposition that characterizes the first stage is itself a concept, and it is contradicting itself in an unusual way. That is, the presupposition itself “is the antithesis of itself: it is the unresolved contradiction.”170 This is the reason that Hegel gives for why Anselm’s argument is unsatisfactory, why it must be repaired. Concepts that express finitude and subjectivity are not simply in contradiction with their contents and referents, they are in contradiction with their own nature as concepts. This is the meaning of “the antithesis of itself: . . .”

Despite this internal dissonance, says Hegel, this presupposition is very common; “we believe that we can regard the concept as strictly subjective, as finite; but the determinate quality of being is in the concept itself.”171 In other words, the very quality that constitutes being is the concept, so a concept that denies the conceptual connection to being is contradicting concepts’ nature. For that reason, if being is a determinate quality within the concept itself, then it is a contradiction to presuppose that concepts are merely subjective and thus disconnected from being.172 This is the reason that Hegel is giving here in the VBDG for why the proof moves from the first to the second stage. The failure of the first stage is its self-reduction to absurdity by means of an implicit but self- refuting reference it makes to its own nature.

This is a very different criticism than the one that Kant has given. Kant’s criticism of Anselm reveals a new kind of mistake, Kant’s own. It is one that second stages make, an attitude of dubitability regarding the unity of concept and object that the first attitude presupposed as a necessity. The first attitude is a presupposition of necessary unity; the second is skeptical of that unity; both presuppose access to the objective truth, and that truth’s implicit unity, in order to reach

170 Ibid. OB, 274: “. . . somit der Gegensatz seiner selbst; es ist der unaufgelöste Widerspruch.” I will later name this contradiction Intermodal Self-Negation. 171 VBDG, 190-191. OB, 274: “. . . man glaubt, diesen festhalten zu können als subjektiven, als endlichen, aber die Bestimmung des Seins ist am Begriff selbst.” 172 This is a very important driving force within the three-stages of the argument. Hegel here links it with sublation, and perhaps this is the primary function of sublation, but I will later refer to it by another term, “intermodal self-negation” and peg it as a logical rule of inference. A more thorough analysis will be given before the end of this chapter and also in Chapter II.

77 their conclusions. So, both attitudes assert concepts that self-refute by contradicting their own nature as concepts. Hegel has noticed, in addition to the two mistakes, that there is only one remaining option. The three options, therefore, form a disjunction: either A, or B, or C.173 And,

Hegel’s analysis from the margins of philosophy and history, form the third and final stage.

Again, there are three options regarding the unity of concept and object: we can presuppose its necessity; we can deduce the mere possibility of its necessity; or we can deduce its necessity.

Hegel efficiently sets up this triad simply by describing and negating the first two options, thereby implicitly assuming the position of the third. The lecture is the third. This is Hegel’s ontological argument, a deduction that contains and deduces itself. This approach, however, may seem to be an example of begging the question. How can a self-deducing syllogism avoid fallacy?

(iii) The OA as a Self-Supporting Deduction. Because Hegel wants his hearers and readers to understand that he is involved in a deduction, he takes time to address the anticipated counterargument of circular reasoning. If Hegel were not giving us a deduction, this defensive stance would not be needed. But, Hegel, in the quotation given below, does offer an explanation in anticipation of the accusation of begging the question.

To review, if a logician or metaphysician does not presuppose his starting principles, then he must secure them some other way. Hegel attempts to do this in the strongest way; he will deduce his premises. But, if the premises of a deduction are also deduced, then either a linear chain of deductions is produced, or at some point the loop closes and the logical structure becomes a closed system.174 Hegel chooses the circular option, but he does so in a way that is not invalid.175 The

173 Cf., WL, 701. Hegel’s Disjunctive Syllogism contains this three-variable association as its disjunctive judgment. In the traditional form, this is the “p or q” premise of the two-variable form of the syllogism. I will reveal why Hegel uses three variables in Chapter IV. 174 I will analyze circularity more fully in Chapter II. I will there explain how Hegel uses circularity to overcome presupposition while maintaining validity. 175 Logicians since Plato and Aristotle have recognized a specific kind of valid self-referential deduction. I will

VBDG does not clarify how Hegel avoids the fallacy of the petitio principii—he had already given us the Encyclopedia at this point, arguably a multi-volume explanation of this very thing. Instead, Hegel briefly indicates here that this is an accomplishment of sublation: “The finitude of subjectivity is sublated in the concept itself, and the unity of being and concept is not a presupposition vis-à-vis the concept, against which it is measured.”176 There are two reasons for this. As hinted just above, the logical features of sublation itself, of its specific deductive form, involve a valid form of self- reference and Hegel believes he has already explained himself on this topic, and as I will show, many other Hegelian texts reveal valid self-reference to be a feature of the Disjunctive Syllogism.177

Secondly, Hegel states, “the concept necessarily includes being.”178 The unity in the conclusion, therefore, was implicit from the start. So, it is available (accessible) from any stage of the argument.

If being is “simple relation to self,”179 and if the concept can demonstrate that it contains this relation, then there is no fallacy.180 Hegel seems to be making use of this second explanation when he writes:

Being is simple relation to self, . . . . The concept, if we consider it, is that in which all distinction has been absorbed, or in which all categorical determinations are present only in an ideal way [als ideell]. This ideality is sublated mediation, . . . perfect clarity, pure transparency and being-present-to-self. . . . absolute self-relatedness, . . . . thus the concept contains being implicitly; it consists precisely in the sublating of its own one-sidedness.181

Hegel is arguing that the being that is implicit within the concept is derived by sublating that which mediates between thought and object. The concept is the (logical) process of sublating its one-

cover this in Chapter II and IV. 176 VBDG, 191. OB, 274: “Diese Endlichkeit der Subjektivität ist an ihm selbst aufgehoben, und die Einheit des Seins und des Begriffs ist nicht eine Voraussetzung gegen ihn, an der er gemessen wird.” 177 Other passages will be explored in this chapter, from the EL, that address this issue. In addition, this will be a major topic in Chapter II. 178 Ibid. OB, 274: “. . . der Begriff enthält ferner notwendig das Sein: . . .” 179 VBDG, 191. OB, 274: “. . . Dieses [Sein] ist einfache Beziehung auf sich, . . .” 180 Recall that this was Henrich’s objection to this interpretation of Hegel’s ontological argument. See, Henrich, 218-219. 181 VBDG, 191. OB, 274: “. . . Dieses [Sein] ist einfache Beziehung auf sich, . . . der Begriff, wenn wir ihn betrachten, ist das, worin aller Unterschied sich absorbiert hat, worin alle Bestimmungen nur als ideell sind. Diese Idealität ist die aufgehobene Vermittlung, . . . vollkommene Klarheit, reine Helligkeit und Beisichselbstsein; . . . : Der Begriff hat so das Sein an ihm selbst, er ist selbst dies, seine Einseitigkeit aufzuheben; . . .”

79 sidedness and in this it “consists.” This is the conclusion of the argument, the result of the third stage. It is accomplished in the Encyclopedia by deriving the connection among all concepts. The connectedness of Thought, and the link that this provides between concepts and objectivity, works to sublate the abstractive presupposition that the first attitude posits. In other words, the presupposition of non-unity (abstraction) results in the derivation of unity. Hegel deduces the latter from the former; this is the feat of the Logic. Presupposing disconnectedness leads to a proof of connectedness. Abstraction has been a one-sided perspective on Thought, a presupposition, and this is sublated, or self-negated, by the end of the Logic.

One way to understand this as a valid deduction is to recognize the negative steps of the inference as they are coupled with the features of a disjunction. It is not that Hegel brazenly infers his own premises by means of his conclusion. This would be a positive self-reference, which would be fallacious. Yet, this very mistake is made by those who assert the position of the first stage. It is by this fault that Hegel reveals it to be self-negating. So, Hegel is rejecting the presupposers (those who employ fallaciously circular syllogisms), and he is negating the premise that proposes this position. For example, Anselm presupposes his access to the axiom of the definition, but Hegel negates that presupposition. Then, Hegel goes on to negate a second option, in which philosophical skepticism posits confidently that the truth cannot be known. Yet, these attempts also self-refute for they require the resources of their conclusion in order to be true. They too beg the question. So, it is not Hegel who begs the question, it is the others that do this. Yet, there is only one option remaining. The three together produce a syllogism. The two premises self-refute. If there are only three options and the first two cannot get off the ground, then the third is proved soundly by a disjunctive syllogism. That this has ontological consequences is very surprising. The failure of negative claims leads to a positive conclusion by default. In this way, Hegel makes an end-run around the problem of self-reference.

Again, the VBDG alone does not make Hegel’s position on circularity clear, and here I must be content only to introduce the issues involved, but there are several hints in this lecture that can be examined. At the point of the lecture where Hegel is addressing Kant’s criticism of the Ontological

Argument, he defends Anselm’s conclusion by reference to his own. But, in doing this, he exposes an underlying dependency on his conclusion within both his first and second premises. Anselm errs, thinks Hegel, not for making existence a predicate, but for assuming that the concept is finite.

When we believe we have separated being from the concept, this is only our opinion [re: Anselm’s dogmatism]. When Kant says that reality cannot be ‘plucked out’ of the concept, then the concept is there being grasped as finite. But the finite is what sublates itself, and when we were supposed to be treating the concept as separate from being, what we had was the self-relatedness that is implicit in being itself.182

Circularity is implied by the way that being’s self-relatedness is implicit within it. Kant argued that being cannot be “plucked out” of the concept, but Hegel responds that being is constituted by conceptual relations. Therefore, contra Kant, the Ontological Argument does not deduce being as a novel characteristic from a concept, but instead being was already part of the concept. In this way,

Hegel is contending that the one-sidedness of the presupposition that Anselm makes sublates

(negates) itself. This historical self-refuting error, becomes a self-negating logical sublation in the

Logics where objectivity is derived from the concept of being. It is there that the concept “sublates its subjectivity itself and objectifies itself.”183 Hegel connects the historical stage and the logical stage by describing them in the same way. The same three logical steps are seen in Hegel’s reviews of historical philosophies and arguments, in the three-part sublations of the Encyclopedia, and now in

Hegel’s lecture on the Ontological Argument. It is the same argument in each case.

Text 1.4 - VBDG

182 VBDG, 191. OB, 274: “. . . es ist bloße Meinung, wenn man das Sein von Begriff entfernt zu haben glaubt. Wenn Kant sagt, man könne aus dem Begriff die Realität nicht herausklauben, so ist da der Begriff als endlich gefaßt. Das Endliche ist aber dies sich selbst Aufhebende, und indem wir so den Begriff als getrennt vom Sein hatten betrachten sollen, hatten wir eben die Beziehung auf sich, die das Sein ist an ihm selber.” 183 VBDG, 191. OB, 274: “. . . er hebt selbst seine Subjektivität auf und objektiviert sich.”

[The Three Stages of Hegel’s Argument; A “Result”]

After criticizing Kant’s criticism and defending Anselm’s argument. Hegel summarizes his own version of the argument to help his listeners and readers to connect the dots and see that his own system is an ontological argument. I again divide the argument into three parts:

[W]hat was at first only ideal is stripped of its one-sidedness and thereby made into a subsisting being. The concept is always this positing of being as identical with itself.

In intuiting, feeling, etc. we are confronted by external objects [objekte]; . . .

. . . but we take them up within us, so that they become ideal in us. What the concept does is to sublate its differentiation. When we look closely at the nature of the concept, we see that its identity with being is no longer a presupposition but a result. What happens is that the concept objectifies itself, makes itself reality and thus becomes the truth, the unity of subject and object.184

These three stages repeat the pattern seen in the first paragraph of the lecture: the one-sidedness of the first stage, abstraction; the finitude and objectivity of the second stage; and the concept-being unity of the third. The third stage is “no longer a presupposition but a result.” Thus the conclusion of the first stage is retained by means of the three-stage process. This process is recognizable as a sublation, but once Hegel’s preeminent syllogism is learned, we can see that it is also a deduction, and for this reason is it a result (Resultat).185

Hegel has opposed Kant’s refutation of Anselm, and he has attempted to assist Anselm, et al., in completing the task of the Ontological Argument by means of a deductive method that many believed had been proven inadequate. Hegel respects Kant, but he does not respect his boundaries.

This shows that Hegel is not allowing Kant to keep him from pursuing metaphysics or formal logic.

Both of these are bound up with the Ontological Argument that Hegel has labored to redeem.

184 VBDG, 191. Bold added. OB, 274-275: “. . . was nur erst Ideelles war, dem wird seine Einseitigkeit genommen, und es wird damit zum Seienden gemacht: Der Begriff ist ewig diese Tätigkeit, das Sein identisch mit sich zu setzen. Im Anschauen, Fühlen usf. haben wir äußerliche Objekte vor uns; wir nehmen sie aber in uns auf, und so sind die Objekte ideell in uns. Der Begriff ist so diese Tätigkeit, seinen Unterschied aufzuheben. Wenn die Natur des Begriffs eingesehen wird, so ist die Identität mit dem Sein nicht mehr Voraussetzung, sondern Resultat. Der Gang ist dieser, daß der Begriff sich objektiviert, sich zur Realität macht, und so ist er die Wahrheit, Einheit des Subjekts und Objekts.” 185 Hodgson, Hegel and Christian Theology, 122. Hodgson, as an example, does not see this “result” as an indicator of deduction. The evidence that it is a deduction, however, needs only to be pointed out. If the elements of a deduction are present in a text, then this should be recognized.

(iv) Hegel Reveals his Goals and Methods. After addressing Kant, Hegel immediately summarizes the three-stages yet again and this brings his lecture to a conclusion that matches his starting place.

Text 1.5 - VBDG [Hegel’s Argument Contains Previous Views as Premises]

Our present standpoint is that of Christianity. Here we have the concept of God in all its freedom. For this concept is identical with being, which is the poorest of all abstractions; no concept is so poor as not to have this determination in it.

We do not have to consider being in the poverty of its abstraction, or in false immediacy, but as the being of God, as wholly concrete being, distinct from God. The consciousness of finite spirit is the concrete being, the material in which the concept of God is realized. . . .

Related negatively to itself, it becomes the process of dividing and differentiating itself; but what has been thus distinguished though it may at first appear as something external, devoid of spirit, extra-divine, is identical with the concept.186

The plan introduced in the first paragraph of the VBDG is here given once again. The same triadic pattern and most of its key descriptors are repeated here for a seventh time. Hegel is thus fulfilling his thesis statement after taking us through the two historical stages he has distinguished.

Once again, Hegel divides the process into three stages: the abstracted; the possible and finite; and the unified. The result is not just the third stage, however, but it is the three taken together as a whole. The proof is not simply a vehicle for the prize of the conclusion, but the conclusion is the whole. The third stage is also the whole argument with its three parts.187 It is now clearer than ever that Hegel has provided in this lecture his own ontological argument using previous arguments as his premises. It also bears striking resemblance to his own Absolute Identity

186 VBDG, 191-192. OB, 275: “Der Standpunkt, auf dem wir uns befinden, ist der christliche. – Wir haben hier den Begriff Gottes in seiner ganzen Freiheit: Dieser Begriff ist identisch mit dem Sein; Sein ist die allerärmste Abstraktion; der Begriff ist nicht so arm, daß er diese Bestimmung nicht in sich hätte. Das Sein haben wir nicht in der Armut der Abstraktion, in der schlechten Unmittelbarkeit zu betrachten, sondern das Sein als das Sein Gottes, als das ganz konkrete Sein, unterschieden vont Gott. Das Bewußtsein des endlichen Geistes ist das konkrete Sein, das Material der Realisierung des Begriffs Gottes. . . . dieses gesetzt, so ist er das Urteilen, das sich Unterscheiden; das Unterschiedene, das zunächst wohl als Äußerliches, Geistloses, Außergöttliches erscheint, ist aber identisch mit dem Begriff.” Bold emphasis added. Division into three parts added. 187 Zambrana, 124. The conclusion of the traditional syllogism is the mediator of the other two premises, but each premise is also the mediator of the other two. Given this caveat, Zambrana is in agreement that “the middle term is not the medium that unites two extremes, but the totality of the concept.”

Thesis, which is itself synonymous with his system.

It would normally be the case that a philosopher performing this kind of historical analysis is either modifying the historical idea to match his own purposes (abusing the source), or he is accepting it and expanding on it as a basis (extending the source). Hegel would then either be altering historical ontological arguments to match his own Absolute Identity Thesis, and thus making it into something different in order to serve his own purposes, or he would be paying homage to the Ontological Argument as correct and thus merely expanding on its implicit themes without destroying its original insights. In my opinion, Hegel is doing both, but in different senses.

Hegel sees the Ontological Argument as the true underlying form of his own system with regard to its method, but his goals are different and he thus shoehorns his very-different goals into Anselm’s argument. With regard to the method of the ancient proof, Hegel intends to adopt it, a fact that he had announced in the shorter Logic:

These are the two elements, abstract identity, on one hand, . . . and Being on the other— which Reason seeks to unify. And their union is the Ideal of Reason.188

The other way of unification by which to realize the Ideal of Reason is to set out from the abstractum of Thought and seek to characterize it: . . . . This is the method of the Ontological proof.190

Hegel therefore obtains the method of his philosophy from the argument of Anselm. This method is to begin with the concept and to work toward the object, or to “Being” as the passage above states. The VBDG makes this even clearer. Hegel begins with a three-stage form, making it the

188 EL, 80, §49. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 86: “Abstracte Identität, welche auch hier der Begriff genannt wird, und Seyn sind die zwei momente, deren Vereinigung es ist, die von der Vernunft gesucht wird; wie ist das Ideal der Vernunft.” 189 EL, 80, §50. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 86: “Diese Vereinigung läßt Zwei Wege oder Formen zu; es kann nämlich von dem Seyn angefangen und von da zum Abstractum des Denkens übergegagngen, oder umgekehrt kann der Uebergange vom Abstractum aus zum Seyn bewerkstelligt werden.” 190 EL, 84, §51. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 90: “Der andere Weg der Vereinigung, durch die das Ideal zu Stande kommen soll, geht vom Abstractum des Denkens aus fort zur Bestimmung, . . . ontologischer Beweis vom Daseyn Gottes.”

84 theme of his lecture on the Ontological Proof, he describes Anselm’s and others’ proofs in terms of the same three stages, and affixes attributes to the stages, and to the whole argument, that closely match the attributes of his own system. Hegel here identifies them as the same argument. The method of Hegel’s system is thus the same as the method of the Ontological Argument as Hegel understands it.

The goal of Hegel’s argument differs from the goal of Anselm’s. Hegel rewrites the goal of the argument in order to make use of it within his own philosophy. Rather than a proof of the existence of an independent, noumenal, and transcendent God, Hegel’s goal is to wed all concepts together into one connected structure, a structure that he sometimes calls “God” and that serves several otherwise divine functions.

The VBDG has been very illuminating of Hegel’s goals and method, and it has also revealed many of logical characteristics of the form he employs. To find more details, we must now turn to other texts.

(2) Excerpts from the Encyclopedia Logic

Text 1.6 - EL, §§49-51 [The Ideal of Reason is the IDT, Two paths to unity]

Accordingly God, when he is defined to be the sum of all realities, the most real of beings, turns into a mere abstract. And the only term under which that most real of real things can be defined is that of Being—itself the height of abstraction. These are the two elements, abstract identity, on the one hand, which is spoken of in this place as the notion; and Being on the other—which Reason seeks to unify. And their union is the Ideal of Reason.191

To carry out this unification two ways or two forms are admissible. Either we may begin with Being and proceed to the abstractum of Thought: or the movement may begin with the abstraction and end in Being. . . . But even without taking into consideration the possible blemish which the study of animated nature and of the other teleological aspects of existing things may contract from the

191 EL, 80, §49. GW, Band 20, 86: “Gott wird als Inbegriff aller Realitäten oder als das allerrealste Wesen zum einfachen Abstractum, und für die Bestimmung bleibt nur die ebenso schlechthin abstracte Bestimmtheit, das Seyn, übrig. Abstracte Identität, welche auch hier der Begriff genannt wird, und Seyn sind die zwei momente, deren Vereinigung es ist, die von der Vernunft gesucht wird; wie ist das Ideal der Vernunft.”

pettiness of the final causes, and from puerile instances of them and their bearings, merely animated nature is, at the best, incapable of supplying the material for a truthful expression to the idea to God.192

The other way of unification by which to realize the Ideal of Reason is to set out from the abstractum of Thought and seek to characterize it: for which purpose Being is the only available term. This is the method of the Ontological Proof.193

God, on the contrary, expressly has to be what can only be ‘thought as existing’; his notion involves being. It is this unity of the notion and being that constitutes the notion of God. If this were all, we should have only a formal expression of the divine nature which would not really go beyond a statement of the nature of the notion itself.194

Hegel considers his own philosophical project to be the epitome of ontological arguments.

These texts most clearly explain that the project Hegel is taking up will itself be an ontological argument. In the first passage above, Hegel indicates that the “Ideal of Reason,” which is the goal of

Philosophy, is to unify the Notion (the abstract identity) with Being. Of course, the Notion will be the conclusion of the Logic, and the Logic’s theme is abstraction. The goal of Reason, therefore, will not be accomplished by the Logic; this task will be taken up in a later volume. So, this first of four passages above merely sets the course to the final destination for the Encyclopedia as a whole. That destination will be the unity of Notion and Being.

The next two passages deliberate about the means to that end. Two types of arguments for the existence of God are briefly described. Those that start with the mundane and work up to God, and the alternative that begins in “the abstractum of Thought,” which was earlier identified as in §49 as the Notion, and merely describes it without venturing into another realm. This is, of course, “the

192 EL, 80, 84, §50. GW, Band 20, 86, 90: “Diese Vereinigung läßt Zwei Wege oder Formen zu; es kann nämlich von dem Seyn angefangen und von da zum Abstractum des Denkens übergegagngen, oder umgekehrt kann der Uebergange vom Abstractum aus zum Seyn bewerkstelligt werden. . . . Allein außerdem, daß die Betrachtung der lebendigen Natur und der sonstigen Beziehung der vorhandenen Dinge auf Zwecke, durch Geringfügigkeit vont Zwecken, ja durch selbst kindische Anführungen von Zwecken und deren Beziehungen verunreinigt werden kann, so ist die nur lebendige Natur selbst in der That noch nicht dasjenige, woraus die wahrhafte Bestimmung der Idee Gottes gefaßt werden kann; . . .” 193 EL, 84, §51. GW, Band 20, 90: “Der andere Weg der Vereinigung, durch die das Ideal zu Stande kommen soll, geht vom Abstractum des Denkens aus fort zur Bestimmung, für die nur das Seyn übrig bleibt; – ontologischer Beweis vom Daseyn Gottes.” 194 EL, 85, §51. GW, Band 20, 91: “Gott aber soll ausdrücklich das seyn, das nur ‘als existirend gedacht’ werdan kann, wo der Begriff das Seyn in sich schließt. Diese Einheit des Begriffs und des Seyns ist es, die den Begriff Gottes ausmacht. – Es ist diß freilich noch eine formale Bestimmung von Gott, die deswegen in der That nur die Natur des Begriffes selbst enthält.”

86 method of the Ontological Proof.” Thus, the means to the destination of unity between Notion and

Being is the argument pioneered by Anselm, which now becomes Hegel’s method.

In the last passage above, Hegel has completed a brief account of the way that the

Ontological Argument works, but then admits that this function is not sufficient, not at this stage at least, the stage of the first volume of the Encyclopedia. Thus, not only is it not enough to say that the

Ontological Argument reaches to “Being,” because the goal is at this point poorly understood, but it is also insufficient because it is only a “formal expression,” the means to the goal is insufficient. That is, it is merely a form that represents the truth rather than the truth itself.

The problem is that abstract expressions, deductions, are trapped in the phenomena. This passage comes within Hegel’s analysis of the Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. It was a blunder on Kant’s part, thinks Hegel, to restrict objectivity to the abstract world and give only a nod to the remainder. But, if we note that Hegel is considering Kant’s philosophy from within the category of ontological arguments generally we can see that Hegel is finding a partner in Kant, to some extent.

Kant has the same goal, to find a way to connect thought to object, and he has the same general strategy, to begin with thought and reach out to being. Yet, Hegel has found Kant’s version wanting.

In the following section, Hegel describes this method of the Ontological Argument, when taken as a formal expression only, as “thought, at its highest pitch,”195 yet he also considers this to be insufficient because it is merely abstract thinking and no more. The Logic is the highest elevation of

Thought, but it is also trapped within its program of abstraction. Here, “. . . Reason supplies nothing beyond the formal unity required to simplify and systematize experiences; . . .”196 Kant’s philosophy, like Anselm’s, has trapped itself, but in a different way.

What then is the alternative to Kant’s philosophy that lies, nonetheless, within the same

195 EL, 86, §52. GW, Band 20, 92: “Dem Denken bleibt auf diese Weise auf seiner höchsten Spitze . . .” 196 EL, 86, §52. GW, Band 20, 92: “. . . liefert nichts als die formelle Einheit zur Vereinfachung und Systematisirung der Erfahrungen, . . .”

87 method? How can this ontological-argument method be pursued properly? It seems that Hegel has in mind an improved version of the argument, one that does not focus on Being exclusively (like

Anselm), and one that does not dwell forever in the realm of phenomenal categories (like Kant).

Hegel foreshadows his search for such an argument when he writes:

And yet there may be something still more insignificant than being—that which at first sight is perhaps supposed to be, an external and sensible existence, like that of the paper lying before me. However, in this matter [the Ontological Proof], nobody proposes to speak of the sensible existence of a limited and perishable thing. Besides, the petty stricture of the Kritik that ‘thought and being are different’ can at most molest the path of the human mind from the thought of God to the certainty that he is: it cannot take it away. It is this process of transition, depending on the absolute inseparability of the thought of God from his being, for which its proper authority has been revindicated in the theory of faith or immediate knowledge—whereof hereafter.197

Here, Kant is the whipping boy once again. Even worse than seeking being, says Hegel, is to employ the ontological-argument method to seek something less than being. Kant has done this, but in doing so has fared even worse than what came before him. Despite this, Hegel has some praise for

Kant because he had refocused philosophy on the “absolute inwardness of thought.”198 In fact, thinks Hegel, this has been “[t]he main effect of the Kantian philosophy . . . to revive the consciousness of Reason, . . .”199 He is very glad to see that Kant did away with externality and favored idealism. Despite its excessive abstractness, Kant’s philosophy “absolutely refused to accept or indulge anything possessing the character of an externality.”200 This Hegel renames “the principle of independence of Reason,” and reason’s “absolute self-subsistence.”201 Thus, reason’s method is

197 EL, 85, §51. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 92: “Nur diß mag noch geringer seyn, was man sich etwa beim Seyn zunächst vorstellt, nämlich eine äußerliche sinnliche Existenz, wie die des Papiers, das ich hier vor mir habe; von einer sinnlichen Existenz eines beschränkten, vergänglichen Dinges aber wird man ohnehin nicht sprechen wollen. – Uebrigens vermag die triviale Bemerkung der Kritik; daß der Gedanke und das Seyn verschieden seyen, dem Menschen etwa den Gang seines Geistes vom Gedanken Gottes aus zu der Gewißheit, daß er ist, höchstens zu stören aber nicht zu benehmen. Dieser Uebergang, die absolute Unzertrennlichkeit des Gedankens Gottes von seinem Seyn ist es auch, was in der Ansicht des unmittelbaren Wissens oder Glaubens in sein Recht wieder hergestellt worden ist, wovon nachher.” 198 EL, 93, §60. GW, Band 20, 99: “absoluten Innerlichkeit.” 199 EL, 93, §60. GW, Band 20, 99: “Die Hauptwirkung, welche die Kantische Philosophie gehabt hat, ist gewesen, das Bewußtseyn dieser absoluten Innerlichkeit erweckt zu haben, . . .” 200 EL, 93, §60. GW, Band 20, 99: “. . . schlechthin sich weigert etwas, das den Charakter einer Aeußerlichkeit hat, in sich gewähren und gelten zu lassen.” 201 EL, 93, §60. GW, Band 20, 99: “Das Princip der Unabhängigkeit der Vernunft . . . absoluten

88 the Ontological Argument, its goal is the unification of thought with its object, and this union is not to be understood in an abstract (separated) or external (transcendent) way. So, it appears at this point in the opening of the Encyclopedia Logic that Hegel’s preparations are complete. He is now ready to begin to develop the structure of Thought within these guidelines. Such a structure, given all of its introductory material, will:

 Be the science of thought that produces its own method and goal internally. This will be the method and modified goal of the Ontological Argument.  Be self-grounding, relying only on its own internal resources in terms of starting places and presuppositions.  Be self-proving, deriving itself deductively.  Be conceptual in nature, but not abstract (concreteness is Reason considered as an independent world, idealism over realism).  Eliminate all kinds of externality (physical, noumenal, or transcendent) by making internal resources utterly complete and sufficient.

(3) Excerpts from the Science of Logic

In the preface to the first edition of the Science of Logic, Hegel again makes reference to ontology and to the proofs of the existence of God.202 He does this as early as the second paragraph in which he laments the loss of his own culture’s metaphysics. This comment places the proof, as with the VBDG, in a thematic position. Just after this, he mentions the effect of the Kantian philosophy, that it was the main reason for the abandonment of super-sensible speculation. By the end of the preface, Hegel defends a new kind of speculative science, “the science of logic which constitutes metaphysics proper . . . [and] purely speculative philosophy.”203 This has led him to

“make a completely fresh start with this science,” which involves a “reconstruction of logic.”204 Such a new science needs to develop its own method of knowing because it is the nature of the content of

Selbstständigkeit in sich, . . .” 202 WL, Preface to the First Edition, 25. 203 WL, Preface to the First Edition, 27. GW, Band 21, 7: “. . . die logische Wissenschaft . . . reine speculative Philosophie . . .” 204 Ibid. GW, Band 21, 7: “. . . mit dieser Wissenschaft wieder einmal von vorne anzufangen, . . . Umbildung . . .”

89 the science to develop itself, internally. It “spontaneously develops itself in a scientific method of knowing.”205 It is a “self-construing method” that “enables philosophy to be an objective, demonstrated science.”206

In addition to method, the science also generates its own form. It is itself its own “reflection of the content itself which first posits and generates its determinate character.”207 Whatever form it takes, it will take that form itself (seine Bestimmung selbst) and not due to any external determination.

As we will see next, this form will be tripartite, modal, and syllogistic. As early as the preface to the second edition of the Science of Logic, the source of the next passage, these aspects of the form are already beginning to take shape.

Text 1.7 - Science of Logic, Preface to the Second Edition [The Three Stages With New Terminology]

The inadequacy of this way of regarding thought which leaves truth on one side can only be made good by including in our conception of thought not only that which is usually reckoned as belonging to the external form but the content as well. It is soon evident that what at first to ordinary reflection is, as content, divorced from form, cannot in fact be formless, cannot be devoid of inner determination; . . . . the Notion, simply as thought, as a universal, . . . ;

. . . secondly a Notion is determinate and it is this determinateness in it which appears as content: . . .

. . . but the determinateness of the Notion is a specific form of this substantial oneness, a moment of the form as totality, of that same Notion which is the foundation of the specific Notions.208

In the preface to the second edition, Hegel begins to anticipate some of the internal work of

205 Ibid. GW, Band 21, 7-8: “. . . indem zugleich diese eigne Reflexion des Inhalts es ist, welche seine Bestimmung selbst erst setzt und erzeugt.” 206 Ibid., 28. GW, Band 21, 8: “Auf diesem sich selbst construirenden Wege allein, behaupte ich, ist die Philosophie fähig, objective, demonstrirte Wissenschaft zu seyn.” 207 Ibid., 27. GW, Band 21, 8: “. . . zugleich diese eigne Reflexion des Inhalts es ist, welche seine Bestimmung selbst erst setzt und erzeugt.” 208 WL, Preface to Second Edition, 38-39. GW, Band 21, 17: “Die Unvollständigkeit dieser Weise, das Denken zu betrachten, welche die Wahrheit auf der Seite läßt, ist allein dadurch zu ergänzen, daß nicht bloß das, was zur äussern Form gerechnet zu werden pflegt, sondern der Inhalt mit in die denkende Betrachtung gezogen wird. Es zeigt sich von selbst bald, daß was in der nächsten gewöhnlichsten Reflexion als Inhalt von der Form geschieden wird, in der That nicht formlos, nicht bestimmungslos in sich, seyn soll; . . . . daß der Begriff als Gedanke überhaupt, als Allgemeines, . . . ; vors andere aber ist er wohl ein bestimmter Begriff, welche Bestimmtheit an ihm das ist, was als Inhalt, was als Inhalt erscheint, die Bestimmtheit des Begriffs aber ist eine Formbestimmung dieser substantiellen Einheit, ein Moment der From als Totalität, des Begriffes selbst, der die Grundlage der bestimmten Begriffe ist.”

90 the book. Once again the three-part form emerges. I have separated the passage into three sections above to make the divisions stand out. In this instance, unlike those analyzed above, something new is developing. The unity in question, which the three-stages demonstrate, is a unity of form and content rather than thought and object, an inward focus. What is new is that this objectivity is isolated within Thought, which is the encapsulation of the entire Logic and is that which produces the Logic. The Logic is all of Thought encapsulated with the program of abstraction; it is Thought taking itself to be abstract. Yet here, within this abstractive encapsulation, something additional is happening. Hegel begins to nest this form within itself, triads within members of higher triads.

Within the Logic’s encapsulation another set of encapsulations is now being given.

The explanation builds slowly. The attitude that “leaves truth on one side” (as abstraction does) also “reckons [it] as belonging to the external form,” but this is “inadequate” because the form and content should be joined together, unified. Our conception of Thought, says Hegel, should include both form and content. The reason for this is that the content cannot be formless, it “cannot be devoid of inner determination.” Thus, “the subject matter is not things but . . . the Notion of them.” This is the Notion “as thought” and “as a universal.” But, this is a nesting of abstraction within further abstraction. Within the Logic’s greater abstraction—the entire book is encapsulated as an abstraction of thought—Hegel is now giving a new triad inside of it. As the introduction to the

Science of Logic will make even clearer, abstracted thought has its own object, and this is something that Thought provides for itself.209 But this sets up a comparison between natural objects out in the world, “things,” and the objects of thought. That these are nested is of interest here. The

Encyclopedia, of which the Science of Logic is an expanded first stage, deals with the objectivity of

“things” in the natural world by means of its second volume, but here within the first stage, the objectivity in question remains abstract. It is still encapsulated within the program of the first stage.

209 WL, Introduction, 43-44.

This is how the two types of object are related by Hegel’s science. The structure of the Logic will in many ways mimic the structure of the Encyclopedia, even while the entirety of the Logic will be encapsulated by abstraction. The first part of the structure of Logic will be the doctrine of Being.

The second stage of the triad within the Logic is: “a Notion is determinate and it is this determinateness in it which appears as content: . . .” Here we see the quality of the second stage, a kind of objectivity within the abstraction of thought is being explained as Thought’s inner determination of its object, the abstract object of thought. This is Thought’s content. Therefore,

Thought produces its own content, and the common understanding that “thinking constitutes the mere form of a cognition, that logic abstracts from all content and that the so-called second constituent belonging to cognition, namely its matter, must come from elsewhere,”210 is rejected by

Hegel. This content is generated by the three-part form. The second stage of this form involves objectivity of a kind, and this is contrasted with the abstraction of the first stage.

Hegel gives a description of the third stage as well: “. . . but the determinateness of the

Notion is a specific form of this substantial oneness, a moment of the form as totality, of that same

Notion which is the foundation of the specific Notions.” And in addition, “[It] is the absolute, self- subsistent object [Sache], . . .”211 It was shown that third stages involve unity for Hegel’s three-stage structures. Here the unity is the “totality” of the Notion, though still as a notion. All three stages within the Logic will have the appropriate themes and follow the same pattern as the Encyclopedia.

In the Science of Logic, unlike the Encyclopedia Logic, explicit mentions of the traditional proof are rarer. Yet, there still remain some important references to it. “God,” as a term, is mentioned less, but we must not be mistaken about Hegel’s intentions; the realm of pure thought is the “realm of truth as it is without veil and in its own absolute nature. It can therefore be said that this content is

210 Ibid. GW, Band 21, 28: “. . . diß Denken die bloße Form einer Erkenntniß ausmache, daß die Logik von allem Inhalte abstrahire, und das sogennante zweyte Bestandstück, das zu einer Erkenntniß gehöre, die Materie, anderswoher gegeben werden müsse, . . .” 211 Ibid., 39. GW, Band 21, 17: “. . . und die an und für sich seyende Sache, . . . ”

92 the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence . . .”212 The term is used more sparingly, but the underlying method of the Ontological Argument and the goal of the Absolute Identity Thesis remains unchanged. For now, in the prefaces and introductions, the explicit references to the Ontological

Argument are being phased out. To go forward then, a new terminology must be adopted or else the connection with the Ontological Argument’s method and goal will go unnoticed.

One of the most prominent exceptions is the next passage, which begins the second section of the second volume of the Science of Logic; this is the section titled “Objectivity.”213 It is no surprise that this text comes just after the point of the book at which the disjunctive syllogism mediates the transition to objectivity. Unlike the parallel section of the Encyclopedia Logic, this section enjoys a more extensive discussion; Hegel there provides some needed details.

Text 1.8 - Science of Logic, Vol. 2, Sect. 2, “Objectivity” [Tying the Disjunctive Syllogism to the Ontological Argument]

In Book One of the Objective Logic, abstract being was exhibited as passing over into determinate being, but equally as withdrawing into essence. In Book Two, essence reveals itself as determining itself into ground, thereby entering into Existence and realizing itself as substance, but again withdrawing into the Notion. Of the Notion, now, we have shown to begin with [the fact] that it determines itself into objectivity. It is self-evident that this latter transition is identical in character with what formerly appeared in metaphysics as the inference from the notion, namely, the notion of God, to his existence, or as the so-called ontological proof of the existence of God. It is equally well known that Descartes’ sublimest thought, that God is that whose notion includes within itself its being, . . .214

This passage comes just after the derivation of the Disjunctive Syllogism. In fact, that syllogism was derived only one page earlier. This is the very next thing Hegel does. After completing that achievement, he now associates it, without delay, with the Ontological Argument; the rarity of such

212 Ibid., 50. GW, Band 21, 34: “Dieses Reich ist die Wahrheit, wie sie ohne Hülle an und für sich selbst ist. Man kann sich deßwegen ausdrücken, daß dieser Inhalt die Darstellung Gottes ist, wie er in seinem weigen Wesen . . .” 213 WL, 705ff. GW, Band 12, 127: “”DIE OBJECTIVITÄT.” 214 WL, 705. Bold emphasis added. Italics in original. GW, Band 12, 127: “Im ersten Buche der objectiven Logik wurde das abstracte Seyn dargestellt, als übergehend in das Daseyn, aber eben so zurückgehend in das Wesen, Im zweyten zeigt sich das Wesen, daß es sich zum Grunde bestimmt, dadurch in die Existenz tritt und sich zur Substanz realisirt, aber wieder in den Begriff zurückgeht. Vom Begriffe ist nun zunächst gezeigt worden, daß er sich zur Objectivität bestimmt. Es erhellt von selbst, daß dieser letztere Uebergang seiner Bestimmung nach dasselbe ist, was sonst in der Metaphysik als der Schluß vom Begriffe, nemlich vom Begriffe Gottes auf sein Daseyn, oder als der sogennante ontologische Beweis vom Daseyn Gottes vorkam. – Es ist eben so bekannt, daß der erhabenste Gedanke Deskartes, daß der Gott das ist, dessen Begriff sein Seyn in sich schließt, . . .”

93 a mention of the old proof in the Science of Logic makes this comment prominent. Hegel’s description above first runs through several processes that have transpired earlier in the book. Beginning with abstract being, Hegel had followed Thought into determinate being, and then he was “withdrawing” into essence. Then from essence to substance, and then Hegel “withdraws again into the Notion.”

At this point the notion is said to have determined itself into objectivity. Of this last transition,

Hegel says that it “is identical in character” to the Ontological Argument. This may seem strange to the reader who has skipped the Encyclopedia Logic, a work that mentions the Ontological Proof far more. Yet, it is not as if this reference comes out of nowhere. Hegel is reviewing the parts of the

Science of Logic that have been relevant to the Ontological Argument.215 And, he does this not as a comparison so much as an alternative description of what his philosophy is accomplishing. He has not been using the terminology of the old proof, but now he is recharacterizing his work in those terms. He is thereby reversing, for the purposes of review and possibly for emphasis, his earlier terminological switch from that traditional argument to his new jargon of absolute identity. Hegel anticipates that this comparison, despite all that he has said to connect his philosophy to the

Ontological Argument, might still seem hard to accept. For this reason, he next defends the connection explicitly:

Now though it might seem that the transition from the Notion into objectivity is not the same thing as the transition from the Notion of God to his existence, it should be borne in mind on the one hand that the determinate content, God, makes no difference in the logical process, and the ontological proof is merely an application of this logical process to the said content.216

There are two “hands” to consider here. On the first, Hegel comes close to saying that the content of the Ontological Argument can be distinguished from its form in such a way that one can

215 WL, 705. Hegel points in this passage to pp. 86, 112, and 442. Each of these references points to an earlier mention of the Ontological Argument by name. 216 WL, 706. GW, Band 12, 128: “Wenn es nun scheinen möchte, als ob der Uebergang des Begriffs in die Objectivität etwas anderes sey, als der Uebergang vom Begriff Gottes, zu dessen Daseyn, so wäre einerseits zu betrachten, daß der bestimmte Inhalt, Gott, im logischen Gange keinen Unterschied machte, und der ontologische Beweise nur eine Anwendung dieses logischen Ganges auf jenen besondern Inhalt wäre.”

94 substitute anything one likes for the content of the variable that is normally filled with “God.” Of course, this is not the case, because a hundred thalers (or dollars) do not appear in my hand when I work through the argument using that substitution. Hegel’s point is not that anything can be substituted, but that God, as commonly understood, is not the true occupant of the variable. He goes on:

On the other hand however it is essential to bear in mind the remark made above that the subject only obtains determinateness and content in its predicate; until then, no matter what it may be for feeling, intuition and pictorial thinking, for rational cognition it is only a name; . . .217

The name “God” is only a term until it is understood what it represents. The point he is making is the same one that he makes elsewhere: Hegel’s ontological argument is only about God if the reader defines God the same way that Hegel does. The use of the method and goal of the Ontological

Argument seems anachronistic and outdated to Hegel’s contemporaries, so he defends the form of his philosophy by clarifying here that this only seems strange to the reader who thinks of God in a particular way. An “old-fashioned” notion of God, as Hegel defines it, will lead to the old problem, dogmatic metaphysics. Another conception of God, Hegel’s, will not lead to these problems. Yet, it is still an ontological argument. This is why Hegel keeps mentioning this old argument long after he might have been expected to have put it to rest (cf., Henrich’s expectations).218

Yet, Hegel seems to want to have his cake and eat it too. Later on the same page he writes,

“God as the living God, and still more as absolute spirit, is known only in his activity; man was early instructed to recognize God in his works; . . .”219 It appears that Hegel is trying to both distance himself from traditional, Christian notions of God, and to benefit from some association with them.

He uses the term God. He uses the title of the preeminent proof for God’s existence. He refers to

217 Ibid. GW, Band 12, 128: “Auf der andern Seite aber ist sich wesentlich an die oben gemachte Bemerkung zu erinnern, daß das Subject erst in seinem Prädicate Bestimmtheit und Inhalt erhält, vor demselben aber, er mag für das Gefühl, Anschauung und Vorstellung sonst seyn was er will, für das begreiffende Erkennen nur ein Nahmen ist; . . .” 218 Henrich, 218-219. 219 WL, 706. GW, Band 12, 128: “Gott als lebendiger Gott, und noch mehr als absoluter Geist wird nur in seinem Thun erkannt. Früh ist der Mensch angewiesen worden, ihn in seinen Werken zu erkennen; . . .”

Anselm by name, and also Descartes. He even elevates Christianity, calling it the consummate religion, but one need not look much deeper than this to see that his versions of “God” and of the

“Ontological Argument” differ in significant ways from the traditional conceptions. Therefore, the interpreter should understand Hegel as doing something new. This explains why the remainder of the section involves a redefinition of “God.” God to Hegel is absolute spirit, an activity that

Thought eternally performs. This activity takes a specific form, and that form is a disjunctive syllogism. In the next text, Hegel ends this section with yet another repetition of the three-stage argument. This time it anticipates what is to come next, mechanism, chemism, and teleology.

Text 1.9 - Science of Logic, Vol. 2, Sect. 2, “Objectivity” [The Triad of Mechanism, Chemism, and Teleology]

First, then, objectivity is an immediacy whose moments, by virtue of the totality of all the moments, exist in a self-subsistent indifference as objects outside one another, and in their relationship possess the subjective unity of the Notion only as an inner or an outer unity. This is mechanism.

But secondly, this unity reveals itself as the immanent law of the objects themselves, and thus their relationship becomes their peculiar specific difference founded on their law; it becomes a relation in which their determinate self-subsistence sublates itself. This is chemism.

Thirdly, this essential unity of the objects is thereby posited as distinct from their self- subsistence; it is the subjective Notion, but posited as in and for itself related to objectivity, as end. This is teleology.220

Hegel here concludes the section explaining the transition from the final syllogism

(Disjunctive) to objectivity. He does so by giving us a triadic division. This transitional passage between subjectivity and objectivity had begun with several pages’ discussion of the Ontological

Proof (705-707). The argument had not been mentioned for quite some time, but this is the point at

220 Ibid., 710. GW, Band 12, 132: “Vors erste nun ist die Objectivität in ihrer Unmittelbarkeit, deren Momente, um der Totalität aller Momente willen, in selbstständiger Gleichgültigkeit als Objecte aussereinander bestehen, und in ihrem Verhältnisse die subjective Einheit des Begriffs nur als innere oder als äussere haben; der Mechanismus. – Indem in ihm aber [sic: no period] Zweytens jene Einheit sich als immanentes Gesetz der Objecte selbst zeigt, so wird ihr Verhältniß ihre eigenthümliche durch ihr Gesetz begründete Differenz, und eine Beziehung, in welcher ihre bestimmte Selbstständigkeit sich auf hebt; der Chemismus. Drittens diese wesentliche Einheit der Objecte ist eben damit als unterschieden von ihrer Selbstständigkeit gesetzt, sie ist der subjective Begriff aber gesetzt als an und für (sich) selbst bezogen auf die Objectivität, als Zweck; die Teleologie.”

96 which Hegel chooses to revive that discussion, and this is no coincidence. Following this reminder of the medieval argument, Hegel gives us a few pages on what it means to exist (707-710). And finally, here in the above passage (710), Hegel concludes with a section that breaks the now- syllogized Notion into three aspects: mechanism; chemism; and teleology. This is the basis for the

Notion’s objectivity, and it is itself a three-part syllogism of a now very recognizable form.

I divided the text above into three segments in addition to Hegel’s own ordinals (“[E]rste,”

“Zweytens,” and “Drittens”). The first segment relating to mechanism takes a discernible form; it is a typical first stage. It involves an imposed separation akin to the separation that is produced by abstraction. It is a self-subsistent totality but such independence is “only as an inner or an outer unity.” The individual moments possess the subjective unity that the Notion has, but only in a way that limits and separates them. There is a unity here in the first stage, but it is a problematic unity.

So, it retains the quality of a first stage, which implies its opposite, pointing to the next stage. The second segment is more cryptic. Notice that it “reveals itself as . . .” It is the same content as the first stage, the subjective unity, but now that unity has put on a mask. It is something immanent within the objects of the previous stage, therefore it takes the form of those objects’ substance. It is difficult to see that this is a form of objectivity within objectivity, but interpreting “immanent law” as a kind of underlying substance appears to be Hegel’s own underlying principle by which he is distinguishing this stage. The third stage is also difficult to interpret. It is like the second in that something external to the objects of stage one stands as an organizing principle. This time, however, rather than being an underlying and implicit substance, it comes as a distant end or purpose. This kind of unity operates ‘from above,’ as it were, and this will be the problem that takes this third stage and makes it into a first stage of the next round of sublation (The Philosophy of Nature). Here, however, it is the resolution and principle of unity for the previous round.

(4) Summation of Formal Elements for Category 1

The direct texts have, through repetition, carved out a specific logical form. Three stages of history, three stages of logical doctrine, three parts to the logical science, three parts to the

Ontological Argument, all have been a report of the same logical structure. As the VBDG indicated, this structure has the characteristics of a modal syllogism. The first two stages assert something and then that assertion is negated through a process internal to each stage. As will be shown, this three- stage form matches the form of Hegel’s derivation of the Disjunctive Syllogism: not the first; not the second; therefore the third. This form will require much development, but for now I will present it in simplified form, using “x” as the variable:

1. ~□~x 2. ~◇x (‘not merely possibly’) 3. □x

c) Category 2: Indirect References to the Ontological Argument

Here, texts make a less specific reference to the Ontological Argument or are relevant to the

Ontological Argument without it being explicitly mentioned by name. Despite the lack of direct reference, most of the information that Hegel makes available about his argument comes from this and the following two categories of texts. Thus, seeing the connection between the Absolute

Identity Thesis (IDT) and the Ontological Argument (OA) and seeing it as a disjunctive syllogism

(DS), features that were revealed through texts in the previous category, uncovers a treasure trove of additional information about the argument. In what follows, I will present texts that describe the three-part argument, its three parts individually, its logical properties, and its function.

Text 2.1 - EL, §240 [The Logic Is the IDT; It Is a Three-Part DS]

The abstract form of the advance is, [1] in Being, an other and transition into an other; [2] in Essence showing or reflection in the opposite; [3]in Notion, the distinction of individual from universality, which continues itself as such into, and is as an identity with, what is

distinguished from it.221

This brief section near the close of the Encyclopedia Logic summarizes it and reveals it to be tripartite.

It is given in the midst of a series of sections that is summarizing the method of the Logic, §§238-

242. This quotation is therefore a focused summary from within a more extended summary. The plan of that extended summary is given below in outline form. It divides the Logic into three parts, and each of the parts have multiple characteristics of its own, which I have gleaned from those sections. There are three stages:

1. “beginning,” §238: certainty of itself; immediate; describable as the Universal; systematic; presupposed.

2. “second sphere,” §239-241: deposed to a mere stage, mediate; mere reflection, showing, shining, primarily implicit; negation, regress; specific character (particular).

3. “end or terminus,” §240-242: sphere, totality, unity, identity; disappearance of the show or semblance; knowledge; one systematic whole.

The numbered parts of Text 2.1 relate to the same numbered divisions in the list just above.

Thus, the stage of “Being” pertains to the “beginning,” “Essence” to “second sphere,” and

“Notion” to “one systematic whole.” These summaries show that Hegel thinks of the Logic as a totality that has three parts. Such a logical structure shares and aligns with the parts of the

Disjunctive Syllogism. Moreover, each of the three premises has an identifiable modal status. The first carries, as an overarching feature, the status of “certainty”; the second carries the status of uncertainty that results from “negation,” “regress,” and deposition (possibly); and the third returns to the assurance of the first, but as having come through a mediating process. As with the VBDG, the properties of the three stages’ in the Logic include the same three modal operators in the same locations. So, the same structure is involved in all three: the VBDG and its ontological argument; the

221 EL, 295, §240. Bracketed numbers have been added. GW, Band 20, 230: “Die abstracte Form des Fortgangs ist im Seyn ein Anderes und Uebergehen in ein Anderes, im Wesen Scheinen in dem Entgegengesetzten, im Begriffe die Unterschiedenheit des Einzelnen von der Allgemeinheit, welche sich als solche in das von ihr Unterschiedene continuirt und als Identität mit ihm ist.”

Disjunctive Syllogism with its three premises; and the tripartite structure of the Logic.

The term “ontological argument” does not appear in these sections, but terms that relate to a unifying identity argument are ubiquitous. This was expected because of the shift in terminology that was seen in Category-1 texts. Structural similarities help to confirm that there is a connection. Thus,

Hegel’s ontological argument is a disjunctive syllogism, and Hegel’s Logic is a disjunctive syllogism, and they share the same disjunctive structure and the position of modal operators, and they both unify Thought into a systematic whole.

Text 2.2 - EL, §162 [The Notion Exhibits Stage-3 Characteristics, Is a Stage-3 Premise]

The preceding logical categories, those viz. of Being and Essence, are, it is true, no mere logical modes or entities: they are proved to be notions in their transition or their dialectical element, and in their return into themselves and totality. But they are only in a modified form notions . . . . The antithetical term into which each category passes, or in which it shines, so producing correlation, is not characterized as a particular. The third, in which they return to unity, is not characterized as a subject or an individual: nor is there any explicit statement that the category is identical in its antithesis—in other words, its freedom is not expressly stated: and all this because the category is not universality. What generally passes current under the name of a notion is a mode of understanding, or even a mere general representation, and therefore, in short, a finite mode of thought (cf., §62).222

This passage anticipates how the third stage relates to the first two stages, that is, how the “end or terminus” (§240-242) relates to the “second sphere” (§239-241) and to the

“beginning” (§238). Hegel is here looking back at the larger movement of his Logic, comparing the third stage to the first two, that is, the doctrine of Notion to the doctrines of

Being and Essence. The first lines of the above quotation reveal that Hegel is consistent: in

§82, he had promised that the earlier stages could be elicited at will from the final stage.

Above he confirms that this is so by describing the earlier modes (Being and Essence) as

222 EL, 225-226, §162. GW, Band 20, 178: “Die vorhergehenden logischen Bestimmungen, die Bestimmungen des Seyns und Wesens, sind zwar nicht bloße Gedankenbestimmungen, in ihrem Uebergehen, dem dialektischen Momente, und in ihrer Rückkehr in sich und Totalität erweisen sie sich als Begriffe. Aber sie sind . . . nur bestimmte Begriffe, . . . indem das Andere, in das jede Bestimmung übergeht oder in welchem sie scheint und damit als relatives ist, nicht als Besonderes, noch ihr Drittes als Einzelnes oder Subject bestimmt, nicht die Identität der Bestimmung in ihrer entgegengesetzten, ihre Freiheit gesetzt ist, weil sid nicht Allgemeinheit ist. — Was gewöhnlich unter Begriffen verstanden wird, sind Verstandes-Bestimmungen, auch nur allgemeine Vorstellungen: daher überhaupt endliche Bestimmungen; vergl. §. 62.”

100 notions in disguise. In this aspect of Hegel’s philosophy, the term “notion” (Begriff) is used as a superior way to characterize concepts; it reflects a post-critical and properly philosophical attitude that avoids the mistakes of naive presupposition and disconnectedness. Hegel uses the terms “being,” “essence,” and “notion” to distinguish three divisions of the Logic, but they represent also three corresponding attitudes toward concepts. The attitude that colors the subdivision of Being naively presupposes access to objects despite involving the concept-object separation in its operations. The attitude that colors the subdivision of

Essence correctly questions the access that concepts have to objects, but cannot avoid the separation itself. The third attitude asserts the unity of concept and object, but not naively; it

“earns” this conclusion by demonstrating deductively the unity that it presupposes. This unity is achieved by the negations of the first two attitudes. This makes the triad into a disjunctive syllogism: not the separation of first; not the doubt second; therefore the unity of the third. Seeing logical categories as notions (3) rather than merely as subjective entities (1) or regulative principles (3) is a superior attitude according to Hegel. Only from this perspective can the underlying unity be seen.

Text 2.3 - EL, §55 [The Critical Philosophy Exhibits Stage-2 Characteristics, Is a Stage-2 Premise]

But in the postulated harmony of nature (or necessity) and free purpose . . . Kant has put before us the Idea, comprehensive even in its content. Yet what may be called the laziness of thought, when dealing with the supreme Idea, finds a too easy mode of evasion in the ‘ought to be’: instead of the actual realization of the ultimate end, it clings hard to the disjunction of the notion from reality.223

Moving back one step, we also see that the second part of the Logic, the Sphere of Essence, is associated with the Critical Philosophy. This passage indicates that they both exhibit stage-2

223 EL, 88, §55. GW, Band 20, 94: “. . . aber die auch dem Inhalte nach umfassende Idee stellt Kant in der postulirten Harmonie der Nature oder Nothwendigkeit mit dem Zwecke der Freiheit, in dem als realisirt gedachten Endzwecke der Welt auf. Aber die Faulheit des Gedankens, wie es genannt werden kann, hat bei dieser höchsten Idee an dem Sollen einen zu leichten Ausweg, gegen die wirkliche Realisirung des Endzwecks an dem Geschiedenseyn des Begriffs und der Realität festzuhalten.”

101 characteristics and behave as the second premise in the Logic’s argument. There are two intertwined but distinguishable elements in the above passage that are relevant to Hegel’s own argument. They are the disjunctive claim of the second attitude and the modal characteristic that is tied to it. These elements fit the second part of the Logic for a role in an argument.

Hegel explicitly identifies the doubt and skepticism of the second stage as a “disjunction.”

This is doubt about the unity of the notion and reality. Rather than being unified necessarily, this position concludes that they merely “ought to be” unified. Hegel calls this laziness, because he thinks philosophers like Kant should be able to see the connection. Just after the above quotation, as he continues to criticize Kant’s skepticism, Hegel writes, “. . . if thought will not think the ideal realized, the senses and the intuition can at any rate see it in the present reality of living organisms and of the beautiful in Art.”224 Hegel is telling Kantians that they should see what is presented plainly before their eyes. Hegel is thus rejecting (negating) the disjunction and the attitude that relies upon it: unity is not merely possibly the case (“ought to be”). He claims that the unity of concept and object can be achieved through some kind of work, a work in which Hegel is now engaged.

Hegel is here linking the historical skepticism of the second attitude, as seen in Kant, with a logical encapsulation associated with second stages in the words: “the present reality of living organisms.”225 This serves as helpful context for placing Kant into the second-stage context. Second stages have recognizable characteristics, the most notable of which is their modal possibility. Doubt of unity holds it in suspense. The unity in question is the very same unity that is dealt with by the second and third stages, but each does so by playing a part in the greater syllogism. That syllogism deals with three possible attitudes toward this unity. In all cases, it is the second attitude itself that both holds unity in suspense and also, through the internal contradiction of this attitude, points

224 EL, 88, §55. GW, Band 20, 94: “Die Gegenwart hingegen der lebendigen Organisationen und des Kunstschönen zeigt auch für den Sinn und die Anschauung schon die Wirklichkeit des Ideals.” 225 I make this connection by noticing that Hegel’s full expression of the second stage is found in the part of the Encyclopedia that treats the natural world, and similarly with the third part that treats the “beautiful in art.”

102 toward the unity of the next stage, which is Hegel’s own position, a third attitude and premise. Just as the first stage pointed toward the second, the second points toward the third. Hegel points out how Kant has delivered philosophy to him in just this way.

The modal characteristic of this stage is prominent in this text. It is possible that concepts and objects are in “harmony,” but it is also possible that they are not. This proposition is a premise in Hegel’s argument and it possesses two key characteristics: it is the disjunctive judgment in that argument (as in “p v q”); and it is modified modally with the “possibly” operator.

Text 2.4 - EL, §164 [Development of the DS in the Notion]

The notion is concrete out and out: because the negative unity with itself, as characterization pure and entire, which is individuality, is just what constitutes its self-relation, its universality. The functions or ‘moments’ of the notion are to this extent indissoluble.226

This final syllogism, the disjunctive, is the principle of unity for the moments contained as premises within it. It is a deductive structure not only for this one syllogism, but for the Logic as a whole, which is seen from the sameness of structure. This form of deduction is developed internally, within the Sphere of the Notion, which sphere is also divided into three parts. The unity that is produced by the deductive connection makes the Notion both concrete and universal, properties that we find in the Disjunctive Syllogism itself. This sameness of properties is further indication that the Sphere of the Notion is itself structured as a disjunctive syllogism.

Hegel lays out the Notion’s three parts and uses the third part to reconcile its internal divisions. The above passage is given under the headings of “A. THE SUBJECTIVE NOTION” and “(a) The Notion as Notion.”227 This is the first of three perspectives on concepts in which concepts are taken as if they were merely abstract and separated from their objects. It is within this first

226 EL, 228, §164. GW, Band 20, 180: “Der Begriff ist das schlechthin Concrete, weil die negative Einheit mit sich als An- und Für-sich-bestimmtseyn, welches die Einzelnheit ist, selbst seine Beziehung auf sich, die Allgemeinheit ausmacht. Die Momente des Begriffes können in sofern nicht abgesondert werden; . . .” 227 EL, 226-230, §163-165. Emphases in original. GW, Band 20, 179: “A. DER SUBJECTIVE BEGRIFF. a. DER BEGRIFF ALS SOLCHER.”

103 section that Hegel derives the syllogisms. After this, he begins a new section titled simply “The

Object,”228 which he earlier called “objectivity.”229

The very next section, however, (“C. THE IDEA”)230 provides a clue to how Hegel will ultimately be addressing this problem. In the first sentence of that section, he defines the Idea as the

“absolute unity of the notion and objectivity.”231 I take this to mean that the Idea is the unity of the notion-as-abstraction and the notion-as-object (objectivity). This unity is achieved abstractly, in the final stage of the abstract Logic, in the third part of the Sphere of the Notion. This third part unifies the previous two parts with itself, and by its deductive structure, the unity of the three is deduced.

That structure is the very same as the disjunctive syllogism that is derived within it.

The first of these three stages within the Sphere of the Notion takes the Notion as a mere notion, making it abstract. This was §163ff. The second of three stages takes the notion as if it were an object, objectivity. This was §194ff. Both of these are encapsulating programs that wrap around the Notion and characterize it in a specific way. These encapsulations are negated in the third. By means of this negation, the underlying unity comes to the fore. Elimination of the principles of division, which are the themes of the first two stages, result in unity. This is seen in §213ff, but it is also seen in the whole of the Logic for the whole is the structure that joins the first two to the third by means of a mediating syllogistic structure. So, the means of development is also the means of unification. The result is interconnected, logically differentiated, unity. The means of this achievement is the method of the Ontological Proof. Here we see repeatedly that this method entails the form of the modal disjunctive syllogism.

Text 2.5 - EL, §166 [Circularity Comes from UPI Relations in both Judgments and Syllogisms]

228 EL, 260, §194. GW, Band 20, 204: “B. DAS OBJECT.” 229 EL, 225, §162. GW, Band 20, 177: “Objectivität, . . .” 230 EL, 274, §213. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 215: “C. DIE IDEE.” 231 EL, 274, §213. GW, Band 20, 215: “. . . die absolute Einheit des Begriffs und der Objectivität.”

104

In its abstract terms a Judgment is expressible in the proposition: ‘The individual is the universal.’ . . . (Propositions such as, ‘The particular is the universal’, and ‘The individual is the particular’, belong to the further specialization of the judgment.)232

At the start of the Sphere of the Notion, Hegel presents us with various permutations of the way universal, particular, and individual relate, the UPI relations. These permutations form circular, or self-referring, structures. These, in turn, are used to derive the judgments and the syllogisms.

Eventually, the UPI relations are the basis for the circularity of the Disjunctive Syllogism. In this introduction to the judgments, which are propositions of the form “x is y,” Hegel links the three

“moments” of the notion-as-notion to a non-linear, ternary relationship. He indicates that one is primary, the “first abstraction,”233 and that the other two are “further specialization(s).” These three moments can be abbreviated so that they form a connected series, a circuit: I is U; U is P; P is I.

When written like this, the inherent circularity of the series stands out. That they can be viewed as a circular triad of judgments does not at first appear to be significant, but a few sections later, when

Hegel comes to describe the Disjunctive Judgment, this circularity is revisited:

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 particularization . . . 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.234

It seems that “totality” is standing in for “individual” in this passage. With this clarification, the

Disjunctive Judgment contains two members, “x or y,” which are both universals. Yet, the circle that is set up between them, is “the circle of its self-excluding particularization.” In this way, the particular is brought into the judgment. This double expression of universality, however, as the result of being described as a circuit, is also a totality, an individual. This is merely an inchoate

232 EL, 231, §166. GW, Band 20, 182-183: “Das abstracte Urtheil ist der Satz: das Einzelne ist das Allgemeine. . . . (Die Sätze: das Besondre ist das Allgemeine, und: das Einzelne ist das Besondre, gehören der weitern Fortbestummung des Urtheils an.)” 233 EL, 231, §166. GW, Band 20, 182: “ersten Abstraction.” 234 EL, 241, §177. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 189: “. . . das Urtheil, welches diß Allgemeine zu seinen beiden Seiten hat, das einemal als solches, das andremal als den Kreis seiner sich ausschließenden Besonderung, . . . ist das disjunctive Urtheil. Die Allgemeinheit zunächst als Gattung und nun auch als der Umkreis ihrer Arten ist hiemit als Totalität bestimmt und gesetzt.”

105 individuality, however.

Along the path to a more robust deductive circularity, Hegel next defines the syllogism, generally, as the “orbit of intermediation of its elements, by which it realizes its unity.”235 By pointing to the spatial form of the celestial orbit as an analogy, Hegel provides insight into the special form that he is developing. In terms of UPI, he explains this circular unity in the following two ways:

. . . the universal nature of the Notion gives itself external reality by means of particularity, and thereby, . . . makes itself an individual. Or, conversely: the actual thing is an individual, which by means of particularity rises to universality and makes itself identical with itself.236

This last passage is from the introduction to the syllogisms. Therefore, in the introductions to both the judgments and syllogisms, Hegel takes time to mention the importance of circular structures that relate to the interplay of UPI. Hegel’s goal will be to find a way for the Notion to unify itself with itself and to do away with the finitude (separation, isolation) that distinguishes its elements, its form from its content. Hegel sees a “necessity for every function or characteristic element of the notion to become the whole itself, and to stand as mediating ground.”237 This goal is achieved by finding a form of thought that allows all of its elements to each take on all of the roles of the syllogism and this will eliminate the form-content distinction. This is stated in the following Zusatz and linked to

Hegel’s larger project:

In their objective sense, the three figures of the syllogism declare that everything rational is manifested as a triple syllogism; that is to say, each one of the members takes in turn the place of the extremes, as well as of the mean which reconciles them. Such, for example, is the case with the three branches of philosophy: the Logical Idea, Nature, and Mind. As we first see them, Nature is the middle term which links the others together. Nature, the totality immediately before us, unfolds itself into the two extremes of the Logical Idea and Mind. But Mind is Mind only when it is mediated through nature. Then, in the second place, Mind, which we know as the principle of individuality, or as the actualizing principle is the mean; and Nature and the Logical Idea are the extremes. It is the Mind which cognizes the Logical Idea in Nature and which thus raises Nature to its essence. In the third place again the

235 EL, 245, §181. GW, Band 20, 192: “. . . der Kreislauf der Vermittlung seiner Momente, durch welchen es sich als Eines setzt.” 236 EL, 244-245, §181. GW, Band 20, 192: “. . . seine allgemeine Natur durch die Besonderheit sich äußerliche Realität gibt und hiedurch . . . Einzelnen macht. — Oder umgekehrt das Wirkliche ist ein Einzelnes, das durch die Besonderheit sich in die Allgemeinheit erhebt und sich identisch mit sich macht.” 237 EL, 250, §187. GW, Band 20, 196: “. . . Nothwendigkeit beruht, daß jedes Moment als Begriffsbestimmung selbst das Ganze und der vermittelnde Grund wird.”

106

Logical Idea itself becomes the mean : it is the absolute substance both of mind and of nature, the universal and all-pervading principle. These are the members of the Absolute Syllogism.238

This stunning passage has put the pieces together for the reader prematurely. Hegel’s system, as a whole, is joined together into a circular UPI structure. What form does this structure take? It is a syllogism. What kind of syllogism? It is a syllogism that posits the “mediating Universal” as “a totality of its particular members,” which is “a single particular . . . [and an] exclusive individuality.”239 Yet, this totality is none other than the Disjunctive Syllogism.240 The role of this syllogism is very great for Hegel’s philosophy. It is its primary characteristic, being its foundation, its form, its content, and the means to its self-sufficiency. Hegel is always either working to derive it, or he is using it to account for everything.

The point at hand is the logical nature of the requisite circularity. In turn, this circularity is the means by which Hegel achieves the elimination of Thought’s externality to itself (the elimination of finitude and disconnectedness).241 Judgments, arranged circularly as a specific kind of remainder- removing UPI relation, are developed into the Disjunctive Syllogism, and this special syllogism is the basis for the totality, the system, the self-sufficient object that is composed of these concepts. In this way, Hegel attempts to fulfill his earlier promise that circularity would be the means by which the syllogism “realizes its unity.”242 All systems in Hegel’s philosophy adopt this form and thus look to it

238 EL, 250-251, §187z. Hegel Werke, Band 8, 338-339 (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970): “Der objektive Sinn der Figuren des Schlusses ist überhaupt der, daß alles Vernünftige sich als ein dreifacher Schluß erweist, und zwar dergestalt, daß ein jedes seiner Glieder ebensowohl die Stelle eines Extrems als auch die der vermittelnden Mitte einnimmt. Dies ist namentlich der Fall mit den drei Gliedern der philosophischen Wissenschaft, d. h. der logischen Idee, der Natur und dem Geist. Hier ist zunächst die Natur das mittlere, zusammenschließende Glied. Die Natur, diese unmittelbare Totalität, entfaltet sich in die beiden Extreme der logischen Idee und des Geistes. Der Geist aber ist nur Geist, indem er durch die Natur vermittelt ist. Zweitens ist dann ebenso der Geist, den wir als das Individuelle, Betätigende wissen, die Mitte, und die Natur und die logische Idee sind die Extreme. Der Geist ist es, der in der Natur die logische Idee erkennt und sie so zu ihrem Wesen erhebt. Ebenso ist drittens die logische Idee selbst die Mitte; sie ist die absolute Substanz des Geistes wie der Natur, das Allgemeine, Alldurchdringende. Dies sind die Glieder des absoluten Schlusses.” 239 EL, 254, §191. GW, Band 20, 199: “Ist das vermittelnde Allgemeine auch als Totalität seiner Besonderungen, und als ein einzelnes Besonderes, ausschließende Einzelnheit, gestetzt, — im disjunctiven Schlusse; . . .” 240 Ibid. 241 EL, 255, §192. 242 EL, 245, §181. GW, Band 20, 192: “. . . der Kreislauf der Vermittlung seiner Momente, durch welchen es

107 as their basis. Once mediation is accounted for formally, here at the climax of the Logic, it can then serve as a non-presupposed, non-dogmatic formal basis for objectivities of every sort. Eventually, it will be the structure used to construct the absolute totality.

Text 2.6 - Science of Logic, vol. 2, Sect. 1 [The Disjunctive Syllogism is the Preeminent Mediator]

The syllogism is mediation, the complete Notion in its positedness. Its movement is the sublating of this mediation, in which nothing is in and for itself, but each term is only by means of an other. The result is therefore an immediacy which has issued from the sublating of the mediation, a being which is no less identical with the mediation, and which is the Notion that has restored itself out of, and in, its otherness. This being is therefore a fact that is in and for itself—objectivity.243

This passage declares the consequences of the Disjunctive Syllogism. The circularity of the

Disjunctive Syllogism comes from its ability to use each of its three premises as a mediator of the other two premises. Only the final syllogism is able to do this without remainder, without a latent dualism or external reference. Its self-mediation, from circular self-reference, is the cause of its independence, and this, in turn, is the cause of its objectivity.

This syllogism boasts some impressive accomplishments. First, it mediates. It mediates its premises together, but it also mediates the roles that the premises take. Each premise takes turns mediating the other two. Or, as Hegel implies, they mutually mediate continuously, without succession. This special form of syllogism sublates itself, its mediation, and this alters the subjectivity of the syllogism, leading to objectivity. That is, the abstractive theme of syllogisms is now becoming problematic, being in tension with the new objectivity. Hegel earlier in the same section writes,

In this way then the formalism of the syllogistic process, and with it the subjectivity of the syllogism and of the Notion in general, has sublated itself. The formal or subjective side consisted in the fact that the mediating factor of the extremes is the Notion as an abstract determination, and this latter is distinct from the extremes whose unity it is.244 sich als Eines setzt.” 243 WL, 704. Emphases in original. GW, Band 12, 126: “Der Schluß ist Vermittlung, der vollständige Begriff in seinem Gesetztseyn. Seine Bewegung ist das Aufheben dieser Vermittlung, in welcher nichts an und für sich, sondern jedes nur vermittelst eines Andern ist. Das Resultat ist daher eine Unmittelbarkeit, die durch Aufheben der Vermittlung hervorgegangen, ein Seyn, das ebensosehr identisch mit der Vermittlung und der Begriff ist, der aus und in seinem Andersseyn sich selbst hergestellt hat. Diß Seyn ist daher eine Sache, die an und für sich ist, — die Objectivität.” 244 WL, 702-703. Emphases in original. GW, Band 12, 125: “Dadurch hat sich nun der Formalismus des

108

Here, “the distinction of mediating and mediated has disappeared. . . . Thus the Notion as such has been realized; . . . it has obtained a reality that is objectivity.”245 This helps to make sense of Hegel’s comment above, in Text 2.6, that this syllogism “is” mediation. It is the most fundamental form of mediation, as Hegel sees the basic concept itself. This is the derivation of Mediation simpliciter and its form is the Disjunctive Syllogism. Everywhere that Hegel makes use of mediation, therefore, this will be its form, either cryptically or overtly. This will be of central importance to understanding

Hegel’s ontological argument, his Encyclopedia, and for that matter, also triadic structures of all kinds throughout his system. Sublation is a process that involves mediation, but so is the Ontological

Argument, the Logic, and the Encyclopedia as a whole. This Disjunctive Syllogism is the form of these mediations. Mediation is therefore always a deductive argument.

This ultimate syllogism has the capacity to deliver objectivity through its mediation.246 It is with this syllogism that the concept crosses the threshold into objectivity. Thus, it is this syllogism that deduces objectivity from the concept. Hegel is quick to recognize how odd this may seem to his readers. It may look as if he has quickly jumped from subject to object without warrant. To explain himself, he qualifies both ends of the transition, both subjectivity and objectivity. First, the syllogizing in play here is not “only an act of consciousness.”247 This expands subjectivity toward objectivity. Yet, by expanding it beyond the context of finite minds, he is also giving it an object-like character. This closing of the gap on the subjective side involves interpreting the syllogism as the free and spontaneous form that Thought takes on its own, which is Thought’s internal development up to this point. He thus sees it as independent and not limited to human thinking. It is something

Schliessens, hiemit die Subjectivität des Schlusses und des Begriffes überhaupt aufgehoben. Diß Formelle oder Subjective bestand darin, daß das Vermittelnde der Extreme, der Begriff als abstracte Bestimmung, und dadurch von ihnen, deren Einheit sie ist, verschieden ist.” 245 Ibid. GW, Band 12, 125: “. . . ist der Unterschied des Vermittelnden und Vermittelten weggefallen. . . . ¶¶ Damit ist der Begriff überhaupt realisirt worden; bestimmter hat er eine solche Realität gewonnen, welche Objectivität ist.” 246 EL, 256-257, §193; EM, 313-315, §§574-577. 247 EL, 256, §193. GW, Band 20, 200: “als ein Thun des Bewußtseyns.”

109 that philosophers discover, not create. To close the gap from the side of the object, he offers a clarification about what objectivity means in this context. The “usual conception”248 of object is being contrasted with what Hegel has derived and which he is labeling with the common term,

“object.” Instead of the common understanding of object, Hegel’s referent is “immediate object” and “the one total, in itself still unspecified.”249 Additionally, it is “the Objective World as a whole,

God, the Absolute Object.”250 This makes little sense if it is not noticed that Hegel has himself, as the author, already reached the end of his philosophy and is returning back to an earlier stage in order to describe it for his readers. Hegel thus has the vantage, and advantage, of the third stage, a perspective elevated sufficiently to view the entirety of the contents of the Logic as a negated program of abstraction. Hegel’s background knowledge at this point therefore includes the unity of subjectivity and objectivity as abstracted concepts, but it also includes, beyond this, the absolute unity of the Idea as concrete concept. In the Notion, as the abstractive program’s highest form of unity, all concepts are unified in one whole. “The Notion . . . . is a systematic whole, in which each of its constituent functions is the very total which the notion is, and is put as indissolubly one with it.”251 Therefore, this passage presages Hegel’s ultimate conclusion, that Thought as a whole is also objectivity, variously understood by finite minds as the objective world, God, or the Absolute.

The world of natural objects thus becomes for Hegel a form of Thought. However, due to the unity of the two, this subjection winds up being somewhat innocuous. Hegel not only diminishes the “objectivity” of the world, but also of God, and the absolute. In fact, to Hegel, nothing is an object in the transcendent sense. His philosophy does not have the effect of doing away with immanent objectivity (the objective quality of the things in our experience), it only does away with

248 EL, 256, §193. GW, Band 20, 200: “. . . unsere gewöhnliche Vorstellung von dem, was Object genannt wird, . . .” 249 Ibid., 256. GW, Band 20, 200: “unmittelbares unbefangenes Object” and “das Eine noch weiter in sich unbestimmte Ganze.” 250 Ibid., 256-257. GW, Band 20, 200: “die objective Welt überhaupt, Gott, das absolute Object.” 251 EL, 222, §160. GW, Band 20, 177: “Der Begriff . . . ist Totalität, in dem jedes der Momente das Ganze ist, das er ist, und als ungetrennte Einheit mit ihm gesetzt ist; . . .”

110 transcendent objectivity. The former becomes a kind of substitute for the latter.

