On Mechanism in Hegel's Social and Political Philosophy by Ross Nathan;

Author:Ross, Nathan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

b) That Mechanism follows from Syllogism

This first articulation of objectivity as the ‘being-in-and-for-itself’ of the concept does not, however, just gain its authority for Hegel from a popular usage of the term. It is important to see that the concept of mechanism is not just a definitional breakthrough for Hegel, but a concept that follows from the overall project of the doctrine of the concept. Hegel remarks that this transition from syllogism to objectivity bears a resemblance to ontological proof for the existence of God, to the notion that the concept of a most perfect being necessarily includes the existence of such a being. But the result of this transition are markedly different from the result of the ontological proof, as Hegel is careful to emphasize the distinction between his logical notion of objectivity and the common notion of existence as given-ness within the world of experience. So in what sense does this transition resemble the ontological proof? The transition from syllogism to objectivity is grounded for Hegel in the initial demand of the doctrine of the concept, that thought determine itself even in its relating to externality. Just as the thought of perfection implies existence,44 so too the thought of self-determining thought implies that the structures of syllogistic thought be made into objective structures.

The prior moments of the doctrine of the concept were: the concept as such, judgment and syllogism. In each case, Hegel is explaining a self-evolving relation between the three aspects of conceptual thought, universality, particularity and singularity. In order for the concept to be self-determining, it must generate out of itself its own relation to that which is external. The judgment (Urteil) is for Hegel the most basic way in which thought realizes itself in its other: the ‘individual’ splits itself and becomes an individual that is at the same time universal (S-U). But this realization of the concept in a judgment is finite, since the individual thing is only related to its universal nature through the medium of the copula. The syllogism for Hegel is the ultimate structure of rational thought, because it relates two abstract moments of the concept through a middle term that is itself the concrete nature of the concept. But Hegel’s treatment of the syllogisms is marked by an internal, animating tension, in that any attempt to think a single moment of the concept as a concrete middle term begs a question about how this middle term became concrete. This pattern of regress leads to more complex syllogism, in which the middle term becomes progressively ‘more concrete,’ which is to say, more capable of explaining a structure in which the moments of conceptual thought relate not in terms of external being, but in terms of an internal activity of thought. The ultimate form that Hegel explicates here is the disjunctive syllogism.45 What is unique about this form is, as Burbidge articulates, “that each proposition can be derived from the others, such that it is not necessary to turn to external instances in order to explain the course of the syllogism.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.