Hegel’s Logic: An Essay in Interpretation. John Grier Hibben 1902
The exposition of the Logic would be incomplete without a word, at least, in reference to the relation of the Logic to the two other philosophical disciplines of Hegel. The Philosophy of Nature (Die Naturphilosophie), The Philosophy of Mind (Die Philosophie des Geistes). These two form the second and third parts respectively of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences.
It would seem at the first glance as though these sciences were arranged in the order of a serial development, so that The Philosophy of Nature would represent an advance upon the first part of the Encyclopaedia, the Logic; and The Philosophy of Mind, the completion and consummation of the two preceding disciplines. This view, however, is erroneous and misleading. A careful student of the Logic cannot fail to be impressed with its fundamental doctrine, that the supreme reason, or the Absolute Idea, is the creative and sustaining principle of all being, and not merely a principle of abstract thought as such. And this present exposition will have failed of its purpose if it has not left a similar impression upon the reader’s mind. This principle, being granted as fundamental and essential to the Hegelian system, – namely, that the rational is also the real and that the laws of thought are the laws of being, – it follows, consequently, that both nature and mind must be regarded as falling within the scope of the all-embracing reason, or idea.
It is affirmed again and again of the idea that it constitutes the totality of all being, and as such, therefore, it must comprehend the spheres both of nature and of mind.
Moreover, Hegel himself insists that it is a false mode of statement to speak of the transition from the idea to nature, and thence to mind.
The term transition (der Uebergang) has acquired in the Hegelian usage a peculiar significance. It means always an advance from an incomplete stage of development to a higher and more complete. This was found to be the case in every step of the progress from the simplest conception of immediate being to the complete all-embracing idea. The idea, moreover, represents that stage of development which is absolutely sufficient unto itself. It not only completes all defects, removes all limitations, and resolves all contradictions, but it is in the fulness of its own nature incapable alike of supplementation or of deterioration. To speak, therefore, of a transition from the idea to nature, would imply that the idea needed the concept of nature as a necessary complement in order to supply its defects and overcome its contradictions. Hegel expressly states that the idea does not become nature, but that it is nature. From this point of view, therefore, The Philosophy of Nature may be regarded as an attempt to rationalize nature, – that is, to show that throughout all of its processes and underlying all its forces, and forming the essence of all its laws, there is ever present the immanent reason.
Again, the transition from any given stage of development to a higher and complementary stage is always brought about through the inner constraint of thought. The transition is always conceived as a necessary one (gesetzt) The nature of thought is such that it is constrained to proceed onward to perfection. But from the idea to nature there is no transition in such a sense. On the contrary, Hegel insists most emphatically that the entire system of nature is the result solely and simply of the free activity of the idea. As he expresses it, “the idea primarily resolves as the outcome of its own inherent being to allow itself freely to reveal its essential being as nature."[40]We have seen that the idea possesses not merely a knowing function but also a willing function as well. It is essentially an active force. The whole tendency of its being as dynamic is to reveal its activity along the lines of the free manifestation of its own nature. The Absolute Idea, however, by no means exhausts itself or loses itself in its self-revelation as nature and as mind. The supreme reason, the Absolute Idea, God, however He may be named, is in and through all His works, yet nevertheless transcends them. This is unequivocally expressed by Hegel in the larger Logic as follows: -
“The content of the Logic is the revelation of God as He is in His eternal essence before ever the world was formed, or a finite spirit came into being."[41]
We may say, therefore, that it is of the very essence of the divine spirit to reveal Himself, and that such a revelation comprehends both nature and mind, and yet the Absolute Ego is not absorbed in the revelation itself.
But may it not be possible that the revelation itself is illusory, a passing shadow with no corresponding substance? The dialectic movement which we have been following from its beginning to end would seem to confirm this view, inasmuch as all finite beings and all finite relations fail of self-sufficiency and permanency in the various stages of their development, and only in the Absolute Idea is there found a satisfactory resting-place for the thought which has tested all preceding stages and found them wanting. “The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are unseen are eternal.” Is, then, the whole cosmic process in time and space a fleeting show? Is the spirit of man but the flashing ray of the central sun, lost forever in the dark and void, or perchance returning again in other forms to be reabsorbed in the primeval light? On the contrary, Hegel in his Philosophy of Nature and his Philosophy of Mind endeavors to ground these essential manifestations of being upon substantial foundations. Nature cannot be illusory, a mere seeming, for there is immanent in it the Absolute Idea. And so also the finite mind does not fall outside of the infinite, but within the area of its being and power. Moreover, inasmuch as the Absolute Idea is essentially a free activity, and as the human spirit partakes of the very nature of this Idea, its freedom is thereby assured and with its freedom, its immortality.
By way of summary, it may be stated that the problem of the Logic is solved in the Absolute Idea, that fundamental principle of reason which is self-explanatory and capable of explaining all lower categories which are to be regarded merely as particular phases of its own self. But in the unfolding of the dialectic process which eventuates in the Absolute Idea, it is discovered that reason is essentially a principle of activity as well as a principle of knowledge. The Absolute Idea, therefore, as the supreme expression of reason, reveals its own nature in the cosmic processes; and in spite of the temporal and spatial contingencies of the great world system, it demonstrates its own eternal nature and purposes as the ground and end of it all. For the enduring and abiding elements in the cosmic order are those which partake of the nature of the Absolute Idea, and which come to a full revelation in the mind of man, disclosing his affinity with the Absolute Mind, and stirring within his breast intimations of divinity and immortality.