When referring to Hegel’s interaction with Kant about the status of “things-in-themselves,”

Stephen Houlgate concurs that “Hegel’s response to Kant is not to say ‘yes, we can know things in themselves beyond experience, after all.’ It is to give up the very idea that there might be a realm of being ‘beyond’ our ‘limited’ experience—. . .”252 This demotion of objects, Hegel is careful to ensure, is not one that leads to the conclusion that the objective world is merely an illusion. Instead, the objectivity of the natural world, by means of this transformation, is made accessible through this move by bringing it into the same world that we occupy. This grounds knowledge about the world

“outside” of finite minds, but it does so by changing what “outside” means. The problem of knowledge had been characterized as a gap or chasm between the subjective mind and the external world. Many attempts at bridge-building had already failed. Hegel’s solution, by contrast, is to do away with bridges and other sides. By erasing the far bank, the bridge becomes a loop that circles around to its origin. This attempted journey out into the world becomes more like a reflected image in a mirror. This reflecting process needs only to find a mirror, which is to say, a mediator.

Notice also that this reference to God, within the context of unification of subject and object, connects the context back to the Ontological Argument, which Hegel saw as the proper methodology required to unify “abstract identity” and “Being” which “[r]eason seeks to unify. And their union is the Ideal of Reason.”253 What justification does Hegel have for mentioning God in the passage above? It seems tied to an earlier promise, given 144 sections earlier, where he set the context for the structure of the Logic, that philosophy would pursue its goal of unification by this method. Hegel had already described the arguments for the existence of God as potential methods for bridging the divide in question. Hegel’s own version of the argument does not bridge a gap.

252 Stephen Houlgate, The Opening of Hegel’s Logic: From Being to Infinity (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2006), 137. 253 EL, 80. §49. GW, Band 20, 86: “Abstract Identität, . . . Seyn . . . deren Vereinigung es ist, die von der Vernunft gesucht wird; sie ist das Ideal der Vernunft.”

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Instead, it consists in the deduction that our thoughts already have access to every form of objectivity conceivable . . . and, more importantly, necessarily, there is nothing beyond what can be conceived in this way according to Hegel. He therefore is attempting to overcome the scandal of philosophy, the embarrassing fact that Philosophers were having difficulty proving that the objective world even exists, by proving the impossibility that anything beyond immanent thought exists.

Without an alternative to which concepts might correspond, their self-correspondence then becomes the measure of truth.

In the previous section, containing Hegel’s analysis of the syllogisms and what they had accomplished, Hegel had said that the “syllogistic process [was] . . . a mediative process through the suspension of mediation—as coupling the subject not with another, but with a suspended other, in one word, with itself.”254 Self-mediation via self-determination is thus the means to Hegel’s end, and this is accomplished through the Disjunctive Syllogism.

Text 2.7 - EL, §193 [Negative Mediation in the DS; Compare to Anselm’s OA; Disjunctive Individuation]

This ‘realization’ of the notion—a realization in which the universal is this one totality withdrawn back into itself (of which the different members are no less the whole, and which has given itself a character of ‘immediate’ unity by merging the mediation)—this realization of the notion is the Object.255

The Disjunctive Syllogism operates negatively. This negative approach matches Hegel’s analysis of the Ontological Argument in the VBDG. To Hegel, this is more than a similarity because the Ontological Argument has secretly been a disjunctive syllogism in all its historical manifestations.

Only the Disjunctive Syllogism can deliver ontology by means of its powers of mediation and self- deduction. It does this negatively by comparing and ruling out self-referring statements. The result,

254 EL, 255, §192. GW, Band 20, 200: “das Schließen die Bestimmung . . . eine Vermittlung durch Aufheben der Vermittlung, und ein Zusammenschließen des Subjects nicht mit Anderem, sondern mit aufgehobenem Andern, mit sich selbst, zu seyn.” 255 EL, 256, §193. GW, Band 20, 200: “Diese Realisirung des Begriffs, in welcher das Allgemeine diese Eine in sich zurückgegangene Totalität ist, deren Unterschiede ebenso diese Totalität sind, und die durch Aufheben der Vermittlung als unmittelbare Einheit sich bestimmt hat, — ist das Object.”

112 therefore, is a negatively qualified form of reality.

Hegel has done much to qualify what kind of “reality” his argument is producing.256 What status is Hegel seeking for his absolute if he rejects common understandings of being, essence, existence, and reality? The above passage clarifies this a bit by indicating how objectivity is derived and how it applies to “things” in all cases. The object of Thought is the other. As it turns out, this other will be revealed to be Thought itself. So, Hegel will conclude, Thought at first encounters its object as an other, then through mediation, reveals to itself that the object is itself, a reflection. This produces a monism. The apparent dualism is revealed to be a veiled monism. As an idealistic monism, and not a materialistic (Epicurus) or neutral monism (Spinoza), Hegel’s underlying reality is conceptual. That reality is a concept that takes a logical form. Nonetheless, this form is real. Despite being a concept, it is not merely abstract. As a whole, the absolute Idea is a real concept, utterly unified. And, this form of deduction is the principle of its unity.

It also has an adequate principle for internal differentiation, unlike Parmenides and Schelling.

These are the three logical encapsulations. They are logical modes or moments in what has been analogized as self-reflection, as if Thought were gazing into a mirror and realizing in stages that it is seeing itself. This is a relatable analogy of what is, to Hegel, the three premises of a logical differentiation. Each premise is a stage in which the whole is enclosed by a modal modifier that slants the whole in terms of a governing theme, like colored glasses. The result is that the whole sees itself in three different ways, or, logically, it takes on the roles of three distinct categories: abstraction; contingency; concreteness.

This course is run via the “negation of characters.”257 Or, the understanding of what a thing is not. This is the principle of individuation in Hegel’s ontology, which I first introduced in the

Introduction as the differentiations of the Parmenidean One. As one of the Disjunctive Syllogism’s

256 See section I.B.1.a), the place where texts of Category A were analyzed. 257 EL, 255, §192. GW, Band 20, 200: “die Negation der Bestimmtheiten.”

113 premises, which is its disjunctive judgment, it works by negation: ‘not this, and not this, and not this,

. . .’ The thing in question is what it is because it is the one part of the totality that is not everything else. This is Hegel’s version of objectivity in second stages generally. One of the premises of the

Disjunctive Syllogism is “A is neither C nor D, . . .”258 This defines A negatively, by negation of the others that are listed in the disjunctive judgment. This is one of the three ways to determine A.

Stephen Houlgate agrees, contra Robert Pippin. Where Pippin sees problems in viewing determination strictly in terms of negation, where objects are reduced to “‘a spuriously infinite relation with all other things’ as not this, not this, not this, and so on,”259 Houlgate sees simply a negative account of ontology, the “ontological structures of ‘reflexivity’ and ‘concept,’ . . .”260 Seeing that this issue is relevant to the essential nature of the Disjunctive Syllogism helps to settle the matter by showing that negative objectivity is part of a larger logical function, which function is performed by second stages.

In §193, from which the above passage is taken, Hegel focuses on individual objects, or objectivity as a general category of individual finite objects. For finite objects, like a stone or a plant, this process of “realization,” which is achieved through the Disjunctive Syllogism, is a “coupling [of] the subject not with another, but with a suspended other, in one word, with itself.”261 This is objectivity. This is the reference to the totality within finite things, which is the reference of Thought to itself to which Hegel was referring in §192, the section where he first derives the Disjunctive

Syllogism. This can be illustrated by a simple sensory experience of a stone. It is only through distinctions that the stone is categorized, located, temporalized, and used. This may seem an odd way of characterizing individual objects, but if Hegel does not leave room for contingencies,262 and if

258 WL, 702. GW, Band 12, 124: “A ist aber nicht C noch D.” 259 Houlgate, The Opening, 138. 260 Ibid., 139. 261 EL, 255, §192. GW, Band 20, 200: “. . . ein Zusammenschließen des Subjects nicht mit Anderem, sondern mit aufgehobenem Andern, mit sich selbst, zu seyn.” 262 This will be addressed a bit more extensively in the analysis of the next quotation.

114 the absolute structure of Thought is exhaustively complete and infinite,263 then there is no imaginable experience of a rock that is not found already within the possible combinations of all concepts, which is to say, in the Logic. And, this combination, the one that is experienced at a specific time, is unique because it excludes all other possible combinations of concepts, including other places, times, and even perspectives. It is from this understanding of the Notion, by which individual concepts are uniquely isolatable through suspension of the other combinations of concepts, that Hegel is producing his fully conceptual version of the object. This stems from Hegel’s need to conceptualize all things and connect the abstract version of objectivity, in the Logics, to objects in the natural world without succumbing to a dualism. The form that accomplishes this mediation, however, must be developed as an abstraction first, and he does so here in this text. This is the first place where this transition occurs, and so it is the point of derivation for the mediating form itself. Here the connection is “from the Subject, the notion in general, and especially the syllogism, to the Object, . . .”264 This is the form that delivers the solution to one of Hegel’s primary problems, the “scandal of philosophy,” mentioned just above, which was the legacy of Descartes,

Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, that the real world might not be knowable at all. It was a scandal because philosophy had been powerless to find a way to bridge the divide between inner subjective thought and the outer physical world of objects. The Disjunctive Syllogism has thus mediated a very important transition. For Hegel, objectivity is a function of the Disjunctive Syllogism, in all contexts, even in the context of the whole. However, in the case of the whole, the objectivity achieved is a special case because its special kind of objectivity, its concreteness, removes the “otherness” of normally-conceived objectivity. It is an objectivity that involves subjectivity within itself. It is the concept that views itself as object as if in a mirror, but it is in fact identical with its image. This

263 VBDG, 190. Hegel writes, “We believe that we can regard the concept as strictly subjective, as finite; but the determinate quality of being is in the concept itself. The finitude of subjectivity is sublated in the concept itself, . . .” 264 EL, 256, §193. GW, Band 20, 200: “. . . dieser Uebergang vom Subject, vom Begriff überhaupt und näher vom Schlusse, . . .”

115 accounts for objectivity at the level of individuals who encounter objects in the natural world, but it also accounts for objectivity in the ultimate context. To put this more succinctly, a stone is what it is because it is not anything else, but the absolute is what it is because there is nothing else. This is

Hegel’s ontology.

In this section of Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel repeatedly jumps to his greater and final conclusions and then reigns himself back. The reason for this is that his conclusions at this point have larger implications, but in the immediate context, these goals are not yet fully achieved. Hegel may have reduced all being/essence/actuality to the unity of concept and being, and he may have reduced all things to “simple self-relation,”265 but at the stage of the quotation above, the notion has disappeared within the object. It has become a mere abstraction associated with objectivity. Hegel calls this “one sided . . . implicitness,” which is the “well-known presupposition of the ontological proof for the existence of God.”266

It is very telling and significant in this section, after using the Disjunctive Syllogism to connect subjectivity to objectivity, that Hegel both looks back to historical arguments—he goes on to review the ontological arguments of Anselm, Descartes, and Spinoza, and in the next section, he also brings up the unity of Leibniz’s Monad—and also forward to his own finished system. It is telling, also, because of its placement within the Logic. This position emphasizes the significance of what was just finished in the previous section, the derivation of the Disjunctive Syllogism. In other words, this is a true climax point in the Encyclopedia. Hegel has developed a form that mediates. It mediates concept and object, in both small and large contexts, but it merely represents a shadow of the true Ontological Argument, one that will not be complete until the Encyclopedia is finished and contemplated as a whole. Only in the context of the widest possible scope does this logical form

265 EL, 257, §193. GW, Band 20, 201: “. . . als die einfache Beziehung auf sich selbst, . . .” 266 EL, 258, §193. GW, Band 20, 202: “. . . die einseitige Form ihres Ansichseins . . . ist sie es bekanntlich, welche bei dem ontologischen Beweise vom Daseyn Gottes vorausgesetzt wird, . . .”

116 become the Ontological Argument. At this point, it is still in development. Nonetheless, Hegel might be forgiven for glancing forward to his conclusions.

Summation of Formal Elements for Category 2:

In this category of texts (indirect references to the Ontological Argument), several additional features of the argument have been described. First, the form of the argument has been clarified: it is a three-part, circular, disjunctive syllogism that unifies form and content through a reciprocal association of UPI relations. Second, it is the underlying form of mediation in Hegel’s philosophy at all levels. Third, the argument is repeated over and over and this highlights the consistency with which Hegel applies certain logical features to each of the three stages. On a larger scale, fourthly, the Logic itself is beginning to look like a first stage in a larger disjunctive syllogism due to its abstractive program. This begins to reveal the place Hegel has for the Logic in his philosophy overall and helps us to avoid certain mistakes of interpretation, as if the Logic were a Platonic onto-logic on its own, sitting in parallel to the natural world.

With regard to Hegel’s view of formal logic, there is much evidence here that Hegel is not ruling out its use. The overall encapsulating program of the Logic (abstraction) is apparently negated in the end. Yet, Hegel continues to use the logical tools that were derived within the Logic. It appears that completing the logical structure somehow overcomes the dogmatism seen with traditional uses of formal logic.

Circularity has also been described at greater length. Connection is produced by means of sublation, but the sublation takes the form of a disjunctive syllogism. To complete the circle, sublation is then used to derive this syllogism. This begs the question if there is any remaining possibility of a dualism, a challenger to the coherent system of concepts. But, if the system of concepts can somehow rule this possibility out, then coherence would be sufficient for grounding.

117

Therefore, great depth has been added to our picture of Hegel’s ontological argument. Yet despite this, nothing new has been added to the basic formal structure by these texts except for circularity, which can be seen now as an important formal element. Below, I add circularity to the formalism. This makes the premises’ numbers moot, but I will leave them in place for reference:

1. ~□~x —— 2. ~◇x \ / 3. □x

d) Category 3: Texts Relevant to the Ontological Argument

Within category 3, texts have a less explicit connection to the Ontological Argument. The association depends fully on seeing Hegel’s two arguments (the ontological and the absolute-identity arguments) as the same argument. Characteristics that are detected in this category include: the forms of syllogism and various other elements of formal logic, especially the disjunctive syllogism; relations between universal, particular, and individual (UPI); any discussion of systematics, an absolute system, a world, a totality, a circle, etc., that comes from conceptual relations that take on a form of syllogism, UPI, absolute identity, or that otherwise help to fulfill the goal of Reason, which is to unify thought with being.267

The following passages help to situate and comprehend the passages above about ontological arguments, both direct and indirect. They will shed light on the place Hegel has reserved for logical arguments, the triadic nature of the conceptual forms that he establishes and which he calls variously systems, circles, syllogisms, worlds, etc., and will show that Hegel’s larger system, the

Encyclopedia itself, is structured as a syllogism.

Text 3.1 - EL, §162 [Hegel’s Restoration of the Old Logic; His New Ontology; Grounding]

The Logic of the Notion is usually treated as a science of form only, and understood to deal

267 EL, 80, §49.

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with the form of notion, judgment, and syllogism as form, without in the least touching the question whether anything is true. The answer to that question is supposed to depend on the content only. If the logical forms of the notion were really dead and inert receptacles of conceptions and thoughts, careless of what they contained, knowledge about them would be an idle curiosity which the truth might dispense with. On the contrary they really are, as forms of the notion, the vital spirit of the actual world. That only is the true of the actual which is true in virtue of these forms, through them and in them. As yet, however, the truth of these forms has never been considered or examined on their own account any more than their necessary interconnection.268

The logic of the notion is the triadic structure constituted by the doctrines of Being,

Essence, and Notion. This same entity contains and uses the logic of the understanding and Hegel himself distinguishes them only by their adherents’ attitudes. Hegel compares and negates attitudes, but all the while, he keeps using the logic of the understanding. In this passage, he defends his own use of logic against the anticipated criticism that he is returning to a past and dogmatic kind of logic.

He both criticizes and celebrates traditional logic. On the positive side, Hegel refers to this logic as vital (living), spirit (the life and activity of thought), as true forms of the notion itself, as something that lies within the actual world as its animating principle, and most importantly, as the ground of truth within the actual. On the negative side, however, this logic is seen as dead. It must be noticed, however, that this lack of vitality is not the fault of the judgments and syllogisms themselves, but the attitude that had been affixed to it as a “presupposing judgment.”269 Hegel is very clear about this mistake in the passage above. The presupposition of the disconnectedness of

Thought’s forms and contents renders the work of logic into something dead. Removing this presupposition, conversely, reanimates logic. It becomes something vital and indispensable as a result.

This connectedness makes logic vital by connecting it to its object, its truth maker. What is

268 EL, 226, §162. GW, Band 20, 178: “Die Logik des Begriffs wird gewöhnlich als nur formelle Wissenschaft so verstanden, daß es ihr auf die Form als solche des Begriffs, des urtheils und Schlusses, aber ganz und gar nicht darauf ankomme, ob Etwas wahr sey; sondern diß hänge ganz allein vom Inhalte ab. Wären wirklich die logischen Formen des Begriffs todte, unwirksame und gleichgültige Behälter von Vorstellungen oder Gedanken, so wäre ihre Kenntniß eine für die Wahrheit sehr überflüssige und entbehrliche Historie. In der That aber sind sie umgekehrt als Formen des Begriffs, der lebendige Geist des Wirklichen, und von dem Wirklichen ist wahr nur, was kraft dieser Formen, durch sie und in ihnen wahr ist. Die Wahrheit dieser Formen für sich selbst ist aber seither nie betrachtet und untersucht worden, eben so wenig als ihr nothwendiger Zusammenhang.” 269 EM, 313, §574. Hegel Werke, Band 10, 392 (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970): “voraussetzenden Urteilen.”

119 the ontological import of Hegel’s theory of truth? As has just been said, the ground of truth, that to which true concepts must correspond in order to be true, is the interconnected nature of Thought itself. Hegel concludes that thoughts need only to correspond with the whole in order to be true.

Text 3.2 - Five Texts from EL [Syllogism as System; Circles as Disjunctive Syllogisms; Not Foundationalism]

Like the solar system, so for example in the practical sphere the state is a system of three syllogisms.270

A living being is a syllogism, of which the very elements are in themselves systems and syllogisms . . . . They are however active syllogisms or processes; . . . Thus the living being is the process of its coalescence with itself, which runs on through three processes.271

The syllogism thus indicated (I-P-U) is a triad of syllogisms . . . . It is only by the nature of this triple coupling, by this triad of syllogisms with the same termini, that a whole is thoroughly understood in its organization.272

Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle rounded and complete in itself. In each of these parts, however, the philosophical Idea is found in a particular specificality or medium. The single circle, because it is a real totality, bursts through the limits imposed by its special medium, and gives rise to a wider circle. The whole of philosophy in this way resembles a circle of circles. The Idea appears in each single circle, but, at the same time, the whole Idea is constituted by the system of these peculiar phases, and each is a necessary member of the organization.273

Being such a circle, further it is the totality, and thus the content, the actual fact of or affair in its all-round definiteness. While in like manner, if we look at the distinction between the two characteristics in this unity, it realizes the concrete totality of the form, the immediate self-translation of inner into outer, and of outer into inner. This self-movement of the form is Activity, carrying into effect the fact or affair as a real ground which is self-suspended to actuality, and carrying into effect the contingent actuality, the conditions; i.e. it is their reflection-in-self, and their self-suspension to another actuality, the actuality of the actual fact. If all the conditions are at hand, the fact (event) must be actual . . .274

270 EL, 264, §198. GW, Band 20, 206: “Wie das Sonnensystem, so ist z. B. im Praktischen der Staat ein System von drei Schlüssen.” 271 EL, 280, §217. GW, Band 20, 219: “Das Lebendige is der Schluß, dessen Momente selbst System und Schlüsse . . . welche aber thätige Schlüsse, Processe, . . . . Das Lebendige ist so der Proceß seines Zusammenschließens mit sich selbst, das sich durch drei Processe verläuft.” 272 EL, 264-265, §198. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 206-207: “Der angegebne Schluß (E - B - A) ist ein dreifaches von Schlüssen. . . . ¶ Es ist nur durch die Nature dieses Zusammenschließens, durch diese Dreiheit von Schlüssen derselben Terminorum, daß ein Ganzes in seiner Organisation wahrhaft verstanden wird.” 273 EL, 20, §15. GW, Band 20, 56: “Jeder der Theile der Philosophie ist ein philosophisches Ganzes, ein sich in sich selbst schließender Kreis, aber die philosophische Idee ist darin in einer besondern Bestimmtheit oder Elemente. Der einzelne Kreis durchbricht darum, weil er in sich Totalität ist, auch die Schranke seines Elements und begründet eine weitere Sphäre; das Ganze stellt sich daher als ein Kreis von Kreisen dar, deren jeder ein nothwendiges Moment ist, so daß das System ihrer eigenthümlichen Elemente die ganze Idee ausmacht, die ebenso in jedem Einzelnen erscheint.” 274 EL, 208, §147. Emphases in original. GW, Band 20, 167: “Als solcher Kreis ist sie ferner die Totalität, so der Inhalt, die an und für sich bestimmte Sache, und ebenso nach dem Unterschiede der Bestimmungen in dieser Einheit die

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Each of these sample quotations comes from a unique context within the Encyclopedia Logic.

They are related contexts, of course, but their variety is a helpful clue to the way Hegel views triadic circles in all contexts. Not only are the circles formed out of three elements, but these elements can always be seen as syllogisms. And, not just any syllogism is formed, but a disjunctive syllogism. This is not made explicit in these passages, but the descriptions of these circular syllogisms matches the properties that Hegel gives to the disjunctive form of syllogism.275 Only that specific syllogism, after all, is a systematic circle.

The first quotation above indicates that system and syllogism are synonymous in Hegel’s usage. Notice also the oblique nod to circles in the reference to the Solar System. The second quotation links syllogism, system, life, and process, which are described there as more or less equivalent or closely-related concepts. Notice that there are also three processes. The third quotation redundantly employs ternary terminology. It then subtly invokes the Disjunctive Syllogism by the phrase, “syllogisms with the same termini,” which description harmonizes with Hegel’s unique understanding of that particular syllogism. This syllogism in particular allows the three premises to occupy various roles within the syllogism; each fills the first, middle, and third position. The premises are also syllogisms themselves; Hegel is here describing a syllogism whose premises are also syllogisms. To start this section, EL, §198, Hegel declares, “The syllogism thus indicated (I—P—U) is a triad of syllogisms.”276 One begins to wonder if this matryoshka doll of syllogisms goes any deeper than this. Are there systems of syllogisms nested even more deeply? This question is given some helpful clues in the fourth passage above. Hegel’s philosophy has parts, it is nicely hierarchicalized

concrete Totalität der Form für sich, das unmittelbare Sich-Uebersetzen des Innern ins Aeußere und des Aeußern ins Innere. Diß sich Bewegen der Form ist Thätigkeit, Bethätigung der Sache, als des realen Grundes, der sich zur Wirklichkeit aufhebt, und Bethätigung der zufälligen Wirklichkeit, der Bedingungen, nämlich deren Reflexion-in-sich und ihr Sich-aufheben zu einer andern Wirklichkeit, zu der Wirklichkeit der Sache. Wenn alle Bedingungen vorhanden sin, muß die Sache wirklich werden, . . .” 275 WL, 701-704. 276 EL, 264, §198. GW, Band 20, 206-207: “Der angegebne Schluß (E - B - A) ist ein dreifaches von Schlüssen.”

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(or systematized hierarchically), into levels with sub-levels all the way down to the poorest of categories, the barest of phenomena, Being. That is what the Progression of Thought, the

Encyclopedia, is. Thus, it is to be expected that Hegel’s syllogism of syllogisms can be further deconstructed into syllogisms of syllogisms of syllogisms . . . ad infinitum.

The fourth passage above, in its first line, mentions completeness on account of the circularity, even though each sub-circle has its own peculiar “medium.” The idea of the medium, consequently, is understood by Hegel as a potential problem, one that threatens circularity and its completeness. But, what kind of entity is this medium? Hegel also calls it “a particular specificality”

(einer besondern Bestimmtheit), a special definiteness. To specify is to place an idea or thing under a category. The media to which Hegel here refers are likely to be the “presupposing judgments”277 and historical attitudes that limit the “inner life” of the Logic, leaving only a “dead” abstraction. The analogy seems to be the living organism, which, when separated into parts, ceases its biological functions. Just so, disconnected (abstract) concepts, disarticulate the interconnected whole in a way that renders the parts inert. In the fourth passage above, therefore, Hegel is making a connection between the idea of complete circles and syllogisms, and the three attitudes that color or qualify the three premises of the larger system. This is the triadic Encyclopedia that takes the form of a disjunctive syllogism itself.

The fifth and final passage above connects this understanding of circle with totality. Perhaps unexpectedly, in this passage he also connects circle and totality with content. This odd reference to content, which he elsewhere disparaged,278 is made clearer by realizing that form and content are ultimately unified; Thought has itself for its true content. This unity is achieved through a special form of Thought; it is the Disjunctive Syllogism that has the unique capacity to unify form and content. And perhaps even more unexpectedly, at least to his early readers, Hegel links this to

277 EM, 313, §574. Hegel Werke, Band 10, 392 (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970): “voraussetzenden Urteilen.” 278 EL, 225-226, §162.

122 genuine and unmitigated reality. “Concrete totality” is a pairing of terms that Hegel thinks he has earned. He has done away with naive versions of reality like “being,” “essence,” and “object.” His replacement is superior, he thinks, because it does not presuppose anything, nor does it isolate concepts or worlds, but it connects all into one complete circle of mutually implying concepts.

Putting these many glimpses together, I conclude that Hegel views his philosophy, in its parts and as a whole, as a nested hierarchy of syllogisms. Each of these syllogisms are circular and thus not linear deductions. Consequently, they are complete, without presupposition, and independent of outside support. The way that Hegel describes the Disjunctive Syllogism matches the way these circles are described.

Text 3.3 - EL, §83 [Three Parts to the Logic; Disjunctive Elimination of Encapsulations]

Logic is subdivided into three parts: . . . . into the Theory of Thought: I. In its immediacy: the notion implicit and in germ. II. In its reflection and mediation: the being-for-self and show of the notion. III. In its return into itself, and its developed abiding by itself.279

The Logic is divided by Hegel into the doctrines of Being, Essence, and Notion.280 Yet all three are the Notion variously appraised under three attitudes that encapsulate it. The Notion is the third stage, but that third stage is already implicit within the previous two stages. The Notion is the underlying truth, but the first two attitudes (which are here called theories of thought) obscure this truth. The first obscures the true nature of Thought by its immediacy. This makes the Notion merely implicit, existing only in seed form. The second obscures the true nature of Thought by its reflection, by seeming to be something other than Thought, by appearing as objectivity. This makes

279 EL, 121, §83. GW, Band 20, 120: “Die Logik zerfällt in drei Theile: . . . . Nämlich in die Lehre von dem Gedanken: I. In seiner Unmittelbarkeit, — dem Begriffe an sich. II. In seiner Reflexion und Vermittlung, — dem Fürsichseyn und Schein des Begriffes. III. In seinem Zurückgekehrtseyn in sich selbst und seinem entwikkelten Bei-sich- seyn, — dem Begriffe an und für sich.” 280 This division is provided by Hegel in this same passage, within the ellipses of the quotation above.

123 the Notion into an independent other, or to seem to be so.281 It is only the third attitude that removes the veil and reveals that the Notion was in the first two all along. These “theories of thought” are attitudes that the three parts of Hegel’s system are testing and unifying. These correlate with the three sides/stages/moments of logic that Hegel had just mentioned in EL, §§79-82. Recall also that these three “do not make three parts of logic, but are stages or ‘moments’ in every logical entity, that is, of every notion and truth whatever.”282

It is not the contents of the logic, the concepts themselves, that are being tested and found wanting, it is the attitude that is brought to these contents which is the concern, which constitutes the theories of thoughts about which Hegel is writing. Thus, for example, when thoughts are put under the first theory, “that of the understanding,” they are thereby “kept isolated from each other,” and this “gives an inadequate conception of them.”283 In contrast to this first theory, the third corrects these problems by apprehending “the unity of terms (propositions) in their opposition—the affirmative, which is involved in their disintegration and in their transition.”284 This disintegration and transition does not eliminate the content of the logic. Instead, Hegel affirms that the third theory produces a positive result via double negation. It negates the theory that at first negated

Thought, cancels it, and thereby uncovers the content within. Hegel writes: “[B]ecause it has a definite content, . . . because its result is not empty and abstract nothing, but the negation of certain specific propositions which are contained in the result.”285 The positive result, the definite content, is delivered by negating “certain specific propositions.” These propositions are the same as the

281 See also EL, 225, §162. 282 EL, 113, §79. GW, Band 20, 118: “. . . macht nicht drei Theile der Logik aus, sondern sind Momente jedes Logisch-Reellen, das ist jedes Begriffes oder jedes Wahren überhaupt.” 283 EL, 113, §79. GW, Band 20, 118: “. . . das Verständige, gesetzt, und dadurch abgesondert auseinander gehalten werden, aber so werden sie nicht in Wahrheit betrachtet.” 284 EL, 119, §82. GW, Band 20, 120: “. . . die Einheit der Bestimmungen in ihrer Entgegensetzung auf, das Affirmative, das in ihrer Auflösung und ihrem Uebergehen enthalten ist.” 285 EL, 119, §82. GW, Band 20, 120: “. . . weil sie einen bestimmten Inhalt hat, oder weil ihr Resultat wahrhaft nicht das leere, abstracte Nichts, sondern die Negation von gewissen Bestimmungen ist, welche im Resultate eben deswegen enthalten sind, . . .”

124 presupposing judgments, attitudes, theories of thought, etc., that encapsulate thought.

The “reasonable result” that arises within third stages is thus an uncovering of the content that had previously been veiled. These unveilings capitalize on the nature of disjunctive judgments and syllogisms. The structure of the underlying argument throughout these sections is one of listing options and eliminating all but one of them. There are three attitudes that one may take toward

Thought, and it is implied by the terse statements in §83 above that there are only three. The first two

“theories of thought” fail internally by contradicting their own contents.

This emphasizes the third theory, the only remaining option. In contrast to the other two, only the third theory of Thought avoids self-contradiction. Since simple coherence is not sufficient to guarantee truth, it takes a comparison with the other two to establish its truth logically. This is therefore a disjunctive elimination that depends on the exhaustive nature of the list of three options.

e) Category 4: Modality and Intermodal Self-Negation

At this point, the number of elements being uncovered is growing rather large, perhaps unmanageably so. For that reason, I will pause the textual analysis for a time and begin to develop and digest what has already been uncovered before moving on to expose these final two elements.

At the close of my third chapter, I will resume original exegesis on the modal characteristics of the three premises and Hegel’s unique logical rule of inference that I will call “intermodal self-negation.”

For now, I conclude the textual review and summarize what has been discovered.

2. The Form of Hegel’s Ontological Argument and his Philosophical System

Hegel gives us four arguments that all follow the same formal pattern: Sublation; the

Disjunctive Syllogism in the Logics; the Encyclopedia/Absolute Identity Thesis; and the Ontological

Argument in the VBDG. All four involve a triadic association of concepts, which also always

125 involves self-mediation. They also share more than their form; they share goal and method. The goal is the unity of the argument with its object; the method is that which begins with concept and works to synthesize objectivity from its internal resources, a priori. A thorough description of these forms seems to indicate that Hegel is seeking his goal by means of a deduction. Hegel is therefore indicating very strongly that he means his system to be understood as an ontological deduction.

As an indication of how Hegel can avoid dogmatism, a criticism he affirms, he describes his system as self-sufficient. Not only is the form of the Disjunctive Syllogism derived internally, within itself, but it is also connected to all other concepts without limit. Hegel is attempting to describe a logical structure that proves itself and that provides its own grounding without presupposition. If

Hegel can do these things, then he avoids dogmatism and earns the right to use deduction in metaphysics.

***

This provides a cursory exposition of the logical structure that Hegel appears to be advocating. Yet, the results are very problematic because they are so unexpected. At this point, therefore, it is only provisionally that I conclude that Hegel appears to be a formal logician who has used logic to do metaphysics. I consider the above interpretation to be fairly straightforward, but it is undeniably at odds with contemporary expectations. Thus, what must come next is a defense of the plausibility of the interpretation. In subsequent chapters I will explore Hegel’s critique of formal logic to see if such an interpretation can be maintained.

The task of the next chapter is to determine in what ways, precisely, Hegel’s approach to formal logic and metaphysics is new. The topic will be Hegel’s critique of formal logic in his own historical context. This will expose the details of Hegel’s innovation and will then lay the foundation for Chapter III, which will thoroughly explore Hegel’s understanding of the Disjunctive Syllogism.

By Chapter IV, the pursuit of a formal proof of Hegel’s argument will finally enjoy enough

126 background support to be presented.

CHAPTER II

HEGEL’S CRITIQUE OF FORMAL LOGIC

[T]hought thinks itself because it shares the nature of the object of thought; for it becomes an object of thought in coming into contact with and thinking its objects, so that thought and object of thought are the same.1

(Aristotle, Metaphysics, XII.7; Quoted by Hegel as the capstone to his Encyclopedia in The Philosophy of Mind, §577)

In this chapter, I will defend Hegel’s use of deduction by accomplishing the following six tasks. First, I will address the aversion to logic that Western culture had harbored since the

Renaissance, especially as this aversion has influenced Hegel, and reveal that this tendency also affects interpretation of Hegel today. Second, I will show that extremely advanced logical knowledge was available to Hegel, and that the achievements of earlier logicians were sufficient to meet Hegel’s purposes in his ontological argument. Third, I will give evidence that Hegel was aware of this body of logical knowledge, and, fourth, that he made extensive use of it. Fifth, I will give good reasons to think that Hegel made some original advancements in the field of deductive logic. And finally, I will examine Hegel’s effort to redeem deduction for use in Philosophy through his attempt to address and remove presupposition and finitude from the practice of logic.

1 Aristotle, Metaphysics, XII.7, 1072b20-24. Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle, trans. W. D. Ross (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1695. Original text: Aristotle. Aristotle's Metaphysics, trans. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 1924. “αὑτὸν δὲ νοεῖ ὁ νοῦς κατὰ μετάληψιν τοῦ νοητοῦ: νοητὸς γὰρ γίγνεται θιγγάνων καὶ νοῶν, ὥστε ταὐτὸν νοῦς καὶ νοητόν. τὸ γὰρ δεκτικὸν τοῦ νοητοῦ καὶ τῆς οὐσίας νοῦς, ἐνεργεῖ δὲ ἔχων, ὥστ᾽ ἐκείνου μᾶλλον τοῦτο ὃ δοκεῖ ὁ νοῦς θεῖον ἔχειν, καὶ ἡ θεωρία τὸ ἥδιστον καὶ ἄριστον.”

127 128

It is common today to think of Hegel as having rejected formal logic. In fact, it is almost unheard of to think anything else. Even though Hegel names two of his major works by the title

“Logic” (Logik), this is often discounted so that the interpreters can read the contents directly in terms of metaphysics or transcendental categories.2

I claim, rather, that Hegel did not reject formal logic and that he uses logic to produce his metaphysics, an ontology that just is the logical system itself. In terms of the traditional practice of logic, he identified two specific mistakes and then he worked to overcome them. Because these mistakes, presupposition and finitude, are external to the core properties and functions of deductive systems, any successful effort to avoid them restores the utility of logic in Philosophy. On this basis,

Hegel has not altered or done away with deduction per se, but has instead redeemed it. This allows us to interpret Hegel straightforwardly when he titles his books by the name “Logic” and when he tells us that his system is composed of syllogisms.

The result of this rehabilitation is not a new kind of logic, but a non-dogmatic means of employing the original logic. Much of Hegel’s argumentation in the Encyclopedia Logic is directly aimed at finding a way to avoid presupposition and finitude, and once they are overcome, the remainder of the Encyclopedia is consumed with producing objects out of syllogisms. Overlooking

Hegel’s approach to deduction, therefore, unavoidably obscures his philosophy.

Of course, this has not been the view of interpreters of Hegel. The syllogistic systems of

Aristotle, the Stoics, the Scholastics, Leibniz, and Wolff are thought to be fundamentally different from Hegel’s dialectic logic. Richard Dien Winfield, for example, explains this perspective by exposing a flaw in deductive logic itself: “Formal logic models a thinking that is mired in the opposition between knowing and its object, method and subject matter, and theory and practice.”3

2 John W. Burbidge, “Hegel’s Conception of Logic,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick C. Beiser, 86-101 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 86-87. 3 Winfield, Hegel and the Future, 81.

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This common belief about Hegel’s rejection of formal logic, says Winfield, comes from Hegel’s conviction that deduction is divisive by nature. Since Hegel is working to unify knowing and the object of knowing, it is concluded that Hegel would never seek to use the older modes of logic that hold them apart.

Dieter Henrich reaches the same conclusion about Hegel’s attitude toward formal logic, but he faces a difficulty when attempting to explain Hegel’s apparent fascination with the Ontological

Argument. He accepts that Hegel defends Anselm’s argument, but calls it a “transparent defense.”4

He then laments the attention that Hegel paid to the argument and expects that this amounts to a misdirection that might have ruined logic for many. The art of formal logic, he says, is weak, yet because it is the unavoidable context for discussing the Ontological Argument, Hegel’s discussion of it must begin in that context even if that discussion is meant to lead readers away from ontotheology. Thus, a discussion of the argument is justified only within its context, and the implication is that this context has been overcome and superseded by Hegel’s own advancements.5

Hegel, was battling to get philosophy away from ontotheology and the Ontological Argument is part of that climb out of dogmatism. He writes:

. . . [this is] the necessary beginning of the process, in which the opponents in their speculative idealism of the proof of the ontology, are forced towards a standpoint of logic out of which alone the ontology of tradition is justified and renewed. . . . It is not sensible already to follow a closed system if it is still dealing with the question of adequate expression, in which the problem of ontotheology articulates itself.6

Quentin Lauer rejects the idea that Hegel uses logic at all in his alternative to the Ontological

Argument. On his view, it is not even a condescending nod to the past. According to Lauer’s Hegel, such logic is useless for proving the existence of anything.

4 Henrich, 218. “. . . undurchsichtige Apologie des ontologischen Beweises, . . .” 5 Ibid., 218-219. 6 Ibid. “. . . mögen sie als der notwendige Beginn des Prozesses erschienen sein, in denen der spekulative Idealismus die Gegner des ontologischen Beweises auf den Standpunkt der Logik zwingt, von dem aus allein die Ontotheologie der Tradition gerechtfertigt und erneuert werden kann. . . . Es ist nicht sinnvoll, einem geschlossenen System schon zu folgen, wenn es noch um die angemessene Formulierung der Frage gehen muß, in der das Proglem der Ontotheologie such aussprechen kann.”

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. . . an “onto-logic” or . . . an “onto-theologic.” . . . Only such a logic, Hegel is convinced, can afford to speak of “proofs” of God’s reality at all. It is a logic which he sees operative in the metaphysical thinking of Saint Anselm and other medieval Scholastics, a logic which he finds obscured by Anselm’s attempts to formulate “proofs” according to the rules of an “abstract” logic of understanding. . . . If there is one and only one logic of proof, these proofs do not prove. For that matter there is no way of proving, by that sort of logic, the “existence” of anything, . . . . where existence is concerned “proof” means nothing, unless the thinking in question is “dialectical.”7

James Kreines thinks that Hegel is a metaphysician of sorts, but rejects the possibility that he has an ontological argument.

. . . [T]his is not to say that Hegel defends anything that would ordinarily be called an ontological argument. Nor that Hegel’s absolute idea is the God of the ontological argument. For Hegel clearly rejects the notion of arguing by finding a predicate of existence in a subject (e.g., EL §28), and he criticizes those rationalists who would extract from and initial definition of God or the absolute a conclusion about existence. [and then from note 32:]Hegel frequently criticizes the geometrical method reliant on initial definitions; . . .8

Patricia Marie Calton takes the same position about “that sort of logic.” According to her,

Hegel intentionally avoids expressing the Ontological Argument as a syllogism.9 Hegel even

“abandons the syllogistic approach” and replaces it with “a new method of discussing God’s existence . . . . [a] new form of proof.”10 This new method overcomes the problems that Hegel finds in Anselm’s and others’ versions of the proof.11 On her appraisal, Hegel has done away with the formal veneer of the argument, preserving only a formless description of God’s own, and our own, self-elevation:

When we “strip away that form of demonstration” that we are used to employing in argumentation concerning God’s existence, Hegel argues that what is left of the proof is “a description of the self-elevation to God.” Instead of presenting the proof for God’s existence as an abstract, intellectual puzzle, Hegel tells us that “this procedure of demonstration should rather be our own elevation, that our spirit or heart ought to elevate itself, . . .”12

Kevin J. Harrelson concurs. Hegel has rejected the entire tradition of logic including the

7 Lauer, 225. 8 Kreines, Reason, 260. 9 Calton, 39, n. 3. 10 Ibid., 39. Italics mine. 11 Ibid., 35. 12 Calton, 38-39. Also, on pages 35-36, Calton calls this a “sort of proof” and says that Hegel is merely “presenting it as” a demonstration.

131 contributions of Leibniz and Wolff. He claims, like Winfield, that traditional logic, the “logic of the understanding,” is inherently divisive. It divides God’s nature from his existence as a matter of its inherent properties, and so it is an inappropriate means of achieving the goals of the proof. He writes:

. . . Hegel takes issue with the structure of the Wollfian [sic] Theologia naturalis and thereby attacks the proof procedure of the entire Leibnizian school. . . . Hegel intends to show this “activity of the understanding” in separating God’s nature from his existence, and these from his attributes, to be an inadequate procedure.13

He concludes that Hegel’s own argument, for this reason, should not be interpreted in such a way that it makes the same mistake. Unlike a deductive argument, Hegel’s analysis is a non-argument and is not subject to refutation or demonstration. Instead of offering a deduction, Hegel has broken down the “cognitive process” in such a way that an ontological argument of sorts is produced.

. . . what Hegel accomplishes [with his ontological argument] is as little subject to refutation as it is to demonstration. . . . Hegel’s case seems unique in that he openly accepts the indemonstrability of God’s existence by reducing the notion of “proof” to the description of a cognitive process.14

Michael Inwood is more specific about the difference between the traditional logic and

Hegel’s new, dialectical logic. Hegel, he thinks, has done something to alter Aristotle’s fundamental form and has done so in order to change the end result:

Aristotle was concerned with the ways in which a proposition can be validly derived from two other propositions. But, in accordance with his reinterpretation of the judgment as an original division of the concept into the universal, particular, and individual, Hegel reinterprets the forms of the inference as successively more adequate ways of restoring the unity of the concept.15

Inwood then, somehow, uses this to conclude that Hegel has done away with the older version of logic completely. The older version divides, but Hegel’s new version unites. And even though he admits that the syllogism is an attempt at uniting, he thinks that Hegel’s newer version of logic, which is not the syllogism, is a total reorientation as compared to the older logic, and thus the two

13 Harrelson, 209. 14 Ibid., 221. 15 Inwood, 137. Some terms were originally written in capital letters.

132 are incompatible.

In place of a deductive reading of Hegel’s inferences, various alternative interpretations of his sublational maneuvering have been imagined including the following major theories and categories. Instead of being a relation of deductive necessity, they are viewed variously as: organic ordering of concepts;16 superior commentary that makes sense of a lower conflict;17 an ordering of a unique and otherwise indescribable kind;18 a multifaceted super-logical ordering;19 a “transcendental” argument in which conditions for the possibility of one phenomenon entails another;20 or a narrative or literary conflict and resolution.21 This variety is unified by one consistency: Hegel has abandoned deduction as such and has replaced it with something else.

As a summary of all these perspectives, which are representative of a unified field of opinion, the typical mindset about Hegel’s view of traditional logic and the Ontological Argument involves the following six beliefs:

 Ontological arguments are unavoidably ontotheological.  Traditional logic is inherently oppositional and dogmatic.  Hegel knows better than to involve himself with either of these, and certainly not both.  So, Hegel is not pursuing ontotheology via traditional logic.  So, Hegel does not have an ontological argument as such.  Those who think that Hegel does have an ontological deduction, or that he uses formal logic, have missed something fundamental.

Yet, these conclusions run into a difficult problem. Allegra de Laurentiis puts it well:

. . . Hegel’s own criticism of metaphysical theorizing, on the one hand, and his pervasive incorporation of metaphysical concepts and deductions into his account of the real, on the other, present scholars with highly challenging problems (to use an understatement).22

16 Kaufmann, 132. 17 J. N. Findlay, “Review of Hegel: Reinterpretation, Texts, and Commentary, by Walter Kaufmann,” The Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1966): 367. 18 Solomon, 207-209. 19 John Burbidge, On Hegel’s Logic: Fragments of a Commentary (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1981), 195-196. 20 Jon Stewart, The Unity of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit”: A Systematic Interpretation (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 2000), 23. 21 Kenneth R. Westphal, Hegel’s Epistemology: A Philosophical Introduction to the “Phenomenology of Spirit,” (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003), 14, 16. 22 Allegra de Laurentiis, “Introduction,” in Hegel and Metaphysics: On Logic and Ontology in the System, ed. Allegra de

133

The problem is that the six almost universally held beliefs listed above seem to conflict with a plain reading of Hegel’s own descriptions of his philosophy.

I will reduce all of this to two fundamental beliefs as I work to argue against the field: 1)

Hegel has almost completely rejected ancient Greek and Medieval syllogistics as well as the formal- logical work of Leibniz, so Hegel’s philosophy could not possibly be engaging in formal logic without irony or accommodation. 2) Hegel’s alternative to formal logic is his own unique brand of

“dialectic logic,” which is different in kind from traditional logic. Moreover, formal logic, as Winfield states explicitly above, is inherently “mired” within a presupposition of various kinds of disunity, and this is something Hegel was working to overcome.

Working against the crowd, I note that these attitudes are at odds with several of Hegel’s direct and explicit claims as well as several of the characteristics of his philosophy. Starting with the first belief just listed, there are multiple reasons to think that it is incorrect. And, although these reasons range from weak to strong, they are all important in building a cumulative case. I begin by noting Hegel’s generally positive attitude toward historical forms of philosophy and formal logic.

This fact alone is not sufficient to incline us to reject the first belief, but it will turn out to be symptomatic of fundamental aspects of Hegel’s philosophy. In turn, an appreciation of this attitude is helpful in restricting our appreciation of those more fundamental aspects. For example, it is well known and uncontroversial that Hegel reserved very high praise for Aristotle and made at least some use of the logic of Aristotle,23 as well as the arguments and logical work of Anselm,24 Leibniz, and

Laurentiis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 2. Bold emphasis added. 23 EL, 250, §187; EM, 315, §577. Additionally, Findlay says in his introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, p. xxi, that Hegel’s Organics are founded on Aristotle’s teleology. See also Alfredo Ferrarin, “Hegel’s Aristotle: Philosophy and its Time,” in A Companion to Hegel, ed. Stephen Houlgate and Michael Bauer (Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley- Blackwell, 2011), 433-451. 24 VBDG is the primary evidence of this, but Anselm’s famous argument is also mentioned favorably throughout Hegel’s Encyclopedia and Science of Logic as has been shown in Chapter I. See also Redding and Bubbio, 465, 467.

134 even Wolff.25 In fact, Hegel’s attitude toward past philosophies is known to be unusually positive for his day. Unlike any philosopher before him, Hegel commonly reached out of his own context in order to comprehend (grasp together) all previous forms of thought. This resulted in a love of history that led him to a very real respect for Greek, Early Christian, Scholastic, and Modern philosophy (as well as their deductive logic). He even seems to have given some attention to philosophy outside of Western culture, as can be seen by his relatively thorough exploration of

Chinese and Indian philosophy in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy as well as various comments about “Brahmans” (Hinduism), Buddhism, and “Mohammedanism” (Islam) in the Science of Logic.26

At the close of the Encyclopedia, Hegel even gives a rather extended discussion of the Bhagavad-Gita.27

Of course, it is not enough that Hegel loves history, but a love of historical and foreign philosophy fits very well with the preservative aspect of sublation. Hegel’s method of sublation is inclusive and generally preservative of the past.28 Throughout such a process, however, the status of concepts left behind becomes a concern. With each new sublation, the first concept may at first appear to be superseded by the second, and then both by the third. It might then be thought that the newer concepts replace earlier concepts, making them obsolete. However, Hegel does not, in practice, leave concepts behind, never to return. New concepts do not obliterate earlier concepts because Hegel returns to them, using them later. The final step of each sublation is certainly meant to overcome something within its earlier concepts, but this overcoming does not obliterate those concepts. In other words, Hegel reveals that each concept is constituted by internal contradictions of some kind, and he sees a progress in the negations that resolve them. Despite this, Hegel goes on

25 Kusch and Manninen, 110-117, 127-128, 137, 162. Specifically, this article outlines Hegel’s admiration for and use of three distinct modal syllogistics that were obtained from Aristotle, Leibniz, and Wolff. 26 E. g., WL, 83, §136; 328, §703, and VGP. 27 EM, 305-307, §573. The Gita is a 700-verse Hindu text dating, on some theories, from the second century BC. 28 There is a distinction between the historical and the logical, of course, but Hegel’s use of sublation preserves the past in both senses. Both earlier historical and earlier logical concepts are contained within and thus preserved by later concepts. It should also be noted, however, that negation of past concepts is also involved. Preservation of a negated form of a concept can look very much like a rejection. This will be addressed below.

135 to use these concepts in later stages of the Progression. He incorporates, or re-uses, past concepts within new concepts. There is negation, therefore, but not obliteration. So, sublation is neither fully negative nor fully positive, but a mix of negation and preservation.

What then is being accomplished? Hegel is both deriving and connecting concepts together through a chain of sublations. With regard to the resulting interconnectedness, these deductive chains eliminate finitude for the concepts that are connected to the structure. With regard to the derivations, Hegel is adding logical and conceptual tools to his repertoire; he develops these tools and then he uses them later despite negating the encapsulating programs that generate the concepts.

This means that he is not climbing ladders and kicking them away as if he could leave the tools of logic behind him.29

This pattern is characteristic of Hegel’s philosophy of history. He traces through historical thought, transforms the historical into the logical,30 recognizes and repairs oppositions by means of logical negation, and ties it all together with a systematic unity. The negated elements, consequently, have their place in logical development, as constituent parts. And, as the chain of sublations moves on, previously-derived concepts resurface again and again and are reincorporated as needed. Just so, the logic of the understanding remains part of the negative-dialectic stage of logic and also the positive-synthetic stage.31

Yet, this too is not enough to rule out the first belief above. The fact that sublation preserves as well as cancels, especially in the way just described, is not sufficient on its own to indicate that

Hegel meant to preserve formal logic as a method. To preserve deduction only in its negated form

29 Julie E. Maybee, Picturing Hegel: An Illustrated Guide to Hegel’s “Encyclopaedia Logic” (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 30, 73, 100, 112, 156, 193, 214, 221, 235, 458, 600. Maybee sees that “Later concepts are built out of earlier concepts as part of their definitions.” If this is the case, she suggests, then the visual analogy of concentric circles is an apt way to describe each concept. I take this to imply that Hegel cannot do away with earlier stages without disrupting the later stages. 30 It is begging the question to use the historical-to-logical transformation as evidence here, but I mention it now only as a reminder that this step is crucial to the actual use of historical forms that was detected in Chapter I, an aspect of the raw data of exegesis that must be accounted for. 31 EL, 120, §82.

136 would be equivalent to a rejection ‘with much respect,’ an acknowledgment of a debt owed to an earlier stage of development. And, this is quite compatible with “kicking away ladders.”

These two factors, however, help to support and explain a much more important third. This final factor has two parts of its own: the first is the absence in Hegel of criticisms of formal logic’s internal, or vital, characteristics; the second is the presence of efforts to repair what amount to relatively superficial errors in past approaches to logic’s practice.

Regarding the first, Hegel only ever criticizes a particular way of practicing formal logic, what

Hegel calls the presupposing attitudes of logicians, and never the actual deductions themselves.32 Hegel takes pains to derive the syllogisms and his criticisms only pertain to external characteristics of logic’s application. Hegel only ever found fault with the presuppositions logicians had been making about their access to concepts and about those concepts’ access to one another and to their objects.

Hegel noticed that Aristotle and the Scholastics, to name a few, tended to begin with presupposed axioms; they assumed that certain self-evident concepts were true.33 They then proceeded to deduce conclusions from these axioms while making the further assumption that the forms of inferences were themselves dependable, a groundless presupposition of the validity of the laws of general logic.

In the end, they reached conclusions that they assumed had a connection to objective truth based on the initial presuppositions of axioms and rules of inference. At each of these points, however, the presuppositions involved were severing the connections needed to provide grounding. As the caricature goes, if a logician drums up concepts for a starting place and then makes up a set of rules

32 Hegel comes very close to doing this in various passages, but close examination allows us to interpret such passages compatibly with his “rescue” of formal logic. Cf., Winfield’s comment above that logic is mired in opposition. Hegel agrees with this, but also uses that opposition to overcome finitude by the time he reaches the DS. This syllogism is the key to overcoming the opposition inherent in judgment and syllogism. If we keep this in mind, we can see that Hegel himself mitigates his strong criticisms of the old logic and metaphysics. See, Winfield, Hegel and the Future, 81. 33 This may not be entirely correct and Hegel may have known of an ancient alternative that overcomes this problem. So, this is only an initial description of the presuppositional fault, the applicability of which will have to be modified later. Though much logical development proceeded on this presupposition, there is also a strong indication that a grounding-principle was widely known as early as Plato. This principle was eventually named the consequentia mirabilis, and it will be explored at length below.

137 to relate those concepts together, then the basis for this interplay of imaginary creations is little more than a game. There is then no reason to think that the conclusions of this game have any purchase on reality. The process is anchorless. Hegel’s accusation of dogmatism amounts to the claim that the roots of these “games” had never been examined and so the whole project was naively doomed to groundlessness from start to finish. Hegel refers to these tandem errors as presupposition and finitude.

Throughout this criticism, however, Hegel has not mentioned anything about the logical machinery itself. This is commonly overlooked. Despite the fact that he believed these errors to be fatal to the practice of logic, the specific criticisms do not imply that the method of deduction is flawed in itself. In fact, this dependency on presupposition is only tangentially relevant and remains fully external to the logical substructure. Hegel never tells us that the deductive method itself is fatally wounded by the errors of presupposition or finitude. Consequently, this aspect of Hegel’s critique is, for us, a negative realization. Something is missing that we would expect to see if Hegel meant to rule out and replace formal logic. We would expect to see a criticism of logic itself, of the judgments and the syllogisms, of deductive inference, etc., but such condemnations are missing from

Hegel’s analysis.

In contrast, the second part is positive; there is something present that we would not expect to see if Hegel meant to rule out and replace formal logic. This positive element is Hegel’s solution to the errors of presupposition and finitude. By overcoming these problems, it seems to be indicated, the method of deduction is to be restored. Why would Hegel labor intensely to repair deduction if he believed it was beyond repair?

A full description of Hegel’s redemptive efforts is the subject of the present chapter, but a brief introduction here will be helpful to set up context. If the problem was a separation between concepts and between concepts and their objects, then the solution is to make connections. If the

138 problem of disconnectedness forced logicians and metaphysicians to presuppose axioms and modes of syllogistic inference, then the solution will obviate these needs and allow a logician to reason without the presupposition of starting places, rules of deductive inference, or links to transcendent objects. Hegel’s system seeks this end by means of an extensive program of conceptual interconnection. Concepts are bound together by means of a step-wise application of sublation. This takes Hegel from the bare phenomenon, Being, to the Disjunctive Syllogism. Then, this final syllogism leads to, or is revealed to already be, objectivity. Objectivity then fleshes out the conceptual contents of an entire world of objects by revealing their inner syllogistic structures.

(These are not strange, new, “dialectic” syllogisms, mind you, but straightforwardly normal and traditional syllogisms. These triads are disjunctive syllogisms in the ordinary sense.) Along the way,

Hegel not only connects all concepts together, but he generates all of the tools and objects needed to perform complex deductive reasoning.34 Most relevantly, between concepts as concepts

(abstraction proper) and concepts-as-objects (objectivity) Hegel derives the most important syllogism. The Disjunctive Syllogism is retroactively recognizable as the form of his sublational process itself, and this is the one and only means that Hegel ever finds for unifying form and content. This unification is the means of connection, of overcoming finitude, and of doing away with the need for presupposition. It is the grounding principle in Hegel’s philosophy. Thought thinks itself, its sole task and function, by means of this form.

Since this form is a straightforwardly deductive syllogism, and because Hegel makes it the centerpiece of his philosophical system, it makes no sense that Hegel would intend to use it merely as a stepping stone. Hegel, therefore, never intended to leave behind abstract deductive syllogistics, the logic of the understanding. He intended instead to use it properly by avoiding certain fatal flaws

34 Kusch and Manninen, 127-128, 137. Hegel is reported here to acknowledge and extend Leibniz’s advanced modal syllogistics based on the rule of contradiction. I take this to be a prominent example of the way that Hegel develops extremely advanced logical tools within the Progression of Thought.

139 that he believed had made past logical efforts dogmatic.

It is therefore a flawed oversimplification to think that Hegel’s critique of formal logic was an outright rejection. Hegel certainly rejected something, but it was not the method of deduction.

Deduction is Hegel’s method. His own philosophy is structured as a system of deductions and once this is pointed out, that the form is recognizable everywhere in his system, it becomes impossible to sustain the first belief above. Despite its popularity, it must now be overturned.

Regarding the second belief, that Hegel aimed to replace the abstract logic of the understanding with an entirely new, “dialectic” kind of logic.35 This is a term that Hegel uses only rarely.36 It is one of the three stages/moments of logical doctrine: the Abstract (the logic of the understanding); the Dialectical (negative reason); and the Speculative/Synthetic (positive reason).37

Every logical entity, says Hegel, involves all three of these stages within itself, and each logical entity can also be seen from the perspective of any of the three stages. That is, when we consider any logical entity, the three stages can be found within it, and any logical entity can be seen in the light of each of the three stages. These stages are thus intrinsic properties and alternative modes of appearance for all concepts.

The three stages of logic are ordered by Hegel from least to greatest, but he is careful to tell his readers that the lower stages are not abandoned in the higher stages. Hegel says that the highest stage, the Speculative, contains the other two stages within itself. For this reason, the lower stages

“can at will be elicited from it, . . .”38 This seems to contradict the received interpretation that the logic of the first stage is abandoned. One reason to think this view is mistaken is an additional subtraction that it makes. It seems to do away not only with the first stage (understanding) but with

35 Hodgson, for example, sees this in Hegel’s ontological proof. See his, Hegel and Christian Theology, 122. 36 Stern reports that Hegel uses the term “dialectic” only very rarely, and that his most direct discussion is in EL, §§79-83. See, Stern, Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit, 15. I can confirm this assessment and I also see this passage as the primary text to consider on this question; I will discuss it next. 37 EL, 113-120, §79-82. 38 EL, 120, §82. GW, Band 20, 120: “. . . und kann aus jener sogleich gemacht werden; . . .”

140 the third stage as well, the speculative. This leaves only the second, the stage Hegel labels dialectic.

This is why it has become common to refer to Hegel’s whole logic as “dialectic” and to understand it in ways that seem to restrict it to the features of the second stage, its negative features. Dialectic logic, when restricted to such an extent that it denies both the previous stage, the logic of the understanding, and the subsequent stage, the speculative logic, cannot help but be negative. The first stage is positive, but abstract, the third is positive and synthetic (as its label indicates), and so it is only the middle stage that is negative, a stage that Hegel explicitly criticizes for hobbling itself with its negativity, resulting in skepticism.39

Hegel describes a three-stage system that overcomes the internal contradictions of both of its first two stages by means of the third. Thus, it is not just the logic of the understanding that has problems, the dialectic logic does as well. Nevertheless, Hegel does not eliminate either of these first two stages. The third stage incorporates them both. The three-stage doctrine of logic is a sublation that negates its first two stages but also preserves them. Hegel’s third stage is a principle of harmony that negates the cause of the internal conflicts in all its parts and reconciles the first two stages to itself by making them logically equivalent to each other and to itself. In addition, each sublation, being a third stage that harmonizes two other stages, uses the resources of first and second stages in its operation. First, it is a syllogism, so it requires the logic of the first stage. Second, it involves two negations, so it requires the resources of the dialectic stage. None of the stages is dispensable. In neither the derivation nor the practice of his sublations does Hegel abandon the other stages. They are all always in use with each sublation. The third stage harmonizes its inner contradictions by means of the resources made available by all of its parts.

The first stage has provided the required logical structure; the second has provided the capacity to work negatively. The third stage not only uses the first two stages as premises, but it also

39 EL, 116, §81.

141 uses the tools that each one has made available through internal derivation. The result is positive

(synthetic) deduction that uses negation internally. The third stage manages to be positive even though the second stage is entirely negative and skeptical.40

As stand-alone strategies, each of the first two stages would be caught in its own futility. The first would be caught in its own dogmatism, presupposition and finitude. The second would be trapped in negativity and skepticism. Thus the historical expressions of these attitudes.

If we leave the first stage behind completely in this analysis, as is common, the second stage looks like it has joined forces with the third while denying its synthetic properties, and the term

“dialectic” seems to apply properly to Hegel’s entire methodology. This common terminological practice reflects the conceptual shift that has occurred through interpretation. It is as if the second two stages together, being named after and behaving like the second, have moved past the first stage without incorporating it even though Hegel insists that it is incorporated.41 As Hegel noted, “every logical entity, that is, . . . every notion and truth whatever” contains each of the three stages.42 But, if every notion and truth extant contains all three stages, then how can we interpret Hegel has having abandoned logic (method) and synthesis (metaphysics)? Hegel uses both. Deduction is neither alien to, nor incompatible with, the other two stages; it is a constituent part of every notion whatever.

The second belief above, that Hegel’s brand of logic is unique and very much unlike traditional logic, is therefore untenable. Hegel’s system is an interdependent package, and its mode of interdependence is best interpreted as deductive. It is thus the second belief above, and not the position it attacks, that leads to problematic opposition. Problems arise because this belief removes the very principle of interconnection that Hegel employs, deduction. I think that this decision lies at the root of our difficulties with Hegel; this decision has made him exceedingly difficult to

40 EL, 116, §81. 41 EL, 120, §82. 42 EL, 113, §79. GW, Band 20, 118: “Diese drei Seiten machen nichte drei Theile der Logik aus, sondern sind Momente jedes Logisch-Reellen, das ist jede Begriffes oder jedes Wahren überhaubt.”

142 understand and defend. I have found that, if the second belief is rejected, then Hegel’s philosophy comes into stark and ready focus.

In sum, it appears that the two beliefs above are at odds with Hegel’s own descriptions of his doctrine of logic. The reason for this, I will contend, is that a rejection of traditional logic as a means of doing metaphysics had become common enough in Hegel’s time, especially among elite German philosophers, that it seems quite out of place to interpret Hegel as returning to it. Perhaps this possibility is so removed from the realm of expectation that it has never really been considered from

Hegel’s time through to today. Yet, when it is considered, I have found that the evidence comes quickly and soon builds to an overwhelming point. To that evidence I turn next.

In what follows, I will look at the state of formal logic in Hegel’s day to determine the extent of his possible exposure and knowledge. This, coupled with what appears to be an advanced use of modal syllogistics, will show that Hegel was much more of a logician than is typically realized. I will then take a much closer look at his actual critique of traditional logic, involving presupposition and finitude, and conclude that Hegel meant to fix and not abandon the deductive method. His subsequent use of this method, as the primary tool of Reason, will then become visible.

A. Hegel’s Study and Use of Past Logical Advancements

The formal features of Hegel’s ontological argument that have been uncovered in the previous chapter through a survey of Hegel’s texts seem out of place given the common view that he rejected formal logic and replaced it with something completely different. We have then an interpretational conflict between the ontological argument that Hegel has described and what is expected from him.

143

1. Hegel’s Debt to Aristotle

The case for Hegel’s redemption of formal logic must begin with Hegel’s admiration for and diligent study of Aristotle. This great respect has even been described by Alfredo Ferrarin as an unexpected “endorsement,” one that he finds “baffling.”43 He also says that:

Hegel’s praise of Aristotle is quite extraordinary, especially for someone who does not normally pull any punches. In the Lectures on the History of Philosophy Hegel reserves for no other philosopher such admiration and such an extended treatment.44

and,

Hegel, whose knowledge of Greek is astounding, is the first philosopher in modern times who engages in a thorough study of Aristotle in the original. He never relies on traditional interpretations, and by giving his own exegesis . . . , he thinks he is contributing to countering the oblivion and the mindless reception, which alternates with occasional piecemeal exploitation, of a philosophy that he takes to be the speculative peak of classical Greek thought.45

Hegel’s admiration for the original logician may seem odd today, but it also seemed odd in Hegel’s day, and this was also the impression of some of Hegel’s contemporaries and students. The writers of the lecture-notes for the Encyclopedia Logic at one point expressed in a specific Zusatz that Hegel had even exempted Plato and Aristotle from his criticism of the old metaphysics,46 a claim that supports Ferrarin’s conclusions. And, of course, Hegel himself gives Aristotle the most prominent of places when he chooses to end his own magnum opus, the Encyclopedia, with a very long quotation from Aristotle’s Metaphysics.47 By doing this, Hegel thereby allows Aristotle to finish his philosophy for him by giving him the final word. This clearly communicates that Hegel’s own system is reaching a conclusion that Aristotle also reached. He is communicating that one and the same conclusion, via different routes of course, is being put forward by himself and Aristotle.

43 Ferrarin, 433, 440, 442. The context of this statement is Ferrarin’s belief that Hegel does not see any type of necessary, linear progress in history and so he is, first of all, quite comfortable allowing Aristotle a place of prominence (442). Second, Ferrarin’s conclusion includes the puzzling notion that Hegel has somehow set aside his identity thesis when he reads Aristotle (440). 44 Ibid. See also, de Laurentiis, 2. 45 Ibid. 46 EL, 59, §36a. 47 EM, 315, §577. This passage is quoted in full in the first exergue at the start of this chapter and a part of it is quoted just below.

144

Not only does this fit with what Hegel claimed in the VBDG, that thought has access to truth due to their underlying unity, but it also gives an example of what Hegel thinks about historical instances of the first attitude of Thought toward its object, that the first stage has the correct conclusion, access to truth, and that its only flaw is that it presupposes rather than demonstrates it.

So, Hegel thinks that he has found a way to prove what was previously only presupposed.48 In that capstone passage, Hegel is thus linking his conclusion with Aristotle’s:

. . . thought thinks itself because it shares the nature of the object of thought; for it becomes an object of thought in coming into contact with and thinking its objects, so that thought and object of thought are the same.49

These words could just as easily have come from Hegel’s own pen. And, of course, they did. Hegel copied these words, in Greek, onto the end of his own finished manuscript.

There is also strong evidence that Hegel studied the formal logical systems of Aristotle in depth. Various scholars have even linked Hegel’s account of modalities for example with Aristotle,50

Leibniz,51 and Spinoza.52 Martin Kusch and Juha Manninen, specifically, argue that Hegel’s account of modalities in the Science of Logic shows strong evidence of knowledge of at least two modal systems that had originated with Aristotle. They conclude that Hegel either knew about them directly from his reading of Aristotle, or that he learned about them through his exposure to Leibniz

48 However, through the consequentia mirabilis, as will be shown shortly, Hegel may have been aware of the way that the original logician and his teacher, Plato, sought to avoid presupposition themselves. 49 Aristotle, Metaphysics, XII.7, 1072b20-22, 1695. For Greek text, see the citation at the head of this chapter. 50 G. R. G. Mure, A Study of Hegel’s Logic (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1950), and Mure, An Introduction to Hegel (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1940). As cited by Martin Kusch and Juha Manninen, “Hegel on Modalities and Monadology,” in Modern Modalities: Studies of the History of Modal Theories from Medieval Nominalism to Logical Positivism, ed. S. Knuuttila (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), 170, n. 7. I also note here that Aristotle’s knowledge of modal logic was fairly advanced in itself. Aristotle considers 137 modal syllogistic systems. See, I. M. Bochenski, A History of Formal Logic, ed. and trans. Ivo Thomas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961), 85-86. 51 Ilkka Patoluoto, “Mahdollisuus ja identiteetti Hegelin logiikassa,” in Tutkimuksia Hegelistä, ed. Marja-Liisa Kakkuri and Ilkka Patoluoto, (Helsinki: Tutkijaliiton julkaisusarja, 1984), 85-106. As cited by Kusch and Manninen, 170, n. 7. See also Clinton Tolley, Kant’s Conception of Logic, 561, who notes Leibniz’s association of the possible with the real, in Leibniz’s words, “even when nothing existent corresponds to it.” Tolley cites Leibniz’s Nouveaux Essais (II.30.1; G v.245). 52 Eugène J. Fleischmann, “Die Wirklichkeit in Hegels Logik. Ideengeschichtliche Beziehungen zu Spinoza,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 18 (1964): 3-29. See especially page 29 for a clarification of the relationship between Spinoza’s and Hegel’s understanding of the “freedom” of the concept to self create.

145 and Wolff. With regard to the influence of Leibniz/Wolff, Kusch and Manninen write:

It seems to us that Hegel’s discussion on modalities in general is most fruitfully read against the context of the Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy as this philosophy is codified foremost in Wolff’s Deutsche Metaphysik, a book that Hegel himself refers to in his lectures on the philosophy of history. The central concepts and conceptions of Hegel’s discussion—like the definition of possibility as the noncontradictory, the concept of a ground, the notion of equipossibility, the idea of free, contingent actualities (e.g. monads), etc.—these can all be found in the Leibniz-Wolffian system.53

Going much further to connect Hegel to what was known of modal logic before the 19th century, Kusch and Manninen even link Hegel to “the basic axiom of S5” via Wolff’s use of iterated operators in the Latin version of his Metaphysical text book, the Philosophia Prima, §286 (cf., §§170-

171). Kusch and Manninen report specifically that, “rule (5)(‘Quod possibile est, id necessario possibile est.’) is interesting since it shows that Wolff is familiar with iterated operators and that [Wolff’s] logic of absolute modalities contains the basic axiom of S5.”54 Wolff’s logic of absolute modalities, as might be expected, comes originally from Leibniz, who links one system of modality to the law of non- contradiction, “A truth is necessary when the opposite implies a contradiction,”55 and another to temporal change via “equipossibility”:56 a contingent event whose actuality is not fully necessitated has an insufficient ground, and this relates to Leibniz’s principle of equipossibility, which is about

“concepts of events whose occurrence is equally probable/possible.”57

Hegel appears to use these two models as the basis for his account of formal and real modalities, on the way to developing absolute modality in the third stage. Additionally, setting the pattern for the development at each of these three stages, Wolff discusses absolute necessity in terms of several “implication-relations” between necessity, possibility, and actuality.58 For these

53 Kusch and Manninen, 110. 54 Ibid., 112. 55 Benson Mates, The Philosophy of Leibniz (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986), 106. As cited by Kusch and Manninen, 172, n. 20. 56 Kusch and Manninen, 110, 128, 162. 57 Ibid., 162. 58 Christian Wolff, Deutsche Metaphysik (1720) and the Latin Philosophia prima sive ontologia (1728), as cited by Kusch and Manninen, 111.

146 reasons, Kusch and Manninen conclude that Hegel has effectively adopted Leibniz’s and Wolff’s system of “implication relations” as stages within his own account.59 Specifically, Hegel reworks these accounts into stages 1 and 2 of his paradigmatic three-stage structure, but even more fundamentally than this, Hegel’s own underlying strategy of defining one modal concept in terms of others is clearly taken from these earlier logicians and is therefore not original to Hegel. Therefore, we need not place the burden of reinventing these wheels on Hegel’s shoulders. And perhaps even more importantly, we need not think of such advancements as anachronistic in Hegel’s context.

Aristotle was also the first to consider the self-deducing properties of the primary laws of thought.60 The validity of such circular arguments was then explored further by the Stoics61 producing a very long tradition of exploration of the possibility of grounding systems in such arguments.62 This tradition gave rise to the Ontological Argument.

2. Hegel’s Debt to the Scholastics

As argued in Chapter I, Hegel borrows his method and his goal, with modification, from

Anselm’s proof. This proof sits within that long exploration of self-negating, self-referring, self- grounding deductions that was just mentioned above. Though logical development had slowed to a crawl after Augustine,63 the 8th century saw the fires of learning rekindled.64 By the 11th century, the stage was being set to tackle larger problems in logic, such as the problem of universals. A new spirit of adventure overtook Europe’s logicians at this time and a “modern” view began to arise, one that

59 Kusch and Manninen. This is the argument of their entire article. 60 Bochenski, 60-62. See also, William Kneale “Aristotle and the Consequentia Mirabilis,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 77 (1957): 62–66. Kneale sees the CM argument in Aristotle’s Protrepticus. As will be discussed later, this argument is the logical tool that logicians use to self-prove the fundamental concepts, AKA primitive truths, and Laws of Thought. 61 Ibid., 74-75. See, Prior Analytics, 14.05, as cited by Bochenski. 62 The Stoic strategy for any primitive truth was to prove it by an attempt to negate it. This can be summarized by the formula: [(~A⊃A) ⊃ A]. More on this later. 63 Ibid., 198. 64 Bochenski, 198-200. Logicians of note in this period: Alcuin (8th cent.); John Scotus Eriugena (9th); Gerbert; Abbo of Fleury; Notker Labeo of St. Gall (10th); Garland the Computist; and Peter Abelard (11th).

147 linked attribute to being. In the midst of this exploration, logicians took up the connection between attribute and being in earnest and the first ontological argument was formulated in this sub-context.

In his argument, Anselm found a contradiction in the supposition that God does not exist. In this,

Anselm followed Augustine’s strategy, which itself had followed the strategy of the earlier Stoics and

Aristotle.65

It should be no surprise that Hegel’s argument works by the same strategy. He owes much to this argument’s great heritage. The evidence of this is the similarity in the structure of the deductions. Hegel’s argument works by leveraging negations, as do all of the older arguments. And also like these arguments Hegel’s is self-referring, self-grounding, deductive, and ontological.

Nonetheless, this connection is a surprise. It comes, I think, from the fact that philosophers in Hegel’s day were in the midst of a centuries-long effort to undermine Scholasticism, both its religious authority and its logic.66 When it is added to this that Kant accused the “general logic” of dogmatism, it can seem quite implausible that Hegel would fight this near universal tide.

Nevertheless, Scholastic thought lingered and remained influential in one form or another, and so, never became completely hidden from intellectuals in northern Europe. This is the environment in which Hegel was educated. Scholasticism and the legacy of Aristotle and the Stoics was maligned, but it had not become completely unavailable.

Unfortunately, because of this sea change there was no new research in formal logic during this period. Instead something new arose in the place of the logic of Aristotle, the Stoics, and the

Scholastics, a simplification that became known as “Classical Logic.”67 This new entity, ironically and falsely called “classical,” dominated for about four hundred more years. During this period, when

65 Ibid., 202, 347. See also, Luca Castagnoli, Ancient Self-Refutation: The Logic and History of the Self-Refutation Argument from Democritus to Augustine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 197. More on this below. 66 Kneale and Kneale, 245-246. 67 Bochenski, 254.

148 logic was taught, the form in which it was taught was that of the new, classical logic.68 This was the logic that Hegel was taught. While it elevated the ancients, it viewed medieval thought as barbaric and backward.69 Thus, it perpetuated the false notion that there was a period of great darkness and ignorance between Aristotle and the Renaissance.70 The new logic was meant to “clear away the rubbish of scholasticism”71 and to ready the post-reformation scholar for assertion more than for proof and analysis.72 Making Plato’s distinction prophetic, logic became a tool for the sophist rather than the philosopher, but the fitting of the tool for this new use dulled it considerably. From this we can detect a possible bottleneck in transmission between past logicians and Hegel.

Classical Logic recognized only four figures of syllogism, nineteen moods (none of the subalterns), and a few other odds and ends from Aristotle and the Stoics.73 They omitted or chose to ignore the Scholastic doctrines of supposition, consequences, antinomies, and modal logic.74 Despite being thus watered down, it was this version of logic that had become formative for modern philosophers, including Spinoza, British Empiricists (and especially the Newtonian movement75),

Wolff, Kant, and Hegel.76 If these thinkers were going to benefit from the advancements in formal logic that had come before them, they would have had to do their own careful research; and most of them leaned heavily on Leibniz for additional help.

68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 In a moment, I will consider also Kant’s infamous comment about the lack of advancement between Aristotle and his own day. 71 Perry Miller, in The Puritans: A Sourcebook of their Writings, ed. Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001), 30. Cf., also Miller’s source, Hardin Craig, The Enchanted Glass: The Elizabethan Mind in Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1936) 140-146, 149-151, 156-158, 198-202. 72 Ibid. 73 Bochenski, 256. 74 Ibid., 257. 75 This movement of the Enlightenment, led by Samuel Clarke and Ralph Cudworth, had returned to formal argumentation in order to effect a sort-of Protestant revival of the theistic elements of Scholasticism. This was part of a larger package of ideas, including Isaac Newton’s physics, that was being used to make all human knowledge certain through physics, mathematics, and logic. This movement was the target of David Hume’s famous dialogues and philosophical arguments. It is thought that his A Treatise of Human Nature was written primarily to oppose Clarke’s revival of the Cosmological Argument. See, Paul Russell, The Riddle of Hume’s Treatise: Scepticism, Naturalism and Irreligion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 25-34, 52. 76 Bochenski, 258.

149

The seminal textbook source for this “classical” reduction was the “Port-Royal Logic” (La logique, ou l’art de penser, 1662) written by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole who were philosopher- theologians affiliated with the Port-Royal Abbey in Paris.77 These sources of the “classical” logic sought to preserve some of what had been neglected, but retained much sympathy for the modern,

Renaissance attitude. It was one step forward after the Renaissance’s four steps backward. The Port-

Royal Logic remained influential for 200 years,78 and despite making some logic common, it also perpetuated the almost universal disdain for ancient and Scholastic syllogistics. Most intellectuals fell for this program of disinformation. The one notable exception before Hegel was Leibniz.79 If it were not for him, the German Idealists would have been almost completely limited to Classical Logic.

