I. Hegel’s conception of judgement

Hegel characterizes judgement as ‘the concept in its particularity’.Footnote ³ Accordingly, in order to elucidate his conception of judgement, we have to start with what he calls ‘the concept’. What he refers to under this heading is neither an abstract entity nor a mental representation. Rather, ‘the concept’ is Hegel’s term for self-determination. It dispels some of the strange air surrounding this notion if one sees it as a radicalization of Kant’s concept of transcendental apperception or pure self-consciousness (WL: 514–17/17.5–20.35).Footnote ⁴ Starting from a broadly Kantian view of cognition, one might argue that if understanding is both spontaneity and the faculty of concepts (or the capacity to judge, for that matter), it must not only be the source of pure concepts and forms of judgement, but include the capacity to render itself transparent as the source of logical forms that it is by explicitly unfolding them in pure thought. Doing so would result in the understanding’s consciousness of itself as the origin of its own concepts and logical forms. It is this at which Hegel’s Science of Logic aims. From this viewpoint, what he calls ‘the concept’ is the transcendental apperception exhibited as the source of pure concepts and of ways in which concepts can be combined into logically organized wholes, i.e., forms of judgement and inference.

Judgement or ‘the concept in its particularity’ consists in a particular way of pure self-determination, then. Hegel characterizes this way as a relational one.Footnote ⁵ Accordingly, judgement is pure relational self-determination. As such it evidently relates distinguishable items. But because the relation between these items is supposed to be one of determination, they cannot simply be posited one besides the other. Rather, one has to determine the other. And because their relation is, more specifically, one of self-determination, one cannot determine the other merely externally. Rather, if judgement is relational self-determination, its elements must relate to each other as ‘guises’ or ‘moments’ of one and the same.Footnote ⁶ Accordingly, judgement consists in a relation between distinct aspects of an organized whole, occurring as if independent of each other, though determining one another. Insofar as judgement is an organized whole or a ‘totality’, as Hegel has it (WL: 550/53.20–24), a version of the so-called ‘context principle’ holds with respect to its constituents. For these will have their specific logical type due to their combination within judgements of specific logical type.Footnote ⁷

For judgement to have a self-determining character, one of its constituents must actually determine what the other is in itself, i.e., articulate or explicate what the other is merely implicitly.Footnote ⁸ Therefore, judgement, as relational self-determination, is explicative self-determination, or, as Hegel puts it, it is the concept’s self-articulation.Footnote ⁹ If one of its constituents is to articulate what the other is in itself, they must, according to Hegel, logically relate to each other as ‘conceptual determinations’ (Begriffsbestimmungen) (WL: 553/55.34). Hence, in order to understand how judgement is logically organized, we have to take a look at what conceptual determinations there are and hence consider where judgement logically comes from. According to Hegel, judgement or relational self-determination logically comes from immediate or non-relational self-determination. In unfolding what belongs to self-determination as such, one has to unfold isolated ‘guises’ of self-determination first, before considering self-determination which consists in explicitly relating such guises, i.e., judgement. In order to see which non-relational guises of self-determination there are, one has to consider what belongs to pure self-determination as such. According to Hegel, pure self-determination must, initially, be marked by three distinguishable guises, namely 1. ingressive self-determination, i.e., what allows for and originates (further) determination considered prior to such determination, i.e., generality; 2. resultative self-determination, i.e., generality as further determined, i.e., particularity;Footnote ¹⁰ and 3. perfective self-determination, i.e., that in which the preceding guises of self-determination, generality and particularity, are united, i.e., singularity. Singularity, thus, consists in a manifold of particular determinations occurring as an immediate, i.e., unarticulated unity held together by a general nature.

Insofar as the positions within judgement can be taken by different combinations of conceptual determinations, we need neutral terms for abstractly distinguishing them. What is to be determined within judgement is called the ‘subject’, and what determines the subject is called the ‘predicate’. This distinction is a logical rather than a grammatical one. In what Hegel calls ‘particular judgement’, for example, part of the grammatical subject logically belongs to the predicate. Accordingly, in ‘Only some mushrooms are poisonous’ the logical subject ‘mushroom’ is further determined by the fact that it has some instances only which are poisonous.Footnote ¹¹ Because subject and predicate are abstract placeholders to be taken by different conceptual determinations, their relation characterizes the logical form of judgement only. Insofar as these places can be occupied by specific conceptual determinations and insofar as these determinations internally relate to each other in different ways, judgements can differ with respect to ‘logical content’. Hence, judgement, according to Hegel, has not only a logical form, but a logical content as well (WL: 562/64.31–33),Footnote ¹² which is to be distinguished from its non-logical content. While judgements like ‘This ring is yellow’ and ‘This rose is red’ differ with respect to their non-logical content only, judgements like ‘This ring is yellow’ and ‘This ring is made of gold’, differ with respect to their logical content as well (WL: 576/78.6–23).Footnote ¹³

That judgements have explicative character is a categorical rather than a universal judgement, i.e., according to Hegel it belongs to judgements as such to explicate or render their subject matter intelligible even if not all judgements in fact do. A judgement which in fact explicates its subject matter is as it, qua judgement, aims to be, i.e., correct.Footnote ¹⁴

