TIlE OWL OF MINERVA, 21, 2 (Spring 1991): 131-140

Thought and Being in Kant and HegeP

Stephen Houlgate

The view that Hegel's logic is a metaphysical logic has come under criticism in recent years from a number of commentators. Richard Winfield, for
example, states unequivocally in Reason and Justice (Albany: SUNY, 1988)
that Hegel's "foundation-free theory of determinacy ... turns out to be a theory
of self-determined determinacy with no immediate ontological or epistemological application ... It is no more an ontological theory demonstrating that the
fundamental structure of reality is something self-determined, than it is an
epistemological doctrine ordaining the manner in which reason can arrive at
each and every truth" (p. 137). The view that Hegel's is a non-foundational,
presuppositionless logic is one that I accept. It is clear that Hegel's logic does
not constitute a traditional metaphysics of the kind put forward by, say, Leibniz or Spinoza. Hegel is not offering us metaphysical propositions about presupposed metaphysical entities. He is not therefore presupposing that there is
an absolute and then enquiring into what it is.
However, it is also undeniable that Hegel does conceive of his logic as
metaphysical in some sense. In the preface to the first edition of the Science of
Logic, for example, he talks of "the logical science which constitutes metaphysics proper or pure, speculative philosophy."2 In 24 of the Encyclopedia he
claims that "logic coincides with metaphysics, the science of things grasped in
thought";3 and in the general introduction to the Science of Logic he maintains
that "the objective logic ... takes the place of the previous metaphysics which
was a scientific edifice to be erected over the world by thought alone" (Logic,
p. 63; Werke, v. 5, p. 61). Hegel also emphasizes the metaphysical character of
the Science of Logic by asserting that the subject matter of his logic is the 101. This paper was presented to the Society for Systematic Philosophy at the APA in
Washington in December 1988 and again at the annual conference of the Hegel Society of
Great Britain at Oxford in September 1989. I should like to thank all of those - on both occasions - who offered comments on it.
2. G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. by A. V. Miller, foreword by J. N. Findlay,
(Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities, 1969), p. 27; hereafter cited as 'Logic'. G. W. F. Hegel,
Werke in zwanzig Biinden: Theorie Werkausgabe, ed. by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969-1970), v. 5, p. 16; hereafter cited as 'Wcrke'. Translations have
been amended where appropriate.
3. G. W. F. Hegel, Logic: Beillg Part One of the EnLyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, trans. by William Wallace, foreword by J. N. Findlay, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), p. 36;
Weme, v. 8, p. 81.