3. Hegel’s Debt to Leibniz

This was Hegel’s most important source of logical knowledge. Leibniz studied the history of logic carefully80 and is often recognized as one of the greatest logicians extant.81 He was also notably critical of his contemporaries, Descartes and Locke for example, for dismissing formal logic.82 He single-handedly revived and preserved logic in its stronger forms. He rediscovered mathematical logic (a formalism) and extended several features of Aristotle’s syllogistics.83 He called Aristotle’s syllogisms, “one of the most beautiful discoveries of the human spirit,” calling it also the “art of infallibility,” statements that were directed against Locke’s insult toward formal logic.84

Hegel almost certainly adopted his goal of systematizing universally from Leibniz. Leibniz

77 Ibid. This was the primary source on logic that most philosophers in this period knew, which was the source of their education in logic. There were a few other texts available, but this was the primary publication. See, Kneale and Kneale, 313-315. The other available textbooks included: Joachim Junge’s Logica Hamburgensis (1638), which was praised by Leibniz; and Arnold Geulincx's Logica Fundamentis Suis a Quibus Hactenus Collapsa Fuerat Restituta (1662). 78 Ibid., 230. 79 Bochenski, 258. 80 Kneale and Kneale, 323. 81 Bochenski, 258. Many of Leibniz’s discoveries went unpublished until the end of the 1800s, and were therefore not influential on Hegel, but they reveal subsequently that he was extremely advanced. 82 Kneale and Kneale, 325. 83 Bochenski, 258. 84 Kneale and Kneale, 322.

150 seems to have gotten the idea from Raymond Lull (Raymundus Lullus, 1235-1315) who devised a method for considering all possible options within a comparison of multifaceted sets.85 Hobbes had also read Lull, and Leibniz cites them both as sources for the idea, but Leibniz also made it his own through significant extension of the principle.86 Leibniz thought of logic as a “generalized mathematics” and so he thought it possible to apply a calculus (a method of notation that makes inference visible) to logic.87 Attempting to build on Hobbes’ very similar ambitions, originally from

Lull, Leibniz sought to produce an “alphabet of human thought” and to use this alphabet of symbols, combining them in every possible way, to reproduce all possible human thought. This was the method and goal of Leibniz’s mathesis universalis.88 This idea of a universal calculus would be extremely influential on Hegel who attempts the very same thing. Unfortunately for Leibniz, this set of all possible combinations could include nothing but analytic propositions, so it was (supposedly) limited in this way, but it was both an artificial language, and also a system of logic that was meant to be universal and complete.89

Perhaps most notable of all is the label that Leibniz chose for his universal system. He called it an “encyclopedia.”90 His method was a mathesis universalis, and the result, if he had completed it, would have been an encyclopedia. Leibniz’s encyclopedia was to be a complete system of all possible combinations of all possible thoughts perfectly mirroring the natural world in a deterministic way.91

The parallels that are detectable between Hegel and Leibniz on these points is startling. Hegel not only adopts Leibniz’s own terminology, but also his deductive strategy of connecting all possible concepts together into a universal whole.

Of course, this term, “encyclopedia,” ought not be confused with multi-volume reference

85 Ibid., 272. See also, Kneale and Kneale, 241. 86 Ibid., 274. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid., 274-275. 89 Ibid., 274. 90 Kneale and Kneale, 321. 91 Ibid., 327.

151 works. Although there was an early effort to produce reference Encyclopedias in France by the so- called Encyclopédistes between 1751 and 1765, Leibniz’s effort preceded it by nearly a century. The term, as well, is used very differently by Leibniz (and Hegel), and Hegel seems to intentionally use the term as an homage to Leibniz. We do not need to guess at Hegel’s other reasons for using the term; he gives them in his introduction. An encyclopedia is an educational process that is circular, and thus systematic. Of course, it is the root “cyclo” in “en-cyclo-pedia” that makes this reference to circles. In the Encyclopedia Logic, §§15 and 16, Hegel spells out the need for a circular system, and in section 16, he explicitly distinguishes his encyclopedia from the ordinary use of the term.92 Hence,

Hegel and Leibniz are not writing reference books. They mean to produce universal, circular systems. There is thus a deep conceptual connection between the two projects, and also to the source of that idea that Leibniz and Hobbes both found in Raymond Lull’s mechanical process of systematicity. This connection to the original source is seen in circular diagrams and Hegel’s verbal references to circles-as-systems. Both Lull and Leibniz produced diagrams of a wheel with points around a circle and lines connecting each point to every other point. School children today have been taught to prepare art projects along the same lines. Nails are hammered into a board in a circle, and then threads are strung from each nail to every other nail. The result is a beautiful geometric design. This same circular geometry appears to be the origin of the concept of encyclopedic systems in Lull. The word itself, in its etymological breakdown, is a perfect verbal expression of the circular diagram: the encyclopedist “walks” (ped) the “circle” (cyclo). Deceptively simple, its heritage is older and more closely linked with Leibniz’s project than we might at first expect. As simple as this idea is, it seems to have captured the imaginations of at least four great minds, and it led all of them to attempt some kind of system building.

The encyclopedias of Hegel and Leibniz have much more in common than their name, of

92 EL, 20-21, §§15-16.

152 course. They are both systematic combinations of concepts that intentionally attempt to be exhaustive (universalis). Every possible combination is systematically pursued, and so they both involve a mechanism (or algorithm) believed to be capable of encompassing all possible thought exhaustively. So, both systems are the same in their structure, their primary goal and, roughly speaking, the means to that goal (deduction).

One purpose of Leibniz’s encyclopedia was to understand the relationship between this universal system of concepts and the structures of the natural world; he wanted to produce a rational mirror to the physical world. Hegel’s Encyclopedia also tackles this difficult problem because it had become a serious difficulty in his day. The mirroring that Leibniz envisioned was blocked by the critical philosophy; it was no longer acceptable to simply assume that the logic of the understanding could give information about the true object.93 Going significantly beyond Leibniz in preparing a solution to this so-called scandal of philosophy, Hegel adds an important layer to this “mirroring” between the abstract system as such and the natural world; he produces a third system that unifies the first two. In this way, Hegel detects a problem with Leibniz’s mirroring procedure, which is no- doubt due to Kant’s influence, and provides a way to resolve the problem. Hegel’s system is more robust than Leibniz’s, but it is difficult to think that Hegel’s project was not rooted in Leibniz’s. The name, “Encyclopedia,” is thus a fairly obvious nod to its conceptual grandfather.

These things suggest, at least, that Hegel followed Leibniz very closely and could have been aware of any detail of formal logic that Leibniz had published. Any influences on Leibniz thus have a possible conduit through him to Hegel, including modal logic. In addition, others extended

Leibniz’s work before Hegel’s flourish, and so Hegel might have been aware of some of them as well. Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728-1777) further developed Leibniz’s mathesis universalis, and

Joseph-Diez Gergonne (1771-1859), in the year 1817, clarifies the idea of his formalism more

93 Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 556.

153 thoroughly.94 However, the most notable logician other than Leibniz in an area relevant to Hegel’s philosophy was Giovanni Saccheri (1667-1733), a slightly later contemporary of Leibniz.

4. Hegel’s Debt to Giovanni Girolamo Saccheri and his Proof of the Consequentia Mirabilis

Saccheri worked about 20 years after Leibniz and a century before Hegel. He developed a special kind of syllogism that proves itself through an indirect method, a negative self-proof that operates by reference to its own negation. Though the argument itself is quite ancient, Saccheri’s innovation was in showing that this kind of argument can be valid and can be constructed without vicious circularity. This argument is extremely important due his usefulness to Hegel in overcoming presupposition and viewing circular argumentation as valid. This argument, the “consequentia mirabilis” or wonderful inference, which is sometimes also called Clavius’ Law, connects the original Stoic argument mentioned above to the heart of Hegel’s development of the Disjunctive Syllogism.

Specifically, Hegel’s argument is prepared by him to perform the function of self-grounding; it is an argument that proves itself without external reference.

The weight Hegel places upon this strategy of argumentation is immense. If Hegel’s system is not self-supporting, then it does not overcome dogmatism (presupposition and finitude). Yet, the roots of this kind of argument go at least all the way back to the Stoics and their response to a prominent Skeptical argument. Saccheri is likely the one that brings this kind of argument to Hegel’s attention because he proves the validity of such a deduction in Hegel’s own era, that is, after the

Scholastics were disacknowledged. Hegel applies this form of argument over and over again, algorithmically, in the method of Lull’s circular systematics and Leibniz’s own mathesis universalis, to produce his own attempt at an encyclopedia.

Recent scholarship on Saccheri’s argument indicates that the consequentia mirabilis enjoys a

94 Bochenski, 277.

154 very robust history before and after him, but that he is the first one to clarify and prove the form.

Before Saccheri, in addition to the Stoics, some have detected the argument in Plato, Euclid, and

Aristotle.95 There is next a possibility that this was the intuition behind Augustine’s “Si fallor, sum” argument.96 More recently, but still before Saccheri, the argument was studied by Gerolamo Cardano

(1501-1576), Christopher Clavius (1538-1612, which is why it is also called Clavius’ Law), André

Tacquet (1612-1660), Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695).97 Additionally, some view Descartes’ Cogito argument (1637) as a consequentia mirabilis.98 After Saccheri, and because of his work, a modest discussion about this argument arose in Germany involving Christian Wolff (Elementa Matheseos

Universae, 1741), two histories of mathematics (Heilbronner, 1742; and Montucla, 1758) and a critique by the mathematician Robert Simson (1756).99 Abraham Kästner, the most famous mathematician in Germany at the time, had also directed his student Georg Simon Klügel in a 1763 dissertation on Saccheri and this produced a modest flourish of activity in the half century between

1763 and about 1815 terminating in the work of Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855).100 These facts easily make the case that Hegel surely would have known about Saccheri and would have been exposed to his work on this special kind of argument. Given its prominence at the time, its similarity with his own method makes it unthinkable that Hegel developed it without awareness of Saccheri’s work.

In addition to this, in an area of his work unrelated to the self-proving argument, Saccheri was also involved with the development of non-Euclidean geometry, a subject in which Kant was

95 Vincenzo De Risi, “Introduction,” in Euclid Vindicated from Every Blemish, ed. Vincenzo De Risi, trans. G. B. Halsted and L. Allegri, (New York: Springer, 2014), 37, 39. I note also that Saccheri saw this kind of argument as Aristotle’s basis for the Principle of Contradiction in the fourth book of his Metaphysics. See also Kneale “Aristotle and the Consequentia Mirabilis,” 62–66. Kneale sees the argument in Aristotle’s Protrepticus. 96 Castagnoli, 197. Note: the author also suggests that this was the inspiration for Descartes’ Cogito. Yet, other sources suggest a flourish of activity on this kind of argument just before Descartes as I show next in this paragraph. 97 Ibid., 37. 98 Ibid., 197. 99 Ibid., 51. 100 Ibid., 52.

155 embroiled. The idea of non-Euclidean space was shocking at the time because it threatened previous, Newtonian understandings of the world. It was disconcerting at the time to think of different kinds of space, invoking the possibility of disconnected and undetectable worlds. This, in turn, threatened confidence in the actuality of the known world. Kant’s philosophy, with its

‘Copernican’ reversal and its reduction of space (and time) to conceptuality, was thus closely related to this surprising new development in geometry. Because of this association and because of its relevance to German philosophy at the time, it is to be expected that any notable figure doing work in this area would become widely read. Saccheri was just such a figure. For this additional reason, then, it seems unlikely that Hegel would have overlooked Saccheri. His fame and the striking similarities in the structure of their arguments, indicates that Saccheri was almost certainly known to

Hegel.

Regarding the self-proving argument form itself, it works by first negating the truth of some primitive proposition, such as the Principle of Non-Contradiction, and then proving that this leads to a contradiction.101 Much before Saccheri, the Stoics thought that this would work for any primitive truth and used it to refute the Skeptics.102 This also provides a way to allow axioms to be proven deductively. Much after the Stoics, Cardano extended and formalized the principle as follows: “If the first, then the first; if not the first, then the first; but either the first or not the first; therefore the first.”103 This was the argument’s first disjunctive formulation, though this was always implicit. Saccheri’s proof is more advanced, but it works by following the same strategy. I will return in a moment to show just how Hegel integrated this argument after considering our next prominent influence on logic.

101 Ibid., 38, n. 62. There was some debate after Saccheri concerning whether or not the argument was negative or positive. The drive to conclude that it was positive was apparently meant to overcome the distaste that Cartesian logicians had for reductio ad absurdum arguments. Therefore, it is perhaps defensible to think of the consequentia mirabilis argument as a positive proof, but I see no need to pursue this point here. 102 Kneale and Kneale, 347. 103 Kneale and Kneale, 348.

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5. Was Hegel Influenced in Logic by Immanuel Kant?

It is generally thought that German Idealists did not understand Kant very well and that they and Kant typically talked past one another despite an overlap in their projects’ goals.104 Hegel has been a strong exception to this state of affairs. Hegel understood Kant’s conclusions well enough to address them head on, and I think that he has worked effectively to overcome Kant’s skepticism. It is primarily through a superior grasp on logic, and logic’s place, that Hegel attains this achievement.

Kant is not as important for determining the extent to which Hegel preserved pre-Kantian formal logic because the case being built here is composed of connections between pre-Kantians and Hegel. Nonetheless, a few words should be said about Kant’s influence on Hegel’s view of formal logic. This will primarily involve metalogical issues.

There are two main areas where Kant’s view of formal logic may have influenced Hegel.

Regarding the first, on some readings of Kant’s account of formal or general logic, (e.g., H. J.

Paton),105 Kant allows it a prominent place as the basis for all judgments whatsoever and is therefore essential even for his transcendental logic.106 Thus, Kant requires general logic in order to make his primary metalogical argument as well as to do the work of delineating his categories. Notoriously, this leaves Kant with a circular and negative argument about truth and our access to it. Hegel will retain both of these features, but without the skepticism.

If this interpretation is correct, some aspects of Kant’s approach to logic were likely an influence on Hegel’s own approach. Specifically, this is seen at least in the belief that concepts can

104 Franks, 7, 9-11. According to Franks, Kant did not share the typical German Idealist’s belief that the only way to ground knowledge was to meet the “holistic condition” and solve the “all-or-nothing problematic” by grounding everything in a systematic whole, a condition that Hegel fully accepted as a requirement. And, although the German Idealist’s milieu was also modified significantly by the Spinozistic/Jacobian controversy, which modified readings of Kant significantly, as Franks reports, I think that Hegel saw both Kant and Spinoza with more clarity than his peers. 105 Smart, 155-159. Paton’s view is summarized well by Smart on these pages and then it is compared to the view of Norman Kemp Smith on pages 159-171. 106 Ibid., 157. Tolley concurs. See his “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 567.

157 be systematized (though Leibniz was probably a stronger influence here; and of course Leibniz was also an influence on Kant on this point).107 In addition, Hegel would have been encouraged to see

Kant’s efforts to derive the rules of Thought from within Thought rather than assuming them, and this is another conclusion associated with Kant and the Kantian tradition, especially with the circularity and self-sufficiency highlighted by Fichte.108 However, none of this would be much support for the argument that Hegel meant to restore the utility of formal logic for use in metaphysics after its reputation for this end was damaged so badly by Kant’s devastating criticisms,

Fichte’s goals notwithstanding. For, if Kant thought of logical principles neither as knowably eternal nor even true in an absolute sense,109 then the kind of objectivity achieved by logic must be significantly restricted, either to merely human understanding or to discursivity in general. Hegel concludes as much when he directly rejects Kant’s version of objectivity, saying that Kant uses the

“Categories or Notions of the Understanding [to] constitute the objectivity of experiential cognitions,” and this is given as the reason why the Critical Philosophy forbids such cognitions from being considered truths, and to be nothing more than knowledge of phenomena.110 This not only deontologizes our logic, but it reinforces its limits, which Hegel considered to be a fatal finitude.111

107 Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 556. 108 EL, 69, §42. 109 Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 557-558; 573-576. 110 EL, 65, §40. GW, Band 20, 78: “Die Denkbestimmungen oder Verstandesbegriffe machen die Objectivität der Erfahrungs-Erkenntnisse aus.” 111 Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 573-575. Hegel’s approach challenges both of Kant’s conclusions: it overcomes the limits (finitude) placed upon logic by Kant by using a deduction to prove the impossibility of transcendent alternatives to this argument itself; and it then “divinizes” Thought rather than merely locating it in the mind of God as Aquinas and Leibniz had done. On this last point, it is true that Kant does away with God as the ground of the validity of logical principles, (Tolley, 572) and on this Hegel would agree. But Hegel only does away with God as a transcendent being or mind; he does not eliminate the thoughts that others had placed in God’s mind. Hegel retains the system of concepts. And, by making them absolute, he in effect makes them into God. Yet, this system of concepts is not very God-like in many respects. It is not a form of theism; it is not even a pantheism. On my reading, Hegel’s idealism is reductionistic. Hegel’s God is consequently simple. Yet, this does not stop him from calling the fundamental master-concept “God.” An analogy will be helpful in making sense of this. Much can be learned, I think, from the analogy of Hegel’s bottom-up idealism to the bottom-up materialism that dominates in Western culture today. Just as the materialist views everything as being constituted and governed by matter and its properties, so too does Hegel view everything as constituted and governed by concepts and their properties. It hardly seems to be a substantive distinction (whether the basic “atom” is a concept or a thing) since they are otherwise inscrutable and indistinguishable in their effects. If we only add to materialism a tendency to refer to matter as “God” then we would have a very close cousin to

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We might conclude then that Kant’s approach to logic is either sufficiently Aristotelian (or possibly even Leibnizian in some senses), rendering his insights superfluous because he adds nothing new, or it is negated by Hegel’s philosophy, making it needlessly skeptical. But, as I have shown above, Hegel requires Kant’s negativity so that he has something to negate himself. Double negation is vital to Hegel’s argument. It may seem antithetical, but in these ways, Kant’s influence on Hegel, with regard to logical doctrine, is both negative and constitutive.

Regarding the second point, Kant is recognized by some as contributing something very important to informal logic: the principle that form and content are inseparable,112 that the many forms of judgment cannot be understood or derived without reference to their content.113 On this point, Norman Kemp Smith believes that Kant never understood the importance of his achievement.114 It was probably Abelard who first reached this conclusion,115 but it looks like Hegel did not miss the point regardless of its origins. To him, the absolute is the ultimate expression of this fusion of form and content, and it is by means of this achievement that Hegel attempted to ground knowledge. Kant, of course, does the opposite with this unity because it is merely the unity of our thought. He uses the logic of the understanding to show that its concept and object are inseparable, but then concludes that the object of thought is not necessarily the true object because alternative ways of cognizing cannot be ruled out.116 God, Kant reasons, might know objects without discursive thinking. And this, in turn, means that our thinking does not have necessary access to the true

Hegel’s view. Hegel adds only a means of doing away with contingency by bringing second stages to a close and negating their modal possibilities. Yet, perhaps even this does not lead to a meaningful distinction, for, as most physicists and philosophical four-dimensionalists today both suggest, time and its contingency has also been removed from materialism. 112 Of course, this neglects the same insight reached by Peter Abelard, about 650 years earlier. 113 Smart, 170. 114 Ibid. 115 Kneale and Kneale, 207-208. The fact that the copula could only indicate identity between subject and predicate, conceptually, was intended to address Anselm’s argument and other relevant logical investigations of the time, but it also bears striking similarity to several of the interests of 18th and 19th century German Idealists, especially Kant, Fichte, and Hegel. In whatever way these ideas were transmitted, or rediscovered, they had already been addressed in the 12th Century. 116 Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 566-567.

159 object. This possibility, even as a mere possibility, becomes a dualism. Another object might exist, so our object is not necessarily the true object. So, our thinking cannot guarantee knowledge. Hegel responds that the object we find in and by our thought is the true object after all. Specifically, Hegel takes the thought-object unity that Kant has found in the logic of the understanding, and uses it to deduce the impossibility of any lingering dualism.

This last point indicates that Hegel meant to move beyond Kant metalogically by giving greater insights into the relationship between logic and metaphysics. This leaves us to question the depth of Kant’s knowledge of syllogistic science itself, logic in the trenches so to speak. On this, his well-known and oft criticized comment about the career of logical science after Aristotle might turn out to be rather damning. Kant’s comment, from Bviii in the preface to second edition of the

Critique of Pure Reason,117 seems to say that there had been no advancements in logic, aside from a few technicalities, after Aristotle and up to Kant’s own day. So, the contrast between Kant and Hegel on historical knowledge of logical science appears vast. Kant may have produced an admirable “second- order reconceptualization of the status and significance of this traditional logic, within the philosophical architectonic of transcendental idealism,”118 which is a metalogical project, but he has not thereby demonstrated awareness of medieval or even Leibnizian advancements in logical theory.

Kant has found logic a place and even a “jurisdiction” of sorts, and on this he demonstrates sufficient knowledge of Leibniz’s metalogical doctrine, but he has not in this way also shown a deep knowledge of any specific system of syllogistics. His criticism of the lack of advancement in logic may then appear to be ignorance.

However, it is not necessary to go so far in criticizing Kant. Probably, his metalogical conclusions, given their import, had caused him to conclude that the practice of logic need not

117 The quotation: “[S]ince the time of Aristotle [logic]. . . . has also been unable to take a single step forward, and therefore seems to all appearance [Ansehen] to be finished [geschlossen] and complete [vollendet].” from Kant’s first critique, second edition, Bviii, as given by Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 1. 118 Ibid., 4.

160 advance any further than Aristotle had taken it, rendering all subsequent developments into superfluous technicalities (an attitude that was typical of many Renaissance humanists and modern reformers of logic). In this way, we can extend to Kant some credit. And, in addition, it is possible that in his infamous comment on logic after Aristotle, he was only referring to metalogical issues and was thereby disregarding the details of logical theory even there. In either case, Kant does not choose to demonstrate a deep knowledge of syllogistics. Hegel’s demonstration of his vast knowledge of ancient and medieval syllogistics, sets up quite a contrast, one that gives his metalogical conclusions more heft than Kant’s choice to overlook such advances gives to his conclusions.

One final point, Houlgate gives a helpful distinction between general and transcendental logics that will help me to draw out one more connection between the logics of Kant and Hegel. He says that:

General logic sets out the rules of valid thinking in general—the rules (such as the law of noncontradiction) that all thought must observe if it is to be logical and formally valid at all. Transcendental logic, by contrast, sets out the rules governing the thought of objects (Gegenstände)—the rules we are to observe if what we are conscious of is to count as an object . . .119

This is a very helpful contrast because it makes the two logics revolve around the same axis, which can then be characterized in very familiar terms: subject and object; concept and being; subjectivity and objectivity—or, perhaps even more tellingly, Logic and Nature. This becomes yet another way to link Hegel’s project to Kant’s. What Kant separates, Hegel unites. Kant uses the transcendental logic to do his work, but Hegel uses the general logic to bring the object back into immanence. Kant uses his special logic to conclude that the object cannot be known. Hegel uses the original logic to conclude that the object cannot exist unless it is part of the whole.

119 Houlgate, The Opening, 123.

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6. Hegel Uses Saccheri’s Strategy to Achieve Leibniz’s Goal

Hegel’s knowledge of logical theory was far in advance of any of his contemporaries. I would even go so far as to claim that he rivals Leibniz in many ways. This is shown by three of his accomplishments: he integrates all past systems of logic into a whole (a job that is surprisingly well done); he derives and then uses a specific deduction systematically to achieve this integration so that the deduction itself becomes infinitely dense with all possible combinations of all possible concepts

(an exhaustively complete deductive system, a true encyclopedia by means of a mathesis universalis); and he then uses this deduction to argue circularly but validly that the argument is its own ground.

This last accomplishment is of course the greatest of them all, but it is not the point here. The relevant point is that Hegel knew of past systems of logic sufficiently to integrate them and this should take us by surprise for its breadth, helping us to see accusations of anachronism as unfounded.

Hegel employed many of the principles of formal logic that came from past logicians across many eras. This multiplies the chances that Hegel borrowed these ideas and weakens the argument that he might have developed them independently. And, this is important because ascribing too much to Hegel can make him seem superhuman, and so any interpretation of Hegel that goes this far will seem incredible. It certainly remains possible that Hegel reinvented some of these wheels, and on many points there is only duplication without evidence of transmission, but this does not diminish how much Hegel knew. My primary argument in this chapter is that Hegel has redeemed the method of deduction for use in metaphysics and has neither abandoned it nor altered it beyond recognition. There are three main reasons for thinking this: Hegel’s philosophy is consumed with syllogistics; these syllogistics are the same as the ones already discovered by past logicians; and Hegel has understood them well enough to integrate them into a single, self-deriving (in terms of rules, form, and content), self-deducing (circular), modal, disjunctive syllogism.

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The weight of these reasons is easy to overlook if they are simply listed like this. Some specific details will thus help to drive this point home. I divide these details into two categories,

Leibniz’s modal systems and Saccheri’s self-proving argument.

Regarding Leibniz, as Kusch and Manninen describe, Hegel makes extensive use of two distinct modal systems from Leibniz and Wolff,120 and his own third system121 is itself probably a modification of Leibniz’s monadology.122 That is, Hegel incorporates two of the earlier modal models as the first two stages of his own tri-partite system, and then modifies Leibniz’s monadological theory of externally-determined, independent actualities (monads) so that it deals instead with free, independent, contingent actualities.123 These scholars have recognized that Hegel had obtained most of his materials on the modalities from Leibniz and Wolff. As noted earlier, it is also extremely valuable to see that Leibniz and Wolff were already working with the essence of what is today called the S5 system. Hegel’s own adoption of this principle is implicit, but it is also requisite. Hegel’s system not only produces the basis for two theorems and the universal accessibility relation of S5, but his overall inference is only valid in S5, as will be shown in chapter IV. Given this evidence, it is difficult to forbid Hegel the use of advanced modal syllogistics.

Leibniz based all deduction on one core principle, the principle of identity. Accordingly,

Leibniz attempted to show that all other necessary truths are derived from the definitions of their terms, and they are identical to their definitions. To produce a deductive proof of any one proposition, the logician only needs to reveal that the predicate concept is contained in the subject

120 One model is based on the principle of non-contradiction, and the other on temporal modalities. 121 WL, 550-553. This is the most detailed presentation of what Hegel calls Absolute Necessity, which I take to be the resolution of weaknesses in the earlier modalities. Hegel provides this in the first volume of his Science of Logic, published in 1812, but a new edition of volume 1 appeared just after his death in 1832. This indicates that this is part of Hegel’s mature thought. This same material can also be located in the Encyclopedia Logic, with the latest edition being published in 1830. Cf., EL, 200-212, §§142-149. 122 Kusch and Manninen, 110. 123 My conclusions on this last point differ from Kusch and Manninen. I have concluded that Hegel completes the development of modal concepts with a determination of absolute necessity rather than contingency. The result of the Progression, in terms of modalities, is thus a necessity not a contingency. I do not think that Hegel leaves room for openness in his system. All contingencies are eventually negated and are thus transformed into necessities. This is part of Hegel’s S5 intuition.

163 concept. Yet, Leibniz wanted to go further by connecting one deduction to another, also deductively, so that a chain is established, one that connects subject to predicate through a series of definitions. All reasoning, to Leibniz, is therefore reducible to such chains.124 Hegel seems to follow this same strategy in his Progression of Thought, but via a special kind of deduction that discovers inner unities between otherwise contradictory concepts, a realization that the principle of identity is self-referential and thus internal. This allows for genuine synthesis without external or transcendent input, an infinitely fecund logical structure can thus be synthesized intrinsically and circularly.125 This overcomes both the problem of infinite regress for the chain and the problem of the highest category.

Leibniz also believed that all truths were available a priori, but thought that only God could possess such knowledge because only God had the required perspective and access.126 Leibniz’s hope that his Encyclopedia could encompass all knowledge a priori, then, depends on the logician or philosopher taking the vantage point of God. And, this is the very thing that Hegel purports to do; this is his “absolute perspective.” Kant had suggested that non-discursive reasoning was a possibility, specifically in God who could know directly without any need to synthesize or judge.127 And, on this basis, Kant concluded with the skepticism of a possible dualism. If God can know the object differently, then our deductions could not guarantee a full understanding. Similarly, Leibniz saw that contingent truths, things that hold true now but that might not have, could be known a priori by

God if God chooses from all possible worlds to actualize just one. Only as the actualizer of the world could any being understand all possible truths a priori and be able to distinguish what actually is from what is merely possible. Hegel’s solution to this “problem” is even more ambitious than

124 Kneale and Kneale, 332-333. 125 Zambrana, 126. Zambrana, despite disagreeing that Hegel can be viewed as a logician, accepts that the “movement of the concept is both analytic and synthetic insofar as, in being nothing but negativity, the concept depends on content.” I see the same capacity for synthesis, but I note that this negativity can eventually result in a negative apophatic conclusion about transcendence, namely, that Hegel concludes that transcendence cannot possibly exist. 126 Ibid., 335. 127 Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 569.

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Leibniz’s. Contingency is reducible to necessity in Hegel’s system if his ultimate form of thought encompasses all possible combinations of concepts exhaustively. Moreover, if concept and object are unified so that all objects are accounted for conceptually, it follows that (what we call) the actual world is part of a greater conceptual whole, and in that way is determined within that whole as an already-completed world. Thus, to Hegel, a priori synthetic knowledge knows no bounds because we have sufficient access to guarantee that no other view of the world is possible. It is an argument that deduces itself as a monism and seems to lend to the philosopher the vantage point previously reserved for God. Therefore, Hegel obtains from Leibniz many of the most important elements of his philosophy.

Regarding Saccheri, who flourished about 20 years after Leibniz, he formulated and rigorously proved a syllogism that acts as its own proof by deducing the falsehood of its own negation, the consequentia mirabilis.128 It is sometimes summarized: “If (if not x, then x), then x.” which

128 The reader may notice that the consequentia mirabilis argument (CM) bears some resemblance to the Principle of Pseudo-Scotus: “Ex falso (sequitur) quodlibet.” (EFQ), that is, “From a falsehood anything follows.” This principle is thought to lead unavoidably to disaster for logic because it threatens to trivialize the meanings of truth and falsity. The danger here is that the CM uses the negation of a primitive truth (which may itself be a contradiction) to prove that primitive truth. Yet, that strategy can prove anything, so the original primitive truth is not found to be special by means of this argument; and the employment of this strategy lets a wolf into the sheepfold, destroying all else in the system. The CM can be defended in two ways on this point and each way figures prominently into the present discussion. For reasons that will become clear in a moment, I will call the first “Kant’s way”: the CM is valid but, metalogically, it is an EFQ, and this leads to skepticism about the ground of the laws of logic, so the argument’s soundness is called into question. I will call the second “Hegel’s way”: the CM is valid and, metalogically, it is also sound because the dangers of the EFQ can be nullified in a holistic system that systematically negates contradictions, eventually accommodating all of them, and that ultimately rules out all alternatives to potential grounds for itself. Regarding Kant’s way, the CM becomes a critique of pure reason in microcosm. It suggests that we must reach a conclusion in line with the primitive truths because of the way we infer in general. When we start thinking about contradictions to such truths, we find ourselves back at those very same truths. We can find no other conclusion valid or sound. But, this does not prove anything absolutely because it has only defined our rational limits. We cannot make sense of contradictions unless we contradict them. Yet, the means of contradicting them is an EFQ. We cannot let EFQ in the door, so we must accept the conclusions of the CM without grasping its means. The logic of the understanding simply presupposes the primitive truths, either asserting them or relying on the CM in some way (cf., Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, etc.) The critical philosophy rejected this as presupposition, but leaves us in skepticism about the status of these truths. Regarding Hegel’s way, his approach to CM is like his approach to Kant. Hegel uses the CM strategy to link all concepts together by joining pairs of oppositional concepts together with their resolution. By this methods he produces a unified deductive system. Moreover, Hegel starts from a single contradiction. That is, from the intermodal conflict between the concept of Being and what that concept is (see, EL, 124-127, §§86-87), and from this contradiction Hegel finds that all else follows. Double negation, therefore, does not annihilate, it unifies. Contradiction does not falsify, it

165 is simple enough, and not recognizably Hegelian, but Saccheri’s version is more complex, having worked out some difficulties, and it is much closer to the form we see in Hegel. Saccheri’s primary form of the argument is:

Every syllogism with a universal major and an affirmative minor premise yields a conclusion in the first figure. But no syllogism of the pattern AEE [universal affirmative major premise, universal negative minor premise, and universal negative conclusion] has a universal major and an affirmative minor premise. Therefore no syllogism of the pattern AEE yields a conclusion in the first figure.129

The Kneales explain:

This argument is itself a syllogism of the kind under consideration, and the two premises are obviously true. If the pattern of AEE is valid in the first figure, the conclusion must therefore be true. But the conclusion is a statement that the pattern AEE is invalid in the first figure. And so the desired result is seen to follow even from its own negation, which is as much as to say that it must be true. Saccheri gives half a dozen examples of this kind, and remarks . . . that the method can be applied more widely.130

The surprise is that the argument is itself the very kind of argument that it attempts to rule out. And, by failing to do so, it proves itself. It is also a surprise that this kind of argument is valid. So, the validity in question is not analogous to pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, but more like stabbing yourself to prove that you are immortal. As it turns out, some arguments cannot be negated without proving themselves in the process. In a later work, Saccheri confirms that this applies not just to the examples he had given, but that every primary truth can be deduced from its own contradictory,131 something that had been intuited as early as Plato and used self-consciously for this purpose as early as the Stoics. Saccheri thus gives rigorous support to the ancient intuition and the

Stoic strategy.

Hegel adopts this very same strategy and it is central to his development of sublation. That differentiates. So, the fangs of the EFQ seem to have been removed by Hegel's approach. Just as he cancels Kant’s skepticism, he cancels the disastrous consequences of the EFQ while taking full advantage of it. Hegel would therefore argue that the CM is a valid and sound form of EFQ that overcomes the dangers normally associated with it. The EFQ is sometimes called “The Principle of Explosion,” and it seems that Hegel has found a way to harness that energy within a system that addresses all internal contradictions. More on this in Chapter IV. 129 Kneale and Kneale, 346. This is Saccheri’s argument as given in Kneale. 130 Ibid., 346-347. 131 Ibid., 347.

166 is, if sublation can be viewed as a deductive form, and it seems that Hegel thinks of it this way, then its form has a great deal in common with Saccheri’s self-proof-by-negation. As was noticed in

Chapter I, this is nothing else but the negation of encapsulations that modify the variables’ contents.

If Hegel wants to prove (x), for example, he can begin by denying (x) and showing that this comes to some kind of failure. Note that what is negated is the denial, not the premise’s contents. By ruling out the alternatives to (x), and by negating them all, a disjunctive syllogism emerges. But, Hegel is not the first to see that the consequentia mirabilis argument can be viewed as a disjunctive syllogism. In his version of the argument, before Saccheri, Cardano had proposed a disjunctive formula: “If the first then the first; if the second then the first; but either the first or the second; therefore the first.”132 Moving closer to Hegel’s form, this can also be presented as follows: “If x, then x; if ~x, then x; but x or ~x; therefore x.”

Using this last disjunctive form as a basis, I will now take the argument through several transformations to show how it matches Hegel’s version of the Disjunctive Syllogism. I will take a moment to make this association because it is the only way to demonstrate how Hegel uses Saccheri to achieve Leibniz’s goal, rather than simply stating that it is so.

Starting with the argument just above, “x” comes to represent not any content at all (for that would involve finitude), but specifically a modal modification of some other content, which I will label (Y). “X” is therefore an encapsulation for (Y). Modally, there are only four ways to modify (Y):

“necessarily not Y”; “possibly Y”; “possibly ~Y”; and “necessarily Y.” The second and third can be combined because the options are only two: (Y) or (~Y). So, the possibility of one is also the possibility of the other. This leaves three possible ways to modify (Y) modally. These, in turn, become the three premises of Hegel’s modal disjunctive syllogism.

1. □~Y

132 Ibid.

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2. ◇Y and ◇~Y

3. □Y

This is just a list of options at the moment. But, it is also already a disjunctive syllogism because the first two premises negate themselves by contradicting themselves internally (for reasons that will become clear in a moment). Thus:

1. ~(□~Y)

2. ~(◇Y • ◇~Y)

3. □Y

This is now Hegel’s modal disjunctive syllogism. If it is not immediately recognized as such, it only takes a few transformations to show that the traditional form of the argument is equivalent to it. We are used to seeing the Disjunctive Syllogism in this form: (p v q); (~p); (q). Because the variable is bivalent (it is either p or q), the two variables can be reduced to just one,133 such that (q) can be seen as (~p). The standard formula can thus be transformed into a one-variable form. As I will work out in the next chapter, this can be reduced to the following Hegelian form:

A. ~(~p)

B. ~(p • ~p)

C. (p)

It is for all these reasons that Hegel’s argument takes the form that it does. I have just taken us from the disjunctive form of the consequentia mirabilis to Hegel’s modal argument, and then I have shown how the traditional, two-variable form of the Disjunctive Syllogism is equivalent to the one- variable form of Hegel’s. Hegel has made a significant advance in logical theory by discovering that

133 This reduction to one variable entails that the operator is an exclusive or. If it were allowed to be an inclusive or, or to remain ambiguous, then the formal fallacy of Affirming a Disjunct would be committed by this reduction to one variable.

168 the consequentia mirabilis is a disjunctive syllogism. In fact, they are one and the same. The features and capacities of the consequentia mirabilis are implicit properties of the Disjunctive Syllogism and that is how it is able to act as Hegel’s preeminent logical tool, the mediator of concept and object. Because it has itself for its content, this self-referential argument is able to deduce the unity of its form and content. Hegel goes on to connect arguments of this form together, in a nested fashion. Just so, each premise of the absolute Disjunctive Syllogism is also a disjunctive syllogism itself, and this continues.

The absolute Idea is the whole that differentiates into Mind, Nature, and Logic; the Logic differentiates into Being, Essence, and Notion; etc. This produces an interconnected system of concepts that has no internal limits on what kinds of concepts it can include. It thus includes all concepts. It works much like Leibniz’s vision of producing a complete chain of deductions. So,

Hegel uses Saccheri’s strategy to achieve Leibniz’s goal.

7. Conclusion

This historical review of relevant developments in formal logic, and the close association found between Hegel’s philosophy and many of those developments, conflicts with the presupposition that Hegel could not have known about advanced systems of logic, modal or otherwise. And so, this presupposition does not stand up to scrutiny. Additionally, the presupposition that contemporary modal logic is new and original, and that Hegel could not possibly have known about the principles of modal systems like S5, is also unsupportable.

In this section, I have challenged the presupposition that Hegel could not have made use of advanced formal logic. I have also given details that partially overcome the belief that he did not use such a system. In what follows I will complete the latter task in different way, by examining directly

Hegel’s defense of deduction in philosophy in the face of accusations of dogmatism. I will begin with an investigation of the specific criticisms that Hegel made against the logic of the past, namely,

169 presupposition and finitude.

B. Hegel’s Criticisms of Traditional Logic: Finitude and Presupposition

In an early section of the Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel writes:

One of the clearest instances of it [the first attitude of thought to objectivity], . . . may be found in the Metaphysic of the Past as it subsisted among us previous to the philosophy of Kant. It is however only in reference to the history of philosophy that this Metaphysic can be said to belong to the past: the thing is always and at all places to be found, as the view which the abstract understanding takes of the objects of reason. And it is in this point that the real and immediate good lies of a closer examination of its main scope and its modus operandi.134

Despite Hegel’s careful study of traditional, formal logic, he did not accept it without criticism. It may be that this is a metaphysics of the past “only in reference to the history of philosophy” and not to the logical interplay of the relevant concepts. Yet, as historical positions, Hegel found fault. And, this remains the case even as Hegel works to vindicate the abstractive program that shares so much with that historical form.

Although he was probably aware of medieval achievements in developing and advancing

Aristotle’s propositional and modal syllogistics, at least through Leibniz, he was also well aware of the common attitudes toward it and the weighty criticisms that had been leveled against it. Hegel agreed with some of these criticisms and disagreed with others, but mostly, he transformed them by means of his usual method: identifying rifts and then repairing them with the introduction of a new- but-intrinsic concept in a reflective, circular, or negation-of-negation fashion.135

Hegel certainly qualifies what he means by logic and syllogism. He does not want his use of

134 EL, 47-48, §27. GW, Band 20, 70: “Dieses . . . war die vormalige Metaphysik, wie sie vor der Kantischen Philosophie bei uns beschaffen war. Diese Metaphysik ist jedoch nur in Beziehung auf die Geschichte der Philosophie etwas vormaliges; für sich ist sie überhaupt immer vorhanden, die bloße Verstandes-An-sicht der Vernunft-Gegenstäne. Die nähere Betrachtung ihrer Manier und ihres Hauptinhaltes hat daher zugleich diß nähere präsente Interesse.” 135 Andries Sarlemijn, for example, sees these smaller-scale forms as circular. He notes that the forms pertaining to being, infinity, unity, quantity, and measurelessness, which is Hegel’s doctrine of Being, realize their own content through self-negation followed by a circling about that negates this and restores itself. This applies, he notes, not only to the determinations in the logical realm but also to the “world of things” and of phenomena. See, Andries Sarlemijn, Hegel’s Dialectic, trans. Peter Kirschenmann (Boston: D. Reidel, 1975), 105.

170 these tools to cause others to group his philosophy with those who had made certain mistakes.

Even the ordinary theories represent the Syllogism to be the form of reasonableness, but only a subjective form; and no interconnection whatever is shown to exist between it and any other reasonable content, . . . . The name of reason is much and often heard, and appealed to: but no one thinks of explaining its specific character, or saying what it is, least of all that it has any connection with Syllogism. But formal Syllogism really presents what is reasonable in such a reasonless way that it has nothing to do with any reasonable matter. But as the matter in question can only be rational in virtue of the same quality by which thought is reason, it can be made so by the form only: and that form is Syllogism. And what is a Syllogism but an explicit putting, i.e. realizing of the notion, at first in form only, as stated above? Accordingly the Syllogism is the essential ground of whatever is true: and at the present stage the definition of the Absolute is that it is the Syllogism, or stating the principle in a proposition: Everything is a Syllogism.136

Hegel is critical of the unreasonable manner in which the syllogism is claimed to be the very form of logical thinking. He indicates that the syllogism, quite damningly, is irrational: “having nothing to do with any reasonable matter.” Yet, in the same breath, Hegel bases all reason on the form of the syllogism going so far as claiming that “Everything is a Syllogism” even making it his definition of the absolute. This is what the absolute Thought is under the first stage of logic; the

Logic is the syllogism. And, this syllogistic property is not limited to the first stage. Not only the parts, but the whole Encyclopedia is itself a syllogism, one composed of syllogisms which are its three stages. It is difficult then to think that Hegel does not genuinely see everything as a syllogism.137

So, Hegel both criticizes traditional logic and he nevertheless sees everything in terms of syllogisms. The resolution of this interpretational paradox, I contend, is found not in a

136 EL, 244, §181. GW, Band 20, 191-192: “Der Schluß pflegt zwar gewöhnlich als die Form des Vernünftigen angegeben zu werden, aber als eine subjective, und ohne daß zwischen ihr und sonst einem vernünftigen Inhalt, z.B. einem vernünftigen Grundsatze, einer vernünftigen Handlung, Idee u.s.f. irgen ein Zusammenhang aufgezeigt würde. Es wird überhaupt viel und oft von der Vernunft gesprochen und an sie appellirt, ohne die Angabe, was ihre Bestimmtheit, was sie ist, und am wenigsten wird dabei an das Schließen gedacht. In der That ist das formelle Schließen das Vernünftige in solcher vernunftlossen Weise, daß es mit einem vernünftigen Gehalt nichts zu thun hat. Da aber ein solcher vernünftig nur seyn kann durch die Bestimmtheit, wodurch das Denken Vernunft ist, so cann er es allein durch die From seyn, welche der Schluß ist. — Dieser ist aber nichts anders als der gesetzte, (zunächst formell —) reale Begriff, wie der §. ausdrückt. Der Schluß ist deswegen der wesentliche Grund alles Wahren; und die Definition des Absoluten ist nunmehr, daß es der Schluß ist, oder als Satz diese Bestimmung ausgesprochen: Alles ist ein Schluß.” 137 It is of course unclear until the end what Hegel means by his use of the term. And, that is the point of this chapter, to determine whether or not Hegel intends to alter the definition of the term significantly enough for it to count as something different than traditional definitions.

171 reinterpretation of his syllogistics, but in an examination of his criticism of traditional logic. So, it has been a mistake to read “syllogism” as if it were something different from and incompatible with traditionally conceived deduction. Below, I will show that Hegel is critical only of the older approach to formal deduction, which involves the presuppositions that logicians had brought to the table before beginning, and not of the logical apparatus itself.

Therefore, Hegel did not do away with traditional syllogistics. His goal was merely to avoid the presuppositions of past logicians in order to free himself to use formal logic as such. And, in spite of expectations, to do so in a post-critical manner. Thus, it will be concluded that Hegel’s core logical methodology is no different than Leibniz’s; it differs only by being formed with a better attempt at grounding and interconnection.

In the remainder of this section (B.), I will focus on the unique way that Hegel understood the failings of the traditional logic. Then, in the following section (C.), Hegel’s resolutions to these reformulated problems will be described. Following that, a few potential problems with this interpretation will be addressed and that will close the chapter.

1. Two Main Criticisms: Finitude and Presupposition

It is in his Encyclopedia Logic that Hegel most clearly covers the deficits of traditional formal logic.138 This is not the only text in which he discusses the topic; he also addresses it in his many prefaces and introductions, and there is, of course, in his History of Philosophy, an extended discussion.

Nevertheless, the locus of the present discussion will be the Encyclopedia Logic because this analysis of the older tradition is thorough and connected better to a relevant context. It is thus sufficient, but it is also already connected to the logical structure that Hegel sees in history.139 That is, Hegel has seen

138 EL, 47-59, §§26-36. 139 Hegel seems to have reached this same conclusion himself. Terry Pinkard reports that just before his death, Hegel pointed to introductory parts of the Encyclopedia as the “true” introduction to his system, by which he may have

172 in history a logical structure and has worked to distill that structure into a formal argument. No other text highlights this connection like the Encyclopedia Logic.

a) Texts on Finitude

In the following nine passages, Hegel introduces the concept of finitude and associates it with the methodology of stage-one thinkers:

This method of thought has never become aware of the antithesis of subjective and objective: and to that extent there is nothing to prevent its statements form possessing a genuinely philosophical and speculative character, though it is just as possible that they may never get beyond finite categories, or the stage where the antithesis is still unresolved.140

This passage, §27 from the chapter titled “First Attitude of Thought to Objectivity,” is critical of this first attitude, but as expected, it does not fully condemn it. The method of this first attitude is one that “has no doubts” and it has “no sense of the contradiction in thought, or of the hostility of thought against itself.”141 Yet, despite this criticism, Hegel does not completely reject this method.

As I have shown in the previous chapter, he shares much of his own method with the traditional logicians and metaphysicians, He only thinks that such methods should not be presupposed. This first historical stage, consequently, operates on the presupposition, or faith, that it has the correct method as well as access to truth. Such a method is said to deal with “finite categories” in the passage above. It is the presuppositions that make the categories finite because presuppositions are the sources of disconnectedness, as the next passage will show.

In the following passage from the next section, §28, Hegel goes on to develop finitude further:

This metaphysical system [the first attitude of thought to objectivity] took the laws and meant to promote it above the PhG. See, Terry Pinkard, German Philosophy 1760-1860: The Legacy of Idealism (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002), 266. 140 EL, 47, §27. GW, Band 20, 70: “Dieses Denken kann wegen der Bewußtlosigkeit über seinen Gegensatz eben sowohl seinem Gehalte nach ächtes speculatives Philosophiren seyn, als auch in endlichen Denkbestimmungen d.i. in dem noch unaufgelösten Gegensatze verweilen.” 141 EL, 47, §26. GW, Band 20, 69: “. . . welches noch ohne das Bewußtseyn des Gegensatzes des Denkens in und gegen sich den Glauben enthält, . . .” This, I think, is a reference to intermodal conflict.

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forms of thought to be the fundamental laws and forms of things. It assumed that to think a thing was the means of finding its very self and nature: and to that extent it occupied higher ground than the Critical Philosophy which succeeded it. But in the first instance (1) these terms of thought were cut off from their connection, [which was] their solidarity; each was believed valid by itself and capable of serving as a predicate of the truth. It was the general assumption of this metaphysic that a knowledge of the Absolute was gained by assigning predicates to it. It neither inquired what the terms of the understanding specially meant or what they were worth, . . .142

This passage addresses both finitude and presupposition; and it should be mentioned here that it is difficult to find passages that do not mention both together. The reason for this is, in part, that the very thing being presupposed is finitude. The concepts being used by logicians and metaphysicians of the past were simply assumed. This means of procuring concepts is the very thing that isolates them. The elements of this method, its “terms,” are thereby “cut off from their connection.” This isolates these concepts from one another with the result that the only thing they have in common to connect them is the fact that they were chosen for use in an argument. The association is thus arbitrary.

Hegel says here that this isolation makes the belief in their validity inappropriate. Isolation is therefore what makes this belief into a presupposition. Or, to turn this around, connectedness is what allows the logician to avoid the error of presupposition. Terms are only “capable of serving as a predicate of the truth” when they are connected to one another. By the traditional approach, however, they were only assuming that they could have knowledge of the absolute (a reference here to the arguments for God’s existence). Simply by presupposing the parts needed to make such an argument, they dreamed that they had a real connection to God, but this is little more than a game that is limited by rules that are only internally relevant. The parts and the rules work the way they do, it seems, only because they are chosen and made to work in specific ways.

142 EL, 48, §28. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 70-71: “Diese Wissenschaft betrachtete die Denkbestimmungen als die Grundbestimmungen der Dinge; sie stand durch diese Voraussetzung, daß das, was ist, damit daß es gedacht wird, an sich erkannt werde höher als das spätere kritische Philosophiren. Aber 1) wurden jene Bestimmungen in ihrer Abstraction als für sich geltend und als fähig genommen, Prädicate des Wahren zu seyn. Jene Metaphysik setzte überhaupt voraus, daß die Erkenntniß des Absoluten in der Weise geschehen könne, daß ihm Prädicate beigelegt werden, und untersuchte weder die Verstandesbestimmungen ihrem eigenthümlichen Inhalte und Werthe nach, . . .”

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. . . though the fact of their being all predicates of one subject supplies them with a certain connection, their several meanings keep them apart: and consequently each is brought in as a stranger [or from the outside] in relation to the others.143

He acknowledges here that some connection is produced by the arguments themselves. This finitude and isolation, however, is not overcome effectively by this kind of connection. For one thing, the concepts have distinct meanings, and this lack of relationship of their meanings keeps them apart by making this limited relatability both the conclusion and a presupposition of the argument. If the terms are effectively strangers, then their ability to be related is not known in advance. And, if only the argument relates them, this can only produce a viciously circular chimera.

The connotation is that these strangers are incommensurate in their meaning when introduced to one another in this way. This produces something like the learners paradox from Plato’s Meno. As a learner cannot search for what he does not know because he is isolated from the object of knowledge, a syllogism that attempts to relate otherwise unrelated terms begs the question of their relatability. Finitude, understood as the isolation of concepts from one another, is therefore fatal to reason. The means of this fate is presupposition because that is what delivers these concepts to the syllogism as strangers to one another.

The solution, implicit in the criticism, is that an alternative means of producing the concepts is needed, one that neither begs the question of their relatability nor isolates them from one another as discrete parts. The solution, as will be seen later, is to connect the concepts together in a meaningful system before the syllogism commences. Hegel will pursue a program of connection of concepts via their internal characteristics. He will develop arguments that establish intrinsic connections between all concepts. This destroys finitude directly and enables syllogisms to non-dogmatically deliver sound conclusions.

Finitude, however, is already part of the propositional form, the judgment and Hegel needs

143 EL, 50, §29. GW, Band 20, 71: “. . . sind sie dadurch, daß sie Prädicate Eines Subjects seyen, miteinander verbunden, durch ihren Inhalt aber verschieden, so daß sie gegeneinander von außen her aufgenommen werden.”

175 to deal with this problem before he solves the problem with syllogisms. He writes:

Besides, the propositional form (and for proposition, it would be more correct to substitute judgment) is not suited to express the concrete—and the true is always concrete—or the speculative. Every judgment is by its form one-sided, to that extent, false.144

As a route to the syllogism, Hegel begins with a criticism of the propositions (judgments) that act as the premises of those syllogisms, the building blocks. In these judgments, their very form, x is y, produces a one-sidedness, which means that the form is isolated from its content in the very same way that the dogmatists had done with their arguments. This is the finitude underlying both the judgment and the syllogism, an internally generated isolation of form from content. This is something that Thought’s development will eventually ameliorate in the Disjunctive Syllogism, but the path from here to there is a long one.

Much of what Hegel has to say about finitude is said through his criticism of one-sidedness.

So, a quick detour into this terminology is needed. Hegel will later criticize the presuppositions of immediate or intuitive knowledge by saying that “it is really a relapse into the habit of external mediation, the gist of which consists in clinging to those narrow and one-sided categories of the finite, which it falsely imagined itself to have left for ever behind.”145 This attempt at a post-critical solution to the problems of knowledge, also known as intellectual intuitionism, has fallen back to the errors of the old metaphysics, says Hegel. It has become one-sided again, and by this Hegel means to say that it has fallen into finitude. Hegel does not make this comment in passing. Not long after this point, he also makes the following comment:

We have still briefly to indicate the general nature of the form of immediacy. For it is the essential one-sidedness of the category which makes whatever comes under it one-sided and, for that reason, finite. And, first, it makes the universal no better than an abstraction external to the particulars, and God a being without determinate quality. . . . Without this unification

144 EL, 51, §31. GW, Band 20, 72: “Ohnehin ist die Form des Satzes oder bestimmter des Urtheils ungeschickt, das Concrete, — und das Wahre ist concret, — und Speculative auszudrücken; das Urtheil ist durch seine From einseitig und in sofern falsch.” 145 EL, 101, §65. GW, Band 20, 106-107: “. . . damit in der That selbst in das Verhältniß der äußerlichen Vermittlung, das auf dem Festhalten an Endlichem, d.i. einseitigen Bestimmungen beruht, über die jene Ansicht fälschlich sich hinausgesetzt zu haben meynt.”

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of elements he [God] is neither concrete, nor living, nor a spirit. Thus the knowledge of God as a spirit necessarily implies mediation. The form of immediacy, secondly, invests the particular with the character of independent or self-centered being. But such predicates contradict the very essence of the particular – which is to be referred to something else outside. They thus invest the finite with the character of an absolute. But, besides, the form of immediacy is altogether abstract: it has no preference for one set of contents more than another, . . .146

This passage connects finitude with one-sidedness, but it also connects finitude with abstraction, which both help to interpret the passage above this one. Abstraction is part of the family of properties that the Logic both examines and maintains for itself, and which Hegel thinks constitutes it. As an encapsulation that will later be negated in consideration of the overarching disjunctive syllogism of the Encyclopedia, this abstraction is both criticized and retained. It is retained not as a historical attitude, which is an error, but as a logical encapsulation, which is simply negated. Here, however, in the part that pursues the historical analysis, there is little more than condemnation, so it is essential not to miss the fact that Hegel retains abstraction in the logical sense despite this critique.

Historically, “they,” those who pursue the course of immediate knowledge, and also those in the first stage who presuppose finitude, merely “invest the finite with the character of the absolute.”

But, it is a false hope, says Hegel, because “unification of elements” is required; guesswork or presupposition will not do. Unification, connectedness, is a prerequisite for a proper argument that reaches to God, or in Hegel’s understanding, to the absolute, the complete whole and totality of all concepts. Finitude is thus a very rich concept for Hegel. Finitude is a presupposition that produces abstraction, independence, and isolation; it can mimic the character of the absolute, but never deliver it.

The propositional form itself, of which syllogisms are composed, is inherently one-sided,

146 EL, 107-108, §74. GW, Band 20, 114: “Noch ist die allgemeine Natur der Form der Unmittelbarkeit kurz anzugeben. Es ist nämlich diese Form selbst, welche, weil sie einseitig ist, ihren Inhalt selbst einseitig und damit endlich macht. Dem Allgemeinen gibt sie die Einseitigkeit einer Abstraction, so daß gott zum bestimmungslosen Wesen wird; . . . Nur so ist er concret, lebendig und Geist; das Wissen von Gott als Geist enthält eben damit Vermittlung in sich. — Dem Besondern gibt die Form der Unmittelbarkeit die Bestimmung, zu seyn, sich auf sich zu beziehen. Das Besondere ist aber eben diß, sich auf Anderes außer ihm zu beziehen; durch jene Form wird das Endliche als absolut gesetzt. Da sie als ganz abstract gegen jeden Inhalt gleichgültig und eben damit jeden Inhalts empfanglich ist, . . .”

177 and as such, it is false. Hegel is not saying that all propositions are false, that would be self-defeating because his philosophy is composed of propositions and this statement itself would be a proposition. Yet, something is amiss. The formula, x is y, is ‘false’ because it separates the concepts involved from their objects. Not only is x distinguished from y, as any subject is distinguished from its predicate, but even in the equating of the two by the copula, they take on distinct roles in the judgment. They are not the same because they function in distinct ways. “The Judgment is the notion in its particularity, as a connection which is also a distinguishing of its functions, which are put as independent and yet as identical with themselves, not with one another.”147 Like the syllogism, the judgment too has a problem of connecting what is isolated and not otherwise related. It cannot be the one and only source of the connection between x and y, because this would be to simply state what might not be true. I can say, for example, “Man is Dog.” But, this does not make it so. If the only connection that these things have is this very judgment, then the truth of the judgment is arbitrary and dogmatic, just as the isolated statement, “God is real” would be. Yet, as the syllogism and judgment share a similar problem, so too do they share a similar solution. Another connection must be established that overcomes finitude, a connectedness that does not come from the judgment in question. Without this other kind of connectedness, finitude leads to a simple assertion of what cannot otherwise be known.

. . . this system of metaphysic turned into Dogmatism. When our thought never ranges beyond narrow and rigid terms, we are forced to assume that of two opposite assertions, such as were the above propositions, the one must be true and the other false.148

Hegel here focuses on the problem of bald assertion. If saying that something is so does not make it so, a rejection of dogmatism, and if the old metaphysics is reducible to a simple assertion of identity,

147 EL, 230, §166. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 182: “Das Urtheil ist der Begriff in seiner Besonderheit, als unterscheidende Beziehung seiner Momente, die als fürsichseyende und zugleich mit sich, nicht mit einander identische gesetzt sind.” 148 EL, 52, §32. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 72: “Diese Metaphysik wurde Dogmatismus, weil sie nach der Natur der endlichen Bestimmungen annehmen mußte, daß von zwei entgegengesetzten Behauptungen, dergleichen jene Sätze waren, die eine wahr, die andere aber falsch seyn müsse.”

178 then the old metaphysics is reducible to dogmatism. This is how Hegel characterizes the pre-critical metaphysics and its attitude toward logic. Dogmatism is not Hegel’s term, of course, he is explaining the criticism that was produced originally by Kant. This explanation, however, betrays Hegel’s intention to work a solution. If dogmatism “never ranges beyond narrow and rigid terms,” and if it assumes and presupposes finitude, then the solution is to range beyond narrow and rigid terms, to demonstrate connection in a way that overcomes finitude.

This is not merely a logical game. It applies to God, Soul, and World. These are the major claimants to objectivity, to being that to which propositions and syllogisms must correspond in order to be true. Hegel is critical of the way that the old metaphysics approached these questions.

The proofs of the existence of God, for example, used a “method of demonstration employed in finite knowledge,”149 but Hegel’s alternative will not make this mistake. This is Hegel’s goal, and his criticism of the old method reveals the means he intends to use to meet that goal. This applies to access to the objective world as well.

Yet in our material thought, the finite world continues, meanwhile, to have a real being, with God as a sort of antithesis: and thus arises the further picture of different relations of God to the world. These, formulated as properties, must, on the one hand, as relations to finite circumstances, themselves possess a finite character . . .150

This passage connects the error of finitude to the goals of reaching from thought to both World and

God. The world, like God, stands out as an antithesis to thought, but this is the same presupposition as was made by dogmatic logicians and metaphysicians. This is nothing else but the error of finitude.

It isolates subjective thought in a way that imprisons it and that disallows access even to the material world. This is philosophy’s scandalous impotence, and it is Hegel’s primary opponent. The removal of finitude, therefore, is meant to obtain access to the object of knowledge.

149 EL, 56, §36. GW, Band 20, 74: “Das Beweisen des endlichen Erkennens, zeigt überhaupt die verkehrte Stellung, . . .” 150 EL, 57, §36. GW, Band 20, 74: “In sofern aber noch die endliche Welt als ein wahres Seyn und Gott ihr gegenüber in der Vorstellung bleibt, so stellt sich auch die Vorstellung verschiedener Verhältnisse desselben zu jener ein, welche als Eigenschaften bestimmt, einerseits als Verhältnisse zu endlichen Zuständen, selbst endlicher Art . . . seyn müssen, . . .”

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Recall that Hegel’s system is acting as an ontological argument. In older versions of the argument, the metaphysicians would make reference to divine attributes. Those who had put these arguments forward ascribed to God many maximized attributes, perfections. Unfortunately, thinks

Hegel, because these attributes are linked to the finite world by the manner of their conception, they were also finite themselves. That is, the attribute of omnipotence, being a concept itself and being defined only in terms of what is seen in the material world, is an isolated and thus finite concept.

This may be a bit of equivocation, but the criticism is plain enough, God’s true infinity is not to be associated with any isolated concept, not even the isolated concept of infinity. The reason for this is that the concept of infinity being used by the old metaphysics was tainted by finitude in the manner of its conception. It was used in a way that betrayed its definition. This is an intermodal self- contradiction. Such judgments presuppose a mode of access to truth that contradicts what the judgments mean, but when considering these same judgments in Hegel’s logical analog, ironically, the judgments can be true. The divine attributes have a legitimate meaning, thinks Hegel, but when defined by minds that are trapped in finitude, these very same judgments are not able to refer properly. They cannot mean what they assert when wielded by minds that cannot conceive absolutely, concludes Hegel. In other words, these metaphysicians, Anselm for example, dealt with concepts whose definitions were being presupposed, according to Hegel, and so these concepts are thereby isolated and made useless. Even though Hegel will ultimately conclude that these definitions are correct, they were also ineffective in the formal deductions that were being put forward by the metaphysicians. Anselm’s ontological argument, therefore, according to Hegel, was on the right track, but the finitude of its terms caused it to become dogmatic. Hegel agrees with the critics insofar as the criticisms are based in finitude. In Hegel’s analysis, the result of finitude can be no better than groundless question begging.

Hegel means to fix all of this. He does so by connecting concepts together circularly, but not

180 viciously. These connections are not made by extrinsic elements, but are effected by the properties internal to the concepts themselves. Concepts thus imply one another by intrinsic relationships.

The Categories or Notions of the Understanding constitute the objectivity of experiential cognitions. In every case they involve connective reference, and hence through their means are formed synthetic judgments a priori, that is, primary and underivative connections of opposites.151

To oppose finitude, which is disconnectedness, Hegel must therefore find a way to connect concepts together, and this way must not be the same way upon which concepts depend in the judgments and syllogisms themselves. He does this, as the passage above indicates, by revealing the

“connective reference” within each concept to other concepts. This is seen “in every case.” The structure that connects concepts illegitimately is dogmatic logic, and the structure that connects concepts legitimately is synthetic logic, the logic that contains all three stages of logic within it.152

Consequently there is a way to pursue a logical interconnection without invoking the problem of finitude. This is the path of the synthetic method.

Hegel’s synthetic method is deductive, thus it employs the resources of the first stage of logic (that of the understanding), and it also employs the negativity of the second stage (which Hegel connects to the Critical Philosophy). Despite these connections, the method ends up being positive rather than negative. That is, it produces rather than denies metaphysical conclusions.

Looking back to his immediate predecessors, Hegel seeks some confirmation of the need for this strategy in Kant and Fichte. He praises them both for first seeing that the categories of thought can and must be deduced (Kant) and that their structure is thus revealed to be necessary.153 He writes specifically of the latter philosopher, “To Fichte belongs the great merit of having called attention to the need of exhibiting the necessity of these categories and giving a genuine deduction of

151 EL, 65, §40. GW, Band 20, 78: “Die Denkbestimmungen oder Verstandesbegriffe machen die Objectivität der Erfahrungs-Erkenntnisse aus. Sie enthalten überhaupt Beziehungen, und es formiren sich daher durch sie synthetische Urtheile a priori (d.i. ursprüngliche Beziehungen Entgegengesetzter).” Emphasis in original. 152 EL, 113-120, §§79-82. 153 EL, 69, §42.

181 them.”154 Hegel seems to be brushing past Kant’s conclusion that the validity of the laws of logic are themselves groundless,155 and moves to one of his own beliefs, that this system of categories is capable of generating its own rules of operation. He makes this connection via an expectation he had that Fichte’s work should have led to an expansive program of deducing the rules of logic from within Thought itself. This could have empowered Thought to establish its conclusions deductively, internally, self-sufficiently:

Fichte ought to have produced at least one effect on the method of logic. One might have expected that the general laws of thought, the usual stock-in-trade of logicians, or the classification of notions, judgments, and syllogisms, would be no longer taken merely from observation and so only empirically treated, but be deduced from thought itself.156

Hegel sees this self-deduction as a condition of the possibility that “thought is capable of proving anything at all, . . .”157 Only if it can produce itself can it prove other things. The system of categories is useful, therefore, only after it is understood to be a self-proof, an argument for its own independence. This is an interesting admission from Hegel that the interconnectedness of Thought is not just about connecting concepts for its own sake, but it is about recognizing the cause of the capacity of Thought to perform any useful activity at all. He concludes the paragraph: “If thought is to be capable of proving anything at all, if logic must insist upon the necessity of proofs, and if it proposes to teach the theory of demonstration, its first care should be to give a reason for its own subject-matter, and to see that it is necessary.”158 This is not a viciously self-referential necessity. If it were, if Kant had his way, then Hegel’s point in this passage would be moot. The point is that

154 EL, 69, §42. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 80: “Der Fichte’schen Philosophie bleibt das tiefe Verdienst, daran erinnert zu haben, daß die Denkbestimmungen in ihrer Nothwendigkeit aufzuzeigen, daß sie wesentlich abzuleiten seyen.” 155 Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 567-568. 156 EL, 69, §42. GW, Band 20, 80: “Diese Philosophie [Der Fichte’schen] hätte auf die Methode die Logik abzuhandeln doch wenigstens die Wirkung gehabt haben sollen, daß die Denkbestimmungen überhaupt oder das übliche logische Material, die Arten der Begriffe, der Urtheile, der Schlüsse, nicht mehr nur aus der Beobachtung genommen und so blos empirisch aufgefaßt, sondern aus dem Denken selbst abgeleitet würden.” 157 EL, 69, §42. GW, Band 20, 80: “Wenn das Denken irgend etwas zu beweisen fähig seyn soll, . . .” 158 Ibid. GW, Band 20, 80: “Wenn das Denken irgend etwas zu beweisen fähig seyn soll, wenn die Logik fodern muß, daß Beweise gegeben werden, und wenn sie das Beweisen lehren will, so muß sie doch vor allem ihren eigenthümlichsten Inhalt zu beweisen, dessen Nothwendigkeit einzusehen, fähig seyn.”

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Thought can have access to its object as a result of this self-deduction. If Kant and Fichte already provided this, then Hegel would not be contending with them. He laments, instead, that they did not go just a bit further. If they had, thinks Hegel, they would have seen that Thought overcomes its own finitude. This is the reason for the partial praise and partial rejection of the Critical

Philosophers. Hegel praises them for making connections deductively, but he criticizes them for leaving a fatal finitude in their wake. In the end, this only produced a dogmatism of a different kind.159 Hegel concluded that Thought deduces not only the categories, but even its own rules of operation, revealing them to be necessary in the absolute sense.160 Hegel thinks that this utter unity, in consequence, rules out alternative cognizing. And thus, it removes from itself, thinks Hegel, that last remaining element of transcendence, the noumenal threat. Absolute connectivity is the complete elimination of finitude (isolation, separateness, dualism). Hegel views Thought as a self-deduction that grounds and enables deduction through the elimination of finitude. The consequence of eliminating finitude, of deducing it as an absolute necessity, is that transcendence is necessarily ruled out. Utter unity has no remainder. That, at least, is Hegel’s goal.

b) Texts on Presupposition

The problem with Anselm, Descartes, and Spinoza in their ontological arguments, thinks

Hegel, is that the unity of the supreme perfection was a presupposition.

The real fault in the argumentation of Anselm is one which is chargeable on Descartes and Spinoza, as well as on the theory of immediate knowledge. It is this. This unity which is enunciated as the supreme perfection or, it may be, subjectively, as the true knowledge, is presupposed, . . . . This objection and this antithesis are got over, only by showing the finite to be untrue and these categories in their separation to be inadequate and null. Their identity is thus seen to be one into which they spontaneously pass over, and in which they are reconciled.161

159 Winfield, Hegel and the Future, 4-5. 160 As will be shown in my final chapter, this absolute context is a logical environment boasting universal accessibility. This is the modal context that is today described by the S5 system. 161 EL, 259, §193. GW, Band 20, 203-204: “Der Mangel aber in der Argumentation Anselms, den übrigens Cartesius, Spinoza, so wie das Princip des unmittelbaren Wissens mit ihr theilen, ist, daß diese Einheit, die als das

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This error is overcome in two steps: the first step is to realize that presupposition is causing an incongruity; the second step is to overcome this incongruity with “identity,” which is unity. These steps are performed by the Disjunctive Syllogism, which Hegel had just finished deriving two sections earlier (the above passage is part of his discussion of the consequences of this syllogism).

The first step is the recognition that presupposition produces a fatal separation. Hegel mentions

“finite,” “antithesis,” and “separation” in this passage, all references to finitude. These are the consequence of presupposing the unity of supreme perfection. Yet, this is not a flaw to be found only in these three philosophers, and it is not limited to the context of the Ontological Argument. It is in this section that Hegel gives us his (in)famous comment about the Ontological Proof: “It does no good to put on airs against the Ontological proof, as it is called, and against Anselm thus defining the Perfect. The argument is one latent in every unsophisticated mind, and it recurs in every philosophy [even Hegel’s], even against its wish and without its knowledge—. . .”162 But, if even

Hegel’s philosophy is a recurrence of the Ontological Argument, then we must assume that he is not saying that this produces an unavoidable flaw. As the main passage above concludes, the solution is unity, one that Hegel presumably avoids. How does this solution work? It works by the logical functions of the Disjunctive Syllogism, as follows. The first step is recognition of the need for negation of the presupposing attitude. The act of presupposition sets the finite in opposition to the infinite.163 That is, the presupposing attitude of Anselm, et al., sits in contradiction to the nature and meaning of the syllogism. The conclusion is unlimited, the presupposition produces a limitation. A presupposition of finitude is in contradiction to the infinite nature of the conclusion of the proof.

Vollkommenste oder auch subjectiv als das wahre Wissen ausgesprochen wird, . . . . Dieser Einwurft und Gegensatz hebt sich nur dadurch, daß das Endliche als ein Unwahres, daß diese Bestimmungen als für sich einseitig und nichtig und die Identität somit als eine, in die sie selbst übergehen und in der sie versöhnt sind, aufgezeigt werden.” Bold added. 162 EL, 259, §193. GW, Band 20, 203: “Alles Vornehmthun gegen den sogenannten ontologischen Beweis und gegen diese Anselmische Bestimmung des Vollkommenen hilft nichts, da sie in jedem unbefangenen Menschensinne eben so sehr liegt, als in jeder Philosophie selbst wider Wissen und Willen, . . .” 163 Ibid.

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Hegel clarifies: this “finite possesses objectivity of such a kind as is at once incongruous with and different from the end or aim, its essence and notion.”164 Once again, we see that a conflict between the modes of the proposition, between what it means and its role in the syllogism, is causing a logical demand for negation, intermodal self-contradiction demands negation of this presupposition.

This negation of premise 1 in the syllogism is then part of the solution; it leads to unification in the conclusion of the syllogism.

In Hegel’s own words, the solution is produced only by “showing the finite to be untrue and these categories in their separation to be inadequate and null.”165 This separation is overcome by allowing the divided elements to “spontaneously pass over” into one another, and to be reconciled.166 Once again it is the separation that is the problem, and this separation is created by the presupposition as the above passage notes. If each of the terms in an argument are “brought in as a stranger in relation to the others,”167 or if the definitions of the attributes of God are merely presupposed in order to prove God’s existence, then the resulting conclusion is ruined by the presupposition. Nothing can be proved this way, yet anything can appear to be proved. In order to properly reach a conclusion, thinks Hegel, the presupposition of abstraction/separation/finitude must be overcome by means of a demonstration of the “organized and systematically developed universe of thought.”168 This is done by producing a rational connectedness between concepts. That is, instead of presupposing connectedness, implicitly or explicitly, connectedness must be determined logically.

The old metaphysics made the mistake of presupposition in several ways, both explicitly and implicitly. These thinkers took ordinary concepts from common usage and applied them to God,

164 Ibid. GW, Band 20, 203: “. . . ist das Endliche eine solche Objectivität, die dem Zwecke, ihrem Wesen und Begriffe zugleich nicht angemessen, von ihm verschieden ist, . . .” 165 Ibid. See block quotation above for full text. 166 Ibid. See block quotation above for full text. 167 EL, 50, §29. GW, Band 20, 71: “. . . sie gegeneinander von außen her aufgenommen werden.” 168 EL, 51, §30. GW, Band 20, 71: “. . . dem Denken des in sich concreten Allgemeinen angehören; . . .”

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Soul, and World. Consequently, this form of presupposition is implicit within language.169 Hegel admits that the old metaphysicians’ assumptions were correct. The objects of their reasoning were in fact totalities; they were genuinely connected to the rest of Thought. This is in stark contrast to the way they were being understood and used. They were “taken by the metaphysician as subjects made and ready,”170 and they were used to support weighty conclusions. However, because they were merely assumed, they could not bear that weight. They were plucked out of their context, but it is their context that gives them their power. The old metaphysics used presupposition, therefore, to answer the most important questions. Because of this weak foundation, their exploration of the characteristics of Being was filled with useful conclusions, but was only dogmatically supported.

The first part of this [dogmatic] metaphysic in its systematic form is Ontology, or the doctrine of the abstract characteristics of Being. The multitude of these characteristics, and the limits set to their applicability, are not founded upon any principle. They have in consequence to be enumerated as experience and circumstances direct, and the import ascribed to them is founded only upon common sensualized conceptions, upon assertions that particular words are used in a particular sense, and even perhaps upon etymology.171

The linguistic version of these presuppositions is Hegel’s focus here. The point is very straightforward. Simply asserting foundational concepts by terms learned from experience, or simply digging into the roots and meanings of the parts of words, is not an adequate means of grounding the concepts used in an argument. Hegel thinks that ontology ought to be founded without presupposition. Thus, some presupposed axioms are explicitly recognized as such, but others are hidden by the familiarity of the language used. If the argument depends on the subjective meanings of words that are themselves finite, then the argument is finite as well. Hence, whether or not the presupposition in question is implicit within the use of language, it is fatal to the argument.

169 EL, 50-51, §30. 170 EL, 51, §30. GW, Band 20, 71: “. . . aber die Metaphysik nahm sie aus der Vorstellung auf, legte sie als fertige gegebene Subjecte bein der Anwendung der Verstandesbestimmungen darauf zu Grunde . . .” 171 EL, 53, §33. GW, Band 20, 72-73: “Den ersten Theil dieser Metaphysik in ihrer geordneten Gestalt machte die Ontologie aus, — die Lehre von den abstracten Bestimmungen des Wessens. Für diese in ihrer Mannichfaltigkeit und endlichem Gelten mangelt es an einem Princip; sie müssen darum empirisch und zufälligerweise aufgezählt, und ihr näherer Inhalt kann nur auf die Vorstellung, auf die Versicherung, daß man sich bei einem Worte gerade diß denke, etwa auch auf die Etymologie gegründet werden.”

186

The epistemologist will wonder if there is an alternative, and Hegel has an answer. He will prepare a logical metalanguage to solve this linguistic problem. The language and its referents will both be unified and interconnected into a whole that supports itself. It is Hegel’s intention to solve the problem of reference through the derivation of all concepts in a single, unified, “systematically developed universe of thought.”172 Only this solution, with strong nods to Leibniz’s mathesis universalis and implicit reliance upon the Scholastics’ metalanguage, can nail down the meanings of terms sufficiently to allow them to bear the weight of ontological argumentation. Hegel will apply the syllogistic form of argument to achieve this goal—that is the context of this passage—but this can be done very badly and he wants to be careful to assure the reader that he understands the dangers. He looks at past attempts to do this with much criticism.