If the relation between subject and predicate is an internal one, a judgement’s subject-matter cannot be given as a distinct, re-identifiable item independently of its being judged.Footnote ¹⁵ Hence, according to Hegel, what judgements are about, considered in itself, i.e., in abstraction from being judged, can neither consist in a set of distinct, enumerable objects nor in a set of distinct, enumerable facts.Footnote ¹⁶ But because judgement, on the other hand, is to make explicit or articulate what (it) is (about), it cannot simply project distinctions which are alien to what (it) is (about) onto what (it) is (about). Hence, what it is about, considered in abstraction from its being judged, cannot be compared to an empty screen, onto which distinctions are projected from the outside, merely. Rather, what is judged, considered in abstraction from its being judged, is judgeable essentially and must therefore consist in an inhomogenously organized continuum.Footnote ¹⁷ Hegel calls it ‘the world’ or ‘the object’ in generalFootnote ¹⁸—a sphere which is non-arbitrarily judgeable without itself being uniquely portioned into distinct, enumerable items. That the explication of the world within judgement is non-arbitrary presupposes that the logical forms coming into play in the course of its articulation can be immanently unfolded, proceeding from the thought of pure being as such. This is Hegel’s project in the Science of Logic.Footnote ¹⁹

By now, we are in a position to understand why, according to Hegel, every judgement qua judgement includes a claim to the explicative identity of its subject and predicate, although no or only certain judgements at best measure up to this claim.Footnote ²⁰ Attributing to all judgements a claim to express adequately what their subject is (instead of merely articulating one of its indefinitely many subordinate aspects) does not result from a confusion on Hegel’s part between the ‘is’ of identity and the ‘is’ of predication, as Russell had it (Reference Russell1912: 365). Nor is Hegel, as others have thought, simply overambitious in demanding from any judgement whatsoever, what at most certain judgements explicitly aim at, namely to fully articulate the essential nature of their subject matter rather than certain aspects of it.Footnote ²¹ For if a judgement’s subject matter is not immediately given as a distinct, re-identifiable item independently of its being articulated within judgement, then qualitative judgement, for instance, in articulating a subordinate aspect of its subject matter, presupposes something which it cannot ensure on its own namely the distinct, re-identifiable determinacy of its subject. Because, in abstraction from judgement, such determinacy is provided for only in so far as what is can be non-arbitrarily articulated within judgement, the distinctness of the subject is nowhere actually in place as long as it has not been fully articulated (Stekeler-Weithofer Reference Stekeler-Weithofer1992: 360; Kruck/Schick Reference Kruck and Schick1996). Therefore, because judgement as such claims to be about one distinct subject matter rather than anything else, it contains, qua judgement, a claim to the explicative identity between its subject and its predicate, a claim, which, qua judgement, it only partially fulfils.

Having outlined Hegel’s notion of judgement we are in a position now to consider his conception of statements which fail to express proper judgements and which he calls ‘mere sentences’.

II. Judgements and mere sentences

Hegel distinguishes between judgements and ‘mere sentences’ (WL: 552–53/55–56; and EL: §167, 243/183–84). This distinction is a metalogical one insofar as it separates meaningful items with a purely logical character—judgements—from meaningful items inextricably marked by a partly non-logical, rather psychological character—mere sentences. While it is defining for judgement that its logical subject and predicate relate to each other as conceptual determinations and, accordingly, stand in an explicative relation, what is characteristic of a mere sentence is that it does not express such a relation. Rather, the constituents of a mere sentence have their conceptual determinacy independently of each other and are, therefore, merely externally attached to each other:

Hegel’s distinction between judgements and sentences has not only been characterized as, at least partly, confused (Graeser Reference Graeser1990: 177–81; Inwood Reference Inwood1992: 152; Knappik Reference Knappik2013: 196), but has provoked a number of incompatible interpretations as well. So before trying to elucidate it myself, I will point out how not to understand it. It is easily overlooked that Hegel does not terminologically distinguish between judgements and sentences but rather between judgements and mere sentences (WL: 55.37, 61.10).Footnote ²² Hence, his distinction cannot be conceived, along Fregean lines, as one between judgeable contents (or thoughts) and their linguistic expressions (Frege Reference Frege1990: 345). Rather, on Hegel’s account, judgements are sentences as well, without being mere sentences. Furthermore, the distinction is not one between uninterpreted and interpreted sentences, but, rather, one within the realm of interpreted or meaningful sentences. Moreover, it does not separate unasserted from asserted sentences,Footnote ²³ but is meant to operate within the realm of asserted sentences or statements. For Hegel makes sufficiently clear that his distinction pertains to meaningful utterances of sentences in specific contexts of use.