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gos: "... it is least of all the logos which should be left outside the science of logic" (Logic, p. 39; Werke, v. 5, p. 30). Speculative logic, for Hegel, is therefore
"objective thinking," "thought in so far as it is just as much the matter (S a c h e)
in itself, or the matter in itself in so far as it is equally pure thought" (Logic, p. 49;
Werke, v. 5, p. 43). This metaphysical or ontological side to Hegel's logic - the
fact that it determines the structure of being, as well as the structure of
thought - cannot, in my view, be denied and is, indeed, part of what makes
Hegelian logic a logic of truth, not just a study of formal logical validity.4
What I wish to examine in this paper is how Hegel's Phenomenology
makes such a metaphysical or ontological logic possible, and also what kind of
ontological logic it makes possible. In due course I hope to clarify whether the
differences between my position and those of such commentators as Winfield
are simply semantic, hinging on the meaning of the word 'ontology', or whether, despite our common recognition that Hegel's logic is presuppositionless,
there are not significant philosophical differences among our views.
Hegel's Phenomenology begins with a consideration of consciousness.
As Hegel later makes clear in the philosophy of Geist, consciousness is distinguished from feeling in that it is not immersed in mere subjectivity. What
makes consciousness consciousness, therefore, is the fact that it takes what it is
conscious of to be true in itself - to be - not merely to be subjective feeling
or fancy:
Consdousness simultaneously distinguishes itself from something, and at the same time relates itself to it, or, as it is said,
this something exists for consciousness; and the determinate aspect of this relating, or of the being of something for a consciousness, is knowing. But we distinguish this being-for-another from
being-in-itself; whatever is related to knowledge or knowing is
also distinguished from it, and posited as existing outside of this
relationship; this being-in-itself is called truth. s
The claim of consciousness is thus always an ontological one. It is the claim
that there is something - be that something nature or consciousness itself and that consciousness can know what that something is. Once that claim is
made, of course - once consciousness acknowledges that it cannot simply remain within the province of its own feelings if it is to be consciousness, but
that it must be bound by what it knows to be - the question arises whether
4. My claim here that Hegel's logic is metaphysical is intended to complement, not
contradict, the claim I have made elsewhere that Hegelian philosophy is best understood as
providing a critique of metaphysics. In my view, Hegel is a profound critic of the metaphysics of
the understanding, that is, of the way of thinking which understands categories such as flllitude
and infinity, or something and other, to be fundamentally opposed to one another. However,
since one of the oppositions that certain "metaphysicians of the understanding" (such as Kant)
presuppose is that between thought and being, it is clear that Hegel's critique of metaphysical
oppositions will itself require him to recognize that thought (and thus logic) is ontological,
because it will require him to recognize that thought and being are not in fact fundamentally
opposed. It is pn;cisely because Hegel is a critic of metaphysical oppositions, therefore, that his
logic must be a metaphysical or ontological one. See my Hegel, Nietzsche and the Criticism of
Metaphysics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), especially Chapters Four and
Five. Alan White reviewed this book in The Owl, 21, 1 (Fall 1989): 91-96.
5. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. by A. V. Miller, with analysis of the
text and foreword by J. N. Findlay, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977, 1979), p. 52; hereafter cited as
'Phen.'; Werke, v. 3, p. 76. Translations have been amended where appropriate.

THOUGHT AND BEING

133

consciousness grasps properly what it knows to be. This is one question which
the Phenomenology examines.
At first glance, however, it appears that this question cannot be answered, for "the object ... seems only to be for consciousness in the way that
consciousness knows it; it seems that consciousness cannot, as it were, get behind the object as it exists for consciousness so as to examine what the object
is in itself, and hence, too, cannot test its own knowledge by that standard"
(Fhen., p. 54; Werke, v. 3, p. 78). The task of the Phenomenology thus seems to
be hopeless, for how can we ever compare our knowledge of things with what
actually is, if our only access to what is is through our knowledge of it?
Hegel points out, however, that consciousness does not actually need
to "get behind" its knowledge and view the object as it is when not viewed by
consciousness, because consciousness can undertake a comparison of knowledge and its object as they are distinguished by or within consciousness itself.
After all, "the distinction between the in-itself and knowledge is already present in the very fact that consciousness knows an object at all. Something is for
it the in itself; and knowledge, or the being of the object for consciousness, is,
for it, another moment" (Phen., p. 54; Werke, v. 3, p. 78). Consciousness thus
does not need to try to compare its knowledge with the object as it is when not
an object of experience, but can compare its knowledge of the object with the
object as it is presented to consciousness. In this way, consciousness will be
able to evaluate or criticize its own knowledge on the basis of its experience of
the object, and so "in what consciousness affirms from within itself as being-initself or the True, we have the standard which consciousness itself sets up by
which to measure what it knows" (Pllen., p. 53; Werke, v. 3, p. 77).
Hegel's intention in the Phenomenology is thus not to determine whether consciousness accurately mirrors an independently given reality, but rather to determine whether consciousness fully grasps what its conception and
its experience of its object actually entail. Hegel's aim is to determine whether
consciousness perceives, understands or knows its object quite as it thinks it
does. Or, to put it another way, his aim is to determine whether consciousness
can mean by being quite what it thinks it means by it. This concern with what
consciousness means or understands by being and with what consciousness
must mean or understand by being, rather than with whether consciousness
gets it right about "the world," is evident from the very first chapter on sensecertainty, where Hegel shows that consciousness is not able to sustain its understanding of being as pure, particular immediacy in quite the way it thought
it could. The Phenomenology thus investigates the claims of consciousness by
suspending the naive belief that we can measure our knowledge against what
is, and by taking up the Kantian project - which is set out in Part Two of the
Critique of Pure Reason (entitled "Transcendental Logic") - of determining
how consciousness must and does conceive of being. To be sure, Hegel's text
does not offer us a transcendental account of the conditions of the possibility
of experience, as Kant's does, but presents the immanent, dialectical determination of what conscious experience actually implies. However, to the extent
that Hegel acknowledges that one cannot go directly to being, but that one
can only understand being through understanding how consciousness must
conceive of being - to the extent, that is, that he recognizes that the old metaphysics must give way to some kind of logic or account of how we must think
- Hegel remains profoundly indebted to Kant (see Logic, p. 51; Werke, v. 5, p.