It [empiricism] employs the metaphysical categories of matter, force, those of one, many, generality, infinity, etc.; following the clue given by these categories it proceeds to draw conclusions, and in so doing presupposes and applies the syllogistic form. And all the while it is unaware that it contains metaphysics— . . .173

Hegel highlights the misuse of formal logical deduction in many areas, most notably in the argument of Anselm, but here Hegel’s hapless target is the empiricist. In both of these contexts, the mistake is the same. Just as one may not presuppose the meaning of the terminology used in an argument, one must also avoid presupposing the form. A syllogism is only as good as its form and its judgments, which are themselves only as good as their names and rules. The whole apparatus, the form with all its ancestry, and even the content, which must ultimately be united with the form, has to be interconnected, derived internally. The alternative is presupposition. Those who use the syllogistic form without grounding it first presuppose it, and this disconnectedness renders its use questionable. Just because the forms of modus ponens or modus tollens seem valid is no guarantee that

172 EL, 51, §30. GW, Band 20, 71: “. . . dem Denken des in sich concreten Allgemeinen angehören; . . .” 173 EL, 62, §38. GW, Band 20, 76: “. . . daß er die metaphysischen Kategorien von Materie, Kraft, ohnehin von Einem, Vielem, Allgemeinheit auch Unendlichem u.s.f. gebraucht, ferner am Faden solcher Kategorien weiter fortschließt, dabei die Formen des Schließens voraussetzt und anwendet, und bey allem nicht weiß, daß er so selbst Metaphysik enthält und treibt, . . .”

187 they are. Seeming so is not the same as being so. To be so, to be true, the syllogism must correspond to something worthy of the label “truth.”

It is one of the fundamental assumptions of dogmatic Logic that Qualitative judgments such as ‘The rose is red’ or ‘is not red’ can contain truth. Correct they may be, i.e. in the limited circle of perception, of finite conception and thought: that depends on the content, which likewise is finite, and, on its own merits, untrue. Truth, however, as opposed to correctness, depends solely on the form, viz. on the notion as it is put and the reality corresponding to it.174

If I say that the rose is red, Hegel’s example, I may be correct, but only in a “limited circle of perception.” I have not, thinks Hegel, achieved absolute truth even if I am correct in my perception and judgment. The judgment’s truth depends on the content, and the content, like the judgment, is finite. That is, there is a disconnectedness in my perception and in my judgment. I and the object of perception are separated from one another just as the subject and predicate of the judgment are separated.175 Presupposition of separation is the cause, and the solution is demonstration of unity.

The implication of this passage is that this judgment, “the rose is red,” can simultaneously be true for Hegel and not true for the dogmatic empiricist. This implies that a judgment can only be true if it is appreciated as part of and as equal to the whole of Thought, which only Hegel understands. This is consistent with the way Hegel relates stage 1 and stage 3 attitudes. As in the

VBDG, the first stage gets the conclusion correct, but fails in grounding that conclusion, now the first stage sees the red rose, but fails to see it as connected.

This may seem exceedingly arrogant, and probably absurd. But, I think Hegel has a relevant point. In support of Hegel on this point, I would go so far as to say that this distinction is self- evident in some contexts. Consider a freshman student of introductory physics who learns by rote some theory such as “E=MC2.” Without a fuller understanding of mathematics and physics, such a

174 EL, 236-237, §172. Emphases in original. GW, Band 20, 86-87: “Es ist eines der wesentlichsten logischen Vorurtheile, daß solche qualitative Urtheile, wie: die Rose ist roth, oder ist nicht roth, Wahrheit enthalten können. Richtig können sie seyn, d.i. in dem beschränkten Kreise der Wahrnehmung, des endlichen Vorstellens und Denkens; diß hängt von dem Inhalte ab, der ebenso ein endlicher für sich unwahrer ist. Aber die Wahrheit beruht nur auf der Form, d.i. dem gesetzten Begriffe und der ihm entsprechenden Realität; . . .” 175 Cf., EL, 230-231, §166.

188 judgment despite being true within its wider context, becomes false in the mind of the student. In this example, we might prefer to dispense with the term “false” and substitute “meaningless.” Hegel might appreciate this subtlety for it is the naiveté, he thinks, and the ignorance of the context that makes the conclusion useless to the thinker. In a similar manner, when a dogmatic empiricist considers the judgment, “The rose is red,” the error is not in the judgment itself, but in the thinker who cuts this judgment off from its source. This lack of understanding of the whole, thinks Hegel, mortifies individual concepts in specific, harmful ways. When this depth of knowledge is missing, the judgment is not true even though that same judgment can be true when it is understood as something connected to the rest of Thought. If a speaker of Italian were to say to me, “La rosa è rossa.” it is plausibly true for him, but it is meaningless to me because I do not speak Italian.

Similarly, when Hegel perceives the rose, he thinks that he from his high and absolute perch is better able to perceive and speak of the truth of the rose’s redness than a non-Hegelian. Yet, he is not denying that the non-Hegelian can have helpful impressions and respond in practical ways.

Hegel distinguishes here two degrees of apprehension of truth. One is limited, the other absolute. The dogmatic logician is being accused of having a limited understanding of concepts, which is tied to limited perception and limited conception. This is the finitude of the old metaphysics that, because of these limitations, turns an otherwise true judgment into one that is, in some sense, untrue. Hegel is accusing us, when we see an object before our eyes, of misunderstanding the truth of the situation. He thinks that we are naive in such a circumstance and so we need the Hegelian argument to achieve a superior perspective, only then can the perception be true absolutely. Up to that point, perception is only functional, merely regulative. Presupposing the normal function of our senses, of our access to what is objectively true, is a genuine aspect of the metaphysical-logical problem for Hegel. In other words, this is not merely a problem of logic or metaphysics. It is truly a problem that descends all the way to the realm of everyday perception. In

189 order to perceive and think properly, according to Hegel, individual objects must be conceived in their absolute context.176 These concepts must be understood as interconnected with the totality in order to be properly appreciated.

A separated individual is finite, but it is not really separated anywhere but in the minds of uninitiated perceivers. Hegel is clear that this is just a misunderstanding of idealism:

The Absolute is the universal and one idea, which, by an act of ‘judgment’, particularizes itself to the system of specific ideas; which after all are constrained by their nature to come back to the one idea where their truth lies. . . . the Idea is in the first place only the one universal substance: but its developed and genuine actuality is to be as a subject and in that way as mind. Because it has no existence for starting-point and point d’appui [a connection point], the Idea is frequently treated as a mere logical form. Such a view must be abandoned to those theories which ascribe so-called reality and genuine actuality to the existent thing and all the other categories which have not yet penetrated as far as the Idea. It is no less false to imagine the Idea to be mere abstraction. It is abstract certainly, in so far as everything untrue is consumed in it: but in its own self it is essentially concrete, . . .177

Hegel would have difficulty being clearer about his idealism. The ultimate reality is the Idea, and that Idea is appreciated only from the absolute standpoint. Therefore, if reality is ideal and fully interconnected, and if perception is conceived in such a way that the individual subject is perceiving a separate individual object, then, he concludes, such a perception is false. An improper presupposition about ontology produces a naive and in some sense false perception. So, this is not simply about logic or syllogism, the point of Hegel’s use of syllogism is to unite them together in such a way that they are inseparable. One cannot, as a result, conceive of the object properly unless it is understood as connected to the system of concepts.

The Ontological Argument, paradigmatically, is not properly being understood if it

176 EL, 275, §213. 177 EL, 275, §213. GW, Band 20, 215-216: “Das Absolute ist die allgemeine und Eine Idee, welche als urtheilend sich zum System der bestimmten Ideen besondert, die aber nur diß sind, in die Eine Idee, in ihre Wahrheit zurückzugehen. . . . daß die Idee zunächst nur die Eine, allgemeine Substanz ist, aber ihre entwickelte wahrhafte Wirklichkeit ist, daß sie als Subject und so als Geist ist. Die Idee wird häufig, in sofern sie nicht eine Existenz zu ihrem Ausgangs- und Stützungs-Punkt habe, für ein blos formelles logisches genommen. Man muß solche Ansicht den Standpunkten überlassen, auf welchen das existirende Ding udn alle weitern noch nicht zur Idee durchgedrungenen Bestimmungen noch für sogenannte Realitäten und wahrhafte Wirklichkeiten gelten. — Eben so falsch ist die Vorstellung, als ob die Idee nur das Abstracte sey. Sie ist es allerdings in sofern, als alles Unwahre sich in ihr aufzehrt; aber an ihr selbst ist sie wesentlich concret, . . .”

190 presupposes a separation that it unifies at its end. This makes the unity at the end into a dogmatic assertion. Hegel’s version will not presuppose unity, it will demonstrate unity instead. To do anything else, thinks Hegel, would be to isolate God (or the world) within a fictional game of our own making.178 This, he concludes, is the error of both Anselm and Kant. Both of them make God transcendent. Anselm places God in the unreachable heavens, Kant in the unthinkable noumenon.

The world is likewise placed out of reach, implicitly by Anselm’s presuppositions, and explicitly by

Kant’s Copernican Revolution. This is all smuggled into Thought by the presupposition of necessary or merely possible disunity, respectively. However, this finitude need not be presupposed. Another presupposition can be made beside these first two. This third alternative, unlike the others which self-contradict, can be proved. In fact, it is a proof.

Regarding such a proof, thinks Hegel, Anselm’s and Kant’s presupposing attitudes preclude the possibility of using logic properly. As a disconnected assertion, such reason is dogmatic. As a critical prolegomena, such reason is unsure. Hegel’s third option will seek to demonstrate the necessity of unity, and this will overcome presupposition. Hegel still holds formal logic in high regard. Speaking of Spinoza and Wolff, he calls these methods “indispensable and brilliantly successful in their own province.”179 Yet, he says, they use presuppositions and this places them into the “province” of the cognition of the understanding.180 Of Kant he says that he is “guiltless of any influence of the notion, and to the additional formalism of classifying scientific and philosophical objects in a tabular form on some presupposed rubric, . . .”181 Thus, both of them wield the tool of

178 EL, 284, §226. 179 EL, 288, §231. GW, Band 20, 225: “Daß diese Methoden, so wesentlich und von so glänzendem Erfolge in ihrem eigenthümlichen Felde, . . .” 180 Ibid. 181 Ibid. GW, Band 20, 225: “So ist denn die Angabe sinnlicher aus der Wahrnehmung aufgegriffener Bestimmungen mit Umgehung des Begriffs, und der fernere Formalismus, philosophische und wissenschaftliche Gegenstände nach einem vorausgesetzten Schema tabellarisch übrigens nach Willkühr und Gutdünken zu classificiren, — eine Construction der Begriffe genannt worden.” Hegel seems hostile in this passage toward the idea of formalism in logic and philosophy, calling it a “tabular form” and a “presupposed rubric” (vorausgesetzten Schema tabellarisch). The indictment appears to be aimed not specifically at the form of the logic of Wolff, mentioned earlier in this same

191 logic improperly. Despite this, Hegel’s respect for formal logic is evident. The solution is to demonstrate the interconnectedness through a doggedly applied syllogism, the Disjunctive. This syllogism is applied like an algorithmic procedure, a one recommended by Lull, Hobbes, and

Leibniz, until the outlines of a complete system argument comes into view. Therefore it is with the

Encyclopedia that Hegel meets the challenge of avoiding presupposition.

3. Summary of the Finitude and Presupposition Problems in Hegel

It has been shown that Hegel’s criticism of the old logic centers around just two factors: first, the old logic viewed its own elements as givens that are for this reason isolated from one another and taken to be axiomatic and incorrigible in themselves; and second, the entire edifice is ungrounded, despite claims to absolute certainty. Though there were indications that a self- grounding principle was being used as early as Plato, it had not been properly integrated into a self- sufficient, self-grounding system. Traditional logicians had simply assumed that at least some of their axioms and forms of inference were absolute and unassailable without good reasons. These are merely superficial problems, however. So, these particular missteps did not make the logical science impossible. They are not flaws in the logic itself, but act merely as restraints on its proper practice.

Hegel himself wished to remove the restraints through demonstrated unity.

The best clue to how this will be accomplished comes from Hegel’s praise of Fichte’s recognition of “the need of exhibiting the necessity of these categories and giving a genuine deduction of them.”182 Hegel expected this to produce a new way to ground logic: “One might have expected that the general laws of thought, the usual stock-in-trade of logicians, or the classification of notions, judgments, and syllogisms, would be no longer taken merely from observation and so only

paragraph, nor at the tabulation of categories in Kant, but on the presupposition inherent in any formalism whatsoever. 182 EL, 69, §42. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 80: “. . . daß die Denkbestimmungen in ihrer Nothwendigkeit aufzuzeigen, daß sie wesentlich abzuleiten seyen.”

192 empirically treated, but be deduced from thought itself.”183 This should have produced a new interest in formal logic, thinks Hegel, but others’ faineance has left him with the task. So, Hegel thinks that Fichte began a work that he, Hegel, will now complete. Hegel concludes that, if logic is

“capable of proving anything at all,” by which Hegel means to reference deductive proofs in any context generally, then logic’s “first care should be to give a reason for its own subject matter, and to see that it is necessary.”184 The necessity in view here is the kind that comes from entailment, deduction. Hegel’s reference is therefore clearly to the deductive, formal, syllogistic logic of days past. This is not a reference to the watered-down “Classical” logic, but to the tradition that reaches from Aristotle and the Stoics, through the Scholastics, and up to Leibniz (and, let us not forget

Saccheri along the way). After having praised Fichte for realizing the need of “exhibiting the necessity” of logical categories (like the syllogism) and of deducing them, it should be expected that

Hegel is going to attempt to do these very things, to deduce the logical categories and show their necessity. And, of course, this is just what the rest of the Encyclopedia attempts to do.185

C. Hegel’s Redemption of Traditional Logic: A Place for Abstraction and Remedies for Finitude and Presupposition

In order to fully understand Hegel’s solution to these flaws in the practice of traditional logic, his Janus-faced approach to abstraction must first be explained. It must first be understood how he can use what he also criticizes before his solutions can be interpreted as a redemption.

183 EL, 69, §42. GW, Band 20, 80: “Diese Philosophie hätte auf die Methode die Logik abzuhandeln doch wenigstens die Wirkung gehabt haben sollen, daß die Denkbestimmungen überhaupt oder das übliche logische Material, die Arten der Begriffe, der Urtheile, der Schlüsse, nicht mehr nur aus der Beobachtung genommen und so blos empirisch aufgefaßt, sondern aus dem Denken selbst abgeleitet würden.” 184 EL, 69, §42. GW, Band 20, 80: “Wenn das Denken irgend etwas zu beweisen fähig seyn soll, . . . so muß sie doch vor allem ihren eigenthümlichsten Inhalt zu beweisen, dessen Nothwendigkeit einzusehen, fähig seyn.” 185 Even beyond the Logics, Hegel continues to labor to show the necessity of the logical categories in their native context, the whole of Thought that encompasses the natural world. This is the reason why I do not limit Hegel’s deductions to the Logics. And, this is why I refer to this effort of connection, and its result, as the “Progression of Thought” rather than an “onto-logic.”

193

1. Hegel’s Paradoxical Criticisms and Uses of Abstraction and Skepticism

I had quoted Allegra de Laurentiis at the head of this chapter as saying that Hegel paradoxically both criticizes and uses deduction. This presents “scholars with highly challenging problems (to use an understatement).”186 An equally difficult problem is Hegel’s criticism and use of negative dialectic, which is also to say, his use of doubt and contingency. The first is a dive into dualism within a contradictory drive toward unity. The second is an express uncertainty, the mere threat of dualism, within that same drive to unity. The solution to these incongruities is the recognition of the logical functions and achievements of the Disjunctive Syllogism. In that structure, first and second premises are negated, but they are also preserved as negated and they each have their contents liberated in the third. In this way, and by this means, Hegel criticizes abstraction and negative dialectic, but he also uses them.

Both abstraction and contingency are preserved in the deduction despite their negations.

Not only are they preserved as negated, but they have their own worlds. There is the world of the

Logic, which we use to make deductions, and there is the world of contingency, the world in which we live. Though these two worlds fail to be absolute, they are not demoted to illusions or fictions by the absolute’s negations of them; they are what they are and this accounts for, as I read Hegel, our experience of both worlds (rational intuitions and our impressions of existence and freedom). To the point at hand, however, this is the solution to the paradox that de Laurentiis describes. Hegel can use and criticize formal deduction, both historically and logically, without contradicting himself.

Hegel’s own “corrected” theory contains the previous stages within it. Each of the first two stages is reflected in history, but each also finds a place in Hegel’s own philosophy. With a surprisingly minor correction, the faulty error of the historical forms is reversed so that they take

186 de Laurentiis, 2.

194 their places within Hegel’s system as logical categories, as principles of differentiation for the absolute (One). This is seen, for example, when Hegel describes the syllogism in two different ways within the first stage of logic. In error, the syllogism can be taken as merely subjective. This subjective “attitude” is something that human philosophers often add to the syllogism. Hegel writes,

. . . 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. . . . 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.187

This first shape, as an attitude and presupposition, divides and separates. This is a presupposition of finitude. Yet, it is not only a presupposing judgment, it is also a “specific mode” which is “reached” by Thought at this stage. The former is the mistake of others, the latter is Hegel’s correction, his recognition of a stage of Thought’s own makeup. Thought abstracts itself in this stage.

Hegel’s attitude, expressed in the logical doctrine of §§79-83, describes the relation between the three stages as one of inclusion rather than separation. The lower stages can be derived from the higher stages and are therefore parts of the higher stages.188 This indicates that the lower stages are not left behind despite being criticized, but are in some way preserved within the higher stages. The exact nature of this inclusion, however, is not fully explained here. That would require logical tools that are not yet derived. For the time being, this section offers up a sufficiently difficult new idea: the assumptions that were presupposed in finitude by the earlier historical stages are now acceptable parts of his own logical doctrine; what was earlier rejected as historical presuppositions are now incorporated logically. What Hegel had just spent a hundred pages denouncing, he now welcomes.

Hegel shows how the historical harmonizes with the logical much later in §162 where he distinguishes three different parts of the doctrine of the notion. The first part is the doctrine of the

187 EL, 245-246, §182. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 193: “. . . wird der Verstandesschlußnach seiner gewöhnlichen geläufigen Bedeutung in seiner subjectiven Weise ausgedrückt, die ihm nach dem Sinne zukommt, daß wir solche Schlüsse machen. . . . ebenso hat aber diß die objecive Bedeutung, daß er nur die Endlichkeit der Dinge aber auf die bestimmte Weise, welche die Form hier erreicht hat, ausdrückt.” 188 EL, 113, §79.

195 subjective or formal notion; the second is the doctrine of the notion focused on objectivity; the third is the doctrine of the notion focused on “the unity of notion and objectivity.”189 This shows that it is not just the earlier, historical attitudes that engage with the first two stages of logic (that of the understanding and of negative dialectic), but the highest, third attitude also engages with them. The first part is the “Logic of the Notion,” Hegel tells us, “is usually treated as a science of form only, and understood to deal with the form of notion, judgment, and syllogism as form, . . .”190 This correlates to the Encyclopedia Logic and the Science of Logic. Usually, this first part of the doctrine of the notion is done poorly, he tells us, and it is assumed that logic is the study only of formal relations without any investigation into “truth,” a criticism that involves the absence of connectedness to the whole of Thought. Yet, somehow, Hegel thinks he is immune to the consequences of this error.

The solution is this: even though Hegel will explore judgments and syllogisms as forms, he will do so with full knowledge of how things are ultimately connected. He will explore all Thought under the program of abstraction, and then he will negate that program to rescue all Thought from abstraction. Thus, Hegel engages in self-conscious—one could even say critical—abstraction. This project, the Logic, will later be subject to a new perspective, but it will always have a vital role to play in the structure of Thought. The program of abstraction is what generates the Logic; without it, there would be no Logic. Yet, Hegel does not overturn and reject abstraction because he intends to redeem logic rather than destroy it. Thus, the program of abstraction is essential to the accomplishments of the Logic, so it is not a mistake. The Logic reveals the necessary structures that connect all thoughts, but its encapsulating program refutes itself, and this, in turn, shows that this necessary totality of Thought is not merely abstract.

This latter point is a very important result, for it delivers the Progression of Thought to the

189 EL, 225, §162. GW, Band 20, 177: “der Einheit des Begriffs und der Objectivität.” 190 EL, 226, §162. GW, Band 20, 178: “Die Logik des Begriffs wird gewöhnlich als nur formelle Wissenschaft so verstanden, daß es ihr auf die Form als solche des Begriffs, des Urtheils und Schlusses, . . .”

196 second stage, the System of Nature. Louis Girard correctly sees the transition from abstraction to nature not as a transition of one mind into a new mode of understanding but as a kind of internal realization for Thought itself. He writes:

How can we best think of this paradoxical relationship between the Idea-as-totality and its other (son autre)? How is the Idea made into Nature? This cannot be regarded as a logical transition, a crossing, . . . . Indeed, the subjective concept passes to objectivity by virtue of logical necessity; it is inhabited by an essential lack, a contradiction, which makes it pass into what is its truth.191

Girard goes on to say that Thought should not be imagined to be the activity of a single subject, as if it worked to assemble determinations together as a way to produce nature, but this passage is instead a removal of subjectivity itself to show that the truth of Thought is the unity of the object with

Thought. He is distinguishing between a subjective transition, as if it was something had by a single subject, and a “passage” out of Subjectivity itself, which is to say, a logical passage made necessary by an internal contradiction. This contradiction is seen within Subjectivity. Thus, the problem that leads Thought to the next stage is the very idea of subjectivity (abstraction, separation, finitude).

Notice that this transformation must occur; its necessity comes from a logical property within

Subjectivity. Thought in the first stage is “inhabited by an essential lack, a contradiction.” There is therefore an internal contradiction that is working itself out in the Logic.

The Logic thus represents an argument unto itself, within the greater argument. A thorough and correctly conceived derivation of concepts, together with the negation of its encapsulating program, is acting to rule out the possibility that logical elements are merely subjective or isolatable from either minds to think them or objects external to themselves. This, consequently, becomes the first premise of the greater, “encyclopedic” argument. In sum, the Logic is created by the abstractive program and this delivers the necessary structure of all Thought in a system of interconnectedness;

191 Louis Girard, L’argument ontologique chez Saint Anselme et chez Hegel (Amsterdam: Rodopi B. V., 1995), 489; translation mine: “Comment penser ce rapport paradoxal de la Totalité comme idée au son autre? Comment l’Idée se fait-elle Nature? On ne saurait considérer cela comme une transition logique, un ‘passage,’ . . . . En effet, le concept subjectif passe a l’objectivité en vertu de la nécessité logique; il est habité par un manque essentiel, une contradiction, qui le fait passer dans ce qui est sa vérité.”

197 then, the abstractive program produces its own negation; and finally, this leads Thought to Nature.

These are creative transformations operating through a key negation, not errors to be corrected or overcome, not transformations that annihilate and replace the logic of the first stage.192

The Logic is therefore a thorough and fruitful effort to follow the presupposition of abstractness to its own self-mediating end. Hegel indicates that placing all notions and truths under the first stage would be to give an inadequate conception of them.193 This failure of the first stage and transition to the second begins to reveal Hegel’s larger plan. The fact that all notions and truths can be placed into the first stage suggests that they can be placed into the other two stages as well.

These will be, first, the three partitions within the Logic, but then, they will become the second and third volumes of the Encyclopedia. And so, even before moving on to pursue Thought’s form under the first stage, here in the preliminary sections, Hegel completes a summary of these two subsequent projects in order to anticipate them. Some aspects of the second stage are covered earlier in §78 of the Encyclopedia Logic, but the project of encapsulating Thought within the second stage is then fully introduced in §81. After this, the third, speculative stage is summarized in §82. These are introductory pictures of three distinct projects that follow “every notion and truth” as they progress through the three stages of logic introduced in §79. These stages, therefore, represent not just failed attitudes in history, which Hegel has described and criticized, and they are not merely the outlining of a methodology that he will use to flesh out the Logic alone, but they are also three logical encapsulations that he himself will be retracing repeatedly and at considerable length.

192 Contra Winfield, among others, Hegel’s method of “determinate negation” does not involve a transformative or evolutionary kind of development. These negations are not destructive because they are contained and thus harnessed by a syllogism. If the form of sublation is that of a proper syllogism, then leaving this form behind would undermine the entire philosophy. If the form of sublation evolves beyond the syllogism, then it cannot account for its functions, which continue on afterwards. Hegel acknowledges this when he continues to use the DS form and when he calls his entire system a syllogism of syllogisms. See, Winfield, “The Method of Hegel’s Science of Logic,” in Essays on Hegel’s Logic, ed. George di Giovanni, Albany, NY: State University of New York, 56. See also, Jon Stewart, “Hegel’s Doctrine of Determinate Negation: An Example from ‘Sense-certainty’ and ‘Perception’” Idealistic Studies 26:1 (1996): 57–78; The Unity of Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit,” 41-43; and Michael Rosen, Hegel’s Dialectic and its Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), 30. 193 EL, 113, §79.

198

Hegel does not intend this merely as an extended counterargument against the first two encapsulations (or presupposing judgments). Instead, these book-length projects will each serve a larger purpose in his overall system and that is why they are so extensive. They are each meant, literally, to sketch out an infinitely complete set of all combinations of concepts whatsoever.

The first stage creates the syllogism, and then the second stage doubts it. Yet, even though the second stage uses the syllogism, it cannot see or produce it on its own. It can only undermine the syllogism by doubting the previous stage that produced it. Nonetheless, the doubts of the second stage undermine themselves. This ends with the negation of the second encapsulating program created by the disjunctive judgment in the larger syllogism. Historically, this ends with hints and flashes of realization about the need for formal logical argument, as Fichte did in his response to

Kant. Hegel had praised Fichte for seeing the need for positive deduction, but criticized his contemporaries for not recognizing or pursuing this need. The forms with which the Dialectic stage works are limited, or more precisely, are made incomplete when seen only by the insufficient light of the second stage. Hegel equates this with skepticism when he writes, “Skepticism, besides, could only get hold of the finite forms as they were suggested by experience, taking them as given, instead of deducing them scientifically.”194 The key phrase here is “instead of,” which refers to the solution to the problem that is being produced by a reliance purely on the second stage. Deduction is the solution to Kant’s stand-alone program of negativity. Hegel is bringing logical deduction into the third stage by overcoming the restrictions placed upon it improperly by the second, which are the

Critical Philosophy’s limitations. The negative science may be part of the positive science, but it should not be used in isolation. As a negative science, this skepticism of the second, dialectic stage would be “useless” on its own. Kant’s philosophy is useless on its own, thinks Hegel. The solution, as we have just read, is to deduce the forms as a totality in order to remove their finitude and make

194 EL, 112, §78. GW, Band 20, 118: “Uebrigens hätte er [Der Skepticismus] die endlichen Formen auch nur empirisch und unwissenschaftlich zu finden und als gegeben aufzunehmen.”

199 them fit for use through and by the higher science, the speculative, third stage of logic. This further explains why Hegel must be seen as redeeming deduction rather than rejecting it.

The method of logic being defined by Hegel is therefore one of addition and repair. Hegel’s goal is to add a unifying factor to previous forms of logic and philosophy rather than to simply overrule or nullify them. He adds interconnectedness, this repairs the damage of presupposition and finitude. These repairs are done in order to restore utility to logic. Hegel brings logic through the first and second stages by reconciling those stages’ founding principles in the third stage. The third stage works this resolution and it involves both previous methodologies: the formal deductive syllogism of the first, and the dialectic of negative reason in the second.

Consequently, Hegel has a very positive and fruitful use for the logic of the Understanding.

It is preserved not only as history, but as a useful form of reason, a form that Hegel then proceeds to employ in the rest of the Encyclopedia. Yet, in that case, when this logic of the Understanding is used to prove itself, it is also a third-stage logical methodology akin to the historical Ontological

Argument. In its new context it is no longer an abstraction, though it is still a deduction. Even though Hegel negates abstraction, he makes no significant alteration to the forms of deduction themselves. In other words, the form of the Disjunctive Syllogism is the same whether or not it is taken as an abstraction. Hegel thinks that this syllogism is a properly grounded deduction of truth.

2. Hegel’s Remedy for Finitude Empowers Abstraction to Make Metaphysical Deduction

Now that Hegel’s multifaceted view of abstraction is clarified, it can be shown more precisely how he understands his solutions to the problems of finitude and presupposition to empower the system of formal logic to make deductions with ontological import.

200 a) Elimination of Finitude Generates Metaphysical Significance

As he derives the various forms of syllogism, Hegel writes that, “. . . each constituent element [of the quantitative syllogism] has taken the place and performed the function of the mean and therefore of the whole, thus implicitly losing its partial and abstract character; . . .”195 And, after the Disjunctive Syllogism, which completes the series of syllogisms, he writes, “The syllogism has been taken conformably to the distinctions which it contains; and the general result of the course of their evolution has been to show that these differences work out their own abolition and destroy the notion’s outwardness to its own self.”196 Both of these quotations indicate that the course of the development of the syllogism works to overcome partiality and outwardness to itself. This is the removal of disconnectedness and isolation of its parts from one another. Elsewhere, as has been shown above, this is simply called finitude. Its removal is the goal toward which Hegel is working.

The opposite of finitude is in-finitude, which is also connectedness. Hegel thinks of this as a kind of freedom for Thought to connect its elements wherever and however its internal implications dictate. To limit or deny these connections in our practice of logic is to impose a foreign program of finitude onto Thought. This, in turn, makes our appreciation of Thought inaccurate. Once characterized in this way, the obvious solution to the finitude problem is to pursue a process of reconnection. With regard to the “differences” between concepts, this is what “work[s] out their own sublation.”197 Hegel does this by recognizing and retracing the structure that thoughts create by inter-implication, a logical link, which is thus a mutual deduction. This is implicit and a result of the form of the syllogism itself.198 Accordingly, the removal of isolation results in unity. The production

195 EL, 251-252, §189. GW, Band 20, 197: “. . . jedes Moment die Bestimmung und Stelle der Mitte also des Ganzen überhaupt bekommen, die Einseitigkeit seiner Abstraction . . . hiemit an sich verloren hat; . . .” 196 EL, 255, §192. GW, Band 20, 199: “Der Schluß ist nach den Unterschieden, die er enthält, genommen worden, und das allgemeine Resultat des Verlaufs derselben ist, daß sich darin das Sich-Aufheben dieser Unterschiede und des Außersichseyns des Begriffs ergiebt.” 197 EL, 255, §192. NB: “abolition” altered to “sublation.” GW, Band 20, 199: “. . . daß sich darin das Sich- Aufheben dieser Unterschiede und des Außersichseyns des Begriffs ergiebt.” 198 EL, 252, §189.

201 of the interconnected structure of all Thought is the solution to the problem of finitude, and once this systematic whole is understood as such, then this structure is the justification for all subsequent use of logic. In other words, it produces for itself all of the resources that logical deductions require, without presupposing them, within a non-isolated structure. This overcomes the problem of finitude that plagued logicians and metaphysicians before Kant.

The absolute structure of Thought itself, as Hegel shows, takes the form of a deductive argument. Circularly, but non-viciously (due to the negative nature of its form)199 the interconnected structure itself employs formal logic to establish itself. It does this by producing its own logical tools within itself. It uses a syllogism to derive itself along with all of its constituent elements. The

Disjunctive Syllogism is the only syllogism that finally and explicitly unifies form and content for

Thought, which is to say, for itself. This syllogism is thus the form that Thought takes when it unifies itself. In turn, this syllogistic form eliminates disconnectedness (finitude, isolation) by means of a self-unification of its form and content. To Hegel, this is the form that Thought takes when it thinks itself.

The unified and unlimited set of interconnected thoughts, if it could be established, would be a structure rich with philosophical implications. Hegel concludes that this united whole of

Thought is able to deliver truth. It thus becomes the basis for an immanent objectivity by means of the elimination of alternative and unattainable forms of objectivity. If each concept is connected to all other concepts, then these connections between concepts are objective due to their necessity; this lends concreteness to the concepts themselves, independent of any transcendent truth-maker, and because that truth-maker is thought to be ruled out. Recognizing the implicit connections between concepts then becomes the basis for truth for these concepts. This is a consequence of the deduction of absolute and utter unity. When unity is pursued to the furthest possible extent,

199 See the above discussion on Saccheri’s proof.

202 unlimited inclusion, this rules out the possibility of anything beyond the whole. If there were anything besides the whole, Hegel thinks, even an the possibility of uncognizable “things,” then even this unknowable lacuna would represent a possible alternative to the truth-maker. The assertion of such a possibility, however, is the theme of the second stage. And, in that stage, this possibility is negated, negates itself. So, in Hegel’s conclusion, not even the possibility of a transcendent truthmaker escapes the deduction. This is how and why it is termed absolute. If it did not include all possible anchors to truth claims, then it would not yet be the absolute, and future “rounds” of sublation would be needed to complete the system.

Objectivity is thus achieved by default, as it were, by eliminating all other possibilities from a disjunctive proposition. That it is a disjunctive syllogism, therefore, is quite important. The objectivity of the whole, achieved through the disjunctive elimination in the syllogism, becomes a shared characteristic among its members. As a whole, and because there is nothing outside of the whole,200 truth is reduced to conceptual holism plus conceptual solipsism. Rather than corresponding to some external reality, a presupposition that requires a bridge between thought and world, as between argument and God, Hegel concludes that concepts need to correspond only with themselves. No other link is needed because all possible links have already been made internally and deductively. Hegel thinks he is justified in concluding, via deductive inference, that the absolute system of concepts is utterly independent because it deduces the necessity of its own solitude. Hegel thinks that the absolute argument must be free from the influence of any transcendent or noumenal remainder that might challenge it or give it a context other than what it gives itself.

200 Cf., John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1994), 44, 83. McDowell thinks that Hegel rejected the idea that “the conceptual realm has an outer boundary, . . .” Which I take to mean that we cannot think of ourselves or anything else as being separated from it, as if there were two realms. Though McDowell is a Post- Kantian, joining Pippin’s camp, we both see the epistemological value of this kind of unity. Franks also sees this as the common theme among all German Idealists after Kant, a sign of their interest in a Spinozistic solution to the problems that Kant left for them (See, Franks, 1-3). In my own logical reading, this holism is the necessary conclusion of Thought’s exhaustive completeness that grants full access from any concept to any other, and that rules out the need for any kind of bridging between concept and non-concept.

203

Although this is accomplished through a negative argument, a disjunctive argument that works by ruling out options, it is also synthetic and positive by default. Hegel is trying to achieve non-hypothetical (not presupposed or held in suspense) synthetic (relating to some objective standard) a priori (being independent of experience of anything beyond itself) knowledge.201 His means of achieving this goal, in part, is the discovery of the connections that hold all concepts together into a single coherent whole. Opposing finitude, therefore, is an essential function of

Hegel’s philosophy. It is the primary means that he employs to pursue his brand of metaphysics.

Thus, it is not merely about redeeming formal logic, it is also about reaching positive metaphysical conclusions. The two goals are achieved by one form, which both connects all concepts together and rules out alternatives.

b) Exhaustive Completeness

It is not enough, therefore, to simply connect thoughts together. An additional function must be performed as well. Namely, in order to have ontological reach, the elimination of the possibility of anything outside of the connected whole must be achieved. Fortuitously, this second function is performed by the very same logical form that accomplishes the first. That is, if Hegel is successful, the form that connects also, when used in the absolute context, rules out alternatives outside of the interconnected whole. It is the Disjunctive Syllogism’s nature to connect thoughts to their objects, and this has been shown by Hegel to be sufficient to derive a nested hierarchy of concepts, each one setting up a tension with its opposite and then synthesizing a higher concept that resolves that tension. This process suggests no end. Hegel does not fill in all the gaps, but the endlessness of the process is inherent in its description. It therefore includes all possible concepts.

This has the side effect of removing all reference outside of itself, which destroys “the notion’s

201 Vittorio Hösle, Objective Idealism, Ethics, and Politics (Notre Dame, IN: Univ. Notre Dame Press, 1998), 13, 20- 23, 25-34.

204 outwardness to its own self.”202 Because this form will eventually consume all possible concepts exhaustively, its ability to destroy outwardness is a proof also of its independence.203

The methodology of the Logics does not contain a reason for stopping within itself. All possible combinations of all possible concepts will eventually be included within it. No mere mortal can trace out this infinite path, but Hegel believes that he can give a sufficient outline of it to render this conclusion foregone. This is seen from his many comments about achieving the totality, one that “embraces all characteristics.”204 It is also strongly implied by the way that the Logics end: by producing within Thought its own world complete with objects, lawful interactions, and even life.

Moreover, the Disjunctive Syllogism itself, because it unifies its form with its content, is able to eliminate the distinction of outside and inside within itself. This means that the form and the content are the same. This, in turn, means that Hegel is crafting all things whatsoever from this form. Hegel believes that the content of this argument is all concepts. This is the Encyclopedia as a whole, the whole system. It has the form of a disjunctive syllogism, but its contents are all-inclusive and are all also composed of disjunctive syllogisms. Just as Logic contains all Thought (but under the program of abstraction), Philosophy of Nature contains the same contents (this time under the program of contingency). And, thirdly, Philosophy of Mind also contains these same contents

(under the program of unity, which negates the other two programs to reveal what lies inside of them). Thus, if the larger syllogism contains all possible content whatsoever, and if it is able to

202 EL, 255, §192. GW, Band 20, 199: “. . . daß sich darin das Sich-Aufheben dieser Unterschiede und des Außersichseyns des Begriffs ergiebt.” 203 Of course, infinite completeness alone is not enough to guarantee that nothing transcendent could possibly challenge Thought’s absoluteness. Perhaps it is possible that thought could be unaware of some kind of object that it cannot conceive under any combination of concepts. This looks like Kant’s noumenon. To get around this obstacle, thinks Hegel, the argument needs to be modal. Its conclusion must be necessary absolutely. In Hegel’s understanding at least, the necessity of the conclusion of his system-argument would be sufficient to guarantee that thought is absolute with no possible competitor. 204 EL, 292, §236. EL, 255, §192. GW, Band 20, 228: “. . . alle Bestimmungen zusammengegangen . . .” Cf., EL, 20, §16; VBDG, 190.

205

“destroy the . . . outwardness to its own self,”205 and if it unifies form and content, then Hegel should be interpreted as ruling out the transcendent by means of an all-inclusive unification.

Hegel describes this absence of transcendence as independence and freedom. It is of great importance that the freedom of Thought is also its limitlessness. That is, the system of thought goes wherever it can logically, makes every deductive connection possible, and proceeds to do so (or has already done so eternally) to the furthest possible extent without being stopped by an external limitation. If Thought is unlimited in this way, then it follows that thoughts are “allowed” to connect however they can. Every possible deduction is already conceptually real. Every possible conceptual world is already complete. If thoughts are able to connect logically, to form logical connections by means of intrinsic properties, then Hegel concludes that they are already connected, and recognition of this fact is then our discovery.

This understanding of freedom, of course, diverges from individualistic and socio-political interpretations.206 It is superior to those interpretations because it recognizes the logical basis for these other forms of freedom that Hegel provides through his system’s larger structure. To recognize the most fundamental kind of freedom, to Hegel, is to recognize that Thought is an already-complete system of deductions, that the limitations we impose on Thought really only apply to our thinking, and so only serve to blind us to the utter completeness of Thought. Yet, if Thought is complete, when taken as itself and not as the part of some greater mind,207 then, thinks Hegel,

205 EL, 255, §192. GW, Band 20, 199: “. . . daß sich darin das Sich-Aufheben dieser Unterschiede und des Außersichseyns des Begriffs ergiebt.” 206 For example, see Yeomans, part IV, esp. pp. 186-188, 192-197; 261ff. Yeomans makes social structures, interpersonal interactions, and individual acts (261) the ultimate definition and expression of freedom in Hegel’s philosophy. He sees free agency as being the result of interaction between individuals rather than between concepts as such. In my interpretation, concepts’ freedom is the underlying basis for these other forms of freedom and it grounds them in the absolute freedom of the whole in the following way. The “already deduced” aspect of every possible concept entails that every possible world exists on an equal ontological footing as every other. The freedom we experience is therefore reducible to our ignorance of which individual we are and what world we occupy. It thus appears to us that we are free to choose, but all choices are made by all possible versions of ourselves in this infinite and exhaustively complete context. 207 Much of German Idealism, in my opinion, occupies itself with the goal of distinguishing itself from Berkeley’s form of idealism, which views all reality as forms of thought within the mind of God, a theme with a much

206 finite minds should not seek to place artificial limits on Thought. This is Hegel’s primary concern with regard to freedom, that we not impose limits on what Thought is already doing. To do this would be to impose a finitude on Thought that is not actually there. Philosophers should only explore what their direct access makes available to them, tracing Thought’s paths wherever they lead.

If such a project can be started properly so that the major questions are settled, then the large structure and relevant properties of the whole can be known even if the infinity of the whole can never be completely mapped. This is Hegel’s grounding for all knowledge whatsoever.

Even though the effort to overcome finitude is endless, its major structures can be determined finitely. This has two important consequences: the barebones of the structure can be known completely even if its infinite extent cannot be fully comprehended; and, the structure, even though incompletely grasped, can serve as a ground for itself and all of its contents. For any part of this infinite structure to be grounded, then, a deductive connection need only be established with the absolute structure. Hegel has given us an anchor, we need only attach individual sciences to that anchor to ground them.

Our task is to understand how Hegel has delivered the anchoring concept without being able to complete the entire, infinite structure. The structure, of course, cannot merely be presupposed, for that would reintroduce a kind of finitude. Hegel’s philosophy cannot leave any hint or possibility of an outside reality. It cannot, as Kant did, allow for an unknowable “realm” of uncognizable

“things.” Hegel must eliminate the question of the remainder, of outside entities that are not knowable. Therefore, if the whole is to be known to be complete, right now and already, if the structure is to be demonstrated to encompass all thought and being, then the transcendent and the merely possible must be eliminated by the deduction. If Hegel fails to do this, then he has simply failed. In other words, the Absolute Identity Thesis must deduce its own exhaustive completeness.

older heritage. See, Doolan’s analysis of Aquinas, who locates the Platonic forms (exemplars) in the mind of God.

207

This means that Hegel must eliminate Berkeley’s alternative. There must be no thought or thinker that might challenge the Idea’s supremacy. Only this would fulfill the dream of reason. It is thus worth repeating that Hegel means to achieve utterly complete connectedness. This interconnectedness must be absolute, absolutely absolute. There must be no possible remainder (note the modality). And, this lack of a possible remainder must itself be deduced.208 Hence, only a deduction, a modal deduction, can deliver the certainty that is required without resorting to an infinite process of exploration of the Idea’s structure.

The problem of course is that, at first glance, one can never know if a set of thoughts is complete if new thoughts can be added without end; if the set of all possible thoughts is infinite, then the addition of new thoughts is a never-ending process and thus the goal of achieving completeness for knowledge remains ever out of reach, forever deferred. However, if the structure of one set of concepts, which makes a claim to completeness, can be determined, and if this structure can be known to be necessarily complete by means of a graspable deduction, then each and every one of the members of the set need not be known in order to conclude that the set itself is exhaustively complete. Hegel expresses this conclusion when he writes, “. . . the Idea contains all the relations of understanding, but contains them in their infinite self-return and self-identity.”209 This means that it contains all possible combinations of all possible concepts. This is Hegel’s belief, which he thinks he has demonstrated. He does not do this in the Logics, but he prepares the way to understand the deduction that he thinks is able to do it in the Encyclopedia as a whole.

Therefore, Hegel needs to determine in advance, before infinity can be summed, that

Thought goes everywhere that it is possible to go. Thought itself is already unlimited and thus complete. Even possibilities must be part of Thought. The actual and the possible are unified and

208 That the argument acts primarily to rule something out is why it is negative, apophatic. 209 EL, 277, §214. GW, Band 20, 216: “weil in ihr [die Idee] alle Verhältnisse des Verstandes, aber in ihrer unendlichen Rückkehr und Identität in sich enthalten sind.” See also, EL, 292, §236.

208 completed in the thought that contains all thoughts. Paradoxically, possibilities must therefore be necessities. In this deceptively simple concept lies the basis for Hegel’s S5 intuition. Given the exhaustive completeness of the whole, that which is possible must be necessarily possible, and that which is possibly necessary is necessary. Hegel’s remedy for finitude delivers universal accessibility and maximizes the reach of his most powerful logical tool.

c) The Freedom of Thought vs. the Freedom of Finite Thinkers

This claim to completeness, despite its potential to solve philosophy’s biggest problems, introduces a serious problem of its own. As Boëthius noted, death brings the end to both good and bad fortunes.210 What is at stake with the achievement of completeness is the freedom of an open future and the possibility of new applications or discoveries of logical combinations. This, as even

Hegel seems to expect, must then lead to death in some sense.211 I will explain.

Hegel has criticized the common logic for limiting concepts by plucking them from their original context. After extracting them so completely, he has argued, they are no longer fit for use and this leads the philosopher astray into dogmatism. To isolate a concept in this way, to use it apart from the necessary structure of the whole, is to do harm to one’s understanding of that concept’s true nature. Yet, if this problem is repaired, then that removes from the philosopher the ability to use concepts contingently, freely. Thought’s freedom, to self-determine completely, removes our ability to freely do anything else but follow that script. This seems to imply that any thought outside of the Progression of Thought is unavoidably disconnected. How then does the philosopher think anything other than the Progression? For that matter, how does the philosopher connect the perfect logical structure to the contingent world? It seems that the natural world is filled with contingencies, which are novel ways of applying and combining simple concepts. Are these contingencies

210 Ancius Boëthius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. Henry Rosher James (London: Routledge, 1901), 42. 211 This is the end for contingent structures as described in the Encyclopedia Nature.

209 themselves not isolations of concepts that pluck them from their interconnected structure, in isolation from the perfect structure of the Logic? Is contingency, in this sense, not an ineliminable part of reality?

These questions expose a presupposing attitude that Hegel rejects. The assumption is that the points of origin for concepts are the only points at which they can be legitimately used. If this is so, then the reality of contingent events, and the emergence of individual concepts in new situations, seems to conflict with the eternal structure of Thought as it is outlined in the Logics. The main clue that Hegel does not consider himself to be limited in this way is that he writes sentences and makes arguments by using concepts out of their original context within the Progression of Thought. He invokes concepts, which each have a single point of origin, at points other than their origins. Within his derivation of the Progression of Thought, in fact, Hegel uses simple concepts both before and after they are derived. Hegel feels free to take these simple concepts out of their original contexts.

In addition, each simple concept becomes embedded in other, more complex thoughts, which are themselves derived in the Progression of Thought at the points of their own origins. If simple concepts “A” and “B” are both derived at their respective points of origin, they can also be invoked at a later point when the concept “A&B” is derived. Subsequently, “A&B” can be used later in more complex concepts such as “(A&B)v(B&C).” The potential for this kind of recombination of concepts has no limit. It must therefore include all possible combinations of concepts. And so recurrence is not problematic for Hegel. If Thought is free to explore all such possibilities, then there is no limitation. So, the achievement of the absolute standpoint does not prevent the philosopher from entertaining the possibility of subsequent combinations of concepts including the ones we take to be mundane and future (those constituting material realities and open futures212 in those realities’ timelines, respectively; I will explain below).

212 This is a common term for the theory of time in which the future is undetermined at the present. This theory is strongly associated with the theory of Presentism, as contrasted with Eterrnalism or Four-Dimensionalism.

210

However, this also means that these apparently contingent re-combinations of concepts are not outside of the absolute structure of Thought. Instead, they must be necessarily part of it if the structure is complete. That is, if all possible concepts are included within the interconnected, absolute structure of Thought, then no possible contingent situation survives outside of it. This thought that I am thinking as I type, and that thought that you are thinking as you read, are then both part of this totality already, eternally. The possible has become the necessary. The apparently open future has been set in the stone of eternal Reasons.

It is helpful to think of this in terms of possible worlds, something that Leibniz had done long before Hegel. Hegel’s own position entails that all possible worlds are included in the absolute structure of all Thought. They are already included, from beginning to end. Their time and their space, their past and their future, are completed in the absolute concept. Hegel is thus reducing possibility and contingency to the necessary structure of the absolute master-world. He is reducing time and space in the same way that he reduces objectivity, by unifying everything into one conceptual whole. This is an unavoidable consequence of unlimited unification.

Overcoming finitude is indispensable for Hegel’s project. Yet, this effort must not stop short of the absolute goal. If anything whatsoever survives this program of unification, if anything remains unconnected, or if it is not connected “yet,” or if it is merely possibly connected, then the project fails. Hegel has painted himself into a corner if his intention was to leave room for an external material world or an open future. No separation can remain, no dualism. Hegel’s need to oppose finitude is more fundamental to his project than any perceived need to protect the contingencies of the natural world. To think this way about Hegel would be to reestablish the dualism between mind and world against which Hegel works. Hegel attempted to determine all things, not to leave them undetermined. His program of interconnection must not stop short of future contingents, for if it does, then it cannot be complete and in that case it would be powerless to rule out the transcendent.

211

If Hegel is interpreted in some way that allows an open future in the back door, then the future becomes the ever-deferred settling of accounts and the never-achieved guarantor of truth claims. In that case, knowledge could not be grounded.

Hegel’s remedy for finitude, as a direct result, is not compatible with a mere conceptual realism or temporal openism. Complete connectedness, Hegel believes, restores logic, removes its abstract quality, grants it concreteness, and deduces the impossibility of any and all transcendent competitors. By this route, the restoration of logic is also a restoration of metaphysics.

3. Hegel’s Remedy for Presupposition is Circular and Metaphysical a) A Multifaceted Solution to the Presupposition Problem

The alternative to presupposing the laws and contents of thought is to deduce them.

Epistemologically, Hegel’s effort to ground knowledge faces the usual set of options: he can rely on foundational concepts that are unavoidably presupposed; he can point to an infinite regress; or he can attempt to describe and defend some form of circular self-reference, the Agrippan Trilemma.

Because he describes his system in a linear manner, Hegel’s solution may at first seem like a foundationalism, but this is a misleading appearance that comes from the way that Hegel pursues the derivation of the parts of his system, cf., Leibniz’s chain of deductions. Despite this appearance of linearity, however, the system is better understood as circular and as a novel form of circularity that relies on negativity, exhaustive completeness, and intuition in a complex manner. His epistemology is therefore complicated. It invokes circularity, but this is only one facet of a multifaceted theory. In what follows, I will describe the nature of the system’s circularity, but I will also integrate negativity, completeness, and intuition.

The circularity of Hegel’s overall system is unusual because it is a circularly conceived disjunctive syllogism with three premises that are each also circular disjunctive syllogisms. It is thus

212 somewhat misleading that Hegel traces a linear path through the stages of this unusual structure.

Along the way he mentions that it is circular, but this property is not clearly expressed and, ultimately, it depends on a successful appreciation of the entire system. Hegel proceeds along a one- dimensional path and moves from one triad to the next and so appears to be establishing a chain.

However, if one were to attempt to diagram the structure all at once, it would have much more in common with a fractal213 than with a chain. The final syllogism, which is the Encyclopedia, has three

“modes”: the abstract Logic; the contingent Philosophy of Nature; and the absolute Philosophy of

Mind. Each of these modes, however, has three of its own modes, like the Sierpinski Triangle. This division into three, like the fractal, has no end. It is a repeating pattern of differentiation that has no stopping point.

The result is a nested hierarchy of triads that cannot easily be reduced to a simple line.

Consequently, there is no giant chain, nor even a loop, with infinite links. At each level of consideration, there is a circle of three concepts. Therefore, the system’s circularity is understood not by grasping the structure of the entire series of descriptions of concepts that Hegel traces out in the Encyclopedia, but by understanding the Disjunctive Syllogism itself, the principle of circularity.

This structure is self-grounding in itself without reference to a quantitative infinity, though it is infinitely dense. Similarly, a matryoshka doll can be conceived as having infinite smaller dolls within it, and still remain enclosed in a finite volume.

Circular structures of any kind, of course, have a problem. According to the common understanding of logic before Hegel,214 circularity was commonly believed to be fallacious and vicious, and thus a fatal flaw for any rational argument. Hegel must therefore show that his version

213 Specifically, the spatial structure of the geometrical figure called the Sierpinski Triangle matches the conceptual structure of Hegel’s System’s nested triads. 214 Vicious circularity was considered fallacious by Aristotle. Nonetheless, among some logicians and philosophers, specific kinds of self reference were allowed. Cf., the Stoic rebuttal to the Skeptics, Caravan’s and Saccheri’s more developed argument, and Fichte’s interest in circularity in his rejection of Foundationalism.

213 of circular reasoning is not fallacious.

Hegel’s absolute circular structure does not ground itself directly by means of its circularity. It grounds itself, instead, by ruling out alternatives to itself, which is the removal of finitude. This is sought, by Hegel, through a modal deduction of exhaustive completeness that he thinks is settled only at the highest level, the point at which we see the Ontological Argument emerge as such. In this way, each concept is grounded both locally and globally. Locally, each concept’s explanation is achieved by means of a deductive connection with other concepts within its own triad. Globally, each concept is part of a whole that deduces its own self-sufficiency by ruling out the possibility of any external entity. This larger triad is also a disjunctive syllogism, but at the highest level, thinks

Hegel, something special is accomplished because it is itself a proof of its own exhaustive completeness, the greatest of ontological arguments.

Another important facet of this multifaceted epistemology is that it is a discovery of an eternal proof, not Hegel’s own proof of something else that is an eternal truth. Hegel’s system is reached as a discovery via intuition. According to Hegel, this is the structure of Thought that we find, and it is something that must be intuitively grasped by the philosopher, both to begin and to explore. The structure and its features are thus directly intuited so that the resulting syllogism is simply what Hegel has found by the lights of his own intellectual faculties. It simply is the structure of Thought (and all reality) that he has discovered. For this reason, even though it is a self-deducing proof, it is not something that Hegel thinks of as his own proof. It seems quite fortuitous that reality is rational at all, and even more so that reality’s structure is its own proof. That things are this way seems at first, given Hegel’s claims about using the intuitional method, to be a brute fact. By analogy, it is very fortunate for the astronomer that deep space is transparent, for this enables viewers from the Earth to see distant galaxies. If it were not so, then the vastness of space and its contents would remain undetectable. Just so, this is how an interpreter of Hegel might first conceive

214 of this surprisingly transparent rational space. Hegel is the one who delivers this deductive system to us, but like the astronomer, he does so as a discovery.

Hegel’s own entry into the system is therefore founded on the bare phenomenon, being, and what he can make of it with the tools of reason, which tools are themselves phenomena, but which will turn out to be derivable from within the system he is exploring despite his phenomenal starting place. This is why Hegel has high praise for immediate or intuitive knowledge, essentially adopting this attitude toward objectivity for himself as the primary methodology of his exploration.215 Hegel does not presuppose the phenomenon that delivers its own self-explaining rational form; he only experiences it and describes it. That it explains itself and rules out other explanations necessarily is then a surprising discovery, one that is not immediately tied to his efforts of exploration; his phenomenological access and his own deducing, therefore, do not introduce viciousness to the structure’s circularity. Hegel does not start by presupposing that his intuitions are true, he just develops the intuitions he has according to the rules he finds himself using.216 He follows these intuitions according to these rules by recognizing and applying their internal implications. He follows a certain path within this logical structure to the point where he discovers the system’s own self-proving form.217

This is a novel solution to the generic epistemological problem. This distinction separates the philosopher’s epistemology from the metaphysics of self-sufficient Thought, but it also joins them together. When the philosopher wonders how to certify beliefs, Hegel points to his discovery of a self-grounding basis for all concepts and invites that philosopher to simply connect his beliefs

215 EL, 95-112, §§61-78. 216 Cf., Tolley’s interpretation of Kant, who concludes that we must use a certain kind of thinking but are not able to prove that alternatives are impossible. This is the basis for Kant’s epistemological conclusion. See, Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 566-567. 217 Those who do not see Hegel as a logician can still recognize this interpretation of what Hegel thinks he is doing. See, for example, Gilles Marmasse, “Hegel and the Ontological Proof of the Existence of God,” Hegel-Studien 46 (2012): 82-83. Marmasse notes that Hegel is not concerned with arguments provided by the philosopher, but instead [we] contemplate the living Idea which unfurls before us and establishes its own validity.”

215 coherently to that structure. Another analogy may help to make this clearer. If an ancient man is wondering what supports the ground that supports him, he might imagine a set of elephants holding up the Earth, then perhaps a turtle under the elephants, etc. Realizing eventually that this does not solve his problem, he might then go on to consider an infinite column of turtles. If he finds this unsatisfactory, he might go on to explore the Earth, the stars, and principles of physics, etc.

Eventually, if he lived long enough, he would discover that the Earth is a spherical planet that simply hangs in space and thus, in a sense, supports itself. The important part of this analogy is that the man’s discovery does not cause the Earth to be self-supporting; the discovery is only the recognition of a physical fact. Likewise, Hegel’s access to this system is not the proof. The proof is the system itself, a conceptual fact. That the system is self-grounding is a property that Hegel discovers. In turn, this self-grounding is a result of the argument’s own logical properties. Because it is a deductive syllogism that contains all of its own requisite forms and contents, it avoids presupposition and finitude for itself. And finally, because this system rules out alternatives to itself, Hegel believes, it is the only possible reality to which concepts can correspond. For these reasons, the fact that Hegel enters and explores this structure along a linear path does not mean that the Hegelian Ontological

Argument is a foundationalism.

Despite being infinite, the structure is still comprehensible. Hegel reaches a point of comprehension from his starting place by tracing a linear path to the absolute vantage point. The whole, as a whole, is infinite and complete. Yet, at each level, when each triad is considered individually, its organizing structure is not quantitatively infinite; it is thus comprehendible. The whole is infinitely dense, but its structure, at any level, is the key to comprehending the whole in a bite-sized concept. Hegel can thus understand some of the implications of this form without grasping the entire, infinite structure. His path of discovery to this organizing form is linear, but the structure itself is circular, an infinitely compounded circularity. The verification of this structure is

216 produced by the structure’s independence, which its structure deduces for itself.

In sum, Hegel’s solution to the problem of presupposition has three elements: first, the simple fact of the immediateness of phenomena;218 second, the negative-synthetic capacity of the disjunctive form; and third, the exhaustive completeness of the whole of Thought.219 The first facet of this solution affords the finite mind a starting place via “Immediate or Intuitive Knowledge.”220

Consciousness has an object and this simple relationship is sufficient to get Hegel started; from this impoverished beginning, which he reduces to Being, Hegel derives the rest of the system.

The second facet is the ability of logic to rule out and cancel the claims that certain propositions make. When this power is applied within disjunctive syllogisms, the truth of the surviving member of each triad is the indirect and negative, but also synthetic result. The positive is thus the corollary of the negative, and so the positive contains and relies upon the negative. This indirect synthetic method connects concepts together until the whole comes into view.

Interconnectedness itself is a solution to presupposition, but the greatest benefit of avoiding presupposition is deferred until the final connection is made and the structure of the whole is seen.

The third facet completes the system by eliminating all possible alternatives to the interconnected system. It is this independence from outside influence that leaves the whole as the only alternative for correspondence, and thus the study of its inner workings becomes a metaphysics by default.

Each of the three facets depends upon a successful redemption of formal logic. This means that Hegel is not abandoning the forms of traditional logic. He means to ground each facet by means of the whole that, in the end, is just a discovery that he is exploring. The soundness of the

218 Descartes’s Cogito has bearing here. This is how the finite mind of the philosopher gains entrance into the system. 219 EL, 277, §214 and 292, §236. 220 EL, 95, §61. GW, Band 20, 100: “Das Unmittelbare Wissen.” This is the sub-title of the section. This is also called the Intuitional Theory.

217 absolute argument is the ultimate guarantor of the legitimacy of each of the steps he took to discover it. Soundness is the property of well-formed (valid) syllogisms that possess all true premises. The premises of a formal deduction cannot help but be true if they are all grounded in the whole of Thought and rendered absolute by the necessary deductive form of that whole. This is circular, but it is just as valid as the self-referential arguments that Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics,

Clavius, Cardano, and Saccheri explored. So, Hegel’s circular epistemology and metaphysics is dependent upon the redemption of formal logic.

b) Hegel’s Circular Epistemology

As was just mentioned, presuppositionlessness is a problem that Hegel solves with circular reasoning. Hegel, on this issue, is often fit into his historical context, and this context is used to interpret Hegel’s approach to circular reasoning, which may more charitably be called

“presuppositionless reasoning.” In most cases, knowing about the themes and currents of a philosopher’s immediate historical context is quite helpful in solving problems of interpretation, but in Hegel’s case, this is not as helpful because his solution to presupposition is as unusual as his understanding of the problem.

Frederick Beiser221 is deeply involved in all of the relevant trends that were in play during this period in German Philosophy. And, to his great credit, his study of Hegel’s closest peer, Friedrich

Schelling, is deeply insightful.222 Despite this valuable service, however, he seems to miss the genuine novelty of Hegel’s solution, which distinguishes him significantly from Schelling. Hegel is not limited to this context in terms of what he knew, nor was he limited to the kinds of solutions that his peers were pursuing. Hegel looked past his contemporaries to the grand sweep of philosophical history,

221 Frederick C. Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism 1781-1801 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2002). 222 Ibid., 465-595.

218 stretching all the way back to the ancient Greeks and not excluding the Scholastic logicians, and he did so without the typical biases that were so prevalent in his day. In other words, Hegel stands apart and so he cannot easily be sifted through the filter of German Idealism, or for that matter, even his closest compatriot, Schelling. Thus, to limit our view of Hegel by means of his context, however scholarly and responsible it is to understand a philosopher’s context, can act as a presupposition that blinds us to other possibilities.

Beiser is in eminent company, of course, but he has missed Hegel’s originality. The cause of this oversight, I suggest, is the near universal belief that Hegel “forswore any attempt to base [the systematic ideal] upon the geometric method.”223 He concludes that Hegel rejected the deductive methods of Leibniz and Wolff, viewing them as “bankrupt” and unavoidably leading to

“paralogisms, antinomies, and amphibolies.”224 I have been arguing that this belief is incorrect and have presented much evidence to that effect above. To the point at hand, this presupposition that

Hegel joined his peers in disparaging logic affects how we view Hegel’s use of circular reasoning to achieve grounding. Many have tackled this question,225 but none has reconsidered Hegel’s logical doctrine as a way to understand his use of circularity.

Tom Rockmore has provided a helpful monograph specifically on the topic of Hegel’s understanding of his own circular reasoning. Thus, it is an extended argument focused on this subject in particular. It also gives Hegel some additional freedom to venture a bit beyond the context of the Spinozan/Jacobian, Kantian, and German contexts. For these reasons, I will select

223 Ibid., 8. 224 Ibid., 579. 225 Others, of course, have focused on Hegel’s epistemological strategies, especially as they compare to foundationalism. See, for example, Kenneth Westphal, Hegel’s Epistemological Realism (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989); Michael Forster, Hegel and Skepticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989); David Lamb, Hegel: From Foundationalism to System (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980); Richard Dien Winfield, “The Method of Hegel’s Science of Logic,” in Essays on Hegel’s Logic, ed. George di Giovanni, 45–57 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1990); and Rockmore, Hegel’s Circular Epistemology. I will select Rockmore’s monograph as my primary sounding board due to its focus on circularity and also his willingness to look more at Hegel than at his context, which allows Hegel some room to differ from his contemporaries.

219

Rockmore’s monograph as my primary sounding board to argue that Hegel’s approach to grounding is not viciously circular despite relying on circularity as a component of his epistemological solution.

Rockmore goes into great depth studying the nature of this doctrine, which he locates in both early and late writings. The doctrine of circularity is developed early in the Differenzschrift,226 but the mature view is located in the Encyclopedia.227 Yet, Hegel’s conclusions about circular justification is only ever implicit and subtextual, according to Rockmore. Hegel, he says, never discussed the problem of circularity directly, but it is “everywhere presupposed.”228

It seems to me that Rockmore overlooks the complex discussion of circularity that Hegel provides in his description of the Disjunctive Syllogism. This form of syllogism is circular in the sense that it unifies its form with its contents and thus accounts for its own parts internally and self- referentially. This is the form of “circle” that Hegel describes when he speaks about his system as a whole.229 Hegel also refers to circle and syllogism with a high degree of synonymy, this is especially the case in texts where he refers to totalities as syllogisms and systems. The third category of the analyses of texts in the previous chapter revealed the locations in the Encyclopedia Logic that refer specifically to circularity, totality, system, syllogism, etc. Nearly every section in this first volume contains at least one such reference, and toward the end of the work, for each of the final 80 sections, Hegel averages about six unique uses of terms of this kind. This synonymy between circle and syllogism is primarily a description of the identity between self-referential deduction and the disjunctive syllogism. This is the only form of syllogism that is able to perform that function. It is the only form of Hegel’s syllogisms that embodies the self-referential logical form. And, as was mentioned earlier in this chapter, it is roughly the same logical form that Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics,

226 “Differenzschrift” is a common abbreviation for Hegel’s early book, The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy. 227 Rockmore, xi, 81. Rockmore prefers the Encyclopedia to the Science of Logic, calling the latter “merely a further development of the previous Logic and metaphysics,” on page 81. I strongly agree here, the Encyclopedia is the best text for examining Hegel on this point. 228 Ibid., vii, 52. 229 EL, 20, §15; EM, 314-315, §575-577.

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Saccheri, and Gödel studied, the consequentia mirabilis argument. Therefore, it is the most relevant sub-topic in Hegel’s writings that addresses his circular epistemology. If this is correct, then Hegel does not merely presuppose circularity or leave it only as subtext, but makes it explicit and nearly ubiquitous—it is ever in the foreground, not the background. It is for this reason that I disagree with some aspects of Rockmore’s analysis. I think that greater insights come from an acceptance of Hegel as a true logician.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Hegel’s conclusions about circular argumentation, which Rockmore correctly emphasizes, is that he thinks it is superior to linear argumentation.

According to Rockmore, credit for this insight lies proximally with Fichte, but originally with the pre-Aristotelians,230 including and most notably Plato.231 The reason for circularity’s superiority, of course, is that the circular method (potentially) does not require external proof of its first principles nor does it require any presuppositions.232 This superiority also implies that it is possible to construct a circular argument that is not vicious; the results of the argument demonstrate its own first principles without begging the question, that is, without engaging in a petitio principii.233

However, Rockmore’s interpretation of this feature is somewhat non-Hegelian. Rockmore’s

Hegel actually does begin with presuppositions, and he later proves them correct by means of self- reference. This interpretation consequently makes Hegel reliant upon a retroactive vindication, an a posteriori confirmation.234 The end result thus proves its own initial assumptions by means of correspondence with itself at the end of a long chain of dialectic reasoning, and of time.235 This, in my opinion, is for all practical purposes a linear interpretation of Hegel’s circular argument, and as such, it does justice neither to Hegel’s intentions nor his discovery. My position has been that

230 Rockmore, 39. 231 Ibid., 87. 232 Ibid., 9, 41-42. 233 Ibid., 10-23. See also, Hösle, Objective Idealism, 33-34. 234 Berthold-Bond would agree, but would then defer this confirmation into the eschaton. See, Daniel Berthold-Bond, Hegel’s Grand Synthesis: A Study of Being, Thought, and History (New York: SUNY Press), 155ff. 235 Ibid.

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Hegel’s exploration of the structure of Thought, though linear, results in a finalized description of

Thought concluding that it is itself circular, self-supporting, and non-presupposing. Only when these are mixed together can the criticism of retroactive vindication be avoided.

As I stated in the previous section, there are two distinct perspectives on Thought in Hegel’s theory, each with its own unique methodology. There is thus a distinction between the philosopher’s linear (temporal) journey of discovery and Thought’s own logical structure in itself. In contrast to

Rockmore’s interpretation of Hegel, therefore, Hegel thinks that he is not proving anything himself—this is not his proof of a particular conclusion—but he sees himself as simply reporting on the rational structure that he finds as he pursues a linear path of exploration. This may seem to be the sort of distinction that any philosopher might make with regard to his or her work, but I think there is something unique going on in this case that makes a key difference. For example, if we compare this to Anselm’s ontological argument, we find that he is using the argument as a means of creating knowledge about a transcendent reality. It is Anselm’s proof of God’s existence. This is highlighted by the fact that he couches the argument within a prayer. So, Anselm does not discover that his prayer is already being prayed by God. Just so, he does not find that the argument is already in God (even though an occasionalist and/or an idealist might reach this conclusion). The result is that Anselm does not see himself exploring something already present beyond his mind. It is his prayer, containing his argument, and it is only the starting definition of God, and the conclusion of

God’s existence that he considers to be distinct from his own syllogizing.

Not so with Hegel. He finds that he is intuiting Thought’s own circular, self-proving structure. The argument is beyond Hegel’s mind and it the thing he is discovering. His intuition stands in the place of Anselm’s argument, epistemologically. And, his argument stands in the place of Anselm’s conclusion metaphysically. Thus, Hegel does not intend to give us a human-generated proof of the absolute truth, as if the argument for the absolute were distinct from the absolute itself,

222 but the proof is the very thing discovered. This distinction makes all the difference in our appreciation of Hegel’s circular epistemology.

Hence, Hegel’s starting place is not the argument’s starting place. The Ontological Argument itself, as Hegel sees it, does not have a starting place, and that is its most interesting formal feature.

The finite mind of the philosopher, in contrast, must find a point of entrance into the argument and explore it. Once it is discovered, exploration gradually reveals that Thought is a deductive argument, a negative, self-grounding circle of circles. Therefore, Hegel’s presuppositions about the phenomenon and its relation to being, about the rules of logic that he employs from the start,236 about negative self-referential argumentation à la Saccheri, and about the exhaustive completeness of the interconnected system of thought, are a posteriori phenomena for Hegel-the-discoverer; this is the point of view of his own journey through Thought. Despite this, this is not the presupposition of the argument that is being discovered by Hegel. It is thus a mistake to conflate these two. Such an oversight obscures the main point and makes Hegel look like he is pulling himself up by his heels.

This distinction, however, may seem disingenuous and presumptuous, or an outright mockery of rational inquiry. After all, is this not Hegel’s argument? Can it be taken seriously that he is “discovering” something objective about Thought’s structure? These are good questions, and they depend on the final analysis of Hegel’s system, but at this point the question is one of interpretation.

I conclude that Hegel believes both that he is not presupposing (because he is not himself deducing but merely exploring phenomena by intuition) and also that the argument itself does not presuppose

(because it is a circular, disjunctive syllogism that acts like a planet floating on its own with no need of external foundations or anchors).

Consequently, the argument itself should receive most of our attention. Hegel’s journey of discovery may be important and it might be typical of any philosopher’s path of discovery of the

236 I have in mind here the rules that support the disjunctive syllogism, the basis for Hegel’s use of sublation.

223 argument, but it is the status of the argument itself that makes all the difference. If the modal, disjunctive, ontological argument is a valid form, and if all but one of the premises in its exhaustive list of options self-refutes, then fallacious viciousness is plausibly avoidable. At least, it is not immediately apparent that this form of argument fails. If Aristotle, the Stoics, Augustine, Clavius,

Cardano, Saccheri, and Gödel, all great logicians, think that this kind of argument has merit, in terms of the validity of its deductive form, then perhaps it is more resilient than first appearances indicate.

It has been most unfortunate that the argument, with all of its merits and pedigree, is hidden from view for any interpreter of Hegel who rejects up-front the possibility that he was describing a deductive syllogism. Such rejections hinder analyses of Hegel’s unusual application of circularity.

Rockmore acknowledges that Hegel thinks that one must personally accept the absolute as a presupposition in order to know the absolute. Yet, he conflates this individual path with the logical form of the absolute itself. He also acknowledges Hegel’s belief that positing first principles limits them,237 which are presupposition and finitude by another name. Again, this ignores the distinction between Hegel’s process of discovery with the entity that is discovered, and it misses the precise way that the system resolves this for itself through its specific form of circularity. This doctrine is found most clearly in Hegel’s descriptions of the Disjunctive Syllogism, but it is most dramatically put into practice by means of the outermost formal structure of the Encyclopedia. This form of syllogism, and

Hegel’s realization that it becomes an ontological argument in this context, is not only a significant piece of the puzzle, it is the primary piece. To overlook it is to reduce Hegel’s argument to an invalid and unsound stab in the dark, a hypothesis endlessly waiting for confirmation.

Rockmore is correct to note Hegel’s reliance upon systematics. This is something that came from his understanding of Fichte, and which came very early to Hegel’s thinking.238 Rockmore cites

Hegel from the Differenzschrift:

237 Ibid., 57. 238 Ibid., 58-60.

224

In this self-production of Reason the Absolute shapes itself into an objective totality, which is a whole in itself held fast and complete, having no ground outside itself, but founded by itself in its beginning, middle and end.239

In his mature thought Hegel’s emphasis on systems, totalities, wholes, and worlds is nearly ubiquitous. This is seen in the much-later Encyclopedia, but the above passage indicates that this is not a late development. Hegel’s emphasis of systems does not change over time. In this passage from

Hegel’s earlier but still well-developed thinking, Rockmore says that the characteristic of being-a- totality is the very thing that grants reason its objectivity.240 And, in the Encyclopedia, Hegel continuously criticizes those who would dogmatically disconnect concepts from one another, presupposing them and thus plucking them out of the air. Plainly, this is just another way of describing Hegel’s belief that disconnectedness limits reason and leads it into error. Yet, because he does not distinguish between Hegel’s linear path of discovery and Thought’s own circular structure,

Rockmore must be overlooking one of the key insights of the Differenzschrift, which is clearly evident in the passage above. It is reason itself that has these properties, and not Hegel or his case for his own philosophy. The passage says explicitly that the Absolute is a self-production of Reason. It thereby establishes its own objectivity. So, Hegel does not see himself as fashioning an argument and then speaking as if he has ownership of it, as if it stands and falls with his own methods and execution of the use of reason. This is not to say that Hegel is not filled with pride for having discovered it, but this psychological issue is not the point and should not cloud the fact that the argument is not, in his own opinion, something he has invented. This passage therefore expresses this feature of the Absolute. This is one of the most important parts of Hegel’s non- presuppositional epistemology.

Nonetheless, Rockmore is aware that Hegel distinguishes between the philosopher’s entry

239 G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, trans. Walter Cerf and H. S. Harris (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1977), 113. As cited by Rockmore, 58. 240 Yet, this is a not-so-veiled reference to the syllogism as the form of totality that achieves objectivity. In fact, the Disjunctive Syllogism is itself the precursor to objectivity in the Logics.

225 point into philosophy and reason’s own structure.241 This introduces a wrinkle to the simple picture above. Where Fichte had claimed that philosophy cannot found itself because knowledge is circular,

Rockmore understands that Hegel responds that philosophy is inherently circular and because of this can found itself circularly.242 Human knowledge grows by fleshing out the structure that comes into view as a circle, but it does not matter at what point or points the finite human mind begins.

Each insight is already connected to the center of the circle, Rockmore explains, so once the shape comes into view, that it is a circle, it is not necessary to fill in every point in the circle, but merely to understand the shape and maintain a view of its center.243 Nonetheless, according to Rockmore, justification for knowledge is eternally deferred because the entire circle is never totally filled in. By making the structure of Thought external to the knower, as even my own analogy of the explorer may seem to do, Rockmore introduces the original predicament back into the equation. To address this aspect of Rockmore’s analysis, I must add another point to my analogy: Hegel does not see himself discovering something in a far country as if he has traveled from his home to some distant land or planet. He is exploring his own native environment. There is no bridge to build, no road to travel, in order to get to the object of exploration; the thing being explored is the place where the explorer first begins. This is why intuition works for Hegel. He is like the explorer who opens his eyes and begins to investigate the place of his birth, having never been anywhere else. Or, to use

Kantian nomenclature, there is no phenomenal starting place that must be escaped in order to reach the noumenon. Platonically, there is no cave to exit. On my interpretation of Hegel’s view, there is only one unified world, it is directly intuited, and it need only be explored properly.

Rockmore does not see it this way. The totality of Thought is objective and external to

Rockmore’s Hegel. It is discovered and searched as if it were a distinct and external reality, and so

241 Rockmore, 74. 242 Ibid., 76. 243 Ibid., 74.

226 the grasp that the philosopher has upon it is at best incomplete, and at worst forever in doubt. This is a very Kantian approach, and Rockmore acknowledges this.244 But, on his reading, the isolated principles, being first presupposed, are only retroactively justified by means of their capacity to explain possible experience. Hegel is thus, according to Rockmore, solving a problem that Kant’s project generated. On this second point I concur to some extent; Hegel begins within a Kantian context, but he is attempting to definitively overcome the latent dualism and the merely regulative objectivity that results from transcendental reasoning. Hegel does this in part by restoring a full and unmitigated idealism. This fully internalizes the structure that Hegel is discovering and makes a bridge “to the outside” unnecessary. In other words, Kant’s problem, as Rockmore calls it,245 is the noumenal remainder. Hegel’s solution, which Rockmore seems to overlook, is to eliminate this remainder once and for all by making Thought completely self-sufficient and alone. This view, subsequently, supports Hegel’s claim, against Rockmore’s critique, that he is not presupposing, he is not awaiting future vindication and the argument itself is not awaiting future fulfillment. The argument has come into sufficient view already, thinks Hegel; he is discovering a new perspective on the landscape of his own directly-intuited world. He has then mapped its borders while exploring it.

All that remains is to fill in the details, but these are not needed for grounding. The minor details can be known in advance to have no influence on the larger conclusion, which is finite,246 and necessary, and, most importantly, provable now. One can map the contours of a space and understand it without knowing each and every infinitesimal point within it. Just so, one can understand the major points of an outline and grasp the structure of a conceptual whole before the details are studied. Yet, studying some of the details, which is the starting point for finite minds, is the only possible way to gain a sense of the structure of the whole. Yet, no bridge is needed to gain understanding of the

244 Ibid., 76-77. 245 Ibid., 76. 246 The Absolute Disjunctive Syllogism is a finite form of deduction as a simple three-premise syllogism. This finitude, however, is overcome by the syllogism’s infinite internal density and exhaustive completeness.

