HEGEL’S TRANSCENDENTAL ONTOLOGY

by
Giorgi Lebanidze

A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with

the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Baltimore, MD
February, 2016

© 2016 Giorgi Lebanidze

All Rights Reserved
Abstract

This dissertation presents an account of the basic schema of Hegel’s ontological

theory based on a close reading of the key part of his Logic: the Doctrine of the

Concept. The careful examination of the internal architectonic of the Hegelian

Concept, which includes its three moments: the activity of generation of empirical

concepts that is guided by the determinations of reflection, the systematically

related constellation of empirical concepts, and the objects that are individuated

through them as well as the specific type of relation between these moments,

demonstrates that the key characteristics of the basic ontological structure stem

from Kant. Hence, I conclude that Hegel is presenting a new type of ontology that

becomes possible after Kant’s Copernican revolution, which rendered the formal

structure of the empirical objects of experience grounded on the faculty of

understanding. The dissertation suggests that Hegel’s Logic can be read as an

extended commentary on (or spelling out of the ontological implications from) the

famous Kantian claim from the transcendental deduction: the object is in the

concept of which manifold is united.

Advisors: Dean Moyar. Readers: Yitzhak Melamed, Hent de Vries

Katrin Pahl, Jennifer Culbert

ii
Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Dean

Moyar for the continuous guidance and support of my research, for his patience,

encouragement, and immense knowledge. It was his constant insistence on clarity

and intellectual rigor that made it possible for me to navigate through the complex

twists and turns of Hegel’s logic. I could not have imagined having a better advisor.

I thank Yitzhak Melamed for his invaluable insights and continuous support

throughout the writing process. Similarly I am grateful to Hent de Vries both for his

helpful comments on this work and the inspiring seminars on contemporary

European Philosophy that nurtured and reinforced my interest in Hegel. I also

would like to thank Katrin Pahl and Jennifer Culbert for their insightful feedback and

suggestions on future prospects of my research.

My sincere thanks also goes to Michael Williams, Richard Bett, Eckart Förster, Paola

Marrati, Meredith Williams, Peter Achinstein, Steven Gross, and Hilary Bok for the

many wonderful classes that shaped my outlook. I’m grateful to Hopkins’ Philosophy

Department for its intellectual rigor and open spirit that offered an ideal

environment for development as a scholar. I thank my fellow graduate students for

iii
their friendship and many inspiring discussions that inform my research through

and through.

Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family, my wife Hulya, my mother

Nelly, and my sister Khatya for their love and constant supporting throughout the

whole process of writing this thesis. Finally, the unique place in my life belongs to

my son, Noe Lebanidze, to whom I dedicate this work.

iv
Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1

Chapter 2: Hegel’s Critique of Alternative Positions ………………………………………………………......33

Chapter 3: Determinations of Reflection and Generation of Conceptual Content …..…………....82

Chapter 4: The Logical Structure of the Concept …………………………………………………………….…122

Chapter 5: Syllogism as the Basic Ontological Schema of Hegel’s Transcendental Ontology...201

Bibliography: …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...273

v
CHAPTER 1: Introduction

The recent debate over Hegel’s philosophy is carried out along the lines of

the Kantian-epistemological vs. metaphysical interpretations of his position. Those

belonging to the first camp understand Hegel as the figure who brought the Kantian

epistemological turn in philosophy to its completion, leaving behind the questions of

traditional metaphysics regarding the ultimate structure of reality that underlies the

mere appearance and true nature of God, soul, and the world. The general line taken

by these commentators is that although Hegel does not stop short of using the

terminology of traditional metaphysics (such as God, infinite, absolute etc.), the

philosophically significant core of his position is independent of these archaic

elements, which therefore can be lifted out of his overall corpus without sustaining

any philosophically significant loss. Though not always explicitly acknowledged,

these Hegelian scholars stand in the long tradition of rescuing what is alive in Hegel

from what is dead and ought to be left behind. The essential kernel of Hegel’s system

worth rescuing, according to these commentators, is the Kantian transcendental

project brought to its completion.

1
1) Pippin

The central figure among the commentators who consider the completion of

Kantian transcendental epistemology central to Hegel's legacy is Robert Pippin,

whose groundbreaking Hegel’s Idealism, published in 1989, set a new stage in Hegel

scholarship. In the book, Pippin aims to demonstrate that the issues most important

to Hegel’s project can be traced back to Kantian critical epistemology. Uncovering

the Kantian origins of Hegel’s philosophy, according to Pippin and his followers,

allows us to read Hegel as a post-Kantian epistemologist whose doctrine can be set

free of any substantial ontological commitments. This approach allows us to read

Hegel's two central works, Logic and Phenomenology, as investigations within the

normative authority of the pure concepts of understanding as the means by which

reality can be cognized, and to do so without ascribing to Hegel any substantial

commitments regarding the nature of this reality. The image of Hegel that emerges

as a result of this account is that of a transcendental epistemologist who replaces

the Kantian formal account of the pure concepts of the understanding with a more

robust exposition of the conceptual schemata as the medium of making sense of the

world while putting aside questions of metaphysical nature.

Pippin’s work brought about two invaluable contributions to Hegel

scholarship. First, he left behind the hitherto dominant onto-theological readings of

Hegel that saw him as a philosopher of the world-soul who had reconstructed the

problems and issues of traditional metaphysical systems on historicist grounds, but

2
essentially addressed the very same questions as his rationalist predecessors and

offered answers to them from the point of view of God. Second, Pippin made it

possible for Hegel to speak to contemporary philosophers by translating his

complicated technical vocabulary—such as “in itself vs. for itself,” “infinite being

immanent to the finite,” “freedom as being with itself in its other,” etcetera—into a

language much more accessible to those schooled in the analytic tradition. From an

obscure thinker of only historical value, Hegel was transformed into a figure who

has much to offer to those engaged in contemporary debates in epistemology and

semantics.

2) New traditionalist alternative

The alternative approach that emerged in the years following the publication

of Pippin’s work has reinstated the image of Hegel as a metaphysical thinker. But

this is not simply an attempt to go back to any version of the traditional reading that

dominated Hegel scholarship prior to the publication of Pippin’s work. What sets

these commentators apart from the traditional readings of Hegel, which also

ascribed to him a metaphysical position, is that they are elaborated on the

background and in contradistinction to Pippin’s Hegel. The most vivid evidence of

this is that these commentators take distancing Hegel from Kant as the touchstone

for ascribing to him any form of metaphysical view. It is because Pippin and his

3
followers take the Kantian dimension of Hegel’s project as the grounds for

advancing a non-metaphysical reading that the new metaphysical interpretations

see distancing Hegel from Kant as a necessary condition for a successful execution of

their project.

Hence, while Rolf-Peter Horstmann in his work that preceded and considered

with the publication of Pippin’s book could comfortably present Hegel as upholding

certain ontological theory, while at the same time standing within the tradition of

the Kantian critical philosophy, the new interpreters like Robert Stern and Brady

Bowman clearly feel the need for decoupling Hegel’s project from Kant's in order to

ascribe to him any substantial ontological commitments. Bowman, for example,

writes, “to be a philosopher self-consciously working in the wake of Kant’s

‘fortunate revolution’ is [not] necessarily to be engaged in a project that is

continuous with transcendental idealism or one that needs to recognize the peculiar

limitations Kant sought to impose on thought. Post Kant is not necessarily propter

Kant” (Bowman 2013, 3). For Bowman, the path to demonstrating that Hegel is

upholding a metaphysical theory lies in showing that his project diverges radically

from Kant’s. In the same vein, Stern writes,

Kant may be seen as proposing a dilemma to the

traditional ontologist: Either he can proceed by
abstracting from the spatio-temporal appearances of
things in an attempt to speculate about things as they
are in themselves,… ,and get him nowhere with things
in themselves; or he can attempt to work with less
formal principles, that take into account the spatio-
temporal features of things—but then he must accept
that he is no longer inquiring into being qua being.
(Stern 2009, 15)

4
Here Stern is drawing two alternative options that were left to choose from after

Kant, and he ends up placing Hegel closer to the traditional camp by describing him

as having “much greater sympathy for the traditional approach than the Kantian

one, which he often presents as a kind of modern faint-heartedness, a falling back

from the admirable confidence in the power of thought and reason to take us to the

heart of things that the metaphysical tradition… was able to display” (Stern 2009, 9).

Clearly, it is due to the depth and breadth of Pippin’s impact on the recent Hegel

scholarship that both Bowman and Stern see no other alternative but to decouple

Hegel from Kant in order to ascribe to him an ontological theory.

3) My Position

My position is that this debate rests on a false dilemma, as it assumes that the

Kantian and metaphysical readings mutually exclude each other. I shall argue that

not only is it possible, but in order to do justice to the complexity of his position we

must read Hegel as both (a) continuing the Kantian Transcendental project, and (b)

advancing a qualitatively new kind of metaphysical (or rather, ontological) theory

(having left the traditional pre-critical metaphysics fully behind). I shall use the

term ontology, rather than metaphysics, for reasons that will become clear shortly.

This work takes up the task of presenting a detailed account of what I will be

5
referring to as Hegel’s Transcendental Ontology, and it consists of three essential

facets.

First, I shall show that the ontological theory Hegel is advancing is

fundamentally different from traditional metaphysics, and therefore the recent

metaphysical readings advance views that are more misguiding than helpful in

understanding Hegel’s position.

Second, I shall also show that this qualitatively new ontological outlook

became possible only after Kant’s critical philosophy. In other words, without the

Kantian background and the Kantian basic framework integrated within the

Hegelian system, the central theses advanced by Hegel’s ontological theory would

simply not be possible. One way to think of this relation is along the lines of the

Kuhnian theory of the establishment of new scientific paradigms that brings along

with it new background commitments and assumptions. According to Kuhn, certain

scientific theories become possible only after one system of fundamental beliefs and

normative assumptions are replaced by another. In the same way, Kantian insights

inaugurate something like a paradigm shift that makes the elaboration of Hegelian

ontology possible. The Kuhnian analogy can also be helpful in further explicating the

difference between traditional metaphysics and Hegelian ontology. Although both

are views about the ultimate nature of reality and, upon first glance, the Hegelian

model might appear as one more theory amongst the many that had been

formulated before him, once more carefully examined, it becomes apparent that we

are dealing with a radical transformation of the most fundamental aspects of the

6
traditional view. For example, the central concept of ontology, being, has been

described in the Hegelian doctrine and traditional metaphysic as identical to

thought, but the claim of identity between the two sides is radically different

according to the traditional and the Hegelian ontology. To use the Kuhnian

terminology, as a result of the paradigm shift, we are responding to a different world

and the shift was initiated by the Kant’s Copernican turn. Hence, spelling out the

Kantian origins of this transformation and taking a close look at its details will be

one of the central tasks of my undertaking here.

Finally, the ultimate goal of the project is to present a detailed account of the

ontological model upheld by Hegel. It is in the Doctrine of the Concept, and

specifically in the Syllogism section, where Hegel presents the most fundamental

account of his conception of actuality. Therefore, a close analysis of these parts of

the Logic will be the central task undertaken in what follows. As is, we shall see that

the detailed presentation of the basic underpinnings of Hegelian ontology will serve

as the most conclusive confirmation of the above two points as well. It is only after a

comprehensive account of Hegel’s vision of actuality is brought to light can we fully

appreciate both its indebtedness to Kant and the extent to which it departs from

traditional metaphysical theories.

7
4) Pippin’s & My Readings

The interpretation that I’ll be offering here is inspired by Pippin’s Kantian

reading of Hegel. I agree with the overall thrust of Pippin's approach regarding the

Kantian origins of Hegel’s system, as well as the rejection of the traditional

metaphysical model that follows from this. To do the contrary and position Hegel

close to the pre-Kantian metaphysic means, as my discussion shall make clear, to fail

to appreciate the revolutionary nature of his position and to relegate him to history

as a “premodern anachronism.” Hence, I agree with Pippin’s claim that “Hegel’s

speculative position…his theory of the Absolute Idea, his claim that such an Idea

alone is ‘what truly is’ could be interpreted and defended in a way that is not

committed to a philosophically problematic theological metaphysics”(Pippin 1989,

5). Indeed, as laying out the detailed picture of Hegel’s position shall make evident,

one has to fundamentally misunderstand the Hegelian basic conceptual framework

to see him as pursuing a project similar to traditional metaphysics. But at the same

time, to claim that Hegel is not committed to “a philosophically problematic

theological metaphysics” is not the same as to claim that he is not upholding any

ontological stance at all. To claim that it is the absolute idea that “what truly is," as

Hegel does according to Pippin, means to take up certain ontological commitments.

If this claim has any meaning at all, it belongs to the sphere of ontology.

I also agree with Pippin’s broad-brush outline of the formula for “getting

Hegel from Kant”:

8
 Keep the doctrine of pure concepts and the account of
apperception that helps justify the necessary
presupposition of pure concepts, keep the critical
problem of a proof for the objectivity of these concepts,
the question that began critical philosophy, but
abandon the doctrine of ‘pure sensible intuition,’ and
the very possibility of a clear distinction between
concepts and intuitions, and what is left is much of
Hegel’s enterprise. (Pippin 1989, 9)

And Pippin’s Hegel’s Idealism indeed presents a comprehensive application of this

formula through the detailed analysis of Hegel’s two central texts, The

Phenomenology and the Logic.

The approach I’m taking in this work is more modest. Instead of presenting a

comprehensive account of Hegel's corpus, I shall almost exclusively focus on those

few sections of his Logic that I consider to be essential for understanding the basic

principle of his position. It is through the identification of the Kantian footprints on

this fundamental level of his system that the claim of continuity between the

projects of the two philosophers will be made.

5) Brandom

Another important figure amongst the non-metaphysical interpreters of

Hegel is Robert Brandom, who alongside Pippin reads Hegel as pursuing the Kantian

project, but sees him as best understood when projected onto the plane of problems

9
and issues of semantics. In his paper “Sketch of a Program for a Critical Reading of

Hegel,” Brandom suggests to read Hegel as advancing a two-tiered semantic theory

that discriminates between the logical vs. empirical (ordinary or non-logical)

concepts. Clearly, the move is directly emanating from the Kantian distinction

between the logical forms of judgment and the categories on the one hand, and the

empirical concepts on the other.

According to Brandom, while the ordinary determinate concepts “make

explicit how the world is,” the logical ones “make explicit the process by which

determinate content is conferred on or incorporated in the ground-level empirical

and practical concepts” (2004). He wants to replace the monistic metaphysics that

used to be traditionally ascribed to Hegel with a semantic holism, according to

which empirical concepts taken together with the inferential relation between them

and the doxastic commitments in which they are employed form an interrelated

holistic system. Hence, judgment, wherein a single element of a given constellation

is employed, is mediately related to the systematic whole; and an endorsement of a

new judgment is mirrored in a modification of the conceptual content of the totality

of the system. Besides, a modification of a conceptual content of any given element

of the system will have its impact on the potential or actual judgment made by

means of the other elements of the given schema.

I agree with Brandom in his delineation between the logical and the

empirical concepts, as well as his view regarding their relation to one another. The

former, instead of serving as the medium through which the world is made manifest

10
to the mind, constitutes the schemata that determines the relation between

empirical concepts and guides the process of their formation. Logical concepts,

according to Brandom, comprise a set of meta-concepts that, instead of telling us

about how the world is, tell us about the processes of formation of the concepts,

which tell us how the world is. Much of the analysis of Hegel’s ontological theory

that follows will be carried out with this Brandomian distinction in mind. As we

shall see, through the analysis of some key passages from the Doctrine of Essence

and the Doctrine of the Concept, Hegel presents an account of this onto-logical

structure grasped on different levels: first, as an elaboration of the elements of this

set of concepts in the doctrine of essence; and later, in the doctrine of the concept,

on the structural relation that guides the process of their application and also

expresses the architectonics of the system of empirical concepts formed through

this process. The empirical, or ordinary, concepts are different from the system

presented in Hegel’s onto-logical account in that they are necessarily unstable and

incomplete; they undergo a continuous process of revision and reformulation of

their meaning. According to Brandom, any set of empirical concepts, through the

process of their application in empirical judgments and the clarification of the

inferential relations between them, will be necessarily driven to contradiction—this

is what he calls the semantic pessimism of Hegel as he reads him. Hence, if in the case

of the logical concepts their exhaustive account is presented by Hegel in his Logic,

the analogous set of the empirical concepts is in principle impossible.

Brandom, like Pippin before him, opens up a new dimension in which Hegel’s

philosophy can be approached, by pointing to a complex framework present within

11
the Hegelian corpus that needs to be further fleshed out and elaborated in greater

detail. The discussion that follows will be dedicated to the analysis of the key

passages from Logic, in which Hegel presents elements of this framework. One

important aspect of the project I’m undertaking here is to present a detailed account

of several key elements of what Brandom calls the system of Hegel’s logical concepts.

Besides having a great exegetic value in rendering accessible some of the murkiest

parts of Hegel’s corpus, this Brandomian approach will also serve as a

demonstration of the futility of attempts to tie Hegel’s stance with the traditional

pre-Kantian metaphysics, as the system of logical concepts uncovered through this

analysis are obviously related to the logical forms of judgment on which Kant

grounded his pure concepts of the understanding. This is one more clear evidence

that the Hegelian system is elaborated within the post-Kantian paradigm, and any

attempts to reduce its problematic to those dealt by the pre-critical tradition is

destined to fail in doing justice to it. At the same time, it will also become evident

that the position put forth is not free of certain specific kind of ontological claims—

ontology not in the traditional sense but in the post-Kantian sense of the word. In

fact, I hope to show that the Brandomian approach best realizes its potential when

embedded in the overall context of reading Hegel’s project as transcendental

ontology.

12
6) Pippin and Brandom: Pros and Cons

Pippin’s and Brandom’s non-metaphysical readings have two decisive

advantages over the traditional approach that places Hegel closer to the pre-critical

metaphysicians than to Kant. First, only against the Kantian backdrop is it possible

to make sense of the large part of Hegel’s logic that deals with the essential core of

his philosophical system—his doctrine of the essence and the doctrine of the

concept. Only with the Kantian theory of the logical functions of judgment

comprising the transcendental structure that guides the activity of the mind on

which the object is grounded does it become possible to make sense of what Hegel is

doing in the Doctrine of the Essence—what kind of meaning could the numerous

claims like these have, “Determinate being is merely posited being or positedness”

and “positidness is a determination of reflection” (WL 406), that Hegel makes

without the Kantian backdrop and within any traditional metaphysical system? Or,

again, without the Kantian thesis that object is in the concept of which the manifold

is united, what could be meant by the Hegelian claim that everything actual is the

concept? It is the Kantian transcendental turn that posits the ground based on which

the theory that grants to the determinations of reflection the constitutive role for

the actuality as is done in the doctrine of the essence. Any serious interpretation of

Hegel's Logic has to acknowledge that what Hegel is doing there is clearly geared to

the completion of the project that Kant characterized as the Copernican revolution

in philosophy.

13
 Secondly, Pippin and Brandom demonstrated how much potential the

Kantian readings have when it comes to re-enlivening Hegel’s philosophy and

making it relevant to contemporary problems and debates in epistemology,

semantics, ethics, etcetera. Once these strengths of the Kantian interpretations are

brought to the fore, the backward-looking traditional readings that discard the

liveliest aspects of Hegel’s thought lose all the appeal.

At the same time, Pippin’s and Brandom’s attempts to maintain neutrality

with respect to ontology contribute very little to the strength of their positions. This

resistance to embrace what clearly has plenty of textual evidence is a remnant of

once-dominant dogma in the Anglophone academic philosophy regarding the

complete rejection of metaphysics. One significant current in this overall approach,

which probably had influenced Pippin and Brandom, originates in the Quinian

privileging of epistemology over ontology. Quine, in his influential paper, “On What

There Is,” argued that it is possible to isolate epistemological and semantic concerns

from the ontological commitment and to formulate epistemological theory, i.e.,

theory about the cognition of reality, while having bracketed the question of what

this reality is like. But a careful examination of Quine’s stance reveals that instead of

staying neutral regarding ontological commitments, he is simply presupposing a

basic Cartesian kind of dualistic ontology.

In a similar way, the shadow of the Cartesian type of dualistic ontology is

following the non-metaphysical readings of Hegel. By neglecting the issue or

attempting to stay neutral regarding ontological commitments and focusing instead

14
on epistemological and semantic problems, a risk emerges of inadvertently

enforcing an ontological outlook utterly different from that of Hegel. Ontological

backdrop seems to me to be a necessary condition for the elaboration of any

epistemological or semantic theory. To put forth, for example, a theory of

knowledge, as a minimum one has to answer the question of what kind of thing is

that which is known, that which knows, and what form of being does knowledge as

such have. By ignoring these questions, we are not obviating the need for answering

them; instead, we are actually answering them implicitly. Brandom’s claim that

“good reasons to endorse a strong holism concerning the senses (but not referents)

of ordinary determinate concepts do not oblige one to adopt a corresponding thesis

concerning the contents expressed by the logical and philosophical meta-vocabulary

we use to discuss and explicate those ground-level concepts” (Brandom 2004, 3),

where he describes the sense of different conceptual sets and contrasts them with

their referents, has a clear dualistic ontological implication of a Cartesian or Fregean

kind. Also, Pippin’s claim that Hegel’s position “is not an attack on the possibility of

an extraconceptual reality ‘in itself’, but on the internal coherence of the notion of

such an object as an object of thought” (Hegel’s Idealism 200) can be interpreted as

accepting a dualistic ontological background. The bottom line is that there is no

epistemology or semantics possible without a corresponding ontological

commitment, and by merely pretending that we can interpret Hegel in this way we

are undermining the force and originality of his thought and might be unwittingly

ascribing him a kind of ontology outlook that goes in direct contradiction with the

one to which Hegel was himself committed.

15
7) Kantian Ontology

Neither does the Kantian reading of Hegel bar us from acknowledging the

ontological view present in his system. When Kant offers supplanting the proud

ontology by an analytic of the pure understanding, “the proud name of an ontology,

which presumes to offer synthetic a priori cognition of things in general in a

systematic doctrine (e.g., the principle of causality), must give way to the modest

one of a mere analytic of the pure understanding” (A247/B303), he is not simply

rejecting ontology as such. Kant is not denying here that we can have some form of

knowledge about the nature of being, as the entire transcendental analytic is

nothing else but an exposition of the constitutive factors of the empirical reality.

What he is rejecting is the basic ontological assumptions of the tradition preceding

him. Kant abandons the idea of the possibility of science of the basic determinations

of being that renders for us accessible the true nature of reality, or, to put it in his

terms, the synthetic a priori knowledge of the noumenal world underlying the

phenomenal realm. In other words, what Kant is saying here is not that ontology is

not possible, but that it is not possible in the way the pre-critical tradition conceived

it and, therefore, it ought to be replaced by a new type of enquiry into the nature of

being for which the analysis of the power of the understanding plays the central

role.

16
 The new type of ontology that becomes possible as a result of the Kantian

revolution puts aside the task of investigating the nature of transcendent being and

turns to the investigation of the nature of phenomenal reality and the power of the

understanding as its constitutive element. Essentially, the fundamental claim of the

new Kantian ontology is made in the famous passage from the transcendental

deduction—the object is in the concept of which manifold is united. The spelling out

and justification of the structure of the unification and the forms involved with this

unity is largely the central task of the Transcendental Analytic of The Critique of Pure

Reason. Hence, the Kantian approach emerges as the polar opposite of the Quinian

one—instead of privileging epistemology over ontology, it is the other way around:

the empirical objects are cognizable, i.e., we can be epistemological optimists

regarding the spatio-temporal objects because they are furnished by the cognitive

structure of the transcendental apperception. It is the transcendental ontology that

grounds Kant’s epistemology, not vice versa. This is the guiding thread that Kant

formulates in the Introduction to The Critique of Pure Reason when claiming that

“reason has insight only into what it itself produces according to its own design” (B

XIII).

The two different ways of thinking of ontology have the corresponding two

senses in which Kant uses the word metaphysics. The first one is related to the old

tradition that he exposes as the dreams of reason, and the other to the contribution

that reason makes to the constitution of experience. Hence, on the one hand

metaphysics is a study of the unconditioned that lies behind the conditioned, or the

apparent reality, and is the source of all meaning. This is the conception of

17
metaphysics that Heidegger traced as emerging in Plato’s philosophy; with this

development, according to him “the change in the essence of truth, a change that

becomes the history of metaphysics” is taking place (Heidegger 1998, 181). Truth

becomes correspondence between assertion and being interpreted as idea, and the

history of metaphysics as the search of this eternal unchanging truth takes its

origins here.

Plato himself concretely illustrates the basic outline of

metaphysics in the story recounted in the "allegory of
the cave." In fact, the coining of the word ‘metaphysics’
is already prefigured in Plato’s presentation. In the
passage (516) that depicts the adaptation of the gaze to
the ideas, Plato says (516 c3): Thinking goes beyond
those things that are experiences in the form of mere
shadows and images, and goes out towards these things,
namely, the "ideas." (Heidegger 1998, 180)

This is the conception of metaphysics that Kant calls “worm-eaten dogmatism” (A X)

and he thinks of it as left behind for good by his critical philosophy.

But Kant also uses the word metaphysics in a different sense and talks about

“a metaphysics that has been purified through criticism" (B XXIV), the metaphysics

that directs its gaze not “beyond those things that are experiences” but investigates

the immanent structure of the experienced reality itself that makes this very

experience and cognition of the things experienced possible. One way to describe

the effects of Kant’s critical philosophy on metaphysics is a transformation of

metaphysics into transcendental ontology. In medieval philosophy, the investigation

of the nature and origins of the unconditioned supersensible reality—the heirs of

the Platonic Ideas—came to be known as metaphysica specialis, to be contrasted

18
with the science of being qua being that was concerned with the basic categories of

being (metaphysica generalis). As such, the way it was conceived before Kant,

metaphysics had to offer a two-tiered ontological account or two kinds of ontology:

on the one hand the science of being of the transcendent substances, which we can

call transcendent ontology, and on the other hand an account of the nature of

ordinary objects of experience that were deemed as “mere shadows” of the

underlying true reality. With Kant’s Copernican revolution, the entire undertaking of

the metaphysica specialis is rendered futile, as so is the part of metaphysica generalis

that we have called transcendent ontology. The only viable option for metaphysical

investigation is the enquiry into the nature of experience, which, considering Kant’s

definition of the term “transcendental” as the “our mode of cognition of objects

insofar as this is to be possible a priori” (A11/B25), I shall call transcendental

ontology. Hence, with Kant, two fundamental changes take place: a) the basic

categories of being are traced back to the cognitive constitution of subject, and b)

the scope of these categories is confined to experience. Therefore, the domain of

metaphysics is reduced to laying out the complete account of the elements

immanent to experience but not originating in it, hence available to reason prior to

experience via its self-examination. Thus, we can say that the metaphysics is

essentially reduced to transcendental ontology. As we shall see, Hegel significantly

modifies Kant’s original project. The central aspects of this change are overcoming

the Kantian psychologism that confines the limits of reason to certain rules of

activity of the mind. But essentially, his theory retains the overall Kantian contours.

19
8) Traditionalist readings

While according to the interpretation I’ll be offering here, the Kantian

readings of Hegel are mostly right, the opposite side—the traditional readings—is

mostly misguided. The shared mistaken assumption of Bowman and Stern is that

reading Hegel as engaged in some forms of traditional metaphysics is a necessary

condition for ascribing to him any ontological views. Therefore, in spite of the many

insightful and interesting aspects of their interpretations, they end up advancing a

picture of Hegel that is fundamentally misconstrued. Hegel’s position cannot be

reduced to a form of Aristotelian metaphysics as Stern does, nor can his arguments

be illuminated by translating them into the scholastic vocabulary (of formal vs.

objective reality) as Bowman ends up doing, and the reason for this is that Hegel’s

ontology is post-Kantian through and through. Once more, the difference between

them can be seen as a difference between two scientific theories divided by a

paradigm shift. To use the Kuhnian analogy again, just like the mass before and after

the elaboration of the theory of relativity means fundamentally different things

(even though on a superficial level it might appear identical), so the basic elements

of the conceptual framework—for example, being, contradiction, concept—have

fundamentally different meanings in the Hegelian vs. the traditional ontology.

20
8.1) Bowman

Bowman, in his Hegel and Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity, claims “Hegel is

committed to a rationalist tradition in Western philosophy that stretches from

Anaxagoras to Leibniz and Wolff and which teaches the unboundedness of scientific

knowledge” (Bowman 2013, 28). On the other hand, Bowman sees Kant as waging

an attack on the identity of “being and intelligibility” (Bowman 2013, 26) and

therefore undermining the unboundedness of scientific knowledge. Hence, Hegel’s

philosophical undertaking is framed as aiming to resuscitate the “the chief casualty

of this [Kantian] attack on rationalism [which] was traditional metaphysics and its

commitments to the knowability of the unconditioned, of being as it is in itself”

(Bowman 2013, 28). Kant and Hegel are placed by Bowman on the opposite sides of

the divide—Kant as a critic and Hegel as a defender of traditional metaphysics. My

analysis of Hegel’s relation to both Kant and traditional metaphysics will make clear

that this is a mistaken approach.