Finally, the distinction cannot amount to a difference between one class of statements for which justificatory responsibility is neither taken nor to be provided (e.g., avowals) and another class, judgements, for which such responsibility is demanded and (to be) taken (Knappik Reference Knappik2013: 196–98). Even with respect to a statement like ‘This lecture hall is 2630 miles from Timbuktu’, which, at least without further ado, does not contribute to explicating a unified subject-matter, a reasonable demand for justification might arise. Neither raising nor meeting such a demand would (automatically) turn this sentence into a judgement.Footnote ²⁴

In order to avoid terminological confusion, I shall refer to what Hegel calls ‘mere sentences’ as ‘posits’.Footnote ²⁵ This term indicates that in a mere sentence semantically contentful items are externally attached to or ‘posited’ besides each other in the following sense: Insofar as its constituents do not relate to each other as conceptual determinations, a posit does not contribute to the explication of a non-arbitrarily unified subject matter. Hence, it does not offer even minimal answers to questions like ‘What is X?’, ‘How is X?’ or ‘What’s the matter with X?’ It rather presupposes that the items attached to each other are already sufficiently determined and have their determinacy independently of each other.Footnote ²⁶

Hegel’s examples of posits range from perceptual posits (‘A carriage is passing by’), avowals (‘I’ve slept well tonight’) and historical posits (‘Caesar crossed the Rubicon’, ‘Aristotle died at the age of 73’) to logical ones (‘A lion is a lion’, ‘A lion is no table’) (WL: 553/55.37; EL: §167, 243/184.3–7, §173, 247/187.14–16). It is crucial that the distinction between judgements and posits is not a formal-semantic, but a use-theoretical one, i.e., a distinction within the realm of statements, not of sentences. So Hegel does not claim with respect to certain sentences that they can invariably be classified either as judgements or as posits, due to a semantic content allegedly belonging to them in abstraction from specific contexts of use. Rather he stresses the use-dependency of his distinction in pointing out that one and the same sentence might, on one occasion of use, express a posit, while on another occasion express a semantically related judgement. Thus, in citing examples of posits, Hegel does not want to exclude the possibility that the respective sentences might express a judgement under certain conditions. Obviously, a context allowing for the transformation into a judgement of what otherwise would express a posit only has to supply some sort of mediation which the posit in itself lacks, rendering the relation between its constituents explicative. Consider one of Hegel’s examples: ‘The news that my friend N. has died would be a mere sentence, and a judgement only if there were a question as to whether he is actually dead and not just apparently dead’ (WL: 553/56.5–7). Now, imagine someone, A, reading the obituaries and stating ‘My friend N has died’. In the context at hand, such an utterance normally does not amount to an attempt on the part of A to further determine who N is or was, that being taken for granted. The utterance, therefore, merely expresses a posit. Consider another situation, though, in which A, a doctor and friend of N’s, has been called to the scene of a crime. Upon his arrival, the police have already determined the condition of N, the victim, up to a certain degree − he is not moving, not responding, etc. Thus, a demand for further determination arises. In normal circumstances, this demand is fulfilled, if A, upon examining the body, states ‘N has died’. Hence, what A utters is a judgement.

As the preceding example shows, Hegel’s distinction between posits and judgements is not a distinction between sentences predicating accidental properties of their subjects or situating them in external relations on the one hand and sentences predicating essential properties of their subjects or situating them in internal relations on the other. It is rather that posits, as such, do not contribute to determining what their subject is, even if their predicates might in fact pertain to the subject internally. Rather, what is constitutive of posits is that their predicate, be it accidental or essential, does not contribute to explicating the subject matter.

According to Hegel’s diagnosis, posits have a ‘subjective’ character.Footnote ²⁷ Their constituents do not relate to each other as conceptual determinations, but as Vorstellungs-Bestimmungen (WL: 553/56.15).Footnote ²⁸ Thus, although posits are sentences in significant use, their use is, at least partly, psychological. Accordingly, posits are not strictly functions of thought but of ‘Vorstellung’, a term I propose to render, in this context, as ‘faculty to posit’. This faculty, as characterized in §20 of Hegel’s Encyclopedia, represents a cognitive function inbetween sensibility and thought.Footnote ²⁹ In contrast to sensibility, the distinction between singular and general is at hand at this level, but the use made of it is, at least in some respect, psychological rather than logical. What does it mean to say, however, that positing is a partly psychological, rather than strictly logical operation, if posits as such can, obviously, be objectively correct or incorrect? To bring the psychological aspect of positing into focus, it is useful to contrast Hegel’s conception of ‘Vorstellung’ with Frege’s. According to Frege, Vorstellungen are unrepeatable, publicly inaccessible items, which, as such, cannot be bearers of objective validity (Frege Reference Frege1990: 145–46). Positing, on Hegel’s account, is not characterized by dealing with such publicly inaccessible items, but rather by the fact that its scope is, in some respect, restricted to thinking in distinction to what is thought about. Thus, one could say that positing is a mode of thought, which essentially and not merely by accident stops short of what is thought about. This characterization is neutral with respect to whether what is thought about is an empirical object or an ‘object’ of pure thought. Positing, thus understood, does not open up a realm of private episodes, but of semantically contentful items, which, as the items they are, contain an element whose significance is limited to mere thought instead of what is thought about, i.e., a psychological element.

Positing only includes such a psychological element, though, insofar as it obviously allows for some kind of objective validity or correctness, too. The correctness of the historical posit that Caesar crossed the Rubicon, for instance, obviously depends on whether a certain person in fact crossed a certain river or not. Hence, positing does not consist in free sentence-forming association. Nevertheless, it is a kind of sentence-forming association, namely objectively ‘bound’ association, as one might call it. The common genus of sentence-forming association is marked by a combination of meaningful items into a sentence, executed without undistracted attention to the normative authority and objective connection of their contents (or, as Hegel would have it, without subjection to die Sache selbst).