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45). Kant's transcendental logic, of course, remains an account of what we as

conscious, rational beings must think, and never permits us to understand how
being itself is to be thought. The task of Hegel's Phenomenology, on the other
hand, is to lead us from an understanding of what consciousness must think to
an ontological understanding of what must be thought by being, that is, to an
ontological, speculative logic.
How does the Phenomenology achieve this and what is its conclusion?
The main thing that Hegel's analysis shows is that consciousness' attempt to
understand its object as wholly independent of consciousness always fails
because consciousness always comes to recognize that what it initially takes to
be being in itself is in fact only what consciousness takes to be being in itself,
that is, "that what it previously took to be the in itself is not an in itself or that
it was only in-itself for consciousness" (phen., p. 54; Werke, v. 3, p. 78). Consciousness realizes, therefore, that it cannot perceive, or conceive of, its object
as utterly distinct from consciousness because it recognizes the determinations
of its object to be the determinations of its own experience or thought. The
way consciousness knows its object is the way it knows its object, so the known
object cannot be thought of as completely independent of consciousness itself.
This conclusion appears to leave us fairly and squarely in Kantianism.
However, in fact, it both confirms and undermines Kant's position at one and
the same time. It confirms Kant's thesis that our knowledge of objects is inseparable from our knowledge of our own categories and thought-determinations. But it also undermines Kant's notion that the determinations of being in
itself could be thought to be utterly other than the determinations of thought.
Kant claims that we cannot intuit or perceive things as they are in themselves,
but that we are tempted to apply our categories to things in general and so to
think of things in themselves as unschematized subjects, substances or causes
(see Critique of Pure Reason, B 186). However, he insists that we cannot make
sense of what that might mean; we cannot understand what it might mean for
something to be a non-temporal substance, for example, since the concept of
substance is only properly determinable by us as the concept of permanence
in time (see B 224-232, 298-300). This leaves us with two options. Either
things in themselves are to be thought of as "objects" and "causes" in ways
which we cannot understand (see Kant's reference to the transcendental "object" as the "cause of appearance," B 344), or they are not to be thought of as
causes (or substances or unities or negations, etc.) at all, but rather as a mere
"something ... of which, as it is in itself, we can have no concept whatsoever"
(B 726)6 - see also Kant's claim on B 344 (Kemp Smith, p. 293) that the transcendental "object" "can be thought neither as quantity nor as reality nor as
substance, etc. (because these concepts always require sensible forms in which
they determine an object)." Hegel's logic endeavours to counter the first alternative by showing that we can indeed make sense of unschematized substance
or causality. But the Phenomenology counters the second alternative by showing that the thought of "something ... of which ... we can have no concept whatsoever" - the thought of that which is utterly beyond conception - is ultimately inconceivable and unintelligible.
Hegel does not deny that we can think of that which is different from a
thought or a concept, or that we can be wrong in our judgments about the
6. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by Norman Kemp Smith (New York:
St. Martin's, 1%5), p. 566; hereafter cited as 'Kemp Smith'.