In Chapter 2 I shall explicate Hegel’s criticism of the rationalist tradition,

which makes it evident that he upheld a fundamentally different model of relation

between “being and intelligibility” from that of the pre-Kantian metaphysicians.

Moreover, the crucial point of the difference between theirs and Hegel’s position is

what he inherited from Kant: the investigation of the grounds of identity of being

and intelligibility. The thread that connects Kant’s undertaking with Hegel’s is not

the issue of unintelligibility of transcendent being or unknowability of things-in-

themselves as Bowman would have it, but the investigation of the conditions of

knowledge of empirical realty, identifying the ground on which the relation between
21
(empirical) being and intelligibility rests. Hegel takes the thing-in-itself and the

problems associated with it as a peripheral husk of Kant’s philosophy, and is quite

explicit about this. What he finds to be the most valuable in Kant is his revolutionary

insights about the nature of the relation between the cognizing subject, the cognized

object, and the structure of cognitive relation between them; and it is as the result of

pursuing this Kantian project further that Hegel arrives at the conclusions about

“the unboundedness of scientific knowledge” and the “identity of being and

intelligible.” Therefore, Hegel should be understood not as performing a miracle and

bringing back to life “the chief casualty” of Kant’s critical attack as Bowman sees it,

but placing the last nails in the coffin and putting it to rest.

As we shall see, Hegel describes the confidence of traditional metaphysics in

the knowability of reality as naïve and this is a pivotal difference between theirs and

Hegel’s position that Bowman ignores. It is true that Hegel is sympathetic to the

commitment of traditional metaphysics to the identity of being and intelligibility,

but sees this strength as resting on its naïveté and, on the other hand, the potential

for overcoming of which he sees in the Kantian transcendental project. One way to

read Hegel’s entire philosophical project is as an undertaking for substituting a

rational justification for this naïve, unreflected presupposition. But Bowman ignores

this crucial difference, instead focusing on those points of Hegel’s criticism of the

pre-Kantian metaphysicians that are neutral in relation to Kant’s devastating attack

on the tradition and can be maintained on the grounds independent of this attack.

Thus Bowman writes: “For him[Hegel], pre-critical metaphysics come to signify any

attitude towards reality which takes the categories of traditional ontology (a) as the

22
exclusive and irreducible forms of objective cognition and (b) as the basic forms of

the substantially real itself” (58). Bowman is right. Hegel does voice criticism along

these lines in the introduction to the Encyclopedia Logic as we shall see below. But

we shall also see that for Hegel these mistakes arise from the more fundamental

problem in the stance adopted by traditional metaphysics—its failure to see the

need for the justification of identity of being and thought. The root of the problem is

not that these commitments of the tradition are incorrect assumptions, but that they

are mere assumptions and are problematic not only because they don’t present the

nature of reality on the most fundamental level, but more because the tradition does

not see any need for presenting justification for them. It is this justification of the

accessibility of being (although of only empirical nature) by intelligibility that is

supplied by Kant, and this is what renders Hegel’s project akin to his and miles away

from the traditional metaphysics.

Although the insufficient appreciation of the Kantian dimension in Hegel is a

weaker side of Bowman’s reading, there are many aspects of his work that are

undoubtedly important contributions to recent Hegel scholarship. One of these is

Bowman's analysis of the dualistic aspect of the Hegelian notion of the concept.

Drawing on the influential works of Rolf Horstamann and Dieter Henrich, Bowman

presents an interesting account of the underpinnings of Hegel’s ontological theory.

The static ontological structure that grounds all finite determination is taken up by

Bowman from Horstmann’s analysis of the Hegelian relational monism in his

Ontologie und Relationen and is integrated with the dynamic account of the very

same structure that he adopts from Henrich’s work. These accounts, one static and

23
the other dynamic, are two sides of the same coin according to Bowman, and only

with keeping this dual aspect of the Hegelian understanding of the concept can we

get an adequate grasp of his ontological theory.

Bowman discusses the relation-to-self that includes as its immanent moment

the relation-to-other as the fundamental feature of the relational structure of the

Hegelian Concept; and in order to demonstrate how this relational structure

underlies the finite thought-determinations, he offers the relation between identity,

difference, and ground. Bowman maintains that “the finite thought determinations

identity, difference, and ground are shown to have no proper content of their own.

They are strictly speaking only different aspects of or perspectives on a single,

complex rational structure” (Bowman 2013, 40-41). He wants to show that the

interrelatedness of these determinations—identity, difference, ground—exemplify

the immanence of the relation-to-other to the relation-to-self, and ultimately all

these determinations are elements of the single complex relational structure. But his

account is not very convincing—although the general idea he is developing is

correct (the self-relational structure is the basic schema that incorporates other

determinations in it), the specific determinations he presents to exemplify this

structure are not suited to do it properly. While claiming to present the self-

relational structure in its entirety, Bowman is actually looking at only a limited

subset of the determinations that comprise it. In order to put forward a more

comprehensive account, Bowman had to look at The Doctrine of the Concept and its

relational schemata, which Hegel presents in the syllogism section, but

unfortunately Bowman stops on the level of The Doctrine of Essence. As my

24
discussion in Chapters 3–5 shall demonstrate, Brandom’s programmatic sketch is

pointing to a more promising direction in laying out the basic relational structure

operating in Hegel’s ontological theory.

Bowman’s discussion of the dynamic moment of the Hegelian ontological

substructure, the autonomous negation, heavily relies on Dieter Henrich’s work. He

wants to supplement the above-outlined static relational structure with an active,

creative function: “In Henrich’s phrase, Hegel ‘authorizes’ negation and makes it to

serve as the unique basic term from which to derive all other logical determinations

and indeed his whole system” (Bowman 2013, 50). In order to avoid possible

misinterpretations, Bowman explains that the dynamic account presented should

not be taken to be anything different from the already outlined static relational

structure:

the Concept and absolute negativity are two sides of a

single ‘speculative’ coin, one structural, one dynamic;
and their unity is at the same time the unity of Hegelian
metaphysics and methodology. For just as the concept
cannot be adequately understood except as the
structural expression of absolute negativity, neither can
the methodology of Hegelian science be understood
except as the finite intellect’s recreation of Nachvollzug
of the same dynamic that constitutes Hegel’s monist
metaphysics of subjectivity, the concept (Bowman 2013,
56)

The activity, or the autonomous negation, is supposed to be tracing the exact same

formal structure of the Concept that was laid out in the static form earlier. Hence,

the immanence of the relation-to-other to the relation-to-self is to be confirmed in

terms of autonomous negativity. But Bowman’s account of the identity between the

25
two sides again falls short of being convincing, and again the reason is that

Bowman’s account only scratches the surface of the problem without descending to

the most fundamental level where the identity between the relational structure and

active creative power are treated as the identity between the two moments of the

Concept as exposed in the Syllogism section of the Subjective Logic. Hence, while I

agree with Bowman’s overall approach regarding the two aspects reading of the

underpinnings of the Hegelian ontology, I do not think his account of this identity

does justice to Hegel’s position. As my discussion in Chapter 5 shall show, without a

detailed exposition of the moments of the concept and the relations between them

that Hegel spells out in the Syllogism section, any account of the identity of the static

and dynamic moments of the concepts will be insufficient.

One more interesting theme that Bowman brings up in his book but does not

develop far enough is the relation between the categories and the fundamental

ontological substructure. He simply identifies the uncovering of the latter by Hegel

with the rejection of the fundamentality of the former:

in reducing the categories of metaphysica generalis to

determinations of the Concept, and thus reformulating
their content in terms of a structure that they either fail
entirely to exhibit in their ordinary employment or at
best succeed in exhibiting only in an inadequate way,
Hegel is effectively transforming the ordinary meaning
of those categories (Bowman 2013, 42)

Bowman ultimately renders the categories as dispensable elements of secondary

importance that can be spared once the more fundamental account which grounds

them is attained: “in principle, we could dispense with such terms and hence with

26
any reference at all to the traditional content associated with those terms, and

instead grasp the content of the Logic purely as a tightly ordered sequence of

iterations of the basic structure of the Concept” (Bowman 2013, 42). In Chapter 5, I

shall show that Hegel’s position is more complex, as well as more interesting, than a

mere rejection of the categories for the sake of the relation between relation-to-self

and relation-to-other as Bowman would have it. Here, just as in the above-discussed

case, a close analysis of the Syllogism section and the Subjective Logic in general is

the key—without paying sufficient attention to the part of the text where Hegel lays

out the most fundamental substructure of his ontological vision, it is not possible to

present an adequate account of this substructure.

8.2) Stern

Robert Stern, in his influential interpretation of Hegel as a metaphysician,

tries to be more attentive to the presence of the Kantian current in Hegel’s thought.

He acknowledges that much of what motivated Hegel’s philosophical ambitions in

his early years emanated from Kant’s critical philosophy, but ultimately Stern also

sees a mature Hegel giving up the transcendental approach and adopting the stance

of traditional metaphysics.

if we do think of Hegel as engaging in ‘proud ontology’

once more, we do not have to see him doing so
forgetfully, as it were, as if deaf to all Kant’s concerns
and ignorant of the Kantian position; but we don’t
therefore have to think of him as in some sense taking
Kant’s transcendental alternative either. Rather, we can
see him as engaging with it seriously, but finding it

27
 wanting in crucial respects, which in turn led him to see
ways in which the traditional picture remains of value.
(Stern 2009, How is Hegelian Metaphysics Possible, 29)

Stern thinks that Hegel came to find his way out of the Kantian problematic of the

formal conditions of the possibility of experience and turned to investigation of the

“being qua being” as it was done by the pre-critical metaphysicians. Stern, like

Bowman, is right in that Hegel advances an ontological theory, but this does not

commit him to returning to the pre-critical metaphysics.

One of the central aims of my dissertation is to demonstrate that instead of

rejecting the Kantian route, Hegel develops it further and arrives at a theory of

being—but not simply as being qua being, but rather as being qua being as thought

and ultimately being and thought as both grounded in what he calls the Concept. In

other words, the way I read it, the path toward the Hegelian ontology lies not

alongside the traditional problems of the pre-critical metaphysics, but through the

Kantian transcendental philosophy. This will be made evident through the careful

analysis of Hegel’s examination of the respective positions of traditional

metaphysics and Kant in the Introduction to The Encyclopedia Logic, which I will

undertake in Chapter 2. But the most conclusive evidence for the Kantian origins of

Hegel’s ontology can be provided only with a comprehensive account of its

fundamental underpinnings, and as my examination of this ontological substructure

through the close reading of the Syllogism section will reveal, the Hegelian position

to its most minute details is a development of the Kantian project and all its pivotal

elements emanate from Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Hence, when we attempt

28
“finding [our] way out of Kantian problematics,” (as Hegel does according to Stern)

we also end up finding our way out of the Hegelian solutions to this problematics.

Stern’s placing of Hegel closer to traditional metaphysics than to Kant at least

in part arises out of his misinterpretation of Kant’s position. He sees Kant as

advancing what he calls a bundle theory of the object: “the Kantian model of the

object therefore remains essentially pluralistic in character, as the unity of the

object is reducible to a complex of more basic and intrinsically unrelated entities

(the manifold of intuitions) out of which the object is constructed” (Stern 1990, 3).

While Hegel, according to Stern, “frees the unity of the object from the synthesizing

activity of Kant’s transcendental subject; for, on Hegel’s account (to put it simply),

the object does not need to be organized or unified by us, because, as the

exemplification of a substance-universal, it is no longer treated as reducible to the

kind of atomistic manifold that requires this synthesis” (Stern 1990, 5).

For now, I’m putting aside the problems with Stern’s interpretation of

Hegel’s conception of the object and I shall address it in Chapter 4. Presently I would

like to briefly point to the obvious problem with Stern’s understanding of the

Kantian notion of the object, which stands in clear contradiction to Kant’s central

thesis from the Transcendental Deduction about the nature of the object: “an object

is that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuition is united” (B137).

Note that Kant is not asserting that the object is the manifold of intuitions that are

united by the concept, as Stern would have it, but exactly the opposite; it is the

concept that is the rule of the synthesis that plays the fundamental role in the

29
constitution of the object. The difficulties with Stern’s view will become even more

apparent in Chapter 4, in which I will be taking a closer look at the Kantian

understanding of the empirical concepts and their objects, and will spell out in

greater detail the meaning of Kant’s claim that object is grounded on the universal

rule of combination and is not reducible to the sensible manifold. On the other hand,

the logical functions of judgment that serve as the most basic rules of this

combination have their presence in the schemata that we encounter in Hegel’s

theory of the relational structure immanent to his notion of the concept—the one he

expounds in the Syllogism section of the Subjective Logic. Hence, Kant and Hegel

don’t stand as far away in this respect as Stern would like to convince us.

Stern places Hegel not only too far from Kant, but also too close to Aristotle.

He wants to ascribe to Hegel a vision of reality like that of Aristotle, where forms are

posited as the immanent substratum of the individuals that determines its structure

and development and expresses what the given individual most truly is: “Hegel

argues, along Aristotelian lines, that properly conceived, the individual is an

irreducible substance and this irreducibility is explained by virtue of its being of

such and such kind … the manifestation of a universal substance-form” (Stern 1990,

4). No doubt there is a strong Aristotelian current in Hegel’s thought, and indeed as

we shall see, the reading of Hegel’s notion of the universal on the Aristotelian

background makes it more easily accessible than is often taken to be. However, to

simply describe them as upholding the same or even similar views about the nature

of the substance-forms play in the constitution of objective reality is a gross

simplification. In Chapter 5 I shall demonstrate that Hegel’s model of the relation

30
between the universal, particular, and individual is very different from Aristotle’s. In

fact, in the Syllogism section Hegel presents an ontological model that is an

Aristotelian one; but he rejects and moves on toward articulating his own vision of

reality. Hence, the analysis that follows will demonstrate the nature of similarity, as

well as its limits and extent of difference between the Aristotelian and Hegelian

ontologies.

In the following chapter I undertake a close analysis of Hegel’s criticism of

traditional metaphysics, empiricism, and Kant as it is presented in the Vorbegriff

Section (translated as Preliminary Conception) of Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic. The

idea behind this strategy is to locate the central points of Hegel’s stance in relation

to the alternative positions that are more readily accessible for contemporary

philosophers. Since the technical vocabularies of the doctrines he considers are

more familiar for us, the Vorbegriff section offers a helpful entry point in the

Hegelian system. By identifying the aspects of the alternative ontological models

Hegel finds problematic and the perspective from which he voices his criticism, we

can learn much about his own standpoint. In Chapter 3 I look at the determinations

of reflection presented by Hegel in The Doctrine of Essence and show that they are

the basic functions guiding the empirical concept generating activity, the universal

moments of the Hegelian Concept. I demonstrate that the determinations of

reflection that include identity, difference, diversity, opposition, and contradiction

correspond to the concepts of comparison (or concepts of reflection) from Kant’s

Amphiboly section of The Critique of Pure Reason and in the end to the logical

functions of judgment from which the concepts of comparison stem from. Hence I

31
show that the modus operandi of the universal moment of the Hegelian Concept is

borrowed from Kant’s critical system. The subsequent two chapters are dedicated to

the close reading of The Doctrine of the Concept itself. First Chapter 4 presents a

detailed account of the three moments of this Hegelian fundamental ontological

structure: universality, particularity, and individuality as the components of the

inner architectonics of the Concept. Finally in Chapter 5, I look at the different

models of mediation between the three moments of the Concept that Hegel

considers and trace the progression toward his own conception of the nature of

their relation. As we shall see, the moments are not merely related to one another,

but their relation has the nature of self-relation—one more feature that ties the

Hegelian Concept with Kantian transcendental apperception. The close examination

of the inner architectonics of the fundamental structure of Hegel’s ontological

theory demonstrates that its basic characteristics are stemming from Kant.

32
CHAPTER 2: Hegel’s Critique of Alternative Positions

Any serious attempt to reconstruct Hegel’s ontology faces a formidable

challenge to translate his complex technical vocabulary into a language more easily

accessible to contemporary philosophers and then to interpret within this idiom

such bold and enigmatic-sounding claims as “everything actual contains opposite

determinations,” “everything actual is rational,” “everything is concept,” “the true is

the whole,” etc. An attempt to meet this challenge can easily result in either

watering down Hegel’s bold and original position or inventing a new jargon that is

even more difficult to make sense of than Hegel’s. It seems to me that the best

strategy for avoiding both of these alternatives is to locate the key points of the

Hegelian system in relation to the alternative positions that are more readily

accessible for us.

The opening pages of the Encyclopedia Logic, which Hegel calls Preliminary

Conception (Vorbegriff), offer a unique opportunity for undertaking such a topology,

for in no other published text does Hegel offer such a comprehensive analysis of the

major alternatives to his own position. In the Vorbegriff, Hegel presents a systematic

criticism of traditional metaphysics, empiricism, Kant and Jacobi, allowing us to

identify the key points of his own position in terms of the alternatives discussed

there. The aim of my strategy is to decipher the key elements of Hegel’s positions

through the analysis of his perspective on the alternative outlooks. The idea is that

by identifying these fundamental points, I can establish a helpful entry point into his

33
system, rendering the more challenging texts to be analyzed in subsequent chapters

more accessible. I shall focus on Hegel’s critical analysis of traditional metaphysics,

empiricism, and Kant, since these three standpoints are more familiar and readily

accessible, hence instrumental in identifying critical points of Hegel’s own position,

while his discussion of Jacobi would have been relatively less helpful for this

purpose.

The first position of thought Hegel examines, pointing out both its

“strengths” and “weaknesses,” is rationalist metaphysics. I’m using the quotation

marks here to highlight the fact that the alleged weaknesses and strengths are so

evaluated from Hegel’s own perspective, rather than from a neutral ground,

whatever that might be; and this is why the analysis of this doctrine and Hegel’s

evaluation thereof could be used as a point of entrance to Hegel’s complex

ontological theory. Hegel refers to the first position of thought as the traditional

metaphysics “the way [it] was constituted among us before the Kantian philosophy”

(EL §27), making it clear that he has in mind the tradition that stemmed from

Leibniz’s metaphysics and dominated the German academia up until Kant. Hence,

Leibniz shall serve for me as the primary point of reference when examining Hegel’s

critical analysis of the first position of thought. While Hegel deploys many different

strategies and examples to demonstrate the problematic aspects of the view under

consideration, these various approaches can be categorized into three major groups.

The first one focuses on the tradition’s conception of the nature of determinations of

thought used as the medium for grasping reality; the second critical strategy

concerns the unjustified projection of a specific structure onto reality; and the third

34
one takes up an issue with the traditional metaphysic’s appropriation of the sensible

representation and the specific epistemic function it grants to them.

But before examining each one of these charges closely, I shall briefly outline

what Hegel sees as a positive aspect of traditional metaphysics. Hegel opens his

analysis of the first position of thought with a somewhat paradoxical claim that in

some respects traditional metaphysics was superior to Kantian critical philosophy.

“This science regarded the thought-determinations as the fundamental

determinations of things; and, in virtue of this presupposition … stood at a higher

level than the later critical philosophizing” (EL §28). One should be surprised by this

claim, considering that in spite of his occasional critical remarks, Hegel is still of

quite a high opinion of Kant’s transcendental system. In fact, during his formative

years in Jena, Hegel explicitly describes his own philosophical undertaking as a

completion of the Kantian project or lifting the spirit of transcendental philosophy

from its letter (Difference 79). The paradoxical claim with which Hegel opens his

discussion of traditional metaphysics is an evidence of the complex and multi-

faceted relation between Hegel and Kant, as well as between Hegel and the

rationalist tradition. It is due to this complexity that Hegel’s project can be seen as

Kantian through and through, while at the same time he can be upholding certain

commitments of the traditional metaphysics as superior to the Kantian stance (or at

least a certain interpretation of Kant).

Hegel locates the advantage of traditional metaphysics in its “naïve” but

nevertheless correct “conviction” that thought “goes straight to the objects” and

35
therefore it can gain access to the genuine nature of reality. This confidence of the

tradition is contrasted with certain reading of Kant (the one Hegel often draws on

when highlighting the differences between Kant’s and his own positions), according

to which we are “the citizens of two worlds,” of noumena and of phenomena. The

latter encompasses the things as they appear to us as variously determined by our

sensibility and understanding, while the former is the realm of things in themselves

as independent from our cognitive constitution. Hegel’s point is that the two-world

picture ultimately commits us to skepticism, or, to be more specific, to the

skepticism of the modern kind that emerged from Descartes and attained its full

fruition with Hume (Hegel was of a much higher opinion of the ancient form of

skepticism), while traditional metaphysics maintains the thesis of the accessibility

of the true nature of reality by thought. In the passage just quoted, I omitted the

clause in which Hegel describes the nature of the “presupposition” that renders the

tradition superior to critical philosophy “in virtue of this presupposition, that the

cognition of things as they are in-themselves results from the thinking of what is, it

stood at a higher level than the later critical philosophizing” (EL §28). The reference

to the specific weakness of the critical philosophy is obvious—the Kantian

postulation of inaccessibility of the thing-in-itself; so is the corresponding strength

of traditional metaphysics—the identity of the determinations of thought and

determinations of things. What we can take home from this point is that Hegel’s own

ontology cannot maintain any gap between the determinations of things and

determinations of thought; he has to present a conception of being that is not

foreign to thought and a conception of thought that is not external to being.

36
 At the same time, we should keep in mind that Hegel’s endorsement of the

epistemic optimism of traditional metaphysics is not unqualified. He sees it

stemming not from the strength of the tradition but from its weakness, not from

having successfully dealt with the challenges of epistemological and ontological

nature that critical philosophy has succumbed to, but from a blunder—the failure to

see them. Dogmatic metaphysics, according to Hegel, was “still unconscious of the

antithesis of thinking within and against itself” (EL 26) and this is what affords it the

courage to take the content of thought to be identical to the determinations of the

world. Clearly, the antithesis that Hegel is talking about here goes along the lines of

the question that Kant stumbled upon as he reported in the well-known letter to his

former student Herz and from which the entire project of the critical philosophy

arose: “What is the ground of the relation of that in us which we call ‘representation’

to the object?” Therefore, for Hegel what the tradition was “still unconscious of” was

the problematicity of the assumption of the identity of thought and being, the need

for the justification of applicability of the concepts to the world. Consequently the

tradition was unaware of the whole cascade of the ontological and epistemological

problems that emerge from this. In Kant’s hands philosophy had lost this naïveté,

but as Hegel sees it, Kant himself was not able to realize the potential that “the

antithesis of thinking” opened up for him and was ultimately driven by it to

skepticism.

37
1) Critique of Traditional Metaphysics

1.1) Abstract Universals as Inadequate Medium of Cognition

The first critical strategy Hegel advances against traditional metaphysics

concerns the nature of abstract universals and their function as the medium by

means of which a true account of reality is supposed to be attained. Hegel argues

that “these determinations, in their abstraction, were taken to be valid on their own

account” and by doing this the tradition was misinterpreting their nature. The

universal determinations that he is concerned with here can be seen as abstract in

two distinct senses. First, they are taken to be independent of the object they are

predicated of; they are abstracted from the individual the properties of which they

allegedly represent. The idea is that a universal determination picks out a specific

property (or a set of properties) that a given individual has, together with an

indefinite number of other individuals; but at the same time they are taken to be

independent of the individuals, just as the individuals are taken to be independent

of the universal representing their properties. The universal determinations are

assumed to exist in the realm of representations, while the individuals exist in the

realm of the represented entities; they belong to two different ontological domains.

The existence of a given abstract universal that represents a property of an

individual entity clearly cannot depend on the existence of the individual being

represented as the abstract universal represents properties of indefinite number of

38
other individuals. The universal concepts of green or round, for example, can

represent the properties of an individual entity, but they would not be affected

either in the ontological or the semantic sense if the individual didn’t exist.

Hegel’s criticism is directed at what he sees as a mistaken conception of the

relation between objects and the determinations of their properties regarded as

external to one another. Traditional metaphysics, according to Hegel, was engaged

in the “external reflection about the object, since the determinations (the

predicates) are found ready-made in my representation, and are attached to object

in a merely external way” (EL §28, 28.5). This bifurcated model, the dualistic

ontology that conceived of reality as comprised of two domains (represented vs.

representations), has interesting epistemological and semantic implications. “In the

proposition ‘God is eternal, etc.,’ we begin with the representation ‘God;’ but what he

is , is not yet known; only the predicate states expressly what he is” (EL §31, 69.2).

First, due to the bifurcated ontological backdrop and the naïve confidence about the

accessibility of the things by thought, traditional metaphysics substitutes the objects

with their representations; “this metaphysics took them [objects] from

representations” (EL §31, 68). But the representation that is taken for the object is

conceived as completely indeterminate and the determination is supposed to be

carried out through the attribution of the abstract universals to it. The object of

cognition is therefore taken as completely deprived of conceptual content, but it is

nevertheless to be individuated as either the soul, or God, or, the world, etc. Hegel’s

point here is that the alleged identification of an object without ascribing to it any

conceptual content is a mere illusion: “The representation of the soul, of the world,

39
of God, seems at first to provide thinking with a firm hold” (EL §31, 68), but it

merely seems to do so. How are we to know that it is the World and not God, for

example, that we are attempting to represent by means of abstract determinations if

there is no cognitive content already immanently present in it? Hence, the

bifurcated ontological model with its abstract universals and the illusory grasp of

the true nature of objects is fundamentally flawed, according to Hegel. Therefore, in

Hegel’s transcendental ontology we are to expect a radically different take on the

relation between the objects and the determinations of thought. Hegel in fact gives

us some indication of the direction he wants to take his project: “Genuine cognition

of an object, on the other hand, has to be such that the object determines itself from

within itself, and does not acquire its predicates in the external way” (EL §28, 67.5).

Presentation of the full-fledged account of this self-determining object is the overall

task of my dissertation and it should gradually emerge throughout the following

three chapters, but already at this point we can see how it will radically differ from

the standard approach used by traditional metaphysics.

The second sense in which we can read the thesis that the determinations of

thought are considered “valid on their own account” is not concerned with their

relation to the object of cognition but to one another and the origins of their content.

The target of Hegel’s criticism here is the semantic atomism of traditional

metaphysics. According to him, the universal determinations by means of which the

representation of actuality is to be accomplished were taken by the tradition to be

semantically independent of one another as well as from the cognitive effort of the

mind. Old metaphysics, claims Hegel,

40
 did not go beyond the thinking of mere understanding. It
took up the abstract determinations of thought
immediately, and let them count in their immediacy as
predicates of what is true. When we are discussing
thinking we must distinguish between finite thinking,
the thinking of the mere understanding, from the infinite
thinking of reason. Taken in isolation, just as they are
immediately given, the thought-determinations are
finite determinations. But what is true is what is
infinite. (EL §28, 66.4)

Hegel further spells out what he means by the abstract determinations taken by the

tradition as immediately given: “that metaphysics moved in thought determinations

whose restrictions counted for it as something fixed” (EL §28, 67.3). It is clear that

Hegel is critical of the rigidity of the conceptual content the tradition used to

comprehend the world. It took the conceptual content of the abstract

determinations as a given, presented to the consciousness in its inner space of

representations as a set of fixed determinations of thought that correspond to the

determination of a thing in the outer realm, that of represented entities. The basic

elements of the representation are thus conceived of as kinds of atoms that the mind

needs to arrange in a correct way to represent the world, but neither their meaning

nor their interrelation with one another is alterable by the mind. As such, we are

essentially dealing here with a variation of the myth of the given, wherein what is

given is the specific conceptual content as a set of immutable elements that needs to

be organized in the right way as a mosaic that maps onto the immanent structure of

the world, which also is postulated as given.

Hegel’s alternative to what he sees as a mistaken conception of conceptual

content as “fixed” and “immediately given” is hinted at in the following passage:

41
“Thinking is only finite insofar as it stays within restricted determinations, which it

holds to be ultimate. Infinite or speculative thinking, on the contrary, makes

determinations likewise, but, in determining, in limiting, it sublates this defect

again” (EL §28, 67.2). Hegel wants to substitute the fixed, restricted determinations

with an account of a process that generates such determinations, but at the same

time sublates them. The rigidity is to be replaced with plasticity and the givenness

with the production of determinations. Moreover, the way the relation between

these determinations was conceived will also have to undergo fundamental revision.

Semantic atomism will have to be left behind for a more closely tied systematic

relations, and the law of non-contradiction—as the following statement makes

clear—will assume quite a different function in Hegel’s hand from the one it had in

the traditional approach.