Sentence-forming association can hence be analysed into minimally three operations which are to some extent normatively (even if not psychologically) independent of each other: selecting one item, selecting another item, combining them into a statement. Free sentence-forming association is characterized by the independence of each successive operation from the result of the preceding one. The next operation is not (executed as) in any way bound by or answerable to the result of the preceding one. Hence, concatenation of these operations is free-wheeling, merely cognitive, and to that extent merely psychological activity. In positing, on the other hand, while the selection of the second item is normatively unbound with regard to the first, the combination of these items either into a statement p or its negation is effected with respect to how things objectively stand with the subject matters under consideration. Positing, therefore, consists in the combination of a psychological element—an operation completely unbound by what the preceding operation is about—and a non-psychological element accounting for the result’s being answerable to how it objectively stands with respect to what it states. Nonetheless, because positing essentially includes a psychological operation, posits are inextricably marked by a psychological aspect. In this respect they violate Frege’s first principle from the ‘Foundations of Arithmetic’ (Frege Reference Frege1953: XXII/1987: X).Footnote ³⁰ Within a posit, what is logical and what is psychological, is not sharply separated but essentially intertwined.

Hence, on the whole, positing can both be responsible to how things are and, at the same time, be psychological rather than purely logical in character insofar as it essentially includes an element not answerable to what is thought about. Positing, therefore, is a blend of logical and psychological elements, or, in other words, a mode of thinking which as the thinking it is lacks continuity with its subject matter. It seems to be an advantage of the concept of positing to allow for an understanding of judgement-like items which violate Frege’s first principle, the logical being inextricably intertwined with the psychological. Posits, it seems, are ubiquitous elements of discourse, namely elements accounting for a certain ‘emptiness’ which may pertain to stretches of discourse even though what is said may not only be correct but even justified.Footnote ³¹ ‘London is in Europe and the moon is not made of green cheese. This lecture hall is 2630 miles from Timbuktu. Therefore, there is a lecture hall within a distance below 4000 miles from Timbuktu’. While such statements, on a Fregean account, not only express judgements which are perfectly in order, but presumably are even true, from a Hegelian viewpoint they are posits only—namely items which are not exclusively directed at articulating a non-arbitrarily unified subject matter but rather presuppose the determinacy of their constituents and put them in certain associative, albeit objectively bound configurations.

III. Stages of judgement

Judgement, according to Hegel, is explicative self-determination. With respect to its logical content, the positions within a judgement must therefore be taken by conceptual determinations. Judgement as it immediately, i.e., non-inferentially, occurs will be marked by a relation between what is singular in the sense of a concrete though still unarticulated unity and what is general in the sense of one of its subordinate, isolated and, hence, qualitative characters. Now we can see why immediate judgement cannot be the perfection of judgement. For judgement as such aims to explicate what it is about. However, in an immediate judgement the subject is purported to be a concrete, non-arbitrarily unified whole, while the predicate ‘touches’ it in one single ‘point’ only (EL: §172 addendum, 247), i.e., merely articulates an isolated, subordinate aspect of the subject. Therefore, immediate judgement is marked by an internal inadequacy, or, as Hegel puts it, a ‘contradiction’ (WL: 556/59.8) between what it, qua judgement, aims to attain, i.e., to articulate its unified subject matter as such, and what it, qua immediate judgement, in fact, does attain, namely to ‘touch’ it in one ‘point’.

Insofar as qualitative judgement contradicts itself pragmatically, this contradiction belongs to what judgement is in itself. Qualitative judgement, therefore, in not attaining what it, qua judgement, aims to attain, negates itself. Taking this negation into account as belonging to judgement itself will yield a new type of judgement. Different types of judgement, hence, can be understood as ‘stages’ of explicative self-determination or rungs on the ladder towards adequate fulfilment, through judgement, of what judgement as such aims at. Insofar as these types belong to explicative self-determination as such, it should be possible to derive them immanently from the notion of judgement in general. In calling them ‘stages’ (Stufen) (EL: §171 addendum, 246, VLM: 148), Hegel indicates that the types of judgement he envisages are not simply coordinate species of judgement, but rather form an ordered series within which the succeeding types presuppose as well as supersede the preceding ones.

Because, with respect to its logical content, judgement consists in an explicative relation between internally related constituents, different stages of judgement must be characterized by the occupation of their positions by co-varying conceptual determinations. Expressing increasingly explicative relations between subject and predicate, different types of judgement will be marked by different types of internal unity. Insofar as generality is what unites particular items, the main stages of judgement, according to Hegel, are characterized by different kinds of generality, namely ‘sensual generality, universality, genus and species’ and, finally, ‘the generality of the concept’ (EL: §171, 245/186.3–6). While sensual generality consists in a unity of subject and predicate pertaining to a single, sensible feature of a single thing taken in isolation, universality expresses a kind of unity which is multiplied with respect to things and properties and, therefore, quantitative, while genus and species articulate what globally unites a thing by integrating the manifold of its particular determinations and accounting for its identity-through-change. Finally, the ‘concept’ of a thing’s specific nature, explicitly featuring in ‘its own’ type of judgement, not only articulates what unites a particular subject matter, but exhibits this unity as self-specifying, i.e., as not only integrating a manifold of determinations, but as also accounting for the specificity of the determinations that it unites.