THOUGHT AND BEING

135

world. But he claims that being cannot be thought to be utterly other than the
way thought determines it to be. Kant's thought of "something ... of which, as
it is in itself, we can have no concept whatsoever" may initially seem intelligible, but it is in fact a self-contradiction. Such a "something" may not be comprehensible in terms of certain specific categories such as causality, but it is
not completely beyond conception. It is not actually the thought of something
"of which ... we can have no concept whatsoever," because "something" is, after
all, a concept, albeit a minimally determinate one. However much we or Kant
might wish or intend to leave open the possibility of that which is utterly other
than thought, therefore, we find that we undo that very possibility simply by
thinking of it. For the "thought" of that which is in every respect beyond conception is precisely one which cannot actually be thought, but which can only be
wished for, dreamt of or "intended."
The conclusion of the Phenomenology is thus that no being-in-itself can
be known or thought by consciousness that is not thought to be being-in-itself
for consciousness. We cannot make sense of the idea that being could be utterly different from thought, and consequently we cannot make sense of the
Kantian idea that what we know are only the determinations of our consciousness and not the determinations of things in themselves. Since we cannot conceive of any being other than the being that can be thought and known by
consciousness, we have no reason to assume that being could ultimately exceed our comprehension. We have no way of actually conceiving of the possibility that the determinations of being could be utterly other than the determinations of conscious thought, and, similarly, we have no way of actually conceiving of the possibility that the determinations of thought could be utterly
other than the determinations of being. What consciousness comes to understand at the end of the Phenomenology, therefore, is the Kantian idea that the
determinations of being are in fact the determinations of consciousness, together with the un-Kantian idea that the determinations of consciousness are
the determinations of being. Consciousness thus recognizes that it cannot simply withdraw into itself and cut itself off from being, and equally that it cannot
evade its own categories and immerse itself in pure, unadulterated being, but
that it must always remain consciousness of the determinations of being and
of consciousness itself at one and the same time (see Phen., p. 490; Werke, v.
3, p. 587-588). This is not to say that the distinction between thought and
being is simply rendered undecidable by Hegel's phenomenological analysis,
however. At the end of the Phenomenology consciousness recognizes that it
has no way of distinguishing being from the thought or category of being, and
that the two are thus identical. The mode of consciousness which recognizes
this identity of thought and being, and which understands that consciousness
does not merely represent what being is "like," but rather thinks being itself in
thinking the category of being, is absolute knowing or philosophy.
One should note here that Hegel is not claiming for philosophy some
privileged insight into any independent being "in itself." Philosophy is privileged by Hegel only because it recognizes a fact about consciousness that
other modes of consciousness do not fully grasp, namely that the determinations of the object of consciousness cannot be kept separate from the determinations of consciousness itself, and that the determinations of consciousness
cannot ultimately be conceived other than as determinations of being. Philosophy understands how consciousness has in fact thought about being all along

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without being fully aware of it. Philosophy understands the tmth about what
consciousness has taken to be the truth and is thus able to articulate how being is to be conceived, rather than just how consciousness thinks - or dreams
- being is to be conceived. Philosophy recognizes, therefore, that consciousness cannot but be ontological, and by so doing is able to conceive of being
properly, that is, as ultimately identical to the thought or category of being.
II