…dogmatism consists in adhering to one-sided

determinations of the understanding whilst excluding
their opposites. This is just the strict ‘either-or,’
according to which (for instance) the world is either
finite or infinite, but not both. On the contrary, what is
genuine and speculative is precisely what does not have
any such one-sided determination in it, and is therefore
not exhausted by it ... what is one sided is not fixed and
does not subsist on its own account; instead it is
contained within the whole as sublated. (EL §32, 70)

As the passage clearly shows, Hegel is not claiming—as is often mistakenly

thought—that the law of non-contradiction is false and ought to be rejected; instead,

he states that the law “is contained within the whole.” Thus, we should expect that it

will have an important function in “the whole,” by which Hegel clearly means the

systematically related determinations. Moreover, the law of non-contradiction will

42
be contained in a sublated form, claims Hegel. It is important to notice here that the

same term was used in reference to the abstract universals in the above-cited

passage. To sublate for Hegel does not mean to reject; rather, it is to go beyond and

retain it by locating its place in a more fundamental account. Just like with the

abstract universals that are still part of the Hegelian system (as the above-cited

passage claims, “the speculative thinking … makes determinations likewise”) while

its misconstrued aspects are left behind, we should expect that in like manner the

law of non-contradiction will be presented in Hegelian transcendental ontology in a

different light with a different function. I shall return to this theme later in this

chapter when discussing Hegel’s critical analysis of Kant’s philosophy and take a

closer look at that time at Hegel’s take on contradiction and its role in his overall

system.

Brady Bowman presents a similar reading of the Hegelian distinction

between the finite vs. infinite thought determinations. Of finite determinations,

Bowman writes:

finitude and untruth was said to consist in the fact that,

although they display the form of independently
determinate identity and hence an absolute character,
in fact they have their determinate content only via
their relation-to-other, into which other they therefore
pass over and pass away. So finitude is here glossed as
relation-to-other, while infinitude and eternity are to be
understood as relation-to-self. (Bowman 39)

43
Hence, the content of the finite determinations of thought, instead of being fixed and

given to the mind as independently determined, is conditioned by the relation to

others. These determinations have meaning only as a part of a systematically

interrelated constellation of concepts, which according to Bowman has self-

relational structure and is understood by Hegel as infinite thought. I agree here with

Bowman, and he is also right in associating the self-relational structure of

interrelated systems of concepts with the Hegelian notion of the Concept: “Thus it

would seem that what distinguishes the Concepts from the merely finite thought-

determinations is its instantiation of pure relation-to-self or, as Hegel also calls it,

the relation of infinity” (Bowman 39). Indeed, as my analysis in Chapters 4 and 5

shall show, the self-relational structure is an essential feature of the Hegelian notion

of the Concepts, which rejects traditional metaphysic’s rigid and atomistic

conception of abstract determinations of thought and replaces it with a dynamic

theory of empirical concepts as systematically related constellation of

determinations marked with perpetual plasticity.

1.2) Projection of the Substance-Property Formal Structure

The second critical strategy Hegel deploys concerns the projection of a

certain formal structure onto reality. The claim is that dogmatic metaphysics

“presupposes that cognition of the Absolute could come about through attaching of

predicates to it.” Although here he uses his technical term absolute for the reasons

that shall become apparent later, I shall treat this term as identical to actuality. In

44
another passage Hegel is even more explicit about traditional metaphysic’s

unjustified imposition of the formal structure borrowed from language onto

actuality: “the form of the proposition, or more precisely that of the judgment, is

incapable of expressing what is concrete (and what is true is concrete) and

speculative; because of its form. The judgment is one-sided and to that extent false”

(EL §31, 69.2). Hegel sees not only the nature of determinations of thought and their

interrelation with one another and the relation to the object as fundamentally

mistaken, but he also believes the formal structure of the judgment is inadvertently

projected as the basic fabric of the world. Here we are dealing with another aspect

of the naïveté of traditional metaphysic, which unwittingly presupposes the

substance-property ontological structure of reality. By taking for granted that

reality can be cognized through deployment of judgments wherein predicates are

attributed to subjects, the tradition is assuming the amenability of the world to the

subject—predicate structure of judgment. In other words, dogmatic metaphysics

presupposes that reality is made up of substances and the properties that inhere in

them, wherein the logical subject of judgments denotes the substance while the

predicate refers to the property inhering in it.

Hegel’s criticism of the projection of the subject-predicate structure onto

reality offers an interesting perspective on Stern’s reading of Hegel’s notion of

object. He reads Hegel as providing an alternative to the model of object as a bundle

of property-universals.

It is Hegel’s aim in the Logic to show that this

reductionist ontology rests on the mistaken assumption

45
 that all individuals can be analysed into a plurality-
universals. His analysis of the notion, judgment, and
syllogism is designed to establish that in fact substance
universal forms the essential nature of the individual as
a whole, and that this universal cannot be reduced to a
collection of universals of another type. (Stern 1990,
74)

Stern is indeed correct: Hegel rejects the bundle theory of the object as a part of his

overall criticism of the projection of the form of the judgment onto the world. The

basic ontological fabric of actuality conceived as made up of the individuals as the

indeterminate substances that serve as the placeholders in which the property-

universals inhere is clearly one way in which the judgment’s formal structure can be

seen as projected onto and ossified in the world.

But it is not clear that the alternative model Stern ascribes to Hegel does not

fall under the same criticism. The substance universal that forms the essential

nature of the individual indeed appears to be a prime candidate for the Hegelian

criticism. For the presence of this central element in the Hegelian conception of an

object as Stern sees it implies a projection of the subject-predicate structure onto

the world, and not only on one (as was the case with the bundle theory) but on two

different levels. First, is a predicating those universals to substance-universal that

are not included in it, for instance, using Stern’s example, “this rose is red” or “this

man is Greek,” etc. This can be described as a surface level projection of the formal

structure of judgment onto reality. But there is a more fundamental level on which

the very same structure is being imposed. Examples of these would be “roses are

flowers” or “men are mammals.” In this case, the judgment form projection is taking

place on a more basic level, within the substance-universal that, according to Stern,
46
“forms the essential nature of the individual as a whole” (Stern 1990, 74). Hence,

were the perspective advanced by Stern expressing Hegel’s ontological outlook, the

criticism of projecting the structure of judgment onto actuality would apply not only

to traditional metaphysics but also to his own theory. As such, what Stern presents

cannot be the Hegelian vision of actuality on the most fundamental level.

Hegel’s criticism of traditional metaphysics for presupposing that the formal

relations between the terms of judgment also obtain within the immanent structure

of the mind-independent reality is both to the point but nevertheless still quite

puzzling. On the one hand, Hegel is clearly right—not only the immediate target of

his criticism but pretty much the entire tradition of Western philosophy can be

accused of simply presupposing the substance-property ontological model. But at

the same time, it is hard to see where Hegel is heading with this criticism, or what

other structure, if any, could reality have if not the one that he accuses the tradition

of having assumed. The Hegelian alternative to the traditional ontological model

shall become clear in Chapters 4 and 5, where I examine his theory of the Concept.

However, we can already see at this point that neither the atomistic semantic theory

of abstract universals nor the structure that mimics the subject-predicate form of

the assertoric judgment has a place on the ground floor of Hegel’s transcendental

ontology. At the same time, this does not mean that Stern’s reading is completely

misguided. In fact, as we shall see, the substance-universals will play an important

function in the individuation of entities, although they are not the most basic

building blocks of reality as Hegel’s transcendental ontology conceives it.

47
 Having looked at the two critical points Hegel makes in the opening pages of

the Encyclopedia Logic, we can already start seeing the contours of a fundamental

shift for which Hegel is preparing his readers. Robert Brandom describes this

transformation as a historic turn regarding “the origin and the justification of our

ideas” that replaces the representation with inference as its “master concept”

(Brandom 2000, 46). The relative explanatory priority accorded to the concepts of

representation in Descartes is gradually replaced by inference, and division of the

world into “what is by nature a representing and what by nature can only be

represented” is left behind. Our analysis of Hegel’s criticism of traditional

metaphysics confirms Brandom’s thesis; in the Vorbegriff Hegel is clearly preparing

ground for the rejection of the bifurcated ontological model and placing the

systematic relatedness between the empirical concepts at the epicenter of his

project. But Brandom, by focusing almost exclusively on the semantic aspects of the

Hegelian turn, does not do full justice to its ontological dimension. Hegel’s praising

of traditional metaphysic’s confidence in the unity of thought and being indicates

that the stance he is setting up to present will not be confined to the semantic issue

about the origins and justification of ideas or the role of inferential relation in the

generation of conceptual content. Instead, his project is primarily ontological. Hegel

will not only be concerned with the questions of the source and genesis of the

concepts through which the world manifest itself to us; instead he is primarily

concerned with the question of the relation between the nature of thought and its

determinations on the one hand and the world on the other. If these are not to be

conceived as standing in the representing vs. represented relation to one another,

48
then how are we to think of their relation? This is one of the central questions for

which we should expect Hegel’s answer in the pivotal parts of his Logic, which will

be discussed in the subsequent chapters of this dissertation.

1.3) Sensible Representations

The third central critical theme Hegel develops in the part of Vorbegriff

dedicated to traditional metaphysics is that of misunderstanding the epistemic

function of sensible representations. Hegel claims that traditional metaphysics tries

to “reproduce the content of sense-experience and intuition” and upholds this “as

the truth” (EL §26, 65). On its face, this criticism seems completely groundless, since

taking the sense experience as the source of knowledge is traditionally associated

not with the rationalist metaphysics that Hegel is targeting here but with the

empiricists who will be dealt with by Hegel in the following section. A close

examination of the view under consideration, however, reveals that Hegel’s criticism

is indeed well justified.

According to Leibniz, the prime representative of the tradition Hegel is

considering here, empirical concepts, are generated through experience; they are

formed via the operation of the intellect on the sense perception that experience

offers (Die philosophischen Schriften, IV 425). Sense perceptions themselves are

confused perceptions originating from the aggregates of monads. For Leibniz, every

single monad perceives every other one, but the clarity and distinctness of this

perception is a function of the perfection of the perceiving monad as well as the

disposition between the perceiving and the perceived monads. God, for example,

49
perceives the totality of the world perfectly clearly; on the other hand, the monads

of the most rudimentary sort (Leibniz calls them bear monads, which are associated

with the inanimate objects although they are not reducible to them) have extremely

obscure perceptions. Humans are somewhere in between; besides the ability to

perceive they are also endowed with the faculty of apperception—that is, the

reflective awareness of their inner states, including perceptual states. In other

words, if a perception is a state of relation with other monads, apperception is that

of self-relation of the monad; it is the perception through which the mind (which is

the human monad according to Leibniz) turns an introspective gaze toward its own

inner states: the perceptual states of other monads.

Now, sense perceptions on which our cognition of physical objects rests

involve both perception of other monads and apperception of our own inner states.

Physical objects, according to Leibniz, are associated not with individual substances

but aggregates of monads, that is, a group of monads that form an organized unity.

Human mind perceives each one of the infinite number of individual monads, but

these perceptions are not conscious; the mind is merely perceiving them without

taking note of the perceiving, its introspection is not directed at these perceptual

states. Leibniz refers to these as small perceptions; they do not merely happen to be

unnoticed but in principle cannot become conscious. What we are conscious instead

of these perceptions taken individually, is the plurality of them run through and held

together, and these are sensations. Moreover, since sensations are confused

perceptions, they will not allow discrimination of the individual components of

which it is made. In other words, there exists not even a theoretical possibility that

50
we can “climb” from the confused perceptions to the clear and distinct ones that

express the true nature of reality.

Hence we can see where Hegel is coming from in criticizing rationalist

metaphysics for a hopeless attempt (according to its own criterion) to ground

cognition on the reproduction of the content of sensible representations. According

to Leibniz, sensible representations are intrinsically defective media for gaining

access to the ultimate structure of reality. Hence, Hegel’s point is that while

traditional metaphysics starts with a correct insight about the accessibility of the

true nature of the worlds by thought, i.e., the identity of the completely individuated

concepts and the monads, when it comes to its theory of human cognition and

generation of empirical concepts, traditional metaphysics essentially undermines its

own fundamental assumption. The reason for this failure, according to Hegel, is that

traditional metaphysics attempts to derive the content of its empirical concepts

from sensible intuitions. The initial confidence in the power of thought and

accessibility of truth through its determinations is undermined by positioning

“sense-experience and intuitions” as the origin of the content of the empirical

concepts. Instead of thought being granted the function of the active power that

generates determination of its own, it is taken as a passive faculty that receives

content from sensations. Traditional metaphysics mistakenly takes the objects of its

cognition from “representation, laid them down as ready-made, given subjects for

the application of the determinations of the understanding to them, and possessed

in this representation alone the criterion of whether the predicates were adequate

and sufficient or not” (EL §30).

51
 Wilfrid Sellars agrees with Hegel’s criticism here by describing such a

conception of the sense impressions as the prime example of the myth of the given.

He sees it as a confused notion that mangles together two distinctly different

phenomena with different epistemological and ontological purports.

Sellars diagnoses ‘the classical concept of sense datum’

as a ‘mongrel resulting from a crossbreeding of two
ideas’: first, an idea of non-concept-involving sensory
episodes, such as sensations of red; and, second, an idea
of non-inferential knowings that such-and-such is the
case. This is a mongrel, a conflation, because
attributions of non-concept-involving episodes belong
below the line drawn by Sellars’s master thought,
whereas attribution of knowing belong above it.
(McDowell 2009, 9)

The line mentioned here is supposed to separate the episodes of our experience that

need to be understood in terms of actualization of our conceptual capacities (above

the line) from those that do not need to (below the line). What Sellars is pursuing

here is a Hegelian thread of arguing the impossibility of reduction of the conceptual

content to sensations. The “classical conception of sense” datum according to him is

a fantastic transplantation of the element immanent to one ontological domain into

its opposite one. Instead of solving the question of the origins of conceptual content,

it is merely creating an illusion of such a solution.

Having looked at Hegel’s critical analysis of traditional metaphysics and

considered the aspects of it that he endorses, as well as the ones that he rejects, the

following conclusions can be drawn about the position he is setting the stage for.

52
1) The dualistic ontology and the correspondence theory of cognition that is

tied to it cannot be a parts of Hegel’s system. He has to present an account

of actuality and the nature of cognition that offer an alternative model of

relation between thought and being. Determinations of thought and

individual objects that they represent in the traditional model will have to

be reconceived in such a way that the gap between them is no longer part

of the account.

2) Semantic atomism has to be replaced with an account in which the

conceptual content of the determinations of thought is much more closely

tied with one another and constitute a systematically related whole.

3) The traditional substance–attribute model that Hegel criticizes as a

projection of the form of judgment onto actuality has to be replaced with

an alternative that cannot be faulted in imposing the structure of

language onto reality.

4) Sensible intuitions cannot be the source of the conceptual content

through which the mind is related to the world. In other words, we

should expect that in Hegel’s transcendental ontology, sense perception

will not play the central role in the generation of the determinations of

thought.

53
2) Critique of Empiricism
Hegel’s examination of the second position of thought consists of two parts:

The first one concerns empiricism, and the second Kant’s critical philosophy. At first

it may be surprising to find Kant, with whom Hegel shares much in common,

included within the same position of thought as thinkers like Locke and Hume, who

could hardly be more distant from him. But as our analysis will make clear, this

move by Hegel is motivated by stressing the difference between his and Kantian

stances.

2.1) The Mind vs. the World

The critical strategies Hegel develops against empiricism are quite helpful in

furthering our understanding of his position. The fundamental flaw of empiricism in

Hegel’s eye is that according to it, “the external is the true” while our cognition is

“supposed to cling exclusively to what belongs to perception.” (EL §38, 81.2). All

central figures within the classical empiricist tradition maintain that the mind has

immediate access only to its inner content. Locke, for example, describes ideas as the

objects internal to the mind to be distinguished from the mind external objects the

qualities of which they are to correspond to: “Whatsoever the mind perceives in

itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I call

idea”(Locke VIII §8, 75). When Locke describes idea as “the immediate object of

perception,” he is setting it apart from the mediated relation that the mind stands to

the objects as they are in the actual world. Immediate objects or ideas are

54
immediate because the mind “perceives [them] in itself;” the mind-external objects,

on the other hand, are postulated to belong in the world external to the mind, which

we never perceive directly. According to Hegel, this abyss between what is available

to the mind on the one hand and the world on the other inevitably leads to

skepticism, whether acknowledged (as in Hume) or not (as in Locke). Locke

attempted to privilege certain simple ideas (extension, shape, number, etc.,

corresponding to the primary qualities) over others (color, taste, paint, etc.,

corresponding to the secondary qualities) as corresponding to the features of the

actual, mind-independent reality. But very few have been convinced by Locke. The

kinds of arguments he offers against the ideas of secondary qualities can clearly be

applied to the ideas of primary qualities as well. Hegel elaborates on the theme he

has already developed in his discussion of traditional metaphysics. However, if there

the central theme is the abstract nature of relation between the determinations of

thought and the objects, here the alleged correspondence between the featured on

the inner vs. the outer realm is brought to the fore. Obviously, both of these are

different strategies he employs in rejecting the traditional dualistic ontology that is

shared by both rationalist and the empiricist hairs of Descartes. Therefore, we can

expect Hegel to articulate a relation between the mind and the world in which they

no longer stand in opposition to one another, and the bifurcated ontology of the

realm of ideas vs. real of mind-external entities together with its correspondence

theory of truth is left behind.

At the same time, we should not assume that, having rejected the

correspondence theory of truth and criticized the externality of truth, Hegel is

55
upholding the identity theory of truth. The identity theory of truth, upheld by a wide

spectrum of influential thinkers like Bradley, Frege, and Russell, has emerged as an

alternative to the correspondence theory, and if according to the correspondence

theory the truth-bearers like propositions and judgments are made true by their

correspondence to facts, according to the identity theory they are identical to facts.

Thomas Baldwin has recently suggested that Hegel’s claims, such as “The truth in

the deeper sense … consists in the identity between objectivity and the notion”

(Baldwin 1991, 40), are evidence that he is putting forward a version of the identity

theory of truth. But the problem with this thesis is that it is still based on the

dualistic ontological model and cannot even be articulated without having it as its

backdrop. The identity theory of truth that attempts to secure an intimate

connection between the mind and the world presupposes in the first place an

ontological gab between them; the connection is sought on the backdrop of

difference. On the other hand, as the subsequent chapters will make clear, Hegel

rejects dualistic ontology altogether, offering a much more radical rejection of the

correspondence theory than the identity theory of truth does. I agree with Robert

Stern when he points out that the passage based on which Baldwin is advancing his

thesis is concerned not with propositional but with material truth.

Truth is propositional when it is attributed to

statements, judgments, or propositions on the basis of
their accordance with the way things are. Truth is
material when it is attributed to something on the basis
of the accordance of the thing with its essence… Hegel’s
interest is in material truth: in how far an object can be
said to be true, in the sense of conforming to its

56
 “concept” (Begriff), where by this he means its nature or
essence. (Stern 2009, 77-78)

Indeed, the subsequent chapters of this work are dedicated to the articulation of the

immanent structure of the Hegelian notion of the Concept and the accordance of

actuality to this structure is the criterion of the material conception of truth that

Stern is putting forth here.

2.2) Universals as Abstraction from Sense Perception

Another critical point Hegel raises against empiricism is its

misunderstanding of the nature of relation between sense perceptions and the

universals. For Locke and his followers, empirical concepts, or the universal ideas,

are the products of the process of abstraction from sensible perceptions or the

particular ideas. The conceptual content hence is extracted from the sensible

representations, which in turn are thought of as effects that external objects bring

about in the mind. But as Hegel points out, this renders the epistemic purport of the

universal determinations spurious.

Empiricism raises the content belonging to perception,

feeling, and intuition to the form of universal
representations, sentences, and laws, etc. This happens,
however, only in the sense that these universal
determinations (e.g. force) are to possess no other
meaning and validity for themselves than that taken
from perception, and that no connection is supposed to
be legitimate unless it has been exhibited in the
appearances. (EL §38, 77.1)

57
Hegel’s point is that such a conception of universality fundamentally undermines its

viability for attaining knowledge, for what is supposed to represent the “outer,”

mind-independent reality is conceived as derived from the content of the “inner”

subjective states. It is interesting to note here that, when explaining the reasons that

the claim of sense perceptions being the source of universal determinations

diminishes their “meaning and validity,” Hegel is clearly striking Kantian notes:

“insofar as perception is to remain the foundation of what is to count as the truth,

universality and necessity appear to be something unwarranted, a subjective

coincidence, a mere habit, and its content might just as well be as it is or otherwise”

(EL §39, 80.1). Obviously, the argument against the “unwarrantedness” of

universality is borrowed from the well-known passage from the Preface of the CPR,

in which Kant claims that “Experience teaches us, to be sure, that something is

constituted thus and so, but not that it could not be otherwise… Thus is a judgment

is thought in strict universality, i.e., in such a way that no exception is at all is

allowed to be possible, then it is not derived from experience, but is rather valid

absolutely a priori” (B3-4). So Hegel uses the argument of the “empiricist” Kant (this

is, the implication of placing Kant within the same position of thought as

empiricism) against the major tenets of the empiricist tradition. This is clear

evidence that Hegel is fully aware of the fundamental differences between Kant and

empiricist positions. Moreover, as we shall see later, Hegel inherits a great deal of

the Kantian approach when it comes to the question of the origins of the universal

determinations.

58
 However, whatever the relation between the Hegelian and Kantian stances

on the origin of universals, one thing is clear: Hegel is further developing the theme

already mentioned in his critical analysis of traditional metaphysics—the

conceptual content of the universal determinations cannot be postulated as given in

the sense perceptions. Hence, if the central attack against the Leibnizians’

conception of the universals was its misconstrual of the relation between the

universals as well as the relation between universals and the object of cognition, the

key flaw of the empiricist tradition’s notion of universality is its epistemic

inadequacy due to the reduction of its content to the subjective states of sense

perceptions. As such, from Hegel’s own theory we should expect an alternative

account of the origins of the universal determination and their content.

My understanding of Hegel’s take on the relation between the sense

perceptions and the universals is quite close to the position Sellars puts forth in

Science and Metaphysics. McDowell sees this position as ascribing to sense

perceptions a transcendental function. “Sellars’s ‘sense impression inference’ is a

piece of transcendental philosophy, in the following sense: it is directed towards

showing our entitlement to conceive subjective occurrences as possessing objective

purport” (McDowell 2009, 17). Sense perceptions play the function of the conditions

of the possibility of the objective purport of conceptual occurrences. Instead of

containing the claims about the world, they are the accompanying conditions that

render the world accessible to us thought them.

visual sensations or sense impressions are not simply

an extra part of the truth about visual experiences, over

59
 and above the part that deals with the distinctive way in
which visual experiences ’contain’ claims … it is not that
visual experiences “contain” claims in their distinct way,
and then there is a simply additional fact about them,
that they involve visual sensations. The reason we have
to acknowledge the ‘additional’ fact, in Sallars’s view, is
that only so can we be entitled to have spoken as we did
when we gave our above-the-line characterization to
visual experiences. (McDowell 2009, 17)

Hence, the claim is that sensations, rather than containing the conceptual content or

merely accompanying it in experience, are the transcendental condition of objective

purport of the content.

2.3) Mere Analysis

Another important critical point Hegel raises against the empiricists

concerns the method used for generating universal determinations. He describes

this as a process of analysis that dissects and separates the content of the objects of

representation into the marks that have to be abstracted from them in order to

generate empirical concepts and the ones that don’t belong to these determinations.

Hegel describes this method as killing of an “alive being,” as it moves away from the

“concrete” towards abstract: “Because empiricism analyses objects, it is in error if it

believes that it leaves them as they are, since it in fact transforms the concrete into

something abstract. By this process, it happens at the same time that life is taken

from the living, for only the concrete, or one, is alive” (EL §38, 78).

Of note here is that Hegel is not simply rejecting analysis as a moment in the

generation of empirical concepts; what he is attacking is the misconceiving of

60
analysis as the only method used in this process. His point is that it is not merely or

even primarily analysis, but first and foremost the synthesis, that plays the key role

in furnishing the determinations through which the mind is mediated to the world:

“Nonetheless, this severing [Scheidung] must occur in order to comprehend, and

spirit is itself the severing in itself. This, however, is only one side, and the chief

Point consists in the unification of what has been severed” (EL §38, 78.3). Hence, for

Hegel, the synthesis, i.e., the unification of distinct determinations, plays at least as

much importance as the analysis of their dissection into component parts.

According to Hegel, the central tenet of empiricism that conceptual content of

universal determinations is traceable back to sense perceptions is contradicted by

empiricists themselves:

The fundamental delusion in scientific empiricism is

always that it uses the metaphysical categories of
matter, force (not to mention those of the one, the
many, universality, and infinity, etc.), and proceeds to
make inferences guided by such categories, all the while
presupposing and applying the forms of syllogistic
inference, ignorant that in so doing it itself contains and
pursues metaphysics and that it uses those categories
and their relationships in a completely uncritical and
unconscious fashion. (EL §38, 77-78)

Indeed, Locke introduces a category of simple ideas, like unity, existence, power,

succession, etc., that originates neither in the senses nor in reflection; instead, these

ideas are “suggested,” as Locke claims, by the ideas of both sensations and

reflection. Hegel’s point is that clearly Locke is helping himself to the basic

determinations of thought that could not have been traced back to sense

perceptions, and so he comes up with an obscure explanation of their origins in

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order to avoid directly contradicting the main thesis of empiricism. Therefore, the

empiricist, for Hegel, gets completely wrong the issue of the origin of the conceptual

content, and we can expect a radically different approach from his own alternative.

2.4) Unfreedom

Perhaps the most fundamental reason for the unacceptability of the

empiricist doctrine for Hegel lies in its being the “doctrine of unfreedom.” By

conceiving of the world with its determinate features as already individuated and

given to us through sense perceptions, the empiricist tradition is postulating what

Hegel sees as its key thesis “the external is the true” and confines the intellect to the

passive role of a mere recipient that takes in the world with its already-formed

determinate features.

Now, insofar as this sensory component is and remains

a given for empiricism, it is a doctrine of unfreedom, for
freedom consists precisely in my having no absolutely
other over against me, but depending instead only on a
content that I am myself. (EL §38, 79.5)

The “sensory component” as we know is the source of all cognition, according to

empiricists; as such, the world with its determinate features is completely given to

us according to the empiricist view. This for Hegel means that actuality as conceived

by empiricists is confronting us as “absolutely other.”

Here we can clearly see the Kantian influence on Hegel’s position. Freedom

as self-determination or related to the content that “I am myself” is contrasted with

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the mere reception wherein we passively take in the content given to us from some

external source. Kant postulated that we are citizens of two worlds, one sensible and

the other rational. The former is the realm of determinism and the latter of freedom.

The freedom is afforded to us via the spontaneity of our rational faculty that posits

content of its own. Hence, for Hegel, just like for Kant, “unfreedom” is associated

with the passive “taking in” of the determinate content that is not a product of one’s

own, while the logical space of freedom is that of reason’s production of the

determinate content of its own. I thus agree with McDowell’s take on the Kantian-

Sellarsian position that “judging, making up our minds what to think, is something

for which we are in principle responsible—something we freely do, as opposed to

something that merely happens in our lives… this freedom, exemplified in

responsible acts of judging, is essentially a matter of being answerable to criticism

in the light of rationally relevant considerations. So the realm of freedom, at least

the realms of freedom of judging, can be identified with the space of reason”

(McDowell 2009, 6). As Hegel’s criticism of the “unfreed” of the empiricist doctrine

indicates, Hegel will be developing an account of epigenesist of “the space of reason”

within which the relation to “absolute other” is substituted with the relation to self.

To summarize my discussion of Hegel’s critical analysis of empiricism, the

following conclusions can be drawn:

1) As a further elaboration of the insights reached through his analysis of

traditional metaphysics and its dualistic ontology, Hegel rejects the

empiricist idea of truth as correspondence between reality and

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 representations. Hence, we should expect from Hegel an epistemological

account that is alternative to both the correspondence and identity

theories of truth.

2) The strong Kantian influence can be traced in Hegel’s attack on the

empiricist postulation of sense perception as the source of universal

determinations, as well as its exclusive emphasis of analysis and

abstraction in generation of universals. Hence, the Kantian positing of

synthetic judgments as the basic condition of the possibility of any

cognition should be expected to see further development in Hegel’s

doctrine.

3) The empiricist ontological and epistemological stances exemplify for Hegel

denial of freedom, which he clearly associates with the relation to the

world in which it is passively taken in by the subject. The alternative

account that is hinted at in his comments would elaborate as the medium

of relation with the world the system of determinations that comprise the

logical space of reason.