227 whole. We come to ourselves in our original awareness already within it.

Using Rockmore’s own picture of the circle that is never filled incompletely, we should expect to be capable of seeing the circularity of the structure with a finite number of points, perhaps even a very small number of points. Therefore, the logical form of the whole is not an epistemological obstacle. It is instead a happy yet shocking gift. Consequently, the Encyclopedia is not put forward as a means to metaphysical discovery, it is the thing being discovered. Hegel’s means of discovery is not deductive; it is intuitional. Nonetheless, the discovered entity is a deduction, and it is one that proves itself and provides for itself all of its formal tools. Criticizing an explorer for taking a flawed path of exploration does not diminish in any way the fact that a discovery has been made, if it has been made.247 Thus, to play Hegel’s game and give his philosophy a fair shake, one needs to assess Hegel’s ontological argument directly, separately from its means of discovery. The question is whether or not it can stand on its own, as an eternal, all-inclusive concept with no author or thinker.

Those who charge Hegel with vicious circularity, or eschatological deferral, overlook key elements of his doctrine of circularity. The cause of this oversight, it seems to me, is that Hegel’s system is not being viewed as he intended, as a self-referring, disjunctive, ontological syllogism. To accept such a view, sufficient advancements in logical science must be recognized in history, and

Hegel’s critique of formal logic must be understood as a refinement rather than a rejection. With these points as background, it is possible to entertain the possibility that Hegel’s system is an artfully constructed deduction. But, when this is done, then the benefits are considerable because we can make use of the resources of deduction to explain the system’s circularity and ontological reach.

247 See Marmasse, 82-83, 95. Here it is helpful to consider what Hegel thinks he has discovered. To Marmasse, the prize that is discovered is validity, and I concur with this for a start, though he does not allow this to become a feature of a conceptual reality and instead isolates it within the mind of the finite thinker. I concur with Marmasse, however, that the validity in question is limited by its abstract characteristics when we consider Anselm’s argument, but Marmasse does not move on to consider Hegel’s own version, the one that overcomes abstraction (95).

CHAPTER III

THE PREEMINENCE OF THE DISJUNCTIVE SYLLOGISM WITHIN HEGEL’S PHILOSOPHY AND ITS CONNECTION TO THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

In this manner philosophy exhibits the appearance of a circle which closes with itself, and has no beginning. . .1

This unity is consequently the absolute and all truth, the Idea which thinks itself— . . . . It is its own content, in so far as it ideally distinguishes itself from itself, and the one of the two things distinguished is a self-identity in which however is contained the totality of the form as the system of terms describing its content. This content is the system of Logic.2

In this chapter, I will examine the way Hegel develops the form of sublation until it becomes the Disjunctive Syllogism. This will accomplish four of my remaining tasks. First, it will link sublation to the Disjunctive Syllogism in terms of its logical form. Second, it will reveal the syllogism’s special mediating properties and explain them as capacities of its logical functions. Third, this mediation will reveal the link between Hegel’s logical efforts and his Identity Thesis. And these points, fourthly and cumulatively, will reveal the syllogistic form of Hegel’s overall system and explain why he adopted the methods and goal of the Ontological Argument.

The form of the thought that thinks itself, that mediates and unifies each concept with its object, is the Disjunctive Syllogism. It is Hegel’s most useful formal tool, but that tool undergoes extensive development from the beginning of the logical science to its climax point. Hegel places the

1 EL, 23, §17. GW, Band 20, 59: “Auf diese Weise zeigt sich die Philosophie als ein in sich zurückgehender Kreis, der keinen Anfang . . .” 2 EL, 292, §§236-237. GW, Band 20, 228-229: “Diese Einheit ist hiemit die absolute und alle Wahrheit, die sich selbst denkende Idee, . . . . [§237] Sie ist sich Inhalt, in sofern sie das ideelle Unterscheiden ihrer selbst von sich, und das eine der Unterschiednen die Identität mit sich ist, in der aber die Totalität der Form als das System der Inhaltsbestimmungen enthalten ist. Dieser Inhalt ist das System des Logischen.”

228 229 final revelation of this special form of thought in the most crucial point of transition in the

Progression. It is found in the Logic between the derivations of concepts-as-concepts and the derivations of concepts-as-objects, which is objectivity. The last syllogism sits between these categories and is a member of both. It is both fully subjective and fully objective. It is therefore a worthy mediator situated in a central and climactic position. So, the Disjunctive Syllogism is a concept that comes at the end of concepts-as-concepts, and is itself the last form of subjectivity, and it is also a concept that comes at the beginning of concepts-as-objects, and is itself the first form of objectivity.

This location in the Progression is critical because of Hegel’s larger goal to unite thought to object by means of the Absolute Identity Thesis, which is Hegel’s ontological argument. At this climactic point of the Progression, Hegel is finally revealing a form of thought that can perform this unification, and only here can we clearly see both its original point of derivation and its explicitly deductive form. Everything that comes before this point is an incomplete foreshadowing, a “proto” disjunctive syllogism, and everything that comes after this point is obscured by added complexities.

Thus, recognizing the form here, where it is newly born and completely formed will be an aid to seeing its formal role in Hegel’s overall system. This is the point where a form of subjectivity first gains the capacity to connect to its object.

This point of the Logic is special because it marks the location of this encapsulation’s most important transition. What comes before is fully conceptual, abstract, subjective, and concepts are dependent on something external. And, what comes after it, though still held in the confines of the

Logic, has already taken on an independent character. As self-sufficient, these later forms have come to look like stand-alone objects. With such a stark contrast, this location calls out for mediation.

Here Hegel’s philosophy demands a connective transition. This is not the only point where Thought encounters a transition between itself and its object, but this encounter is special because it results in

230 the first overtly formal mediation. It is at this point that Mediation itself is revealed to be a specific kind of syllogism.

Although this is the Disjunctive Syllogism’s first appearance as such, it has been at work from the beginning. It is in fact pervasive within Hegel’s philosophy, being the form of its structure at every level of decomposition. At each point, the syllogism acts as a mediator between what came before and what comes next. Before its derivation, this syllogism had been anticipated and foreshadowed by what had come before it in the Logics and is also recognizable in Hegel’s many introductions and preparatory materials. Yet, only when it is fully developed are its formal logical properties evident. This is what Hegel has been doing all along; it has been the formal aspect of his methodology from the start.3 All subsequent mediation between Thought and its object will now look to this point of original derivation when a mediating concept is needed. This is the point where the original mediator becomes the standard as the explicitly deductive pattern that will eventually structure the ultimate mediation between Thought and object in the largest logical structure in

Hegel’s philosophy, the Encyclopedia itself, Hegel’s ontological argument.

The syllogism has an interesting career after it is derived. Immediately after that point in the

Logics, the Progression takes a surprising turn. It develops a system of objectivity within the encapsulation of abstraction. This set of objectivities eventually becomes a world of its own, complete with mechanism, chemism, teleology (the end toward which processes work), life, the living individual, and even intelligent thought (cognition). This odd circumstance is not addressed in the Logic, but is taken up in the next stage of the Encyclopedia, where it becomes the theme of that stage’s encapsulation.4 The second stage’s encapsulation also comes to a self-mediated end. This leaves only one remaining option, the third stage. The three stages in combination, however, assume

3 Hegel had identified the method of the Ontological Argument as his own, but it could not be understood that this involved a disjunctive syllogism until that form of mediation was derived and made explicit. 4 These points were discussed several times in previous chapters, so I will not repeat them here in detail.

231 the shape or form of the very same syllogism that first mediated concepts and objectivity within the

Logic. Thus, the Encyclopedia as a whole assumes this very same deductive form and it uses that form to work the absolute mediation.

However, the science of logic began with a principle of mediation already in use. The very first sublation put it on display without grounding it there and without making its form explicit. I speak of sublation, the at-first mysterious rational process that begins the science of logic and that develops itself into the Disjunctive Syllogism.

Thus, throughout the Encyclopedia, the need for mediation is explored and some means of mediation is always used by Thought to develop itself. Each step is a stab at mediation of concept and object that succeeds at resolving a certain tension, a duality, but that also leads to a new tension, which then leads to another round of mediation. At each point, mediation is pursued by means of a triadic structure. This begins as a contest between the shapes of consciousness; it continues as a kind of proto-syllogistic sublation; but it is ultimately revealed to be a true syllogism. Thus, before it is that syllogism, it is a proto-syllogism, a not-fully-revealed disjunctive syllogism. When this structure is eventually revealed at that special point in the Logics between concept and objectivity, its formal features are then embraced by Hegel and this becomes the explicit form for all future explorations of mediation in his philosophy. This leads him to anticipate in his introductions and to also declare at the end that his philosophy is a syllogism.

This form’s work of mediation is not fully completed, however, until the very end. Only then is its scope absolute,5 which wins for the syllogism its soundness.6 Only there is the task of mediation truly completed. At least, that is the conclusion that Hegel apparently reaches. In the meantime, as earlier aspects of Hegel’s philosophy are examined by interpreters of his system,

5 This belief about Hegel’s conclusion, that it is the final and absolute point, will be challenged in my conclusions. Here, I mention it as Hegel’s belief. 6 Its soundness, however, will be challenged at the end of Chapter IV.

232 learning to recognize these triadic associations as a specific kind of formal deduction, and appreciating this deduction’s special capacity to unify and mediate, become crucial skills for understanding what Hegel is doing at every step. The key to interpreting Hegel, therefore, is recognition of this specific logical form throughout his system. This is the guiding principle without which the interpreter is set adrift in a tortuous and monotonous series of dialectic contests. The

Disjunctive Syllogism, therefore, provides clarity to an otherwise confusing philosophy. To reach this vantage point of clarity we must first detect the strong similarity between the Disjunctive

Syllogism as Hegel describes it in the Logics and the form that his entire system takes in its parts and at its end.

This special syllogism must therefore be carefully described in the context of its original derivation. Four things should be noticed here. First, the Disjunctive Syllogism sits at a point of climax within the Progression. Second, it acts as a bridge or mediator at that point; it is a mediating syllogism even at its point of derivation. Third, the two entities that are mediated at that point of origin remain within the realm of Logic, and in fact also within this very same syllogism, so this mediation is not a bridge to the “outside.” It is instead a mediation between two kinds of concepts, or it is itself simultaneously two kinds of mediation. The first kind of concept that is mediated is that of the specific premise; two judgments that are premises are unified by a third judgment, their mediator; this is a narrowly-focused mediation. The second kind of mediation is seen between the concept-of-concept and the concept-of-object; this is accomplished by unification of the syllogism’s form and its content; this is a more far-reaching kind of mediation. In other words, this syllogism does not simply mediate specific contents, as Saccheri’s much more limited proof did, it mediates more than just its own form with its own contents, it mediates form and content generally,7 and it does so intrinsically without any need to correspond to an outside entity. This latter kind of

7 This mediation comes into play when the scope of the argument becomes fully generalized, absolute.

233 mediation is what lends the syllogism its negative-ontological powers. These characteristics together make the Disjunctive Syllogism very useful. Consequently, and fourthly, very similar structures are seen on larger and smaller scales in Hegel’s philosophy, both before and after the derivation of the syllogism itself. It is his most useful tool, which explains why it is ubiquitous in Hegel’s writings. Yet, its presence in some locations must be exposed.

In previous chapters, I have given a thorough description of what this syllogism becomes, and in the next chapter, I will deal with the syllogism’s validity. In this third chapter, in the middle, I will treat the path of development from the beginnings of the science of logic to the point of the derivation of the Disjunctive Syllogism. This will reveal what this syllogism is to Hegel so that his use of it will make better sense.

So, to provide a basis for understanding Hegel’s derivation of the Disjunctive Syllogism, a quick review of sublation in the three spheres of the Logic (the spheres of being, essence, and the notion) will be given next. This will include a description of sublation’s inner mechanism, revealing it to be dependent upon a logical “drive” that operates in response to intermodal conflicts. Then the analysis of the derivation of the syllogism itself can be provided at the end of the chapter. This analysis will explore the syllogism’s characteristics and mediating capacity and show how they fit well with Hegel’s larger project understood as an ontological argument.

A. From Sublation to Universal

Sublation is well-trodden ground in Hegel scholarship, but it has not been recognized previously as a deduction. A careful examination of its internal structure will show that it matches the structure of the Disjunctive Syllogism as Hegel describes them both. My goal in this section will be to show that Hegel develops sublation’s own form beginning with a proto-mediator that is not obviously a syllogism and ending up with a fully developed mediator that is recognizable as the

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Disjunctive Syllogism. I start at the very beginning, with the term “Sublation” (Aufhebung) and some preliminary attempts at its definition. Then, I will trace Hegel’s own development of sublation in the

Encyclopedia Logic through the spheres of Being, Essence, and the Notion, the three parts of the

Logic, to show how Hegel assembles and grounds his categories by means of this form and reveals it at Logic’s climax to be the Disjunctive Syllogism.

1. The Term “Sublation” and its Rudimentary Characteristics

Few things are as esoteric as Hegel’s use of sublation to characterize, as it were, his own version of “dialectic logic.” The German term itself, Aufhebung, has several meanings that exist in tension with one another, and of course, it is for this very reason that Hegel chose it. There is thus ambiguity not only in the term itself but also in the way Hegel uses it. In common German usage the term means “raising up,” “abolition or destruction,” and “preservation,” meanings that seem to conflict with one another. Yet, in Hegel’s usage, anticipated perhaps by Friedrich Schiller, it means all three at the same time.8 That is, one and the same relation performs all three of these functions simultaneously at each point of sublation. While Hegel’s focus at any one location might be on one or two of these three functions so that his description loses sight of the others, there is no reason to doubt that all three are connoted in every case. Thus, with every episode of sublation, something is destroyed, something is preserved, and something new raises itself up (sich aufheben). Additionally, so as to avoid any sense of dualism or disunity, that aspect which is destroyed is also somehow preserved and raised up, that aspect which is preserved is also somehow raised up and destroyed, and that which is raised up is somehow also destroyed and preserved. The puzzle that Hegel left to us is found in those “somehows.” Yet, since all three must be occurring in each instance, it is important not to

8 Inwood, 283. Inwood points out the potential for Schiller’s origination of this multifaceted usage from his book, On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters, trans. E. M. Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), XVIII, as cited by Inwood.

235 adopt an understanding of sublation that leaves things behind completely, on the one hand, or that totally resolves the tensions found between opposites so that unity becomes undifferentiated, on the other.

Sublation of concepts is generally accepted to be “logical,” a modified understanding of the traditional term, but it is never interpreted as a formal deduction. It is instead understood, very generally, to be a special kind of conceptual triad that defies formal description due to its innovative use of negation. It is common, but controversial, to think of sublation as the interaction of two entities in tension, which cancel each other out and then lift aspects of one another up in the production of something new. At a very early point in the history of Hegel scholarship, Heinrich

Moritz Chalybäus conceived of this triad as a simple series: “thesis-antithesis-synthesis.” This has long been criticized and sometimes even considered a myth about Hegel. It is now typically viewed as an oversimplification with erroneous implications, though a few continue to support some version of it.9 Chalybäus’ interpretation is sometimes understood to carry with it the unwelcome idea that Hegel means to dispose of some elements of the triad rather than preserve everything in the new totality; it thus obscures the relation of difference that Hegel means to preserve. In addition, this interpretation appears to allow for extrinsic relations to dominate Hegel’s fundamental process; antithesis and synthesis can thus seem to come out of nowhere.

There is also a difficulty in considering the distinction between sublation and synthesis.

Hegel is most often understood to prefer sublation to synthesis, distinguishing these two rational processes and ruling out the older term in favor of his new process. One oft-quoted passage in support of this states that “. . . the name synthesis, synthetic unity, has rightly been dropped.”10 Yet, this quotation is taken from a context of criticism about Jacobi and Kant, and thus provides an

9 For example, Michael Forster, “Hegel’s Dialectical Method,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick C. Beiser (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 131; and Stewart, The Unity, 39, 55. 10 WL, 96. GW, Band 21, 83: “. . . ist mit Recht der Nahme Synthesis, synthetische Einheit ausser Gebrauch gesetzt worden.”

236 impression too limited to afford a good look at the full picture. A closer inspection of Hegel’s use of sublation in a wider context does not present a clear distinction between these terms. And, with regard to the type of process sublation is, it is also not clear if Hegel means something different from the “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” formulation, even if that series is a simplification. Therefore, the three-step simplification is not the whole picture—it certainly does leave some things out—but it is not, for this reason alone, incorrect. It is a simplification, but not, I think, an oversimplification.

For this reason, some contemporary scholarship now thinks very positively about this dated characterization of the triadic pattern.11

Chalybäus’ simplified triad is quite suitable for beginning my own analysis of sublation. I begin, then, with the simplification itself: thesis-antithesis-synthesis. When a concept is first defined and understood, it is already a proposition or “thesis.” As such it immediately begins to form a tension with its opposite, its “antithesis.” Its own definition implies or generates its opposite, which sits apart from it and in tension with it. Finally, a mediating third concept is produced from the tension that preserves some aspects of the original pair and also destroys some aspects, the

“synthesis.”

This simplification fails to mention several of sublation’s key elements. Modifications and additions are needed to overcome the errors that might be inferred from or connoted by this simplification. Perhaps the most noteworthy modification involves the distinction between falsification (destruction, cancellation, abandonment, etc.) and negation, which is to say, between the annihilationistic forms of cancellation that may be applied to mistakes made by historical logicians and metaphysicians and the much less destructive concept of logical negation, which Thought applies to itself. The more destructive conceptions are historical, social, and even psychological, but negation is purely logical and as such does not carry strong annihilationistic overtones. The formal-

11 See for example, Sarah Schnitker and Robert Emmons, “Hegel’s Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis Model,” in Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions, ed. Anne L. C. Runehov and Lluis Oviedo (New York: Springer, 2013), 978.

237 logical understanding of sublation reveals how negation avoids being a destructive transformation for the contents that are sublated. Sublation’s formal-logical properties are needed to make this clear.

Hegel brings these properties forward when he makes the distinction between historical and logical stages. Historical philosophers and logicians who took on certain attitudes as presuppositions, thinks Hegel, must be opposed as wrong, their presuppositions falsified. Yet, these same positions can be logically appraised as parts of an eternal structure, encapsulations that are

(constructively) negated. That which is logically negated is not thereby annihilated; it does not become useless or meaningless. In this way these positions are both “destroyed” and “preserved.”

Yet, it is in the logical sense alone that the negated elements are preserved and retained as a relation of opposition; this is their unity as well as their antagonism. Just as negative numbers have utility in mathematics and in physics, without being assumed to be less than nothing and unimportant, a negated logical entity remains fully functional and useful. In the Logic, for example, abstraction produces the system of concepts, but because it is merely an encapsulation, abstraction is negated.

This negation does not destroy the concepts, the forms, which remain useful to philosophy despite losing their abstract character through the negation. This negation only affects the removal of concepts’ abstractive veil.

A second modification that should be made to the simplification involves the synthesis- sublation distinction and the suggestion that it involves only extrinsic relations. It is my position, as mentioned above, that Hegel thinks of sublation not only as a synthetic process, but also as a revelation of a concept’s intrinsic properties. Each concept is thus infinitely dense. In the previous chapter, I showed that this synthetic process is also the third stage of logic, and that it includes the other two stages of logic within it.12 If however Hegel distinguishes synthesis from sublation, and rejects the former as an intrinsic source for concepts, this would mean that Hegel is guilty of the

12 The first two stages are the logic of the understanding and the negative/dialectic logic. These are contained within the third stage.

238 presupposition of finitude within the core method of his system. That is, even as he criticizes others for bringing axioms and rules into formal logic without any other (intrinsic) connections that might avoid dogmatism, he himself would be guilty of building his Logic out of these extrinsic relations, plucking concepts out of the air, as it were. Thus, his solution to finitude would itself fall prey to finitude. The thesis-antithesis-synthesis simplification, if conceived as a process of extrinsic association, would therefore be subject to criticism.

However, although synthesis is sometimes criticized for being an external, or extrinsic process, there is more than one way to understand that process. I think that Hegel’s way of using synthesis, the sublative way, is capable of overcoming the problem of finitude. It is not simply the addition of three separate elements together, welding them, and taking them to be a single unit after the sublation. This would clearly be the error of presupposition that leads to finitude. Hegel’s version of synthesis is not an extrinsic process of assembly, so it does not fall prey to this criticism.

If an intrinsic version is available, and defensible, then a fully immanent process may pursue synthesis without presupposing anything external. In this case, the “synthesis” in question simply reveals what already exists hidden within the first two concepts and it does not generate a new concept from outside the pair to resolve their discord. It can be understood as an immanent synthesis that produces from its internal resources rather than generating something completely new.

This intrinsicality is also mutual, the synthetic conclusion carries the “thesis” and “antithesis” within and the conclusion is already intrinsic within the first two. The details of such a perichoretic, circularly-nested relationship have a geometrical or topological analog,13 a fact that demonstrates the feasibility of this kind of logical relationship.

Some may hold out that Hegel was opposed to Kant’s version of synthesis, and think that he would therefore not be pursuing it himself. It is true that Hegel is critical of Kant’s version of

13 Consider the recursive triple klein bottle as a higher-dimensional version of the mobius strip. See, Stephen Barr’s classic monograph, Experiments in Topology (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1964), 34-38, 62-77.

239 synthesis for the reason that it produces a dualism. And, it is true that Hegel is critical of this kind of finitude, which connects things logically, but not intrinsically. That is, the very essence of Hegel’s criticism of finitude is that it connects things together only in the logical formulae in which they are used, and this brings them in as strangers and makes the resulting logic dogmatic. However, these points do not force us to think that Hegel is doing away with synthesis all together. He has his own version of synthesis that is fully intrinsic. Such a synthesis is not inherently dualistic. If it were, then

Hegel would not describe his own method as a synthesis.14 This non-dualistic reading applies both to sublation and its logical form. Regarding that logical form, the Disjunctive Syllogism specifically, and also deductive forms generally, Hegel does not think of them as irreparably dualistic or oppositional, contra Winfield, et al.,15 though this is common understanding. Hegel instead had a synthetic and unifying perspective on logic that ultimately arises from the mediating properties of the Disjunctive

Syllogism. More on this later.

One final difficulty involves the appreciation of the many layers of preservation and cancellation that are contained in sublation. Any interpretation of sublation must take these into account and explain them somehow. If the cancellation has preservative overtones, and if the preservation has cancellative overtones, then these should not be overlooked; accounts of sublation should avoid ad hoc explanations of them. On this point, the typical criticisms of the simplification hold more weight. As a simplification, the “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” formula does appear to overlook this point entirely, revealing the omission to be quite misleading.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that the logical characteristics of the Disjunctive Syllogism best account for cancellation and preservation in sublation. Not only does this avoid the ad hoc nature of these descriptions—what is it that could explain this precise amount of preservation or that amount of cancellation?—but the alternative is a much less precise interaction between subjective concepts,

14 EL, 285, §228. Consider also Hegel’s reference to his system as “speculative” in EL, 113, §79ff. 15 Winfield, Hegel and the Future, 81. The others were discussed at the head of Chapter II.

240 which are then subjectively compared. The dialectician has little choice but to layer personal and emotional reactions over the conceptual relationships that are in play and risk imbuing the structure with self-consciousness and will. What else would motivate the structure to do anything at all?

Viewing the process as a deduction resolves what is otherwise paradoxical. A logical inference can provide the capacity for a non-destructive negation that at the same time unifies opposites together with its resolution-synthesis. It even exposes the logical equivalence among all three members of the triad. Like looking in a mirror, each side relates to its extreme as itself through the mediating reflector. With these comments I could be describing either sublation or the

Disjunctive Syllogism, and in fact I am describing both. The Disjunctive Syllogism is inherently sublational and vice versa.

With regard to negation specifically, the syllogism has a premise that must be negated as an irreducible aspect of its function. The syllogism contains three propositions: this or that (the disjunction inherent in Hegel’s second stages), NOT this (first stages), therefore that (third stages).

The second16 premise in this series involves cancellation in the form of negation. Yet, this “cannon fodder” remains part of the syllogism as its negated premise. So, the syllogism also preserves. The canceled premises are retained as premises even though they are logically negated. The canceled premise is negated by the form of the syllogism, but as part of this specific instance of the syllogism, ineliminably, it is also united with it, and by it. It is preserved in one sense and canceled in another, and both senses are accomplished formally, by a deduction. In addition, the Disjunctive Syllogisms makes its premises equivalent so that each premise “takes a turn” being the mediator of the other two. Thus, even the negated premises play pivotal roles in the structure of the whole. This logical way of accounting for the preservation-cancellation relationship is not only robust, it is also very

Hegelian, for in addition to the other factors, Hegel requires the strength of a deduction to achieve

16 Recall that the order of the premises is variable. The order given here is the traditional order, not Hegel’s typical ordering.

241 his larger goals.17 This is another reason to think that a logical interpretation of Hegel’s system is superior.

To the point at hand, for the above reasons, it is best to think of Hegel’s sublation as a proto-disjunctive syllogism. It is sublation until it is developed sufficiently to be a syllogism. After that point, it remains a syllogism until the end. Nevertheless, it seems that uncovering this syllogism was Hegel’s intention from the start; he has aimed straight for it. The properties of this syllogism can be traced in Hegel’s descriptions all the way back, through sublation, even to the shapes of consciousness.

Sublation appears at first to be a close parallel to the Disjunctive Syllogism. Both have three parts, both involve negation, both have an either/or stage, and both synthesize a conclusion. It has long been understood that sublation must preserve what it negates, in some way. The logical approach generally, and the Disjunctive Syllogism specifically, lends great explanatory power on this point and shows precisely how opposites in tension can be comprehended without simply declaring it to be so or anthropomorphizing the process.

In what follows I will trace the development of this form of thought through its development in the Encyclopedia Logic starting from the beginnings of the logical science.18 I will show how Hegel prepares sublation as a logical entity and develops it into the Disjunctive Syllogism over the course of the three spheres, or categorical subdivisions, of the Logic. Then I will discuss the syllogism’s special properties that allow it to function as mediator of concept and object.

2. Sublation in the Sphere of Being: Simple Negation and its Intermodal Properties

Next in my logical perspective on sublation, after having dealt with some of the terminological and rudimentary characteristics, I will now begin to show how Hegel develops

17 EL, 69, §42. 18 EL, 123, §84.

242 sublation from its most basic form to a fully developed, syllogistic mediator. Hegel’s Logic, being the first of the three parts of the Encyclopedia, is itself divided into three parts. These three parts are: the sphere of Being; the sphere of Essence; and the sphere of the Notion.19 In this and the two following sections, I will examine the form of sublation in each of these spheres as the form of sublation develops. I will also show that the three spheres together form their own sublation, the sublation of the Logic as a whole. The focus will be on the progressive revelation of the logical structure as it transforms itself in these examples of sublation.

Hegel begins his analysis of the structure of Logic with the bare phenomenon, of “the bare assertion of the opposition of consciousness,”20 which is simply the concept of Being. He will conclude that Being, when it is scrutinized, plays the role of and thus instantiates its opposite,

Nothing, and that they are both together interchangeable and they “vanish into one another” and, as a pair, are thus unified in a third concept by playing the role of Becoming.21

Pure being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same. What is the truth is neither being nor nothing, but that being—does not pass over but has passed over—into nothing, and nothing into being. But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that, on the contrary, they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct, and yet that they are unseparated and inseparable and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is therefore, this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one into the other: becoming, a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a difference which has equally immediately resolved itself.22

I note first that this movement of Being into Nothing and Nothing back into Being is not meant to be a temporal movement. Hegel himself makes this point when he says that this transition

19 In the Encyclopedia Logic, these spheres begin, respectively, in §§ 84, 112, and 160. I use the term “sphere” to specify the things discussed rather than Hegel’s account of them. Though he does not use these specific terms in the titles of the relevant sections, he does use them in certain places. E. g., WL, 79. I note also, as I do in other parts of the present work, that “sphere” is used by Hegel synonymously with other terms for a coherent set of concepts. Other terms, in translation, include “world,” “totality,” and “system.” 20 Winfield, Hegel and the Future, 17. 21 WL, 82; EL, 123-132, §§84-88. 22 WL, 82-83. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 21, 69: “Das reine Seyn und das reine Nichts ist also dasselbe. Was die Wahrheit ist, ist weder das Seyn, noch das Nichts, sondern daß das Seyn in Nichts, und das Nichts in Seyn, — nicht übergeht, — sondern übergegangen ist. Aber eben so sehr ist die Wahrheit nicht ihre Ununterschiedenheit, sondern daß sie nicht dasselbe, daß sie absolute unterschieden, aber eben so ungetrennt und untrennbar sind, und unmittelbar jedes in seinem Gegentheil verschwindet. Ihre Wahrheit ist also diese Bewegung des unmittelbaren Verschwindens des einen in dem andern; das Werden; eine Bewegung, worin beide unterschieden find, aber durch einen Unterschied, der sich eben so unmittelbar aufgetost hat.”

243 from Being to Nothing is not something that “does” happen but that it “has” happened. More subtly, Hegel also says that Being and Nothing are the same, not that they become the same. So, there is much in this passage that betrays Hegel’s underlying eternalist position, making the descriptions of movement, for the most part, metaphorical.23

Here in the doctrine of Being, his first of three stages within the Logic, Hegel lives up to his promise to produce distinctions within unity changelessly, rather than breaking unity up into parts and then reassembling the parts into a unity, as if in temporal succession. This need to see unity in difference and difference in unity, at the same time in one structure, is a demanding one. Hegel’s will not be an utter unification, one that denies negation (difference) and that contains no otherness. At the same time it will not pursue a severe extreme of negation as Spinoza, Saussure, and Derrida have done, to name a few. Hegel denies that determination can only be a form of negation, as Spinoza had concluded.24 He would also deny that terms have significance only through negation, something

Saussure concluded, and of course he would reject Derrida’s assertion that this reliance upon negation requires a continuous deferral of meaning,25 an issue relating not only to the role of negation at this stage, but also relating back to the question of temporality and mutability for concepts. The negation in question has to be part of an eternal structure that produces both unity and difference all at once. In contrast to these four views, the solution that I think Hegel gives is one that sees a duality inherent within each concept, a distinction that is simply the case, that obtains at all times. Yet, it is a conflict between two distinct modes of the concept. This duality is found between what a concept means and the role it plays in a relation to other concepts. In other words,

23 As I have argued earlier, the life that is in the absolute Idea is not meant to be diminished by its changelessness. Hegel is eager to emphasize this liveliness-in-spite-of-changelessness by invoking metaphors of processes and change. But, they are not entirely metaphorical because the changeless forms are meant to be the source of merely temporal change, which is seen as inferior, a very platonic problem and solution. 24 See, Spinoza, “Letter 50 to Jelles,” in Spinoza, Complete Works , trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 892, as cited in Winfield, Hegel and the Future, 23. 25 See, Jacques Derrida, Marges de la Philosophie (Paris: Les éditions de minuit,1972), 1–29, as cited in Winfield, 23. This comparison of Hegel’s position to the positions of other philosophers’ extremes is Winfield’s. He places Hegel between these extremes.

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Hegel recognizes that concepts contain within themselves a potential conflict between what they mean and what they are doing. As it plays a role in the sublation and as it relates to other concepts, each concept’s meaning can differ from the properties of its activity in the relation. This is my own original insight, and none of the interpreters of Hegel or the philosophers just listed explain the internal tension in this way. It is a unique interpretation that comes from the logical perspective on sublation, and it is a helpful new way of appreciating the underlying process of sublation as an eternal structure rather than as a transformation.

This is how it works. Being is a concept whose meaning is in conflict with the role it plays in

Hegel’s first sublation. In this sense it self-contradicts. The contradiction occurs between two senses or modes that the concept of being has. The concept of Being has a meaning, but it acts like the opposite of this meaning, Nothing. It acts out the role in its relation of an entirely different concept.

This duality between two modes of Being is the basis for and also the unmediated act of generation of the second concept, Nothing. For the same reasons, the contradictory concept, Nothing, plays the role of Being as it relates back to Being. Yet, because the meanings of the two concepts contradict, they sit in tension as opposites. Again, each of the two concepts has a meaning, but it also plays a role in their relation. And, the role can be different from, even contradictory to, the meaning. The meaning of each one can contradict the other’s meaning, even while the role of each is the other. Moreover, the meaning of each contradicts its own role . . . and this is the other. We are not seeing, therefore, the transformation of one concept into the other, but a static and eternal duality embedded within concepts themselves, between the mode of their meanings and the mode of their roles in relations. This duality, the capacity to be different things in different senses, or modes, leads to tensions that call for negations. Thus, the negation of Being is Nothing, and the negation is generated internally by the contrast between what Being means and what it is doing in a relation with another concept.

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This kind of intermodal conflict is infinitely dense with creative potential. Each new concept and relation, as a unit, can have an intermodal conflict of its own. And if it can, then it does, due to

Thought’s freedom to self-determine. This is not a decision or an act of production, as if it were a willful or temporal process, but it is a logical implication. Wherever such implications can exist as logical consequences, they do so eternally. This can be described as an action, and it often is, but this would be to anthropomorphize and temporalize a structure that is purely deductive. In this sense, then, the Being-Nothing pair can also contradict what it means, and so it does. Being and nothing contradict one another, and negate one another, but together they relate in a new way, they act out a new concept distinct from their individual meanings. This entails another concept, Becoming. Each element of the pair is also the other (according to a different mode), and the other is also itself.

Negations of these internal conflicts “drive” the structure forward, which is to say that they entail multiple subsequent concepts. The result of this negation and the relation between the pair is also the third concept. Being’s intermodal conflict generates Nothing, Nothing’s intermodal conflict generates Being, and together their intermodal conflict generates Becoming.

These conflicts are typically characterized as a “need” to resolve some inner tension at each point. Hegel clarifies that this “need” is properly understood as a logical demand. It is the internal antithesis between what is known and what is true; it is “the difference of knowledge and Truth, . .

.”26 It is the recognition that a concept can often be “the antithesis of itself; . . . [an] unresolved contradiction.”27 Hegel is also noticing that advancements in the Progression, as for example between the first and second stage, are “based on something more profound on which it rests,” which are “to be sought in the insight into the necessary conflict of the determinations of the

26 PhG, 491, §805. GW, Band 9, 432: “. . . der Unterschied des Wissens und der Wahrheit, . . .” 27 VBDG, 190. VBDG, 190. OB, 274: “. . . somit der Gegensatz seiner selbst; es ist der unaufgelöste Widerspruch.”

246 understanding with themselves,”28 which is to say, between what they mean and what they are in terms of the role they are playing in their respective sublations/syllogisms.29

Thought is driven forward by logical necessity. It assumes all the configurations that can be assumed. By this “driving force,” Thought proceeds (or entails structures that can be followed) from the Sphere of Being to the Sphere of Essence and then to the Sphere of the Notion.

In the first sphere, we only see determination by means of simple, one-tier negation. There are other ways of producing concepts, however, and we will encounter them in the next two spheres. Simple negation is thus the theme that governs the doctrine of Being, the first and simplest of the spheres, and it is inherently a process of sublation based on conflicts between the two modes that concepts have. This is Thought’s first and simplest means of producing its simplest concepts.

This gives Thought the capacity to determine categories like quality, quantity, and measure. Simple negation is limited to these types of product because this means of production is itself limited.30 The development of additional categories of concepts can only come by moving beyond the first sphere and its mode of simple negation. When Hegel follows Thought next into the sphere of Essence, which involves a new capacity to produce categories that the sphere of Being could not, then a new means of production will commence. Before the second sphere is described, however, the way that the first sphere has been a proto-syllogism should first be made explicit.

28 WL, Introduction, 46. GW, Band 21, 30: “Diese Wendung jedoch, welche das Erkennen nimmt, und die als Verlust und Rückschritt erscheint, hat das Liefere zum Grunde, worauf überhaupt die Erhebung der Vernunft in den höhern Geist der neuern Philosophie beruht. Der grund jener allgemein gewordenen Vorstellung ist nämlich in der Einsicht von dem nothwendigen Widerstreite der Bestimmungen des Verstandes mit sich selbst, zu suchen.” 29 Inwood, 78. This opposition that is a “nothwendigen Widerstreite der Bestimmungen” is something that Hegel sees as inherent within concepts themselves as a quasi-existential property. This is reflected in a word that Hegel often uses for concepts when they are considered as “determinations” (Bestimmung and its variants). Inwood tells us that this German term, especially as used by Hegel, contains the concept of this internal conflict in its meaning. Inwood’s explanation invokes the language of what I call intermodal conflict. He writes: “The connection of Bestimmtheit with negation . . . allows us to distinguish between what a thing is IN ITSELF (an sich) and what it is in it (an ihm), that is, between its INNER nature or potentiality and its OUTER, explicit qualities, which are both its qualities and its RELATIONS to other things, . . .” 30 Winfield, Hegel and the Future, 23.

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3. The Manner in Which the Sphere of Being Expresses the Proto-Syllogism

The first clue that the conceptual relations in the first sphere are proto-syllogistic is the triadic or three-step format. This three-step process has been encountered many times in the historical breakdown that Hegel had just completed in the Encyclopedia Logic, and readers had seen it many times before that in Hegel’s various introductions. At this point, however, we are in the logical science and no longer within preparatory or historical contexts. The three-step process must now be understood as a logical entity.

Yet, the structure of the form is little changed. Instead of a new and obviously logical formula, we see mostly the same form as was found in earlier contexts. This triadic form, however, is still in development and so its logical form is nascent. It will be revealed only after the three spheres (Being, Essence, Notion) can be compared to one another. For now, however, I note that the simple triadic pattern remains in place with only the promise of its logical nature. It remains only the simplest form of sublation, determination by negation.

Even here, however, determination by simple negation is already inherently intermodal, as the previous section above indicated. Intermodal conflicts that call for negation can be understood as logical properties. Therefore, even the simplest form of sublation is being “driven” by something logical, not emotional or willful. The first sublation is a triad, whose elements interact by simple negation, which is a production of concepts out of others without mediation. Each concept has its opposite immediately within itself, which is to say that each concept has two modes, its meaning and the manner in which it relates to other concepts. The manner of relating that is produced is itself another concept. Thus, the first concept can contain another concept immediately without mediation of an additional concept, and so it does. Hegel thus traces this process to ground, for himself, a treasure trove of useful concepts that can now, due to their being connected, be used legitimately in

248 philosophy (finitude is removed by connection).

The process is continuously driven forward. This drive-like characteristic can be understood analogously, anthropomorphically as a search for unity. Considered as a proto-syllogism, the first triad lacks something that is needed to achieve unity. It lacks the mediation needed to reconcile concepts together. Instead of unity, the triads in the first sphere exist as and consist of opposition to their own contents. The being-nothing-becoming triad is the epitome of this simple relation. The third concept unifies the triad, but the contents are still in conflict. There is therefore a repulsion contained within an attraction. The third concept resolves the problem of intermodal opposition to some extent—the third element explains the relation of the pair-in-opposition—but it does not eliminate all such opposition; there is a remainder. All dualisms are not eliminated and so the remainder becomes a new tension that is now intrinsic to the third concept itself, Becoming. This new conflict is called “determinate being.”

. . . becoming is the vanishing of being in nothing and of nothing in being and the vanishing of being and nothing generally; . . . . It is therefore inherently self-contradictory, because the determinations it unites within itself are opposed to each other; but such a union destroys itself. . . . Becoming, as this transition into the unity of being and nothing, . . . is determinate being.31

Notice that the self-destruction that Hegel sees between Being and Nothing, which lies within

Becoming, is, for Becoming, a conflict between content and form, this is confirmation that Hegel understands the conflict as intermodal.

Becoming is a unifying concept, but the concepts it unifies are not unified; in themselves,

Being and Nothing can only be in tension. This is the “uncomfortable” remainder produced by the first triad that only further development can resolve. Unification is not yet fully accomplished. So,

Becoming has a new problem that arises at its own level, and not at the lower level of its

31 WL, 106. GW, Band 21, 93-94: “. . . Das Werden ist das Verschwinden von Seyn in Nichts, und von Nichts in Seyn, und das Verschwinden von Seyn und Nichts überhaupt; . . . . Es widerspricht sich also in sich selbst, weil es solches in sich vereint, das sich entgegengesetzt ist; eine solche Vereinigung aber zerstört sich. . . . ¶ Das Werden so Uebergehen in die Einheit des Seyns und Nichts, . . . ist das Daseyn.”

249 constituents. Distinct from the process that causes it to be what it is, it also contains its own intermodal conflict. A new round of sublation is then caused, and then another, and another. In this way the development of Thought continues until the sphere of Being is adequately sketched. And then, at the end of Hegel’s journey through the sphere of Being, the entire sphere itself, as a whole, expresses a conflict between what it is and what it does in relation to the other two spheres.

Up to this point, the simple sublational triads of the simplest sphere have been revealed to be triadic logical structures that operate not by desire, but by intermodal conflicts that allow for negation. Such options are always exhaustively explored due to the capacity of Thought to freely explore relations of any and all kinds. If a cohesive structure of the sphere is possible, then it is.

Hegel thinks that he has found such a structure. Its parts can be interconnected in this way, through these triads and their internal, intermodal negations.

In addition to all of this, note the order of the logical development. It proceeds from simple to complex in Hegel’s descriptions. Despite Hegel’s path of discovery, it must remain possible to proceed from the conclusion (Unity) and work backward. This structure is non-temporal and so these connections must be reversible. Becoming can be broken down into its intrinsic parts, and these in turn can be seen as immediate determiners of one another; Nothing can then be seen as the determined product of Being by negation, which takes us back to Being, the bare phenomenon of

Thought and thus the simplest concept. So, the logical permutations remain coherent in either direction. The possibility of this change in direction is itself a logical feature.

However, several logical properties are still lacking at this level. Rearrangement, for one, is not yet possible. If Being is 1, and Nothing 2, and Becoming 3, then it is not possible to make sense of changing the order like this: 1-2-3 => 2-3-1 => 3-1-2. This is a capacity or feature that this low- level triad lacks. The triad can be viewed forward or backward, but that is all. To add this capacity of rearrangement, the role of mediation must first be established. One of the three parts must be the

250 mediator of the other two if these alterations of order are to become possible. Mediation will be introduced in the next sphere, but the capacity to rearrange that mediator will not be seen until the third sphere.

The structures of this first sphere also lack the property of interpenetration, a feature that comes only by mediation. These structures include concepts that come in from outside as strangers.

As if they required presuppositions, these concepts are not enclosed into self-consistent circles. The problem of presupposition for the premises of syllogisms, which Hegel wishes to remove, is not yet removed at this stage. Here, the circle cannot yet close, these triads are not yet disjunctive syllogisms that can remove extrinsic reference by unifying form and content. This capacity of the Disjunctive

Syllogism, which comes much later in the Progression, comes from its ability to share its mediating role among its three premises. Recall from Chapter I that each disjunctive syllogism is also three syllogisms that stand together as a superposition; there is one state for each of the three premises playing the mediating role. Thus, the capacity to interpenetrate comes from the capacity of each part to play each role. The sphere of Being therefore contains triads that have beginnings and ends, and that can be understood backward or forward, but which do not eliminate extrinsicality. This sets up a problem that looks forward to a resolution further down the line.

Sublations of the first-sphere, in conclusion, have some of the properties of the Disjunctive

Syllogism, but also lack many of those properties. Yet, this form of Thought will be developing into that later form, through several additional stages. Therefore, it is appropriate to think of it as an early form of that syllogism. That later syllogism, in turn, will eventually become Hegel’s ontological argument, which is his Encyclopedia, so triads even at this early stage might also be considered proto-ontological-arguments.

4. Sublation in the Spheres of Essence and Notion

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My goal has been to show that Hegel is developing the form of sublation from a proto- mediator into a fully developed mediator, from a three-part relationship of some indistinct form into an explicit disjunctive syllogism. So far, in the above section, I have examined this development through to the end of the first of the three spheres.

The second sphere, which comes after the sphere of Being, is the sphere of Essence, and after the second sphere will come a third, the sphere of the Notion. Once we see the distinction between the first and second sphere, the nature of the spheres themselves begins to come into focus. Hegel is using the spheres to accomplish the derivation of a connected system of concepts through three distinct modes of production; he thereby connects and explores all the forms that

Thought can take. So, the three spheres are like three different kinds of factory. Each factory makes concepts in a distinct way, and so each is able to produce specific kinds of concepts. Each is thus a specialist. In this section, I will explore the second and third spheres in detail with a special eye on their logical properties.

a) New Kinds of Concepts in the Second Sphere

The first sphere covered above recognized the most primitive feature of Thought, to have an object, and this is Being; it proceeded from there by means of intermodal conflicts to determine other concepts through direct negation and without mediation. The second sphere, like the first, also uses negation but it employs dual instead of single negation. This new power will produce new kinds of concepts and add to Thought’s repertoire.

Unlike the first sphere, the second can produce inequalities, pairs of concepts that relate to one another unequally, for example: essence-appearance; ground-grounded; whole-parts; thing- properties; substance-accidents; and cause-effect.32 This is the sphere in which one concept’s

32 Winfield, Hegel and the Future, 25.

252 determination is owed to the assertion (or posit) of another, a determined determinacy. These will be two-tier relationships as compared to the previous sphere of Being, which contained only single-tier relationships. One concept determines another, and by doing so becomes its superior, thus two tiers.

There is a problem with two-tier relationships: despite the apparent hierarchy within each pair, the determination turns out to be mutual. This will be a problem for all members within this sphere. That is, the superior positing concept may seem to determine the inferior posited concept in a one-way operation, as the cause posits the effect, but in truth the inferior posited concept also helps the superior positing concept to define itself.33 Despite being dominant as the one that posits, the positer is also defined by the relationship it produces by positing. This is its own primary defining characteristic. Therefore, the determiner defines itself by determining an other, and this is nothing else but the mediation of that other in its own self-definition. So, the role of these concepts in their pairing differs from their individual meanings. These differences according to the usual two modes (definition and behavior within a relation) can be in conflict with one another. For example, the cause-effect relationship involves a positer (cause) and a posited (effect), but the cause cannot be a cause unless it has both an effect and the relationship between them (causation). Thus, the cause is

“caused” to be a cause by reference to these other two elements. The cause is also an effect. Or, the cause (which is so through its definition) is also an effect (which is so through its behavior in the two-tier relation). We can now realize that the first and second spheres produce concepts in two distinct ways. The first sphere employs immediate negation, and the second introduces the mediation of another. This means that one concept does not directly birth its opposite in an equal and reciprocal relationship, as was the case in the first sphere, but instead a supposedly superior concept posits another concept. This, paradoxically, defines both the posited concept and itself and the relation between them, and it does this through intermodal negation.

33 Ibid., 25-26.

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Cause posits effect, but cause can only have its definition by being an effect of effect. The concept of effect is then the mediator of cause’s own definition. So, the definition of cause is in contradiction to the way it relates to the other concept. It relates like an effect, but it is defined to be cause. There is a conflict between its modes, but this time, that conflict is mediated through another concept. The negation that this conflict makes possible is now revealed to involve mediation.

Causation is thus produced in this sphere via mediation. Mediation has been added to the repertoire.

As with the first sphere, this kind of production of concepts is not without its internal and unresolved tensions. Because the posited concept is merely posited, stipulated without reason, there is a doubt about its claim. This introduces a connotation of doubt or suspicion. An uncertainty or bracketing of judgment about the truth of the posit is the unavoidable result. The features of an encapsulation become prominent, an “as if” veil that surrounds the second sphere and all of its parts. That is, if one concept is posited from another, as if by fiat, then there is no intrinsic way to tell if the posit is true.34 Determination by fiat, a capacity that is new in this sphere, comes with its own shortcomings. It can produce its concepts only under the encapsulation of possibility, and thus its products, its concepts, come into direct conflict with their status as bearers of truth. The posit determines its object arbitrarily, dogmatically, and in so doing it contradicts its own nature as a bearer of truth. This is the theme that is characteristic of the second sphere.

b) Nascent Circularity in the Spheres of Essence and Notion

One remaining element of the Disjunctive Syllogism that has been in development up to this point has yet to be emphasized. The addition of mediation in the second sphere allows for variation in order among the three members of each triad. This is something new in the development of sublation. This is not explicitly pursued by Hegel at this point, but the variation in order is an added

34 Ibid., 26.

254 capacity that comes with this stage. Specifically, the original order of 1-2-3 can also be viewed as 2-3-

1 and 3-1-2. For example, cause defines effect by determining it to be so, and this relationship is thus determined to be causation. But, just as easily, causation can be seen as the determiner and definer of cause, and the relationship between them can subsequently determine the concept of effect. And, finally, effect can only be effect if it is part of causation, and this in turn determines what causation is, and the relationship between these two determines what a cause is. These intermodal permutations are made possible for the first time in the sphere of essence.

This is a nascent form of the interpenetration enjoyed by the Disjunctive Syllogism. But, at this stage, it is only an extrinsic form of mutual explanation for the three concepts. Cause explains effect and causation; effect explains causation and cause; causation explains cause and effect. They explain each other, however, as externals to one another. So, this mutualism still involves otherness, so it is not fully intrinsic, and thus not yet fully an interpenetration. Nonetheless, it is a step in that direction. A set of three concepts that explain one another is not yet involuted and so its members are still “viewed with suspicion” (the possibility operator) by one another as if the parts of the triad were taken from the outside.

Nonetheless, the truth that is being developed, and that will come to light in the next sphere, is that they are not others to one another, but they are in fact the same. Yet here, the second sphere is ignorant of this unity, and this is a result of the theme of the stage. It nonetheless contains the truth implicitly, in an incipient circularity that has just now been developed within the logical process.

c) The Interactions Between the Spheres Taken as Wholes

The second sphere, that of Essence, is much closer to the Disjunctive Syllogism than the first sphere was. The second sphere retains the advances of the first sphere and adds four additional

255 properties: external mediation; implicit circularity; nascent interpenetration; and a new instance of the expression of intermodal self-negation.35

Before we look at the third sphere, however, we should also look at the way the first and second interact as wholes. There is intermodal conflict to be found here as well, between the two spheres. Just as the theme of the second sphere, governing its contents, is to doubt and hold in suspense, so the entire first sphere is held in suspense by the second. That is, the sphere of Essence holds the sphere of Being in suspense along with all of the concepts it produced, including, of course, the concept of Being. As Hegel himself says about the second sphere, it no longer deals with the negations of the realm of Being, but it deals with the negation of the entire sphere of Being itself.36 The theme of the entire second sphere, therefore, holds the theme of the entire first sphere and all of its conceptual products in doubt. This, in turn, casts a pall of illusory otherness on the entire second sphere and its concepts.37 So, from the perspective of the second sphere, both the first and second spheres are in doubt. Everything is merely possible according to this theme.

This is because the perspective of the second sphere colors all the concepts that it contacts.

All concepts involved in this sphere, including the first sphere and its contents, become reflections of their determiners, as for example effect is derived as a reflection of cause. The determiner, consequently, can only be taken as an other.38 The unity that is sought by Thought is, in this stage’s theme, elusive. It is thus a characteristic of all of the products of the second sphere that they are tinged with alienation and doubt, which logically is mere possibility.

The next and third sphere will do better at achieving the desired unity by taking a final,

35 With regard to that last item in the list, the second sphere violates the principle of intermodal self-negation in a different way than did the first sphere. The first sphere denies unity between what a concept is and what it means directly, by negation. The second sphere denies unity by questioning it, doubting it, and by stipulating its mere possibility. 36 WL, 394. 37 This is characteristic of all second stages. Most notably, with the second volume of the Encyclopedia, this is the basis for the objectivity and contingency experienced in the natural world. That is, this is how Hegel accounts for the nature of the world of objects, space, and time. 38 Winfield, Hegel and the Future, 26.

256 unifying step. It will transform reflection into self-reflection and determined determinacy into self- determined determinacy. The second sphere, however, is not yet self-determined determinacy, which is the higher form of relation in which the two concepts of a pair are understood to be the same thing. Here, in the second sphere, two concepts are distinguished by a posit and the concepts that are produced are therefore merely posits.39 In this way, being is reduced to no more than “a mere negative, to a seeming or reflected light.”40 The determiner has a status that comprises “the negation of a nothing,”41 which means that it is a double negation. And finally, it also removes independence from the status of the concept that it determines.42 Both sides of these two-tiered relationships are therefore held in suspense and are in fact merely possible.

Let us now consider briefly how these logical spheres, or modes of producing concepts, relate to historical philosophies. This will not only further establish the historical-logical correlation, but it will shed more light, by way of example, on each sphere’s theme. The principle of sufficient reason, which presupposes that every concept must have a reason to be true, produces philosophies that rely too heavily on the second sphere. We see this in some of Leibniz’s logical systems, specifically the modal systems that are built from direct assertion. Even though he is mostly to be categorized among the first-stage logicians, his advanced modal syllogistics can be considered transitional. But, Kant is guilty of this as well, and his philosophy is truly the epitome of the second approach to concept-building. His approach privileges this kind of determination. If it is relied upon as a stand-alone program, however, this approach leads to the unavoidable conclusion that reason can only know conditionally; it can only accept the categories as regulative.43 This, in turn, forces

39 Ibid. 40 EL, 162, §112. GW, Band 20, 143: “. . . zu seyn zu einem nur negativen herabgesetzt, zu einem Scheine.” 41 WL, 400. GW, Band 11, 250: “. . . das Andre, . . . ist nicht das Nichtseyn eines Seyns, sondern das Nichts eines Nichts, . . .” 42 Winfield, Hegel and the Future, 26. 43 Ibid.

257 philosophy to look to the structure of knowing in order to attempt objectivity,44 but it raises a wall of separation between what is known and the positers of that knowledge, the latter remaining ever out of reach.45 This is, of course, Kant’s phenomenal/noumenal split, a position that is, however it is understood, inherently skeptical.

The seeds of this level’s own destruction (or negation) are already sown within it because the determiner of a concept is eventually revealed to itself that it is itself, or logically, the encapsulation of mere possibility is eventually negated due to a conflict between what the concepts mean and their roles in various contexts. For example, the cause-effect relation posits both cause and effect, but then, in turn, the causes and effects make the relation what it is. Thus, cause is causing itself to be a cause, and it is therefore also an effect, but this is mediated through another, the other concept, effect. This undermines the basis for this kind of relation because it reveals that each concept in the relation is not the posit of another, as it at first seemed, but each is instead self-posited, self- determined, it is a mediated self-relation. This means that the third stage embodies a realization that otherness cannot be maintained; such an approach self-defeats. The other that determines these concepts turns out to be the first concept itself.

The second sphere leads to a third sphere through its self-cancellation. In the third and final sphere, the determined concept determines itself via reflection, a self-determined determinacy.46 This third sphere is different in the way it relates to the other spheres. Surprisingly and very much unlike the second, it does not destroy or oppose the other spheres. It incorporates them.47 It incorporates the first two spheres. Sphere one contains a simple kind of negation. In turn, the negation of the entirety of level one, which occurs in level two, produces otherness. Thus, otherness is negation of negation, a double negation. Following this, the negation of sphere two, which occurs in sphere

44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 26-27. 46 Ibid., 27-28. 47 Ibid., 28.

258 three, is the negation of sphere two’s mediation and this takes Thought back to the start, but via the route of reflection.48 The third sphere makes the mediator into itself and thus becomes immediate to itself despite retaining the process of mediation. This unifies and reverses the alienation of the second sphere, but it still contains and employs the negative function of that sphere.

This is how the three sphere’s interact with one another, logically. I now move on to consider the inner workings of the third sphere. This will shed further light on the manner in which the third sphere, as a whole, interacts with the other two spheres.

d) The Complex Interrelation of the UPI Roles in the Third Sphere

Let us now consider the theme and internal workings of the third sphere in general (the specifics will be taken up in the next section). Here, there is a capacity to derive new kinds of concepts, and there are three primary building blocks with which this capacity works: universality, particularity, and individuality (UPI).49 The universal is a concept that can contain others as their category. The particular is the member of the set of concepts contained within a universal category.

These first two relate closely, in the way that two-tier concepts relate. In the third sphere, however, there is a third ingredient. The individual is an independent concept, it stands alone and has some kind of self-sufficiency. It may relate externally as a particular, but in itself it is independent. In its original connection to the structure of Thought, however, individuality is derived out of the interplay between universal and particular. Using acronyms, U and P relate like a two-tier pairing, but the manner in which they relate produces the I. This is another intermodal invention. The ways that U and P are defined conflicts with the roles they each play out in their relation to one another, like any two-tier relationship, but the pair together, uniquely, produce a self-sufficient entity. In the mode of their interrelation, then, they act out the role of the I in its independence.

48 Ibid. 49 Ibid., 26, 28.

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This is the theme of the entire sphere. In order to be self-determined determinacies, the concepts of the third sphere undergo their permutations according to these three roles. That is, the

UPI roles are intrinsic to self-mediation through reflection and self-determined determinacy. This final means of production affords Thought the capacity to produce all remaining concepts.

This is the stage that, within the Logic, removes all remaining disunity, dualism, and skepticism. The way this process works, however, is not as straightforward as the other two processes in the other two spheres. The first sphere’s process involved mostly just one part, one role, which was negation. The second sphere’s process involved two parts and roles; it was two-tier.

The third sphere involves three parts and roles, and this adds enough complexity to create a far more robust system of concept production. These three parts are, again, universal (U), particular (P), and individual (I). I will now attempt to explain the basic form of their interrelation and the way that they produce new concepts.

Let me begin by relating just two of the three UPI concepts together, the U and the P, and then I will show how these two point toward the third. At first, the U posits the P just like a two-tier relation. And, just like before, each concept in the pair is defined by its role in their relation. This is what makes both the P and the U what they are. Without this relation, neither could be what it is. As

Winfield clarifies, “Particularization is thereby a self-determination enabling the universal to be what it is. Without a particular, it can’t be a universal.”50 So, this is determinate determination for a start.

Yet, because this is the third sphere, the process goes further. A U relates to a P not as an unknown and disconnected other, nor does it relate as if it were something other than what it is, but it is itself incorporated into the P because they mutually define and share one another’s roles, intermodally.

The P is likewise not a mere reflection of the U, but is the U itself. This however remains undetectable without the inclusion of a third concept. Mere reflection is thus insufficient to achieve

50 Ibid., 29. See also, Michael B. Foster “The Concrete Universal: Cook Wilson and Bosanquet,” Mind XL:157 (1931): 1-22.

260 identity between the U and P, this was the reason why the second sphere could not stand on its own. Only as a self-determination, and not as a determination by another, is this unity achievable.51

The third concept, I, achieves this unification for the U-P pairing. The I now joins in the relation. The “realization” that the two-tiered relationships from the previous sphere were merely reflections removes those reflections’ otherness and reverses the alienation and skepticism involved.

The third sphere thus reveals to itself that the other concept is just the same as itself. And this, in turn, makes the relation self-sufficient in itself, a monumental development, the original derivation of Individuality. The third sphere thus leads to the I, the origin of objectivity.

Since the I is a stand-alone entity with no dependency on other, outside relationships, the third sphere is able to derive the crucial concept of objectivity. In other words, the way that U and P relate, as self-reflection, renders them independent, and this is the defining feature of I, which is an independence that constitutes objectivity.

Individuality can only be produced at the third level, which is to say that the conceptual relationships based purely on the resources of the bare phenomenon, Hegel’s entry point, cannot derive the concept of object until it is able to move from very simple production-processes

(determination by negation and determination by posit) to the most advanced production process

(self-determined determinacy by means of the double negation that involves reflection). Individuality is thus a very advanced and complex concept. It can be produced neither within the sphere of Being, nor the sphere of Essence. It can be produced only through the interplay of UPI, which are all derived in their mutual relationship.

These UPI relationships are logical, and they foreshadow the way that conceptuality and objectivity must be brought into conformity in terms of their respective schemes of negation. The first sphere involves a negation inherently, and this will itself be negated. The second sphere

51 Ibid., 29. All of this is Winfield’s analysis.

261 involves the negative properties of a mere possibility, and this will also be negated. And finally, these two negations will ultimately be accomplished for abstract Thought through the Disjunctive

Syllogism in the third sphere. This most important concept represents the culmination of the development of UPI relations. It will tie up loose ends and eliminate all internal tensions. This syllogism is thus the crown jewel of the third sphere; it is the one concept that is able to relate UPI together without remainder, without internal contradiction, without a conflict inside of itself between what it means and what it is. This will achieve the desired unity, but it will also produce a framework of self-relation by which Thought can provide the absolute self-correspondence needed to make claims to truth, to escape the merely regulative version of self-reference characteristic of the second sphere.52 In other words, the conclusion of these three-sphere’s self-derivation is a form of thought that is self-defining and thus self-sufficient. It is the one form of Thought that is able to unify form and content, U and P, and it is also the one concept that can be an I, the object. This is the formal structure for mediation in its pure form.

Of course, here in the Logic it is still abstract, but eventually this form will be used to remove the veil of abstraction from Thought and reveal the concrete reality of Thought to itself.

This occurs in the absolute context, after the three parts of the Encyclopedia are brought into comparison to form their own disjunctive syllogism, the Absolute Ontological Argument. With these last few points, of course, I get ahead of myself, but that is where things are headed.

Before moving on however, I want to call attention to the way that UPI relations depend on intermodal conflict. Just as we saw with the first two spheres, there is a distinction between what the concepts mean and what role they are playing in their relations to other concepts. There is interplay between concepts as such filling the roles of U and P, and the actual concepts of Universal and

Particular themselves, which are now filling their own titular roles. Once again, these two

52 Ibid., 30-31.

262 perspectives on a concept, its meaning and the role it plays as a content in another concept, are different modes for the concept. That the concept can be instantiated outside of its native mode is the capacity for intermodal variety; a concept is not limited only to its native role when it is the content of another concept. Within the first sphere, the two modes were the negation, or opposite, of one another. For the concept of Being, its meaning was its first mode, and its role in the relation within the sublation was the opposite or negation of that meaning. The theme of the first sphere, simple negation, thus limited concepts to their opposite roles. The negation of that sphere therefore pertains to the intermodal distinction in this way.

In the second sphere, there were two options. The concept of cause, for example, could act as a cause and thus fulfill its native role—its meaning and role could be the same—and it could also act as an effect, and thus fulfill a contradictory role. And in fact, it does both.

In the third sphere, concepts can assume their native roles and also either of the other two roles in the trio. It can be itself, immediately, it can be the other through mediation of the other, or it can be itself again in a third way through self-mediation. The concept of Universal not only fills the role of universal, but so does the concept of Particular, and so does the concept of Individual, and so on, mutatis mutandis.

Intermodal permutations have been in play all along, from the very beginning of the first sphere. This confusion of definition and role cannot be eliminated from the discussion because it is integral to the way the Progression of Thought operates. It is precisely the point at hand. It is fundamental to sublation.

The possibility of intermodal variations is also integral to the logical aspects of the

Progression. Consider the cause-effect relation from the second sphere as an example. The concept of cause is being “caused” to be a cause by the concept of effect, and without the concept of effect the concept of cause could not be a cause at all; it could not play its native role. The concept of

263 cause, therefore, is being mixed up with the nature of its many roles in the derivation process. This possibility, however, is very powerful; it is this feature that allows Thought the capacity to develop and interconnect at all. That there can be confusion between the concept and its role, that the cause as a concept can play the role of the effect, is the reason for the applicability of the rule of intermodal self-negation. Thus, intermodal permutations can lead to intermodal contradictions, and these, in turn, entail the application of intermodal negation. Such negation, in turn, entail a round of sublation. The first two spheres are the premises in the syllogism that negate themselves.

Within the sphere of the Notion, the third sphere, these robust logical properties are fully on display. They are the logical features of the Disjunctive Syllogism in the act of constituting its own objectivity. Self-determined determinacy produces a kind of synthetic a priori product that comes from within Thought. And, as something that is fully immanent and intrinsic, it is self-sufficient.

This is the founding feature of objectivity, which grounds itself in its own inference by its own logical principles without need of anything external.

These have been the general characteristics and theme of the third sphere with a focus on the UPI relations. I now turn to consider the specific elements of this sphere as it proceeds from universals, through the judgments, and finally to the syllogisms.

B. From the Universal to Objectivity

In my ongoing effort to trace the development of the form of sublation from proto- mediator to Disjunctive Syllogism through the first two spheres, I have shown precisely how several logical capacities have been added to the form. Through the first two spheres and the first part of the third, we have seen the stepwise addition of several logical faculties to the form: inchoate mediation, circularity, interpenetration, and various confrontations with intermodal self-negation. In the rest of the third sphere, the remainder of the missing pieces will be developed.

264

Thought’s theme and encapsulating program in the third sphere is unification.53 In the pursuit of this goal, the form of sublation will be developed by Hegel from the UPI relations into judgments and then syllogisms. Each step adds a bit more to the unifying capacity of this form. The process of development does not terminate until unity is achieved. A form of thought must be found that requires no further unification and that does not allow for another application of the rule of intermodal self-negation.54

1. Universals Differentiate Themselves, Point to Judgments

In the sphere of the Notion, Hegel develops the form of sublation from the Universal, through judgments, to syllogisms. As before, each step is driven logically by an intermodal conflict.

Universals, in their meanings, contradict the unity of Thought. For example, the universal Dog, names a class, but there is little a priori information to be had in this universal taken alone, for when it is taken alone, there is no context to add meaning. The Universal itself, therefore, is self-isolating.

This means that universals already possess an intermodal contradiction because there is an internal inconsistency between their meanings, which involve isolation, and their place within the

Progression of Thought, a place that involves connection. Again, the meaning of Universal asserts isolation, but the status of the Universal as part of the whole of Thought entails connectedness. It thus contradicts itself between these two modes: its definition and its status.

Hegel argues that the internal isolation of the U generates the P, and then the I. The U thus has an intrinsic connection with the P and the I, and exploration of these produces new concepts, new stages in the Progression; these are the judgments. As the U unfolds to reveal these internal

53 This is applied still within the Logic’s overall and founding encapsulation of abstraction, which is inherently disunifying—it is after all the “notion as notion” and something “subjective” (EL, 226, §163. GW, Band 20, 179. Titles of this section include these phrases: “Der Begriff als Solcher” and “Der Subjective Begriff” respectively.)—but within this context, the theme of unification is pursued. 54 This final criterion will prove very important to my criticism of Hegel’s system, which I will present at the end of this book.

265 relationships, it accounts for each of the judgments and then drives Thought forward toward the syllogisms. And, with the last syllogism, Thought finally is able to develop its own content internally, independently, in both meaning and status. This, then, brings Thought to the threshold of objectivity. All of this is driven logically by intermodal contradictions encountered with each new form of sublation. This is its most fundamental characteristic.

At another level, not quite as fundamental, we can tell a kind of story about how concepts run into difficulties and, as it were, ‘realize’ problems and then ‘seek’ resolution. As we did, for example, with cause and effect, we will see that the U cannot help but play the role of the P as it defines itself. This pair, in turn, then cannot help but play the role of the I. Yet, these permutations, on a logical analysis, are not driven by the concepts’ desires or inner drives, but by the more fundamental logical functions of conceptual relations.

On Winfield’s account of this development we find a non-logical description of the process.55 Here, the self-differentiation of the U is pursued first through the P. The U then relates to the P as a function of what it is, but there is also a reversal of roles because the P also particularizes the U, and this makes the P into a U. The U, in turn, becomes a genus with two differentia: the P itself; and the U in its contrast to the P. Universality thus entails particularity internally. The U can only be what it is by particularizing itself. At the start, the U can be understood as having undifferentiated unity, but its unity is owed to its determinateness, which in turn is produced by the internal tension between P and U. This is the original derivation of the P.

In a second step, as differentiated, U and P take on the role of I. The resulting unity between

P and U thereby constitutes Individuality. Consequently, Universality entails Particularity and

Individuality. However, this is not a hierarchical determination as in sphere two. All three are equals

55 Winfield, Hegel and the Future, 55, 60-61.Winfield clarifies Hegel’s own descriptions of these developments well, but as I gloss them in the next two paragraphs, I will add a few helpful additions to clarify that this is a logical process.

266 in the third sphere, and as will be revealed in the Disjunctive Syllogism, they are also logically equivalent. Thus, the I is equally a U and a P, and the U is equally a P and an I, and the P is equally a

U and an I. This forms a circle that is “symptomatic of how self-determination and universality go hand in hand.”56 The emphasis should be on the “self” in “self-determined.” That is, Universality contains within itself the circle that delivers to itself a triadic relation between U, P, and I.

This newly arrived instance of the “circular” triad is very special. It involves mutual mediation (each member of the triad is mediator of the other two). This is an additional logical capacity added to the form of sublation by the self-differentiation of the U. Mutual mediation is here the means to independence, which Hegel presents to us later as the original Objectivity.

With the arrival of this triadic and circular self-mediation, the nascent Disjunctive Syllogism is now recognizable. Its logical underpinnings are still hidden from view, and I have been mentioning intermodal conflicts in anticipation of these revelations, but they are becoming less and less hidden. Here, the first hints of independence are arising. This will eventually provide an account of objectivity that is completely internal and that works without presupposition.57 It will thus be a presuppositionless, intrinsic objectivity. In this way, through his program of interconnection, Hegel will deliver on his promise to eliminate presupposition and finitude. That is, objectivity will be derived conceptually from within a system of concepts that has produced itself using only internal resources. The resulting independence will be the defining characteristic of conceptual objectivity.

2. Judgments Differentiate Themselves, Point to Syllogisms

The form, “x is y,” is a proposition and a judgment. Hegel defines judgment in the following way: “. . . the judgment is the connection of the two; the copula expresses that the subject is the

56 Ibid. 57 Ibid.

267 predicate.”58 However, there are several complications to this deceptively simple definition.

Historically, in the German language, a judgment (Urteil) was a giving of a thing to a person, an allotment, literally an “original cut” (ur - Teil); later it was restricted to the legal sense of rendering a favorable judgment for individuals, giving people what was fundamentally/originally theirs; later,

Leibniz was the first to apply the term to the function of a proposition.59 Wolff defined the term as a connection between two concepts,60 a definition which Hegel accepts in part but which he qualifies.61 Hegel accepts these basic principles, but adds to them. The additional descriptions amount to a defense of the old definition together with an alteration suggesting that judgments do not lead unavoidably to the finitude that plagued propositions in the old logic. Judgments divide by nature, but they do not necessarily lead to the limitations of finitude. The problem that is inherent within judgments, disunity, is to be overcome piece-by-piece, through a succession of judgments.

The succession of the forms of judgment increase in terms of the unity they bring to the concept that the judgment by nature divides.62 Judgments are inherently divided by their fundamental form;

“x is y” distinguishes x from y and connects them only in the formula itself. Taken directly and without any further realization of intrinsic connections, this is the recipe for finitude that Hegel rejects. To attain the realization of intrinsic connections, however, he begins by establishing an additional division. Hegel divides judgments into “moments” (universality, particularity, and individuality). This division, however, eventually leads to connection in the final syllogism that unites content with form, the Disjunctive Syllogism. Therefore, like the U itself, which is inherently abstract and isolated by definition from P and I, Hegel sees the judgment as a problem to be solved because the judgment is a separation that isolates the concepts within itself from one another, and

58 WL, 628. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 12, 57-58: “. . . denn das Urtheil ist die Beziehung beyder; die Copula drückt aus daß das Subject das Prädicat ist.” 59 Inwood, 151. 60 Ibid.. 61 WL, 626-630. 62 Inwood, 153.

268 the judgment itself from the rest of Thought. Stating that x is y distinguishes x from y except for the unity afforded by the judgment itself. If this judgment is a U, then it is also general, and thus it is separated from any particular application. These are different aspects of disunity, which is finitude.

Hegel is working to fix this problem. The judgments are originally derived and then follow a series of successive, implied developments from the lowest to the highest judgment. This is pursued on the path to the one form of thought that can heal these rifts. The order of development for the judgments is as follows:63

1. Judgments of Existence (Inherence)/Determinate Being a) The Positive Judgment b) The Negative Judgment c) The Infinite Judgment 2. Judgments of Reflection a) The Singular Judgment b) The Particular Judgment c) The Universal Judgment 3. Judgments of Necessity a) The Categorical Judgment b) The Hypothetical Judgment c) The Disjunctive Judgment 4. Judgments of the Notion/Concept a) The Assertoric Judgment b) The Problematic Judgment b) The Apodictic Judgment

Each new form of judgment resolves a problem of disunity and internal conflict that the previous form left as a remainder. At the end, the judgment takes the form of a rudimentary syllogism. A syllogism mediates and thus unifies elements within judgments. Thus, at the next level of the development, the Syllogism takes up the task of unifying what the Judgment itself has distinguished.

3. Syllogisms Differentiate Themselves, Terminate in the Disjunctive

Like the judgment (Urteil), the term “syllogism” is also complicated historically and etymologically. In German, the term syllogism is imported from the Greek as Syllogismus, but Hegel

63 WL, 623-663. Cf., EL, 230-244, §§166-180.

269 only occasionally uses this term.64 More commonly, Hegel uses the term Schluss, which can be translated into English either as “syllogism” or as “inference.” Leibniz and Wolff used the term

Schluss for the process of inference, though it originally and more literally means “closure” or

“conclusion.”65

Hegel once again accepts tradition while also working modifications. He adds to and colors the definition that was handed down to him. As Inwood points out,66 the Aristotelian focus was on discovering valid ways of deriving one proposition from two other propositions, but Hegel is more concerned with restoring the unity of the concept that the judgments had divided. That is, the judgments separated the concept into the moments of U, P, and I; the syllogisms progressively restore unity by working with these three parts. The first syllogism is thus originally derived from the final, “apodictic” judgment and then follows a series of successive, implied developments from the lowest to the highest syllogism. The final member in the succession is the Disjunctive Syllogism, which finally accomplishes unity.

Hegel sees the syllogism as the restorer of the unity that the judgment had opposed by nature. The judgment divides, but the syllogism unifies. Hegel calls this the truth of both the judgment and the notion (or concept).67 At the start, the syllogism merely posits this unity, and so it retains the problem that the judgments possessed. Hegel works to overcome this problem by deriving the syllogisms one by one to overcome presupposition, but also by working toward a specific syllogism that is able to unify form and content. Through the progression of syllogisms,

Hegel is manipulating judgments’ inherent disunification into a connected form that unifies itself with its content. This leads to independence, which becomes the original Objectivity.

The premises of the syllogisms are each judgments, which means that Hegel’s derivation of

64 Inwood, 136. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., 137. 67 WL, 664.

270 the syllogisms depends on his derivation of the judgments just as the judgments had depended on the breakdown of the Universal. Winfield notes that Hegel thinks—and he agrees with Hegel—that these forms are non-arbitrary.68 This is necessity. The judgments terminate with a minimal, necessary definition of syllogism, which in turn transforms itself, through a series of necessary stages, into the final form of syllogism, the Disjunctive, which is therefore internally derived and necessary.69 The judgments and the syllogisms are derived from the Universal, and each stage is a non-arbitrary form that originates from what came before it. The order of development for the syllogisms is as follows:70

1. Syllogisms of Existence (Inherence)/Determinate Being a) The First Figure of the Syllogism (IPU) b) The Second Figure of the Syllogism (PIU) c) The Third Figure of the Syllogism (IUP) d) The Fourth Figure of the Syllogism (UUU, the Mathematical Syllogism) 2. Syllogisms of Reflection a) The Syllogism of Allness (IPU) b) The Syllogism of Induction (UIP) c) The Syllogism of Analogy (IUP)

3. Syllogisms of Necessity a) The Categorical Syllogism (IPU) b) The Hypothetical Syllogism (UIP) c) The Disjunctive Syllogism (IUP)

Syllogizing puts individuals under universals by means of the particular. It employs mediation of identity in contrast to the judgment that simply asserted identity. By the end of the syllogisms, the mediation is revealed to be self-mediation. This correlates the conclusion of the syllogisms’ development with the conclusion of the path from the sphere of Being, through the sphere of Essence, to the sphere of the Notion. The result of the latter was self-determined determinacy, and the result of the former is syllogistic self-mediation. Self-mediation, in the case of

68 Richard Dien Winfield, From Concept to Objectivity: Thinking Through Hegel’s Subjective Logic (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2006), 109. 69 Ibid. 70 WL, 664-704. Cf., EL, 244-259, §§181-193.

271 the final syllogism, results in a fully-internal and circular self-reference. This resolves a problem that arose at the start of the syllogisms: throughout the circuit of syllogistic forms, the subjective character of syllogizing prevented the unity that is achieved by syllogisms from being fully internal.

Logically, this has been the source of the intermodal contradictions that have continuously arisen within each form of sublation. Beyond this, using the more anthropomorphic style of description, this prevents Thought from ruling out externality. This is a reason for Thought to move forward because Thought is, to Hegel, not only interconnected, but also independent. Winfield sees the last syllogism as finally resolving this problem:

This externality gets removed only through the ultimate form of syllogism, Disjunctive Syllogism, where each term ends up having the same determination. Since this eliminates their subjective extrinsic character, it paves the way for objectivity, whose determinations are completely and thoroughly intrinsic, even if such wholly intrinsically determined objects must immediately confront one another in a completely external way, as constitutive of mechanism.71

This is a great insight. This process is an extended labor of Thought to rid itself of externality; it is like a hard-won achievement. The form that achieves this victory is the Disjunctive Syllogism.

However, Winfield seems to miss the primary consequence of this insight. He thinks that the final syllogism “eliminates the type of mediation constitutive of syllogism.”72 It is true that something has ended at this point—Hegel does move on to objectivity and stops developing the syllogism—but the type of mediation that the ultimate syllogism provides does not end. Instead, it is continuously employed throughout the remainder of the Encyclopedia. Moreover, the transition to the next stage of development is not eliminative in character. Instead of eliminating the form that has been in development for so long, Hegel is here completing the derivation of the logical form of sublation.