Insofar as the relation between subject and predicate is an internal one, different stages of judgement not only relate their logical constituents differently; also, what they relate differs logically. In this respect, it is essential to keep in mind that Hegel’s distinction between different types of judgement is not a formal-syntactical one, but rather pertains to ‘logical content’. Hence, according to Hegel, sentences with the same formal-syntactical structure can nevertheless express judgements of different logical types. ‘This plant looks red’, ‘This plant is medical’ and ‘This plant is a tulip’, for example, notwithstanding sameness of formal-syntactical structure, express logically different judgements due to the occurrence of logically different types of predicates within them (WL: 576/78.16–23). More precisely, different stages of judgement, according to Hegel, are not only characterized by logically different types of predicates. Rather, as he presents the matter, the introduction of specific logical constants is tied to specific stages of judgement as well. Thus, predicate and sentential negation are introduced on the level of what Hegel interchangeably calls ‘judgement of existence’ (‘Daseinsurteil’) or ‘qualitative judgement’. The universal and the (restricted) existential quantifier (‘only some’) are introduced on the level of the so called ‘judgement of reflection’, (material) implication and (complete) disjunction on the level of the ‘judgement of necessity’ and, finally, modal operators on the level of the ‘judgement of the concept’.

In characterizing logically different types of judgement, i.e., mutually exclusive stages of explicative self-determination, by reference to a correlation of logically different kinds of predicate with different logical constants, Hegel’s classification of judgement-types obviously differs from Kant’s. Although Kant’s table of judgements and Hegel’s account of logically different stages of judgement overlap to a large extent with respect to terminology, their conceptions fundamentally diverge.Footnote ³² The four ‘classes’ or ‘titles’ of judgement, which Kant distinguishes, do not express mutually exclusive types of judgement, but rather, combinable aspects of the form of judgement, i.e., distinct dimensions of the unity belonging to any judgement as such.Footnote ³³ Thus, on Kant’s account, one and the same judgement is usually determined with respect to each of the four classes of judgement, being characterized by (at least) one of the moments listed under each title.Footnote ³⁴ On Hegel’s conception, though, the four titles designate mutually exclusive, logically successive stages of explicative self-determination.

As Hegel points out, these stages necessarily ‘follow’ from one another in the following sense.Footnote ³⁵ Each stage makes something explicit in form of a new type of judgement, which the preceding types merely implicitly presupposed. What each preliminary type of judgement implicitly presupposes, without rendering it, qua preliminary type, explicit, is (a grip on) the distinct, re-identifiable, self-sustaining unity of its subject matter. Hence, even qualitative judgement, in merely articulating an isolated, possibly ephemeral aspect of its subject, implicitly presupposes the latter to be a distinct, re-identifiable unity. Preliminary types of judgement, therefore, presuppose the possibility to proceed to other types of judgement, successively contributing to the explication of their respective subject matter, whose concrete unity has been implicitly presupposed from the outset.

Having clarified the ‘principle of derivation’, we are now in a position to follow Hegel’s exposition of logically different types of judgement.Footnote ³⁶ As already indicated, the first stage is positive judgement. It is immediate insofar as its subject and predicate appear as independent of each other. The predicate, hence, expresses a property, pertaining to the subject independently of what kind of thing it is and of what other determinations it has—a quality. But because the subject, as a non-arbitrarily unified whole, cannot be adequately explicated by reference to a quality, positive judgement cannot attain what it, qua judgement, aims to attain, namely to express the concrete unity of its subject matter.

The failure of positive judgement is not due to its subject, but due to the inadequacy of its qualitative predicate with respect to it. Because this inadequacy belongs to judgement itself and must, therefore, lead to a new stage, negative judgement, which explicitly takes it into account, within this new type of judgement negation will pertain to the predicate, rather than to the judgement as a whole. This is why negation, within negative judgement, on Hegel’s account, is not sentential, but predicate negation (‘This E is not-F’).

It might seem that the progression from positive to negative judgement does not mark any actual progress. For, if the subject is not adequately articulable by reference to a quality, it seems irrelevant whether this quality is directly given (‘F’) or indirectly hinted at, by not being this quality but another one (‘not-F’). Nevertheless an advance has taken place. On the one hand, the progression to negative judgement makes explicit that qualitative predicates are not that isolated after all, as positive judgement could make believe, but connected to each other through relations of ‘material incompatibility’.Footnote ³⁷ On the other hand, because subject and predicate relate to each other internally, predicate negation must accentuate a hitherto implicit feature of the subject as well. What is brought into the open by negative judgement is that the subject, a singular item, must at least implicitly be characterized as an item of a general kind. This is highlighted, in negative judgement, insofar as the determinacy of the sphere of predicates, one of which (‘not-F’) is being indirectly attached to the subject through negation of another (‘F’), depends on what kind of thing the subject is. Hence, from ‘This E is not-F’, according to Hegel, it follows that the subject is of a quality materially incompatible with F and belonging to a sphere of qualities determined with respect to the concept E. From ‘This plant is not-red’, for example, it follows that this plant is of some other colour than red.