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3) Critique of Kant

After his critical analysis of empiricism, Hegel turns to a lengthier

examination of Kant, whom he also includes in the second position of thought. The

close proximity of his own system with the position examined makes studying this

part of the Vorbegriff particularly fruitful, as each critical point Hegel raises will be

an indicator of the pivotal points of difference between the two outlooks with a

largely shared background. I shall focus on three central themes Hegel develops

throughout his critical examination of the Kantian philosophy. The first one

concerns Kant’s conception of universality. Hegel’s take on the Kantian notion of

universality, as the following analysis shall show, is geared not to its outright

rejection but to its critical appropriation. He supports the main thrusts of the

Kantian approach, while at the same time criticizing him for not fully developing its

potential. Another prominent critical point Hegel deploys against Kant is that his

system is fractured into subjective vs. objective moments. Hegel criticizes Kant’s

notion of the thing in itself, which he sees as undermining the epistemic purport of

the determinations of thought, turning his critical philosophy into a mere subjective

idealism. The claim is that by introducing the thing in itself in his system, Kant fails

to overcome the gap between the determinations of thought on the one hand and

the true nature of reality on the other. The last line of criticism that I will discuss

here is that of the role of contradiction in the determination of objective reality. As

we shall see, Hegel is critical of Kant’s use of contradiction that grants it only

65
negative function. The Hegelian alternative that will be indicated in his critical

remarks and will be more fully fleshed out in the Doctrine of Essence will grant to

contradiction a much more important a role in the determination of objective

reality.

3.1) Immanence of universals

Hegel opens his critical analysis of Kant by pointing out the similarity

between Kant’s and the empiricist positions—clearly an attempt to justify placing

Kant within the same position of thought as empiricism. “Critical Philosophy has in

common with Empiricism that it accepts experience as the only basis for our

cognitions” (EL §40, 80.3). These words undeniably echo the well-known thesis

from the opening lines of his B-edition Introduction: “There is no doubt whatever

that all our cognition begins with experience; for how else should the cognitive

faculty be awakened into exercise if not through objects that stimulate our

senses….” (B1). And just as Kant soon qualifies this empiricist-sounding claim, “But

although all our cognition commences with experience, yet it does not on that

account all arise from experience” (B1), so does Hegel; and in addition to this he

explicitly states the element that “does not arise” from experience: “universality and

necessity … are found to be present in … experience” and this aspect of experience

“belongs to the spontaneity of thinking, or is a priori” (EL §40, 81.1).

Hegel here points to the key move Kant makes that sets him apart from the

empiricists—the internalization of the universals to the empirical reality. Recall that,

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for Locke, universals don’t belong to the actual fabric of the mind-external world;

rather, they are products of abstraction and reside only within the inner realm of

representations. Contrary to this, Kant not only acknowledges that universals

belong to the experienced reality, but asserts that they “make up the objectivity of

the cognitions of experience” (EL §40 81.1). Hegel is clearly impressed with the step

Kant takes toward conceptual realism, but at the same time he also criticizes Kant

for not going far enough and not fleshing out the full potential in this move. “To be

cognizant, however, means nothing else but the knowing of object according to its

determinate content. A determinate content, however, contains a manifold

connection within itself and is the basis for connections with many other objects”

(EL §46 89.2). According to Hegel, the “Kantian reason has nothing but the

categories” (EL §46 89.2). Hence, Hegel sees the key defect in Kant’s system to be its

inability to do justice to the “manifold of connection” that makes up its “determinate

content.” Kant confines himself to the categories and is unable to flesh out the

determinate content of the objective cognition that the immanence of the universal

to the objective reality implied. The idea here is that if we acknowledge that certain

universal determinations make up the basic structure of actuality, we are also

implicitly committed to the thesis that the relations and the “manifold of

connections” that obtain between these element make up the immanent structure of

the actuality.

In order to gain a good understanding of what Hegel has in mind when he

claims that Kant’s conception of cognition fails to appreciate the “manifold of

connections” between universal determinations and interrelatedness of the objects

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of cognition through determinate content, we must look closely at what Kant means

by universality and what role it plays in cognition. This shall also shed light on the

question of to what extent Hegel’s criticism is justified. For Kant universality is the

form of concepts while their matter is the objects of experience. Hence, the issue of

the relation between universality and empirical reality is directly tied to the relation

between concepts and the empirical realm on the one hand, and between the

concepts and their form on the other. Objects for Kant are not entities

heterogeneous to the human intellect, but they are a certain subcategory of the

determinations of the mind. His Copernican revolution, which turns on the insight

that “the objects must conform to our cognition” (B XVI), is carried out through the

internalization of the objects of experience (phenomena) to representations (the

determinations of the mind): “an object … is that in the concepts of which manifold

of a give intuition is united” (B137). A concept for Kant is not merely “a general and

reflected representation” but also a “consciousness of the unity of an act of synthesis

of a sensible manifold;” in other words, concept is what underlies and guides the

process of the unification of sensible intuitions furnishing objects of cognition.

Hence, the conceptual content is present in the perceptual experience as integral

elements of the rule of apprehension. To be sure, the outcome of the process of

apprehension is not yet equivalent to full cognition, as the latter implies two

additional syntheses: reproduction in imagination and subsumption under a

concept (this time not as the rule of synthesis but universal and reflected

representation). The former is merely an appearance, “undetermined objects of

empirical intuition,” thus it has not yet been determined, i.e., subsumed under a

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concept and thus become phenomenon or “determined object of empirical intuition.”

This, however, does not mean that the merely apprehended appearance is free of

conceptual content, as a concept qua the unity of an act of synthesis has already

been employed in the apprehension of sensible manifold.

Therefore, for Kant, conceptual content is present on both ends of the

cognitive process. Initially, it is present as the schema of the synthesis of

apprehension as a result of which the empirical reality as a plurality of appearances

manifests themselves to the mind. At this level, concept is functioning as the

“consciousness of the unity of an act of synthesis of a sensible manifold,” essentially

as a function of unity through which appearances are perceived or taken in by the

mind. This level of presence of conceptual content corresponds to what Kant in the

Prolegomena calls judgment of perception. At this stage, the world taken in by the

mind is appearing in a certain way, i.e., reality the way it manifests itself prior to

being cognitively determined by the intellect. There is a second level of application

of the concepts, this time at the other end of cognitive activity, wherein these

appearances are subsumed under concepts. This second level of application of the

concepts corresponds to what Kant in the Prolegomena calls judgments of

experience. The question of the presence of “the manifold of connection” or the lack

thereof can thus be addressed on these two different levels. But clearly, while the

relations under consideration will be present in different form in the judgments of

perception and the judgments of experience, they are without a doubt available on

both levels. The concept that is used as the rule of apprehension has “the manifold of

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connections” within it, as do the universal and reflected representation under which

the appearances are subsumed.

As such, Robert Stern misses the point when contrasting Hegel’s positions

with Kant’s regarding the immanence of concepts when he maintains that

I will claim that Kant’s idealism is subjective for Hegel in

employing the activity of the synthesizing subject to
explain the genesis and structure of the object, while
Hegel’s idealism is objective in treating the substance-
universal which it exemplifies as constituting the unity
of the individual. As a result, whereas Kant’s philosophy
is idealistic because it treats the unity of the object as
dependent on the structure imposed on experience by
the transcendental subject, Hegel’s philosophy is
idealistic because it operates with a realist theory of
universals, which have a fundamental place in his
ontology. (Stern 1990, 110)

Stern’s reading of Kant misses a crucial point: “the synthesizing subject” is not

combining in a random fashion manifolds of representations; rather, the object is

formed through a rule-guided synthesis. And this rule through which “the structure

of the object” is formed is nothing else but the concept or “the substance-universal”

as Stern calls it. Therefore, the two positions are much closer than Stern would have

it.

Kant’s well-known example about a savage perceiving a house for the first

time can be helpful in clarifying the point here. While analyzing the differences

between two cases of apprehension of representations of the very same object, one

guided by a concept qua schema of synthesis of apprehension and the other that is

not, Kant explains:

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 If, for example, a savage sees a house from a distance
whose use he does not know, he admittedly has before
him in his representation the very same object as
someone else who knows it determinately as a dwelling
established for human beings. But as to form, this
cognition of one and the same object is different in the
two cases. In the former it is mere intuition, in the latter
it is simultaneously intuition and concept. (Logic,
Intorduction V, Ak. IX, 33; 544-45)

For Kant, both intuition and concept are perceptions or conscious representations,

and both are related to an object (unlike mere sensations, which are perceptual

state of subject only). In other words, they are related to something independent of

the mind engaged in apprehension. The difference between them, however, is that

while intuition is related to the object immediately, the concept is related to it

mediately. Thus, someone who has the concept of house while apprehending the

representations of the house has, according to Kant, both mediate and immediate

representation of the object. The immediate element is the intuition, whereas the

mediated is the schema, i.e., the rule that guides the synthesis of apprehension of

this intuition. The manifold connections that Hegel refers to make up the relations

between the elements that make up the internal structure of the rule and their

relations with the content of other empirical concepts. For the savage who sees such

an object for the first time, the rule that would enable him to apprehend the

representation as a house is not available. But once the savage sees many similar

objects and acquires the concept of house, the nature of his subsequent

apprehensions will also change and it will have no longer merely intuition but

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“simultaneously intuition and concept.” Therefore, his subsequent episodes of

apprehension of similar objects will also have “the manifold of connections” in them.

At the same time, if the conceptual content involved in the genesis of

experience of an object is an integral part of the network of determinations that are

interrelated to one another, the objects the apprehension of which will involve these

determinations will also be related to one another. For instance, if an apprehension

of a house involves a concept of a house as a dwelling of human beings and hence

one amongst a manifold of connections in place, there is the connection between the

concept of a house and the concept of a human, then any particular house

apprehended is related to any particular human apprehended due to the relation

between the concepts that made individuation of these objects possible. Therefore,

Hegel’s criticism of the lack of appreciation by Kant of the manifold of connections

between the conceptual content involved in experience, as well as between the

objects of experience, is not based on a charitable reading of his position to say the

least.

But Kant is not blameless here as he rarely discusses the question of

interrelation between the conceptual content of empirical concepts and the process

of their formation. For Kant, the key question is the origin of the pure a priori

concepts and the justification of their applicability in the cognition of empirical

objects. Hegel, on the other hand, stresses the need for a closer attention to the

manifold of relations that obtains between the determinations of thought and the

interrelatedness of the objects individuated through these determinations.

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Therefore, even if the criticism of Kant is based on an uncharitable reading on his

position, it nevertheless reveals what Hegel sees as the aspect of the Kantian system

that is in need of further development. Therefore, we can anticipate that tracing the

manifold of relations between the determinations of thought will be one of the

priorities in Hegel’s appropriation of the Kantian system.

3.2) Kant as a Subjective Idealist

Another critical angle from which Hegel investigates Kant’s position is its

rigidly maintained distinction between the subjective and the objective moments of

actuality. In Hegel’s eye, Kant is maintaining the distinction between the subjective

and the objective ontological spaces while wanting to ground the objective on the

subjective:

That the categories should be regarded only as

belonging to us, i.e. as subjective, must seem rather
bizarre to the natural consciousness, and there is
indeed something skewed about it…. Now although the
categories (such as, unity, cause, effect, and so forth) do
belong to thinking as such, it does not follow at all from
this that they should for that reason be ours alone and
not also determinations of the objects themselves. This,
however, is supposed to be the case according to Kant's
outlook. His philosophy is a subjective idealism. (EL
§42, 87)

Hegel’s criticism in this case appears to be quite on point. If Kant maintains that the

categories originate in the logical forms of judgment and are the source of the

objective purport to our representations, while he also wants to keep the thing-in-

itself as a part of his system, then subjective idealism indeed seems to be an

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inevitable outcome. The “objectivity” that is grounded on the subjective functions of

the operation of the mind clearly appears as a watered-down version of the true

actuality represented by the thing-in-itself. With the noumenal realm as its

backdrop, any attempt to ground objectivity of the phenomena and its cognition on

the specific constitution of the faculties of the subject indeed appears to inevitably

lead to subjective idealism.

Very often, a solution to this problem is sought in a fundamental

misinterpretation of the Kantian stance according to which sense perceptions are

taken to be the source-conferring objectivity to the representations of the mind.

Hegel is quite right to point out that, according to Kant, sensible intuitions are also

states of the subject: “The categories are empty, having application and use only in

experience, the other element of which, the determinations of feeling and intuition,

are likewise something merely subjective”(EL §43, 88). Indeed, for Kant all

representations, the subspecies of which are sensible intuitions as well as mere

sensations, are “inner states of the mind.” What is different between mere

sensations and intuitions is that while the former belong only to the subject, the

latter in addition to that are also related to the objects of cognitions. But this

objectivity, as Hegel points out, arises from another subjective element: the logical

forms of judgment and the categories. Therefore, Hegel’s charge that the source of

objectivity within the Kantian system is a highly problematic issue that is not dealt

with in a satisfactory manner is not an unwarranted one.

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 The point here is that while all components of this objective realm are of

subjective origin, when combined together, according to Kant, they somehow form

objective determinations. A possible defense of Kant’s position could be offered

along the following lines: The knowledge derived from experience of the

phenomenal reality is true only with qualification—it is true only as it appears to us,

while things independent of our cognitive constitution, or things in themselves, are

never accessible for us according to Kant, hence the “subjective” origins of

objectivity cognition. However, Hegel thinks that this position amounts to nothing

but an indirect admitting of skepticism—the impossibility of grasping the ultimate

nature of reality. As he puts succinctly: “for Kant … what we think is false just

because we think it” (EL §60, 107). Therefore, we should expect the Hegelian

transcendental ontology to, in one way or another, deal with the problem of the gap

between the subjective and objective moments that he criticizes in Kant;

additionally, determinations of thought will no longer be “ours alone” but will

determine objective reality the way it is in itself and not merely as it appears to us.

3.3) Contradiction

Another critical theme Hegel develops that I want to examine here is the

epistemic function and the ontological status of contradiction. Hegel takes up the

issue with Kant for whom reality is assumed to be free of contradiction, which is

confined to the subjective side of Kant’s bifurcated system. It is only the

determinations of thought that can and do come to contradict each other, according

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to Kant. Reality on the other hand is pre-postulated to be free of contradictions. In

fact, this confining of contradiction to the subjective side is where Kant locates the

key to his solution to the problems of paralogisms and antinomies: “The resolution

is that the contradiction does not apply to the object in and of itself, but pertains

solely to reason engaged in trying to know” (EL §48, 93). By limiting the scope of

contradiction to the realm of thought, Kant is attempting to “save” the objective

reality from it. In Hegel’s eye, however, had Kant been more open to embrace the

inner thrust of his own thought, he could have put the difficulties generated through

these contradictions to his advantage, but Kant is too much a child of his own time

and unable to free himself from the basic assumptions of both rationalistic and

empiricist traditions.

Nevertheless, Hegel thinks it is still to Kant’s credit that he uncovers the

necessity of contradiction brought about by cognitive effort. He sees this as an

important insight with far-reaching epistemological and ontological consequences.

This is where it is brought up that it is the content itself,

namely the categories themselves, that bring about the
contradiction. This thought that the contradiction
posited in the realm of reason [am Vernunftigen] by the
determinations of the understanding is essential and
necessary must be regarded as one of the most
important and profound advances in the philosophy of
recent times. The resolution is as trivial as the view is
profound. It consists merely in a tenderness for worldly
things. It is not supposed to be the worldly essence that
bears the blemish of contradiction, but it is supposed to
fall to thinking reason alone, the essence of spirit. (EL
§48, 93)

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Clearly, for Hegel the Kantian “solution” to the antinomies and parallogisms does

not measure up to the “problems” themselves. Hegel thinks that it is the “solution”

that is the problem, while the “problem” is the key to the qualitatively higher

philosophical vision that Kant could have brought about but fails to. While the full

account of what Hegel has in mind by this missed opportunity shall be gradually

emerging throughout the remaining chapters of the present work, we can already

see some of its features hinted at in these passages in Hegel’s texts.

To begin with, it is clear that if Hegel is to develop the theme of

groundedness of individuals on the universals, then the confinement of the

contradictions to the realm of determinations of thought and sheltering the

determination of things from it will become problematic. If the individuals are

grounded on universals and hence the determinations of thought are immanent to

them, so are the relations between these determinations. Further, Hegel is explicit

that the number of necessary contradictions is not limited to those presented by

Kant in the Transcendental Dialectic: “the main point that has to be made is that

antinomy is found not only in the four particular objects taken from cosmology, but

rather all objects of all kinds” (EL §48, 92.2). Claims like this have often been used in

discrediting Hegel as an upholder of an utterly confused position, according to

which for any true proposition “x is y,” there is at the same time corresponding true

propositions “x in not y.” Were this a correct interpretation of his thought, Hegel

could not have been ascribed to uphold any meaningful proposition. This is,

however, not the most interesting reading of Hegel’s thesis, nor the one that best fits

his philosophical system as a whole. If we recall the conclusion we drew earlier in

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the chapter from Hegel’s critical remarks on semantic atomist, hence his

commitment to the strong interrelation between the determinations of thought, and

combine it with another commitment of Hegel regarding the immanence of

determinations of thought to “all objects of all kinds,” then a very interesting

perspective on the thesis about ubiquity of contradiction comes to the fore.

Robert Brandom points to this alternative by offering to read the

contradiction thesis as a claim of necessary inadequacy of any system of empirical

concepts wherein contradiction serves as an immanent source of their inevitable

instability:

What we must realize to move to the standpoint of

Vernunft is that we will always and necessarily be led to
contradict ourselves by applying determinate concepts
correctly—no matter how the world happens to be—
and that it is in just this fact that the true nature of the
immediacy, particularity, and actuality revealed to us in
experience consists … When Hegel says of the concrete
that “the true, thus inwardly determinate, has the urge
to develop,” and that “The Understanding, in its pigeon-
holing process, keeps the necessity and the Notion of
the content to itself—all that constitutes the
concreteness, the actuality, the living movement of the
reality which it arranges,” he means that no concepts
with fixed, determinate boundaries can capture how
things are in a way that will not turn out to require
eventual revision. (Brandom 2004; Sketch of a Program
for a Critical Reading of Hegel 13)

That is to say, the claim that “everything actual contains opposite

determinations”(EL §48, 93.2) is not an attempt to reject the law of non-

contradiction but its integration within the new ontological vision, according to

which any system of empirical determinations of thought that immanently structure

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actuality is intrinsically inadequate. This means that when the inferential relations

are pursued far enough, any given constellation of empirical concepts and doxastic

commitments will inevitably lead to mutually contradicting claims. This in turn calls

for a revision and continuous redefinition of the content of empirical concepts that

constitute the basic determinations of actuality, throughout the revisions of which

transfiguration of not only the meaning of the empirical concepts but also the basic

fabric of actuality is taking place. While I shall repeatedly return to Brandom’s

reading in the subsequent chapters, the centrality of the contradiction to the

Hegelian project shall become evident already in the next chapter where the

determinations of reflections are considered in depth.

4) Conclusion

Having looked at the major critical themes Hegel develops in his examination

of the key alternative doctrines, the following conclusions can be made:

1) Hegel’s transcendental ontology shall offer an alternative to the

traditional dualistic metaphysics and the representation theory of

knowledge. Division of the world into two realms, represented vs.

representations that takes the mind to be a kind of mirror and the

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 concepts as generalized versions of the images reflected in it, has to be

replaced with a model that leaves behind this bifurcated picture and the

plethora of the ontological and epistemological problems that arise from

it. As we see, Hegel understands Kant’s postulation of the thing-in-itself to

render his critical system into one more example of the dualistic

ontology. As the subsequent chapters shall show, the Hegelian alternative

will make a turn along the lines of what Brandom describes as

substituting representation with expression as the master concept of

epistemological doctrine. The conceptual content in this model is hinged

not on the external reality, which it purportedly replicates, but on the

process of the application of empirical determinations through which the

implicit content is made explicit and the individual determinations are

given meaning as elements of the systematically related constellation of

determinations.

2) The traditional approach of taking the sensations as the source of content

for universal determinations shall be replaced with an account of the

universals as the immanent grounds of individuation of entities that we

“find” in the world. These universals, instead of being self-sufficient

atomic determinations, derive their meaning from their relation to the

other determination, together with which they make up a systemic whole.

As such, the relations between the concepts serve as the background

condition on which individual determinations are grounded. The

relations between elements of the system making up the totality of

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 conceptual content will play the key role in constituting individual

determinations, and, as we have seen, Hegel indicates that contradiction

will play a very important role amongst them. I shall examine this issue in

the following chapter.

3) The third general strategic line that can be extracted from Hegel’s critical

analysis of alternatives doctrines is his aim to put forth an ontological

vision that is marked with the radical plasticity of actuality as its key

feature. This plasticity is what sets his stance apart from the doctrines

like that of empiricists that he saw as philosophy of unfreedom. Concepts,

instead of representing pre-existing reality, are the nodes in a network of

interrelated and continuously revised system of universal

determinations, which not only constitute the objects but also constitute

them differently, and are different objects at successor stages of the

continuously transforming system. Hegel’s master word, dialectic, is this

movement of self-determination of interconnected constellation of

concepts within which any determination is perpetually subjected to

dissolution and re-determination.

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CHAPTER 3: Determinations of Reflection and Generation
of Conceptual Content

1) Essence as Truth of Being

Hegel’s striking claim with which he opens the Doctrine of Essence, “The truth

of being is essence” (WL 337), is a clear testimony of the important role that this

central part of the Logic occupies in his transcendental ontology. Here is how Hegel

describes the relation between the previous part of the Logic, the Doctrine of Being,

and the one that he is about to present, the Doctrine of Essence: “behind this being

there still is something other than being itself, and … this background [essence]

constitutes the truth of being” (WL 337). Hence, while presenting the basic

determinations of the essence Hegel is laying out the “background,” the underlying

structure of being and its determinations. Here we can clearly see the traces of the

Kantian move of grounding objects on determinations of thought—an empirical

entity that is out there in the world is conditioned by the act of synthesis guided by a

rule that constitute its essence. What Hegel is doing in this part of the Logic is to give

a detailed account of the process (and its determinate features) through which the

essence as the ground of being is furnished, the inner architectonics of “this

background [that] constitutes the truth of being.”

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2) Reflection as the Process of Generation of Essence

Hegel sees reflection as the modality of operation of Essence. This is already

made evident in the title of the opening section of the Doctrine of Essence: “Essence

as Reflection Within Itself,” as well as the numerous claims of the following kind “in

its self-movement, essence is reflection” (WL 345) and “essence is reflection.

Reflection determines itself; its determinations are a positedness which is

immanent reflection at the same time” (WL 340). Thus, reflection and its basic

determinations, or essentialities, play the central role in the doctrine of essence and

Hegel’s ontology in general. Indeed, as my analysis shall demonstrate, the

determinations of reflection or the essentialities are the most elementary functions

that guide the activity of the generation of conceptual content—the content that

serves as the medium of our cognitive relation to actuality, as well as the content

through which entities comprising this actuality are individuated.

Dieter Henrich has describes “the basic operations” discussed by Hegel in

“the chapter on ‘Reflection’ at the beginning of the ‘Logic of Essence’” as “the core

and the key” to The Science of Logic (Henrich 2003, 319). Reflection therefore

comes to the fore as the main mechanism of the generation of the space of reason. It

is the process of formation of the systematically related constellation of

determinations. As such, close attention to reflection and its basic determinations is

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necessary for proper understanding of the Logic and the ontological doctrine laid

out therein.

A natural question to ask at this point is how the thesis “the truth of being is

essence” (WL 337) and the identification of essence with reflection and its basic

functions (i.e., essentialities) square with another crucial thesis of Hegel’s ontology

offered later in the Logic: “reality properly comprehended is the concept.” In other

words, how should we make sense of the relation between the reflection and its

essentialities that make up the schema of essence on the one hand, and on the other,

the concept—the fundamental ontological substructure Hegel introduces at a more

developed stage of his Logic? Longuenesse offers a good starting point for

understanding this relationship by tying the unifying or self-relational dynamic

moment of the concept with reflection that gradually manifests itself as the moving

force in the unfolding of the Logic.

In Being (expounded in Part 1, Book 1 of the Science of

Logic), the concept and its aim of the true are only
implicit; the determinations of the object are received
as immediate, and the mediation of their mutations by
the movement of the concept is masked. This is why
they “pass” into one another, without an explicit
unifying principle. In reflection, or Essence (expounded
in Part 1, Book 2) the role of the unity of the concept in
pushing forward the movement of determinations is
made explicit, although the concept does not yet
manifest its capacity to produce from itself all
determinations. … In contrast, in the concept
(expounded in Part 2 of the Science of Logic), each
determination is produced from the unity of thought,
and reflection is now a development (Entwicklung) of
the concept rather than the “shining into another” that
it is in essence. (Longuenesse 2007, 34)

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Hence, reflection is integrated within the larger ontological structure with clear

Kantian roots as its self-relational or unifying aspect. In Being, this activity of the

concept has not come to the surface yet; the development and transition from one

determination of Being to another, although conditioned by this activity of the

concept, is never made manifest. Reflection comes to the fore in the Doctrine of

Essence, where Hegel takes up explicitly the drive to the unification, the self-

relational activity of thought. The difference between the Doctrines of Essence and

the Concept, according to Longuenesse, lies in the degree of assimilation of

everything external to the reflective activity of thought. In the former there is still

content given to the reflection that is taken as standing external to it. The complete

self-relational transparency is not yet accomplished, which serves as the impetus for

the continuous effort of reflection. In the latter, this resistance to unity has been

overcome and all determinations are acknowledged as the products of the activity of

thought. Longuenesse is right, indeed: The complete integration of determinations

within the self-related holistic unity is one of the key developments that becomes

accomplished in the concept, but it needs to be mentioned that this activity is

integrated within the fundamental ontological substructure that Hegel calls the

concept as one of its three moments, the moment that Hegel will describe as the

creative power that produces all determinations: universality.

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3) Determinations of Reflection as the Basic Functions
Through Which Conceptual Content is Generated

The determinations of reflection, or essentialities, include identity, difference,

diversity, opposition, and contradiction. This is the list of the basic functions that

guide the process of reflection in its effort of generating conceptual content. Hegel

claims that these fundamental forms were traditionally taken as “the universal laws”

that are “accepted as true by all thinking that grasps their meaning”:

The determinations of reflection have customarily been

singled out in the form of propositions which were said
to apply to everything. They were said to have the
status of universal laws of thought that lie at the base of
all thinking; to be inherently absolute and
indemonstrable but immediately and indisputably
recognized and accepted as true by all thought upon
grasping their meaning. (WL 409.6)

The question that used to be ignored and thus left unanswered by the tradition was

this: What is the reason behind this apparent self-evidence of the universal laws of

thought? Of note at this point is that Hegel is not merely raising the theme of

analytic vs. synthetic relations. In other words, he is not repeating the Kantian thesis

that what the tradition took for analytic was in reality synthetic and thus

presupposed the unifying activity of thought. Hegel wants to go further and assert

that even the most basic analytic relations imply functions of thought that need to

be closely examined. The self-evidence of the universal laws of thought, such as

“everything is identical with itself,” needs to be demystified and the ground for their

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validity have to be made explicit. Once this is done, Hegel claims that we shall

discern a relational structure of the most basic determinations that are present even

on this level. The essentialities and the universal laws that correspond to them are

not the atomic units given as the most basic pieces of the mosaic that make up

actuality. “In the form of the proposition, therefore, in which identity is expressed,

there lies more than simple, abstract identity; in it, there lies this pure movement of

reflection in which the other appears as schein” (WL 415.4). Instead, they are the

functions of thought, the reflective activity, which, when closely examined, reveal

relatedness to one another.

Now, a striking testimony of the Kantian origins of Hegel’s project emerges

from how closely the determinations of reflection deduced and examined by Hegel

in the Doctrine of Essence correspond to the concepts of comparison that Kant

presents in The Amphiboly chapter of the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant’s goal in

Amphiboly is to distinguish between the reflection that compares concept and the

reflection that compares sensible representations. The concepts concerned in

Amphiboly include identity and difference, agreement and conflict, inner and outer,

and matter and form. Kant also draws an explicit parallel between the concepts of

comparison and the logical forms of judgment “Prior to all objective judgments we

compare the concepts, with respect to identity (of many representations under one

concept) for the sake of universal judgments, or their difference, for the generation

of particular ones, with regard to agreement, for affirmative judgments, or

opposition, for negative ones, etc.”(A262/B318). As Longuenesse has shown in her

detailed study of the concepts of comparison, they are, for Kant, the basic operations

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of thought involved in the generation of empirical concepts. The first three pairs of

the concepts of comparison correspond almost one to one to the determinations of

reflection from The Essence chapter of Hegel’s Logic, while the last pair that deals

with the modality of judgment is also reflected in the Hegelian system, as we shall

see. Hence, in what follows I shall first present Kant’s account of the concepts of

comparison in a manner that closely follows Longuenesse’s detailed analysis of

them. Through this analysis, it shall also become apparent that the concepts of

comparison correspond to the logical functions of judgment. Having gained a good

understanding of the key element of the Kantian system, I shall return to Hegel’s

text, take a close look at his deduction of the determinations of reflection, and draw

the relation between the Kantian and the Hegelian accounts of the elementary

function of thought that generates empirical determinations. This side-by-side

reading of Kant’s and Hegel’s texts should allow us to see how much light can we

shed on the role that the Hegelian determinations of reflection play in the

generation of empirical concept based on illuminating the corresponding function of

concepts of comparison in the Kantian system.