Hegel's phenomenological analysis to my mind follows through and

completes Kant's attempt to displace Cartesian subjectivity, and if we are able
to understand how the Phenomenology achieves this we will be able to see that
the non-foundational view of Hegel's enterprise put forward by Winfield is in
fact quite compatible with Hegel's claim to have provided an ontological
logic.
The distinguishing characteristic of Cartesian doubt and meditation is
that it proceeds from the self-conscious thinking subject. Descartes achieves
self-certainty through his method of doubt, but only because such doubt presupposes the perspective of the doubting subject in the first place. The fundamental Cartesian assumption, therefore, is that I can cast all apparently external things into doubt and withdraw into my certainty of myself. As Descartes
says at the beginning of the third Meditation: "I will now shut my eyes, stop
my ears, and withdraw all my senses. I will eliminate from my thoughts all
images of bodily things, or rather, since this is hardly possible, I will regard all
such images as vacuous, false and worthless. I will converse with myself and
scrutinise myself more deeply.'07 At the beginning of this Meditation, Descartes is certain that the thought of himself entails his own existence, but he is
not certain whether the thoughts or ideas which he has of apparently external
objects entail the existence of such objects. He thus sees himself confronted
by the problem of having to establish from within his own self-certainty
whether or not there is a realm of objective existence outside of himself. The
existence of something other than himself is established, Descartes believes,
through the proofs of God presented in the third and fifth Meditations.
Kant, in my view, sees himself as providing a profound critique of Cartesian self-certainty. He sets out such a critique above all in his "Refutation of
Idealism" in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, where he argues that "OUf inner experience, which for Descartes is indubitable, is possible
only on the assumption of outer experience," and that "the determination of
my existence in time is possible only through the existence of actual things
which I perceive outside me" (B 275-276; Kemp Smith, p. 245). For Kant,
therefore, in contrast to Descartes, self-certainty cannot be separated or
abstracted from the certainty that there exists an objective world about us.
In the "Refutation of Idealism" Kant makes this point by claiming that
no objective determination of the self can be made without understanding the
place that the self has in the objective flow of time, and that this cannot be determined without determining the objective character of things, their permanence, etc. In another sense, however, Kant's whole conception of the catego7. Rene Descartes, 17le Philosophical Writings, trans. by John Cottingham, Robert
Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), v. 2, p. 24.

THOUGHT AND BEING

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ries is anti-Cartesian. Our categories for Kant are not "inner" representations
whose objectivity is in doubt and whose objectivity would be established if we
could prove that there exists outside of us something which corresponds to
them. Rather, our categories are the epistemic conditions of objective experience itself. They (together with their schemata) are the terms in which we are
able to conceive and make sense of what it means to be objective. They are
the necessary categories of objectivity itself.
The categories are objective for Kant not because there is something
outside us which corresponds to them and which thus, as it were, lends them
objectivity, but because they lay down what is to count as objective for
thought, what objectivity can mean. For Kant, therefore, it is only when we
think of something as substantial, as bound up in causal relations with other
things, as possible, actual, or necessary, etc., that we can think of it as existing
objectively at all. Because the subject does not need to prove that its categorial
representations match something outside itself in order to prove their objectivity, therefore, the subject does not need to try to build a bridge between itself
and the sphere of objective existence. Rather, since it is in terms of our categories that we determine what it means to be objective in the first place, there
is no fundamental gap to be bridged between thought and objective existence.
This is why Kant believes that his critical philosophy banishes skepticism. Skepticism or "problematic idealism" (B 274-275) can only arise if
thought can abstract itself from the world and raise doubts about the apparent
objectivity of its ideas. However, if such pure, abstract self-certainty is not possible, if certain knowledge of oneself is itself already certain knowledge of the
categorial structure of objective existence, then skeptical doubts about the objective validity of our categories or ideas cannot arise. In Heidegger's terms,
therefore, Kantian subjectivity displaces Cartesian skepticism because it is
always already ontological, always already being-in-the-world.
Kant considers the categories of thought to be the determinations of
objectivity, not because he thinks that they correspond to something "real"
which exists outside of him, but because he thinks that they define what is
meant by objective existence. With this conception of the categories Kant
rejects the idea that there is a fundamental epistemological gap between the
subject and the object, and so seeks to avoid the skeptical problems which
concern Descartes. Yet, at the same time, he remains caught up in the very
Cartesian separation of subject and object - of thought and being - which he
is attempting to undermine. This is the consequence of one of his most deeply
held convictions. Kant is convinced that the only way in which we could know
things as they are in themselves would be through a posteriori empirical intuition, that is, if the objects were "present and given to me," and if the properties of those objects could "migrate (hinuberwandem) into my faculty of representation."8 Now, since the categories of the understanding are a priori, for
Kant, and lay down what is meant by objectivity, they clearly cannot be derived from empirical intuition. Therefore, they cannot tell us about things in
themselves, but can at best be determinations of what we must understand by
objective existence, not determinations of being itself. Kant's residual empiri8. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, trans. by P. G. Lucas
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1953), 9, p. 38. Kant believes that beings other
than ourselves might gain access to things in themselves through intellectual intuition; however,
he denies that we ourselves possess such a faculty. See Critique of Pure Reason, B 308-309.