Here it is, finally, with its completed, formal structure. Hegel will not leave this form behind.

Winfield describes this momentous point as if it were merely a transition to objectivity. He implies

71 Winfield, Hegel and the Future, 194, n.3. Capitalization added. 72 Winfield, From Concept, 109.

272 that it is a shame that such a great achievement produces objectivities that “must immediately confront one another in a completely external way, . . .”

I agree that it would be a pity to simply turn to face what is next, never to look back, after spending so long in solving this problem of external reference. Instead of an anticlimactic abandonment, therefore, I prefer to interpret Hegel as finishing one project so that he can pursue another. The ultimate syllogism is the means by which he pursues all subsequent development. He is turning next to use his powerful new tool. The initial effort to collect and sharpen his formal logical tool is complete at this point; the construction project can now begin. It is not as important to see the turn from subjectivity to objectivity as it is to see the transition from development to use of a specific logical form.

4. The Disjunctive Syllogism a) The Differences Between the Hegelian and Traditional Descriptions of the Disjunctive Syllogism Are Superficial

One wonders if Hegel is inventing something new when he develops his version of the

Disjunctive Syllogism. Is this the same syllogism that is found in traditional logic? To be sure,

Hegel’s version appears to be somewhat different from the traditional form that is received from antiquity, but such differences may turn out to be superficial. I will argue for this by showing, first, that there has been some variability in the traditional formulations themselves, and second, that

Hegel has good philosophical reasons for the modifications he makes. Plausibly, because these modifications are rooted in original features of all concepts (their interconnectedness and self- reference), Hegel’s modifications may be revelations of the true Disjunctive Syllogism’s underlying features.

Regarding the variability in the original formulations of the Disjunctive Syllogism, I turn now

273 to its first appearance. As it happens, this syllogism was not born fully formed. It began only implicitly in Aristotle’s work and developed to its completed, traditional form over the period of a few centuries. The “original” form, therefore, has been presented in several distinct ways. So, from the start, there was not a single formulation of the syllogism that could be thought of as the one and only Disjunctive Syllogism. Therefore, at the start of its development, Aristotle did not resolve the

Disjunctive Syllogism, strictly speaking. The modus tollendo ponens form was only a subsequent development of Aristotle’s work. Specifically, according to Susanne Bobzien,73 this form of argument began with Aristotle’s logic (Topics and Prior Analytics) but is not explicitly recognizable there, and Aristotle never straightforwardly discussed these arguments in the texts available to us.74

However, the early Peripatetics developed certain elements of Aristotle’s logic and this eventually became the four basic arguments: modus ponendo ponens; modus tollendo tollens; modus ponendo tollens; and modus tollendo ponens.75 Despite the lack of an explicit presence in Aristotle, this form of argument was based on Aristotle’s category of syllogisms “that lead to the impossible.”76 Thus, it could be argued that it was contained within this category implicitly.

Despite its gradual and vaguely Aristotelian beginnings, from the point of Boëthius’ amalgamation and interpretation of Aristotelian and Stoic logic onward, the form of the Disjunctive

Syllogism has been standardized as follows: p or q; not p; therefore q.77 This is the traditional form.

It is a linear, three-part syllogism with two premises and a conclusion. It contains a disjunctive judgment as the major premise and a categorical judgment as the minor premise. Traditionally, the

73 Susanne Bobzien, “The Development of Modus Ponens in Antiquity: From Aristotle to the 2nd Century AD,” Phronesis 47 (2002): 359-394. 74 Ibid., 361. 75 Ibid., 360-361. 76 Ibid., 365. Bobzien cites Aristotle’s An. Pr. 45a23-4, and also points to An. Pr. 61a18ff and 62b29ff, in note 21. 77 Alternatively, p or q; not q; therefore p. Formally, these are identical even though the variable letters are switched.

274 disjunctive premise is written first and sets out only two options,78 then the second premise denies one of the disjuncts listed in the first premise, and then the conclusion follows in the third step. This syllogistic form survives intact through the Renaissance, the simplification of “Classical” logic, and is the form of the Disjunctive Syllogism that Hegel would have received from logicians like Leibniz and Wolff.

Hegel sees great value in Aristotle’s strategy of argument that leads to the impossible.79 It was Aristotle’s original insight, but Hegel makes extensive use of it and expands it further than ever before. Both Hegel’s formulation of the Disjunctive Syllogism and the consistently used rule of inference that vets each premise, what I have called intermodal self-negation, relies on reduction to the impossible. Bobzien finds the root concept of such a reduction in Aristotle:

In [Aristotle’s] reductions to the impossible, the conclusion is not proved through a syllogism, or syllogized, but is concluded from a hypothesis (or concluded or proved through the impossible, An.Pr. 50a29-32, 61a34-5, 62b38-40). It is concluded from a hypothesis because without hypothesizing the contradictory of the demonstrandum, one would never get to the (impossible) conclusion, hence never to the falsehood of the contradictory of the demonstrandum, hence never to the demonstrandum. Thus the demonstrandum is concluded from the hypothesis, viz. by means of an act of supposing.80

A disjunctive syllogism is a form of hypothetical reasoning because it contains a disjunctive judgment as one of its premises. This judgment is uncertain about something, whether one or another option is the case. It knows that A or B is the case, but not which one. This acts as a hypothetical step in the syllogism. The other two steps are categorical; they each assert one simple claim.

Regarding the second part of my argument, that Hegel has good philosophical reasons for the modifications he makes, I will now explain why Hegel makes the other modifications that we see in his descriptions of the syllogism. Hegel approaches the Disjunctive Syllogism as if it were a

78 An extended disjunctive syllogism, however, is not significantly different from a simple one. Such extensions just add options to the disjunctive judgment, as in A or B or C or D, etc., instead of just p or q. We can see how making a group of the disjuncts that are eventually eliminated will reduce such an extended argument to the simple form. 79 Cf., Bochenski, 76. 80 Bobzien, 366.

275 consequentia mirabilis argument that operates by itself on itself. This leads him to modify the form of the syllogism so that it includes a three-way disjunction rather than the standard two-way version: either B or C or D; not C or D; therefore B.81 On my analysis, the cause of this change originates with Hegel’s belief that Thought thinks itself. If this is the form that Thought takes, and if Thought thinks itself, then this leads us to conclude that the Disjunctive Syllogism has itself for its content.

As mentioned earlier, this is also a prerequisite for being a consequentia mirabilis argument.

The decision to make the argument consider itself, among other consequences, has an effect on the argument’s form. Hegel’s form of the argument can be derived from the traditional form in the following way:82

Permutation 1: [The traditional modus tollendo ponens.] a. pvq b. ~p c. q

Permutation 2: [Substituting ~q for p, since the variable is binary.]83 A. ~qvq B. ~q C. q

Permutation 3: [Placing A-C above into a new syllogism.] 1. (~qvq) v (~q) v (q) [These three disjuncts are from Permutation 2 above.] 2. ~(~qvq) [First one, . . . 3. ~(~q) . . . and then the other disjunct is negated.] 4. q [Only one option remains.]

Permutation 4: [Substituting the labels for premises A-C into Permutation 3.] 1. A v B v C 2. ~A 3. ~B 4. C

Permutation 5: [Through equivalence (~A ≡ ~B ≡ C), circularity is permissible.]

81 WL, 702. 82 The following is a brief account of the transformation that I will more fully describe in Chapter IV. See section IV.A.4.a). 83 See discussion below explaining why the middle premise is not ~~q. Another section in Chapter IV, will then further explain this particular issue.

276

~A —— ~B [Circularity implies the disjunctive judgment, replaces it.] \ / C

In Permutation 1, the original form of the syllogism, the premises must be presupposed. In

Permutation 2, ~q is substituted for p and this makes the premises equivalent.84 In Permutation 3,

Hegel has taken the three steps of the traditional argument (A-C) and he has made them the content of the syllogism itself. This is a self-variable as form. Premise 1 of Permutation 3 is a three-way disjunct containing the options from Permutation 2. This self-reference entails the extension of the number of disjuncts. This appears to be the reason for Hegel’s extension to three disjuncts. It is a logical explanation for the form reported by Hegel himself in the Logics.

What is happening here? This is the Disjunctive Syllogism considering itself as its own content; its form contains itself as form. When this self-consideration is worked out, the Disjunctive

Syllogism becomes extended to consider three disjuncts and it can then function as a consequentia mirabilis (because it is an argument that considers itself as its own content).

That Hegel is doing this is indicated by the three-variable form he uses. But, this leaves us to wonder if this is still the same syllogism. Does the Disjunctive Syllogism consider itself implicitly and is the traditional formulation thus over-simplified by a dogmatic presupposition of finitude

(which would keep it from considering itself)? I think that the answer to these questions might be yes, and given Hegel’s beliefs about the unity of all Thought, and the additional belief that Thought must always have itself for its own content, it seems that Hegel must certainly say yes to these questions himself. And, in harmony with Hegel on this point, in my own analysis, it seems at least plausible that the traditional syllogism is just a simplification of what the modus tollendo ponens really is.

84 Note that since premise B is already negated in the original form, it does not need to be negated again in the substitution. This will seem strange at first, but it is another allowance permitted by the variable’s binary status.

277

In that case, Hegel is only recognizing features that the syllogism already has in itself.85

In addition to these points, the traditional presentation of the argument is rigidly linear, but

Hegel’s is not.86 He thinks that this linearity was part of the traditional logic’s problem. The traditional interpretation and expression of this syllogism possesses two judgments that are brought in as “strangers” to the syllogism. Even as variables, the two premises are thus dogmatically asserted and put in place as axioms, presuppositions. Additionally, the Disjunctive form itself is simply intuited and not itself derived. According to Hegel, therefore, the problems that plague traditional logic in general are fully on display with the traditional account of the Disjunctive Syllogism. Hegel’s solution is to derive the premises and the form internally, ancestrally, and thereby to bring them together as “cousins” anchored within the same great family. Each judgment and the form of the syllogism itself are therefore mutually defining. They get their meanings from other areas of

Thought, and when put together they produce an inference about themselves that does not presuppose any aspect of its makeup.

Hegel’s contextual-formal modifications solve the problems of presupposition and finitude for the syllogism in his philosophy, but traditional advocates may think that they wreak havoc on the syllogism’s ordering and linearity making Hegel’s syllogism altogether different. On this point, Hegel answers that it is not him but the traditionalist who has made the changes. That is, according to

Hegel, there is an eternal form that itself is connected to the rest of Thought, and it has itself for its own content. As a consequence of these characteristics, the syllogism itself already possesses the form that Hegel describes. Thus it is the linear, two-variable form that is the modification, not the other way around. Therefore, to Hegel, the traditional expression of the Disjunctive Syllogism

85 Of course, as features are added, the line blurs between the syllogism’s own properties and the properties of its proper context, which, in Hegel’s philosophy, are all interconnected. But, this only means that there is a danger of falling into a semantic dispute. 86 This is seen in Hegel’s own presentation by the fact that he lists the premises in two different orders. He also, later, indicates that each premise is a mediator for the other two. See Winfield, Concept, 126.

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(Permutation 1) is not the true form of that syllogism. The proper form is implicitly circular and self- referential, and Hegel sees himself as simply bringing this into the light (Permutation 5).

b) The Derivation and Retention of Hegel’s Disjunctive Syllogism

Hegel’s derivation of the Disjunctive Syllogism places it at the end of a series of syllogisms divided into classes. His classification scheme is based on the question of external references made implicitly by concepts at each stage. All of the forms of Thought up to this point have contents, objects, but Thought has not yet accounted for their source internally, and this lack involves intermodal conflicts. Each new round of sublation addresses a specific intermodal conflict. In the

Sphere of Being, objects were determined by negation. In the Sphere of Essence, objects were determined by another. Here, in the final sphere, objects of Thought are expected to be unified with their concepts through mediated self-determination and this is the goal up to the climax point of the

Logics. In the wider context, the goal is unification that avoids the intermodal conflicts that cause finitude and presupposition. The objects or contents of the syllogism must not come from outside of it, they must come from within. The abstraction that is thematic of the Logic is gradually being replaced with unity one small step at a time.

The Disjunctive Syllogism itself is derived within the larger category of the Syllogism of

Necessity. This category of syllogism unites the I with the P by means of the U, which is not unique to this kind of syllogism, but the difference here is that this U is not indifferent to the particularity that gives the I its constitution.87 That is, individuals that sit under that universal “are necessarily, objectively bound to the particular inherent in the genus [which is here universal].”88 This is why it is the Syllogism of Necessity.

Hegel describes this category of syllogism as one in which the universal has an objective

87 Winfield, Concept, 122. 88 Ibid.

279 quality. In these syllogisms, “universality . . . contains the entire determinateness of the distinguished extremes like the allness of the syllogism of reflection, a fulfilled yet simple universality—the universal nature of the fact, the genus.”89 This means that this special kind of universality has taken on a larger scope, encompassing completely the extremes which it mediates. By doing this, the intrinsicality of the form begins to take shape. Thus, the Syllogism of Necessity is what it is because:

. . . its middle term is not some alien immediate content, but the reflection-into-self of the determinateness of the extremes. These possess in the middle term their inner identity, the determinations of whose content are the form determinations of the extremes.90

Put simply, the syllogism has finally begun to account for its parts without external reference.

The final syllogism in this category is the Disjunctive. Hegel presents this syllogism with two different formulas:

A is either B or C or D, But A is B, Therefore A is neither C nor D.91

A is either B or C or D, But A is neither C nor D, Therefore A is B.92

The two formulas differ in the order of the second and third premises. Thus, the syllogism is either

1-2-3 or 1-3-2.

Those who deny that Hegel’s “dialectic” logic is logical, in the traditional sense of the term, see this variation of order as confirmation of their belief. Winfield, for example, is adamant that this syllogism cannot be reduced to its formal scheme.93 This is apparently his explanation for the variation in the order of the premises. He is not explicit on this point, but his reasoning seems to be that, if the form can be this or that, then form does not matter. Since form does matter to deductive

89 WL, 695. 90 Ibid., 695-696. 91 WL, 701. GW, Band 12, 124: “A ist entweder B oder C oder D/ A ist aber B/ Also ist A nicht C noch D.” NB: forward slashes have been added in this quotation to indicate carriage returns. 92 Ibid., 702. GW, Band 12, 124: “A ist entweder B oder C oder D/ A ist aber nicht C noch D/ Also ist es B.” NB: forward slashes have been added in this quotation to indicate carriage returns. 93 Winfield, Concept, 126.

280 logic, it must not matter to Hegel because he is not pursuing deductive logic.

In contrast to this reading, it seems rather that Hegel is giving two routes through the syllogism in order to show that it is a circular structure in itself. As Winfield himself points out, this syllogism allows each of its premises to stand in as mediator to the other two.94 This amounts to the claim that, from the first premise, the mind can proceed next to either of the other two premises before finishing the syllogism with the last remaining premise. By giving us two forms to consider,

Hegel is introducing us to this new feature. Despite the two forms given in his own presentation,

Hegel refers to it as a single syllogism, so the reader is meant to confront a choice, to realize that the order is either unimportant (Winfield), or that one and the same syllogism can have both orders.

Hegel’s intention is that we will see that this syllogism has the capacity to work in a new way as compared to past syllogisms. It is circular.

This might at first seem to eliminate order all together since it appears that all of the important features of linear order are now missing. But, one important feature of ordering remains: middle-ness. The question now, given the circular form, is this: which judgment occupies the middle or mediating position? There are of course three ways to fill the middle position, with premise 1, 2, or 3. Hegel’s insight is that, in the original Disjunctive Syllogism itself, all three premises occupy that position. The three premises each occupy the middle position in three different sub-forms. The

Disjunctive Syllogism, therefore, is a superposition of these forms. This is not to be understood as a succession, not even in the sense of non-temporal “logical” order. Multiple perspectives can be taken on the syllogism that begin with one specific premise and place another in the middle position, and there are three such perspectives, but no single perspective is privileged or absolute. Just as the legs of a table or chair share their load, with none coming first or going last, just so do the three premises of the Disjunctive Syllogism share middle-ness even if a finite mind can only conceive of this

94 Ibid.

281 structure in three moments.

There is neither temporal nor logical preference. Each of the premises is equally the mediator and the mediated. And, it is this single property, which depends on circularity, that consummates95 the syllogism; it dissolves that by which the distinction between extreme and middle terms was made. Thus, “the distinction of mediating and mediated has disappeared.”96 It is for this reason that the Disjunctive Syllogism “is equally no longer a syllogism at all. For the middle term, which is posited in it as the totality of the Notion, contains itself the two extremes . . .”97

Winfield acknowledges this in part. He notes that, in the Disjunctive Syllogism, “what mediates can no longer be distinguished from what is mediated.”98 However, he views this as a way to move past the syllogism to objectivity, leaving syllogism behind. In my opinion, however, the destruction of the syllogistic form is not implied by Hegel, not here and not anywhere. The key word in the quotation from the Science of Logic above is “equally,” which the translators felt was implied.

This syllogism is equally a syllogism and no longer a syllogism. There must then be a sense in which it is a syllogism and a different sense in which it is not. I interpret this to mean that it is still a syllogism in terms of its form (preserved), and it is no longer a syllogism in terms of its subjectivity (canceled).

It is now an objective syllogism. That is, it is no longer a one-sided concept, but it is an independent concept that produces itself from internal resources. This is the defining characteristic of objectivity to Hegel, so it is no longer “just” a syllogism. Yet, it still is a syllogism in every other respect. This means that it has not stopped being a syllogism just because it has also become objectivity. It would be very uncharacteristic of Hegel to abandon the syllogism at this point, because he views the

95 WL, 703. GW, Band 12, 125: “Vollendung.” 96 WL, 703. GW, Band 12, 125: “In der Vollendung des Schlusses dagegen, worin die objective Allgemeinheit ebensosehr als Totalität der Formbestimmungen gesetzt ist, ist der Unterschied des Vermittelnden und Vermittelten weggefallen.” 97 Ibid., 702. GW, Band 12, 124: “. . . der aus diesem Grunde ebensosehr kein Schluß mehr ist. Die Mitte, welche in ihm als die Totalität des Begriffes gestetzt ist, enthält nemlich selbst die beyden Extreme in ihrer vollständigen Bestimmtheit.” 98 Winfield, Concept, 126.

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Progression as being intrinsically inclusive and therefore progressively additive. Also, because he sees syllogisms in everything whatsoever including the structures of nature99 and in the development of mind,100 and because he later calls his entire system a syllogism (and seems to mean it straightforwardly), it would be odd at this point to scrap the most important and most powerful syllogism, his preeminent tool and most developed form of sublation. Instead, Hegel intends to move to objectivity by viewing objectivity as a disjunctive syllogism. The original form of objectivity is the

Disjunctive Syllogism, and objectivities are composed of syllogisms. This understanding of objectivity, and of objects, is retained throughout the rest of the Encyclopedia.

My Logical-Metaphysical interpretation of Hegel allows for the retention of the formal syllogism beyond this point. Formality without presupposition or finitude is painstakingly developed by Hegel in approximately 1500 pages of preparatory material, then it is put to use. This makes perfect sense. It does not make sense, however, to think of Hegel doing all that work just to scrap the syllogism as soon as he has perfected it. The formality of objectivity is important to Hegel’s understanding of it and it must be retained because formality delivers the deductive strength of

Hegel’s final conclusions about ontology. c) Is the Disjunctive Syllogism Inherently Modal?

For Hegel, modality is an implicit aspect of both the Disjunctive Syllogism and its earlier proto-syllogistic variants.101 Within each of the stages of its development, or revelation, this triadic form is given modal features by Hegel in his descriptions. However, it takes some practice to be able to see the signs of these modal modifiers.

They are most obvious in the second premises because there is a modal operator internal to

99 EN. The entire volume is composed of explorations of syllogistic patterns, which in that place are seen as varieties of UPI relations. This is the recognition that the logical structures derived abstractly are also evident throughout the natural world. 100 EM, 20, §385. Notice in this section that there are three stages of the development and the way that each stage parallels the development of the spheres of Being, Essence, and Notion respectively, as well as the three stages/volumes of the Encyclopedia. 101 Shapes of consciousness and sublation.

283 its formulation that cannot easily be hidden by its verbal descriptions. The character of second premises generally is that they are in some way affixed with doubt or uncertainty of some kind. In comparison, despite being otherwise obscure, the modal character of the first and third premises becomes evident when the three stages are associated together. Altogether, as was seen in Chapter I,

Hegel consistently and repeatedly describes these stages as, first, claiming the necessity of the disunity of concept and object (premise 1), second, claiming uncertainty about that unity (premise 2), and third, demonstrating necessity about that unity (premise 3).

These modalities are consistently applied as modifiers to the premises of Hegel’s disjunctive syllogism in the following way:

1. necessarily not unity 2. possibly unity and possibly not unity. 3. necessarily unity.

The first and second are negated by the third. This produces the finalized form, which I now give with the standard contemporary formalism; the variable stands for the unity of concept and object:

1. ~□~x 2. ~(◇x • ◇~x) 3. □x

These modalities are added by Hegel, but they are also (arguably) already part of disjunctive syllogisms in general. We add little to the traditional syllogism (in itself) if we add modality:

Non-Modal Version: Either A or B; not B; therefore A.

Modal Version: Possibly, either A or B; necessarily not B; therefore necessarily A.

Does the modal version of the syllogism assert something that the non-modal version does not? Or, to put that another way, does the modal version say anything that was not already implicit in the non-modal version? Excepting issues of context, the answer is no. Hegel seems to draw the conclusion that modality is already implicit within the Disjunctive Syllogism itself. This is not

284 expressed in so many words, but the intuition Hegel has about his argument’s validity requires the absolute system of modal logic in order to be proved valid (as I will show in Chapter IV). As others have noted about a contemporary version of the argument, it is probably already modal.102

I will now attempt to analyze Hegel’s implicit conclusion that the syllogism possesses in itself all of the logical qualities that he sees within it and upon which he relies. To begin, I understand this issue through an appreciation of the different levels or strengths of necessity that are distinguished in various modal systems.

Limited logics operate within limited contexts, and the resulting necessities involved are correspondingly limited. There are thus strong and weak necessities relating to strong and weak logics, respectively. What is the context of the Disjunctive Syllogism itself? We have two accounts to consider: the modal and the propositional. The original version of the syllogism either does not specify its modal environment, or it is intentionally kept general and open to any environment; it is thus meant to be the Disjunctive Syllogism in itself. In this case, even if the syllogism turns out to be inherently modal, we might say that the isolated form of the traditional syllogism is agnostic about its context because it does not specify its own scope, nor does it give preference to any context. Yet, the logicians who formulated it in this way could also be naive; they could be ignorant of the idea that all concepts are necessarily connected. Such connections must involve a widening of the context. This entails the logical properties that Hegel sees in the syllogism. So, I think Hegel would consider the non-modal disjunctive syllogism to be a simplification, something like the thesis- antithesis-synthesis simplification given to us by Chalybäus. It is simply naive or agnostic about context due to the absence of this aspect in a particular presentation; its implicit modality can remain undeclared until such characteristics come into question.

A truth claim is similarly distinguished. A proposition can be true in different ways, in

102 Damschen, “Ultimately Founded,” 165. See also, Hösle, Objective Idealism, 25ff.

285 contexts that are more or less limited. But, when we say that something is true, we tend to mean that it is simply true. The default context or scope of a truth claim is thus absolute unless challenged. We would then have to be more careful in expressing ourselves if we wished to speak of a proposition that was true only in a limited sense. It is true that one plus one equals two. But, if pressed, we might also say that it is not true only in this context, but it is true in every possible world. The Disjunctive

Syllogism in its traditional form is like the former, Hegel’s form is like the latter.

It seems that our expectations, the default understanding, for modalities runs in the opposite direction. We assume that we are not dealing with the absolute context until we are explicitly told so.

This is merely a convention, however, and that is a consequential fact here. So, if a syllogism can deliver a “necessary” truth in either a weak or a strong context, in a system of modal logic that is restricted or unrestricted, in order to communicate what the logician or metaphysician intends, the modal context should be declared. If it is not declared, or if modality is omitted entirely, as it is in propositional logic, then the conclusion is simply assumed to be weaker. This means that, if one wants to deduce an absolute truth, without any limitations whatsoever, then one needs to make context, and thus a particular modal environment, explicit in order to express this.

Yet, the Disjunctive Syllogism itself does not express anything by itself. So, we have to divorce the concerns we have about conventional matters from the present question. The concern we have here, whether or not this syllogism is inherently modal, is about the syllogism itself, apart from the dates of its invention or the various formulations that are affixed to it.

On this purified question, however, we have a remaining complication. As I had said above, if Hegel is correct that all concepts are interconnected, then the lines are blurry between the

Disjunctive Syllogism and its modal context. This means that there may not be a clear-cut answer to this question. In that case, the drawing of lines between form and context is not as important. It would be enough for Hegel to show that the syllogism is natively modal, and that removal of modal

286 concerns results in a finitude, an isolation from that native context.

It follows that, if that context is absolute, then the resulting necessity is absolute as well. The strongest103 modal system in this regard is today called S5 modal logic. It might also be called absolute modal logic if we wish to include Hegel in our discussion, since he did not have access to the contemporary terminology. An absolute context, the one specified by S5, enjoys universal accessibility (something that the interconnectivity of Hegel’s Progression of Thought delivers).

Therefore, the necessity that an absolute modal argument is meant to deliver is absolute because there is nothing else beyond the “worlds” it is used to analyze. A necessary truth in S5, is true in every possible world whatsoever, and from this comes its suspicious ontological reach.104 But, a necessary truth in a weaker logic cannot make this claim because proofs in weaker logics lack accessibility to all possible worlds.

Hegel might not have been able to communicate the subtleties between weaker modal logics and stronger ones as precisely as logicians do today—he certainly would not have been able to use contemporary terminology sufficient to distinguish the various systems in use today . . . K, T, S4, S5,

S, S13, etc.—but he did distinguish between necessity in a limited context and necessity in an unlimited context. He makes these distinctions in the Logics and Encyclopedia respectively. That is, in the Logics, taken in isolation, he delivers necessity in a limited context; it is limited to the program of

103 Strength may be a thorny term to use here. Some logicians do not consider S5 to be a strong logic. However, in the present context, I think it is legitimate to use this term to refer to a system’s degree of accessibility in isolation from any other consideration. 104 Timothy Williamson, Modal Logic as Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013), 2, 391-397. Though he argues against what he calls “necessitism” (the thesis that what is, is necessarily, the alternative thesis is “contingentism”), Williamson gives us some clues that Hegel’s approach may have some ability in the contemporary context to support this thesis. I read Hegel as proposing a form of necessitism based on the belief that he has met the holistic condition. Williamson argues against necessitism as well as the implication that modal logic can reach necessary ontological conclusions. His argument, however, contains a weakness that he admits subtly (397). When considering the necessity of a truthmaker for every proposition (Necessitism), it is sometimes argued that “several things collectively make A true.” He had earlier (395) linked this to the universal accessibility enjoyed by the S5 system and the consideration of the totality of all possible worlds. Yet, in such a case, Williamson can only offer a potential rebuttal. He says that this “may make no difference” and that problems persist for necessitism only “given the contingency of truth.” Such caveats are too much, it seems to me. It appears that Williamson’s case is not able to overcome Hegel’s modal ontological argument for the absolute truthmaker because it plausibly delivers all possible worlds.

287 abstraction, and we might say, to a sub-set of worlds. The necessity of the contents of the Logic, therefore, is viewed by Hegel as non-absolute. The necessity of the conclusion of the entire

Encyclopedia, in contrast, the largest-possible modal disjunctive syllogism, is viewed by Hegel as absolute. That argument’s necessity, therefore, must be absolute and without limitation. All corresponding principles of modal logic would then apply to this syllogism.

Given all of this, the present question, whether the Disjunctive Syllogism is modal in itself, depends on which context is the “real” context for that syllogism. Is the proper context the original derivation at the middle point of the sphere of the Notion within the Logic? If so, then that syllogism is arguably not inherently modal. Alternatively, we might consider the context described at the end of the Encyclopedia, the place where the entire structure is finally revealed. If this alternative is correct, then the syllogism must be inherently modal. Yet, if there is a progressive revelation of what this form of thought really is, if we do not stop until the end, then we must go to the point of its greatest revelation to see what it is inherently, and that point is of course the absolute standpoint. It is there that we see the syllogism fully unveiled.

To decide which option Hegel has chosen, we need only look to the consistent use of modal operators throughout the Logic. Even in its nascent form, the three parts of the proto-disjunctive- syllogism are described consistently with the same modal characteristics: necessarily not; possibly; necessarily. Thus, if the only alternative to seeing this syllogism as inherently modal is to limit it to its point of original derivation in the Logics (and because even there it has modal features), I think that we must conclude that the argument is intended by Hegel to be seen as inherently modal. To this textual evidence I turn next. d) Did Hegel Intend to Give Us a Modal Argument?

Providing an answer to this question requires a resumption of the textual analysis that was paused at the close of my first chapter. I now resume this analysis as a way of augmenting the

288 current effort to explain Hegel’s development and description of the Disjunctive Syllogism.

I have concluded that Hegel did intend to argue modally. I reach this conclusion for two reasons. First, he affixes modal modifications to his three stages with great consistency. Second, these modal operators in these specific locations are essential to the validity of Hegel’s ultimate argument. I address the former reason in the remainder of this section, but the latter reason will be addressed in my final chapter.

Modality is most obvious when doubt is expressed; this can be interpreted as possibility.

When dubitability is seen in the same stage of multiple instances of the same form of argument, of an argument that is supposed to take a logical form, then a modal operator is thereby indicated. In this context, consistent verbal clues are very meaningful. This applies, however, only to the second of the three premises in Hegel’s argument. The other two premises, I have claimed, are modified with the modal operator of necessity, but this is less obvious. Consequently, in most cases, the modality of first and third premises must be understood from weaker textual evidence. It is rare for this evidence to be given directly, as it was seen earlier within the VBDG, but there are instances.

The key to seeing this evidence is thus found in Hegel’s consistency. Detecting these consistently placed clues is the focus in the following texts. I break this search into two groups: the necessity operator of stages 1 and 3; and the possibility operator of stage 2.

(a) Texts on Necessity in the First and Third Stages: Presupposed and Earned, Respectively.

Texts 4.1 - EL, §§26, 28, 80, 213, and 236; EM, §§573 and 574 [Texts on Necessity in the First and Third Stages] • Stage 1 [Presupposed Certainty]

[§26]The first of these attitudes of thought is seen in the method which has no doubts . . . . [§28]This metaphysical system took the laws and forms of thought to be the fundamental laws and forms of things. It assumed that to think a thing was the means of finding its very self and nature: and to that extent it occupied higher ground than the Critical Philosophy which succeeded it. . . . It was the general assumption of this metaphysic that a knowledge of

289

the Absolute was gained by assigning predicates to it.105

This passage refers to the pre-critical and pre-modern philosophies such as the ancient

Greeks and the Scholastics. It shows that this historical attitude involves the presupposition of access to truth, which was an unjustified certainty. These presupposed concepts are not just assumed to be true, but are assumed also to be disconnected from one another and to be merely subjective.

This historical attitude has a logical analog:

Thought, as Understanding, sticks to fixity of characters and their distinctness from one another: every such limited abstract it treats as having a subsistence and being of its own.106

This is the first page of Hegel’s development of the Logic, a place where he introduces its three major encapsulating programs: the abstract; the dialectical (negative); and the speculative (positive).

In the passage just above, Hegel is fleshing out the first of these stages. The relevant point to notice is the phrase “treats as,” which indicates that this stage is a characterization of all of Thought.

Historically, this is an attitude that colors Thought in a way that separates concepts from one another. Logically, as Hegel is here beginning to show his readers, it is a conceptual modifier that casts all Thought within a specific mold. This will be the Doctrine of Being. This is the place in the

Logic where Thought is cast “[i]n its immediacy: the notion implicit and in germ.”107 In this place, the Doctrine of Being, “Being is the notion implicit only: its special forms have the predicate ‘is’; . .

.”108 Hegel indicates here that this brazen use of the copula itself is logically problematic. It reveals that this encapsulating program distinguishes the parts of Thought from one another as a subject

105 EL, 47-48, §26, 28. GW, Band 20, [§26] 69: “Die erste Stellung ist das unbefangene Verfahren, welches noch ohne das Bewußtseyn des Gegensatzes des Denkens in und gegen sich den Glauben enthält, daß durch das Nachdenken die Wahrheit erkannt, das, was die Objecte wahrhaft sind, vor das Bewußtseyn gebracht werde.” [§28] 70: “Diese Wissenschaft betrachtete die Denkbestimmungen als die Grundbestimmungen der Dinge; sie stand durch diese Voraussetzung, daß das, was ist, damit daß es gedacht wird, and sich erkannt werde, höher als das spätere kritische Philosophiren. . . . Jene Metaphysik setzte überhaupt voraus, daß die Erkenntniß des Absoluten in der Weise geschehen könne, daß ihm Prädicate beigelegt werden, . . .” 106 EL, 113, §80. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 118: “Das Denken als Verstand bleibt bei der festen Bestimmtheit und der Unterschiedenheit derselben gegen andere stehen; ein solches beschränktes Abstractes gilt ihm als für sich bestehend und seyend.” 107 EL, 121, §83. GW, Band 20, 120: “. . . In seiner Unmittelbarkeit, — dem Begriffe an sich.” 108 EL, 123, §84. GW, Band 20, 121: “Das Seyn ist der Begriff nur an sich, die Bestimmungen desselben sind seyende, . . .”

290 from its predicate. The copula shows that Thought is incoherently making connections on the basis of separation, but this is an unearned necessity.

Hegel is describing a simple judgment, a proposition. Yet, there is an associated modal circumstance that relates directly to the scope, or application, of the judgment. The scope of the proposition determines its modal status. Consider the general proposition “x is y.” The copula, “is,” makes a claim. The strength of this claim need not be as strong as to invoke a “necessarily,” but it is nonetheless a claim to certainty within its context. The modal modifier in question is invoked by the logical system in which the formula has meaning. If “x is y” is applied within a limited logical system only, then the necessity related to it is also limited to the same extent. As the limits to the logical system are reduced, as we approach the absolute context, the strength of the certainty involved with the conclusions of the formula increase. At the extreme, where the scope is absolute, the necessity of conclusions is likewise absolute. The copula carries the connotation of necessity, but this necessity comes in degrees according to the scope of the proposition.

This distinction can be applied to Hegel’s appraisal of early, “dogmatic” logicians as compared to himself. As evidenced minimally by Anselm’s understanding of his own ontological argument which reached even to the existence of God, evidence which Hegel repeatedly references as the epitome of this stage, the first attitude had aspirations of absolute scope for its propositions and for the systems of logic and metaphysics that were produced. Its necessities were intended to be robust enough to reach absolute status. In addition to undertaking to deduce the existence of God, the widest possible scope, Hegel says that they took their judgments to be “the fundamental laws and forms of things.” Therefore, Hegel concludes that the scope they intended to reach with their logic was absolute and the resulting necessity, whether implied or expressed, was also unavoidably absolute and therefore the widest possible necessity is the implication. Though this hindsight and broad accusation misses the great subtleties in play with Scholastic modal logic, this seems to be the

291 essence of Hegel’s critique.

Yet, for those who appreciate the great subtleties and advancements of Scholastic logicians such as Ockham, we must not also miss the subtlety of Hegel’s insights. For, the tendency may be to take sides and overlook the accomplishments of one or the other. And, that is precisely the point being made here. As shown in Chapter II, Hegel is not abandoning advances in modal logic that had come before him; he was likely aware of much more than is recognized. And yet despite this, he is in agreement with the condemnation of Scholasticism that is common in his own time. The difference is that Hegel has arguably earned the right to level the criticism of dogmatism, unlike his contemporaries, because he has understood what has already been accomplished in the field of modal logic, he has worked to redeem much of it from specific problems, and he has done so in full awareness of the implications of the critical philosophy. For these reasons, we need not lump

Hegel’s criticisms in with the rest who throw babies out with bathwater where Scholastic logic is concerned. Hegel means to earn his necessity by removing presuppositions and finitude from his own system of logic.

• Stage 3 [Earned Certainty]

The Idea is truth in itself and for itself—the absolute unity of the notion and objectivity. Its ‘ideal’ content is nothing but the notion in its detailed terms: its ‘real’ content is only the exhibition which the notion gives itself in the form of the external existence, while yet, by enclosing this shape in its ideality, it keeps it in its power, and so keeps itself in it.109

The terms “truth” and “absolute” here strongly indicate Hegel’s intention to communicate the Idea’s necessity, and this in its broadest, or absolute, scope. Yet, while the “Idea itself is not to be taken as an idea of something or other, . . .” or “treated as a mere logical form,”110 it is

109 EL, 274-275, §213. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 215: “Die Idee ist das Wahre and und für sich, die absolute Einheit des Begriffs und der Objectivität. Ihr Ideeller Inhalt ist kein anderer als der Begriff in seinen Bestimmungen; ihr reeller Inhalt ist nur seine Darstellung, die er sich in der Form äußerlichen Daseyns gibt und diese Gestalt in seiner Idealität eingeschlossen, in seiner Macht, so sich in ihr erhält.” 110 EL, 275, §213. GW, Band 20, 215-216: “Die Idee selbst ist nicht zu nehmen als eine Idee von irgend Etwas, ...... für ein blos formelles logisches genommen.”

292 nonetheless enclosed in its ideality (in seiner Idealität eingeschlossen), which is to say, encapsulated in abstractness, which means that Hegel’s Logics are properly treating it as an abstraction by some right that he has earned. He notes however that Thought does this for itself. It encloses this shape in its ideality by its own power; it “keeps itself in it.” Hegel believes that he is merely recognizing that this is being done by Thought, and so he does not presuppose it.

In the context of the Logic, despite the fact that the words “truth” and “absolute” are used prematurely, Hegel acknowledges in the same paragraph that there is still a container within which the Idea is being held. He sees the absolute character of the thing contained, but he also sees the container that prevents the absolute from taking its native context. A little later he writes:

The Idea, as unity of the Subjective and Objective Idea, is the notion of the Idea—a notion whose object (Gegenstand) is the Idea as such, and for which the Objective (Objekt) is Idea— an Object which embraces all characteristics in its unity. This unity is consequently the absolute and all truth, the Idea which thinks itself—and here at least as a thinking or Logical Idea.111

Hegel here describes his understanding of the Logic’s perspective, its encapsulating program. It is the notion of the Idea. It is Thought’s consideration of itself as if it were only a mere abstraction.

The Idea is absolute, but it can also cast itself as if it were limited. This is the abstractive program that produces the Logic (the Notion) out of the Idea. The Idea is here being cast under the encapsulating program of “Logical Idea.” This is happening only in the Logic, however, only “here at least” (zwar hier als . . .) Despite the penultimate character of this revelation, however, the connotation of earned necessity comes through powerfully.

Philosophy thus characterizes itself as a cognition of the necessity in the content of the absolute picture-idea, as also of the necessity in the two forms—on the one hand, immediate vision and its poetry, and the objective and external revelation presupposed by representation—on the other hand, first the subjective retreat inwards, then the subjective movement of faith and its final identification with the presupposed object. This cognition is thus the recognition of this content and its form; it is the liberation from the one-sidedness of

111 EL, 292, §236. GW, Band 20, 228: “Die Idee als Einheit der subjectiven und der objectiven Idee ist der Begriff der Idee, dem die Idee als solche der Gegenstand, dem das Object sie ist; — ein Object, in welches alle Bestimmungen zusammengegangen sind. Diese Einheit ist hiemit die absolute und alle Wahrheit, die sich selbst denkende Idee, und zwar hier als dekende, als logische Idee.”

293

the forms, elevation of them into the absolute form, which determines itself to content, remains identical with it, and is in that the cognition of that essential and actual necessity.112

In the third stage, being given here as the ultimate third stage, the connection with absolute necessity is much more explicit than it was in the Logics. Here, Thought has removed its encapsulating programs and expresses itself as it is, as the “self-thinking Idea, the truth aware of itself . . . the logical system, but with the signification that it is universality approved and certified in concrete content as in its actuality.”113 It is the “recognition” of the identity of form and content, which is

“essential and actual necessity.” Hegel uses the following terms to describe this third stage: necessity; actuality; essential; absolute; [not] one-sided; self-determined; identical with content. And in §574, it is further described as: self-thinking idea; truth aware of itself; the logical system (stage 1) that is universality approved, certified, actual; the logical system that is now cast as a spirit principle; the logical system taken out of its presupposing judgment; it is not only implicit; and it has risen into its pure principle, which is its proper medium. Thus, it is not only necessary, but necessary without limitation in its absolute context. Therefore the necessity that Hegel has in mind is that which is applicable within the strongest logical system, the one with unlimited accessibility, as we might say today, to all possible worlds.

Necessity is much more noticeable at the end of the Encyclopedia than at the beginning. Yet, given the context that comes from seeing these volumes as one piece, it is hard to interpret Hegel as not consistently and intentionally invoking necessity for the first and third stages. These modal concepts apply to and thus characterize only the stages’ encapsulating programs and they act as

112 EM, 302, §573. Hegel Werke, Band 10, 377-378 (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970): “Die Philosophie bestimmt sich hiernach zu einem Erkennen von der Notwendigkeit des Inhalts der absoluten Vorstellung sowie von der Notwendigkeit der beiden Formen, einerseits der unmittelbaren Anschauung und ihrer Poesie und der voraussetzenden Vorstellung, der objektiven und äußerlichen Offenbarung, andererseits zuerst des subjektiven Insichgehens, dann der subjektiven Hinbewegung und des Identifizierens des Glaubens mit der Voraussetzung. Dies Erkennen ist so das Anerkennen dieses Inhalts und seiner Form und die Befreiung von der Einseitigkeit der Formen und Erhebung derselben in die absolute Form, die sich selbst zum Inhalte bestimmt und identisch mit ihm bleibt und darin das Erkennen jener an und für sich seienden Notwendigkeit ist.” 113 EM, 313, §574. Hegel Werke, Band 10, 392 (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970): “. . . die sich denkende Idee, die wissende Wahrheit . . . das Logische mit der Bedeutung, daß es die im konkreten Inhalte als in seiner Wirklichkeit bewährte Allgemeinheit ist.”

294 modal operators on the premises to which they are affixed. The historical forms are:

1. Necessarily it is not the case that concept and object are unified/ (□~x) 3. Necessarily it is the case that concept and object are unified. (□x) The first is, as expected, brought into harmony with the third through its negation, and so it becomes: ~(□~x).

(b) Texts on Possibility in the Second Stage:

Text 4.2 - EL, §112 [Modal Possibility in the Second Stage]

The terms in Essence are always mere pairs of correlatives, and not yet absolutely reflected in themselves: hence in essence the actual unity of the notion is not realized, but only postulated by reflection.114

This text is a good introduction and representative of second stages generally because of what it announces and because of the characteristics it describes. Hegel introduces the doctrine of essence in this section, at the start of chapter eight. One of the first things that he says of essence, of this second theory of Thought, which is the second stage of Logic, is that they are “not realized,” but are instead “only postulated.” Full realization is anticipated in the third stage, but the second stage has not yet reached as far as that. For this stage, the attitude brought to the notion is one of possibility; its conclusions are merely hypothetical. The modal operator being described here, possibility, is one that characterizes the entire doctrine of essence, which is the second theory of

Thought mentioned in §83.

Text 4.3 - EL, §139 [Modal Possibility in the Second Stage]

. . . the notion is at first only an inward, and for that very reason is something external to

114 EL, 162, §112. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 143: “Das Wesen ist der Begriff als gesetzter Begriff, die Bestimmungen sind im Wesen nur relative, noch nicht als schlechthin in sich reflectirt; darum ist der Begriff noch nicht als Fürsich.”

295

Being, a [merely] subjective thinking and being, devoid of truth. In Nature as well as in Mind, so long as the notion, design, or law are at first the inner capacity, mere possibilities, they are first only an external, inorganic nature, the knowledge of a third person, alien force, and the like.115

Hegel’s doctrine of essence continues to be the context here. The modal character of the members of this second attitude is that they are “mere possibilities.” The quotation also links the second attitude directly and explicitly to the second volume of the Encyclopedia, the Philosophy of

Nature. Of course, the third volume is also roped in, but only because the latter volumes both have something in common for this context. Yet, with the phrase, “they are first only . . . ,” the reference seems to be limited to Nature. This takes us beyond the textual scope of the present analysis, but for a brief glimpse outside of the Logics, this passage seems to mean that Nature is what the Notion is in the second phase (which applies most prominently to the second volume of the Encyclopedia, but which also resembles the character of second stages at all levels of the system). For that wider, inter- volume contrast, it has moved beyond the first phase (Logic) in which the Notion was only “an inward,” to the second, in which the Notion has become “an external,” an “alien force,” something with potential, held in suspense (Contingency). What is held in suspense is the way that Thought might have sway over objects. “. . . [T]he Idea of Nature, when parceled out in detail, is dissipated into contingencies.”116 This is the way that the second attitude comes to the objects and forces of nature. This entire attitude, therefore, is characterized by doubt, suspense, uncertainty, contingency .

. . possibility. This then becomes a modal operator when the second attitude becomes a premise.

Text 4.4 - EL, §81 [Two Views on the Second Stage; Its Negation]

It is customary to treat Dialectic as an adventitious art, which for very wantonness introduces confusion and a mere semblance of contradiction into definite notions. . . .

115 EL, 197, §140. Bold text and bracketed words added. GW, Band 20, 163: “. . . der Begriff nur erst das Innre, ist er ein demselben Aeußeres, — ein subjectives, wahrheitsloses Seyn wie Denken. — An der Natur, so wie am Geiste, in sofern der Begriff, Zweck, Gesetz nur erst innere Anlagen, reine Möglichkeiten sind, sind sie nur erst eine äußerliche unorganische Natur, Wissenschaft eines Dritten, fremde Gewalt u.s.f. — . . .” 116 EL, 21-22, §16. GW, Band 20, 58: “. . . die Idee der Natur in ihrer Vereinzelung in Zufälligkeiten, . . .”

296

Often, indeed, Dialectic is nothing more than a subjective seesaw of arguments pro and con, where the absence of sterling thought is disguised by the subtlety which gives birth to such arguments. . . . Thus understood the Dialectical principle constitutes the life and soul of scientific progress, the dynamic which alone gives immanent connection and necessity to the body of science; and, in a word, is seen to constitute the real and true, . . .117

In the two sections prior, Hegel had compared and contrasted two ways of employing the first stage of logic, that of the understanding. One can either presuppose in error the fixity and isolation of concepts, or one can properly allow Thought in only one of its stages, “as Understanding,” to consider itself under the guise of “fixity of [its] characters and their distinctness from one another:

. . .”118 This present passage, 4.4, works similarly, but it involves itself with the second moment of logic rather than the first; this is the “Dialectic” stage. Just as the first stage might involve a proper and an improper way of invoking its attitude, so does the second.

The improper version of this method is entirely negative, being merely a “subjective seesaw.”119 It is “adventitious,” which means it happens by chance and not by design. It is wanton, relativistic, and a “mere semblance of contradiction.” When “employed . . . separately and independently . . . Dialectic becomes Skepticism; . . .”120 Hegel is thus rejecting the Critical

Philosophy as a stand-alone program just as he rejects the logic of the understanding when taken in isolation from the absolute context, but when made a part of the three-stage process, it is made legitimate. The second stage becomes neither a cancellation nor a total annihilation, but instead a passing over into another. It is a connection rather than a severance. However, whenever it is described as part of Hegel’s system, it carries with it some form of indefiniteness. And it is this

117 EL, 116, §81. Emphasis in original. GW, Band 20, 119: “Die Dialektik wird gewöhnlich als eine äußere Kunst betrachtet, welche durch Willkühr eine Verwirrung in bestimmten Begriffen und einen bloßen Schein von Widersprüchen in ihnen hervorbringt, . . . . Oft ist die Dialektik auch weiter nichts, als ein subjectives Schaukelsystem von hin- und herübergehendem Raisonnement, wo der Gehalt fehlt und die Blöße durch solchen Scharfsinn bedeckt wird, der solches Raisonnement erzeugt. . . . Das Dialektische macht daher die bewegende Seele des wissenschaftlichen Fortgehens aus, und ist das Princip, wodurch allein immanenter Zusammenhang und Nothwendigkeit in den Inhalt der Wissenschaft kommt, so wie in ihm überhaupt die wahrhafte nicht äußerliche Erhebung über das Endliche liegt.” 118 EL, 113, §80. GW, Band 20, 118: “Das Denken als Verstand bleibt bei der festen Bestimmtheit und der Unterschiedenheit derselben gegen andere stehen; . . .” 119 EL, 116-117, §81. GW, Band 20, 119: “subjectives Schaukelsystem.” 120 EL, 116, §81. GW, Band 20, 119: “. . . Das Dialektische vom Verstande für sich abgesondert genommen, macht insbesondere in wissenschaftlichen Begriffen aufgezeigt den Skepticismus aus; . . .”

297 indefiniteness alone that is logically negated by the end of the second and start of the third stage.

This is the primary reason for quoting this passage, 4.4; in addition to its usefulness in distinguishing two approaches to the second attitude, this passage puts on display Hegel’s intention to include a modal modification to the entire attitude. This modification can be characterized in two ways: first, the skeptical historical error; and second, the Hegelian correction that is a logical negation.

This passage is replete with indications that Hegel is modifying his premises modally. The second attitude, historically, presupposes the mere possibility that concept and object are unified, or that Thought has objectivity or even a world of its own. This error is associated above with the following pejoratives: adventitious, wanton, confused, merely a semblance, indefinite, subjective, non-sterling (not excellent or valuable), disguised, unreal, and untrue. In the same section, but not in the quotation above, it is additionally associated with skepticism and “mere negation.”121 All of these descriptors connote indefiniteness.

If a proposition’s status is “subjective” then it is not known to be true. If it is a mere

“semblance” of objectivity, then its status is unknown despite appearances. This is the skeptics’ legacy. The world appears tangible, lawful, objective, but these appearances could not be proven by them. Philosophers could not even be sure if the noumenal was an “it” at all. Noumenality could be spoken of as if it were a thing or a realm, but when pressed, these modes of speech and thought had to be held in suspense along with everything else. Thus, the overarching legacy of the skeptical turn was possibility.

Text 4.5 - EL, §130 [The Negative Characteristics of the Second Stage]

Each of the several matters . . . is also negated: and in this negation of theirs, or as interpenetrating their pores, we find the numerous other independent matters, which, being

121 EL, 116, §81. GW, Band 20, 119: “die bloße Negation.”

298

similarly porous, make room in turn for the existence of the rest. Pores are not empirical facts; they are figments of the understanding, which uses them to represent the element of negation in independent matters. The further working-out of the contradictions is concealed by the nebulous imbroglio in which all matters are independent and all no less negated in each other.122

Pores are used here as a thematic example of essence taken as a mere appearance. Hegel is dealing with an element of physics as an example at this particular stage of development of Thought within the second subdivision of logic, the doctrine of essence. Several terms and their collective connotation are given as descriptions: appearance; phenomenon; negation; figments; contradictions; and the delightfully colorful phrase, “nebulous imbroglio.” (nebulosen Verwirrung)

I also notice, given the insight that the wider context affords, that the term “independent” is being used here as a pejorative. This independence is the basis for the contradictions, the negations.

Another term comes to mind that summarizes all of these ideas: chaos. There is a lack of unity, a lack of harmony among many parts, rather than the systematicity of a whole. Independence is in this context a ‘freedom’ from order.

In the context of this passage, Hegel had been building to this conclusion for several sections. Highlighting the various kinds of unity and identity that could be found on the path to these appearances-as-pores, Hegel here finally reveals explicitly that the unities in question are partial at best, and are reducible to chaos at worst. Hegel begins the section by saying, “The Thing, being this totality, is a contradiction.”123 This is the turning point for the last few sections, a sudden dissonance introduced into a line of descriptions of unification. Such thoughts existed only in the mind producing a being that “has been absorbed or suspended.”124 These various forms of essence

122 EL, 186, §130. GW, Band 20, 156: “Jede der vielen Materien . . . ist auch negirt, und in dieser ihrer Negation, ihren Poren, sind die vielen andern selbstständigen Materien, die ebenso porös sind, und in sich die andern so gegenseitig existiren lassen. Die Poren sind nichts empirisches, sondern Erdichtungen des Verstandes, der das Moment der Negation der selbstständigen Materien auf diese Weise vorstellt, und die weitere Ausbildung der Widersprüche mid jener nebulosen Verwirrung, in der alle selbstständig und alle in einander ebenso negirt sind, deckt.” 123 EL, 185, §130. GW, Band 20, 156: “Das Ding als diese Totalität ist der Widerspruch, . . .” 124 EL, 182, §125. GW, Band 20, 154: “. . . von sich unterscheidet.”

299 thus described were a “mere abstract,” and “a superficial association.”125 Such things existed “under the reflective characteristic of identity.”126 They are merely “characterized,”127 merely “put,”128 “a supposition which is no sooner made than it is revoked,”129 it is “clung to,”130 “assumed or imposed,”131 “[v]iewed as,”132 and a mere “show.”133 Elsewhere and frequently, Hegel has used terms like “dualism,” “skepticism,” and “criticism” to describe second stages. All of these colorfully described attitudes are criticized by Hegel, but he nevertheless replaces them with apparent synonyms and thinks he has made them useful. These failed presuppositions are thus associated with other terms that describe concepts appropriate for the second stage of logic: reflection; negation; dialectic; opposition; contradiction; and relativity. This whole set of terms, whether part of a failed historical presupposition or a proper element of a legitimate stage of logic, characterize an entire part of Hegel’s philosophy. They all ascribe some kind of disunity to their contents. This disunity may be naively put forward as an independent truth, or it may be put forward as a means of subdividing

Thought itself. Unlike Kant, Hegel advances philosophy via the latter route, one that does not dead- end in skepticism. Hegel writes, “The Apparent or Phenomenal exists in such a way, that its subsistence is ipso facto thrown into abeyance or suspended and is only one stage in the form itself.”134

In wider perspective, according to Hegel, both the first and the second approaches err and are naive. They either presuppose rather than deduce, or they attempt to ‘prove’ disunity using the

125 EL, 184, §127. GW, Band 20, 155: “die abstracte”; “oberflächlicher Zusammenhang.” 126 EL, 184, §128. GW, Band 20, 155: “. . . die Existenz in der Reflexionsbestimmung der Identität zusammen, . . .” 127 EL, 181, §125. GW, Band 20, 154: “bestimmtes.” 128 EL, 205, §145. GW, Band 20, 166: “gesetzt.” 129 EL, 207, §146. GW, Band 20, 166: “. . . das aber ebenso aufgehoben, . . .” 130 EL, 180, §124. GW, Band 20, 153: “an der gegen die Reflexion-in-anderes und gegen die unterschiedenen Bestimmungen überhaupt als an der leeren Grundlage derselben festgehalten wird.” 131 EL, 202, §143. GW, Band 20, 164: “. . . so daß sie an ihr zugleich als Schein, als nur Gesetzte bestimmt sind . . .” 132 EL, 202, §143. GW, Band 20, 164: “Als.” 133 EL, 179, §122; 202, §143. GW, Band 20, 152, 164: “Scheinen . . . in sich”; “als Schein.” 134 EL, 188, §132. GW, Band 20, 157: “Der Erscheinende existirt so, daß sein Bestehen unmittelbar aufgehoben, dieses nur Ein Moment der Form selbst ist; . . .”

300 resources of unity. These historical errors are made into logical containers into which all Thought is placed—Hegel would say that Thought places itself into them—and by adding a third, Hegel completes a syllogism. This third part is the proof of unity, but not as a presupposition, so it avoids the error of the first attitude. It concludes with unity, not disunity, so it avoids the error of the second attitude. It incorporates the previous historical stages, so it does not lose sight of history.

Historical arguments like Anselm’s, therefore, retain a place in Hegel’s system, as does formal logic itself.

With regard to the formal modal qualities, the above quotation is thematic as a general representation of the second premise of the wider argument. Wherever the second stage/attitude/premise is described, it is characterized as indefinite in some way. It therefore connotes a modal property.

Text 4.6 - EL, §188 [Doubled Possibility; Iterated Operators]

The Apparent or Phenomenal exists in such a way, that its subsistence is ipso facto thrown into abeyance or suspended and is only one stage in the form itself. . . . In this way, the phenomenal has its ground in this (form) as its essence, . . . . This ground of its is no less phenomenal than itself, and the phenomenon accordingly goes on to an endless mediation of subsistence by means of form, and thus equally by non-subsistence.135

In the Encyclopedia Logic, within the Doctrine of Essence, Hegel expresses an odd kind of doubling of uncertainty. In the terminology of formal logic, this is called iteration. The iteration or doubling of uncertainty above stems fundamentally from the way that possibility is derived in the

Progression of Thought. It is defined as the unsure, and it is also based on something that is unsure, so it is doubly unsure. This doubling is described in fairly confusing language, but Hegel’s consistency allows his intention to come to the surface. These confusing and odd doublings of

135 EL, 188, §132. GW, Band 20, 157-158: “Der Erscheinende existirt so, daß sein Bestehen unmittelbar aufgehoben, dieses nur Ein Moment der Form selbst ist; . . . . Das Erscheinende hat so seinen Grund in dieser als seinem Wesen, . . . . Dieser sein Grund ist eben so sehr ein Erscheinendes, und die Erscheinung geht so zu einer unendlichen Vermittlung des Bestehens durch die Form, somit ebenso durch Nichtbestehen fort.”

301 possibility always appear in descriptions of second stages.

Above, Hegel writes about the world of appearances. The element in question here is “the apparent.” It subsists in an unstable way, depending on a ground that is ever in abeyance. It is grounded in essence, but the essence is no more stable than it is.136 This is perhaps a too-subtle clue for a first reading, but after finishing the Encyclopedia with its multiple similar descriptions of multiple second stages, passages like this start to look less convoluted and more like an intentional invocation of an iterated modal operator: merely possible, possibly contingent, or possibly possible. The thing in question, the particular state of development of Thought, is one of relativity or possibility, but its identity is the result of an uncertain process. At one point Hegel writes, “. . . the phenomenon is relativity or correlation: where one and the same thing, viz. the content or the developed form, is seen as the externality and antithesis of independent existences, and as their reduction to a relation of identity, . . .”137 Not only is it “seen as” an externality, but it is also a mere phenomenon itself. It is a possible thing, but it is only seen as such. Soon after this in the same work, Hegel describes possibility itself as if it contained a second layer of possibility within it:

Possibility is what is essential to reality, but in such a way that it is at the same time only a possibility. . . . Possibility is really the bare abstraction of reflection-into-self— . . . lifted out of reality and with the being of a mere supposition, and is thus, sure enough, supposed only as a bare modality, an abstraction which comes short, and, in more concrete terms, belongs only to subjective thought.138

Possibility is, therefore, not just possibility as normally defined, but it is a mere abstraction, a mere supposition, merely supposed, and only subjective. It is “only a possibility” and is thus,

136 EL, 188, §132. There are other, similar expressions of doubled possibility as well, e.g., EL, 200, §141; 202, §143. 137 EL, 191, §134. GW, Band 20, 159: “Die Erscheinung so gesetzt ist das Verhältniß, daß Ein und Dasselbe, der Inhalt, als die entwickelte Form, als die Aeußerlichkeit und Entgegensetzung selbstständiger Existenzen und deren identische Beziehung, ist, in welcher Beziehung die Unterschiedenen allein das sind, was sie sind.” 138 EL, 202, §143. GW, Band 20, 165: “Die Möglichkeit ist das Wesentliche zur Wirklichkeit aber so daß sie zugleich nur Möglichkeit sey. . . . In der That ist die Möglichkeit die leere Abstraction der Reflexion-in-sich, . . . nur gesetzte, äußerliche Innre bestimmt, und so allerdings als eine bloße Modalität, als unzureichende Abstraction, concreter genommen nur dem subjectiven Denken angehörig, auch gesetzt ist.”

302 inherently and automatically, possibly possible because the definition of it contains a backing-away from actuality in two distinct ways: possibility is “viewed as an identity” (a well-defined concept) so it has the identity of Possibility; yet because it is merely being viewed as such, it is only possibly what it is as an identity.

This iterated modal operator seems to already be implicit in Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature when it is taken as part of the whole Encyclopedia. It is encountered when the argument considers the question of whether or not the natural world is determined by the Logic. The Philosophy of Nature, taken as a science, is a second “degree” of possibility added to a first degree, which is the natural world’s unknown status. To follow the logic of the Ontological Argument, to trace through the steps, the abstract logic is completed after premise 1, but its relation to the unknown disposition of the natural world arises by their comparison. Similarities are noticed, the natural forms seem to mimic the logical forms, and so the question of their relationship is posed. The first degree of possibility is inherent in the natural world itself. It is a world of contingency marked by uncertainty; mystery and temporal openness are its defining characteristics. To further question its relationship to the Logic is to add a second layer of doubt. The philosopher’s tracing of the Encyclopedia, which is itself an ontological argument, at this point in its structure, asks if it is possible that the natural world is contingent. The possibility inherent in the natural world is included within the larger modal argument, one that is disjunctive. It is placed in the second position, implying that it is in question at the level of the argument over and above its internal contingent status.

Hösle states it more clearly in his own premise of a reconstructed, neo-Hegelian argument, which he labels II.2, “If there is non-hypothetical (synthetic) a priori knowledge, then its laws have possibly nothing to do with reality.”139 From the perspective of the subject, then, the possibility of joining the subjective logic to the objective world is itself a possibility. It seems possible that either it

139 Hösle, Objective Idealism, 29.

303 is connected, or that it is not; possibly either/or; which is to say, “possibly possibly.” Hösle adds the second layer with the “if/then” of his statement above. If x, then possibly y. The “if” of the

“if/then” structure adds this outer layer of possibility. Therefore, Hösle ably captures the contingency of the second premise, and he emphasizes modality enough to reveal the iterated operator that is in play.

In addition to the doubling of possibility, there is another example of iterated modal operators. In this second kind of iteration, rather than doubling one operator, Hegel shows that he is able to iterate two different operators: possibly and necessarily.

Necessity has been defined, and rightly so, as the union of possibility and actuality. This mode of expression, however, gives a superficial and therefore unintelligible description of the very difficult notion of necessity. It is difficult because it is the notion itself, only that its stages or factors are still as actualities, which are yet at the same time to be viewed as forms only, collapsing and transient.140

Just as he did with possibility, Hegel here defines necessity under the same qualification of uncertainty, instability, and dubitability. They are both being defined within the doctrine of essence.

Thus, the pall of the second presupposition, or the negativity of the second stage of logic, is cast over all of its contents. Thus, even necessity, at this stage, is possible necessity. This is, among other things, a new doorway to useful logical tools: “necessarily possibly” and “possibly necessarily.”

This doubling of a modal modification, of modal operators generally is the kind of thing

Hegel would have known about from Leibniz’s and Wolff’s Metaphysics,141 and this gives us a way to understand how there can be three kinds of modal-operator iteration detectable in Hegel’s philosophy. First, there are two forms of iterated modal operators implied by the nature of Hegel’s

Progression of Thought itself. If Hegel conceives of the possible as the rational, and the rational as the necessary, this already involves two important modal rules that employ iteration: first, “If

140 EL, 208, §147. GW, Band 20, 167: “Die Nothwendigkeit ist zwar richtig als Einheit der Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit definirt worden. Aber nur so ausgedrückt ist diese Bestimmung oberflächlich und deswegen unverständlich. Der Begriff der Nothwendigkeit ist sehr schwer, und zwar weil sie der Begriff selbst ist, aber dessen Momente noch als Wirklichkeiten sind, die zugleich doch nur als Formen, als in sich gebrochene und als übergehende zu fassen sind.” 141 This was a prominent topic of Chapter II.

304 possibly p, then necessarily possibly p.”;142 and second, “If possibly necessarily p, then necessarily p.” The first of these is called Axiom S5,143 and the second holds most S5 models and is arguably intuitive.144 Additionally, these rules are concepts themselves, concepts which Hegel believes can be derived within the Logic.145 Intriguingly, both of these formulae are required to give a formal proof of Hegel’s ontological argument.146 And, Hegel’s system, by its nature as the exhaustively complete set (world) of necessary and inter-implying, inter-deducible concepts, already expresses both of them. That is, the nature of Hegel’s system involves the necessity of all possibilities and the necessary possibility of all concepts. These form the basis of what I had earlier called Hegel’s S5 intuition.

Second, the doubling of possibility is implicit within the second stage of the argument, as noted above. This is most clearly seen, historically, in the doubting of the contingency of the natural world. And, it is seen logically, as an encapsulating program in which Thought takes itself to be an

“other.” Thus, possibly possibly is part of the structure of second stages generally. One of these possibilities, however, is included within the variable. Thus, we do not see “possibly possibly x” in the argument, but only “possibly x” where “x” stands for contingency in the form of a dualism, a disunity that entails duality. Possible contingency is a concept that contains within itself an iterated

142 This is the primary formula that is called by the name “Axiom 5.” It is sometimes also referred to as the negative introspective rule. By any name, this formula is seen as the rule that helps to generate S5 from a weaker logic. 143 AKA, Axiom 5, 5•, “five dot,” or (5). 144 This axiom is not a theorem of S5, but it is true in most S5 models. The S5 system allows strings of iterated operators to be pruned so that only the final operator need be considered. Thus, if p is possibly necessarily necessarily possibly necessarily possibly true, then p is possibly true. This means that the second axiom listed in the text above is provable in S5: if possibly necessarily p, then necessarily p. The first operator can be pruned. While this may seem counterintuitive, Alvin Plantinga has shown that if it is possible (that it is necessary), then it is true in at least one world. And if it is necessary in that world, then it is necessary. However, if p is necessary within a limited scope of worlds, then the necessity in question is limited to that scope. Yet because S5 provides universal accessibility, this is not an issue within that system of logic, and Plantinga’s argument about the intuitive nature of pruning applies. The point in this paragraph, of course, is that Hegel has an intuition about what an absolute modal environment entails. This intuition bears striking similarity to Lewis’s fifth system. In turn, this correlation is sufficient to see that Hegel’s argument is provable within some systems of contemporary modal logic. 145 Since all concepts are connectable within the Logic, and since Hegel develops multiple systems of modal logic in his Logics, this conclusion follows. See, Kusch and Manninen, 110. 146 The proof of Hegel’s argument, in Chapter IV, uses these rules as justifications for several steps.

305 modal operator. This is important for the rest of Hegel’s system for three reasons: Hegel derives this property as the second stage of his triadic structures in general and as the second stage of his

Encyclopedia; the Encyclopedia is itself an argument that depends on iterated operators for a proof of its validity; and lastly, the exhaustively complete set of all concepts entails the interconvertibility of possibility and necessity, and thus the theorems of the absolute modal system.

In conclusion, all of the above means that there is a significant amount of textual evidence that Hegel was aware of what he was doing in terms of modal logical systems and their rules. His modal intuitions are far more robust than are typically expected.

e) The Rule of Inference That Drives the Disjunctive Syllogism: Intermodal Self-Negation

My description of Hegel’s disjunctive syllogism would not be complete without a detailed discussion of its internal, logical means of independence. I have introduced it earlier as a kind of

“driving force,” and also as a logical reason for the certain negations within sublation, but, until now,

I have refrained from a thorough analysis. Now that all the other pieces are in place, it is time to provide that analysis.

Earlier, I had introduced this concept by quoting three texts to show how Hegel distinguishes between two modes of each concept and how he makes use of a conflict between those modes. In these texts, the conflict between these two modes of a concept is called: “the difference of knowledge and truth” and a “necessary conflict of the determinations of the understanding with themselves.” In addition, when speaking of the conflict between these modes,

Hegel calls it a “contradiction” and the state of a concept being in “antithesis” with itself.147 I also

147 Respectively, these texts are: PhG, 491, §805. GW, Band 9, 432: “. . . der Unterschied des Wissens und der Wahrheit, . . .”; WL, Introduction, 46. GW, Band 21, 30: “Diese Wendung jedoch, welche das Erkennen nimmt, und die als Verlust und Rückschritt erscheint, hat das Liefere zum Grunde, worauf überhaupt die Erhebung der Vernunft in den höhern Geist der neuern Philosophie beruht. Der grund jener allgemein gewordenen Vorstellung ist nämlich in der Einsicht von dem nothwendigen Widerstreite der Bestimmungen des Verstandes mit sich selbst, zu suchen.”; and

306 showed that one of the most common terms that Hegel uses for concepts, “determinations”

(Bestimmungen), especially as it is used by Hegel, contains within itself the distinction between inner and outer meanings, between qualities and relations of each determination.148

This distinction in modes for determinations allows specifically for interaction between the two modes of the same concept.149 These can be characterized as conflicts between form and content, or meaning and role within a syllogism. Hegel’s system is built upon the detection and leveraging of such interactions. Conflicts between the two modes is the logical reason for negation of a concept in two out of the three stages of every sublation. Specifically, a concept is first found to be in a kind of tension with something, close examination reveals that this tension is being produced by a conflict of the concepts meaning and the role it is playing in the syllogism. That is, its meaning conflicts with what it is, and it is being defined by the syllogism in which it sits. For premise 1 to contradict premise 3 is a reason for premise 1 to be negated. This repeats for the second premise.

Following these two negations, the trio of premises then forms a sublation, which is a disjunctive syllogism that deduces the unity of the first two stages in the third.

This duality is packed within all concepts and it is the basis for the deductive connections that link all concepts together in Hegel’s universal calculus (mathesis universalis).150 The conflict itself is thus the basis for the deduction, but Hegel found this kind of interaction to be difficult to explain.

So, in introductions to his philosophy, Hegel trained his readers to understand this most unusual and perhaps most consequential aspect of his methodology. This training involved a specific way of thinking about Thought’s engagement with its own nature by means of vignettes involving confrontations of consciousnesses with their objects. Hegel showed that shapes of consciousness

VBDG, 190. OB, 274: “. . . somit der Gegensatz seiner selbst; es ist der unaufgelöste Widerspruch.” 148 See, Imhoff, 78. 149 Ibid., 78, 291. NB: Inwood also characterizes this distinction as that held between form and content for a concept. See, p. 291. 150 Recall from Chapter II that Leibniz desired to link all concepts together into deductive chains by means of a universal calculus. The end result would be a structure that he was the first to name “Encyclopedia.”

307 reach points of conflict between what they presuppose about themselves and the way that they relate to their objects. At each crisis-point, there is a recognition by a shape of consciousness of a specific kind of self-referential incoherence. In each scenario, it is the recognition of these conflicts by the consciousness that drives it forward to its next stage. This preparatory approach provides a non- logical look at this kind of interaction as practice. This prepares the novice for the logical version of the same process, which is given in the Encyclopedia.

This special kind of interaction between what a shape of consciousness is and what it presupposes about itself is left to our intuitive grasp at first, but when Hegel leaves behind the introductory material he invites his readers to replace the merely intuitive with the logical; the subjective permutations of the shapes of consciousness are meant to become a rigorous logical science. The specific conflict between what a concept is and what it does is no longer to be rejected intuitively, as if it were an irritant experienced by a consciousness, but now as a special kind of logical self-contradiction.

We have already seen that the overall structure of the sublation is a disjunctive syllogism, and we know that the first two premises of this syllogism are negated, but what is not yet revealed is exactly how these negations are accomplished as a purely logical function. If a proposition is negated in a logical process, then such a logical move requires a logical justification. Logical maneuvers can only be justified by rules of inference. Anything else would presuppose a personal subjectivity into the process, a dogmatic choice.

What then is the justification for the negations in Hegel’s logical sublation? Hegel is not as clear as he could have been on this question, and I will examine several relevant passages below, but at this point, I can say two things about the justification of these negations. First, whatever it is, it is the fundamental engine of sublation. Second, it is closely related to, or a sub-species of, the principle of non-contradiction. It is close enough, perhaps, that Hegel may have conceived of it as

308 synonymous with one of Aristotle’s fundamental laws of thought, the principle of non- contradiction.151 In the Encyclopedia, the justification for negating certain contradictions seems to come from an unnamed principle, one that enforces negation wherever a proposition (or judgment) contradicts what a proposition “is.” This use of “is,” of course, requires some explanation, for the ontology in play here concerns only the way that concepts relate to other concepts in that particular syllogism/sublation. Yet, because all thoughts are connected, to Hegel, the “is” can be expanded beyond that limited context when needed. The concept of Being, can therefore be said to be (exist as) the way it relates to other concepts and to the basic structure of Thought. Consequently, the concept of Being “is” the way it relates. Hegel expects us to be surprised to find that this identity differs from and conflicts with its own definition or meaning. In this way, the definition of Being is a proposition that posits its own non-existence, which entails disconnectedness from the rest of Thought. It thereby activates its own negation by purely logical means. It acts like its opposite, and this internal dissonance not only generates a new concept, Nothing, but it also goes on to relate, as a pair, in a way that also generates a third concept, Becoming.152 When the concept of Being is posited, therefore, the conflict between two distinct modes (definition and role) necessitates its negation by means of a certain principle. As a result, we are to think of this principle functioning as a logical rule.

Before moving on, a term for this logical rule is needed, one that can help to facilitate a logical perspective on sublation. It would be nice to find a Hegelian term for this rule, but the closest that he comes to describing it, as an internal difference or a self-contradiction, is not very helpful because these are not specific enough to indicate how unique this kind of difference or contradiction is. Thus, despite the many references, and because there is no explicit study of this concept in the Logics, Hegel is of little help in naming the logical rule as such (though he describes it

151 However, as was shown in Chapter II, it is more likely that Hegel studied a certain kind of argument called the consequentia mirabilis and simply intuited its manner of function without explicitly identifying or producing a rule of inference. 152 This is the first triad of concepts in the logical science. See, EL, 123-129, §§84-88.

309 in some additional texts that I will give below). I have struggled to determine my own term for the rule and have settled, with some reservation, on the unwieldy moniker “intermodal self-negation,” a term that I will explain below after looking at a few passages in which Hegel invokes the principle.

1) The Basics of Intermodal Self-Negation

At the end of the Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel describes the transition from Logic to the

Philosophy of Nature.153 When he does so, he describes the reason for the transition and the failure of the encapsulating theme of the Logic:

The Idea which is independent or for itself, when viewed on the point of this unity with itself, is Perception or Intuition, and the percipient Idea is Nature...... We began with Being, abstract Being: where we now are we also have the Idea as Being: but this Idea which has Being is Nature.154

This a prominent example of the unique kind of tension that (apparently) drives Thought forward into a subsequent stage. Hegel’s language is often anthropomorphic, but I think the intention is to describe a logical function.155 The earlier stage has developed to the point of conflict with its encapsulating program. Here, this earlier stage is the Logic, and its encapsulating program is the abstracting perspective on Thought. This is the Idea that is (in violation of the rule of intermodal self-negation) taken to be “independent or for itself,” which is to say, abstract. The germ of this encapsulating program’s negation is already found within itself. Its meaning (abstraction) is in conflict with the way that it behaves in relation to other concepts, which is its nature (as connected

153 As John Burbidge notes, this particular transition is one of “the most enduring puzzles about Hegel’s system . . .” See, Burbidge, Hegel’s Systematic Contingency (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan), 106. My point here, however, will not require me to delve into that mystery. I will merely show that a certain kind of conflict sits at the core of this and many other similar transitions. Perhaps this point of commonality will be useful later in clarifying the Logic- Nature transition, but that is not my goal here. 154 EL, 296, §244, with zusatz. GW, Band 20, 231: “Die Idee, welche für sich ist, nach dieser ihrer Einheit mit sich betrachtet ist sie Anschauen; und die anschauende Idee Natur.” Hegel Werke, Band 8, 392 (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970): “Das, womit wir anfingen, war das Sein, das abstrakte Sein, und nunmehr haben wir die Idee als Sein; diese seiende Idee aber ist die Natur.” 155 Hegel often wishes to prevent his readers from thinking of the Logic as merely abstract. But, in avoiding this, the opposite danger is that the Idea can seem alive in its own right, as a self-conscious Spirit. Instead of falling prey to one of these extremes, I think that Hegel intends to have some aspects of both.

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Thought). In the Logic, Thought views itself as a mere abstraction (separate, independent from the world) that nevertheless contains an infinite, exhaustively complete, and ‘objective’ world within itself. This conflict allows a certain principle to negate the encapsulation, intermodal self-negation, and so it does. Whenever a logical principle can be in effect, within the exhaustively complete world of concepts, it is. No mind or will is invoked. Just as the number line is infinite despite the inability of mathematicians to count to infinity, so every conceptual relation that can be is. Wherever the rule of intermodal self-negation can be invoked, it is. Hegel sees this as a principle capable of connecting all of Thought. It is, to him, the one principle that actually can (and so it does) make Thought coherent, connected, and complete.

Hegel is fairly straightforward about the distinction between sublation and the logical justification upon which it depends in the VBDG, the text that discusses the nature of the logical inference in the Ontological Argument:

What is unsatisfactory is that this is a presupposition, so that when measured against it the concept must of necessity be something subjective. But the finite and subjective is not just something finite as measured against that presupposition. It is finite in itself, and hence it is the antithesis of itself; it is the unresolved contradiction. Being is supposed to be diverse from the concept. We believe that we can regard the concept as strictly subjective, as finite: but the determinate quality of being is in the concept itself. The finitude of subjectivity is sublated in the concept itself, and the unity of being and concept is not a presupposition vis-à-vis the concept, against which it is measured.156

Hegel thinks that there is a conflict, in Descartes’ and Spinoza’s ontological arguments, between the concept of the “most perfect and most real of all things”157 and the nature of the concept itself. This conflict is only stated by Hegel. He does not elevate it as a principle by means of a special name.