4) Longuenesse’s Thesis About the Key Role of the

Concepts of Comparison in Concept-Generation

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 Hegel’s discussion of essentialities and reflection in general makes it clear

that these operations are the elemental functions of the activity of thought through

which conceptual content is generated. However, Hegel focuses on their deduction

and the articulation of the relations between the determinations of reflection,

instead of presenting an account of how exactly they are employed in the process of

generating empirical concepts. In other words, Hegel is mostly concerned with

demonstrating how identity implies operation of reflection that is tied to

differentiation, which in turn is related to diversity, etc. But he takes for granted the

transparency of how these interrelated determinations function as the basic

operations guiding the process of the generation of conceptual content. It is

interesting that Beatrice Longuenesse makes a similar observation regarding Kant.

As she points out, in The Critique of Pure Reason Kant also assumes the familiarity of

his readers about the use of concept of comparison in the generation of empirical

concepts. Kant is explicit about it only in his lectures on Logic (Longuenesse 1998,

131-132).

The first thing to note about the Kantian concepts of comparison (or the

concepts of reflection, as Kant also calls them) is that they are a very specific kind of

concepts. Instead of being concepts of object and their properties, Kantian concepts

of reflection represent the forms of activity of comparison that the mind is engaged

in. Now Kant’s discussion in Amphiboly focuses on the employment of these

concepts in comparison of concepts in judgments, but as Beatrice Longuenesse

conclusively demonstrates, the very same operations are involved in the activity of

the generation of new concepts. “[I]n its fully achieved discursive form is a

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comparison of concepts, but in ‘silent,’ or embryonic form, is a comparison of

sensible representations in order to form concepts” (Longuenesse 1998, 124).

Hence, these basic functions of the operation of the mind, which Kant calls concepts

of comparison or concepts of reflection and Hegel presents as determinations of

reflection or essentialities, are in operation both with building concepts from

sensations (singular and immediate representations) and from already available

concepts (universal and reflected representations).

An exploration of the Kantian concepts of reflection and identifying their

correspondence with the Hegelian determinations of reflection from the Doctrine of

Essence shall help us to clarify the role of these determinations in the generation of

empirical content and subsequently the aspect of Hegel’s theory of the concepts that

is associated with the determination-generating activity. In other words, with

illuminating the way in which these functions guide the process of generation of

conceptual content, we shall shed light on the internal structure of that moment of

the Hegelian notion of the Concept, which is associated with conceptual content

generation—the universality. As such, what follows in this chapter is an exploration

of the internal architectonics of the universal moment of the Concept, to the close

study of which I shall turn in the subsequent two chapters of this work.

4.1) Identity and difference

The first pair of concepts Kant considers is identity and difference, which he

associates with the quantitative judgment. Identity corresponds to the universal,

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and difference to particular judgment. “Prior to all objective judgments we compare

the concepts, with respect to identity (of many representations under one concept)

for the sake of universal judgments, or their difference, for the generation of

particular ones” (A262/B317). The identity we are dealing with in universal

judgment obtains in relation between the determinations falling under the subject-

concept in regard to the predicate-concept. For example, statements such as “All

bodies are divisible,” or stated more generally “all As are B,” assert the identity not

of the concepts of A and B but of those determinations that are thought under A with

respect to the concept B. In other words, the statement means: this x-body is

divisible, that y-body is also divisible, another z-body is divisible as well, etc. Hence,

“All bodies are divisible.”

On the other hand, particular judgment, such as “Some divisible things are

bodies,” or stated more generally, “some As are B,” introduce difference—while this

divisible-x (for example, this desk) is a body, but that divisible-y (for example, the

time interval used to write this sentence) is not. In other words, x and y are different

with respect to the concept of “body.” In this respect, x and y that are both thought

under the concepts of divisibility are determined as different with respect to their

relation to the concept of body. If, in the case of universal judgment, all

determinations falling under the concept were identical in regard to their relation to

concept B, with particular judgment they are differentiated into groups with

different relations to the concept B. In other words, when applying the concept of

comparison identity and difference we are engaging in the process of reflection that

is aiming at determining the extension of the domains of the two concepts that are

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being compared. This internal differentiation of the initial self-unity is what we shall

see when Hegel introduces difference as the second determination of reflection after

identity. Both Kant and Hegel present identity and difference as the unity and its

internal differentiation. With Kant, the extension of the one determination is

differentiated into two parts, one belonging to another determination and the other

excluded from it. With Hegel, as we shall see, the very same move of internal

differentiation of the unity will be restated in more general terms.

Now, according to Longuenesse, the very same formal structures are guiding

our conceptual-content-generating activity.

[I]n order to form concepts, we sift through our sensible

representations by means of our concepts of
comparison, which thus guide the formation of concepts
for judgments. Recognition of the (generic) identity of
the “rule of our apprehension” in different
representations yields a universal judgment.
Recognition of the difference of the “rule of our
apprehension” in various representations yields
particular judgment. (Longuenesse 1998, 134)

In other words, it is through the identifying and differentiating activities of the mind

engaged in the process of apprehension of representations that new determinations

are generated. The process of reflection that attends apprehension of a variety of

representations and is guided by these functions of comparison is geared to

generating new empirical concepts. For example, this tree (x), that tree (y), and

another tree (z) all have such and such identical types of leaves, trunks, branches,

etc., which differentiates them from numerous other representations that are also

apprehended as trees. Based on the shared properties that set these trees apart

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from others, I can arrive at a new concept that includes the shared properties, a

concept under which falls a certain subcategory of the object apprehended as trees.

4.2) Agreement and Opposition

The second pair of the concepts of comparison Kant considers is agreement

and conflict. “Prior to all objective judgments we compare the concepts, … with

regard to agreement, for affirmative judgments, or opposition, for negative ones,

etc.” (A262/B318). In relating two determinations to each other, not only do we

specify how they are related regarding their extension—whether one is fully or only

partially included in the other—we also determine whether this relation of

extensions is positive or negative. In other words, we are making the determination

of whether the extension of one concept is fully included (agreement) within the

domain of the other, or fully excluded (opposition) from it; or whether they are

partially included or partially excluded from each other. If identity and difference

were related to quantitative judgment, the agreements and opposition are related to

qualitative judgments (affirmative vs. negative). Hence, with the two pairs of

already-considered concepts of comparison, we can have four different ways of

relating determinations: identical agreement, or “all As are B”; identical opposition,

or “no As are B”; differentiated agreement, or “some As are B”; and differentiated

opposition, or “some As are not B.”

Longuenesse relates the second pair of functions, agreement and conflict,

with the previous one as mutually implying each other: “These two concepts of

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comparison [agreement and conflict], and the acts of comparison they guide and

reflect, are clearly inseparable from identity and difference. Earlier, we saw how

judgments such as ‘all As are B’ presuppose acts of comparison with respect to

identity. But comparison with respect to agreement is clearly involved as well: as to

its content, B is in agreement with A” (Longuenesse 1998, 138). In other words,

within the process of reflection that identifies one determination with another is

involved agreement between their respective acts of apprehension, just as the

process of differentiation involves registering an opposition. Delineation of

extensional relations between determinations is inseparably tied with discerning

agreement and conflict between their respective contents. We shall see that Hegel

will advance a similar point in his discussion of determinations of reflection by

deducing the relations of diversity and opposition from differentiation of self-

identical unity. That is to say, just as with Kant, identification and differentiation

implies discerning agreement and conflict, so with Hegel identification and

differentiation implies diversity and opposition.

Therefore, together with identity and difference as the functions that guide

the process of the generation of empirical content are also involved agreement and

conflict as integral elements of the very same activity. In other words, the process of

generating empirical concepts involves reflection that is searching for instances of

apprehension of representations that are in agreement and/or conflict with one

another and through discerning such relations gradually augmenting the content of

existing concepts, forming new ones, etc.

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4.3) Inner and Outer

In addition to identity/difference and agreement/opposition, the concepts of

reflection involved in the generation of empirical determinations, according to Kant,

also include inner and outer. If the previous two pairs of concepts were related to

quantitative and qualitative judgments, the present one corresponds to the

judgment or relation: “If we reflect merely logically, then we simply compare our

concepts with each other in the understanding, seeing whether two of them contain

the very same thing, whether they contradict each other or not, whether something

is contained in the concept internally or is added to it” (A279/B335). The inner

relation between the determinations being related stands for attributing the

predicate-determination to the subject determination without any external

condition. In other words, there are no additional conditions that need to obtain in

order to predicate the former to the latter. “All trees have branches” or “some trees

are evergreen” would be examples of such a relation. This form of relation

corresponds to categorical judgment. The outer relation, on the other hand, needs

some external condition to be obtained, which necessitates the attribution of

predicate-determination to the subject determination. An example of this could be

“if roots of a tree are cut off, the tree will die.” Moreover, this external condition

does not have to be related to the subject-determination: The outer relation can

have not only the form of “If A is X, then A is Y” but also “If A is X, then B is Y.” For

example, “If Professor Kant walks by, the clocks will strike four times” or “If the

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climate dramatically changes, many animal species will perish.” One more important

thing to note here is that, if with the other concepts of reflection we were relating

two determinations, now we are relating two relations. As such, inner/outer formal

functions are geared to articulating complex systematic relations between

determinations and the relations between determinations. It is the systematizing

function immanent to the determination-generating process.

These functions (inner and outer), together with the two above-discussed

pairs (identity/difference and agreement/conflict), are not merely used to relate

already-existing concepts, but also are guiding the process of reflection through

which conceptual content of empirical determinations is generated. In the process of

the formation of empirical concepts, we examine appearances with the aim to

discern the formal structure of either inner or outer relations between its

determinations. For example, we observe that this x, which is a tree, has branches,

and that y, which is also cognized as tree, has branches as well. We repeat this

process until we eventually come up with a general rule that states that trees have

braches. This is clearly an example of an inner relationship discerned amongst

apprehended representations. On the other hand, we can also parse experiences

with the aim of identifying external conditions under which new states of affairs will

be obtained. For example, if this piece of metal x is heated it melts, if that other piece

of metal y is heated, it also will be transformed from solid into fluid state, etc. Thus I

arrive at a general rule that if metal is heated, it melts. This is clearly an example of

an outer relation between the concepts of metal and fluid, established based on the

external condition of increased temperature.

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 The search for the inner and outer relations between the determinations

offered through experience is what constitutes the process of looking for

regularities in nature and identifying empirical laws. This is what Kant has in mind

when claiming in the Transcendental Deduction that understanding is continuously

busy with “scrutinizing appearances in search for rules” (A126). Empirical laws of

nature are nothing but a system of interrelated concepts that articulate rules of

inner and outer relation. The former present the features that the given

determination possesses due to its own constitution, while the latter articulate the

necessary course of development if specific conditions are to obtain. It is important

to note here that with the necessity involved in both the inner and the outer

relations corresponding to the hypothetical judgments (“all As are B,” which is the

same as “all x-s that are A, are also B”; “if A is L then A is M”; or “if A is K then B is

M”) is implied another relational category: contradiction. This can be made evident

from the fact that the very same relations can be formulated as a contradiction

between two propositions, respectively, between “x is A” and “x is not B,” “A is L”

and “A is not M,” or again between “A is X” and “B is not Y.” Here two relations that

are perfectly non-problematic when taken on their own cannot be asserted together

due to their mutual contradiction to each other. As we shall see, contradiction is the

last element in the system of determinations of reflection that Hegel presents in the

Essence chapter, and, indeed, here with Kant as well, it completes the portion of the

concepts of reflection that is involved in the generation of conceptual content. The

last remaining pair, matter and form, as we shall soon see, has a different function.

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4.4) Matter and Form

Kant opens his discussion of the fourth and the last pair of concepts of

comparison with the following claim: “Matter and form. These are two concepts that

ground all other reflection, so inseparably are they bound up with every use of the

understanding. The former signifies the determinable in general, the latter its

determination” (A266/B322). Hence, while the previous three pairs of concepts

were specific functions guiding reflection in the process of the generation of

empirical concepts, matter and form are seen by Kant to perform a somewhat

different role. Instead of being specific forms of relating determinations, matter and

form describe the totality of reflective activity that has the previously discussed six

forms as the immanent functions of its operation. Kant goes even further and claims

that they not only “ground reflection” but also are “inseparably … bound up with

every use of the understanding” To the broader meaning of this claim I shall return

shortly, but for now we are looking at the application of these functions that is

geared to generating new conceptual content. For Kant the process guided by the

concepts of comparison through which empirical determinations are formed is

nothing but the application of form onto matter or determination of determinable.

But if we keep in mind that the outcome of this application is the generation of new

concepts that is matter of the logical forms of judgment, we can conclude that the

application of forms of thought (concepts of comparison that correspond to the

logical forms of judgment) is geared to generating the matter of thought (concepts).

In other words, the very same functions that relate already formed concepts are also

the functions through which these concepts are generated. As Longuenesse puts it,

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“The thesis that the concepts of comparison, ‘inner’ and ‘outer,’ ‘agreement’ and

‘conflict,’ ‘identity’ and ‘difference,’ guide the formation of concepts from the

sensible given is equivalent to saying that the matter of all thought (viz. concepts) is

generated by the very activity that combines concepts in accordance with its proper

form (the forms of judgment)” (Longuenesse 1998, 162).

Indeed, as we have seen, the previous three pairs of concepts of comparison

correspond to the logical forms of judgment: the forms that related concepts with

respect to their extension—to the quantitative judgment; with respect to their

content to the qualitative judgment; and with respect to the inner/out conditionality

of their interrelations to the judgments of relation. Hence, one ought not to be

surprised that the conceptual content generated via the application of the concepts

of comparison will be amenable to the logical forms of judgment. Empirical

concepts, which are the matter to which the forms of judgments are applied, are

generated through the process guided by the functions that correspond one-to-one

to these very functions of judgments.

The fact that the fourth pair of the concepts of reflection is—different from

the previously considered ones—not additional formal elements that determine the

activity of thought engaged in the generation of determinations is a reflection of the

correspondence between the logical functions of judgment on which the categories

are based and the concepts of comparison. In the case of the logical functions of

judgment also, Kant explicitly states that the judgments of modality do not add

anything new to the content of relations offered in the table; “the modality of

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judgments is a quite special function of them, which is distinctive in that it

contributes nothing to the content of the judgment (for besides quantity, quality,

and relation there is nothing more that constitutes the content of judgment), but

rather concerns only the value of the copula in relation to thinking in general”

(A74/B100).

Hence, as is the case with the concepts of comparison matter and form, so

with the judgments of modality the very same theme of the totality of thought comes

to the fore. In the former case, instead of specific forms of reflection (such as with

identity, difference, etc.), we were dealing with the whole process of application of

these functions. In the latter case, the modality of a proposition relies on the totality

of empirical knowledge as its background. To better understand the meaning of this

last point we can recall Kant’s distinction between problematic, assertoric, and

apodictic judgments: “Problematic judgments are those in which one regards the

assertion or denial as merely possible (arbitrary). Assertoric judgments are those in

which it is considered actual (true). Apodictic judgments are those in which it is

seen as necessary” (A75/B100). To see what Kant means here, let’s consider the

distinction between assertoric and apodictic judgments. The relation between them

can be described as follows: The generation of apodictic judgments is accomplished

via the gradual accumulation of the assertoric types of judgments. Thus, if I observe

that this swan is white, that another swan is also white, yet another one is white as

well, I can finally conclude with a general rule that all swans are white. But it is

important to note here that this is only possible if the totality of empirical

experience does not include contrary cases, i.e., there are no black swans, in this

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case. Hence, without the totality of empirical knowledge as the background, the

distinction between the assertoric and apodictic judgments of empirical laws makes

no sense. The same point can be made regarding the difference between

problematic and assertoric judgments.

As we have seen in the above-cited passage, Kant claims that the concepts of

matter and form are not only applicable to the activity of the generation of empirical

concepts, but they in general are “inseparably bound up with every use of the

understanding.” Now, understanding for Kant means our active faculty of cognition,

which he also often describes as spontaneity and contrasts with sensibility as the

passive faculty of receptivity; and includes three types of actions of the mind:

formation of concepts, subsuming objects under concepts as well as lower concepts

to higher concepts, and formation of inferences. My discussion here has been mostly

focusing on the formation of concepts and how application of the logical functions of

judgment in this process yields generation of conceptual content. But Kant makes

clear that the application of form for the generation of matter is taking place not

only in this but “with every use of the understanding.” In other words, the

matter/form relation can be discerned on a lower level where the concepts are not

matter but the forms and the objects are their matter (subsuming objects under

concepts), as well as on a higher level where the judgments themselves are the

matter of the inferences (formation of inferences). As Longuenesse puts it,

we can go further in our use of the concepts “matter”

and “form” to reflect the generation of concepts through
comparison/reflection/abstraction. (1) We can go
further down, toward the determinable, and consider

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 the matter for which the concepts themselves are the
form, namely the object. (2)We can go further up,
toward the determination, and consider the form for
which judgments are the matter, namely forms of
inference, and the form of a system in general.
(Longuenesse 162)

The concepts of comparison, the role of which in the generation of empirical

concepts we have examined, are also asserted to be ingrained in the empirical

objects themselves as the immanent elements of their constitutive structure. This is

apparent from the way Kant conceives objects of experience—for him they are

grounded on the rule-guided synthesis of intuitions, these rules of synthesis being

empirical concepts. As we have seen, however, the generation of empirical concepts

is nothing but the application of forms on matter, that is, formation of determination

through the activity of the mind guided by the functions present in the previous

three pairs of the concepts of comparison. Hence, the form-matter relation within

the concepts implies the form-matter relation within the objects of experience. But

we can look at this issue from another angle by recalling Kant’s notion of the

transcendental object from the first edition of The Critique of Pure Reason, which is

basically the formal structure made up of the logical functions of judgment and is

present in every object of cognition as the very condition of its possibility, as its

immanent formal structure. The transcendental object, comprised of the functions

of unity identical to those of the concepts of comparison, is therefore a necessary

condition without which no combination of representations into an objected of

experience is possible.

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 The pure concept of this transcendental object (which
in all of our cognitions is really always one and the same
= X) is that which in all of our empirical concepts in
general can provide relation to an object, i.e., objective
reality. Now this concept cannot contain any
determinate intuition at all, and therefore concerns
nothing but that unity which must be encountered in a
manifold of cognition insofar as it stands in relation to
an object. This relation, however, is nothing other than
the necessary unity of consciousness, thus also of
synthesis of the manifold through a common function of
the mind for combining it in one representation. Now
since this unity must be regarded as necessary a priori
(since the cognition would otherwise be without an
object), the relation to a transcendental object, i.e., the
objective reality of our empirical cognition, rests on the
transcendental law that all appearances, insofar as
objects are to be given to us through them, must stand
under a priori rules of their synthetic unity. (A109)

Thus, the logical functions of judgment comprising the formal structure of the

transcendental object are the elements that afford “objective reality” to the

synthesis of sensible intuitions. Now, as we have seen, these functions correspond

and are formally identical to the concepts of comparison, and the process of

reflection guided by these concepts is described by Kant as an imposition of form on

matter. Therefore, matter and form, which are described by Kant as the “two

concepts that ground all other reflection” guided by the remaining six concepts of

comparison, are present not only on the level of generation of empirical concepts

but also on the level of formative synthesis of objects of representation. In fact, the

generation of empirical objects out of sensible given is nothing but the process of

combination of the latter in accordance to the formal structure of the transcendental

object, hence the generation of the form within the matter.

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 The matter-form relation can be discerned not only on this “lower” level, but

also on the “higher” level where the judgments themselves are the matter and the

inferential relations that structure them aiming to give them systematic unity—their

form. Kant presents a lengthy discussion of this drive toward systematic unity in the

Introduction to The Critique of Judgment. Reflective activity is guided by the very

same functions that generate empirical concepts and objects of experience while

searching for the patterns of systematic relations between judgments and aiming at

tying them through inferential relations into a unified whole. Hence, the reflective

activity as the form-generating process that immanently structures its matter is

present on all levels of the Kantian transcendental system—from the generation of

empirical objects of representation, via the generation of concepts, all the way to the

unified theories structuring the judgments into a systematic whole.

5) The Form–Matter Relation in Hegel’s Concept

It is striking that the exactly same relation between form and matter we have

just seen in Kant is present on the most fundamental level of Hegel’s ontology—his

theory of the Concept. Moreover, as is the case with Kant, here it is also related to

the process of the generation of conceptual content. The Concept, which I shall

examine closely in the remaining two chapters, is the kernel of Hegel’s ontological

theory; it is his vision of actuality properly comprehended. For Hegel the Concept is

a complex relational structure consisting of three moments: universality,

particularity, and individuality. Now the relation between the key moment of this

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fundamental ontological structure, universality, with another moment, particularity,

is described by Hegel as that of the form to the content. Moreover, the universal

moment of the concept is presented as the activity, or “creative force,” through

which conceptual content is generated. The particular moment, on the other hand, is

the system of determinations produced by universality. The similarities with Kant

don’t end here, as even the terminology Hegel uses in describing the universal as the

process (e.g., absolute self-identity positing differences, generating particular

determinations as diversity, etc.) is clearly reminiscent of the Kantian account of the

generation of concepts, as the logical functions of judgment for Kant are identical to

the transcendental apperception—they are the functions of self-relation (§19, CPR).

We shall also see that Hegel, while discussing the universal moment as the process

of generating conceptual content, makes numerous direct references to the Essence

chapter of the Logic, where determinations of reflection corresponding to the

Kantian concepts of comparison and logical functions of judgment are presented.

Here is a passage where Hegel describes the positing of determinations by

the universal as a generation of differentiated content in relation to which it (the

universal moment) functions as the form:

The particular has this universality in it as its essence;

but in so far as the determinateness of the difference is
posited and thereby has being, the universality is form
in it, and the determinateness as such is its content.
Universality becomes form inasmuch as the difference
is something essential, just as in the pure universal it is,
on the contrary, only absolute negativity and not a
difference posited as such. (WL 536, 12:39)

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The “pure universal” is thus absolute negativity, the activity that aims at the

generation of the differentiated determinations and it is related to its product as the

form to the content. Just like Kant’s form-matter relation was referring to the

activity of reflection through which empirical concepts were generated, so here the

universal as the form posits differentiated determinations and is related to them as

to its content. Here is another passage where Hegel describes the universality as the

“creative power” that posits determinate content through self-differentiation and

refers to universality as the form associated with “creativity of the concept”:

It [universality] is creative power as self-referring

absolute negativity. As such, it differentiates itself
internally, and this is a determining, because the
differentiating is one with the universality. Accordingly,
it is a positing of differences that are themselves
universals, self-referring. They become thereby fixed,
isolated differences. The isolated subsistence of the
finite that was earlier determined as its being-for-itself,
also as thinghood, as substance, is in its truth
universality, the form with which the infinite concept
clothes its differences – a form which is equally itself
one of its differences. Herein consists the creativity of
the concept, a creativity which is to be comprehended
only in the concept’s innermost core. (WL 533-34,
12:36-37)

Hence, the Kantian activity of reflection geared to generating empirical concepts and

guided by the concepts of comparison is appropriated by Hegel as the universal

moment of his basic ontological structure: the Concept. The detailed examination of

the universal moment, as well as of the Concept in general, will be undertaken in

subsequent chapters. Here I shall look at that part of the Doctrine of Essence where

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Hegel deduces the basic functions corresponding to the concepts of comparison. He

calls them determinations of reflection or essentialities.

Having considered how the Kantian concepts of reflection guide the process

of the generation of empirical concepts and having seen the correspondence

between them and the Hegelian determinations of reflection, we can already make

some preliminary conclusions about the function of the latter in regard to the

empirical concepts even before moving to a close analysis of their deduction. It is

clear that the determinations of reflection, or essentialities, are not the fundamental

elements making up the ontological landscape (the elaboration of the basic

“furniture” of actuality is the task most directly undertaken in the Doctrine of Being).

Instead, they are the most basic formal functions guiding the activity that generates

this landscape. In other words, identity, difference, diversity, etc., are not primarily

the constituent parts found in the world and represented by the mind, but the basic

functions of activity that generate determinate content of these entities. The

essentialities are the formal features that guide the process of the generation of

empirical concepts, and therefore also of the entities individuated through them.

The self-identity of any determination, its difference from another, etc., are not the

properties that these determinations have in themselves as independent of process

of reflection, but the most elementary forms involved in the process of their

formation. They can surely be “discovered” when one reflects on the entities and

their relations to one another, but not because they originate somewhere outside of

the domain of reflection, but because they have been ingrained within the

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determinations that serve as the condition of the possibility of individuation of these

entities.

What is taking place in the Essentialities chapter is a deduction of these

interrelated functions of thought, identity and difference, diversity and

contradiction, etc., which are the basics forms of the operation of the determination-

generating process that are connected to one another with necessity. The point is

that when something is comprehended as self-identical, it is also implicitly

comprehended as different from something else, and vice versa. What is not taking

place in this chapter is the articulation of qualities that each entity taken by itself or

together with others has, independently of thought and merely represented in

thought. Hence, the well-known criticism of Hegel, as having maintained that

everything is self-contradictory and contradiction is the feature of every single

entity encountered in the world, completely misses the point. Contradiction, just as

other determinations of reflection, is a feature not of the self-sufficient independent

entities given to the mind, but of the process of the generation of the conditions of

individuation of these entities. I shall return to this point after giving a close

treatment of this and other determinations of reflection.

6) Identity
The first determination of reflection is Identity. Hegel describes it as “the

immediacy of reflection. It is not that equality-with-self that being or even nothing is,

but the equality-with-self that has brought itself to unity … pure origination from

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and within itself, essential identity” (WL 411.4). The first thing that needs to be

noted here is both clear surface-level similarity and the radical difference between

Identity and Pure Being with which the entire The Science of Logic commences. Both

are pure indeterminate immediacies, still not yet touched with the mediation that is

about to ensue and bind them with other determinations. Thus, in that sense the

identity is the totality of reflection and not merely its one determination, just like

Pure Being is Being as such prior to any differentiation; “so far, then, identity is still

in general the same as essence” (WL 412.1) or “the identity is, in the first instance,

essence itself, not yet a determination of it, reflection in its entirety, not a distinct

moment of it” (412.3). But there is also a fundamental difference between the

opening determinations of the Doctrine of Being and Identity; as Hegel puts it, if the

former merely “is,” the latter “has brought itself to unity.” Identity is essentially

activity of self-relation: the “equality-with-self” that is continuously reconstituted,

the reflection that “brings itself to unity.”

Clearly we are dealing here not with a property possessed by something in

the world independently of any act of reflection, but with a key feature of any act of

thinking that “brings itself to unity.” This dynamic nature of the first determination

of reflection is what Hegel wants to bring to the fore when describing it as “pure

movement of reflection” (416.2). The fact that Hegel does not take identity to be an

“unmoved simple” property, but an act of identification becomes apparent with the

example he offers to demonstrate that the identity implies difference.

Instead of being the unmoved simple, it surpasses itself

into the dissolution of itself. More is entailed, therefore,

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 in the form of the proposition expressing identity than
simple, abstract identity; entailed by it is this pure
movement of reflection in the course of which there
emerges the other, but only as reflective shine, as
immediate disappearing; “A is” is a beginning that
envisages a something different before it to which the
“A is” would proceed; but the “A is” never gets to it. “A
is...A”: the difference is only a disappearing and the
movement goes back into itself. (WL 360.1-2)

The point is that identity as a form of reflection implies difference because it is not

an “unmoved simple” property that is discerned within an object of thought, but an

active principle of self-relation that in order to return to itself has to introduce

difference, but only as “reflective shine.” Hence, Hegel’s determinations of reflection

are not the most fundamental elements of actuality along the lines of the

Aristotelian categories as the most universal characteristics of what is out there in

the world. For the latter presupposed the representationalist picture of the

universal features of the world expressed in the determination of thought as the

categories. Instead, they are the necessary conditions that any process of reflection

engaged in determination of content has to fulfill.

Identity is the dynamic principle of unification that is present in any action of

thought, for even the other determinations that will be derived from it shortly by

Hegel have to be parts of the unified whole in order to be comprehended as

difference, diversity, etc. For only within a unified whole can difference be thought; if

there is no act of relating one determination with another one as distinct from it and

taking them up together into a self-identical act of reflection, differentiation cannot

be accomplished. This is even clearer in the case of diversity, contradiction, etc.

Hence, identity can be described as the minimal requirement of thought, the

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principal element of any determination. As with Kant, here also we are dealing with

carving out a self-identical domain of determination. In the former case, it was the

identity of plurality of apprehended individuals in regard to the presence of certain

schema of apprehension in all of them, hence the identical acts of unity that all of

them have in common. In the latter case, we have the very same formal structure of

act of identification presented in a more minimalistic vocabulary.