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cism, which commits him to the view that being can only be given to us in empirical intuition, thus leads him right back into the position from which he is
endeavoring to free himself, that of the Cartesian subject, certain of itself but
facing a problematic world.
Kant in fact drives an even bigger wedge between thought and being
than Descartes had done. Not only does he deny that the thought of God entails the existence of God, he even seems to deny the ontological implications
of the cogito. Kant agrees with Descartes that in any act of thinking I can and
must be able to think of myself as thinking, but he denies that I can "conclude"
from that I am a thinking being: "I cannot determine my existence as that of a
self-active being; all that I can do is to represent to myself the spontaneity of
my thought, that is, of the determination; and my existence is still only determinable sensibly, that is, as the existence of an appearance" (B 158; Kemp
Smith, p. 169 n.). Whereas Descartes says "I think, therefore I am," all Kant
seems willing to say is "I think, therefore I must represent myself as thinking."
But Kant's relapse into an even more extreme form of Cartesian selfabstraction than Descartes himself engaged in is founded upon a questionable
assumption. Kant argues that because the categories are a priori they cannot
be true of things in themselves. But this is because he assumes that being can
only be given to us empirically, through intuition. However, this assumption
runs counter to the whole thrust of his theory of categories, which is designed
to show us that, although empirical intuition is essential for the cognition of
objects, being is not simply given to us, because thought itself determines what
the fundamental structure of objective existence is.
In my view, Hegel's Phenomenology develops Kant's critique of the separation of thought and being and in so doing leads beyond Kant's subjective,
transcendental perspective itself. Hegel's text shows that consciousness does
not simply find itself in a problematic relation to being "in itself," but that it
gets itself into that problematic relation because of the way it conceives of being. The Cartesian problem and the Kantian split between the self and things
in themselves are thus, for Hegel, not self-evident; they result from an inadequate determination by thought of what thought actually understands by being. Naive consciousness thinks of being as independent of itself, but it fails to
reflect upon the fact that this is only one of the ways in which being can be
understood. Furthermore, such consciousness fails to realize that it is in fact
not simply conscious of being, but that it is conscious of what consciousness
itself means by being. Properly speaking, being cannot actually be thought by
consciousness except as what consciousness understands by being. After all,
even the thought of being as wholly independent from and other than thought
is still the thought of being and so is not really the thought of what is utterly
other than thought. What consciousness thinks when it thinks of being must
always be being for consciousness; so the thought of being "in itself' is in fact
an abstraction from what consciousness is actually thinking when it thinks of
"being." In believing that it is just thinking of being "in itself," therefore,
consciousness i~; not recognizing what it is actually thinking about and is thus
misunderstanding itself.
But precisely because we cannot conceive of being that is not for consciousness in some way, we cannot actually think of being as something that
eludes or withdraws utterly from consciousness. So we cannot think of being
as utterly other than our understanding of it, as other than what we are con-