Perhaps it is too obvious, or too similar to the principle of non-contradiction. Nonetheless, it is the

156 VBDG, 190-191. Emphasis added. OB, 274: “. . . daß dies eine Voraussetzung ist, ist das Ungenügende, so daß der Begriff an ihr gemessen ein Subjektives sind muß. ¶ Das Endliche und Subjektive ist aber nicht nur ein Endliches, gemessen an jener Voraussetzung; es ist an ihm endlich und somit der Gegensatz seiner selbst; es ist der unaufgelöste Widerspruch. Das Sein soll verschieden von dem Begriff sein; man glaubt, diesen festhalten zu können als subjektiven, als endlichen, aber die Bestimmung des Seins ist am Begriff selbst. Diese Endlichkeit der Subjektivität ist an ihm selbst aufgehoben, und die Einheit des Seins und des Begriffs ist nicht eine Voraussetzung gegen ihn, an der er gemessen wird.” 157 Ibid., 190. OB, 274: “Jenes Allervollkommenste und Allerrealiste.”

311 principle by which the argument’s sublation operates. Hegel states that these things are in conflict; a concept is not finite, but presuppositions are subjective limitations, and they make the concept finite, “hence it is the antithesis of itself.” Hegel’s reader is left to make the connection: concepts cannot express what is antithetical to themselves without invoking their own negations. This is so obvious, he must have thought, that no more needs to be said. So, the principle remains implicit in the accusation. And, resulting from this state of dissonance, “the finitude of subjectivity is sublated in the concept itself.” Sublation, as always, results from the application of this principle.

Hegel therefore sees intermodal self-negation operating behind the scenes in the context of the Ontological Argument as well as the transition from the Logic to the Philosophy of Nature. In these arguments, this principle operates as a reason for negating the first two premises, and it functions within the argument as a whole, which sublates the first two stages in its final step.

Hegel saw the same kind of conflict in Kant’s “reflective understanding.”158 But, Hegel thinks of this as a “turn taken by cognition”159 itself. Hegel says that this (Copernican) turn itself rests on something even more fundamental, and thus, more important. Cognition’s turn is “based on something more profound on which it rests,” which is “to be sought in the insight into the necessary conflict of the determinations of the understanding with themselves.”160 This is an intermodal conflict.

Intermodal self-contradictions are thus found in the first and second stages. The fault of the first stage is recognized by the second. In turn, a similar conflict in the second will be recognized by the third, from within Hegel’s own stage. Thus, in two stages, in two texts, we see a reliance upon this same principle. In addition to the formal structure of the argument as a whole, we can learn now that its primary, logical operation, the function at its nucleus, relies upon a relation between what

158 WL, Introduction, 45. GW, Band 21, 29: “der reflectirende Verstand.” 159 Ibid., 46. GW, Band 21, 30: “Diese Wendung jedoch, welche das Erkennen nimmt, . . .” 160 Ibid. GW, Band 21, 30: “. . . ist nämlich in der Einsicht von dem nothwendigen Widerstreite der Bestimmungen des Verstandes mit sich selbst, zu suchen.”

312 propositions are and what they propose. Hegel thinks that Thought performs sublation on itself by reference to a key principle. Speaking analogically, this principle is thus the fuel that runs the engine that drives Thought forward as a logical process and that ultimately explains why Thought’s structure is an ontological argument.

2) Terminology and Extended Definition of Intermodal Self-Negation

Functionally, intermodal self-negation behaves like an axiom or rule. So, it can be understood as a logical rule of inference. This is the kind of proposition that is used to justify or give a reason for a line within a logical proof: no proposition (its definition) may properly contradict what a proposition is (its way of relating to other concepts generally, and its immediate syllogism specifically). In Hegel’s ontological argument, for the first two of the three premises, when content is encapsulated with a program that is contradictory by nature to what that concept is, the program itself is incoherent and can (and is) thereby be negated. Regarding the self-directed aspect of the term, “self-negation,” this rule is applied by Thought to itself when a proposition has contradicted itself. The rule is simply the logical consequence of the conflict. It can be applied in those instances, so it is.

The rule is intermodal because it is an alethic perspective on self-correspondence; it involves and thus exposes an intrinsic self-reference within propositions. That is, it involves a relationship that abides between two different modes161 of a concept: between what a proposition is (its role in the syllogism) and what it means (Its definition); between an ontological or metaphysical property162 and

161 This logical rule is here called “modal” in the non-logical sense. The sense in which it is named inter- “modal” here is not the logical sense (as in, “necessarily” or “possibly”). 162 Using straightforward language, I note here that this property is only a promissory note: there is an implication in each proposition that its meaning deals with something real, a truthmaker. Logically, this promise is processed by means of a hypothetical, within the scope of an assumption. The proposition of the first stage, for example, proposes that it is true that it is merely abstract, but this proposal conflicts with its required basis, that it corresponds to a truthmaker. It must be real to be true, but it denies that concepts are real. And so, because it is a concept whose truth depends on its reality, it is self-falsified. In other words, the process does not begin with a naked

313 a semantic property. This can be seen with the “I think” aspect of propositions. This rule thus refers to an implicit reference to propositions’ ontological aspirations that is carried like baggage within them. The rule indicates that it is necessarily the case that no proposition can be true if it contradicts what a proposition is just as a person could never correctly think, “I am not thinking.” So, the proposition itself cannot be true.

One might think that this is an attempt to smuggle ontology into the argument, and it is in fact the source of the argument’s metaphysical import. But, it is not a cleverly disguised version of the ‘sin’ in which modal logic is conceived (cf., Quine).163 In this instance, it is not an ontological peccadillo that confuses ‘use’ with ‘mention’ because it is not a presupposed axiom. Hegel does not simply add this ontology-granting principle out of thin air, which would introduce an arbitrary dogmatism to the enterprise. This is still entirely conceptual and so, no transcendent ontology is being invoked. If one has a proper intuition about any concepts at all, then one can intuit the relation in question, and that is sufficient to see that the negative-ontological powers of the argument are produced entirely from its internal resources.

This is how it works. Each concept has its definition, and it also behaves in certain ways in relation to other concepts (especially in syllogisms). These are two modes for each concept. A concept’s definition or meaning is its constitutive mode. Its behavior within the syllogism under consideration is its active relational mode. If the definition (mode 1) contradicts the way a concept relates (mode 2), then the concept’s meaning is in conflict with its role. For the syllogism, the concept has a meaning that contradicts the role it plays in the syllogism, thus the content and form are in conflict. This property makes no reference to existence outside of the “world” of that syllogism; the resulting negation is thus analytic. This move then presupposes the conclusion and references it as the other half of the pair that are in conflict. The premise is in conflict with the metaphysical presupposition. 163 On this accusation, see Marcus’s analysis in Modalities, 215-232.

314 conclusion of the very same syllogism, and on this basis alone is the premise negated. This is performed logically within a hypothetical capsule. Thus, just in case the conclusion is true, the premise must be false. Thus, only a negated premise can be part of a syllogism that is coherent with itself, and this makes no reference outside of the syllogism in question.

Due to the hypothetical nature of the ontological assertion packed into the concept, the ontological significance of the second mode must be bracketed and held in suspense until the syllogism (or system) is complete. So, no ontological commitments are made at first nor are they required up to the end point. Yet, at that end point, where all promises are to be kept, Hegel thinks, the problem is solved and all hypothetical loops are closed.

This is done in an unexpected way, however, because the bracketing of external objectivity is not removed at the end. Instead, the existence of anything external to the bracket is ruled out as impossible.

Within each sublation we see these themes play out. The first mode is, in a sense, abstract; abstraction is the bracket that defines that mode. When abstracted, this is the mode that Hegel calls

“the abstract side.”164 This stage is concerned only with the form and contents of propositions, taken in isolation165 from everything else. The other mode within the same syllogism takes the consequences of interconnectedness into account. These connections, however, reveal that concepts sometimes relate in ways that conflict with their abstract definitions. This larger perspective takes both modes into consideration in its unifying theme. This is the broad category of encapsulations that Hegel calls variously notion, idea, spirit, and truth. When propositions are defined in ways that contradict what those propositions are, which is to say, how they connect and play their role in their syllogisms, then they can be appraised according to the two modes. According to the first mode taken alone, there is simply a set of axioms, everything appears to be in order and the problem is not

164 EL, 113, §79. GW, Band 20, 118: “. . . drei Seiten a) die abstracte oder verständige, . . .” 165 For example: EL, 84, §50; 225, §162; 292, §236; EN, 443, §376; EG, 8, §381.

315 readily apparent; analogously this is the error made by dogmatic metaphysicians. But, according to the highest, unifying perspective, when there is a conflict between the modes, the definition proposes authoritatively what cannot be true. The first stage claims truth, as definitions do, which is about correspondence with reality, but the statement is about itself, and the correspondence in question is therefore reflexive. And, because it contradicts what it is, it fails to correspond to itself.

Its hypothetical nature is then exposed and it must then be negated. So it fails the criterion for truth without any needed reference to an outside, objective, or transcendent reality. Alternatively, when a proposition makes a claim that does not contradict what a proposition is, its truth remains a possibility, moving it to the second stage.

When we consider the proposition that concepts are abstract, it should be noticed that its negation does not rely on any ontological commitment, but such a negation merely denies the validity of the proposition that claims abstraction; it operates on a hypothetical. Such a negation recognizes an inner conflict and thus does not rely on external correspondence to be denied or negated. Hegel’s argument compares the most fundamental instances of assertions like this. These are the three encapsulating programs. This is the beating heart at the core of his argument. There are only three possibilities in play when the relation of concept and object is considered at the largest scale:

 Necessarily not unity (thoughts are abstract and are certainly not objectively real)  Possibly unity, possibly not unity (thoughts might be objectively real)  Necessarily unity (thoughts must be objectively real)

All three propositions involve an implicit reference to what they are in themselves, propositions.

The first two, however, contradict what they are.166 This intermodal dissonance calls for a negation

166 I must remind the reader here that what they “are” is relative to the syllogism itself. This reduces what

316 to bring it into agreement with the other premises. This alters the three options into the following form: not (necessarily not unity); not (possibly unity, possibly not unity); and (necessarily unity).

Simply by relating together, these three propositions, according to Hegel, form a syllogism. The list of three propositions is a disjunctive syllogism, and it is modal (deals with necessity and possibility).

The conclusion is the third premise, but this is equivalent also to the negated forms of the other two premises, and therefore to the whole.

This is the genius of the argument. It takes a few claims to ontological knowledge, refutes them negatively by reference to the internal conflict among its modes, and combines them with their only remaining option in a disjunctive syllogism. This is how Hegel intends to generate synthetic, ontological knowledge from a negative argument. The rule of inference described here is therefore central to Hegel’s philosophy.

3) Negative Ontology

When we judge a proposition false we do not always need to look to an external truth-maker in order to falsify it, to check whether or not it corresponds to something real. No external reference is needed for propositions that break down internally.167 There is no need to check any other kind of correspondence when a proposition fails to correspond to the syllogism it occupies.

Hegel leverages this onto-logical principle by means of a disjunction. After the first two options (of three) are recognized as negated, by the process of elimination from an exhaustively complete list, a negative conclusion can also be recognized as a logical consequence. The curious thing is that the negative result that comes from the use of this logical rule has positive implications.

concepts are to the roles they play in their syllogisms. 167 Notice that I have not made reference to the principle of non-contradiction in making this claim. Hegel’s core principle is a close cousin to non-contradiction, however, but on that issue, if it is a concern, I note again that he produces all principles from within his system. So, at the very least, he can defer until the end.

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It is thus a negative apophatic synthesis.168 This negative conclusion about what is not the case is sufficient, thinks Hegel, to make a substantive metaphysical claim; he uses it to rule out the possibility of the noumenon. If this is correct, then an external check is not required by this argument, and Hegel believes that the conclusion that comes from this argument is sufficient to show that there is nothing against which any truth claim can be checked except Thought itself. Not only is a noumenal anchor for truth not needed, concludes Hegel, it is also not possible. And, it is precisely because it is not possible that it is not needed. Hegel thus relies on intermodal self-negation as a logical rule of inference to reach his metaphysical conclusions.

The vehicle for this rule of inference is an argument. This argument, in turn, reaches an ontological conclusion. It is an ontological argument. It is a deductive syllogism that has both the features of an abstract argument and the features of a truth-making ontology, albeit an immanent ontology. The mediator between these two otherwise disparate worlds, concludes Hegel, is a special form of deduction that can be both formula and content, concept and object.

C. Summary of Chapter

Ontological argumentation is not only Hegel’s express methodology, but it is his goal as well.169 It is the form of his system overall, and that system is Hegel’s answer to the primary problems of Philosophy. This is Hegel’s Encyclopedia and it functions as an ontological argument.

This form is straightforwardly logical, which is to say that it is a deductive syllogism. Hegel reveals, derives, and exposes this deduction’s special properties gradually from §84 to §192 in the Encyclopedia

Logic.

168 Zambrana, 126-129. We agree that form and content are inseparable and that the resulting content is negative. I disagree with her, however, in the result. I conclude that there is a significant metaphysical thesis lying in this double negativity, but Zambrana concludes that Hegel is still playing Kant’s game and is therefore not saying anything about the noumenon. Where I see a negative ontology, therefore, she and Angelica Nuzzo, who Zambrana quotes next, believe that Hegel is providing a “norm for philosophical thinking” and “a normative perspective from which to engage the real sciences.” (p.129). 169 EL, 80, §49; 84, §51.

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Within these sections of the shorter Logic, Hegel traces instances of a special triadic form and develops it through many steps until it becomes the Disjunctive Syllogism. At first, the logical triad seems to take on a simple association of three concepts, the rudimentary thesis-antithesis-synthesis form of a simple three-part sublation. In early stages, it is not obviously logical, but it is not long before Hegel develops this simple triad until it begins to reveal its logical features and its independence. It is first characterized as determination by negation, then by determinate determination, then by self-determined determination. By the end of the development of the

Syllogisms in the third sphere, the form has taken on a recognizably syllogistic form, the unabashedly deductive and quite recognizable form of the Disjunctive Syllogism.170 Yet, as connected to the rest of Thought, it also possesses several additional features including: preservation of concepts in tension, negation without destruction or abandonment of contents, derivation without “moving on” and with the retention of all constituent parts (negated or not), and a fully internalized self-reference that avoids presupposition and finitude. It contains what it derives and so it does not annihilate these contents. It negates encapsulations, but preserves what has been produced within and by those encapsulations, and it does so without annihilating even the encapsulations that are negated.

This has revealed that sublation itself is not simply a methodology for Hegel, but it is a specific form that he has taken great pains to develop into a mediating syllogism that is logical and properly deductive. Hegel has thereby rescued a traditional form of syllogism from the threat of dogmatism and goes on to make use of it throughout the rest of his system. Even though its logical features are underdeveloped at many points prior to the sections on syllogisms, his use of this form is so extensive that it is recognizably the form of his system at every level .

This is Hegel’s primary logical means of unification and mediation of concept and object.

170 EL, 254-255, §191; WL, 701-702.

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This is why his system is best understood as an ontological argument. The very long and arduous development of this argument now makes a great deal of sense because of the fruit it bears. If Hegel is correct about the characteristics of this form of syllogism, then it makes little sense for him to leave it behind or to do away with its basis in the logic of the understanding. I have argued that

Hegel has instead removed deduction’s fetters171 so that it can be useful in solving philosophy’s greatest problem.

My first chapter explored Hegel’s own words to determine how he viewed his own project.

There, I presented Hegel’s goal of unification, his intentions to use formal deductive logic, the form of his actual argument, and many indications of his intention to argue modally. In the second chapter, I presented my case that Hegel was redeeming formal deductive logic rather than replacing it. I showed that Hegel could have been, and, at key points, was aware of many important developments in the logical science including several modal systems developed by Leibniz. I also gave evidence that Hegel made use of many of these previously discovered advancements in formal logic within his own system. Moreover, that chapter examined Hegel’s argument against traditional logic and concluded that Hegel’s criticisms and solutions were not fatal to that moment of logic, but were intended to redeem it for use in philosophy.

Here in the third chapter, I have examined Hegel’s development of the form of sublation itself, showing precisely how he develops this form into the Disjunctive Syllogism. This has established the strong, deductive link between the first instance of sublation and the Disjunctive

Syllogism. This syllogism’s mediating capacities explain how it unifies its internal distinctions without annihilating them in the process. This logical unification also explains Thought’s independence because it is developed into a self-proof that does not refer externally, which is the logical way in which presupposition and finitude are avoided. This syllogistic form, through this

171 Presupposition and finitude. The latter fetter is removed by exhaustive interconnection of all concepts. The former is removed by the completeness and independence of the deductive system that results.

320 independence, then also becomes the basis for objectivity. As such, this syllogism is not only the most developed form of subjectivity, but also the first form of objectivity; it is the point of mediation between the two. Finally, as the fundamental form of mediation, which remains a syllogism, it also provides a deductive basis for Hegel’s Identity Thesis and gives good reasons why we should think of Hegel’s overall philosophy as an ontological argument.

Several tasks still remain. First, the argument will be shown to be valid by means of a proof.

Second, the validity of this proof must be understood as being interdependent with its soundness and with its modal properties. And finally, a discussion of the syllogism’s variable will reveal how the argument can contain itself as both its form and its content. When these tasks are completed, the argument’s flaws can then be analyzed.

CHAPTER IV

THE MODAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HEGEL’S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

Philosophy thus characterizes itself as a cognition . . . . This cognition is thus the recognition of this content and its form; it is the liberation from the one-sidedness of the forms, elevation of them into the absolute form, which determines itself to content, remains identical with it, and is in that the cognition of that essential and actual necessity.1

This notion of philosophy is the self-thinking Idea, the truth aware of itself . . . the logical system.3

The Idea (Idee), as the passages above suggest, is the conclusion of Hegel’s philosophy, the whole of Thought that comprehends its three stages—the Logic, Nature, and Mind. The Idea therefore includes within itself the whole system of Thought and that system is itself a disjunctive syllogism that is composed of disjunctive syllogisms ad infinitum. At the highest level, this form of syllogism acts as an ontological argument because it does not simply unify Thought with its object, with itself, but it rules out alternatives to itself, invoking the properties sufficient for an ontology. It

1 EM, 302, §573. Emphasis in original. Hegel Werke, Band 10, 377-378 (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970): “Die Philosophie bestimmt sich hiernach zu einem Erkennen . . . . Dies Erkennen ist so das Anerkennen dieses Inhalts und seiner Form und die Befreiung von der Einseitigkeit der Formen und Erhebung derselben in die absolute Form, die sich selbst zum Inhalte bestimmt und identisch mit ihm bleibt und darin das Erkennen jener an und für sich seienden Notwendigkeit ist.” 2 EL, 292, §236. Bold emphases added. GW, Band 20, 228: “Die Idee als Einheit der subjectiven und der objectiven Idee ist der Begriff der Idee, dem die Idee als solche der Gegenstand, dem das Object sie ist; — ein Object, in welches alle Bestimmungen zusammengegangen sind. Diese Einheit ist hiemit die absolute und alle Wahrheit, die sich selbst denkende Idee, und zwar hier als denkende, als logische Idee.” 3 EM, 313, §574. Bold emphasis added. Hegel Werke, Band 10, 392 (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970): “Dieser Begriff der Philosophie ist die sich denkende Idee, die wissende Wahrheit . . . das Logische mit der Bedeutung, daß es die im konkreten Inhalte als in seiner Wirklichkeit bewährte Allgemeinheit ist.” Emphasis in original.

321 322 does so with necessity. And, by ruling out any alternative to itself it achieves ultimate objectivity for itself, as it were, by default. These properties are on display, partially, with each sublation, but are only fully developed and concluded with the absolute syllogism.

A. Formal Proof of Hegel’s Modal Ontological Argument

In this section, I will now present Hegel’s modal disjunctive syllogism and then a proof of its validity. First some technical details. Regarding its logical environment, since it is an ontological argument in the absolute context, the absolute system of modal logic will be the logical system in which the proof operates.

Regarding the argument’s variable, because the proof addresses itself, it must take on special characteristics. I do this by complicating the presentation of the variable in two ways: by affixing an existential quantifier; and by including the idea of holism into the meaning of the variable itself. I accomplish the latter by referring to “world” within the variable.4 In my proof, consequently, the variable involves the property of what I call “world-ness,” a term that I will explain briefly below and then more extensively in a later section after the proof.

I will be following the pattern of the argument given by Damschen,5 with certain modifications. Regarding the variable, in order to capture the distinction between “conceptual objectivity” and “world-ness” I will substitute “Wx” instead of Damschen’s “Dx.” Where

Damschen focuses on an x that has definiteness (true & synthetic & a priori), which captures all relevant characteristics of objectivity in his assessment, I focus instead on the way that a necessary world (□W) is constructed by Thought and how x can be associated with it or not. When x has a world and is connected to the absolute world, meaning that it is both connected to and contains all other concepts, then it has world-ness (Wx). For Damschen, “Ǝx □Dx” means, “there is an x that is

4 This integrates the holistic condition into the proof. See, Franks, 9. 5 Damschen, “Ultimately Founded,”163-177. For details, see the appendix.

323 necessarily definite.” In the following proof, “Ǝx □Wx” can be read as “there is an x that necessarily is/has world-ness,” or “there is a concept x that achieves the holistic condition of a conceptual monism.”6

To capture Hegel’s belief that a concept cannot contradict that concept’s role in a syllogism and still be true in that context, I will make reference in the proof to the logical rule of inference that

I have been calling intermodal self-negation. Though I have named it, this is Hegel’s rule. Its specific function is essential to sublation and so it is also crucial to the proof of sublation’s validity, which is to say, to the validity of the disjunctive syllogism that contains itself as its content. Without this rule, the proof cannot be proven valid. Hösle and Damschen have referred to this rule indirectly in sections that discuss what their respective proofs are doing at specific points, but they do not include this concept of self-contradiction as a rule. Making use of intermodal self-negation as a logical rule of inference allows me to translate these discussion-only segments into formalized aspects of a single proof. This unifies the entire enterprise under one logical roof and eliminates non- logical, prosaic connectors. Since unity is a Hegelian theme, it makes sense, as a result, to either formalize the entire argument as a means of clarification for Hegel’s ontological argument, or allow the entirety to remain in dialog format just as Hegel had left it. Since the latter option has been a source of obfuscation for the argument in the past, it is therefore better at this stage of consideration to attempt to formalize it in its entirety.

All of the tools and justifications needed to accomplish the proof have been given in this and previous chapters. It is now time to begin the process of reconstructing the final version of the formal proof.

I begin by presenting anew a simplified form of the triadic syllogism as the basis of the proof that will follow. I do so in three ways, progressing from verbal to diagrammatic: first using words

6 Franks speaks of the holistic condition as the solution to the Agrippan Trilemma that German Idealists were pursuing. See, Franks, 9.

324 only; second introducing symbols for the variable and dividing it into numbered lines; and third using two-dimensional positioning to reveal circularity. The formalism of a numbered list will shape the first two and the diagrammatic formalism of a circle will accompany the third.7 Let us leave the domain of discourse as open as possible so that it ranges over propositions without specifying at the start what they are:8

1. It is not the case that, necessarily it is not the case that there exists a proposition that necessarily possesses world-ness. 2. It is not the case that, possibly and possibly not, there exists a proposition that necessarily possesses world-ness. 3. Necessarily there is a proposition that necessarily possesses world-ness.9

1. ~(□~Ǝx □Wx) 2. ~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) 3. □Ǝx □Wx

Finally, this special syllogistic form is intended by Hegel to be a circle.10 No single premise is privileged as the start or the finish even though finite minds enter the syllogism at one or another premise by adopting or considering one of the possible presuppositions about world-ness.

Nonetheless, for reference, I retain the numbers as above:

1. ~(□~Ǝx □Wx) ——— 2. ~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) \ / 3. □Ǝx □Wx

1. An Expanded, Linear Proof

It is possible to produce a proof of the above argument, showing it to be valid. This is a proof of the argument only at the highest level, because only at that level does the logical system involved enjoy unlimited, universal accessibility. The need to use the theorems and rules of S5 in the

7 Note that the first two premises are given in negated form; the first two presuppositions are already falsified. 8 For additional details on the domain of discourse and the importance of removing the limitations pertaining to accessibility, see the section below, IV.A.3, item 3. 9 This can be stated in many ways, as can the rest, but here some options may prove profitable: e. g., “There exists necessarily a set of concepts that is necessarily a world.” 10 WL, §15.

325 proof, which in turn rely on the system’s exhaustive completeness, show a dependence of the argument upon its absolute context. Only in that context are the requisite theorems and rules justified. That is, only in that context can the system furnish these rules for itself. Therefore, the proof below cannot be separated from the grandest of logical spaces, the absolute modal environment.

The main argument is given in numbered steps 1-3. Each of these numbered premises contains within itself a set of lettered lines constituting a sub-proof. In each sub-proof, the assumption of the negation of the numbered premise leads to a contradiction operating in the fashion of a consequentia mirabilis argument, the lettered steps. That is, attempts to negate the numbered premises instead prove them by the method of reduction to the impossible in steps 1.a–l,

2.a–p., and 3.a–r. The three numbered premises, taken as a triad, form an exhaustive list of options.

Thus, taken together, they form a Hegelian disjunctive syllogism. Consequently, the testing of the three premises is contained within the larger syllogism, and these tests deliver all true premises to that syllogism.11 This is Hegel’s methodology. Below, I employ that methodology in a contemporary formalism:12

11 This is not to say that the argument is sound. This will be part of the subsequent discussion of the proof. 12 The notation used here follows Irving M. Copi’s, Symbolic Logic, 5th ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1979). Specifically, the notation for the Strengthened Rule of Conditional Proofs is from p. 57-58. The change in type face is made to make use of the benefits of the new font’s mono-spaced properties.

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1. ~(□~Ǝx □Wx) 2, 3, Disjunctive Syllogism —> a. ~~(□~Ǝx □Wx) Assumption, Indirect Proof, (negation of 1) | b. □~Ǝx □Wx 1.a, Double Negation (D.N.) | c. Ǝx □Wx 1.a, 1, 2, 3, Def. of Wx, | Intermodal Self-Negation | [i.e., 1.a is an x with W13] | d. ◇Ǝx □Wx 1.c, (p ⊃ ◇p) 14 | e. □◇Ǝx □Wx 1.d, Axiom (5) | f. □~□~Ǝx □Wx 1.e, Modal Equivalence (◇ ≡ ~□~) | g. ~~~□~Ǝx □Wx 1.f, (□p ⊃ ~~p) |______h. ~~(□~Ǝx □Wx) ⊃ ~~~(□~Ǝx □Wx) 1.a-1.g, Strengthened Rule of Conditional Proof (C.P.) i. ~~~(□~Ǝx □Wx) v ~~~(□~Ǝx □Wx) 1.h, Material Implication (Impl.)15 j. ~(□~Ǝx □Wx) v ~~~(□~Ǝx □Wx) 1.i, D.N. k. ~(□~Ǝx □Wx) v ~(□~Ǝx □Wx) 1.j, D.N. l. ~(□~Ǝx □Wx) 1.k, Tautology (Taut.)

[In sum for 1.a-1.l: Negation of 1 leads to 1, therefore 1.]

2. ~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) 1, 3, Disjunctive Syllogism —>a. ~~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) Assumption, Ind. Proof, (neg. of 2) | b. ◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx 2.a, D.N. | c. ◇Ǝx □Wx 2.b, Simplification (Simpl.) | d. Ǝx □Φx ⊃ □Ǝx □Φx S4 Rule16 17 | e. ◇Ǝx □Φx ⊃ ◇□Ǝx □Φx 2.d, DR3 | f. ◇Ǝx □Wx ⊃ ◇□Ǝx □Wx 2.e, Filling the Φ variable | g. ◇□Ǝx □Wx 2.c, 2.f, Modus Ponens (M.P.) 18 | h. □Ǝx □Wx 2.g, (◇□p ⊃ □p) is valid in S5 | i. ~◇~Ǝx □Wx 2.h, Modal Equivalence (□ ≡ ~◇~) | j. ~◇~Ǝx □Wx v ~◇Ǝx □Wx 2.i, Addition | k. ~◇Ǝx □Wx v ~◇~Ǝx □Wx 2.j, Commutatation (switching order) 19 | l. ~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) 2.k, De Morgan’s Theorems |______

13 Premises that propose, like this one, the “existence” of a concept because that concept has already been part of the proof up to this point, is not new. I have detected it as early as John Buridan in his logic text book, Summulae de Dialectica. See, Mikko Yrjönsuuri, “Treatments of the Paradoxes of Self-Reference,” in Handbook of the History of Logic, vol. 2, ed. Dov M. Gabbay and John Woods (Boston: Elsevier Press, 2008), 600 (see premise 4). Notice also that this premise sits within the scope of an assumption. Nonetheless, this is likely to be a very controversial step. It will be discussed more in a following section. 14 Recall that this is the rule that “delivers” S5. If possibly p, then necessarily possibly p. It is also found in the Leibniz/Wolff Metaphysics textbook with which Hegel shows evidence of familiarity. 15 For clarification, the rule of material implication states that the following two propositions are logically equivalent: p ⊃ q ≡ ~p v q. See Copi, 40. 16 This rule obtains in modal logic S4 with constant domain. Damschen uses this as step 10 of his own proof. He cites Fitting, M. and Mendelsohn, R. L. (1998). First-Order Modal Logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 137. See the Appendix. 17 This rule, DR3, used by Damschen in steps 11 and 12 of his proof, states that one can distribute a modal operator (M) to both sides of an implication. ⊢ a ⊃ b ⇒ Ma ⊃ Mb. Damschen cites G. E. Hughes, and Cresswell, M. J. A New Introduction to Modal Logic (London: Routledge, 1996), 35. See the Appendix. 18 This step is our conclusion. However, in this location, it is contained within the scope of an assumption, which remains to be discharged. Therefore, this statement is not proved at this point. 19 As a historical curiosity, I note here that the theorems widely known today as De Morgan’s were already well known to Ockham in 1325.

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m. ~~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) ⊃ ~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) 2.a-2.l, C.P. n. (◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) ⊃ ~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) 2.m, D.N. o. ~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) v ~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) 2.n, Impl. p. ~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) 2.o, Taut.

[In sum for 2.a-2.p: Negation of 2 leads to 2, therefore 2.]

3. □Ǝx □Wx 1, 2, Disjunctive Syllogism -> a. ~(□Ǝx □Wx) Assumption, Ind. Proof, (neg. of 3) | b. ◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx 3.a, ~□ ≡ (◇•◇~) | c. ◇Ǝx □Wx 3.b, Simplification (Simpl.) | d. Ǝx □Φx ⊃ □Ǝx □Φx S4 Rule20 | e. ◇Ǝx □Φx ⊃ ◇□Ǝx □Φx 3.d, DR3 | f. ◇Ǝx □Wx ⊃ ◇□Ǝx □Wx 3.e, Filling the Φ variable | g. ◇□Ǝx □Wx 3.c, 3.f, Modus Ponens (M.P.) | h. □Ǝx □Wx 3.g, (◇□p ⊃ □p) is valid in S5 | i. ~◇~Ǝx □Wx 3.h, Modal Equivalence (□ ≡ ~◇~) | j. ~◇~Ǝx □Wx v ~◇Ǝx □Wx 3.i, Addition | k. ~◇Ǝx □Wx v ~◇~Ǝx □Wx 3.j, Commutatation (switching order) | l. ~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) 3.k, De Morgan’s Theorems |______m. ~(□Ǝx □Wx) ⊃ ~(◇Ǝx □Wx • ◇~Ǝx □Wx) 3.a-3.l, C.P. n. ~(□Ǝx □Wx) ⊃ ~~(□Ǝx □Wx) 3.m, ~□ ≡ (◇•◇~) o. ~(□Ǝx □Wx) ⊃ (□Ǝx □Wx) 3.n, D.N. p. ~~(□Ǝx □Wx) v (□Ǝx □Wx) 3.o, Impl. q. (□Ǝx □Wx) v (□Ǝx □Wx) 3.p, D.N. r. □Ǝx □Wx 3.q, Taut.

[In sum for 3.a-3.r: Negation of 3 leads to 3, therefore 3.]

This proof, of course, requires much explanation in addition to the preparation that has gone before. In what follows I will do the following five things: I will discuss the contemporary proofs upon which my own proof has been based; I will add some additional reasons to think that modality is vital to the argument; I will explore two ways in which the proof includes itself as its content; and I will discuss the strategy that the proof employs. After this, to close the book, I will

20 This rule obtains in modal logic S4 with constant domain. Damschen uses this as step 10 of his own proof. He cites Fitting, M. and Mendelsohn, R. L. (1998). First-Order Modal Logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 137.

328 produce a criticism of Hegel’s system-argument that I think escapes his own anticipations of counterarguments.

2. Three Predecessors to the Above Proof: Contemporary, Neo-Hegelian Arguments Establish the Viability of Formal Proofs and Reveal the Need for Modality

The present work is not the first to attempt a contemporary reconstruction of Hegel’s argument and I must now acknowledge my debt to those who have laid the foundations of this proof. Vittorio Hösle is apparently the first to put forward a deductive argument gleaned from

Hegel’s Philosophy.21 He is a Neo-Hegelian and conceptual realist who is trying to revive interest in the metaphysical claims that he thinks Hegel has made, and he does so as a means of opposing materialistic monism and alethic relativism. Hösle has worked to distill and formalize Hegel’s system with the result being a single argument that establishes the objective existence of at least one concept. His argument has three parts, which I think roughly correlate to Hegel’s three-part ontological argument as I have reconstructed it, however this correlation is difficult to detect and

Hösle does not make use of the disjunctive form as Hegel and I do.

I will not fully analyze Hösle’s argument here. However, I have provided a detailed analysis of it in the appendix. Nonetheless, it will be discussed briefly here due to its novelty in the contemporary debate as well as its influence on my own formal reconstruction. This influence is both direct and mediated through the work of others who have examined and improved Hösle’s original argument, specifically Miriam Ossa and Gregor Damschen. Hösle adds the precedent of viewing Hegel as an implicit logician, a logician who pursues deductive syllogistics. After him,

Hösle’s followers have added modality into his argument, out of necessity, as a way to achieve

21 Hösle, Objective Idealism, 1-40.

329 validity. To be clear, they have not seen this aspect in Hegel, but they do see it implicitly in Hösle’s contemporary argument. They have also offered extended proofs to show the validity of the modal form of Hösle’s argument.22

My own position is third in this line. What I am adding to this picture is the recognition that

Hegel’s argument was deductive and modal in itself, originally. There is no need to “glean” an argument from his verbal descriptions. Contemporary Neo-Hegelian arguments are rediscovering what Hegel has done, but seem unaware that these achievements were already made by Hegel himself. I also focus uniquely on the importance to Hegel of the Disjunctive form as well as the argument’s function as an ontological argument, the latter being Hegel’s express methodology.

Neither of these elements are found in these other contemporary efforts.

Miriam Ossa was first to publish a substantive reaction to Hösle’s argument.23 She produced a proof showing that the argument is valid in S5 modal logic.24 Gregor Damschen had also interacted with Hösle at about the same time that Ossa published, but only in correspondence.25 In these ways, both Ossa and Damschen have made the claim that Hösle’s original argument implicitly involves modal concepts. That is, the Hegelian-type argument that Hösle makes already contains modal argumentation implicitly, but its author, Hösle, was apparently unaware of this at the time of original publication. In Damschen’s eventual publication, he interacts with both Ossa and Hösle and offers what he thinks, and which I concur, is an improvement over both.26 Damschen’s argument and proof is thus the best available form of the Neo-Hegelian argument.

My contention, of course, is that Hegel’s original system-argument already contained the modal features required to make it valid and sound. Hegel therefore, without the aid of

22 Damschen, “Ultimately Founded.” 23 Miriam Ossa, Voraussetzungen voraussetzungsloser Erkenntnis? Das Problem philosophischer Letztbegründung von Wahrheit (Paderborn: Mentis, 2007). 24 Ibid. 25 Damschen, “Ultimately Founded,” 165. 26 I analyze Damschen’s argument in the Appendix.

330 contemporary conventions and formalisms, had sufficient knowledge and intuitions to see that the argument had to be modal in order to work. Therefore, the achievements accomplished by the work of Hösle, et al., are not properly new since they originated with Hegel. Nevertheless, since the time of Hegel, no one but Hegel appears to have been aware of such features in Hegel’s system. This contemporary flourish, though it does not seem so to intend, points us back at Hegel and helps expose what he had already accomplished.

Damschen’s proof is the most immediate basis for my own proof above. Damschen’s proof and my analysis of it appears in the appendix. Damschen’s proof lacks certain Hegelian characteristics. Once these characteristics are added back into the argument, it becomes a suitable description and reconstruction of Hegel’s system, which is to say, his ontological argument.

3. Why Modality Is Important

Damschen and Ossa have noticed that the argument must be modal. In previous chapters, I have explained partially why this makes sense in Hegel’s system and how Hegel expressed what I have called his S5 intuition. To recap, the recognition of these features involved six points of evidence:

1. Hegel has derived the tools of modal logic from within the Progression of Thought making them fit for use in post-Kantian philosophical argumentation. This includes the modal operators, the “modalities.”27

2. Hegel gives some evidence that he has read and used several of Aristotle’s and Leibniz’s modal syllogistics. From this we can also infer that he was aware of what is today called Axiom (5), (◇p ⊃ □◇p), the defining rule of S5 modal logic, because Leibniz was aware of it. This is a very powerful and important theorem. It indicates that possibilities are necessarily what they are. In other words, it makes each possible world itself necessary and thus also accessible from within this system. I elaborate these capacities in the following points.

3. The rules of modal logic, and specifically those of what is today called S5, in addition to the second point just above, are implicit within Hegel’s exhaustively

27 These can be found primarily in the section in WL that derives the modalities: WL; Vol. 1, Bk 2, §3, Ch.2; 541-553.

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complete Progression of Thought. Not only does the Progression contain all possible concepts, so that the theorems of S5 must also be part of that set, but it also includes implicitly the much more basic claim that the inclusion of all possibilities within the necessary set of all concepts ultimately reveals possibilities to be necessities. This makes Axiom (5) itself, its meaning, implicit to the notion of exhaustive completeness, since all possibilities must necessarily be part of the absolute structure, and thereby be necessary themselves; I have described this as the absolute modal environment (and this dovetails with the next point).

4. The exhaustively inclusive Progression of Thought is also fully interconnected, and this interconnectedness implies universal accessibility, another important feature of S5.28

5. There is sufficient evidence that Hegel intentionally, consistently, and meaningfully invoked modal argumentation in the context of the Ontological Argument. In fact, all of his three-stage arguments consistently invoke the same pattern of modal properties, in the following order: necessarily (not) for premise 1; possibly for premise 2; and necessarily for premise 3.

6. Hegel does not meet certain standards of contemporary expressions of modal logic, nor does he have anything to teach modern logicians about logical theory,29 but his work is nevertheless quite significant for the application of logic to philosophy, metalogically, and we miss the importance of his advances in this area if we hold him to inappropriately anachronistic standards. Hegel should not be held to contemporary standards with regard to logical formalisms, terminological conventions, or contemporary proof-presenting practices, nor should he now be expected to have anticipated every aspect of the contemporary S5 system. Such expectations are out of place. Consequently the lack of such conventions in Hegel need not prevent Hegel from working within a very advanced modal syllogistic environment. Unfortunately, there seems to be a ubiquitous presumption of inferiority for past logicians and for the state of logical science prior to Frege, and this keeps us from considering the possibility that logicians in and before Hegel’s day could have been using sufficiently advanced logic. Numerous examples of adequately advanced modal logic before Frege could be presented. In fact, this seems more the norm than the exception.30 William of Ockham is a prime example; he discovered over one

28 S5 is known as the strongest system of modal logic primarily because it allows access to all possible worlds. On this basis its necessities are not limited to just some possible worlds, and are therefore absolute. 29 Hegel does, I think, have much to teach contemporary logicians and philosophers about the relation between logic and truth, the ontological import of logical systems. 30 Some helpful facts and names: Aristotle had considered two senses of necessity and possibility, three modal functors, and 137 modal syllogisms explicitly; the Stoics improved the semantics of Aristotle and provided an analysis of implication that is more “intricate and careful” than anything available today; the torch of logic was then carried long and faithfully through Galen, Apuleius, Sextus Empiricus, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Porphyry, Marius Victorinus, Augustine, Martianus Capella, and Boethius; in the early middle ages, the fires were stoked again with Alcuin, John Scotus Eriugena, Gerbert, Abbo of Fleury, Notker Labeo of St. Gall, and Garland the Computist; these set the stage for Anselm and Peter Abelard who, through their work on the problem of universals, initiated the golden age of high Scholasticism; at that time, Albert the Great extended Aristotle; Pseudo-Scotus introduces multiple new modal functors, totaling ten, but Ockham, is the most advanced modal logician, possibly, of all time (see main text). After Ockham,

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thousand valid modal syllogisms. By his day, the state of logical science had been steadily progressing for millennia. Before the Modern reinvention of logic, the ancient Greek, early Christian, and Scholastic logical science had become exceedingly advanced, easily rivaling most of what is being done in logic today. After this second glance at what had been accomplished before him, it will not seem odd at all to think of Hegel working legitimately in the absolute modal space, intuitively if not explicitly. There is then sufficient evidence to conclude that this could have been Hegel’s intention. And so, Hegel’s inference implies that the appropriate modal rules have been intentionally invoked even though contemporary notational procedures are not used to emphasize them in ways that we, in the twenty-first century, have come to expect.

A few additional features of Hegel’s argument, ones that depend on its modality, can now be described. Modality is the means of adding the following additional perquisites to Hegel’s ontological argument: validity; soundness; exhaustiveness; and the elimination of dualisms. All of these factors are closely interrelated. Soundness cannot be delivered without the elimination of dualism because the conclusion, ultimate unity, is contradicted by any remaining externality. The elimination of dualism cannot be delivered without exhaustiveness because a partial structure is incomplete by definition, and so it leaves a remainder (at least potentially). The achievement of exhaustiveness cannot be had by brute force, as if the infinite set of concepts could all be enumerated. If it is achieved at all, therefore, it must be reached by means of a finite rational procedure that can guarantee the conclusion. Only a modal deduction in the widest modal environment has the capacity to necessitate its conclusion absolutely. If it were any other kind of process,31 then the conclusion would retain some doubt. This contingent perspective on what

“might be” a necessary structure would be a kind of dualism in itself. Therefore, it must be a deduction. And, of course, a deduction is worthless if it is not valid. Therefore, a valid deduction is required. It must be a valid and sound deduction that contains all concepts exhaustively and that

important advances were pursued by Walter Burleigh, Richard Swineshead, Jean Buridan, William Heytesbury, Albert of Saxony, Marsilius of Inghen, and Richard Ferrybridge. These were the logicians before Leibniz. For details on these points, see Bochenski, 81-230. See also Kneale, The Development of Logic, 177-190; 242-269. 31 By this I mean to suggest that any fuzzy concept of “dialectic” logic or a non-logical “sublation” is incapable of bearing the weight that Hegel places upon the process.

333 thereby eliminates dualisms of every possible sort. To conclude that Hegel is correct, all of this must be established.

To be more specific, there are several concepts at play in this discussion of the argument’s validity and soundness. My goal will be to show that the argument’s validity has a context in which my ultimate criticism will be made. Along the way to this goal, I will explain the many facets of the circular, interpenetrating, and self-referential logical structure that I think Hegel has described.

The ingredients required to constitute a modal disjunctive syllogism are derived within the

Progression of Thought. The interconnectedness of the Progression overcomes the problems of presupposition and finitude. Because they are derived and thus connected to the whole, deductive syllogisms are thus made fit for use in post-Kantian philosophy.32 This includes propositional logic, which is implied by Hegel’s derivation and use of the disjunctive syllogism together with its contents

(or ancestry).33

Four additional logical tools are also made available by the Progression. First, Hegel has provided the grounding for a logical rule of inference that drives sublation as a logical process. Hegel does not name this rule, but I have called it intermodal self-negation. This rule is implicit within the inference of the Disjunctive Syllogism itself (when it is derived as a syllogism that has itself for its content), and that is the syllogism that is ultimately the ground for this principle. This rule of inference has been used to drive the development of the shapes of consciousness, early forms of sublation in the doctrines of being and essence within the Logics, and the syllogisms in the doctrine of the notion. This rule of inference produces the negation of two of the three premises in the

Disjunctive Syllogism and this is the motive force both within that triadic logical structure and it is

32 This was the argument of Chapter II. 33 It may be contested that propositional logic involves more than the elements that Hegel has derived, but this syllogism is part of propositional logic, and it will be the only part that Hegel needs to make his final case. Therefore, minimally, the aspects of propositional logic that Hegel needs have been derived successfully in the Progression.

334 the source of the logical dynamism that pushes to the next triad in the Progression.34

Second, Hegel has derived the basic alethic modalities themselves, possibility and necessity.

He has derived them by means of the usual process of sublation in the doctrine of essence, but this process has also derived multiple systems of modal syllogistics, systems in Hegel’s modalities that had already been published by Aristotle, Leibniz, and Wolff. Just as logics today are recognized as relating to one another additively—one logic is transformed into another by addition of rules and formulae, which means that stronger logics contain weaker logics—so too does Hegel’s account of modal logical systems involve the inclusion of weaker modal and non-modal logics within itself.

Hegel’s Progression delivers multiple systems of logic.

More importantly, Hegel has established the modal environment within which absolute modal arguments can be made. By working toward an absolutely inclusive totality, he has provided universal accessibility to Thought. That is, because thought is internally interconnected, it has access to each of its parts within itself. And, because this totality is infinitely and exhaustively complete, this implicates two modal theorems of momentous importance, ◇□p ⊃ □p, and ◇p ⊃ □◇p

(Axiom 5).35 This implication comes from the exhaustive completeness of the totality. If a concept is possible, then it must already, necessarily be included in the totality. But, the totality is necessary.

Therefore, if a concept is possibly necessary, it must also be necessary, and, if a concept is possible it must be necessarily possible. Universal accessibility and these two theorems are sufficient to constitute what is today called S5 modal logic.36 This accessibility and these rules were needed in the above proof of the argument.

34 Nuzzo, 118. This is a good solution to the problem that Nuzzo sees in Hegel: “This is the methodological problem of the dynamism of the logical progress as it appears in the introduction to science, that is, before its actual beginning.” On my interpretation, the logic of sublation is ubiquitous in Hegel, beginning, middle, and end. This is the method of the Ontological Proof that Hegel clearly spelled out early in the Encyclopedia (EL §§ 51, 62, 64, 69-70, 76, 85). It is the method he links to the three stages of logic, and eventually to the DS. In the end, Hegel makes this the method of synthesis for the whole. It is everywhere his method, but the explanation of it requires special focus on the DS. 35 The latter form of this rule is found in Christian Wolff’s Latin Metaphysics, as discussed in Chapter II. 36 These rules are, minimally, sufficient for the inference that Hegel actually makes. I do not mean to make a case for the complete inclusion of every feature of contemporary S5 within Hegel’s philosophy.

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Finally, Hegel has shown that the Disjunctive Syllogism has implicit modal features itself.

This belief is put on display with each instance of the triadic pattern that Hegel produces. Each involves some clue to the modal value of some or all of the three stages/premises. These arguments also infer their conclusions by means of a modal inference. A modal inference is one that can only be proven within a modal-logical system; weaker logics cannot achieve a proof in this circumstance.

Hegel’s inference requires a modal system to be proven; therefore the argument he uses is a modal argument.

If the argument’s form is valid, and if it is provided with true premises in the absolute context, then it is a sound argument (though this does not eliminate all possible criticisms). Yet, this argument obviously strains the traditional definition of soundness. We must recognize that soundness, for this argument in particular, is about providing self-referential truth. The argument is meant to establish its own truth and independence. Consequently, soundness is achieved by ruling out external elements to which concepts might alternatively correspond.

It seems unavoidable to conclude that the establishment of the exhaustive inclusiveness of an infinite set would be a supertask.37 One might think that each element in the infinite set would have to be addressed if the set’s exhaustive completeness were to be established, but Hegel seeks to achieve this end within a finite argument by means of the argument’s modal features. Hegel’s finite and rather compact argument, far from being a supertask, concludes that dualistic alternatives are not possible; transcendence is impossible; the system is necessarily complete. So, it can be known a priori that there is nothing else, no transcendent concept or entity of any kind that might threaten

37 This is an infinite task that requires either infinite speed or infinite time in order to be completed. While this kind of infinity is characterized by Hegel as spurious and false in some contexts (WL, 139, 149), this schlechte Unendliche is only disparaged by him because it makes concepts unreachable. Thus, Hegel complains only when he has a solution, but when he does not the problem is not mentioned. I do not think that Hegel would deny that the comprehensibility he lends to all the sciences through the grounding that his system provides produces an endless task of filling in the gaps. Thus, I read his complaints about the “bad infinity” as pertaining only to certain kinds of limitations that he is able to remove with his system. For example, Kant’s and Fichte’s views on endlessly deferred moral grounds. See, Zambrana, 55; she draws the same connection. See also, Wayne Martin, “In Defense of Bad Infinity: A Fichtean Response to Hegel’s Differenzschrift,” Hegel Bulletin 28, no. 1-2 (2007): 168-187.

336 knowledge claims that are derived within the system. It is because the necessity of the conclusion is intended to be absolute in scope that it is meant to leave no possible remainder whatsoever. There is then nothing left about which the philosopher must remain necessarily ignorant. So, these many features of Thought are also features that can offer grounding to the philosopher who seeks knowledge.

For all these reasons, I conclude that the following concepts are interdependent in Hegel’s system: exhaustiveness; absolute scope (elimination of dualism); validity; soundness; circularity; self- grounding; self-correspondence; and necessity. I do not list them in a particular order, however, because the complex web of their interrelation makes an effort to discover an objective order of their arrangement pointless. Each concept seems to relate to every other concept in this one syllogism. Nonetheless, there is a clear break with the expected order of dependence between several of these concepts. Normally, for a syllogism in general, the premises’ truth is assessed first, then, subsequently, the validity of the argument’s form is assessed, and only then is the soundness of the argument as a whole determined and its conclusion judged true. In this case, however, the argument’s soundness seems to be the reason for its premises’ truth, and the truth of the premises is the reason for the soundness of the argument. Together, they would be delivering truth to themselves.

Hegel relies here on the circular nature of this form of argumentation. Each part of this argument relies on the other parts and on the whole. Yet, because Hegel’s argument is absolute in scope, validity is not simply first in a linear appraisal. If the argument depends only on itself, then validity has to depend on soundness, and soundness on validity.

But of course, there are other factors that must be worked into this circle. Modality delivers exhaustive completeness by means of a necessary conclusion; exhaustive completeness delivers objectivity to the whole; the objectivity of the whole delivers objective truth to the premises;

337 objectively true premises in a valid argument render the structure of the whole logically sound. Thus, objective reality is itself a true argument, and for this reason the exhaustively and necessarily complete conclusion, which is its modal property, delivers exhaustiveness, which takes us back to the start.

Circularity is irritating. A valid deductive argument with all true premises is sound, but in this case, the truth of the premises ultimately depends on the soundness of the argument. It helps to remember that Hegel treats the argument as a discovery. This is simply the form of Thought that he finds in play and that he detects by intellectual intuition. That it proves itself deductively is fortuitous, but the reason why is not given any further explanation, nor can it be.38 To view this as a discovery rather than as an argument for a system turns philosophy into a quasi-empirical exploration of concrete Thought through the faculty of intuition. This seems to be the ground on which Hegel thinks he is standing: reality explains itself coherently. If it can be believed, Hegel is just an explorer.

Modality is important because it is connected to a complex and interdependent set of features that includes the soundness of the argument. All of the parts of this web of interdependent features are essential. Without modality, therefore, the argument would not be sound.

4. The Self-Variables of the Disjunctive Syllogism

Now that modality has been explained as being essential to the argument’s soundness, one additional factor remains to be discussed to complete my analysis of the argument’s form. I will now explain the way that the form of the argument expresses Hegel’s intention that Thought should think itself. In other words, the argument’s variable is filled with the argument itself and this affects

38 Hegel avoids an infinite regress of reasons or explanations by showing that the highest level explains itself through interpenetration, a feature I have elsewhere called perichoresis. Even if one disagrees with Hegel’s specific conclusions, the need for the highest level to explain itself, if knowledge is to be grounded at all, is unavoidable. Theists refer to this property, in God, as aseity.

338 the argument’s form in two ways: incorporating the form of the Disjunctive Syllogism within its form; and incorporating the objectivity of the argument within itself as its object. I divide analysis of these two ways into the next two subsections, respectively.

In preview, the first task in the first subsection is to show precisely how the Disjunctive

Syllogism can contain its form within its form. The second task in the second subsection is to show how the Disjunctive Syllogism becomes the object of itself, being the meaning of the variable (x).

The argument fills its variable with itself as content in this way. The former task will reveal why

Hegel’s account of the Disjunctive Syllogism involves an extended disjunction, the latter will reveal more about Hegel’s intentions to produce an ontology.

a) The Self-Variable as Form

The task now is to show how Hegel fills the Disjunctive Syllogism with itself as form. I had provided a preview of this work in Chapter III,39 but here I will give complete detail of the transformation. This will take us from the traditional form of the Disjunctive Syllogism to the circular and modal form that Hegel uses throughout his philosophy. I thus begin with the traditional form:

p v q; ~p; q

Since the variable is binary, p can be treated as equivalent to ~q, and q to ~p. This allows us to use a single variable. I have been using “x” throughout earlier chapters, so I return to that choice now:

x v ~x; ~x; ~x

This will at first seem a strange syllogism, and that is due to the way the two variables are transformed into one. A quick example using appropriately placed parentheses will help explain the oddity. Either I will (eat apples, p) or I will (not eat apples, q); it is not the case that I will (eat apples,

39 See, III.B.4.a).

339 p); therefore, I will (not eat apples, q). Brackets help distinguish the p’s from the q’s; one need only keep track of whether or not the negation sign is inside or outside of the brackets: (x) v (~x); ~(x);

(~x). Using two variables had kept the ambiguity at bay in the formalism, but now, half the disjunct, the middle premise, and the conclusion are all made ambiguous by consolidating the variables. This ambiguity allows for certain choices in expressing each premise, which in turn allows us to match

Hegel’s format.

We can thus switch back to the positivity of the conclusion, which was lost in the formula above, by negating all the variables:

~x v ~~x; ~~x; ~~x, which reduces to: ~x v x; x; x

This has unfortunately reversed the disjunctive statement, but due to the binarity of the variable and the rule of commutation in propositional logic, it is unchanged in its meaning. That is (x v ~x) is equivalent to (~x v x), just as (p v q) is equivalent to (q v p). The two disjuncts need only be switched in their order to get back to the original format. On a second point, the above maneuver has also removed the negativity of the second premise, which we need to retain for a proper disjunctive syllogism. This negativity can be kept, however, by retaining that premise’s double- negative form, which is to say, by not reducing the double negative of the middle premise. This has the effect of switching the variable that is negated (as if (~p) were switched for (~q) in the second premise), but this too is acceptable due to the binarity of the variable. As it turns out, reversing the first premise allows for this to be done without losing consistency. So, the variable p (which was x) is now q (now ~x), and q (which was ~x) is now p (now x). This reverses the conclusion too, but this merely harmonizes the conclusion with the other premises. The meaning of the syllogism is not harmed. This gives us the properly transformed, one-variable form of the syllogism:

x v ~x; ~(~x); x

To confirm, let us apply this in ourr apple-eating example:

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Either I will (eat apples, q) or I will (not eat apples, p) [notice the switch]; it is not the case that I will (not eat apples, p); therefore, I will (eat apples, q).

This works as a disjunctive syllogism. So, the transmformation to one variable is working so far.

I next add modal operators. As discussed earlier, modalities can be considered implicit for propositions whose context is not specified. However, when the context is specified, then the modalities can be made explicit together with the accessibility relations that are applicable to the scope of the system of concepts that is being considered. In the absolute context, accessibility is made absolute. This means that more can be known about the premise’s propositions than could be considered in a general context (simply x). It also means that these propositions cannot be limited in scope by means of a less-than-absolute modal system with a limited accessibility relation.

Consequently, (x) becomes (□x) in the third premise; [~(~x)] becomes [~(□~x)] in the second; and the dis-junction of the first premise, (x v ~x), can be expressed as the con-junction of two possibilities

(◇~x • ◇x). That is, (x v~x) is equivalent to (◇x • ◇~x). This adds modal operators to each of the three premises.

Appropriate negations must be added to retain the validity of the form; but the syllogism applies them to itself. Since the variable is filled with itself, the absolute context is the meaning of x.

This makes rejection of x untenable in both of its modal states, □~x and ◇~x. So, the two premises that include these values, (□~x) and (◇~x • ◇x), must self-negate as a prerequisite for compatibility with the absolute context. This means that the first two premises must appear in their negated forms. The second is already negated, but we must add a negation to the first. The formula thus becomes:

~(◇~x • ◇x); ~(□~x); □x

Hegel reorders the premises in his typical order of presentation as follows:

~(□~x); ~(◇~x • ◇x); □x

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This is the final, modal version.

This is not obviously valid. In fact, it seems plainly invalid. The reason for this is that there is a concept-object boundary in effect that the typical formalism is not equipped to express.

Specifically, there are two different kinds of negation in each of the first two premises. One is applied in the existential sphere, the other is applied in the conceptual sphere. This boundary is all but invisible in the formal expression, and for this reason, readers will be prone to applying simplifications that should not be applied when the syllogism is interpreted.

Specifically, regarding Hegel’s first premise, a contemporary modal logician is prone to reducing ~□~ to ◇ before appreciating the distinction between the existential negation and the conceptual negation. The brackets in this premise thus represent a boundary that such simplifications ought not breech. The premise is [~(□~x)]. Here the outer- or left-most negation is applied in the existential sphere; the inner- or right-most negation is applied in the conceptual sphere. For this reason, [~(□~x)] cannot be reduced to (◇x).

Likewise with the second premise: The core of the premise is (◇x • ◇~x). It is reducible to (◇x). If we apply the outermost negation to this, without respecting the existential-conceptual barrier, we get (~◇x). This appears to contradict (◇x) from the previous premise. Thus the appearance of invalidity.

This means that [~(□~x)] cannot be properly reduced to (◇x); and [~(◇x • ◇~x)] cannot properly be reduced to [~(◇x)]. The following analogy will help to illustrate these points:

1. A man truthfully speaks the words: “I definitely cannot speak.” 2. A man truthfully speaks the words: “I might be able to speak and I might not be able to speak.” 3. A man truthfully speaks the words: “I definitely can speak.”

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For ease in labeling, I will stipulate the following terminology: we have here three propositions (1, 2, and 3) containing three assertions in quotation marks. The first two propositions, it is plain enough to see, are false in this context because the act of speaking those assertions contradicts their meaning. Therefore, if a man speaks those words, then he cannot be truthful. These propositions (1 and 2) must be negated, but such negations do not make the assertions in quotation marks false.

Such a negation does not apply to the assertions. Rather than leading to a contradiction between 1 and 2, these negations bring the first two propositions in line with one another and also with the third.

The relevant point is that the negation of proposition 1 must not be allowed to interact with the negation inside the quotation marks, the “cannot.” Proposition 1 properly becomes:

1. It is not the case that a man truthfully speaks the words: “I definitely cannot speak.”

This is quite intuitive; there is no danger of mixing the levels of negation when the ideas are presented like this. But, when this is translated into a formalism the danger emerges. [~(□~x)] is all too easily seen as equivalent to [~□~x].

Therefore, the negations of the propositions that deal with the assertions are not done at the same level as the assertions themselves. Alternatively stated, the outermost negations of the premises apply to the existential sphere and the innermost negations apply to the conceptual sphere. They must not be intertwined by a simplification.40

I must explain, then, how the proof thirteen pages above crosses this same conceptual- existential barrier in several steps without violating this principle. The reason why it is appropriate in the proof above is that the hypothetical statements being tested by those parts of the proof act to remove the barrier. That is, their hypotheses entail the non-existence of the barrier. The result is unavoidably contradictory. This disproves the hypothesis, which then establishes the existence of the

40 Damschen attempts to capture this distinction with the logic of speech acts. See the Appendix.

343 barrier by reduction to the impossible.

Now that I have reduced the traditional syllogism to a one-variable form and have showed how the modal operators are applied, I will endeavor to show how Hegel places this form within itself, in terms of its formal aspects. That is, the variable of the form is to be filled with the form itself. When this is done, Hegel’s peculiar three-variable version of the Disjunctive Syllogism emerges and this serves as an explanation for why he uses three variables. This is done by placing all three premises of the syllogism into just one premise as a three-way disjunctive judgment.41 This premise will later be removed, for it will be found later to be implicit, but for now it serves to show an important step. This new disjunctive judgment is: (□~x) v (◇~x•◇x) v (□x). Though this was the entirety of the argument, as given above, all three premises are now combined into a single disjunctive judgment. This can be used as a premise in the syllogism itself.

Within this new premise, notice, each part is included in its naive form, prior to its negation.

Subsequent premises will then adjudicate the appropriate negations according to internal, intermodal conflicts. The resulting syllogism has, for now, four premises. This will later be reduced to just three:

1. (□~x) v (◇~x•◇x) v (□x)42 2. ~(□~x) 3. ~(◇~x•◇x) 4. □x

This differs from the traditional form of the Disjunctive Syllogism in that it has three variables instead of the normal two. Whereas the traditional form is: pvq; ~p; q. Hegel’s version involves a three-way disjunct, and thus three variables: pvqvr; ~p; ~q; r. Hegel’s description of this syllogism’s disjunctive judgment is: “. . . either B or C or D.”43 This three-way disjunction corresponds to premise 1 just above. Hegel then combines premises 2 and 3 into one premise. His

41 As noted earlier, I have inferred that Hegel has done this based on the evidence that his version of the DS uses a three-way disjunct: A is B or C or D. See, WL, 701-702. 42 This disjunctive judgment represents the DS within the DS as form. 43 WL, 701-702. Hegel’s B corresponds to my #4. C and D correspond ambiguously to my 2 and 3. GW, Band 12, 124: “. . . entweder B oder C oder D.”

344 labels are: “. . . neither C or D.”44 Finally, the conclusion is the same, one variable remains.

This formalism, however, contains two crutches that allow us to see two of the consequences of the argument’s circularity. The first crutch is premise 1 itself, the three-way disjunction. In Hegel’s sublations, and especially the final sublation, where Hegel organizes his

Encyclopedia into an ontological argument, this three-way disjunction is only implicit in the three premises that are given.45 Hegel believes that the three-way disjunctive judgment is implied by the simple juxtaposition of the other three options. So, the inclusion of the first premise as such is a crutch; it is not properly a premise; it is already implied, already present in the syllogism, by the other premises taken together. So, that first premise can be removed. We are left with 2-4. When the first two of these self-negate, the following form emerges, but it has a strange new property, circularity.

Consequently, the second crutch is the syllogism’s linearity. The flexibility of the form is revealed. It can go in any direction from any one of the premises. This capacity emerges when we eliminate the disjunctive judgment as a stand-alone premise. The final form is therefore circular. In the diagram below, I use lines46 to indicate directions of consideration among the three premises.

From any one of these premises, one can look to any of the other two. Hegel views the syllogism not only as circular, but as capable of mediating its form and its content. As explained above, it does this because each premise stand as mediator of the oher two:

~(□~x) ——- ~(◇x • ◇~x) \ / □ x

These insights tie Hegel’s unusual three-variable version of the Disjunctive Syllogism not only to the form of sublation, but also to his claim (and Aristotle’s) that thought thinks itself. When we place

44 Ibid. GW, Band 12, 124: “. . . aber nicht C noch D.” 45 EM, 314-315, §§575-577. 46 A typical syllogism, being linear, requires no lines to direct consideration. The reader simply knows to go “to the next line below.” Here, because the normal conventions of linear proofs is foregone, the lines are needed to indicate how one can proceed from one premise to the next.

345 the form inside itself, so that the content of the form is the form, we see this unusual three-variable syllogism emerge.

These are the consequences of filling the argument with itself in terms of the form. This does not complete the task of accounting for the variable, however because the variable, x, remains.

What then is x? This is the self-variable of the syllogism in term of content, or object. The filling of the syllogism with itself as form, has now been completed, now the second way of self-filling will be described.

b) The Self-Variable as Content: Filling the Variable (x) with World-ness

Above, I have explained how Hegel’s argument is a disjunctive syllogism that contains its own form within itself as form. This has allowed me to account for the argument’s three-way disjunction and it gives the syllogism the ability to check and negate its premises purely by internal resources. The self-filling variable has thus given us explanatory power. To this pair of explanations,

I will next add the capacity to explain the argument’s ontological reach. This third aspect is explained by considering the way the syllogism contains itself as its own object. This is another way for the syllogism to have itself as its content, through the variable that represents the object to which the concept refers. When this variable is filled with the argument itself as a concrete object, the ontological consequences follow.

This second way of filling the variable, however, is special because its context dictates the success or failure of the argument’s ontological reach. Thus, where the previous analysis could remain formal and general, here, only the absolute context can deliver the ontological reach that is needed by the system.

Hegel’s system is filled with sublations, and each can seem like an attempt at independence that fails, each one leading to the next attempt. In terms of the variable of the sublation-argument, x

346 can be filled with anything. And, the intention seems to be that it is indeed filled with everything whatsoever. Throughout the Encyclopedia, the variable is filled with every possible concept. Put another way, each sublation is itself also the value of the variable being considered in its own process. Yet, none of them is successful in achieving unification, and so the process moves on until it reaches the point at which Hegel stops, the point that he calls absolute.

Hegel’s conclusion implies that only in the absolute context can this syllogism function properly as an ontological argument with no remaining threats to its independence. There is therefore only one place where Hegel’s ontological argument is provided by him in the proper context even though its form repeats endlessly as one looks backward from this conclusion.

Formally, the argument is the same in all instances, but in all other instances but the last one,47 the syllogism is not a true ontological argument. The reason for this is that the argument is not valid until it can make legitimate use of an absolute modal system of logic, one with full accessibility. Only if this is ever achieved for the whole are the logical resources of the whole available to its parts.

There are limitations on the variable in the absolute context. In this context, x cannot be an external element because such a choice would introduce a dualism after the pattern of stage 1. It cannot be a mystery either, an irreducible variable, for that too would introduce a dualism after the pattern of stage 2. It must therefore be an internal element expressing the unity of stage 3.

Additionally, if this is to be a genuine ontological argument, then the variable must inherently deal with the question of the formula’s relation to the absolute world (and not any smaller set of concepts, nor any subset that excludes something, for that would either introduce a dualism or reveal that particular application to be a sub-syllogism). There must be an appropriately ultimate content for the variable x if the conclusion is to be absolute. The alternative is to interpret Hegel’s philosophy, in part or in whole, as aiming at a lesser goal: either a merely parallel objectivity for

47 E.g., in shapes of consciousness; in pre-syllogistic sublations; in the spheres of Being, Essence, and the Notion; in the Logic as a whole; and in the syllogistic structures seen throughout Nature and Mind.

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Thought versus the material world; or mere normativity within the confines of the phenomenal world. With regard to the former, objectively real concepts would be governors of a separate but also objectively real material universe.48 With regard to the latter, relatively determined concepts would be seen as normative but still possibly disconnected from reality in some way.49 Neither of these alternatives allows Hegel to meet his goals and they both fall prey to one of the two inferior presupposing attitudes that Hegel worked to overcome. These are none other than the first and second presuppositions of abstract dogmatism and critical skepticism. Only if Hegel’s context is wide enough to include all concepts and all objects, encompassing both mind and world completely, can it achieve the goals that Hegel intended. Only in the absolute context can the argument be truly ontological.50

So, the variable in the absolute context must be filled, and it must be filled with something absolute, and that something must not be external. The variable, once again, must then be filled with the Disjunctive Syllogism itself. However, this time, this filling must be done in a new way, as content, as object. I must now determine how it is that Hegel performs this second kind of self-variable filling.

I begin by admiring the choice that Hegel makes. It is unfortunate that it is not emphasized more by Hegel because it truly showcases his skill as a philosopher. Yet, contemporary Neo-

Hegelians have overlooked the stress that Hegel himself has placed on what I have called “world- ness.”

World-ness is appropriate because the argument that has itself for its content must fill its variable with itself. Not only with its form, which I did in the previous section, but with itself as content. This distinction results in two distinct moments for the syllogism. Thought produces its own logical space, according to Hegel, so when it fills itself with itself as an object, it does so as an

48 Conceptual realists like Stern and Hösle take this position. 49 Post-Kantians take this position. 50 Though, of course, this ontology is highly modified as compared to the ontology expected by the Greeks, the Scholastics, and Leibniz, all of whom sought access to something objectively transcendent.

348 objective (or concrete) world. The Disjunctive Syllogism unifies its form with its content, so they are the same, but this identity means both that it unifies its form with its form and its content with its content. These can be considered to be two moments of the unification accomplished by this syllogism.

The first moment of unification, uniting form with form, which was just described above in the previous section, is a purely formal accomplishment. This self-inclusion is the condition for the possibility of intermodal self-contradictions, and as such, it is the “driver” of the logic of sublation.

The second moment of unification, however, is a purely objective inference. Here, the content of the syllogism, its object, is the syllogism itself. It is a concept that considers itself to be the absolute world. A simple statement, though insufficient as a proof of itself, might now serve as a helpful analogy and clarify the strategy that is in play. Consider the sentence: “This sentence is everything.” If true, then this sentence has included itself within itself as its object. The variable form would be: “(x) is the whole of existence.” This shows how a proposition might include itself as content. Now consider a syllogism, composed of sentences, that does the same thing: “Necessarily,

(x) is not the whole of existence; possibly, (x) is the whole of existence; necessarily, (x) is the whole of existence.” If (x) is “this syllogism,” then we have a Hegelian ontological argument. Because it includes itself, the first and second premises contradict the syllogism, as is seen in the fact that they contradict the conclusion. The form is thus invalid unless the first two premises are negated. Yet, even after negating them, it would be absurd to think that this syllogism were true because so much remains outside of it. Hegel uses this basic form to leverage an exhaustive program of inclusion that absorbs all possible concepts within the syllogism itself. If Hegel has been successful, then we have a strong contender for a solution to Philosophy’s preeminent riddle.

This type of self-inclusion is the condition for the possibility of synthesis. This is the basis for the ontological reach of the absolute syllogism.

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There is a very consistent indication from Hegel that he understood his argument in terms of a contest of worlds,51 and that is exactly what (x) winds up doing in the syllogism if it is understood as world-ness. The three options for understanding (x); as necessarily not having, possibly having, and necessarily having world-ness; makes the syllogism into a contest of the three possible perspectives on world-ness. World-ness is therefore a very Hegelian concept that makes sense in the context of a disjunctive argument.

This application of world-ness also ties Hegel’s argument to contemporary modal logic in a new way through its most popular semantics, the possible worlds semantics. This is more than a perspective or interpretive framework useful for appreciating Hegel’s ontological argument; it seems to be something that Hegel himself pursued. In other words, Hegel’s three-step Encyclopedia may be an early, logically-relevant invocation of possible-world semantics. But, this is not merely a semantics in

Hegel’s hands. Hegel intends to cross the divide between form and meaning (syntax and semantics) and to unify them. Thus, a discussion of semantics in the Hegelian context does not permit as clean a distinction as has been made in contemporary logic between the semantics and the interpretation of the meaning of the semantics.

As might be expected, the choice of semantics is tied to the nature of the project itself, and thus our choice of interpretation of it. Consequently, interpreters of Hegel who occupy the first, second, and third stages in their own attitudes will be drawn to semantics that reflect the nature of those stages. Therefore, the process of selecting the proper semantics will itself be seen to retrace the logical steps of the argument itself. I think that my own selection, world-ness, is a properly third- stage option. Other options are then first- or second-stage options. In what follows, I will break down the alternatives and show that the third alternative must have been Hegel’s intention.

51 E.g., EL, 19-20, §§13-15; 50-51, §30; 179, §123; 181, §125; 188-189, §§132-133; 207-208, §147; 239, §174; 283, §224; and 295-296, §241-244.

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(1) The First and Second Stages and World-ness

When the concept is considered by some, its reality is denied, and so it is understood to lack world-ness. This approach to the variable is seen historically in first-stage attitudes. Hegel has attributed this to Aristotle and to Anselm, as we saw in the VBDG. This attitude sees the tangible as the real, and the mental as the imaginary.

This is the first historical presupposition that Hegel criticizes and he joins the Critical

Philosophy in this pronouncement. It involves a presupposition so fundamental to everyday thinking that it is usually not critically examined even when robust systems of logic and metaphysics are based upon it.52

The second stage calls the first stage into question by critically examining this presupposition. In terms of world-ness, the first stage thinks that there is only one world, and that it is the ultimate realm of the real. When the possibility of other worlds is first considered, as Kant was believed to have suggested until recently,53 the objectivity of the world is thereby called into question, and along with it, the meaning of the term “world” itself.

Any consideration of world-ness therefore holds the first presupposition in suspense. If other, subjective entities can possess world-ness, then the original presupposition is given a serious challenger. If there are two worlds, then there are two challengers vying for ultimacy. This is the difficulty with which Kant’s philosophy had left Hegel in the grand sweep of the history of philosophy. Even if we interpret Kant’s philosophy in a way that does not allow for two actual

52 E.g., the Newtonians and their proofs of the existence of God that were considered in Chapter II. This was the most immediate target of David Hume’s skepticism. 53 The aptly named “two-worlds” interpretation, AKA “two-objects,” was the leading interpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism in Kant’s lifetime and remained dominant until the mid 20th century. Cf., the Göttingen Review given by Garve and Feder in the early 1800s. A contemporary challenger has recently arisen known as the “two-aspects” interpretation. Proponents of this view include: Graham Bird, Gerold Prauss, Rae Langton, and Henry Allison. There are at least two other interpretations. As I will describe in the main text, this distinction does not alter my argument here even though I might additionally argue that Hegel would have been exposed only to the two-worlds interpretation during his lifetime meaning that something like the two-aspects theory would have to be invented by Hegel ex novo.

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“realms,” the phenomenal and the noumenal,54 this distinction remains legitimate here because the mere possibility of alternative modes of cognizing (discursive and non-discursive) is enough to produce an alternative basis for the validity of the laws of reason, as Kant concluded.55 So, whether we consider the possibility of other worlds in terms of space-time entities, or as sets of concepts, the first and second stages function the same way in Hegel’s argument.

This can also be imagined as an individual journey of realization. Thus, we see it in the development of a child. The object does not bend to my will? The object is outside of me? The object is another person? This is surprising, jarring. These are first encounters with other worlds, in a sense. At any level of consideration, this takes us from the first to the second stage.

The second stage also has difficulties. The consideration of subjective or possible worlds of any sort is a threat to the truth-making capacity of the public world of objects accessed through the senses and also of the public world of thought accessed through the common rational faculty. Cast in these terms, Kant showed that it is not just subjective perspectives that are demoted by the suggestion that there are different worlds; our publicly-shared worlds (sensate and rational) are also weakened with regard to their capacity for verification. He showed that we could not simply and uncritically rely on our perceptions or our thoughts about our shared world. Our shared rational world is accessed through the faculty of the understanding; our shared objective world is accessed through the senses; and both are subject to doubt. Kant could not find a way to ground knowledge because he could not find a way to access a world that unifies all other worlds. He could only peripherally and weakly set up a category for the unknowable, the indescribable noumenon.

(2) The Third Stage and World-ness: Overcoming Kant’s Noumenon

54 Pippin, Persistence, 187, n.2. Pippen distinguishes three views here, which he names: “metaphysical dualism”; “a veil of perception phenomenalism”; and “a purely methodological, ‘dual aspect’ theory.” My point here is that all of them produce a reason to doubt the naiveté of the first-stage attitude. 55 Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 566-567.

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Hegel’s solution was to show that worlds of any and all kinds are already fundamentally conceptual structures, a conceptual monism. It is not that we cannot get “outside” of concepts to find an objective anchor, he argues, it is that the attempt makes no sense. Such attempts are based on faulty presuppositions. What would it even mean to get outside of concepts when asking for meaning?

Kant concluded that we could not rule out the possibility of alternative ways of cognizing.56

Our discursive mode of understanding, therefore, does not rule out the possibility of non-discursive ways. If there are alternative ways to think, then our conclusions cannot be proven absolute.

Whether or not we think of these categories of cognizing as true “realms” or not, it is clear to me that Hegel’s approach turns Kant’s conclusion on its head. Hegel has concluded that there need not and cannot be an “outside” to thought regardless of what “outside” might mean. It is hard to avoid the spatial metaphors, and perhaps it is possible to translate them into a discussion of dependence and independence, but I nonetheless find the spatial analogy helpful.

Hegel thinks that Thought includes everything within itself and this conclusion is the primary result of the completeness and necessity its own structure. If Hegel is correct, then everything is already conceptual, a universal tautology. Thought is a self-deduction that furnishes its own form and content. A “realm” outside of Thought is necessarily ruled out, concludes Hegel.

Transcendent entities, he thinks, are not merely inconceivable and inaccessible, there is no possibility of their existence in any sense. Even this category itself is already be found within thought. Kant had dealt with these questions by means of the noumenon, the unthinkable non-category whose very nature is in opposition with definability. Yet, Hegel works to prevent this non-category from arising in the first place. He goes beyond Kant by deducing the impossibility of transcendence from within

Thought.

56 Ibid., 564-567.

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Moreover, that which is inconceivable does not and cannot provide any kind of grounding.