7) Difference
If identity is the moment of reflection that represents the continuous effort

toward reconstitution of unity, difference is the negating force that reshapes existing

determinations and generates new ones: “Difference is the negativity that reflection

possesses in itself” (WL 361). In order to constitute unity, reflective activity has to

integrate determinations within a whole, thus negating their apparent self-

sufficiency and rendering them into the elements of an interrelated unified whole.

Any process of negation, on the other hand, also implies a drive toward unification

as what is negated is taken up within the process of reflection that includes other

determinations. This mutual relatedness is one of the key features of difference and

identity as the essential moments of any act of reflection: “Difference is the whole

and its own moment, just as identity equally is its whole and its moment. – This is to

be regarded as the essential nature of reflection and as the determined primordial

origin of all activity and self-movement. – Both difference and identity make

themselves into moment or positedness because, as reflection, they are negative

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self-reference” (WL 362). Hence, the process of the generation of determinations of

thought for Hegel, on the most fundamental level, is differentiation and

identification. We shall see that this thesis will be restated in the Concept chapter of

the Subjective Logic and specifically in regard to the universal moment of the

concept that Hegel sees as “the creative power” that generates conceptual content.

Here again, just like with identity, Hegel is explicit in arguing that we should

not confuse difference with a feature of the self-sufficient actuality. This is what he is

after when juxtaposing and contrasting difference with otherness. The former is a

feature of the process of reflection, while the latter that of determinate being.

It is the difference of reflection, not the otherness of

existence. One existence and another existence are
posited as lying outside each other; each of the two
existences thus determined over against each other has
an immediate being for itself. The other of essence, by
contrast, is the other in and for itself, not the other of
some other which is to be found outside it; it is simple
determinateness in itself. Also in the sphere of existence
did otherness and determinateness prove to be of this
nature, simple determinateness, identical opposition;
but this identity showed itself only as the transition of a
determinateness into the other. Here, in the sphere of
reflection, difference comes in as reflected, so posited as
it is in itself. (WL 361)

Difference here is the negative moment of thought that deals not with some external,

given determination, but instead is the basic negative function of the act of

reflection. It therefore ought not to be confused with otherness of determinate being.

The latter implies givenness of distinct determinations between which reflection

can move back and forth. Difference on the other hand is the aspect of the process of

reflection that generates empirical determinations and together with identity

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constitutes the most fundamental functions on which the radical plasticity of

empirical determinations rests. Hence, together with identity, difference is the basic

function of determinateness; it is through these two forms, differentiation and

identification, that carving out of the boundaries between determinations is

accomplished. As in Kant, here as well identity and difference are the most basic

functions through which determination is accomplished.

8) Diversity
The subsequent determination of reflection is the unity of identity and

difference, or the application of the latter on the former: “Identity internally breaks

apart into diversity because, as absolute difference in itself, it posits itself as the

negative of itself and these, its two moments (itself and the negative of itself), are

reflections into themselves, are identical with themselves; or precisely because it

itself immediately sublates its negating and is in its determination reflected into

itself” (WL 362). Hence, the differentiated elements are “reflected into” themselves

qua self-identical unities. Indeed, clearly, the minimal condition of any

determination is some form of self-unity; and therefore the determinations that are

generated through the “identity [that] internally breaks apart” is not merely

differentiated determinations but also self-identical ones. And on the other hand,

these determinations can be self-identical only through differentiating from what is

not identical to them. Diversity is, as such, the first immediate result of the unity of

identity and difference. At this stage we can see quite clearly the correspondence

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with the Kantian concepts of reflection. In both cases, the determination of the

domain or extension of diverse concepts is the task accomplished by identification

and differentiation.

With the posited determinations in the picture, we no longer have the

complete transparency of reflection that was there with identity and difference. The

posited determinations stand outside of the complete self-transparency of reflection

and its positive (identity) and negative (difference) moments: “Diversity constitutes

the otherness as such of reflection” (WL 362). But this does not mean that diversity

is a determination of being, something absolutely external to thought; it instead is

the otherness of reflection generated from the process of reflection itself. “The other

of existence has immediate being, where negativity resides, for its foundation. But in

reflection it is self-identity, the reflected immediacy, that constitutes the subsistence

of the negative and its indifference” (WL 362).

With the introduction of the diversity that is the internally posited

differentiated content, differentiation and identification acquire new functions,

namely, as determining likeness and unlikeness amongst the posited determinations;

“this external identity is likeness, and external difference is unlikeness” (WL 363).

What were the positive and the negative moments of activity of reflection in general

are now functions relating the determinations that have been generated through it.

Identity and difference operate within the diversified content as likeness and

unlikeness. Just like in their pure form, however, they mutually implied each other;

unlikeness can only be determined on the background of likeness and vice versa—

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two determinations can be likened to each other as long as they are also unlike, or in

some respect different from, each other. Without this difference they would simply

not be two distinct determinations.

This last point brings us to the complex relation that Hegel stands to

Leibniz’s theory of identity of indiscernibles. On the face of it, he sides with Leibniz

and goes against Kant when stating that numerical distinctness implies difference in

determinations of thought, hence not on the level of sensible given but on the level

of conceptual content.

That everything is different from everything else is an

altogether superfluous proposition, for in the plural of
things there is already implied a multitude and totally
indeterminate diversity. – The principle, however,
“There are no two perfectly like things,” expresses more
than that, for it expresses determinate difference. Two
things are not merely two (numerical multiplicity is
only the repetition of one) but are rather differentiated
by a determination. (WL 366)

Hence, the necessary condition for distinctness, according to Hegel, is determinate

difference. Hegel indeed agrees with Leibniz that all difference is reducible to

conceptual difference, and there are hence no other conditions (such as sensible, as

Kant would have it) that could serve as the ground of numerical distinctness. But on

the other hand, Hegel also sides with Kant against Leibniz in his rejection of the

conception of cognition as a mere perception of content. The world is given to it in

the form of ideas that are preprogrammed to arise in it as perceptions. “The

Leibnizian monad develops its representations from itself but is not their generating

and controlling force; they rise up in it as a froth, indifferent, immediately present to

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each other and to the monad as well” (WL 343). For Hegel, then, what is lacking in

Leibniz is the process of mediation, the activity of generation of the conceptual

content; the Leibnizian ideas, instead of being products of reflection, merely pop up

in the mind like bubbles. Kant, on the other hand, introduces the role of active

reflection as the source of the generation of determinations. The problem with his

stance, according to Hegel, is in setting limits to the active reflection as the source of

determinations and retaining the passive reception of sensations as another source

or determinations. Therefore, ultimately the problem with Kant, according to Hegel,

is that he retains too much of Leibniz by allowing immediately received content as

the ground of differentiation between entities. That is, Kant has rejected the

Leibnizian immediacy or determinate content by placing spontaneity as the source

of generation of the conceptual content, but he does not go far enough for Hegel to

completely eliminate the passive reception content as the immediately given source

of determinations.

9) Opposition
Hegel introduces opposition as “the determinate reflection” in which

difference “finds its completion.” If with diversity, determinations produced through

the process of reflection were related to one another and therefore the question of

their groundedness on the activity of thought was set aside, here it occupies the

center stage of the discussion. The determinations that are related as opposite to one

another are here taken as elements of “the one mediation of the opposition as such,

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in which they are simply only posited moments” (WL 425.3). Hence, instead of

likeness and unlikeness as the modalities of relating diverse determinations, now

we are attending to the unified process of mediation thought, which distinct

determinations as such are posited. From a perspective that looks at diversity of

determinations as if from an external point of view, we transition to the one that

approaches the generation of these determinations, having been accomplished

through the process of reflection, that opposes them to one another. In other words,

the generation of determinate conceptual content on the most fundamental level

involves the identification and differentiation of the pairs of determinations that are

opposed to one another. One element of the pair is positive, the other negative, but at

the same time each side can be either positive or negative.

The two sides are thus merely diverse, and because

their determinateness – that they are positive or
negative – constitutes their positedness as against each
other, each is not specifically so determined internally
but is only determinateness in general; to each side,
therefore, there belongs indeed one of the two
determinacies, the positive or the negative; but the two
can be interchanged, and each side is such as can be
taken equally as positive or negative. (WL 369)

Negative and positive are the simultaneously posited sides of the act of the

generation of mutually opposing determinations, and neither side is intrinsically

positive or negative. They are the basic functions of the process of differentiation,

and this is why Hegel claimed that opposition is the completion of difference.

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10) Contradiction
Given the foregoing, the process of reflection that generates conceptual

content proceeds with positing a determination and in the same breath excluding its

otherness. Not only is the diversity of determinations generated thought this process

of reflection, but the determinations as opposing one another are determined

through negation of the other, and as such they are only through one another or

constituted through reciprocal opposition. But having laid out these basic functions

involved in the formation of conceptual content, we can also discern one more

formal relation that is necessarily involved within the process that is guided with

this constellation of functions. This formal function is contradiction.

Each act of determination has two necessary aspects that correspond to the

two main functions from the determinations of reflection, identity, and difference.

The first aspect is that it is self-identical, and the second, that it is what it is through

differentiation from what it is not. The former can be seen as the positive, and the

latter as the negative moment of the determination. When closely analyzed,

however, each one of the sides will lead to necessary transition into their opposites

(433.3).

The positive is contradiction – in that, as the positing of

self-identity by the excluding of the negative, it makes
itself into a negative, hence into the other which it
excludes from itself. This last, as excluded, is posited
free of the one that excludes; hence, as reflected into
itself and itself as excluding. The reflection that excludes
is thus the positing of the positive as excluding the
other, so that this positing immediately is the positing of
its other which excludes it. (WL 375)

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The claim that Hegel is making here is that any act of positive determinations is also

an immediate determination of what it excludes, thus of the negative. The positing of

a determination is possible only through the exclusion of what does not belonging to

it, hence simultaneously determining what is excluded. Thus the act of positing a

determination is always at the same time the act of determining what is excluded

from it. Therefore, when we are dealing with a complex system of interrelated

determinations, the generation of any new determination is not merely related to

the specifically posited content but at the same time with the totality that is

excluded from it.

This is only one side of what Hegel calls “absolute contradiction,” its positive

aspect. In addition to this, it also has the negative component: contradiction

discerned from the opposite side of the act of determination, or “the absolute

contradiction of the negative” (WL 432). At first, the very same schema as we have

seen from the positive side—the determination as simultaneously posited (thus

reflected) in what it excludes—can be discerned: “Considered in itself as against the

positive, the negative is positedness as reflected into unlikeness to itself, the

negative as negative” (WL 375). But in this case, we have an additional aspect that

needs to be factored in, namely, that we are dealing not with positive but negative

determination, which immediately implies the negation of the opposite: “But the

negative is itself the unlike, the non-being of another; consequently, reflection is in

its unlikeness its reference rather to itself” (WL 375). Hence, the relation that we

had to explicate in the case of the positive, which is still there and can be explicated

in the negative, is in addition to that which is also immediately present on this side

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of determination. This is what Hegel is claiming in this passage, “This is therefore

the same contradiction which the positive is, namely positedness or negation as self-

reference. But the positive is only implicitly this contradiction, is contradiction only

in itself; the negative, on the contrary, is the posited contradiction” (WL 375).

Having delineated the basic relational structure involved in any act of

determination, we can conclude that the contradiction is the relational function

immanent to the process of the generation of conceptual content and that it emerges

from the opposition between the positive and the negative moments of any act of

determination. Hence, contradiction is the element ingrained in the relational

structure that is necessarily present with any process of generation of determinate

content. It is the tension between seeming self-subsistence of what is posited and its

constitutedness by the system of relations that are left external to it.

My analysis of Hegel’s essentialities or the determinations of reflection that

was carried out in this chapter on the background of the Kantian concepts of

comparison aimed at shedding light on the role they play in the generation of

empirical determinations. These basic functions of unity are the forms of relating

determinations to one another through which the formation of empirical concepts

takes place. Our investigation into the details of how the functions identical to the

Hegelian essentialities are operating in the generation of empirical determinations

within the Kantian system has shed light on the functioning of essentialities in the

empirical concept generating process. As it has also been apparent, the analysis

undertaken in this chapter should be understood as a detailed exploration within

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the immanent structure of the universal moment of the concept—the moment that

Hegel associates with the generation of conceptual content. The two remaining

chapters will be dedicated to a close analysis of this fundamental ontological

structure of Hegel’s ontology—his theory of the concept.

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CHAPTER 4: The Logical Structure of the Concept

1) The Concept as the Centerpiece of Hegel’s

Transcendental Ontology
In the previous chapter, I presented a detailed account of Hegel’s vision of the

process of generating conceptual content and the meta-concepts that function as the

basic forms that carry it out. I argued that the determinations of reflection

presented by Hegel in the Doctrine of Essence were the normative authority-

conferring basic schemata, through the application of which empirical concepts and

their determinate content were generated. It has also become apparent that these

basic determinations of reflection can be traced back to the Kantian logical functions

of judgment, which on their part were also basic forms of the activity of the mind

through which both empirical and a priori concepts were generated. This Kantian

thread, however, does not end there on the level of the Doctrine of Essence—as we

shall see, it weaves its way all the way to the foundations of the Hegelian system. If

the determinations of reflection are the results of Hegel’s appropriation of the

Kantian logical functions of judgment, the Doctrine of the Concept can be seen as an

extended commentary on the central thesis of Kant’s transcendental deduction:

“object is that in the concept of which manifold is united”

The animating idea of Hegel’s Logic, and thus the central thesis of his

transcendental ontology, is that reality properly comprehended is the concept—“the

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cognition that truly comprehends the object is the cognition of it as it is in and for

itself, and that the Concept is its very objectivity” (WL 590.2) The present and the

following chapters will be dedicated to the task of spelling out what exactly Hegel

means by the term concept, what the assumptions and implications are of such a

conception of reality, and where this thesis positions Hegel in relation to alternative

ontological theories. As we shall see, what Hegel means by the concept is very

different from the ordinary understanding of the term as a certain kind of mental

representations or abstract universals that refer to the things in the mind-external

world. The more deeply we descend in analyzing his theory of the concept, the more

apparent it shall become that what Hegel is doing in this crucial part of the Logic is

laying the ground for a fundamentally new ontological vision that directly emerges

from the Kantian transcendental philosophy, putting behind many deeply rooted

(and still often encountered) dogmas of the hitherto dominant tradition.

The term concept for Hegel stands for a complex ontological structure that

consists of three elements (or, in his words, moments), as well as the schema of

relations between them. This separation into relations and relata, however, is

somewhat artificial, as the moments of the concept and the schemata of mediation

between them are mutually dependent and can be adequately grasped only in

unison. Hence, merely dissecting the concept into its components is not going to give

us a comprehensive account of what the concept means. It is also crucial to describe

the way in which the moments of the concept are related to one another. The

detailed analysis of the nature of the three moments of the concept and the schema

of their relation is presented by Hegel in the first section of The Doctrine of the

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Concept, specifically in its first and third chapters, The Concept and The Syllogism.

While The Concept chapter focuses on the moments, The Syllogism presents several

different schemas of mediation between them. These schemas, which constitute

different ontological models as I shall show shortly, are arranged in an ascending

degree of proximity to the Hegelian vision of actuality that on the one hand serves as

the final element of this set, and on the other presents the fully mediated structure

of the concept.

Hegel describes the relation between the concept and the syllogism in the

following words: “the syllogism is the completely posited Concept” (WL 664) and “in

the syllogism … their [moments of the concept] determinate unity is posited” (WL

664). The technical term posited for Hegel implies “made explicit” or “manifest”;

therefore, the development from the Concept chapter to the Syllogism chapter is a

process of self-manifestation of the concept. Although it is only at the end of this

process that the successful model of the unified inner structure of the concept will

emerge, it is still of crucial importance to closely examine the entire development,

because an adequate understanding of each new stage of mediation assumes

familiarity with what has previously taken place. The three moments of the

concept—universality, particularity, and individuality—undergo significant

transformation as they traverse the stages of mediation via syllogistic structures, at

each stage leaving its footprint in the moments of the concept. As we shall see, by

the end of Hegel’s Syllogism chapter, all three terms will have acquired meaning

quite different from what they had at its beginning.

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 While examining the details of the development in the Doctrine of the

Concept, it is important to keep in mind its significant difference from what has been

covered in the previous parts of the Logic: “The progression of the Concept is no

longer either passing-over or shining into another, but development; for the

[moments] that are distinguished are immediately posited at the same time as

identical with one another and with the whole , and [each] determinacy is as a free

being of the whole Concept” (EL, par 161, pg 237). Hence, if prior to this point in the

text, the development involved changing of the subject–matter, or as Hegel puts it,

“passing-over” from one area within the onto-logical space to another, in the

Doctrine of the Concept the different stages of development are “posited … as

identical with one another” The last form of syllogistic mediation is describing the

very same actuality as the first one but more adequately comprehended. Thus, what

Hegel calls “development” is a gradual deepening of understanding of the logical

structure of the concept; every new form of mediation between its elements is a

more adequate depiction of their fundamental unity. The third part of the Logic

therefore can be described as an account of the epigenesis of the Hegelian

Concept—the centerpiece of his transcendental ontological system.

1.1) The Kantian Origins

Hegel’s Doctrine of the Concept is the most direct testimony of the Kantian

origins of his system. It draws on the task undertaken in the Doctrine of Essence,

where the basic functions employed in the empirical concept generating activity,

which includes reflection as a form of activity but is not limited to it, as it also

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includes non-mental activity—or, rather, rejects the distinction between the two as

a part of overall paradigm shift that leaves behind the dualistic ontology altogether.

The Doctrine of the Concept also presents an account of the relational structure that

includes this empirical concept generating activity together with the determinations

that it produces as the integral parts of the larger whole, which Hegel calls actuality.

In other words, if the determinations of reflection are meta-concepts that exhibit the

functions guiding the process of generating empirical concepts, the subject matter of

the doctrine of the concept can be described as the meta-meta-concept that presents

the architectonics of the relation between the concept-generating process, the

totality of empirical concepts, and actuality.

1.1.1) Self-Relationality

As we shall see, amongst several other crucial similarities with Kant, one of

the defining features of Hegel’s basic ontological structure is its self-relationality,

which is a clear evidence of its Kantian origins. One advantage of my treatment of

the much-contested issue of the Kant-Hegel relation is that it located the central

thesis of Kant’s transcendental idealism in the very heart of Hegel’s ontology—his

theory of the concept. This brings to light the limitations of the alternative

approaches on the issue. For example, it shall become clear that Brady Bowman’s

reading of the self-relational structure of the Hegelian ontology that focuses on the

doctrine of essence clearly cannot do justice to the issue under consideration,

because neither is the doctrine of essence where the most fundamental layer of

Hegel’s transcendental ontology is presented, nor is it the deepest point in the text

where the self-relational structure can be discerned. In fact, this mistake might be
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the key reason for Bowman’s and Robert Stern’s misreading of Hegel as abandoning

the Kantian project—they did not deny the presence of the Kantian influence on

Hegel, but their lack of the appreciation of the all-pervasiveness of this influence led

them to their mistaken conclusions. Indeed, if the self-relationality is the central

characteristic of Hegel’s transcendental ontology, it has to be—and as the analysis to

follow shall make clear, it indeed is—present at the epicenter of the system, i.e., the

theory of the concept.

While the first two parts of the Logic, the Doctrine of Being and the Doctrine of

Essence, are concerned with the traditional categories (although as the earlier

chapters have demonstrated, they are integrated into the overall paradigm shift that

is taking place in the transition from the traditional to the Hegelian ontology), the

third part, the Doctrine of the Concept, is where Hegel breaks new ground and the

extent of his departure from the tradition comes to the fore. The project of

substituting traditional ontology with the transcendental logic initiated by Kant

attains its completion in this last part of Hegel’s Logic. The basic relational schemata

that makes up the structure of the Concept is of both logical and of onto-logical

import on which rests the correspondence between the laws of logic and the

structure of reality.

Instead of merely presupposing or postulating this correspondence like in

Plato, traditional metaphysics, or early Russell, Hegel gives a detailed account of

their unity. The mysterious claim of the tradition about the acquaintance of the

mind through the determinations of thought, the laws of logic, with the

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determinations of the world is substituted by a complex but powerful argument that

takes its inspiration from Kant’s revolutionary insight. The Concept is the systematic

structure of the basic conditions on which both the determination of being and

thought are grounded: “Being and Essence are so far the moments of its [the

Concept’s] becoming; but it is their foundation and truth as the identity in which

they are submerged and contained” (WL 577). For Hegel, the inadequacy of the

categories of traditional ontology and logic lies not in their complete lack of the

capacity to grasp reality, but in that they can neither do this on the most

fundamental level, nor explain what their confidence in the accessibility of reality

rests on. Instead of having comprehended the basic elements or the conditions, they

remain on the surface level of the conditioned. In fact, had the tradition understood

the nature of the grounding of its basic ontological categories, it would have been in

the position to meet Hegel’s challenge presented in Chapter 2—namely, how

traditional metaphysics justifies the applicability of the categories to reality. This is

essentially the question that triggered Kant’s Copernican revolution, and as Hegel

sees it, it is adequately answered only in his ontological theory and more

specifically, in the theory of the concept. It is only when the categories are grounded

on the very same fundamental structure that also underlies the reality properly

understood can one legitimize their application.

1.2) Acknowledgment of the Kantian Origins

Hegel begins the Doctrine of the Concept with a lengthy introductory

discussion that aims to orient the reader to how much has been covered and what

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still remains to be done in order to arrive at his fully fledged philosophical vision.

The fact that most of this introductory discussion is dedicated to the analysis of Kant

reveals much about the position Hegel is setting the stage to articulate. Moreover,

even a cursory look at these pages makes evident that the central part of Hegel’s

ontological theory, which he is preparing his reader for, directly emerges from the

Kantian transcendental philosophy. For example, the thesis of the concept being the

underlying ground of actuality is explicitly acknowledged to originate from Kant,

who, according to Hegel, described “the object as that in which the manifold of

intuition is unified…. Here… the objectivity of thought is specifically enunciated, an

identity of Concept and thing, which is truth” (WL 590). Thus, Hegel begins the

presentation of the theory of the concept as the ground of actuality with the

extensive analysis of the Kantian original insight about the concept underlying and

conditioning empirical objects. Even if there were no more deeply running currents

that tie these two projects together, this open declaration of the Kantian origins of

the crucial element of his project right from the outset of the discussion of this

element is conclusive evidence of how much Hegel is tracing Kant’s footsteps in

what is to follow. But as will be made clear later in this Chapter, this is only the tip of

the iceberg of both acknowledged and unacknowledged convergences between

these two outlooks.

The introductory remarks to the Doctrine of the Concept demonstrate Hegel’s

recognition of Kant as the transitional figure from traditional metaphysics to his

own position. Hegel begins with introducing the concept as the underlying truth of

the determinations of Being and Essence and by maintaining that the concept is the

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truth of the substance as “the real essence” (WL 577). Hence, the subject matter of

the last part of the Logic, the theory of the concept, is the same as the preceding

parts but grasped on a more fundamental level. Hegel sees both of these

perspectives—the outlook that grasps reality on the level of the substance and the

one that inaugurates the perspective that sees reality as grounded on the concept—

as actualized in the history of philosophy, proclaiming that “The philosophy which

adopts the standpoint of substance and stops there is the system of Spinoza” (580).

After dwelling for a while on the strengths and weaknesses of Spinoza’s position,

Hegel moves onto a much lengthier analysis of Kant’s doctrine, associating it with

the theme of the concept as the ground of reality: “It is one of the profoundest and

truest insights to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason that the unity which

constitutes the nature of the Concept is recognized as the original synthetic unity of

apperception, as unity of the I think, or of self-consciousness” (WL 584). He further

adds that this insight “goes beyond the mere representation of the relation in which

… concept stands to a thing and its properties and accidents and advances to the

thoughts of that relation” (WL 584).

It is clear that in Hegel’s eye, the Logic can be divided roughly into two parts:

firstly, the one that expresses the standpoint that precedes Kant (clearly not in

merely temporal sense of the term), the traditional metaphysics, and secondly the

other part that is post-Kantian in spirit through and through, i.e., his own

philosophical system. In this, Kant is the watershed figure setting apart the two

sides—the traditional metaphysics, which he brings to the end, and the Hegelian

transcendental ontology for which Hegel furnishes the grounds. The Kantian origins

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of Hegel’s project are made manifest by the structure of his Logic and the way Hegel

understands the correspondence of its different parts to the central figures in the

history of philosophy. Hence, one can say that Hegel’s Kantianism is built into the

structure of his Logic.

2) Hegel’s Kantianism and Stern’s Position

The interpretations of Hegel that place him within the tradition of pre-critical

metaphysics tend to focus on the objective logic and pay little attention to the theory

of the concept. But Hegel is explicit about the centrality of the subjective logic for his

ontology, as is evident in his claim that “the concept is the truth of substance” (WL

577) and many other similar ones. Moreover, that Hegel is discussing the traditional

categories in the objective logic and does not shy away from the vocabulary

associated with the pre-critical metaphysics is not reason enough for us to ignore

the new meanings he gives to these terms and to relegate him to the tradition that

he described as naïve and the overcoming of which he saw as the central task of his

philosophy.

The strongest defense of the metaphysical reading of Hegel is perhaps

Stern’s. Its advantage over other similar interpretations is that rather than turning a

blind eye to the Kantian dimension of Hegel’s system, which would have rendered

his reading simply implausible, Stern explicitly acknowledges it. But having done

that, Stern still maintains that Hegelian philosophy belongs to the category of the

pre-critical metaphysical systems. Stern believes Hegel found the Kantian system

wanting, “while Kant recognized that thought was required in order to grasp the

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world as more than the ‘fleeting and transient’ objects of experience, he did not

accept that this thought gave us access to the world as such” (Stern, 2009, 73). Stern

concludes that, although Hegel had appropriated some Kantian insights, he came to

recognize Kant’s limitations and acknowledged the superiority of traditional

metaphysics over transcendental philosophy,

Hegel would claim that in finding something in the

classical tradition that still needs to be taken seriously,
he was building on the real lesson to be learned from
Kant (even if it was not learned by Kant himself). This is
that there can be no workable distinction between
“immediate” experience and “mediated” thought, as
conceptualization runs through all cognitive relevant
levels, making it impossible for the empiricist to
question our faith in thinking without ending up in total
skepticism. (Stern 2009, 74)

Hence, Stern emphasizes Hegel’s disappointment with the Kantian retention of the

thing-in-itself as a part of his system, while the crucial lesson learned from him was

the necessarily mediated nature of all experience.

2.1) Thing-in-itself criticism

While both of the points emphasized by Stern are correct, using them as the

thread that connects Hegel with Kant is misleading. Hegel never tires of criticizing

the Kantian thing-in-itself; however, this is a sign of not the gap between the two but

the deeply running continuity between them—only on the basis of the shared

background that the refutation of one of the elements of Kant’s system could have

become such a pressing issue for Hegel. At the same time, it is important to note that

thing-in-itself is a peripheral aspect of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, and the main

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motivation for Kant to keep it in his system was specific to his practical philosophy

and related to the need of curving out the conceptual space free of the cause-effect

relational schema in which the self-determining free subjectivity could be

articulated. Hegel is very well aware of this motive of Kant, and this is the very

reason that, together with rejecting the thing-in-itself, he explicitly upheld Kant’s

theoretical philosophy over the practical one.

Moreover, thing-in-itself is clearly a remnant of the old metaphysical systems

as it postulated a being radically external to thought. Hence, when Hegel considers

this to be the weakest aspect of Kant’s philosophy and attacks it, he is criticizing not

Kant’s original insight, i.e., his transcendental turn, but the remnants of the

traditional metaphysics still lingering in his system. As such, if notwithstanding the

whole array of deeply running themes of continuity between the two philosophers,

one still decides to look at the Kant-Hegel relation through the lens of the latter’s

criticism of the thing-in-itself, then at least one has to go beyond the surface level

and uncover the real motivations of the criticism. Had Stern done that, he would

have seen that the ultimate force behind this specific criticism is not the difference

but the shared background between the two, and this could have helped him draw a

more precise picture of what exactly is common between Kant and Hegel and where

their paths diverge.

2.2) The Similarity Stern Focuses on

“The real lesson” that Hegel learned from Kant, according to Stern, is that

“there can be no workable distinction between ‘immediate’ experience and

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‘mediated’ thought, as conceptualization runs through all cognitive relevant levels”

(Stern 2009, 74), maintaining that this ought to be seen as the main thread

connecting the two systems. There being no immanent boundary for

conceptualization for both Kant and Hegel is certainly a correct as well as an

important observation, but the problem is that Stern focuses exclusively on this

point and disregards the other equally significant (and perhaps even more so)

points of convergence between the Kantian critical system and the Hegelian

transcendental ontology.