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scious of, as other than what we can think. We cannot, therefore, conceive our
own conception of being as just our conception of being, and of being itself as
completely different from it. We cannot, in other words, think of being itself
as utterly different from what we think it to be, and so cannot think of what we
think being to be as utterly other than being. We are certainly capable of
error, but we are also capable of truth. There are thus no grounds for radical
epistemological skepticism. Ultimately, the true determinations of being must
be thought to be the determinations of our thought, and the necessary determinations of our thought must be thought to be the determinations of being.
At the conclusion of the Phenomenology consciousness has not bridged
a real gap between thought and being; it has seen an apparent gap between
thought and being collapse and disappear as it reflected upon what it means and must mean - by being. This is why Hegel's logic must be an ontological
logic. It is not that Hegel is offering us a logical description of an independently given reality or nature. He is not claiming that our categories do, after
all, "apply" to a distinct reality. To this extent Winfield is quite right. Hegel is
not claiming that we can indeed get from "within" thought to the reality "outside." He is showing us that we are in fact never simply "within" thought in the
first place. But, precisely because, at the end of the Phenomenology, consciousness is no longer - or rather, not yet - able to separate itself from being and think of itself as 'Just" thought, Hegel's logic must be, pace Winfield,
an ontological logic, a logic which, as William Maker puts it, presents "the
truth of being purely as thought."9
Hegel's logic does not posit an identity between the categories of consciousness and the structure of a reality that is held to be distinct from consciousness. It thus does not presuppose a determinate reality and seek to uncover that reality's underlying rational structure. (Nor, indeed, does it seek to
collapse reality into mind.) The Science of Logic cannot offer us a "metaphysical" or "ontological" account of an "objective," determinate reality in this sense
because the Logic starts once the distinction between consciousness and determinate being, which such an account presupposes, has collapsed. I therefore
agree wholeheartedly with Maker when he says that "we cannot take consciousness' structure of cognition - according to which whatever is being cognized is always already determinate as being other than the awareness which
thinks it, is always already determinate as an object in some sense, whether
externally given or self-given - as the methodological model in a purportedly
pure logic" (p. 84). What the Logic presents, I believe, is an account of how
being must be thought without presupposing that it is to be taken as a determinate object for thought. Indeed, the Logic cannot presuppose that being is
an object for thought, because it is precisely the task of the Logic to determine
whether being can be thought of as an "object" by determining, to use David
Kolb's phrase, "what it means to be."lo
The project of the Logic follows necessarily from the analysis of consciousness given in the Phenomenology. The result of the Phenomenology is
the post-Kant ian recognition that the task of philosophy is not to make judgments about a given reality, but to determine what is meant, what is to be
9. William Maker, "Does Hegel Have a 'Dialectical Method'?" The Southern Journal of
Philosophy, 20, 1 [Spring 1982]: 86.
10. David Kolb, The Critique of Pure Modernity: Hegel, Heidegger, and After (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 43.

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understood, by being. This is why Hegelian ontology takes the form of a logic,
and not of a traditional metaphysics. After Kant, we have to understand being
by understanding what it means to be, that is, by understanding what is to be
thought by the category of being. The Science of Logic will thus think through
what it means to be and show that it means being real, being substantial,
being rational, and so on. None of these determinations will be presupposed,
but the task will always be to determine what it means to be real, substantial,
and so on (and, of course, what it does not mean).
The culmination of the Logic will be the understanding that to be
means not simply to be real, substantial, and rational, but to be natural, selfexternal and spatio-temporal, and to lead to the emergence of consciousness.
The transition from the Logic to the philosophy of nature is thus the consequence of the further, immanent determination of what it means to be. As
both Winfield and Maker point out, it does not entail the "application" of the
concepts in the Logic to the "given" material of nature.
With the emergence of the thought of nature, it becomes clear that the
determination of being given in the Logic is in fact an abstraction, an underdetermination of the meaning of being. Being is not determined concretely,
therefore, until it is determined as self-externality and indeed until the possibility of a determinate difference between consciousness and nature is considered at the beginning of the philosophy of Geist. The relation between the
Logic and the philosophy of nature is thus not that between thought that is
merely "subjective" and thought that is truly "objective." We do not need to
wait until the philosophy of nature until being is thematized. Being is already
thematized in the Logic. However, it is not yet concretely determined as
nature. The Logic is thus ontological, but still only abstractly ontological. It
tells us how being must be thought and what it means to be determinate, to be
real, to exist, to be objective, and so on, but it does not yet tell us what it
means to be spatio-temporal, to be material, to be organic, or to be conscious.
The more precise determination of this difference between an abstract and a
more concrete determination of what it means to be will have to be left for
another occasion. But I hope that what I have said will at least provoke others
to pursue this issue further.

DePaul University