Negative judgement, nevertheless, shares with positive judgement a fundamental defect, namely that it attempts to explicate what itself is not a quality by reference to a quality. The inadequacy of the predicate, as it occurs by now, because it is not directly but only indirectly—and hence indefinitely—given, no longer appears to be an inadequacy of this or that qualitative predicate, but is manifest as the inadequacy of any qualitative predicate whatsoever. Taking into account this inadequacy cannot result in another type of qualitative judgement, then, but in the cancellation of qualitative judgement as such. Hence, at the next stage, infinite judgement, negation does not affect the predicate but the logical copula, i.e., the explicative relation between subject and predicate as such. Obviously, what results from negating the copula, cannot be a judgement any longer, for judgement is defined as an explicative relation between subject and predicate. Thus, as Hegel concedes, infinite judgement, in its immediate form (‘This E is-not a quality’), is not a judgement but only a posit (EL: §173, 247/187.16–20). Nevertheless, because infinite judgement results from immanently unfolding what belongs to judgement as such, the transition from negative to infinite judgement cannot result in something that lacks explicative character altogether. Within infinite judgement, subject and predicate, due to the cancellation of their explicative relation, are each ‘reflected’ into themselves, so to speak: ‘This E is-not A’ can be read as ‘This E is this E only and A is A only’. This observation actually provides us with a new type of subject and predicate, namely a reflected one, the singular presenting itself as singular and the general as general. Because we have been provided, by infinite judgement, with a new type of subject and predicate and because subject and predicate are positions that can only be taken within judgement, we have been provided with a new type of judgement, namely reflective judgement: ‘The singular posited as singular is the general posited as general’ (EL: §174, 248/188.1–12).

But what does it mean to say that the subject of reflective judgement is the singular ‘posited as singular’? Obviously, what is singular can occur as singular only if it is presented in distinction to and thereby as one amongst others. Reflective judgement, then, is quantitative judgement. Its subject is a singular item of a certain kind related to a set of other individuals. Because subject and predicate logically co-vary with each other, the predicate within reflective judgement must contain a reference to quantity as well. Hence, it cannot express a quality any longer, because quality, understood as a subordinate property pertaining to a subject taken in isolation, does not contain any reference to other singular items. The predicate of reflective judgement, however, must situate what it applies to within a set of such singular items. Even though it does not express a quality, insofar as it results from the negation of qualitative judgement, the predicate of reflective judgement must presuppose the subject to have a manifold of qualities, to include a negation of qualitative predicates and to thereby relate its subject to other items. Accordingly, reflective judgement predicates of its subject the determinate negation, i.e., a specific alteration of qualities under certain conditions involving the subject’s relation to other singular items. The predicate of reflective judgement must be a dispositional one, then, expressing a specific alteration of qualities under specific conditions involving the subject’s interaction with other individuals. Reflective judgement, therefore, is marked by both quantity and dispositional predicates. Hence, in its immediate form, singular judgement, it can be expressed as follows: ‘This one F has disposition D’, e.g., ‘This animal is tame’.

Because a disposition is a proneness to specific change of qualities in case certain conditions arise, the subject’s identity through change of conditions must be guaranteed within reflective judgement. What, on the level of reflective judgement, explicitly guarantees the subject’s re-identifiability, cannot be its specific nature, because reflective judgement expresses a preliminary step towards an explication of that nature. The subject’s identity can therefore be secured with reference to an abstract ontological type or general nature only (like plant or animal), though not yet by reference to its specific nature.Footnote ³⁸ However, because judgement presupposes its subject to have a specific nature accounting for its being the concrete unity it is, even though this nature, on the level of reflective judgement, still waits to be adequately articulated, and because the predication of dispositional predicates plays an intermediate role in articulating the specific nature of a subject, there cannot, in principle, obtain unspecific relations between abstract ontological types and certain ranges of dispositions only. Rather, there must be certain definite relations between specific dispositions and specific natures, such that grouping singular items of a general kind according to their respective dispositions will be taking a step towards the explication of their specific nature. This is why particular judgement makes a presupposition of singular judgement explicit; and this accounts for Hegel’s understanding of the existential quantifier in a restricted sense. The existential quantifier can fulfil its function, within reflective judgement, to contribute to the articulation of a subject’s specific nature, only, if it occurs restrictedly (‘some and only some’), and not if unrestrictedly (‘some and perhaps all’). For, in the latter case, a correct existentially quantified statement of the form ‘Some F are D’ would leave it open in principle whether items of a general kind F have disposition D due to their specific nature S or not. Therefore, such statements cannot contribute to making this nature explicit. That it is existentially quantified reflective judgements in the restricted sense, which play a crucial role in bringing the specific natures of things out into the open, should be obvious with respect to the role judgements like ‘Only some plants are medical’ or ‘Only some stuff burns’ play in discovering natural kinds.