The peculiarity of this point of connection that sets it apart from the others is

that Hegel completely assimilates this Kantian insight into his system at an early

stage in the presentation of his system, in the Doctrine of Essence. As I have shown in

Chapter 3, in this middle part of the Logic, Hegel argues that determinations of

reflection are the basic functions that need to be involved in the process of

generating of any content, cutting across the conceptual vs. sensible divide. Hence,

in this specific case, the question of continuity between the Kantian and the

Hegelian stances is resolved prior to entering the fundamental layer of the Hegelian

transcendental ontology: the doctrine of the concept. Mediatedness of both sensible

and conceptual manifold is the task carried out by the process of reflection that

Hegel looks at in the Doctrine of Essence, the part of the Logic that has not left the

themes and concerns of traditional metaphysics fully behind. In fact, as I have

shown, at that point in the text we stand at the very epicenter of integrating the

Kantian Copernican turn within Hegel’s system, and until this is brought to

completion and its implications are properly fleshed out (which will take place in

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the subjective logic), we cannot appreciate the extent of Hegel’s departure from the

tradition. Thus, the specific similarity between the Kantian and the Hegelian

systems that Stern decides to focus on cannot do justice to how far-reaching Hegel’s

rejection of the traditional metaphysics is.

2.3) Unacknowledged Similarities

Perhaps the most important shortcoming of Stern’s reading is its failure to

acknowledge explicitly what constitutes the most fundamental link between the two

systems—the thesis that the concept conditions actuality. Stern wants to describe

Kant’s project as primarily epistemological, concerned with the structure of

appearances rather than of being; hence, if the concept grounds anything, it

concerns with not how things are but how they appear. He writes, “Kant may

therefore be seen as proposing a dilemma to the traditional ontologist: Either he can

proceeded by abstracting from the spatio-temporal appearances of things in an

attempt to speculate about things as they are in themselves…; or he … must accept

that he is no longer inquiring into being qua being” (Stern 2009, 15).

As I have already mentioned and as the forthcoming discussion shall

demonstrate, the entire Doctrine of the Concept can be read as an extended analysis

of this central thesis of Kant’s transcendental deduction. Hegel makes no secret of

his indebtedness to Kant on what is to follow in the theory of the concept. In the

opening passages of the subjective logic, after having introduced the concept as the

“substance raised to freedom” and having briefly outlined the three moments of its

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immanent structure (universality, particularity, and individuality), Hegel directly

associates the concept with the “I,” or pure self-consciousness: “the concept, when

developed into a concrete existence that is itself free, is none other than the I or

pure self-consciousness” (WL 583). Moreover, as if this was not enough as an open

declaration of his indebtedness to Kant, Hegel continues with a lengthy summary of

the argument of transcendental deduction (WL 584-85) and concludes it with the

following statement: “thus we are justified by a cardinal principle of the Kantian

philosophy in referring to the nature of the I in order to learn what the concept is”

(WL 585). Such an introduction of the centerpiece of his ontological theory—the

concept—and directly drawing on its structural identities with the transcendental

apperception leave no doubt about the origins of the defining characteristics of this

pivotal element of Hegel’s system.

2.4) The Kantian Origins of the Notion of the Concept as

Relational Schema

Another important theme binding Hegel to Kant that is brought to the fore in

the introduction to the subjective logic is the rejection of the notion that the concept

is an abstract universal and its replacement with a theory of the concept as a

relational schema. While criticizing the tradition for working with a fundamentally

flawed understanding of the concept, Hegel argues that “the superficial conception

of what the Concept is, leaves all manifoldness outside the concept and attributes to

the latter only the forms of abstract universality or the empty identity of

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reflection…. If one would but reflect attentively on the meaning of this fact, one

would see that differentiation must be regarded as an equally essential moment of

the Concept” (WL 589). Differentiation for Hegel means the generation of

determinations or formation of conceptual content. That is, for Hegel the concept is

not merely an abstract universal, or the determination of the mind that is externally

related to all manifold; instead, the concept is immanent to the manifold and

possesses the capacity for differentiation that is positing a content of its own. One of

the central tasks of the chapter that Hegel is introducing here will be the

presentation of the account of this self-differentiation of the concept and

examination of different models of relation between this process of self-

differentiation, the products of this process and the manifold that it is declared to be

immanent to in the passage just cited.

Immediately after voicing his criticism of the traditional notion of the

concept and offering his alternative to it, Hegel points out the sources he is drawing

on in taking this step. The just cited passage continues, “Kant has introduced this

consideration by the extremely important thought that there are synthetic

judgments a priori. This original synthesis of apperception is one of the most

profound principles for speculative development; it contains the beginning of a true

apprehension of the nature of the Concept” (WL 589). In other words, the self-

differentiation of the concept that is one of the central themes of the third part of the

Logic is traced back to the Kantian insight about the synthetic a priori judgments.

This claim has several important implications for us. First, it brings forth the deeply

running Kantian current of Hegel’s transcendental ontology to its very epicenter. As

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the central element of the theory of the concept, its generation of the conceptual

content is explicitly acknowledged to originate from Kant’s “most profound

principles.” Secondly, it helps us see clearly the role of the determinations of

reflection, which were demonstrated to be the Hegelian adaptation of Kant’s logical

functions of judgment, in the overall architectonics laid out in the theory of the

concept. By the explicit association of the “nature of the concept”—and specifically

its “self-differentiating” or content-generating aspect—with the “synthetic

judgments a priori,” Hegel is indicating that the determinations of reflection are the

elementary functions that guide the process of self-differentiation of the concept,

which, as we shall see shortly, is identified by Hegel with one of the three moments

of the concept: the basics element of his transcendental ontology.

Hegel sees his theory of the concept as the ultimate grounds from which his

alternative to the abstract formality of traditional logic emerges, “the abstract view

that logic is only formal and, in fact, abstract from all content; we then have a one-

sided cognition which is not to contain any object, an empty blank form which

therefore is no more an agreement—for an agreement requires essentially two

terms—than it is truth” (WL 594.1). The gap between the form and content, the

abstract universals and the determinateness, renders traditional logic an inadequate

medium for accessing reality as it operates exclusively on one side of the bifurcated

ontological background structure. If the form of logical relations can be articulated

in complete abstraction from the content, no matter whether logic is understood as

the thought’s form or that of the world’s form, it can give us no substantial

knowledge of reality. Hegel claims that this ontological and epistemological gap can

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be bridged by rejecting the traditional conception of logic as merely formal and

advancing an alternative to it within which the form is inseparable from content. But

if a conception of logic is put forth that is no longer merely formal and generates

content of its own, thereby positing determinations that have the same degree of

normative authority as the principles of logic themselves, then we end up with a

conception of logic that is radically transformed. This, no longer merely logic, opens

up the possibility of a new conception of logic that encapsulates its own ontological

commitments.

In light of this, advancing an alternative to the traditional conception of logic

is one possible way to interpret Hegel’s entire philosophical undertaking. And here

again we encounter an explicit acknowledgment of the Kantian influence. Hegel is

pointing to the Kantian transcendental logic as the point of origin of his own project:

“In the a priori synthesis of the concept, Kant possesses a higher principle in which a

duality in a unity could be cognized” (WL 594). But even without this explicit

acknowledgement, it would be clear that the idea of logic as not merely formal ought

to come from the Kantian distinction between general logic “abstracts from all

content of cognition” (A55/B79) vs. transcendental logic, “the science of pure

understanding and of the pure cognition of reason, by means of which we think

objects completely a priori” (A57/B81). It is there that the seed was planted of

cognizing something not merely formal about objective actuality based on the

merely formal principles of logic. In Hegel’s hand, the a priori act of synthesis will

become a process or activity through which determinate conceptual content is

generated and a detailed account will be given of the basic forms guiding this

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process, as well as the architectonics of the systematic whole that is generated for it.

But the basic method applied in both cases is identical—the bifurcation is overcome

based on tracing the role of the formal principle of logic in the generation of

determinations that immanently structure reality. The “unity of duality” mentioned

in the above-cited passage is accomplished by Hegel within the structure of the

concept and in terms of the relation between its universal and particular moments.

The schemata of relation between the moments of the concept that are presented in

the Syllogism section of the Logic are different models through which the mediation

between the abstract and the concrete sides of the formally bifurcated ontological

model can be established.

Hegel’s transcendental ontology arises out of the potential immanent to the

Kantian transcendental logic. Once the thesis of the possibility of cognition of the

specific determinations of reality based on the principles of logic is in the picture,

and a system of such a priori determinations is put forth, also opened up is a whole

new horizon of drawing further conclusions about the overall structure of such

reality and enriching this a priori content. Hegel takes up this very task, and in

addition to enriching the system of a priori determinations, he adds a whole new

dimension to the Kantian project—namely, he asks what conclusions can be drawn

about the totality of conceptual content, the process of its generation and their

interrelation, as well as the relation to empirical reality, granted that we accept the

Kantian story of the possibility of synthetic a priori cognition. This meta-account is

the task taken up in the theory of the concept. Universality, particularity, and

individuality are the three elements that make up the moments of this meta-

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structure, and their analysis will allow Hegel to explore not only the question of

what are the a priori determinations through which actuality is mediated to us (this

was done in the previous parts of the Logic), but on a higher level what are the

structural features of the world within which the generation of empirical conceptual

content is carried out through the application of the given set of a priori functions.

2.4.1) An Example of Ontological Assumptions

In order to prepare his readers for the upcoming task, Hegel considers a case

of ordinary assertoric proposition and points out the presence of implicit

ontological assumptions therein. The claim is that when we make assertions of the

kind “the individual is a universal,” we are implicitly presupposing certain formal

schema being present in and immanently structuring reality.

Thus, for example, the form of the positive judgment is

accepted as something perfectly correct in itself, the
question whether such a judgment is true depending on
the content. Whether this form is in its own self a form
of truth, whether the proposition it enunciates, the
individual is a universal, is not inherently dialectical, is
a question that no one thinks of investigating. (WL 594)

Here Hegel makes clear what he is after. He criticizes traditional ontology for

overlooking its most essential task, and for simply importing the basic

determinations of reality from external sources like language instead of critically

examining them. The tradition simply assumes that the relational schema expressed

in the judgment “the individual is universal” is also to be found within reality as its

immanent structure. Therefore, the only question for the tradition that remains to

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be dealt with is whether the specific content that is placed in this form does justice

to reality.

But what if the schematic structure of reality is such that the given form

cannot do justice to it?—asks Hegel. He argues that the Kantian insight about the

possibility of synthetic a priori cognition gives us a powerful principle through

which we can carry out a critical investigate of the formal architectonic structure of

actuality. This is the task taken up by him in the Doctrine of the Concept, where he

looks at the different schemas of relation between the universal, particular, and

individual moments of the concept, and therefore of the world. But this enquiry into

the onto-logical structure of actuality is a further development of the Kantian

distinction between the general (or formal) and transcendental logic. The lengthy

analysis of Kant and criticism of the merely formal nature of traditional logic with

which Hegel introduces his theory of the concept is a clear testimony that we are

standing not at the threshold of an ontological theory of a traditional kind, but of the

transcendental ontology the conditions of the possibility of which lie in Kant’s

transcendental logic.

2.5) Hegel’s criticism of “Kant”

Perhaps the most interesting evidence of the deeply running continuity

between the two projects is Hegel’s criticism of Kant. A close investigation of what

appears on the surface as Hegel’s attack will reveal that the genuine Kantian stance

is expressed not by the position that is being criticized but by the one from which

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this criticism is voiced. Thus, when Hegel attacks Kant on siding with empiricism on

the issue of reality being composed of the manifold of intuitions as the empirical

material from which universals are to be abstracted, he is clearly attacking not Kant

but a possible (and unfortunately widespread) misinterpretation of Kant’s position.

Hegel writes,

The conception of this relation both in ordinary

psychology and in the Kantian transcendental
philosophy is that the empirical material, the manifold
of intuitions and representations, first exists on its own
account, and that then the understanding approaches it,
brings unity into it and by abstraction raises it to the
form of universality …. The concept is not the
independent factor, not the essential and true element
of the prior given material; on the contrary, it is the
material that is regarded as the absolute reality, which
cannot be extracted from the Concept. (WL 587)

As was shown in Chapter 3, Kant’s stance is very far from the position sketched and

criticized here by Hegel. He attacks a variation of the view that is often mistakenly

attributed to Kant, which maintains that two elements are needed for cognition to

take place. The first is the sensible input supplied to the mind by external reality,

and the second is the forms of synthesis as that can ultimately be traced to the

cognitive constitution of the mind.

If this were really Kant’s position, the criticism would have been fair. But

Kant actually stands much closer to the position from which Hegel’s criticism is

voiced than to the one that is being criticized. The point of Hegel’s criticism is that

the concept should be acknowledged as the “the essential and true element of the

prior given material” instead of postulating the sensible material as “the absolute

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reality.” And indeed, for Kant also the concept is the rule-guided act of synthesis

within which the logical functions of judgment have been ingrained, thereby

constituting the grounds for actuality—or the “essential and true element.”

Sensation, on the other hand and contrary to the above-presented misinterpretation

of Kant’s position, is a mere subtype of representation, the “inner determination of

the mind,” which has no objective reference. Hence, what is presented as a criticism

of Kant would have been better described as an attempt to defend Kant from his

“followers” who radically misinterpret his position.

2.6) Hegel Closer to Aristotle than to Kant?

By now, it should be clear that Stern’s positioning of Hegel closer to Aristotle

than to Kant arises out of a highly selective reading that fails to do justice to both

Hegel and Kant. Stern claims, “Hegel is closer to Aristotle than Kant in conducting

his inquiry ontologically, as a metaphysica generalis, for which ‘the categories

analyzed in the Logic are all forms or ways of being … they are not merely concepts

in terms of which we have to understand what is’” (Stern 2009, 50). Here again,

Stern correctly describes Hegel’s position that categories are not merely concepts but

also forms of being, but this is one of those correct assertions that completely miss

the point. Stern’s thesis fails to represent the root of the matter from its lack of

appreciation of the fact that Hegel’s claim of the identity of concept and being is not

a bare assumption but an outcome of his entire undertaking in the Logic. Moreover,

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Hegel speaks of arriving at this result from his lifelong effort to find the solution to

the problem first clearly identified by Kant, in his famous letter to Herz:

What is the ground of the relation of that in us which we

call ‘representation’ to the object? … the pure concepts
of the understanding must not be abstracted from sense
perceptions, nor must they express the reception of
representations through the senses; but though they
must have their origin in the nature of the soul, they are
neither caused by the object nor do they bring the
object itself into being. In my dissertation I was content
to explain the nature of intellectual representations in a
merely negative way, namely, to state that they were
not modifications of the soul brought about by the
object. However, I silently passed over the further
question of how a representation that refers to an
object without being in any way affected by it can be
possible. (KCR 10:130 )

In Hegel’s eye, a preliminary solution to the problem was offered (although not a

satisfactory one) by Kant himself. With traditional metaphysics and Aristotle, we are

dealing not only with the absence of addressing the issue, as it had not even been

posed as a problem for them; they took the identity of the categories and being for

granted. Hegel clearly saw this gulf dividing him from the tradition and described its

stance as naïve in the Introduction to the Encyclopedia Logic. As such, not only is

Hegel closer to Kant, but without the Kantian backdrop his entire undertaking in the

Logic would not have been possible, because a solution to the problem can be

offered only after the problem itself is clearly conceived.

What Kant did that Hegel considered to be the fundamental breakthrough in

the history of philosophy is that he raised the question of the conditions of the

possibility of agreement between thought and being, and gave an account of why

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reality had to correspond to certain determinations of thought. On the other hand,

Aristotle, according to Hegel, carried out an important task as “he was the first to

undertake [the] description” of “the natural history of the phenomena of thinking

just as they occur” (WL 595). However, while this is an important undertaking, it is

not the problem that Hegel sees as central to philosophy and tries to solve in the

Logic.

The pressing problem for Hegel is to identify the grounds of attributing the

structure of the determinations of thought to the determinations of being, as well as

to come up with a full account of the consequences one can draw from the

possibility of such grounds. Hegel believes that Kant addressed the first prong of the

problem (although not to Hegel’s full satisfaction), while almost completely

neglecting the second one. Kant’s greatest contribution, therefore, was the clear

identification of the problem, making it possible to look for a solution to it. Hence,

Kant stands at the epicenter of the transformation of the perspective, which Hegel

sees as having taken place between his and the traditional approaches as described

in the above-cited passage.

Thus for example, the forms of the positive judgment is

accepted as something perfectly correct in itself, the
question whether such a judgment is true depending
solely on the content. Whether this form is in its own
self a form of truth, whether the proposition it
enunciates, the individual is universal is not inherently
dialectical, is a question that no one thinks of
investigating. … A logic that does not perform this task
can at most claim the values of a descriptive natural
history. (WL 594)

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The latter perspective is clearly the one Hegel associates with Aristotle, while the

earlier is the one that Hegel himself upholds. The stance from which the question is

posed, “Whether this form is in its own self a form of truth,” is obviously made

possible after Kant’s identification of the problem of correspondence between the

categories (hence logical forms of judgment) and reality, making it the guiding

thread of his transcendental philosophy. Hence, Stern’s Aristotelian interpretation

arises not only from a selective reading of Hegel, but perhaps even more from

merely surface-level interpretation of the claims and passages based on which he is

advancing such reading.

2.7) Series of Self-relational Models

The bottom line is that the relational schema laid out by Hegel in the Doctrine

of The Concept presents the account of actuality in which the Kantian insight about

the possibility of synthetic a priory cognition is brought to its logical conclusion. It

presents the onto-logical space in which the standard division between the subject

and the object, cognition and reality, has been overcome and hence the promise

made in the phenomenology of spirit about grasping substance as a subject is

brought to its fulfillment. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the basic ontological

structure, the concept, that Hegel presents in this culminating part of the Logic

exhibits the defining characteristic of Kant’s transcendental apperception: self-

relationality.

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 This self-relationality is presented in the theory of the concept as the self-

relationality of the immanent structure of the concept. That is to say, the structure

of unity between the dynamic and the static moments that takes roots in the Kantian

notion of the transcendental apperception is emerging here as a unity and mutual

dependence of the moments of the concept: universality, particularity, and

individuality. As we shall see, each one of these moments, and not only the idea of

their unity, has its precursors in Kant’s system. But the Hegelian account of the

concept, unlike the corresponding elements in Kant, has often been seen as

particularly murky and resisting any coherent interpretation. One reason for this is

that Hegel presents not one but a whole series of different models of unity of the

moments of the concept. Granted that these models are arranged in the ascending

order of adequacy for the full mediation between the three moments, the natural

question to ask is why Hegel does not directly go to the last—the fully mediated—

model, but instead picks the torturous road of twists and turns of the previous

stages. In answering this question, what comes first to mind is Hegel’s well-known

claim from the Preface to The Phenomenology of Spirit:

Truth and falsehood as commonly understood belong to

those sharply defined ideas which claim a completely
fixed nature of their own, one standing in solid isolation
on this side, the other on that, without any community
between them. Against that view it must be pointed out,
that truth is not like stamped coin that is issued ready
from the mint and so can be taken up and used…. Just in
the interest of their real meaning, precisely because we
want to designate the aspect or moment of complete
otherness, the terms true and false must no longer be
used where their otherness has been cancelled and
superseded. Just as the expressions ‘unity of subject and

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 object’, of ‘finite and infinite’, of ‘being and thought’, etc.,
are clumsy when subject and object, etc., are taken to
mean what they are outside their unity, and are thus in
that unity not meant to be what its very expression
conveys. (Phenomenology, Par 39)

Considering that the Preface to Phenomenology was written by Hegel for his system

as a whole, one of the reasons behind his strategy is, instead of forcing the

ontological vision foreign to the readers onto them, to gradually guide them from

their standpoint to his vision of actuality, in order to allow the immanent necessity

of the commitments they are already upholding to guide them through the stages of

development and ultimately arrive at the properly comprehended vision of

actuality.

Hence, as we shall see, our understanding of the moments of the concept—

universality, particularity, and individuality—are undergoing continuous

transformation as we make our way through the stages of mediations in the

Syllogism chapter. Their final form—that is, the most adequately comprehended

one—that makes possible the self-relational structure of the concept to be clearly

perceived is a product of the process of mediation that has taken place through the

previous stages of the Syllogism chapter. This can be described as the internal

reason for choosing the complex option as each stage of mediation is pointing to the

moments of the concept engaged in the subsequent stage. There is another angle

from which we can look at the issue. The different phases of mediation are not only

developmental stages in the education of consciousness itself, but they also express

ontological models. We shall see that each inadequate schema of mediation

presented by Hegel in the Syllogism chapter is a model that stands for a major
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alternative ontological vision. By presenting them in this specific hierarchical order,

starting with the most impoverished model and culminating with Hegel’s own

stance, he highlights the superiority of his own vision over the alternatives.

3) The Three Moments of the Concept

From the very beginning of his articulation of the structure of the concept,

Hegel emphasizes its self-relational character. Indeed, as will be made clear in the

following paragraphs, a very strong sense of unity between its elements plays a key

role in the inner architectonics of the concept. To begin with, the unity under

discussion cannot be reduced to the mere idea of compositionality. We are dealing

instead with a deeper sense of unity between the elements, each internally related

and in a certain sense even encapsulating the others. Here, just as in many other

crucial points of Hegel’s system, his Kantian heritage proves to be the best segue

into the topic. The unity that Hegel describes as the defining feature of the concept is

easily traceable back to the Kantian transcendental apperception, acknowledged by

Hegel as “one of the profoundest and truest insights to be found in the Critique of

Pure Reason” (WL 584).

In Hegel’s hand, however, this idea of unity undergoes a significant

reorientation; if for Kant the transcendental apperception is the most fundamental

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element, the source of the logical functions of judgment and hence of all conceptual

content, Hegel is positing the basic structure of the concept as the grounding

principle. This is a turn away from the psychologism of Kant’s critical philosophy

and its substitution with the ontological vision, according to which neither the

subject nor the object is seen as the grounding principle of reality. Instead, the

fundamental ontological schema is articulated in the logical space within which the

standard bifurcated model is left behind. For Hegel it is this basic schema making up

the architectonic structure of the concept that lies at the foundation of the I, not vice

versa—“The Concept, when it has developed into a concrete existence that is itself

free, is none other than the I or pure self-consciousness” (WL 583). Hegel’s strategy

in the Logic is to demonstrate that the fundamental self-relational ontological

structure emerges as a necessary ground for the most basic determinations of first

Being and later of Essence, once the meanings and implications of these

determinations are set in motion via reflective thought.

3.1) Locus of Intentionality and Hegel’s Fundamental Shift

In light of this, although with Hegel, as with Kant, the identity of the subject,

the concept, and the objectivity is a very important point, he is nevertheless not

merely reducing the concept and objectivity to the subject. Hegel is rather aiming to

uncover the basic structure that all three sides have in common. While Kant first

reduced objectivity to the concept—“an object is that in the concept of which the

manifold of a given intuition is united” (CPR 137) —and ultimately traced the basic

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conceptual structure back to the subject, Hegel wants to shift the center of gravity

from the subject to the concept. For him it is the subject that is an actualization of

the schema immanent to the concept, the concept that is “developed into a concrete

existence.” Thus on the one hand, Hegel is following Kant’s footsteps in maintaining

that the ground of the object, its “foundation and truth,” is the concept; on the other

hand, he wants to avoid the Kantian reduction of the concept to the realization of the

subject’s cognitive constitution. Instead, he is arguing that the concept itself has a

rich inner structure that it does indeed share with the subject but is related to it as

the condition to the conditioned.

For proper understanding of the significance of the shift that has taken place

here, first from the object to the subject as done by Kant and then by Hegel from the

subject to the concept as the central element of his ontology, it is helpful to take a

look at Robert Brandom’s description of the related shift in the “fundamental locus

of intentionality.” Brandom is looking at the issue of the relation between the mental

realms and linguistic practices regarding the question where should we locate the

“native and original locus of concept use.” According to the traditional approach, the

mental realm has the pride of place, as it is in our mind that we form thoughts,

generate conceptual content, and then communicate them to others.

Concepts are applied in the realms of language by the

public use of sentences and other linguistic expressions.
They are applied in the realm of the mind by the private
adoption of any rational reliance on beliefs and other
intentional state. The philosophical tradition from
Descartes to Kant took for granted a mentalistic order
of expression that privileged the mind as the native and
original locus of concept use, relegating language to a

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 secondary. Late-coming, merely instrumental role in
communicating to others thoughts already full-formed
in a prior mental arena within the individual. (Brandom
2000, 5)

Brandom juxtaposes and contrasts this to two alternative views. One of them

belongs to Dummett, who wants to reverse the axis of dependency and grant to

language the function of the original locus of the conceptual: “we have opposed

throughout the view of assertion as the expression of an interior act of judgment;

judgment, rather, is the interiorization of the external act of assertion” (Brandom

2000, 5). The other alternative is advanced by Davidson, for whom “neither

language nor thinking can be fully explained in terms of the other, and neither has

conceptual priority. The two are, indeed, linked in the sense that each requires the

other in order to be understood, but the linkage is not so complete that either

suffices, even when reasonably reinforced, to explicate the other” (Brandom 2000,

6).

Both of these alternatives are undermining the traditional assumption of the

mental as the original locus of the generation of the conceptual content. What needs

to be noted is that this assumption is a part of a larger dualistic backdrop that the

tradition has been taking for granted—the dualism of the mental vs. physical realm

where the former is the locus of thought, representations, concepts, etc., while the

latter is that of the extended, inter-subjective, material etc. This deeply rooted

presupposition stems from the Cartesian metaphysics with its clear-cut distinction

between the mental vs. physical and their corresponding principle attributes,

thought vs. extension. When considered against this background, it becomes clear

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that while both Dummett and Davidson shift the priorities in the standard picture,

they still remain within the scope of the dualistic framework. Neither by inverting

the standard picture nor by demonstrating the interdependency between the

language and thought are we rejecting the Cartesian dualism; all we are doing is

exploring new possibilities within the conceptual space carved out by it.

Unlike these contemporary alternatives, Hegel wants to leave behind the

standard dualistic picture altogether. According to him, both ends of the bifurcated

model are mere abstractions from the more fundamental background, the

articulation of which is undertaken in his Doctrine of the Concept. If the Doctrine of

Being and Doctrine of Essence were concerned with the traditional categories and

the determination of thought that grounded them, retaining dualistic ontology in the

picture, the third part of the Logic, the Doctrine of the Concept, presents an account

within which the division between the inner and the outer realms taken for granted

by “the philosophical tradition from Descartes to Kant” is completely overcome.

Whether linguistic, mental, or other kinds of activity, like social, political, etc., that

involves application of concept and revision of the conceptual content, it is

grounded on the schema that Hegel is explicating in the doctrine of the concept.

Both the mind and world, the inner and the outer realms, are best understood not in

abstraction from one another, nor with grounding one on the other, but through the

realization that both are abstractions from the more fundamental structure that

Hegel is proceeding to articulate in this part of the Logic.

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 As in many other key points of his system, here also Hegel is following the

Kantian footsteps. For although Kant didn’t fully free himself from it, he still in an

important sense set up the conditions for overcoming dualistic metaphysics. The

significant step taken in this direction by Kant is his assertion that the very same

ground underlies and conditions the phenomena of both the inner and the outer

realm. The activity of the mind for him is the ground of objects both of mental as

well as physical space. For example, the desk that I’m looking at right now and my

desire to bring it to order are objects of experience, one outer and the other inner,

but for Kant both are outcomes of the activity of the mind guided by logical

functions that constitute the basic structure of what he calls the transcendental

object or object in general. Hence, the objects—whether belonging to the inner realm

of the mind, thus occurring only in time but not in space, or to the outer realm that

in addition to temporal are also spatial—are conditioned by the activity of the mind

and guided by the logical functions of judgment. By tracing the grounds of both the

inner and the outer objects to the same source, Kant is taking a significant step

toward overcoming the dualism with respect to objects of experience. But this is

clearly only a first step, rather than a full-fledged effort to overcome the bifurcated

background—while the ontological gap between the realms of the inner and the

outer objects was significantly shaken, the same was not done with respect to the

activity, as Kant obviously gives the pride of place to the action of the mind.

Hence, we can see Hegel’s project as taking a further step by rejecting the

dualism not only regarding the objects of experience but also regarding the activity

that makes this objects possible, and elaborating a new type of ontology that leaves

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the traditional dualistic structure behind. In other words, Kant had overcome the

ontological gap on the level of the conditioned, but not on the level of the conditions;

and Hegel is bringing the Kantian revolution to its completion. As such, when we say

that action for Hegel is an application of concepts, we should not understand this as

the mental object in the inner realm that guides action taking place either in the

extra-mental physical world or within the inner space. Neither the inner nor the

outer space is the privileged locus of action or of conceptual. Both mental and non-

mental are mere abstractions from the basic substructure of Hegel’s transcendental

ontology that he articulated in the Doctrine of the Concept. It is not the action of the

mind that grounds phenomena but the fundamental schema that conditions the

objects as well as the actions both of the mind and in the world.

