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Hegel's Dialectic in Historical Philosophy1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

J. O. Wisdom
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Extract

Conflicting Systems in the History of Philosophy. Hegel's logic consists, as is well known, in a chain of categories, connected by a relation of dialectic, which proceeded from the featureless Being, Nothing, and Becoming through more important ones such as Substance, Cause, and Reciprocity to the highest category of all, the Absolute Idea. Now Hegel also pointed to an interesting correlation between the categories of his logic and the dominant concepts of those philosophies that preceded his own: that is to say, the logical order of categories given by him corresponded to the temporal order of the history of philosophy. Such connexion was not, however, to be regarded as an accident but as a necessary truth: for the Absolute manifested itself temporally in the form of the history of philosophy. Seeing that this contention probably contains some psychological truth and is probably assumed in Marxian interpretations of Hegel, it may be of some interest to see how far it can be substantiated.

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Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 15 , Issue 59 , July 1940, pp. 243 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1940

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References

page 244 note 1 Hegel, : Logic, trans. by Wallace, Oxford, 1874, § 86. Lect. Note.Google Scholar

page 244 note 2 Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association, Sup. vol. xi, London, 1932.

page 246 note 1 Hegel, : Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. iii, London, 1896, p. 547.Google Scholar

page 246 note 2 Ibid., vol. i, 1892, p. xv.

page 246 note 3 Ibid., p. xvii.

page 247 note 1 I have substituted “absolute nature” here for the translation of Begriff.

page 247 note 2 Hegel: Op. cit., p. 44.

page 247 note 3 Hegel, : Logic, translated by Wallace, , Oxford, 1874, § 13.Google Scholar

page 247 note 4 Hegel, : Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. i, 1892, p. 28.Google Scholar

page 248 note 1 Hegel, : Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. i, London, 1892, p. 37— my italics.Google Scholar

page 248 note 2 Hegel, : The Phenomenology of Mind, London, 1931, p. 68.Google Scholar

page 248 note 3 Hegel: Logic, supra cit., § 86, Lect. Note.

page 250 note 1 Hegel, : Logic, supra cit., § 60.Google Scholar

page 252 note 1 Hegel, : Logic, supra cit., § 13.Google Scholar

page 253 note 1 Infra, p. 261.

page 253 note 2 I.e. according to the Philosophy of Spirit, but in the Philosophy of Religion, McTaggart points out, the final category is that of community of persons mutually animated by the deepest feelings of esteem: see McTaggart, J. Mct. E.: A Commentary on Hegel's Logic, Cambridge, 1910, § 295.Google Scholar The difference between them, if there is one, does not, however, affect the present discussion.

page 254 note 1 See, however, footnote supra, p. 253.

page 255 note 1 Quoted above, p. 246.

page 256 note 1 See supra, p. 254. This is a personal impression and may be dogmatic. Cf., however, Stace, W. T.: The Philosophy of Hegel, London, 1924, § 435Google Scholar, wherein Professor Stace refers to the Philosophy of Nature as of merely historical interest.

page 256 note 2 Mctaggart, J. Mct. E.: Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, Cambridge, 1922, chap. iv.Google Scholar

page 256 note 3 Macran, H. S.: Hegel's Doctrine of Formal Logic, Oxford, 1912, Introduction, PP. 79–85.Google Scholar

page 258 note 1 Stace: Op. cit., §§ 416–17.

page 258 note 2 Ibid. § 416.

page 258 note 3 Ibid. § 417,

page 258 note 4 Hegel: Op. cit., Prolegomena by Wallace, p. cxvi.

page 259 note 1 Hegel: Op. cit., § 43.

page 259 note 2 Ibid. § 44.

page 262 note 1 Luce, A. A.: Berkeley and Malebranche, Oxford, 1934;Google Scholar and “The Unity of the Berkeleian Philosophy” in Mind, N.S. vol. xlvi, Nos.181–2, London, 1937.Google Scholar

page 265 note 1 Macran: Op. cit., pp. 79–84.

page 265 note 2 “This does not mean, of course, that space and time are there waiting to receive the sundered thought, but that this disintegration of thought is what time and space essentially are.”