A ground must be a master world, but a world is already, necessarily a conceptual structure.

Therefore, the way to ground philosophical knowledge is through the discovery of a master conceptual structure, the world of all worlds. Hegel’s system attempts to prove deductively that

Thought is both self-sufficient and alone; he views it as the ground for all knowledge claims whatsoever.

(3) World-ness Clarifies Hegel’s Goals

A single proposition can have world-ness not only through being a systematic totality, but by containing intrinsically the rest of Thought, by being part of the master world through its internal connections to the rest of Thought. Hegel sought to establish this in his two Logics by showing the connectedness of all concepts. Hegel writes of the Notion that it is, “the systematic whole, in which each of its constituent functions is the very total which the notion is, and is put as indissolubly one with it.”57 This suggests that Hegel views world-ness as more than just an inclusive property for elements within each sphere, but also as a linking property of any one system with the great system, the over-arching world of worlds.

Thought inherently and independently avoids finitude because it freely connects to itself wherever it can. It can connect everywhere conceivable, so it does. The logician and philosopher avoids presupposition through the realization that finitude is not applicable to concepts; interconnectedness is a necessary property of concepts. Yet, interconnectedness must lead to totalities, systems, worlds. Ultimately, the whole is achieved, and each part of the whole is then necessarily connected to the whole, and this connectedness is intrinsic. So, each concept contains all other concepts. Each concept is not only a world, but it is the world, the whole. This is the holistic

57 EL, 223, §160. GW, Band 20, 177: “Der Begriff . . . ist Totalität, in dem jedes der Momente das Ganze ist, das er ist, und als ungetrennte Einheit mit ihm gesetzt ist; . . .”

354 condition for which German Idealists were searching. The property of world-ness is therefore the negation of finitude. Negating finitude unveils the necessity of world-ness for each and every concept.

This perichoretic and nested interconnectedness of all possible concepts therefore also connects Hegel’s argument to the type of logic (called S5 modal logic today) that is needed to make its inference valid. If all possible concepts exist at some point in the Progression of Thought (The

Encyclopedia), then merely being possible is equivalent to being part of the larger necessary structure. Thus, what is possible is necessarily possible and what is possibly necessary is necessary.58

Thus, world-ness is more appropriate than the consideration of objectivity for an argument that attempts to give structure to all possible sets of concepts and of objects. So, the result is a more genuinely Hegelian argument. Therefore, a semantics of world-ness carries many benefits for an interpretation.

There are, however, competitors to this semantics. World-ness can also be described as objectivity, as if it were a synonym. Objectivity, however, is already biased in favor of the first-stage interpretation. World-ness, in contrast, can be claimed and tested by all three interpretations, and this is the whole point: it is these very claims that can be compared in a disjunctive syllogism. World- ness is therefore the best choice of semantics.

It might be argued that Hegel is smuggling mind into object and then deducing mind from object, a strategy that involves presupposition. However, this is not quite what Hegel is doing and world-ness helps us to see this more clearly. The early, first-stage attitude thinks that it has the obvious answer to questions about the world, but this forces it to occupy a mere subjectivity from which it cannot even prove its own presupposition about the world. The second-stage attitude thinks that it is clever enough to hold the external world in doubt and applauds its own

58 Cf., steps 1.e, 2.h, and 3.h in the above proof.

355 circumspection, but this forces it to occupy a deeply skeptical position from which it also cannot prove its own founding presupposition. A world-based semantics reveals these attitudes to be mistakes more easily than other semantics. Yet, it does not presuppose anything because it is semantically neutral; each position has a way of thinking about the status of its world so each can lay claim to the semantics of world-ness. The deduction simply forces them to test their grasp on that semantics by relating each one directly to its own presupposition.

Hegel’s line of reasoning is certainly not unassailable, and I am not promoting it as such here, but this appears to be the most charitable way to interpret Hegel because no other interpretation takes his philosophy further toward the goals that he expressed. Yet, this semantics is also very exegetical. World-ness, like modality and formal logic, is easily detectable throughout

Hegel’s works. It is therefore the semantics that Hegel has chosen for his own system.

This semantics is intimately tied with the formal features of the Disjunctive Syllogism as it is positioned in the absolute context. In terms of the formal deduction then, the argument has a variable, and that variable refers to a specific content in the absolute context. The variable is thus the syllogism itself, but taken as concrete. This “taking as” is a logical function of the syllogism. By placing itself into the role of content, by being x, it functions as the object. Yet, since this is the highest level, the absolute level, this is no longer play-acting. In that context it becomes the real object, the concrete Idea. The way that things are real is ultimately founded on Thought taking itself to be real. It is because it is.59 The way this is done, logically, is the filling of the variable with itself, which is to attribute world-ness to itself. This is the founding attribution of reality, the definition and original presentation of concreteness in Hegel’s system. It is his final conclusion.

59 Notice that we have entered into theological territory with this explanation. That which is because it is, has the attribute of aseity.

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B. The Strategy of the Proof and its History

As an ontological argument, the proof at the head of this chapter represents not only a solution to the problems of Hegel’s day, it is a solution to an ancient problem. It also employs an ancient strategy. The great age of both the problem and the strategy, however, does not hinder the argument from directly and relevantly addressing the various concerns of the German Idealists.

There is, then, a set of contexts that I am attempting to associate. I have come to believe that Hegel’s solution is best understood in its wider context first, and that this becomes a prerequisite for understanding it in Hegel’s immediate context. And, in addition to these, we must also understand the argument today, in our own context. That is why I have brought its validity to light by means of a contemporary-style proof. In this section I will address these three issues of context as a summary of the entire project up to this point.

1. The Multiple Historical Contexts of Hegel’s Argument

That ancient problem mentioned above concerns how philosophy can ground deductive systems without running aground in the so-called Agrippan Trilemma,60 which is the skeptical challenge asserting that deductions must remain ungrounded because they cannot avoid relying upon one of three distasteful options: presupposed axioms, circularity, or infinite regress. The ancient strategy for avoiding this trilemma has a very long and rich history starting perhaps even before

Aristotle in Plato. The deductive form of the solution involves Aristotle’s method of reduction to the impossible and his attempt to self-ground of the Laws of Thought using to the impossibility of negating them.61

60 Both Franks and Hösle connect this problem to the Trilemma, but only Hösle sees this as a problem of deductive grounding. See, Hösle, Objective Idealism, 7ff; and Franks, 3-4, 9, 192-193. Note: Hösle calls the Trilemma by another of its common names: the “Münchhausen Trilemma.” 61 Kneale “Aristotle and the Consequentia Mirabilis,” 62–66. Kneale sees the CM argument in Aristotle’s Protrepticus. De Risi, 37, 39. De Risi sees this argument in Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid. Bochenski, 60-62, 76. Bochenski

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Plato’s consideration of “knowledge of knowledge” in the Charmides is perhaps the very first attempt to explore the repercussions of a concept that considers itself as its object.62 Aristotle is then first in the logical context to conclude that certain principles of logic can be self-supporting and he also appears to rely upon his method of reduction to the impossible to accomplish this.63 The Stoics presented a counter-skeptical argument involving the futility of attempting to negate any primitive truth; they found that any attempt to do so leads to a proof of that primitive truth. Augustine’s Si fallor sum64 (if I am mistaken, I am.), often seen as a precursor to Descartes’ cogito, is next to consider the implications of self-reference; but it is the first form to point out the argument’s existential component. Next, and critically, Pseudo-Scotus’s principle, ex fallor (sequitur) quodlibet (EFQ), expresses what many today call the “principle of explosion,” and it threatens the Aristotelian approach of reduction to the impossible if a self-referential argument begins with a contradiction.

This, in turn, is addressed, among other places, within the Scholastic discussion of the consequentia mirabilis argument (Clavius, Cardano, Saccheri), and it is Saccheri who eventually offers a proof of the validity of this kind of argument (though it is debatable if this also addresses Pseudo-Scotus). It is next Hegel who takes up the campaign. His version of the consequentia mirabilis faces the principle of Pseudo-Scotus head on,65 and defuses it. Hegel shows that from a contradiction everything does indeed follow, and he does so in a way that defangs the principle of explosion by preventing contradictions from voiding the distinction between truth and falsity. It does so by accounting for all possible concepts within a system of logical differentiation based entirely on the negations held reports that Aristotle develops the principle of contradiction thoroughly and devotes a whole book to it, Gamma, in his Metaphysics. Bochenski interprets Aristotle to have concluded that the Principle of Noncontradiction is not an axiom; it can be deduced. Aristotle does the same with the Law of Excluded Middle, and the Law of Identity, and these three are the three Laws of Thought, which are not merely axioms to Aristotle; all of them are self-deducible. These sources indicate that Aristotle used the method of reduction to the impossible to show that the Laws of Thought can be deduced by self-reference. 62 De Risi, 37, 39. See also, Plato, Charmides, 167B-175D. 63 Kneale, “Aristotle and the Consequentia Mirabilis,” 62-66; Bochenski, 76. 64 Augustine makes this argument in City of God (De Civitate Dei) XI, 26, trans. William Babcock (New York: New City Press, 2013), 26-27. See also On Free Choice of the Will, II.3, 7; and The Trinity, XV, 12, 21. 65 I am not saying that Hegel discusses EFQ directly and by that name, but only that his version of the CM addresses the threat that the EFQ represents.

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(safely) within disjunctive syllogisms. These act as containers that nullify what would otherwise be mutually annihilating negations; this is the preservative effect of sublation.

Without knowledge of this context, Hegel’s solution makes much less sense. Yet, extending our analysis into this context requires first that we appreciate his redemption and use of logical deduction. Seeing Hegel as a logician is the gateway to seeing the relevance of the wider historical context.

Hegel is neither lost in the past, nor is he oblivious to the problems of his own day. His solution is backward looking in terms of its use of logic and its approach to the oldest of problems, but it is also circumspect in the way it picks up the gauntlet that Kant had thrown down. Hegel acknowledges and overcomes the problems of dogmatism in the practice of logic (presupposition and finitude). He uses the system of deduction to prove that system’s own self-sufficiency (within subjectivity). And then, he turns this achievement into an ontological argument by using it to rule out the possibility of transcendence, which, if successful, beats Kant at his own game.

2. The Contemporary Proof

Historical considerations are thus of great importance in this excavation of Hegel’s ontological argument, but of equal importance are the technical issues surrounding the argument’s validity. To these issues I now turn with a specific focus on the extended proof above.

The technical issues that precede Hegel include reduction to the impossible as a means of deductive proof (from Aristotle) and the possibility of non-viciousness self-reference (as in the consequentia mirabilis). New with Hegel is the issue of intermodal self-negation as a means of driving the negation within self-referential proofs for the deductive system. And, perhaps new to my own proof above, is the expression of all the above with a contemporary-style formalism. This is the context for the technical issues I now discuss below.

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The proof itself has levels that are nested within one another. The numbered steps are the disjunctive syllogism that has been described throughout the present work. The lettered steps, however, involve the logic of the self-negations of each premise taken individually. This is the logic afforded by the rule of intermodal self-negation. It is, therefore, the logic inherent in sublation, a form that is proved valid only in connection with the ultimate fulfillment of the system in the absolute context because only there are the rules for the absolute modal system available.

One by one, these sub-proofs negate their premises by the method of reduction to the impossible. The truth of each numbered premise, following the strategy of the consequentia mirabilis, is tested by working through the consequences of its own negation in the lettered steps. These negations are put forward as hypotheticals, which is to say, within the scope of an assumption.

Among the lettered steps, the inner workings of premise 1 (1.a - 1.l) are the most consequential. It is here that the overall syllogism questions its ontology most directly because it is here that it addresses the relationship that it has, itself, with its contents. For this reason, it is also the place where the rule of intermodal self-negation is needed. This is the place where the concept’s

“unresolved contradiction” is expressed as such and worked out logically. The thesis of abstraction

(negation of premise 1) is the thesis of finitude, but as such, this thesis contradicts what it is. “It is finite in itself, and hence it is the antithesis of itself; it is the unresolved contradiction. . . . The finitude of subjectivity is sublated in the concept itself, . . .”66 Internal to sublation, then, as a logical process, through step 1.c, premise 1.a expresses its capacity to grasp the negative (apophatic) ontological implications of its own definition. As the thesis of abstraction it sits in contradiction to its truth.

This inner conflict is first exposed as such in step 1.c: (Ǝx □Wx). The justification is intermodal self-negation. This is the only place in the proof where this rule of inference is needed,

66 VBDG, 190-191. OB, 274: “. . . es ist an ihm endlich und somit der Gegensatz seiner selbst; es ist der unaufgelöste Widerspruch. . . . Diese Endlichkeit der Subjektivität ist an ihm selbst aufgehoben, . . .”

360 but it sits at the crucial step; it cannot be substituted or eliminated without disrupting the entire proof. Yet, the proof’s potential problems also arise with this step. One of these problems is that 1.c is simply a statement of existence, and so it may seem that “Ǝx □Wx” is just the conclusion of the proof (and in fact, it is identical to step 3). However, this is mitigated by the fact that 1.c is held within the scope of an assumption and so it is only an implication of the hypothetical truth of 1.a.

Nonetheless, this may not be readily apparent, because 1.c is a direct implication of 1.a in a very unusual way. On Hegel’s analysis, 1.c is a direct implication of any concept’s truth. Thus, if any concept ‘is the case,’ even hypothetically, then the simple fact of it ‘being the case’ is enough to carry ontological commitment into the scope of the assumption. If, hypothetically, 1.a is true, then 1.c must also be the case. That is all that 1.c indicates. It is not simply stating the conclusion after all, it is stating the consequence of 1.a being true. And, 1.a is hypothetical.

Nonetheless, if the proof as a whole is to have ontological import, then it must not be trapped within a hypothesis of its own. So, 1.c is contained in a hypothesis, but the broader syllogism is not. To clarify how Hegel works this out, I will summarize the logical process again and then relate it back to step 1.c.

If a syllogism is valid, before all else, it must be coherent. Its parts must harmonize with its other parts and with the whole. So, it is a condition of the syllogism’s validity that the premises must not contradict the conclusion. Premises that conflict with the conclusion of the syllogism are thus automatically falsified. In the logical context produced by a syllogism, no premise may contradict the conclusion. Such a contradiction would violate the role that the proposition is playing in its syllogism. And so, no proposition may properly play its role as a premise of a syllogism if it contradicts the conclusion of that syllogism. On this basis alone, the premise must be negated if validity is to be maintained.

Put another way, within the jurisdiction of the logical game being played, no proposition can

361 remain un-negated if it would otherwise conflict with the conclusion of the argument. This is not vicious circularity or self-reference. It is a condition of validity for all syllogisms.

Like Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Clavius, Cardano, and Saccheri, Hegel had come to appreciate that this capacity for self-negation can be leveraged logically to make an assertion about what cannot be true. And, like Augustine and Descartes before him, Hegel also realized that this capacity could be leveraged ontologically, to make an assertion about what cannot exist.

This is how it works:

- If A cannot be true without contradicting the syllogism, and if B cannot be true without contradicting the syllogism, then they both must be negated. - But if A, B, and C are the only options, - Then C must be true, by process of elimination. - But if A, B, and C are propositions about the possibility of transcendence, - Then, the conclusion of the deduction, C, says something about the possibility of transcendence. - If C rules out the possibility of transcendence, then it removes its own hypothetical bracket because of the meaning of transcendence. - So, C must be a truth that is not trapped within the scope of an assumption.

In one additional move, Hegel makes this into a system. He packs all things whatsoever into the argument, into A-C, so that nothing remains outside of it. The result is an ontology that is structured as a deductive system of all possible concepts.

This is how the larger movement of the proof ties into step 1.c. That step asserts the hypothetical existence of 1.a. (Keep in mind that I am dealing with existence in terms of world-ness, which is a qualification of existence.) But, 1.c is part of the process of negating 1.a. So, 1.a must exist if 1.a is true. This means that the existence of 1.a is in conflict with the meaning of 1.a in the context of this syllogism. The assertion of the existence of 1.c is then the basis for the negation of the hypothesis of the truth of 1.a.

Step 1.c is the place where the proof first reaches outside of the logic of speech acts, as

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Damschen describes it, and into the realm of ontological significance.67 Even though this is hypothetical, it is the condition of validity that borrows on the possibility of ontological status.

Hösle describes this move as a form of contradiction. In other words, the denial of 1 can only be true if it is a member of the world that 1 is also a member of. It is the same in kind as the entities it doubts. This was the same idea lurking within the Saccherian argument. What I have shown, I think, is that Hegel’s argument relies on this inference, and so rejection of 1.c would then be tantamount to rejecting Hegel’s (and Saccheri’s, and Gödel’s, and Hösle’s, and Damschen’s) argument before it can get off the ground. If my Logical-Metaphysical interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy is correct, then his philosophy hangs on this one step.

To Hösle, my premise 1 is the concept that denies that concepts can be non-hypothetical

(synthetic) a priori knowledge. Yet, it refutes itself because, if it is true, then it must be the very thing of which it denies the possibility. To Damschen, this is the step whose propositional content denies the very form it takes. It denies the possibility that any proposition can be definite (true, synthetic, and a priori), but it can only be correct about this impossibility if it is itself definite. Clearly, Hegel’s version is the strongest of these three perspectives because it deals with worlds, a semantics that is quite at home with Hegel’s system as well as with the argument’s requisite modal environment.

Thus, the statement in 1.a denies world-ness, but it already relies upon world-ness. The direct implication of its meaning is its existence (1.c), but its existence contradicts it meaning. So, 1.a is false, and 1 is proven true by this internal process.

This is enough to allow movement to the next step. This is admittedly negative and still merely conceptual, but within a list of three exhaustive alternatives that deal with ontology, being able to eliminate options is very consequential. Representing the Logic, this is the basis for Hegel’s apophatic ontology.

67 Damschen, “Ultimately Founded,” 167.

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C. Hegel’s Lapse and a Suggestion for a Hegelian-Style Resolution

The argument’s form is valid. In addition, because Hegel points to an infinite, internal expansion of its contents exhaustively, if he is successful, the Ontological Argument also provides for itself all of its own logical prerequisites, its theorems, rules, and objects. It can do so only in the absolute context, however, because only exhaustive completeness allows for universal accessibility among all worlds. That is, if it reaches its goal of absolute scope, it thereby provides its own internal reasons for the absolute modal system that it needs in order to be valid, a system that is for all practical purposes equivalent to S5. This was Hegel’s modal intuition. Validity and soundness, therefore, are both dependent on the absolute scope of the argument. Dualisms are therefore antithetical to the soundness of the argument. If any dualisms are found to remain, then the argument, as it stands, cannot be considered sound because it would lose access to the absolute modal system and its theorems.

Unfortunately for Hegel, a dualism does remain in his system, one that he has not yet addressed directly. In what follows, I will identify this dualism and explore its consequences. I will then suggest a way forward for Hegel’s methodology, post-Hegel.

1. Hegel’s Lapse: A Latent Dualism

I have been claiming that dualisms have the potential to bring down Hegel’s entire system and that he must eliminate all of them to reach his goal. But, the dualism I have detected that has remained is not the kind of dualism that must necessarily bring down Hegel’s house of cards, not entirely, because it is a dualism that can be addressed with an addition to his system rather than a subtraction. I am thus calling for an additional round of sublation.

This is my primary criticism of Hegel. Though I have defended his system and made as much of it as I can up to this point, now I find that I must turn against it. Despite this turn, however, I do not

364 criticize it by contradicting it, but instead by completing it. It is my contention that Hegel’s system is incomplete; he has failed to take two final steps. These steps are not optional, in terms of the internal logic of Hegel’s system, because Hegel’s methodology, like an algorithm, must be free to go wherever it can. If anyone, even Hegel, limits it arbitrarily, then that system’s true import is interrupted before it can finish. Yet, I have found that completing Hegel’s system, according to

Hegel’s own rules, leads to a very different conclusion as compared to the one Hegel reached himself.

a) Detecting the Latent Dualism in Hegel’s System: Why Hegel’s Is Not the Proper Stopping Place for the Progression of Thought

I now present a criticism that does not fall into one of the first two presupposing attitudes. It has been difficult to find, in part, because it lies after his system has taken its final step. Nonetheless, it may seem at first that this criticism does indeed fall into the category of the first attitude. For that reason, I fear, it may be prematurely dismissed. Yet, if Hegel has revived and grounded the logic of the first stage, as I think has been adequately argued, it may now be permissible to revive and ground the original context of the Ontological Argument through the following criticism.

Hegel concludes that the system of all concepts, what he calls the Idea (Idee), is utterly independent. He concludes that the Idea is self-grounding because it is uncontested as a truth maker.

Despite the validity and necessity of Hegel’s conclusion, however, careful inspection shows that

Hegel has not yet tested the possibility that a transcendent mind contains and/or generates the Idea.

In other words, by deducing that the unity of concepts is an absolutely necessary truth, Hegel has not also tested for the inclusion of something that is not a concept. In other words, he has not yet accounted for a master subject, the so-called “Cosmic Spirit" of onto-theology.68 So, I agree with

Pippin and others who conclude that Hegel is not a spirit monist (though I have disagreed about

68 See, Pippin, Hegel’s Idealism, 4-5, 10, 92, 99, 194, 199.

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Hegel’s view of metaphysics and concluded that he is an idealistic monist). But, I am complaining that Hegel has not ruled out this option himself with a sublation.

The proper place for such a sublation is just after the point at which the Idea deduces its own independence. This is the required location for such a deduction because Hegel is moving from the parts to the whole. Therefore, the sublations that test greater questions would be located at the end rather than the beginning of his route of analysis. Yet, Hegel stops just short of the point where such a sublation should be undertaken. The result is a rather large oversight, a premature termination of the algorithm he has so carefully followed to this point. As such, it becomes an artificially introduced finitude, which means that Hegel has violated his own rules.

To the typical Hegel scholar I expect that this will seem like a stage-1 complaint, and as such, it may at first appear naive. But, I think that I am being quite fair to Hegel in this criticism because I am acknowledging all of the rules that Hegel has established, and have pointed out that Hegel himself is violating one of them. If dualisms and finitudes are to be ruled out by the unifying process of sublation, and if even the mere possibility of such a finitude can be fatal to the system, and if such possibilities have led to new sublations in all other locations of the system, then there is no reason to disallow such additions here at the end.

In short, it is not naive at all to wonder if thoughts require a thinker. Perhaps like books without readers and also without authors, the proposal of an utterly independent concept is inherently self-contradictory. Perhaps, the meaning of “thought” includes within itself a reference to or a reliance upon a thinker. Maybe the thinker is entailed by the concept. Maybe a thought is the kind of thing a thinker thinks.

At this point, of course, it would be pure dogmatism to assert that this is the case. But, it seems equally dogmatic to assert the opposite. But if both are equally dogmatic, and if that is a finitude. If the Idea has not yet sublated this tension, it follows that the system of concepts must

366 enter into another sublation if it is to avoid landing back in Kantian territory.

This next round of sublation must now be pursued. The tension is between Hegel’s conclusion, the independent Idea, and the opposite alternative, and the dependent Idea. Adding modalities, we again see familiar forms of the three options.

2. Suggestion for a Hegelian Solution: An Additional Syllogism to Address the Latent Dualism in Hegel’s System

The unresolved tension caused by Hegel’s premature terminus can be tested by means of an additional sublational triad, a subsequent disjunctive syllogism and sublation. This is, consequently, an extension of Hegel’s system by means of its own rules. This post-Hegelian sublation will question the necessity of the Thinker of the Idea.69 The unresolved tension in Hegel’s Idea, can be formed as a question: Does the Idea have a Thinker? There are three70 fundamental ways for us to answer the question: no; maybe; and yes. Following the form that is standardized by Hegel’s system, this becomes:

1. It is not the case that, necessarily, there is a Thinker. 2. Possibly there is a Thinker. 3. Necessarily there is a Thinker.

These might not be immediately recognized as Atheism, Agnosticism, and Theism, but those are the options at stake in such a question. If we wonder if the system of all possible concepts has a

Thinker, we are wondering if there is a transcendent mind responsible for the concepts Hegel has been assembling into a coherent system. Given the idealistic context, this is Berkeley’s God.

As we have come to expect, the logical process will next take us from the disunity of the first premise to the unity of the third. The first two premises, as the method demands, are negated by

69 My own use of the term “Thinker” is, in this section, meant only to refer to the mind that potentially thinks the thoughts in Hegel’s system, the Thinker of the Thought (or Idea). As such, it is the transcendent mind and/or person that Hegel has attempted to rule out. 70 This is true given the rules of the Hegelian approach.

367 means of working out their internal and intermodal conflicts. I will not belabor this point by providing a new proof because a simple substitution is needed. It is the same form as given above in the many-step proof, thus it has already been shown to be valid.

a) The First Premise Self-Refutes: A Result of Leftover Tension in Hegel’s Encyclopedia

The first position in the list just above is Hegel’s system. If the Idea is independent, then it has no Thinker. This implies that there is no transcendent God, and this seems to be Hegel’s position. As a whole, this involves the encapsulation of the Idea with the modification of necessary independence. And, as with any other stage-one encapsulation, assertions of independence become a finitude-generating modification. This means that Hegel’s conclusions have applied a finitude- generating independence to the absolute Idea itself. All Thought is thus isolated from at least one thing, the Thinker.71

Unlike Hegel, I recognize this first premise not as an absolute conclusion but as exhibiting the defining characteristics of a first stage, and thus its inner tension erupts from within, as a consequence of its inner conflicts. It unavoidably produces a new instance of dualism. The encapsulation of Thought by a program of independence is very similar to the abstraction that produces the Logic. Thus, just as Aristotle and Anselm presupposed that thoughts could be abstract and thus independent from the real world, Hegel is presupposing that thoughts can be independent from a Thinker. Thinker-less-ness is akin to abstraction because it separates and isolates. Abstraction and Thinker-less-ness are therefore both plagued by finitude. Like birds of a feather, they should both be seen as first-stage attitudes. There are, of course, differences between the kinds of finitude that confronts each position, but they are very similar. They are similar enough to produce an

71 This is the defining feature of Naturalism. It is common to view Hegel as a naturalist of some sort; e.g., Paul Giladi, “Hegel’s Metaphysics as Speculative Naturalism,” in Hegel and Metaphysics: On Logic and Ontology in the System, ed. Allegra de Laurentiis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 149-161.

368 intermodal conflict, which is the necessary and sufficient logical cause of a new sublation.

Just as the encapsulation of abstraction produces the Logic, the encapsulation of independence (Thinker-less-ness) produces atheistic philosophy and theology. Consequently,

Atheism is this encapsulation’s historical manifestation. Such a philosophical disposition conceives of the unified rational and material worlds as if they were independent and self-sufficient.

Historically, this is the implicit presupposition that is made by absolute idealists and (atheistic) conceptual realists. This encapsulating concept claims that concepts can exist concretely and even think by themselves (and about themselves) without the aid of a mind to generate them, which is a conceptual reductionism. Concepts simply are what they are, being structured together the way that their natures insist. The whole is then thought to rely only on itself; it possesses for itself its own aseity.

The self-refuting aspect of this encapsulation and its conflict with its contents is that it disunifies Thought from Thinker by denying the possibility of the Thinker’s existence. It shows that concepts are all unified, which is to say, coherent and connected, and it reduces some objects and thinkers to concepts, but it does not thereby rule out the existence of a distinct master-Thinker (a special and thus untested kind of thinker).72 This means that Hegel’s system, which is now premise

1, proposes necessarily that it is disconnected from a master thinker of any kind, but, as it will turn out, it requires connectedness to a Thinker in order to be true.

Hegel might ask why this need be a problem. Perhaps, he might say, the Idea might be able to exist independently of any thinker. If it is true that the Idea self-proves and that it is thereby able to self-exist,73 then this is simply the case; no higher explanation is needed. Its internal consistency seems to be a good reason to think that the Idea can explain itself. Additionally, the Idea would then

72 Nor for that matter does it necessarily unify that Thinker with its thoughts (to produce an immanent self- Thinker). Hegel explicitly rejects the interpretation that makes him a pantheist in EM, 302-313, §573. 73 I.e., to self-concretize.

369 have aseity and this is every bit as legitimate as its alternatives, which are that the Thinker has aseity

(monotheism) or that the Thinker-Idea as a pair have aseity (pantheism). The Thinker, Hegel would argue, does not produce any additional support to the Idea than the Idea does not already possess in itself. The utter self-sufficiency of Thought, he concludes, is a good reason to rule out a Thinker.

This would be an odd rebuttal to come from Hegel, however, because he used an eerily similar argument against the logic of the understanding, but on that point Hegel took the opposing position. Why, after all, cannot individual concepts stand on their own? Just because a philosopher imagines necessary connections between concepts does not mean that those connections are in fact necessary for concepts’ existence.74 Why cannot individual concepts have aseity so that Hegel’s interconnected system becomes moot? Hegel’s answer in that case was that such independent concepts could only be grasped in an arbitrary way, resulting in dogmatism. This eventually leads to skepticism and relativism. Hegel wanted to avoid these problems, so he worked to prove that concepts must be connected by their own internal logic. By their own internal resources, he showed, concepts imply their interconnection and, in fact, the connectedness of the whole of Thought.

My contention is simply that this same program of connection, whether it is legitimate or not, terminates prematurely if it stops before unifying Thought with Thinker, or at the very least, before testing the possibility with its own sublation. Also, potentially, if completeness is needed in order to justify the knowledge available within the Idea, via justification of requisite modal rules, then failing to test for the master Thinker is a glaring omission and possibly a fatal logical flaw. So, at minimum, this is a flaw of incompleteness for Hegel’s logical proof. He fails to follow through on this own method, and this failure might leave us with limited accessibility, which, in turn, might prevent any legitimate use of the absolute modal system.

How then does the first stage move to the second? Via a conflict between what the Idea is

74 Or, their ability to be concrete on their own.

370 and what its encapsulating program means. Its encapsulating program is “necessary independence,” but what it is is a thought. If thoughts are the kinds of things that thinkers think, or if this is at least a possibility, then this encapsulation is self-contradictory.

One might think that this is not enough to reject the independence of the Idea, but this misses the point. All it takes is a mere possibility. Thus, if the Idea is not utterly self-proving without the barest possibility of a lingering externality, then the necessity of the conclusion is lost. The entire first premise must then be negated just as first premises have been throughout the Progression. Such a negation is not a proof of the conclusion, of course, but it is only a revelation of the self- contradictory nature of the first premise as such, as a declaration of the necessity of the independence of a thought.

Let me unpack this just a bit more because I fear that it will come off as unsophisticated. I start by noticing that thoughts are only ever had by thinkers in our experience because a thinkerless thought cannot be perceived as such. This sets up a kind of phenomenon-noumenon distinction.

Concepts in our experience are not isolatable from thinkers. Even if a thinkerless thought is possible, it is never encountered, and if it was, then it would not be thinkerless. Any thought of which I am aware is for that reason also a thought that has at least one thinker. A thinkerless thought is therefore inherently undetectable, not rationally and not empirically. It could only be noumenal.

There are two worries that might arise at this point for my readers. First, it might seem that these intuitions about a thinkerless thought are not sufficient to conclude that thoughts always require thinkers. Second, I may also appear to be begging the question.

Regarding the first worry, in addition to the similarity that this argument has to Berkeley’s

“Master Argument,” an argument that I think can be leveraged to some extent to bolster my claim

371 here,75 I will also argue that there is a modal disjunctive syllogism waiting to be triggered by the mere possibility that a thinkerless thought is not the case. This “possibly not” modification to Hegel’s

Idea, then becomes the second premise in that syllogism; it becomes the antithesis of Hegel’s conclusions. And, like all other rounds of sublation, the second premise will then negate the first.

In rebuttal, it might be argued that a thinkerless thought is at least a coherent notion. And, conceptual realism is in fact a time-tested and respectable theory. It will seem plausible to most that, despite our inability to demonstrate the existence of such thoughts, it remains possible that they exist without thinkers. Yet, this simple and unavoidable concession, I contend, is enough to set us on the path of the sublation at hand; Hegel’s Encyclopedia is like a first-stage premise with a necessary conclusion whose untenability pushes us into a second-stage consideration of possibility. So, this first worry is already, itself, a second-stage attitude. (This is what I mean when I said that it is hard to

75 Samuel C. Rickless, Berkeley’s Argument for Idealism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Rickless gives a thorough treatment of this argument in his monograph. He refines the argument to the following 11 steps: (1) X conceives that T exists unconceived. [Assumption for reductio] (2) If X conceives that T is F, then X conceives T. (3) X conceives T. [1,2] (4) If X conceives T, then T is an idea. (5) T is an idea. [3,4] (6) If T is an idea, then it is impossible that T exists unconceived. [Nature of Ideas] (7) It is impossible that T exists unconceived. [5,6] (8) If it is impossible that p, then it is impossible to conceive that p. [Impossibility entails Inconceivability] (9) It is impossible to conceive that T exists unconceived. [7,8] (10) X does not conceive that T exists unconceived. [9] (11) X does and does not conceive that T exists unconceived. [1,10] [A contradiction arises from premise 1, so 1 is falsified.] (NB: I have omitted some of Rickless’ labels in the above proof.) Rickless concludes that this argument is “clearly valid.”(136, 188) But, it is “not clear” whether or not it is sound.(188) Rickless gives a many-paged discussion of soundness and concludes that it is not sound just so long as the realist is willing to accept certain costs in denying implications of the premises. For this reason, it is a significant challenge to realism.(196-197) It is a “forceful challenge to realists and materialists of all stripes” because it forces realists to commit to beliefs that are “contrary to common sense and to one’s experience . . .”(197) Specifically, according to Rickless, the commitment that realists must make in order to retain their thesis is “to suppose that the exercise of reason [or judgment] is required for the production of perceptual beliefs.”(197) In the end, despite failing to provide a definitive proof, Rickless thinks that Berkeley has given us “one of the most impressive examples of pure a priori ratiocination in defense of an immensely important ontological thesis ever devised.”(197) In his final analysis, Rickless gives Berkeley his guarded assent. He concludes that Berkeley “may well be right.”(197) My own criticism of Hegel’s argument now rests on a very similar point and so the considerable weight of Berkeley’s Master Argument can be used as a support for my criticism here, though I will provide an argument that I think must be accepted if Hegel’s system is also accepted. See, George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, ¶22ff, in George Berkeley: Philosophical Writings, ed. Desmond M. Clarke, 67-149 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 91ff. And in the same book, Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, Dialog 1, 154-190.

372 criticize Hegel without falling into one of the first two presupposing attitudes.)76 So, if I am criticized for arguing naively that thoughts require a thinker, then the critic is probably leveling this complaint on the basis of the plausibility of the alternative (that thoughts might not always require a thinker).

Yet, this point can only be made by assuming the disposition of the second attitude.

Regarding the second worry, that all of this begs the question, I can answer by partially admitting to the accusation. This argument does rely on the conclusion of the present syllogism, but it does not do so in a way that Hegel has not already done throughout his system and which he has done, in fact, at every self-negating step. Hegel has consistently relied upon the conclusion of his system in order for concepts to conflict with what they are. That is, we need the conclusion to know what a concept is, but we need to know what it is to negate the first two premises.

Yet, this is not a vicious circularity, as I showed in Chapter II. It operates as a consequentia mirabilis argument that tests a concept by assuming its negation and then showing hypothetically how it leads to contradiction; no external reference is needed. The conclusion, being negative, only relies on the role that the concept is playing within the scope of that assumption, as my proof above has also demonstrated. In other words, in hypothetical situations where a concept plays a role that contradicts what it means in that syllogism, it would then be a self-contradiction. It fills a role that entails a commitment that it cannot meet.

This is a major point that brings together everything that has been stated in the present work so far, so I will carefully develop this point in three levels of explanation, from simple to complex.

First, logically, if the syllogism’s conclusion is X, and if the meaning of a premise is ~X, then that premise must be considered a hypothetical that is then falsified.

76 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 235. Foucault has different reasons for the same conclusion, but that the conclusion is the same is perhaps of interest. He writes: “We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us.” My reason for this conclusion, of course, is that we have consistently misinterpreted Hegel and fallen into one of the first two presupposing attitudes that he so extensively argued against.

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Second, from an epistemological perspective, Hegel’s system concluded necessarily that

Thought is independent. But, if this is true, hypothetically, that thought is necessarily independent, then it is an independent thought that I am thinking. It is thus dependent on my thinking it, and I cannot imagine it any other way. The truth of this claim is therefore unknowable. So, its necessity must be negated. So, it is not necessarily the case that Thought is independent. This then takes us to the second premise, which tests the self-contradictory nature of the mere possibility. Taking this from another angle, Hegel’s argument would work perfectly if we did not have to consider the

Thinker as such, but because it represents a possibility, it must be considered. And, when we do consider it, we have already abandoned the necessity of the first premise. The mere possibility of the

Thinker is already ruling out the necessity of the previous conclusion. The necessary independence of Hegel’s Idea must be negated because it cannot reach its own independence purely by internal means.

Third, putting epistemological and logical concerns together, consider as a starting place the form of the absolute deduction, which is the form of Hegel’s Idea: ~(□~X); ~(◇X v ~◇X); □X.

Given that the argument provides meaning for itself, then each premise must conform to its role in this argument if the argument is to be true. That is, no premise can contradict the syllogism. The syllogism assigns to each premise its role, and the meaning of each premise may not contradict that role without invoking its own negation. The conclusion (□X) can be read as: “Necessarily, Thought requires a Thinker.” No premise may contradict this in its meaning. But, Hegel’s system does contradict that meaning. Premise 1 (□~X), “Necessarily, Thought does not require a Thinker.” clearly contradicts the premise 3, so it self-negates in this argument. The meaning of premise 1, necessary independence, hypothetically contradicts premise 1’s role in the syllogism, a role that entails the negation of premise 1. If premise 1 were true (before its negation), then it would self- contradict in the context of this argument. That is, if it were true hypothetically that □X, then this

374 would contradict the role that this proposition plays in the present syllogism. So, □~X contradicts the third premise □X, which means that it cannot fit in with the whole of Thought as Hegel has presented it to us, unless it is negated. So, the whole of Thought, if it is to be coherent, must include a negation at this point. Truth can come only via unity, but premise 1 contradicts that unity unless it is negated. The only route toward truth that remains is to negate the first premise and move forward, awaiting a termination point. So, the hypothesis of necessary independence can be rejected because it cannot deduce its independence from the Thinker. This takes us to the second premise.

b) The Second Premise Self-Refutes

The second premise in this first, post-Hegelian sublation, is taken historically by agnostics with regard to the Thinker. Logically, it is generated out of the negation of the first premise.

In Hegel’s own historical review, the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant was the representative member of the second stage. Just as Kant concluded that the traditional metaphysicians were overconfident in their conclusions, so now the skeptic at this higher level realizes that the first premise, which is Hegel’s system itself, was overconfident. Yet, the skeptic here is an agnostic about the need for a Thinker. It is not necessarily not the case that there is a Thinker.

In this way, skepticism about Hegel’s atheistic system can be translated into a logical encapsulation that renders its contents merely possible. If it is not necessarily not the case that there is at Thinker, then it is possible that there is a Thinker. Possibility and the negation of necessary negation are equivalent: ~□~ ≡ ◇.

In this premise, the same contents are characterized in a new way, not as necessarily independent from the Thinker (premise 1), but as merely possibly dependent/independent (premise

2). As expected, this encapsulation also contradicts itself in the same way that all second stages do. It relies on the resources that it doubts in order to doubt.

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Logically, the disjunctive syllogism in play with this syllogism can only be internally coherent if all three premises come into equivalency. The conclusion, □X, requires that all its premises be equivalent to it. But mere possibility is not equivalent to necessity. We might argue that if something is necessary then it is also possible, but the meaning in play here with the second premise is skepticism; one cannot be both certain and uncertain. If conformity with the overall syllogism involves certainty, then uncertainty must negated.

Epistemologically, we can now consider the first two premises together to make sense of the logical maneuvers. If a thought comes with a thinker in all cases of which we can be aware, then we cannot conclude that it is necessarily the case that Thought has no Thinker. That is premise 1. Yet, we know that a conclusion must be reached if anything is to be known including premise 2. So, the mere possibility of the conclusion, which is premise 2, must be rejected. Our only hope of knowledge contradicts premise 2, but premise 2 is a hypothetical proposal of knowledge. Premise 2 depends on and contradicts premise 3. Even though we can consider it only as a hypothetical, it must be negated within that hypothesis.

Therefore, by Hegel’s own logical procedure, the possibility of a thinkerless thought must be ruled out at this stage. Premise 2 must be negated.

c) The Third Premise Does Not Self-Refute

The third premise, that Thought necessarily has a Thinker, is the only remaining option and so the syllogism as a whole reaches this premise as its conclusion. In addition, taken alone, the third premise cannot be negated by its own consequentia mirabilis, as the other two premises have been. The attempt fails and this has already been seen because the negation of premise 3 has already been tested by premise 1. That is, premise 1 (before negation) is tested and found to be contradictory to

376 the syllogism in which it lies, but after negation, premise 1 is equivalent to premise 3. So, it has already undergone its own internal test.

Of course, this third and final option is a form of theism. This is not, of course, the theism of the monotheist: the Jew, the Christian, the Muslim, etc. Instead, it is the theism of an absolute, idealistic philosophy.77 This is the position delivered as the only remaining option by the insufficiency of the first two of three options within this specific context, the logical space or game that Hegel has described. Because the first two options self-refute, the only remaining option is delivered as a necessity by the argument’s modal, disjunctive form.

In this context, the whole of Thought (the absolute Idea) is now characterized as being connected to the Thinker, the “I” in “I think.” This harmonizes with our intuitions about thoughts and makes sense of our phenomenological evidence. A thinker who thinks a thought ontologizes that thought.78 Our every thought puts this aspect of their nature on display. This third premise, when associated with its two other premises in negation, rules out the Idea’s independence. Unlike the Encyclopedia, which was meant by Hegel to be utterly independent, this post-Encyclopedia syllogism reveals that Thought is dependent on something else, something that is not a concept.79 It is still the

Idea systematized into a comprehensive whole, but it remains dependent on something different from and superior to itself.

In this conclusion, however, the story has not yet come to an end. The complete nature of this Thinker is not fully described by this sublation; only the dependence of the Idea has been deduced. So, all questions are not answered, and all internal tensions to the system of Thought are not removed. Another round of sublation is needed for that.

77 To be clear, I am not speaking about a specific religion, nor even about monotheism generally. The topic is the one kind of theism produced by this specific argument. Whether or not it is compatible with a specific monotheistic religion is not the point here. 78 Cf., Sokolowski, 14-17, 28, 310-311. 79 If it were a concept, or composed of concepts, then it would already be included in the Idea. This sublation has been a test of the possibility of a Thinker that is independent of concepts.

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3. Potential Problems with the Above Solution

An immediate problem arises with the post-Encyclopedia sublation given above. This extension to Hegel’s system, theism, is itself a blatant dualism. Even though Hegel’s system is criticized by that subsequent syllogism for containing a disunity because it fails to consider the possibility of the Thinker, the Thinker itself represents an obvious and glaring dualism. So, the syllogism’s conclusion does not remedy the first premise’s implicit dualism, it confirms it. Thus, the problems associated with dualism are more prominent than ever. This threatens to destroy the access to the whole that is required to legitimize the use of the absolute modal system’s theorems.

Without these theorems, the argument and its contents cannot be proven valid. The entire edifice now seems threatened.

This difficulty may prove to be superficial, however, because the logical property of accessibility that is had by systems of logic is applicable only to concepts. A modal system need not have access to non-thoughts in order to enjoy all the logical benefits of universal accessibility. If the theism in question involves a Thinker that is different enough from its thoughts to threaten unity, then this very difference becomes the reason why questions of accessibility do not apply. The argument requires the theorems of the absolute modal system, and those theorems are available only in an exhaustively inclusive system, but this system need be exhaustive only of concepts. Its requisite exhaustive inclusiveness is then properly limited to concepts and so its absolute character does not refer to non-concepts. The absolute modal system was won for Thought by Hegel’s encyclopedic system, which is a system of concepts only, and the first post-Encyclopedia sublation above does not take it away.

However, this does set up a second problem. If the Thinker is not composed of concepts, then it is possibly out of the reach of concepts. The problem of subjectivity is thus revived; this is

378 the original problem of divine transcendence. If so, then concepts could never describe it positively.

At first, this may seem to once again render the project hopeless. The possibility of transcendent theism, despite not disrupting the logical system, is at least a dualism that might preclude the grounding of knowledge for that ground remains unknowable.80 However, this problem too is quickly, though not easily, solved.

I say that it is not easily solved because it has already been solved with great difficulty. This second problem is already addressed, it seems, by Hegel’s original system. I think that he has succeeded in overcoming the limits placed on metaphysics by Kant. In much the same way that

Hegel was able to deal with the transcendence of the material world, his system’s mechanism can now deal with divine transcendence. Or, in the post-Hegelian syllogism above, it has already done so. Hegel’s argument possesses a capacity to deliver negative synthetic knowledge, and it has this capacity independently of its other capacity to unify the concept (the argument) with its object. This negative-synthetic argument can provide unity—that is its internal logical capacity—but even in the case where it cannot provide unity, it can still negatively synthesize.

In this latter case, the unifying properties of the Disjunctive Syllogism are not fully active. It is still a negative argument that uses logic to rule out two of three ontological options. It still operates by recognizing internal contradictions in statements that describe all possible ontological options. It still deals with finitude and abstraction in its first two premises and negates them. The above deduction of transcendent theism, through these means, has thus already avoided the subject- object problem. It does not have to concern itself with the worry that concepts are unable to grasp and relay truths about their objects. So, it has already been shown that the goal can be achieved if it is done in this way: negatively, disjunctively, deductively. That is a hidden power of the consequentia mirabilis. It need not unify itself with its object to reach a conclusion, even though it does so in all

80 Thus, alternative forms of cognition, ones not based on discursivity, remain possible. As Kant concluded, this calls into question the validity of our laws of rationality. See, Tolley, “Kant’s Conception of Logic,” 566.

379 previous instances.

Therefore, nothing about this argument in itself seems to limit its application only to instances of unification of concept and object. This means that they can, at minimum, produce negative truths about objects whether or not their conclusion unifies concept and object. There is, I believe, only one instance of such an application, and that is the Ontological Argument for the existence of the transcendent Thinker, but it is a legitimate non-unifying application of the argument nonetheless.

The problem with other ontological arguments for the transcendent God was that it leans heavily on its axioms, premises, and systems. These are, in turn, merely assumed to be sufficiently reliable to guarantee the conclusion. As Hegel notes, this places tremendous weight on presuppositions. Philosophers like Quine have thus been well within their rights to reject the viability of the logical system that makes this conclusion possible. Hegel remedies this problem by removing finitude and presupposition and that fixes the problem just as long as it is possible for the system as a whole to reach a conclusion. I do not think that the flaws of presupposition and finitude are now being reintroduced. The gains Hegel has achieved can be retained.81

Even though the Thinker is no mere object, and though it is likely to be utterly unique and possibly beyond the reach of finite thought in many ways, it is at least an object to those thoughts that consider it. It is thus at least an object to thought and its “existence” must therefore be conditioned by that fact. Despite this limitation as a conceptual description of that object (which is subjective), a deduction can rule out possibilities about how that object can be truthfully described.

It operates on the margins of what is possible, and much like the self-proof of primitive truth that

Plato or Aristotle discovered and that the Stoics advanced, it seems at first to be invalid due to its circularity. But, it is defensible, and it seems not to be a mere trick of the logical apparatus. It is

81 I must add here, however, that these gains can be retained only given the idealistic context. Thus, a Hegelian- based OA, like the one above and below, post-Encyclopedia, can only be a proof of the Berkeleyan God.

380 somewhat analogous to the capacity of sailboats to “close haul,” a practice that allows sailboats to

“work windward,” to make progress against the wind despite naive expectations that this is impossible. This is perhaps the best analogy to the way this final consequentia mirabilis argument operates. Hegel’s methodology is able to turn the negativity of self-refutation of some concepts into an ontological insight by recognizing that they are self-negating concepts from an exhaustive list; concepts can say something of transcendent ontological import when they can operate negatively, deduce a conclusion necessarily, and when that necessity is absolute in scope. Ultimately, the denial of the transcendent Thinker contradicts itself and this can be deduced from within subjectivity.

D. Conclusions

Hegel answers many longstanding questions and he does so in novel and ingenious ways.

Yet, these are not entirely new answers. The systematicity and circularity that Hegel’s methodology lends to these issues is new enough, at least in this combination, but the questions, categories, and answers are very old. It is certainly not new to think of a rational universe without God (Epicurus), or to imagine that thoughts might not have a thinker (Stoics). But, it has been more common in philosophy to put thoughts and Thinker together, and to put thoughts into a godlike mind. Aquinas, for example considers the platonic forms to be thoughts in the mind of God.82 And long before him, Plato himself, and especially the Neo-Platonist Plotinus, conceives of the One (the Good) as being superior to the forms. To Plotinus, the One is thus greater than, different from, and, in some sense, the source of the Intellect (the collection of forms). What Hegel has managed to accomplish is the utter interconnectedness of the rational and material aspects of the world. As a rational idealism, it competes with Berkeley’s idealism by removing the transcendent God, and it completes

Leibniz’s dream of a deductive mathesis universalis, a project that Leibniz was first to call

82 Cf., Gregory T. Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes (Washington D. C.: CUA Press, 2008).

381

“Encyclopedia.” These points connect Hegel thoroughly with a deep tradition. In a pre-Kantian context, Hegel’s philosophy, as a whole, is an ingeniously constructed system of nested deductions.

In light of Kantian limitations, it is very impressive that he was able to engage in deduction at all let alone to complete Leibniz’s ambition to outline an exhaustively complete, deductive system.

Yet, the system Hegel created has a momentum of its own, and it should have been allowed to run its course. Hegel himself had suggested that concepts must be allowed to enjoy their freedom; the alternative is a premature truncation of Thought resulting in a fatal finitude. It is unfortunate that Hegel prevented the last remaining dualisms from being tested because this has prevented his system from being what it is. Like the dogmatists before Kant, this leaves Hegel with the conclusion he preferred rather than the conclusion his system generates on its own.

Perhaps, Hegel simply wanted to avoid a Berkeleyan result and for this reason was motivated to accomplish a non-Berkeleyan idealism in which a transcendent, thinking God could be ruled out by sheer force of human intellect. That would comport with the spirit of his time and so it seems quite plausible. If this was his goal, it might have produced a cognitive bias that prevented him from seeing the consequences of his own system. This conclusion is not very generous to Hegel, but I think it is at least as generous as Hegel was to Anselm. Just as Hegel gave Anselm much credit and praise, but ultimately found an error and reversed Anselm’s conclusions, so too must I give Hegel much credit and praise, but in the end, turn the conclusions back once more to their original position, with much having been gained in the process.

I hope that I have shown the true logical nature of Hegel’s system convincingly. I also hope that I have presented a strong case for its being Hegel’s own attempt at the Ontological Argument.

To Hegel’s credit, his Encyclopedia is probably the most robust version of the Ontological Argument that has ever been attempted, even if it has been, up to now, hidden from view. However, I must reject Hegel’s conclusion as premature because his own methodology points beyond the place where

382 he stopped.

The implications of these conclusions are quite significant. Yet, I cannot sufficiently support or adequately argue for them here. Thus, I will keep my musings on these implications very brief even though the following points are likely more important than what has come before.

First, the Hegelian ontological argument, once brought to its proper end, might be able to serve as a starting place for improving ontological argumentation generally. Hegel’s Encyclopedia may now serve as a basis for improvement of contemporary explorations of this class of arguments. If, for example, Gödel’s83 or Plantinga’s84 modal arguments can be joined to Hegel’s in a synergistic way, as a way to ground their reasoning, then perhaps the combination can overcome some of the protestations that are leveled against these arguments and their (apparently unearned) access to the absolute modal system. This might then turn out to be a very important discovery in the Philosophy of Religion by providing a much improved system of grounding to ontological arguments.

Second, for philosophy generally, because Hegel has connected the ontological-argument form to all conceptual structures exhaustively, it follows that a successful ontological argument, whether it is the theistic or atheistic version, has the potential to ground knowledge. This could be the beginning of a convincing extension to Hösle’s case against relativism. To clarify, because the question of God’s existence is arguably a binary issue,85 and because knowledge can be deductively tied to ontology either way, given Hegel’s work of connecting all thought, it seems that knowledge can be grounded either way. The Ontological Argument, therefore, may be the key to overcoming skepticism and relativism and the so-called scandal of philosophy whether or not the philosopher concludes that God exists.

83 For a helpful analysis of Gödel’s ontological argument, see Fitting, 133-172. 84 For his views on modal logic and its ontological consequences, see, Alvin Plantinga, Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality, ed. Matthew Davidson (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003). 85 It is binary in the sense relevant here despite the many variations of both “God” and “existence” that are currently being entertained.

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APPENDIX

ANALYSIS OF GREGOR DAMSCHEN’S NEO-HEGELIAN ARGUMENT

The proof that began my fourth chapter is a modification of an effort that was made recently by Gregor Damschen. This argument, in turn, was based on the neo-Hegelian argument of Vittorio

Hösle.1 The latter effort is an attempt to revive interest in Hegel’s metaphysical claims as a means of opposing materialistic monism and alethic relativism. Hösle has worked to clarify, distill, and formalize a part of Hegel’s system in order to ground knowledge today. His argument has three parts, and with some careful examination, the logical movement of these three parts roughly correlates to the logic of Hegel’s overall system-argument.

This correlation is fairly difficult to see, however, and it takes some head tilting to detect how the argument’s three premises apply to the three premises of Hegel’s argument, which is to say that the modal disjunctive form that I have detected is not represented clearly in Hösle’s argument.

In addition, the modal characteristics that appear so consistently in Hegel’s argument are mostly missing from Hösle’s recapitulation.

Others have interacted with Hösle’s argument and have reached a few significant conclusions about the argument’s form: first, the argument is not valid as Hösle presents it; second, two attempts have been made to prove the argument valid in S5 modal logic; third, these attempts offer proofs that make the inherently modal aspects of the argument explicit. Therefore, the

1 Hösle, Objective Idealism, 1-40. See also, Morals and Politics. Translated by Steven Rendall (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2004); and God as Reason: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2013); and God as Reason: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2013).

392 argument has been corrected and made valid by adding additional modal characteristics.

For the sake of brevity, I will now move straight to Damschen’s proof. This proof possesses the best qualities of other, earlier efforts,2 but it has a better grasp on the argument’s goal (which

Damschen labels “definite”) as well as a more compact form. It is for these reasons that I select it as the basis for my own proof.

Modifications of Hösle’s Argument Has Been Proven Valid

Miriam Ossa was first to publish a substantive reaction to Hösle’s argument.3 She produced a proof showing that the argument is valid in S5 modal logic.4 Gregor Damschen had also interacted with Hösle at about the same time that Ossa published, but only in correspondence.5 In these ways, both Ossa and Damschen have made the claim that Hösle’s original argument implicitly involves modal concepts. That is, the Hegelian-type argument that Hösle makes contains modal argumentation implicitly, but its author was apparently unaware of this fact at the time of original publication. In Damschen’s eventual publication, he interacts with both Ossa and Hösle, and offers what he thinks, and which I concur, is an improvement over both.

1. Damschen’s Modal Proof

Damschen contends that Ossa’s formalized argument is unsound at one point and that this problem also reflects back on a particular weakness in Hösle’s argument. About this criticism and his solution, Damschen writes:

. . . my argument is in many important ways different from the good and helpful reconstruction done by Ossa: (1.) Hösle and Ossa did not adopt the theorem that I use in step 10, and they also did not adopt the proof from step 10 to 12 which replaces Hösle’s argumentation that he uses in the second

2 Including Miriam Ossa and Vittorio Hösle. 3 Ossa, Voraussetzungen voraussetzungsloser Erkenntnis? Das Problem philosophischer Letztbegründung von Wahrheit (Paderborn: Mentis, 2007). 4 Ibid. 5 Damschen, “Ultimately Founded,” 165.

393 part of his argument (Ossa, 2007: 69-79). (2.) I showed elsewhere that the underlying idea of the second part of Hösle’s argument is probably not sound (see Damschen, 2005). (3.) The most important difference lies in the interpretation of the starting point of the proof: Ossa interprets ‘There is an ultimately founded entity’ as ‘There is something which is a sentence and necessarily true’ (see Ossa 2007: 64), whereas I interpret it as ‘There is a proposition which is necessarily [true (T) & synthetic (S) & a priori (A)]’. The difference is obvious. In Ossa’s case to be a sentence could be contingent; in my case all of the properties are necessary. If one accepts that ultimately founded entities cannot have any contingent properties, Ossa’s version does not seem appropriate to prove an ultimately founded entity. Moreover, being necessarily true alone (Ossa) does not rule out the possibility that the ultimately founded entity is analytic. (4.) There are, however, more differences: one of them is the problem of constant and varying domains, which occurs in predicate modal logic, another is my use of the assertion stroke which shows that the question of an ultimately founded proposition is inevitably connected to the question of the ontological status of the one who asserts this proposition.6

Damschen’s own argument is the attempt to prove, through a modification of Hösle’s argument, that “it is necessary that there is at least one ultimately founded proposition.”7 He summarizes the parts and steps of the argument as follows:

The argument has two parts. In the first part (steps 0 to 9) we examine whether it is possible that a subject of a speech act is asserting in a consistent way that it is impossible that there is at least one ultimately founded proposition (0). On the basis of a speech act analysis in step (1) and an analysis of presuppositions in steps (2) and (3), the propositional content of the assertion (0) proves to be a pragmatically inconsistent and, therefore, false proposition. Hence, proposition (9) —which is contradictory to the propositional content of (0)— is true. Because the first part of the argument is an analysis of presuppositions, it will be called a transcendental argument. The second part of the argument leads from proposition (9) to proposition (15) using theorems and rules of S5. Thus the second part of the argument is called a modal proof in S5.8

The first part attempts to find self-contradiction in the claim (presupposition) that there can be no ultimately founded propositions, that is, that there can be no necessary truths. The second part is a modal proof of the proposition, “It is possible that there is at least one proposition that is necessarily definite.”9 Damschen’s Proof is as follows:10

6 Ibid., 167 n. 5. 7 Ibid.,167. 8 Ibid. Damschen notes also that his own strategy reverts to something similar to an earlier version of Hösle’s argument. Damschen explains: “. . . the former version is a two-part argument with steps from impossibility to possibility and from there to necessity (see Hösle, 1987: 255-5; 1994: 286-7), and its transitions from step one to two and step two to three use two different concepts of contradictions similar to that of my argument (see Hösle, 1987: 253-5; 1994: 272-3).” Damschen’s citations are to Hösle’s “Begründungsfragen des objektiven Idealismus” in Forum für Philosophie Bad Homburg, Philosophie und Begründung (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1987), 212-267; and “Foundational Issues of Objective Idealism.” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 17 (1994): 245-287. (English translation of Hösle 1987.) 9 Ibid., 171. It should also be noted that Damschen begins by taking Hösle’s concept, “ultimately founded,” and replaces it with “definite,” which represents the following conjunction of properties: true & synthetic & a priori. He represents this combination-attribute with the letter D in his formalism.

394

Part One: A Transcendental Argument

(1) It is impossible that there is at least one proposition that is necessarily definite. ⊢ (~◇Ǝx □Dx11) [speech-act assertion]

(2) It is necessary that there is no proposition that is necessarily definite. ⊢ (□~Ǝx □Dx)12

(3) It is necessary that it is necessary that there is no proposition that is necessarily definite. □□~Ǝx □Dx13

These statements, in brief, take the very form that their propositional content denies. In order to make the claims that they make they must be the very thing that their claims deny.

Damschen argues to similar conclusions through a more detailed line of argument; I summarize as follows: to hold (2) one must assume that its propositional content is true; since the claim in (2) is one of necessity, as described in (3) through the application of a rule in S4, it follows that (2) is either necessarily true or necessarily false; if the assumption affirming (2) is correct, then (2) is necessarily true; however, the propositional content of (2) is not analytic because it does not presuppose D and the negation of (2) does not lead to contradiction; if the existential quantifier ranges across all possible propositions with a constant domain, then it is impossible that any proposition in any possible world contains a proposition with property D; thus, it is necessary that

(2) is not analytic; (2) is also not knowable empirically because statements of impossibility cannot be known empirically by finite minds; in sum, it is assumed to be true, and it is not analytic, so it can only be synthetic, and it is not empirical, so it can only be a priori; therefore, it presents itself as true

& synthetic & a priori; but, these are the properties of D; yet (2) denies D; this is a contradiction; therefore, the assumption of the truth of (2) is incorrect. Damschen calls this a “transcendental

10 Ibid., 168-172. 11 Ibid., 168. Note that the symbol ⊢, the turnstile, is meant to be taken as a symbol for a claim that is made in the logic of speech acts. This is analogous to Frege’s “judgment stroke” or “assertion sign.” Note also that the capital letter “D” here stands for “definite” as defined in a previous footnote in this section. 12 Arrive at (2) by replacing ~◇ with □~ in (1). 13 Damschen notes that, in S4 modal logic, □p ≡ □□p. Thus, in S4, (3) is a valid deduction from (2). (3) reveals that the propositional content of (2), if true, are necessarily true.

395 reflection.”14

As a result of the self-contradiction of this assertion, one must then deny it, and its denial leads to the only alternative, the possibility that there exists a proposition with the property D, as follows:

(4) It is possible that there is at least one proposition that is necessarily definite.15 ⊢ (◇Ǝx □Dx)

(5) It is not necessary that there is no proposition that is necessarily definite. ⊢ (~□~Ǝx □Dx)16

(6) The law of introducing conjunctions in the logic of speech acts.17 ⊢ Ap [assert proposition A] ⊢ Bp ______⊢ Ap & Bp

Then, from (2), (5), and (6), it follows that:

(7) It is necessary that there is no proposition that is necessarily definite and it is not necessary that there is no proposition that is necessarily definite. ⊢ (□~Ǝx □Dx & ~□~Ǝx □Dx) [a contradiction]

This falsifies (1). Therefore, its contrary is true.

(8) It is not impossible that there is at least one proposition that is necessarily definite. ~~◇Ǝx □Dx

This is equivalent to:

(9) It is possible that there is at least one proposition that is necessarily definite. ◇Ǝx □Dx

By reaching proposition (9), it has been demonstrated that it is possible that ultimately founded propositions might exist.18 This is a logical consequence of the propositional content of the original speech act. That is, if one says that concepts do not exist, one not only contradicts oneself,

14 Ibid., 169. 15 Damschen here cites the Latin phrase, “ab necesse ad esse valet consequentia.” This suggests the ability of the proof to deduce actuality from logical necessity. He gives a lengthy defense on p. 169. 16 Arrive at (5) by replacing ◇ with ~ □ ~. 17 Damschen cites D. Vanderveken, Meaning and Speech Acts. Volume II: Formal Semantics of Success and Satisfaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991, 70. 18 Damschen, “Ultimately Founded,” 172.

396 but the denial in itself implies the possibility of the opposite state of affairs.

In part two, Damschen offers a modal argument that such propositions must necessarily exist, a claim with intentional ontological valence. He does this by exploring the ontological consequences of the just-established fact that one cannot correctly put forward a proposition in speech claiming that ultimately founded propositions cannot exist.

Part two is a modal argument in S5:

(9) It is possible that there is at least one proposition that is necessarily definite. [From part one] ◇Ǝx □Dx

(10) If there is at least one x that is necessarily Φ, then it is necessary that there is at least one x that is necessarily Φ.19 Ǝx□Φx ⊃ □Ǝx□Φx

If (10) is a theorem of modal predicate calculus, then rule DR3,20 which allows operators to be distributed across implications, applies in S5 as well. Therefore,

(11) If ‘a⊃b’ is a theorem in modal logic S5, then ‘◇a⊃◇b’ is a theorem in S5.

⊢S5 a⊃b ⇒ ⊢S5 ◇a⊃◇b

From (10) and (11),

(12) If it is possible that there is at least one x that is necessarily Φ, then it is possible that it is necessary that there is at least one x that is necessarily Φ. ◇Ǝx □Φx ⊃ ◇□Ǝx □Φx

Inserting D (definite) for Φ and applying modus ponens to (9), given the rule in (12), produces:

(13) It is possible that it is necessary that there is at least one proposition that is necessarily definite. ◇□Ǝx □Dx

In S5, the following theorem is valid:21

19 This rule obtains in modal logic S4 with constant domain. Damschen cites Fitting, M. and Mendelsohn, R. L. (1998). First-Order Modal Logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 137. Note that Φ is a variable for a property. Damschen fills this variable later with D. 20 This rule, DR3, states that one can distribute a modal operator (M) to both sides of an implication. ⊢ a ⊃ b ⇒ Ma ⊃ Mb. Damschen cites G. E. Hughes, and Cresswell, M. J. A New Introduction to Modal Logic (London: Routledge, 1996), 35. 21 Damschen, “Ultimately Founded,” 172. Damschen labels this theorem S5(1). It is widely considered to be a

397 (14) A proposition is necessary if it is possibly necessary. ◇□p ⊃ □p22

Modus ponens takes (13) and (14) and gives,

(15) It is necessary that there is at least one proposition that is necessarily definite. □Ǝx □Dx

The fifteenth step would have been the final conclusion of the argument. However, in a footnote Damschen adds two additional premises, one of which is the ontological conclusion:

(16) There is an x that is necessarily definite.23 Ǝx □Dx

Listing the presuppositions that allow for his ontological conclusions, Damschen writes,

“The ontological commitments we require to show the necessity of ultimately founded propositions are, on the one hand, the possibilist interpretation of the existential quantifier or the assumption of a constant domain of the possible worlds W*; and, on the other hand, the modal logic S5.”24

2. A Simplification and Analysis of Damschen’s Proof

A simplified form of this argument, to emphasize its major movements, can be distilled as follows. Damschen begins with a negative statement, ~◇x (1-3). Focusing on his own premise (2), he uses a discussion,25 rather than a rule of inference, to show that the premise self-contradicts by denying the very thing that it is. The presupposition of the truth of (2), therefore, is false, so the opposite presupposition is indicated (4). He then takes a few steps to show that (2) and (4) contradict (5-8). He then concludes with the possibility of a necessary x (9): ◇□x. This conclusion is characteristic feature of S5. 22 Recall that the Leibniz/Wolff metaphysics text book affirmed a similar but different modal rule: ◇p ⊃ □◇p. 23 Damschen reaches (16) by using “modal descent” and also through what he calls premise (17), which is: It is necessary that it is necessary that there is an x that is necessarily definite. (□□Ǝx □Dx). See also, Damschen, 169, where he discusses the Latin phrase, “ab necesse ad esse valet consequentia.” The order of premises seems odd, since 16 depends on 17, but in any case, 16 is the conclusion of ontological valence that Hösle was aiming for. 24 Damschen, “Ultimately Founded,” 173. 25 Damschen lacks a specific logical rule of inference to present these moves as logical. I have been arguing that Hegel has such a rule, but that it is not given a name. I have named it intermodal self-negation.

398 then put through the paces to show the possibility that there is at least one x that is necessarily definite (9-13). Finally, a rule from S5 is applied to show that this possibility is also an affirmation of the necessity. So, an x that is necessarily definite must exist.

To simplify even further, part one begins with the statement of impossibility of something

(x) and deduces its possibility by means of revealing an inherent contradiction in the denial of x. The denial of x is negated:

□~x >> ~□~x26

Part two works with this conclusion, the negation of the denial of x, and delivers first the possibility of x . . .

~□~x >> ◇x

. . . and then, through a valid S5 theorem (◇□p ⊃ □p), it delivers the necessity of x.

◇x >> □x

These larger movements are strikingly similar to the three parts of the Hegelian disjunctive syllogism:

1. ~□~x 2. ~(◇x • ◇~x) 3. □x

The main difference is in the middle. Hegel negates the mere possibility of x (~{◇x •

◇~x}), but Damschen reasons from possibility (◇x) to possible necessity (◇□x), and from possible necessity to necessity (◇□x >> □x). As will be shown shortly, it is my contention that these transitions are the same. That is, a more completely described transition in the middle step must incorporate both of these logical features in combination. I will present this in my own proof, which will show that the second stage of Hegel’s argument is proved rigorously by means of a negation of mere possibility that requires the very same modal transformations that Damschen uses

26 Recall that ◇ is equivalent to ~□~.

399 in his proof at this point.

3. Connecting Hösle’s, Ossa’s, and Damschen’s Proofs with Hegel’s Argument

In its three-step simplified form, Damschen’s proof, which I take to be the most successful form of Hösle’s argument, shows clear affinity with the Hegelian argument, and shows itself to be an extremely important first-step in establishing the validity of Hegel’s argument.

To make the connection more sure, however, the variable x must be filled in the way that

Hegel would have filled it. This is because Hegel’s argument’s soundness depends on how the variable is filled, and this, in turn, is because Hegel’s argument unifies form and content in the absolute context. Therefore, it matters how the variable is filled. It must be filled with itself, and thus be all-inclusive, for the argument to be sound.

It is not common practice in contemporary logic to explore this option. So, it is understandable why Hösle’s and Damschen’s argument does not do this. Their argument proves itself, and it is then used to ground other concepts,27 but the integration of form and content is not part of the argument itself and it does not result in exhaustive completeness. It draws a connection between some concepts and reality, but there is no totalizing. Finitude has thus become the problem for the contemporary, neo-Hegelian version of the argument. A conversion is therefore in order, one that adds back these missing elements. In short, too much has been removed from Hegel’s system.

If there is at least one concept that fills the variable x in the Hösle-Damschen proof, a concept that is “definite” (true, synthetic, and a priori),28 then this very concept itself is the best

27 Hösle pursues this end in Morals and Politics, a work that attempts to ground moral and political principles. 28 Gregor Damschen, “Are There Ultimately Founded Propositions?” Universitas Philosophica 54 (2010): 171. Damschen begins by taking Hösle’s concept, “ultimately founded,” and replaces it with “definite,” which represents the following conjunction of properties: true & synthetic & a priori. He represents this combination-attribute with the letter

400 candidate. That is, the argument that concludes with the necessary existence of at least one concept is itself the best candidate for the one concept that must exist. This is the conclusion of the Neo-

Hegelian proof. However, once this one concept is discovered, it is of little use. If it cannot ground or “ontologize” other concepts, then it has not accomplished the task that Hegel intended. It would be a sad circumstance if this one concept were the beginning and end of efforts to ground knowledge.

Even if Hösle et al. are correct that “at least one” proposition is definite, this does not in itself ground other concepts, nor does it address questions about the nature of non-conceptual reality. If this one concept, even if it is the proof of itself, cannot share its self-certainty with other concepts and objects, then it is an all but useless and pyrrhic victory over skepticism.

Therefore, if Hegel’s original accomplishment is to be appreciated, it must show that this one concept is connected to (all) other concepts as well as to (all) objects. This is exactly what

Hegel’s original project attempted. Hegel’s big foes were presupposition and finitude, and in this

Neo-Hegelian argument we see that finitude is coming to the fore once again. With this, we see how easy it is, in efforts to both interpret Hegel and/or to improve on his system, to fall into one of the first two presupposing attitudes.

Hegel’s original argument is itself the best candidate for the one concept that determines itself to be “definite.” But, it accomplishes more than being merely true and synthetic and a priori.

This one concept can also ground knowledge in a non-foundational sense. This is because it contains within itself, on Hegel’s account, all other thoughts exhaustively. That is, it is not merely a disconnected thought, over here, that acts as a foundation for other thoughts, over there, which is to say that it is not the self-deriving foundation for a system of other concepts. It is more of a container than a foundation. This additional function, which I argued above was essential to soundness, is missing from these neo-Hegelian efforts.

D in his formalism. See the appendix.

401 Nonetheless, Hösle, et al., have done much good. They have brought deduction back into the contemporary discussion and Hegel would have welcomed this. In addition, through the work of

Damschen specifically, the argument’s potential for being implicitly modal opens up a new realm of possibilities, a realm that makes the argument’s validity seem more plausible than ever before.

Throughout his Encyclopedia, Hegel is preoccupied with syllogisms, and he states that his system is a syllogism. The work of Hösle and Damschen has allowed this claim to be taken seriously for the first time in a very long while.

With regard to the possibility of doing metaphysics today, therefore, the work of Hösle provides potential for restoring Hegel’s original backbone and starting place. Taking the next step, the work of Ossa and Damschen has shown that Hösle’s argument is best conceived and only valid as a modal argument. These efforts have been my stepping stones.

402

INDEX

Abelard, 146, 158, 332 164, 166-168, 220, 275- 15, 24, 29-30, 32-37, 82- Agrippan Trilemma, 28, 276, 308, 325, 357-359, 88, 92, 97, 124, 206, 211, 323, 356-357 372, 376, 379-380 228-229, 320 Anselm, 4-5, 13, 18, 32-34, Cudworth, Ralph, 148 Intermodal Self-Negation, 43, 49, 53, 59-87, 95, Self-Contradiction, 76, 111, 115, 129-130, 133, Descartes, 8, 12-13, 32, 59, 124, 164, 172, 179, 184, 146-147, 158, 179, 182- 70, 92, 95, 114, 115, 233, 241, 245-278, 305, 183, 186, 190, 196, 221, 149, 154, 182, 216, 310, 309,-317, 323, 326, 333, 227, 290, 300, 332, 350, 357, 361 343, 348, 359-360, 367- 368, 381 Deutsche Metaphysik, 368, 400 Aristotle, 5, 11-12, 53, 77, Wolff, 145 Intuition, 19-21, 50-51, 94, 127-128, 131, 133-134, Dialectic, 54-56, 130-141, 101, 154, 175, 193, 208, 136, 143-144, 146-149, 169, 195-199, 295-296 211, 214-216, 221-227, 154, 159-160, 164, 169, 284, 304-305, 309, 313, 192, 212, 217, 219, 223, Equipossibility, in Leibniz, 330, 337, 363, 376 273-274, 308, 330-334, 145 345, 350, 357, 359, 361, Euclid, 154-155, 357 Kant, Immanuel, I, 1, 5-6, 8, 368, 380 11, 16, 19-20, 23-29, 32, Augustine, 146-147, 154, Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 1, 40, 42-44, 49-51, 53, 59- 223, 332, 357, 361 27, 29, 157-158, 180, 61, 67, 70-76, 80-82, 86, 192, 198, 212, 219-220, 88, 100-102, 110, 114, Berkeley, George, 60, 114, 223-225, 335 144, 147-148, 152, 154- 205, 207, 367, 371, 379, 165, 169, 178, 180-182, 381 Gödel, Kurt, 220, 223, 362, 190-191, 198, 201-206, Boëthius, 208, 273 382 214, 226, 235, 238, 256, Buridan, John, 326, 332 311, 317, 330, 333, 335, Holism, Holistic Condition, 347, 350-353, 374, 378, Cardano, 154-155, 166, 217, i, 5-6, 27, 156-157, 164, 381 223, 357, 361 286, 324-323, 354 Circular Reasoning, 23, 77, Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 211-227 Idealism, Idealist, 1, 8-9, 16, 3-4, 11, 13-14, 24, 32, Clarke, Samuel, 148, 371 19, 25, 27-28, 50, 61-62, 59, 70, 115, 128, 131, Clavius, Christopher, vii, 65, 73, 87-88, 112, 129, 133-134, 138, 144-153, 153-154, 217, 225, 357, 149, 156-159, 189, 202, 157-168, 186, 191-192, 361 205, 217, 218, 221, 226, 210, 256, 267, 269, 274, Concrete Universal, 259, 323, 350, 354, 356, 365, 303, 306, 319, 326, 330, 387 367, 371, 376, 379, 381 332, 334, 347, 381, 399

Consequentia mirabilis, vii, Identity Thesis, Absolute Lull, Raymond, 150-151, 136, 144, 146, 153-155, Identity Thesis, vii, 9, 153, 191

403 Mathesis universalis, in Port-Royal Logic, 149 Spinoza, Baruch, 1, 4-7, 19, Leibniz, 150, 152-153, Pseudo-Scotus, 164, 332 25, 27-28, 32, 70-73, 161, 186, 306, 381 357-358 112, 115, 144, 148, 156, Monad, Monadology, 115, 182, 190, 218, 243, 310 145, 162 Quod possibile est, id necessario Stoics, 4, 11, 128, 146-155, Monism, i, 1-2, 5, 7, 16, 19- possibile est, in Wolff, 145 164-165, 192, 212, 217, 20, 24-25, 72-73, 112, 219, 223, 273, 331, 357, 164, 323, 328, 352, 365, S5 Modal Logic, 13, 145, 361, 380 393 162, 168, 182, 208, 286, 304, 325-335, 363, 393- Wolff, Christian, 59, 70, Newton, Isaac, the 400 128, 131, 134, 145-148, Newtonian Movement Saccheri, Giovanni 154, 162, 164, 190, 218, 4, 48, 155, 350 Girolamo, 153-155, 267, 269, 274, 303, 326, 161-168, 192, 201, 212, 334, 399 Ockham, William, 291, 327, 217, 220, 222-223, 357, World-ness, 322-324, 345- 331-332 361-362 362 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Parmenides, 1, 19, 54, 112 Joseph, 1-2, 29, 112, Philosophia Prima, Wolff 217-219, 224 145 Scholastics, v, 4, 11, 14, 28, Plantinga, Alvin, 304, 382 128, 130, 134, 136, 146- Plato, 18-19, 24, 50, 52, 77, 149, 153, 186, 192, 218, 116, 136, 143-144, 148, 289-291, 332, 347, 357 154, 164-165, 174, 191, Si fallor sum, in Augustine, 206, 217, 219-220, 225, 154, 357 243, 357, 361, 380-381

404