Because dispositional judgement must play a crucial role in making specific natures explicit and because it can fulfil its role only if, with respect to a general kind of thing F, there are dispositions, which only some instances of F, due to their specific, though still implicit nature, have, while others do not, the nature of a thing, while not available ‘in specie’ yet, must be able to appear, on the level of reflective judgement, through the fact that only some F’s have a certain dispositional property. Hence, particular judgements allow us to form preliminary species concepts: a general ontological type tied to a specific disposition. Such a concept is preliminary, insofar as a specific nature does not consist in a combination of a general ontological type and one disposition only, for the specific kind includes, as such, a variety of dispositions tied to it, while not being identical with any of them. Hence, the concepts of a poisonous baccate plant or a white substance melting at 73.6°C, for instance, are not proper species concepts yet.

However, because at least some of the dispositions of a thing must be tied to its specific nature, a preliminary natural kind concept F, reached on the level of reflective judgement, can function as a proxy for the actual species. Because there must be such proxies representing the species on the level of reflective judgement, this connection can be made explicit by a transition from particular to universal judgement (‘All F are D’). On the level of reflective judgement, that all F are D cannot be explained by reference to a species concept yet. Rather, because F is a species-proxy only, it can only be observed with respect to a set of F-instances that all of them are D. Hence, universal judgement, on Hegel’s account, expresses an inductive generalization (WL: 572–73/75.10–32). Nevertheless, insofar as universal judgement belongs to judgement as such, for logical reasons at least some universal judgements must be explicative indeed, i.e., correct. But inductive generalizations can be non-accidentally correct, only, if things have specific natures, accounting for the fact that all things of such and such nature have a certain property.

Now, because the specific nature, unifying a subject’s qualities and dispositions, on the level of reflective judgement, cannot be made explicit, while obviously no further forms of quantitative judgement, following universal judgement, are yet possible, reflective judgement as such does not fulfil what it aims to attain qua judgement. However, because reflective judgement is apt to bring out into the open a multiplicity of dispositional properties pertaining to items of a general kind non-accidentally, i.e., due to their specific nature, everything needed to make this nature explicit is at hand now. For the specific nature is that which accounts for the unity of a bunch of dispositional properties which non-accidentally belong to items of a certain, albeit so far only preliminarily determined, kind. Articulating what unites and explains a bunch of dispositions non-accidentally belonging to items of a certain general kind, does not have to rely on an explicit reference to individuals any longer. For what is at issue is a relation between a specific kind and certain properties non-accidentally belonging to this kind.

This insight leads to the next stage of explication, categorical judgement, for which it is constitutive to link a specific nature directly with properties related to it essentially. A characteristic linguistic device for expressing categorical judgements is the use of distributive singular terms in patterns like ‘The S is P’ (‘Something, insofar as it is S, is P’). Insofar as categorical judgement expresses an immediate link between a species and an essential property, it does not explicitly state that this relation, as such, is independent of the existence of singular items instantiating this link. That independence is made explicit in hypothetical judgement, which, free of existential assumptions, articulates necessary connections between the species and other (e.g., causal) properties. Hypothetical judgement, on Hegel’s account, cannot be understood on Fregean lines, then, because on a truth-functional account of implication there is no need for a material connection between antecedent and consequent for the whole to be true. According to Hegel, though, the constituents of a judgement must stand in an explicative relation. Therefore, hypothetical judgement, expressing a necessary explicative relation, must have an explanatory character.

Within hypothetical judgement, antecedent and consequent relate to each other as particular and general insofar as the consequent articulates some feature that follows from the antecedent but is less specific than the former. Now, because the particular is a logical pluralia tantum, Footnote ³⁹ it must be possible to envisage, within reflective judgement, a plurality of species of a genus as such. Hence, disjunctive judgement, expressing the division of a general nature into its species, makes something explicit, which is implicitly presupposed by hypothetical judgement. Insofar as the division of a genus into species can lay claim to completeness only, if the principle of division is not external to the genus, it must be possible to exhibit the general concept, articulated within disjunctive judgement, as self-specifying. This leads to the so-called ‘judgement of the concept’, which articulates a thing’s nature as not only integrating a manifold of particular determinations but as establishing internal requirements with respect to such determinations. The concepts of a cat or a violin, for example, go hand in hand with criteria of what counts as a healthy cat or a good violin. In consequence, judgements of the concept express internal evaluations insofar as they articulate ways in which a particular thing either accords or disaccords with its own nature.Footnote ⁴⁰ Assertoric, problematic and apodictic judgement, as the particular forms belonging to this stage, contain modal categories. These categories are to be understood realistically insofar as they serve to articulate what a thing can or must be—not with respect to the epistemic condition of the judger, but with respect to what its own nature allows for, necessitates or excludes.

In summary, Hegel’s exposition leads from observational judgements articulating perceptible features of particular things via empirical articulation of dispositional properties and preliminary natural kinds and via judgements focusing on general explanatory connections between such kinds and certain properties back to the articulation of particular things as concrete wholes being, due to their particular properties, either in accord or disaccord with their own specific and, by now, explicit natures. Envisaging a particular thing as a harmonious or disharmonious unity of its specific nature and its particular properties completes the explicative demand internal to any judgement as such.

IV. L>P-posits

Traversing the stages of judgement envisaged by Hegel should have clarified that these stages neither coincide with Kantian forms of judgement nor match with a broadly Fregean conception of logical form. Not only can statements of one and the same Kantian or Fregean form belong to different Hegelian stages. Rather, from a Kantian or Fregean standpoint, there seem to be a good many statements with a perfectly acceptable logical form, which on Hegel’s view, due to the occurrence of certain logical constants within them, cannot count as judgements at all. I will call such items ‘L-posits’ in order to indicate that their positional character is due to the occurrence of certain logical constants within them.Footnote ⁴¹

The concept of L-posit is introduced for the following reason. As pointed out, in successively unfolding different stages of judgement, Hegel correlates the introduction of certain logical constants to the introduction of certain types of predicates. Hence, in climbing the rungs of the ladder of judgement, only when reaching a judgement containing a certain type of predicate does one reach a type of judgement capable of containing a certain logical constant.

On the level of qualitative judgement, for instance, neither quantifiers nor material implication are yet available, while on the level of reflective judgement, quantifiers are available while implication is not. Hence the question arises of which logical status to assign to statements containing specific logical constants combined with predicates of a lower rank than is necessary for the whole to express a judgement. Obviously, such items do not belong to any of the stages of judgement which Hegel envisages, and because the series of these types is meant to be complete (EL: §171, 246/13–16), such statements cannot count as judgements. We can call them ‘L>P-posits’, because they are characterized by the occurrence of a logical constant (L) of a higher rank than is allowed for by the rank of their predicate (P). In figure 1, these ranks are symbolized by indices referring to respective types of judgement, ‘E’ standing for ‘judgement of existence’, ‘R’ for ‘judgement of reflection’, ‘N’ for ‘judgement of necessity’ and ‘C’ for ‘judgement of the concept’:

Figure 1

Types of L>P-posits

Now, the following thesis can be formulated: On Hegel’s account, certain well-formed statements, due to their specific combination of certain types of predicates with certain logical constants, cannot be items playing a strictly logical role, i.e., judgements, but have a partly psychological character only. We can characterize such statements as L>P-posits, insofar as their respective combination of predicates and logical constants does not contribute to further articulate a non-arbitrarily unified subject matter.

With respect to this thesis the following question arises. Are there really good reasons to distinguish between one class of statements—judgements—which, due to their combination of certain types of predicates with certain logical constants, contribute to an explication of a unified subject matter, and another class of statements—posits—which, due to their respective combinations, do not and therefore have a partly psychological rather than purely logical character? Or has the concept of logical content been overstretched by not only tying it to certain types of predicates (qualitative, dispositional, substantial, evaluative), but by insisting on an internal connection between such types of predicates and certain logical constants, as Hegel obviously does?Footnote ⁴²

I will try to answer this question by discussing three basic types of L>P-posits. In considering these types examples shall be given. Reasonable use of them presupposes attention to the fact that the distinction between judgements and posits is a pragmatic one. Hence, the thesis under discussion is not that certain syntactically well-formed strings of signs cannot, in principle, be used to express judgements. It is rather that in those contexts of their use, in which their predicate is assigned a lower rank than their logical constant, such sentences do not express a judgement. This does not preclude the same string of signs being used to express judgements in other contexts of use.Footnote ⁴³

V. Conclusion

The preceding considerations have served to show that, given Hegel’s idealist view that distinct things are neither immediately existent nor given independently of attempts at an articulation of their specific nature within judgement, there are good reasons for the distinction between judgements and L>P-posits.

Judgements have a logical primacy over L>P-posits insofar as the latter presuppose the possibility to refer to distinct, unified subjects, which can be ensured by the respective terms occurring within judgements only. Hence without there being judgements, there could not be any posits either. Posits, however, seem to play de facto indispensable roles as well. Apart from communicative, e.g., phatic functions, posits have epistemological roles too. Because, according to Hegel, the world is necessarily—albeit only partially—marked by features which are merely contingent and thus external to each other and to the evolving substances making up the world,Footnote ⁴⁵ articulating such features can rely on posits only.Footnote ⁴⁶

Nevertheless, the possibility of referring to anything at all presupposes the possibility of referring to non-arbitrarily unified subject matters within judgements. Hence, even in empirical contexts, it must be possible to dispense with a good number of posits in sticking to the regulative ideal of exclusively articulating the integrated features of a unified subject matter at hand instead of leaping about between incoherent features of the world placed besides each other merely contingently. In consequence, the concept of L>P-posit might serve as a diagnostic tool in criticizing misguided forms of science which content themselves with articulating factual correlations on a merely positional level—an activity which not only ‘so far’, but in principle, does not contribute to the articulation of a non-arbitrarily unified subject matter.

Be this as it may, at least within the realm of philosophical thought, one can and should do without posits, according to Hegel. For philosophy, according to him, is the attempt to immanently unfold what belongs to the concept or self-determination as such. From this point of view, modes of thinking which essentially lack continuity with what is thought about, containing leaps and introducing external assumptions, may be criticized in a precise way with the concept of an L>P-posit at hand.