We can see how much more thorough Hegel’s rejection of the traditional

assumption of the mental realm as “the native land” of concepts is, compared to

Dummett’s and Davidson’s interpretation of him. Whether one replaces judgment

with assertion as the original locus of the concept application, or maintains that

neither thought nor language has conceptual priority and each requires the other in

order to be understood, one is not questioning the fundamental dualistic

background of the traditional theories. The mental and material still remain as the

two realms divided by ontological gap. Contrary to this, Hegel leaves the bifurcated

ontology behind by arguing that both sides of the divide are mere abstraction of the

more basic schema that grounds them. This is the schema that is outlined in his

theory of concept as the syllogistic mediational models between the three moments

that make up the architectonic structure of the concept.

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3.2) Universality

The inner structure of the Hegelian concept consists of three moments:

universality, particularity, and individuality. As has already been mentioned above,

these are not mutually excluding elements that can be separated from one another,

but each one of them is internally related to the other two and embraces the totality

of the concept (WL 600). Hegel begins his presentation of the moments with

universality and he has good reasons for it. While each one of the three moments

plays an indispensable role in constituting the concept, universality occupies a

special place amongst them. Not only does it encompass the whole concept, “The

universal is thus the totality of the Concept” (WL 604), but it is also described as

“the pure Concept” or the moment that stands for “the pure identical self-relation” of

the concept (WL 600). Moreover, as the discussion that follows shall demonstrate,

universality is associated by Hegel with the pivotal characteristic of the concept—its

creative potential. Therefore, he is well justified in starting the discussion of the

moments of the concept with universality.

3.2.1) Not an Abstract Universal

Hegel’s understanding of universality is very different from its ordinary

conception that he describes as abstract universal. In fact, if this were not the case,

his claim about universality comprising the entire structure of the concept, which

also includes particularity and individuality, would be completely

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incomprehensible. Were the universal a product of abstraction from the individuals,

it obviously could not have the elements that it has been abstracted from present

within it. As we shall see, the ordinary notion of the abstract universal has more in

common with another moment of the Hegelian concept, particularity. Hence, these

are the two important questions that have to be addressed at this point: What

exactly does Hegel mean by genuine universality? And how is it related to the

ordinary conception of the terms that he calls abstract or impoverished universality

and sets apart from his own usage of the term?

3.2.2) Universality as a Process and Creative Power vs. Representational

Model

Universality is described by Hegel as a “free power,” “the shaper and creator”

that “takes its other within its embrace … without doing violence to it” (WL 603). He

also refers to it as a process that posits differences: “the universal is a process in

which it posits the differences” (WL 605). These might strike readers as very

puzzling claims, putting forward an utterly extravagant conception of universality

that has nothing in common with the way the term is traditionally understood. But

this is only a first impression. Hegel’s position has much in common with such

prominent figures in the tradition as Aristotle and Kant.

The apparent perplexity of this notion comes from Hegel’s effort to

emphasize the contrast with the traditional conception of it—the universal as

abstract representation standing externally to what it represents. One of the central

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goals Hegel is pursuing in his Logic is to overcome the representationalist

presuppositions deeply imbedded in the tradition he inherited, according to which

reality is cut into two parts, the mental (the domain of the representations) and the

non-mental (the domain of represented), and the universals belong to the former

while referring to the latter as a product of abstraction from it. Hegel wants to

replace this model with the one that grants to universality the function of meaning-

producing activity, a power that gets realized through the process of positing

differences, similarities, contrasts, identities, etc., and hence generating the

conceptual content that illuminates instead of representing the determinations of

the world. It is due to this effort to emphasize the contrast with the traditional

approach that it is easy to overlook the influential precursors of the Hegelian notion

of universality, Aristotle being one of them. A good starting point, therefore, to begin

understanding the Hegelian conception of universality is Aristotle’s notion of the

form.

3.2.3) The Aristotelian Connection

For Aristotle, each thing we find in nature, including organisms, their parts,

basic elements, etc., has within it the principle of change and rest that determines the

structure that the given thing has at any stage of its existence; the same principle

functions as the power that drives the course of its change and governs its

interaction with other entities. This structuring and development-driving power is

what Aristotle called the form. We can identify different aspects of the way a form

determines an individual by looking at an example; let’s take a willow tree. At every

stage of its development—be it a seed, a small sapling, fully grown willow tree or an
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already old, dying plant—the state that the thing finds itself in is a product and an

expression of the principle that determines what it means to be a willow tree, its

form. This principle is what sets willow apart from oak, pine, and more radically

from other kinds of things like frog, human, water, etc. Thus, the principle

determines the structure of the thing, its composition, and nature of functioning at

different stages of its development.

Another perspective from which we can approach the determination of the

individual by the universal is related to the principle that encompasses the whole

development of the thing. We can talk of the presence of the principle in an object

not at any specific stage of its development, but as a creative force that encompasses

the entire lifecycle of a willow tree. The form as the creative power has to determine

not only certain stages in the development of a willow tree, but its entire lifecycle.

This points us to the third aspect in which the form governs an individual—as the

principle determining the transition from one stage to the next one. Hence, we can

identify three important and interrelated aspects in which the form determines the

individual’s nature and its development. First, each stage of development is a

manifestation of the principle. Second, the principle encompasses the totality of the

thing’s determinations; and third, the principle is in place at each determinate stage

qua force that propels its further development.

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3.2.3.1) Three Moments Similar in Hegel

Analogies for each one of these three aspects of the form’s determination of

the individual can be located in the Hegelian notion of the universality. When Hegel

claims that the universal is a creative power, which “when posits itself in a

determination, remains therein what it is” (WL 602), and that “the universal is …

substance of its determinations” (WL 603), he is describing the relation between

universality and its particular determinations, which is analogous to the Aristotelian

thesis that each determination of the given particular is a manifestation of its form

or the principle of change. Within both the Aristotelian and the Hegelian accounts,

the structure that the given determination exhibits reveals the nature of the creative

power at work. This claim of the immanence of the universal in its determinations

goes beyond the mere assertion of the presence of the characteristics of the genus in

its species. In other words, the spatial metaphor that Hegel uses here about the

presence of the universal in the individual stands for the relation in a stronger sense

than the one that mirrors the presence of the conceptual content of the definition of

the genus-concept like tree, into that of the species-concepts like willow, pine, oak,

and etcetera. Hegel sees the latter relation as characteristic of the abstract universal

and describes it as “outward going” (WL 604), while the genuine universal he

considers to be “bent back into itself” (WL 604).

What Hegel means by this is that while the conceptual content of the abstract

universal is a product of the process of abstraction, throughout which the features

that differentiate individuals falling under this universal are left out (hence the

abstract universal can be described by him as “lifted out” of the individuals), the

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matters are quite different with Hegel’s own conception of universality. The

Hegelian notion of universal is “bent back” in the sense that it is not a product of

abstraction from the individual; instead it plays a formative role in its

determination. If the abstract universal, which Hegel also describes as impoverished

universal, is stripped off the determinations present in the other moments of the

concept, the Hegelian universal retains them—or rather, as we shall see, retains the

principle of their generation. Hence, the spatial metaphor of the immanence of the

universal to the particular should be understood as the former playing a role in the

generation of the latter. Here the Aristotelian analogy becomes handy, because in

Aristotle also the universal can function as the formative principle of particular

determinations. However, it should also be kept in mind that the two models are not

completely identical. The relation between universality and the other two moments

of the concept as the analysis undertaken in this and the following chapter

demonstrate is of a complex nature, and the Aristotelian analogy only scratches the

surface without giving us an adequate access to its intricate details.

Another related aspect of the similarity is that universality encompasses the

totality of all of its determinations. Hegelian universality is not only expressed in

each and every one of its determinations, but it also encapsulates them all within

itself. As Hegel puts it, “it [universality] contains within itself difference and

determinateness in the highest degree” (WL 601), or, again, “The determinateness…

is not introduced from outside when we speak of it in connection with the

universal.… The universal is thus the totality of the Concept; it is concrete and far

from being empty, it has through its concept a content, and a content in which it not

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only maintains itself but one which is its own” (WL 603-604). Here again the

similarity with the Aristotelian doctrine can be a stepping stone into understanding

Hegel’s position—a form is not merely the animating principle immanent to the

different stages of development of a natural being, but it also is the totality of the

determinations that the being goes through. For Aristotle, without comprehending

the different stages of development of a tree, for example, it is not possible to grasp

the form of tree. But here again, it should be pointed out right away that

notwithstanding some similarities, the immanence of the particular determinations

and the individuality to the universality for Hegel is not quite identical to the

Aristotelian model. As we shall see soon, for Hegel the spatial metaphor of the

universality embracing the individuality and particularity should be understood in

quite a different sense from the immanence of the different determinations to the

Aristotelian notion of the substance-universal. This should hardly be surprising, as

Hegel’s claim is a direct consequence of the reformulated notion of the universality

that leaves behind the fundamental assumptions of the traditional metaphysics,

while the Aristotelian model is a prime example of the tradition. As such, when

using Aristotle as a stepping stone into the Hegelian system, we should keep in mind

that the analogy serves just a heuristic function and ought not to be pushed too far.

Having looked at the two important similarities between the Hegelian and

the Aristotelian theories, we can begin to see what Hegel means when describing

universality as free power. First, freedom for Hegel means being with itself in its

other, and this is an exact description of the logical structure of the concept when it

comes to the relation between universality on the one hand and the other two

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moments on the other hand. Particularity and individuality are the products of the

self-differentiation of universality; hence, it encounters nothing foreign to itself in

them. This is what Hegel has in mind in the already cited passage: “The universal is

therefore free power; it is itself and takes its other within its embrace, but without

doing violence to it; on the contrary, the universal is, in its other, in peaceful

communion with itself” (WL 603).

But Hegel describes universality not merely as free but as free power,

pointing us to the third aspect of the similarity with the Aristotelian notion of the

form. Universal in both cases functions like a power that determines the course of

development; it is “the principle of change,” to put in the Aristotelian terms.

Universality, therefore, not only is expressed by its particular determinations and

encompasses all determinations within itself, but it also is the principle that drives

the transformation—or rather, the process—of the formation of these

determinations. The previous chapter has presented a detailed analysis of the basic

determinations of reflection that function as the guiding principles of the empirical-

concept-generation process. In the following chapter, I shall look at the details of the

relation between universality as process of formation of conceptual content and the

empirical determinations formed thereby.

3.2.4) Stern’s Aristotelian Reading

Having examined the similarities with the Aristotelian theory of the form, we

should keep it in mind that the analogy is only a useful entry point in understanding

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Hegel’s account of the inner structure of the concept and ought not to be pushed too

far. Reading too much Aristotelianism into Hegel’s notion of universality and the

concept in general will lead us to ascribe to him an organism-like account of the

concept, which does not do justice to what Hegel says about this key element of his

transcendental ontology.

Robert Stern’s interpretation of the Hegelian notion of universal is a good

example of positing Hegel too close to Aristotle. While looking at the British

idealists’ appropriation of Hegel’s notion of the concrete universal, Stern criticizes

their claim that the universal embraces the individuals that exemplify it and instead

is advancing a reading akin to Aristotle’s notion of the form as substance-universal.

Stern claims that the Hegelian notion of the universal should be understood as

nothing else but the “characteristics of the kind to which the individuals belong

(men qua men are rational)” (Stern 2009, 156). According to him, then, the British

idealists, by offering an obscure and extravagant reading of the universal as the

ultimate ground that embraces individuals, misinterpreted Hegel’s more modest

and traditional Aristotelian claim about universal consisting of the essential

characteristics belonging to a given genus. While neither of these readings does full

justice to Hegel’s position, I think the one upheld by the British idealists is closer to

Hegel than Stern’s, since while the former readily acknowledges the central function

of the universal moments in the constitution of the individuals and their

determinations, the latter effectively reduces it to the Aristotelian position.

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 The British idealists’ rendering of the Hegelian notion of universality is

described by Stern in the following exposition.

‘the universal in the form of a world’, as Bosanquet put

it, rather than in the form of a class. By ‘the universal in
the form of a world’, Bosanquet meant that individuals
which exemplify this universal are thereby related with
one another in a system of mutual interdependence,
whereas individuals that merely belong to the same
class are not. Josiah Royce (not of course, strictly a
British Idealist, but nonetheless greatly influenced by
them) puts this idea as follows: This universal is no
abstraction at all, but a perfectly concrete whole, since
the facts are, one and all, not mere examples of it, but
are embraced in it, are brought forth by it as its
moments, and exist only in relation to one another and
to it. It is the vine; they, the individuals, are the
branches. (Stern 2009, 150)

As is evident in this passage, Stern asserts that the universal is seen by the British

idealists as the ground of the other two moments of the concept. The claim of the

universal embracing individuals is understood as the universal being involved in the

constitution of the determinations of the individuals. This reading clearly resonates

well with the above-examined claims of Hegel regarding universality being the

creative force or the process generating conceptual content. It also asserts a high

degree of interdependency between individuals, due to them being the products of

the very same process of universalization. The idea is that each individuated entity

with the totality of its properties is an outcome of the overall process of the

generation of determinations that includes other entities individuated together with

it. This renders individuals not only being “embraced” by the universal but also

existing “only in relation to one another.” This acknowledgment of the robust

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grounding role that the universal is playing in relation to the individuals and their

determinations is the strongest aspect of the reading that Stern ascribes to the

British idealist.

Stern rejects the British idealist perspective in favor of the interpretation

that reduces Hegel’s notion of the universality to a set of characteristics of a class.

Universal is conceived here as a substance-universal comprised of a set of

determinations that makes up the essential qualities of the given genera or natural

kind. What binds the individuals belonging to the given universal together,

according to Stern’s Aristotelian reading, is their shared instantiation of the

properties included in the given universal. For instance, if the universal man is

defined as the rational animal, then the determination of the rationality alongside all

other determinations belonging to the universal animal will be exhibited in the

individual man, exhausting the sense in which they are related to the universal man.

Stern writes:

While the Concept, as the interrelation of universality,

particularity, and individuality, has a holistic structure,
in the sense that (as we have seen) each ‘moment’ is
claimed to be only intelligible in relation to the others
and through the others, and while the substance
universal characterizes the individual as a whole in a
way that unifies its particular properties, there is no
suggestion here that individuals as such are
interrelated, in the manner of Bradley’s red-haired men.
So, when Royce writes that ‘the universal ‘man’ is thus
konkret in two senses, namely in so far as in it all men
are together, and in so far as through it all Qualitaten of
each man are united’ I would accept only the second of
these senses as being part of Hegel’s conception of the
concrete universal, and not the first. (Stern 2009, 158)

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Now Stern’s reading stands in obvious contradiction with the passages cited above,

where Hegel is explicit about the universal moment’s formative role for particularity

as well as individuality, and describes it as a process that grounds and embraces the

other moments of the concept. The weakest aspect of his reading is its inability to do

justice to the dynamic character of the Hegelian concept, its key and most essential

elements, which are repeatedly described by Hegel as a process and a creative power.

The substance universals are the static sets of determinations that the cognitive

process find in the world and extracts from it; while the Hegelian universal is the

source of dynamism, it is the process that furnishes these static determinations.

There is a dynamic moment in the Aristotelian model as well (and this is the

reason that we can use it as a stepping stone into the Hegelian system), but Stern

ignores it, instead focusing on its static aspect. Moreover, even if Stern had used it to

argue for similarity with Hegel, he could have not gone beyond mere surface

resemblance, since the dynamic moment in the Aristotelian conception of universal

is present there on a different level than in the Hegelian one. For Aristotle, form as

an already actualized static set of determinations serves as the propagator of

development of individuals, while for Hegel these very sets of determinations are

the products of the creative power at work. For Aristotle, the substance universal

with its complete set of determinations is out there in the world, immanently

structuring reality. Cognitive processes are related to the substance universal

externally without playing any role in determination of the elements and the

structural relations found in the substance-universal.

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 The Hegelian notion of the universal, on the other hand, exhibits a very

different relation to the process of reflection. As we shall see shortly, Hegel

identifies universality with the determination-generating processes. Universality

qua creative power is the self-relational process of reflection that posits all

determinations and embraces them. Aristotle and Hegel therefore conceive radically

differently the relation between thought and the determinations of universals. While

in the case of the former, thought is external to the already existing universals and

its determinations, and all it can do is to grasp or mirror them, with the latter case

we have thought as the process identical to universality that functions as the ground

of all determinacy. As such, to identify the Hegelian notion of universal with the

Aristotelian substance-universal is to fail to appreciate even the first stage of the

revolutionary aspect of Hegel’s theory—the relation between thought and reality—

not to mention its full extent where the dualistic traditional metaphysics is fully left

behind together with its collateral assumption. Therefore, notwithstanding some

degree of similarities, Hegel’s stance cannot be simply identified with the

Aristotelian position as Stern attempts to do.

3.2.5) Kantian Connection

Aristotle is not the only, or even the most direct precursor, of the Hegelian

notion of the concept and its moments. Hegel’s notion of universal as a creative

power is more closely related to Kant, who maintained that the logical functions of

judgment are the most basic forms of the activity of the mind on which both pure

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and empirical concepts are grounded. The pure concepts of the understanding or

the categories are the general representations of the synthesis of intuitions carried

out by these logical functions, as Kant states in the famous passage from the

Metaphysical deduction:

The same function that gives unity to the different

representations in a judgment also gives unity to the
mere synthesis of different representations in an
intuition, which, expressed generally, is called the pure
concept of understanding. The same understanding,
therefore, and indeed by means of the very same actions
through which it brings the logical form of a judgment
into concepts by means of the analytic unity, also brings
a transcendental content into its representations by
means of the synthetic unity of the manifold in intuition
in general. (A79/B105)

The very same functions of synthesis are guiding the process of formation of

empirical concepts. According to Kant, we form new empirical concept through the

operation of the mind that is guided by the concepts of comparison, which

correspond one to one to the logical functions of judgment (identity and difference

to quantitative, agreement and conflict to qualitative, inner and outer to relational).

To be more specific, we can apply these concepts of comparison—or, ultimately,

logical functions of judgment—to the process of our apprehension of empirical

objects. Thus, new empirical concepts are generated from the process of sifting

through the rule-guided apprehension of phenomena and forming new

determinations through this process. The logical functions are involved on both

levels of this activity. They guide the process of comparison of apprehension of

empirical phenomena, and they are also already ingrained in the rules of

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apprehension as the latter are nothing but the previously formed empirical

concepts. Thus, for Kant, the activity of the mind guided by the logical functions of

judgment is the basic formative process that posits all determinations.

The first thing to note here is that Kant is rejecting the representationalist

model according to which the cognitive purport of conceptual content is a function

of the adequacy of its representation of the mind-external reality. The source of

determinations in the traditional model, including the Aristotelian one, is external to

the mind, and the justification of cognitive contentfulness of our concepts rests on

their representational correctness of the mind-external world. With Kant, contrary

to this, the normative authority of the determinations is traced to the objectifying

capacities of the minds itself, more specifically, to the logical functions of judgment

that confer cognitive purport to determinations posited by the creative activity of

the mind. Hence, Hegel is following Kant’s footsteps when claiming that the

universal is a determination-positing creative power, “thinking as activity is the

active universal, and indeed the self-activating universal” (§ 20, EL). Hegel further

notes,

It [universal] differentiates itself internally, and this is a

determining, because the differentiation is one with the
universality. Accordingly, the universal is a process in
which it posits the differences themselves as universal
and self-related. They thereby become fixed, isolated
differences. … Herein consists the creative power of the
Concept, a power which is to be comprehended only in
this, the Concept’s innermost core. (WL 605.2)

Hence, instead of the traditional representational model, according to which a

concept and its determinations were supposed to mirror the determinate features of
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the mind-external world, Hegel takes up the Kantian approach—the mind as the

source of the cognitive purport of determinations. Universal moment of the concept

is that creative, cognitive content conferring power that is responsible for generating

the conceptual content and is describes by Hegel as the concepts “innermost core.”

Another important aspect that needs to be noted in the above-quoted

passage is that Hegel describes universality as the difference positing process, clearly

pointing us to the determinations of reflection presented in the Doctrine of Essence.

He sees the universality as the creative process, the activity of thinking through

which the conceptual content is generated; it is the very same process of thinking

that he has discussed in the Doctrine of Essence where an interrelated system of

determinations of reflection is laid out. Universal, that is, the “self-identical”

moment of the concept, is differentiating itself, argues Hegel, mirroring the

sequence of identity and difference that we have seen in the doctrine of essence—

the two pivotal determinations that the process of reflection and generation of

ordinary conceptual content proceeds with. Here is another key passage where

Hegel explains the nature of relation between the determinations posited by the

universal moment of the concept and the process of reflection he investigated in the

doctrine of essence.

Difference, as it shows itself here, is in its Concept and

therefore in its truth. All previous difference has this
unity in principle (im begriffe). As immediate difference
in the sphere of being, it is limit of an other; in reflection
it is relative and posited as essentially relating itself to
its other; here therefore the unity of the Concept begins
to be posited, but at first it is only illusory being in
another. The true meaning and resolution of these

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 determinations is just this, that they attain to their
Concept, their truth; being, determinate being,
something, or whole and parts, etc. substance and
accidents, cause and effect, are grasped as determinate
concepts when each is cognized in unity with its other
or opposite determination. (WL 607.2)

The empirical concept generating process of reflection that Hegel has

presented in the Doctrine of Essence attains its truth in the Doctrine of the Concept,

claims Hegel. Hence, in the Doctrine of the Concept, Hegel returns to the very same

ground that was covered in the Doctrine of Essence, but this time from a more

developed standpoint that allows us to locate the function that the activity of

reflection and its basic forms have within the larger account of reality. In other

words, if in the doctrine of essence the process of generation of determinate content

and the basic formal vocabulary by means of which this content is generated was

investigated in greater detail, now Hegel steps back and allows us to see where that

account fits in the most comprehensive account of his transcendental ontology. The

activity of positing differences, and identities, diversities, and oppositions that I

have discussed in Chapter 3 is now revealed to be one of the three essential aspects

of the ontological structure that Hegel calls the concept—its universal moment (the

other two being particularity and individuality).

Moreover, in a certain sense, this process is supposed to grasp the totality of

actuality since, as we were told, each moment of the concept embraces it fully (WL

600). Therefore, one way we can regard reality, according to Hegel, is through

conceiving it as essentially grounded on the conceptual-content-generating activity.

In other words, he wants to maintain that there is nothing to reality that could claim

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complete independence from this determination-positing process. But obviously,

this is only a part of a larger picture, and we still need to look at the other two

moments of the concept, as well as their relation to one another, to gain a

comprehensive account of Hegel’s transcendental ontology. The account of the

dynamic aspect of the concept has to be complemented with the account of the

totality of determinate conceptual content and the specific relation of their unity. As

we shall see, Hegel will be presenting different models of relation between the

moments of the concept in the Syllogism chapter and will culminate his account with

what he takes to be the genuine nature of their unity.

Hence, the Kantian insight that the synthetic activity guided by the logical

functions of judgment and serving as the most basic determinations of all

conceptual content, whether related to the combination of the sensible or the

conceptual manifold, is the main precursors of the Hegelian notion of the universal

as the creative process that generates and embraces all determination. This is the

reason that Hegel hails the transcendental unity of apperception that is identical for

Kant to the logical functions of judgment as the highest point of Kant’s philosophy.

Hegel’s description of the universality as the “pure identical self-relation” (SL, 601)

is a reflection of the Kantian identification of the apperception with the logical

functions of judgment. But as at many other critical points, here Hegel also does not

merely follow the Kantian footsteps but develops them further and brings them to

what he sees as their logical conclusion. The important difference here is that while

Hegel picks up the Kantian thread and integrates the activity of the mind guided by

the determinations of reflection within his theory of the concept, he is not confining

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the universal as the active power to merely mental processes. The determinations of

reflection as the basic functions of the content-generating process of thinking were

considered by Hegel at a different stage of development of his system from the one

we see in the Doctrine of the Concept. In the Doctrine of Essence, he was still dealing

with the issue of grounding being on essence or developing the notion of being qua

thought; he was at the epicenter of bringing Kant’s Copernican revolution to its

completion.

Now on the other hand, in the Doctrine of the Concept, that task has already

been accomplished and the schism between thought and being is overcome. Thus

the determinations of reflection as the activity-guiding functions no longer belong to

reflection exclusively—they are the basic functions of action in general. This is the

reason Hegel is claiming that “thinking as activity is the active universal” instead of

merely asserting that “thinking is active universal, …the self-activating universal.” In

other words, the activity as such is the universal moment of the concept in action

and reflection is only one modality in which this activity can be carried out. The

activity that furnish determinate content—the second moment of the Hegelian

notion of concept that Hegel calls particularity—is not limited to the mental but also

includes inter-subjective activities, social, historical, and etcetera, which are

processes through which different conceptions get applied, tested, and modified.

Hence, the formal schemata that Hegel presents in the theory of the concept,

judgments, syllogisms, is not merely a series of determinations related to different

kinds of mental representations, but different models of actuality that includes the

mental activity but is not limited to it.

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3.3) Particularity

While Hegel’s notion of universality can be traced back to the Kantian

understanding of the cognitive activity and hence one of the ways that Kant uses the

term concept (i.e., the consciousness of the unity of the act of synthesis), the second

moment of the Hegelian concept, particularity, is related to the other meaning that

Kant has for the same term, “universal or reflected representation.” As such, the

overall structure of Hegel’s concept can be argued to have already existed in an

incipient form in Kant: the act of synthesis as the universal moment; universal and

reflected representation as the particular that is the product of self-differentiation of

the first moment; and the third moment, individuality, which for Hegel is the unity

of the previous two.

According to Hegel, the second moment of the concept—particularity—

captures the totality of the concept, just like the first moment, but it does so in its

own way. Hegel describes it as the outcome of the first negation of the universal. “As

negativity in general or in accordance with the first, immediate negation, the

universal contains determinateness generally as particularity” (WL 603). The

universal, as the creative, dynamic power, generates an interrelated system of

determinations and this system is what Hegel calls the particular moment of the

concept. Instead of the dynamic process (i.e., the nature of universality), now we

have the static determinations that the process has produced; instead of the

mediation, the mediated. This first negation of the universal is a self-

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externalization—the splitting of the concept into two moments: universality and

particularity.

3.3.1) Particularity as Determination of Universality

The particular moment of the concept is a product of the universal moment’s

self-differentiation.

The universal determines itself, and so is itself the

particular; the determinateness is its difference; it is
only differentiated from itself. Its species are therefore
only (a) the universal itself and (b) the particular. The
universal is as concept itself and its opposite, and this
opposite is in turn the universal itself as its posited
determinateness; the universal overreaches it and, in it,
it is with itself. Thus it is the totality and the principle of
its diversity, which is determined wholly and solely
through itself. (WL 606)

Hegel makes three important claims in this passage that I would like to take a closer

look at. First, he clearly describes particularity as generated from universality and

sees it as an outcome of its self-differentiation or positing determinations immanent

to itself. Second, Hegel describes the universal as containing the principle of

diversity of the content by which it generates the particular moment of the concept.

Third, universal is declared to be the totality of its diversity and being with itself in

it.

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3.3.2) Particular as self-differentiated universal

I shall start with the first point; the universal, as we have seen, is the process

of reflection or the activity of thinking through which the determinate conceptual

content is generated. Hence, granted that Hegel describes the particularity as being

generated from the universality through its self-differentiation and positing of

determinations, the particularity is the product of the conceptual content generating

process guided by the formal schema presented by Hegel as the determinations of

reflection. What Hegel means by the technical term particularity is a holistic system

of inferentially interrelated determinations that make up the totality of its

conceptual content. The constellation of the empirical concepts is generated through

the process of thinking in Hegel’s technical meaning of the term, which includes

reflection along the lines of the ordinary meaning of the term, as well as the

application of the concepts through activity carried out in the inter-subjectively

shared space that includes social and political institutions. Hegel describes the

determinations that comprise the particularity moment of the concept as abstract

universals:

This universality, with which the determinate clothes

itself, is abstract universality. The particular has this
universality in it as its essence; but in so far as the
determinateness of the difference is posited and
thereby has being, the universality is form in it, and the
determinateness as such is its content. Universality
becomes form inasmuch as the difference is something
essential, just as in the pure universal it is, on the
contrary, only absolute negativity and not a difference
posited as such. (WL 608)

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In this way, the particular moment of the concept is made up of the determinations

we call empirical or the ordinary concepts. These have the form of abstract

universality and have been generated through the process of discerning differences,

similarities, and identities in experience, and forming new determinations on this

basis. The Hegelian, the genuine, notion of universality, on the other hand, is

described here as the “absolute negation,” related to the abstract universality as the

ground to the grounded.

The particular moment of the concepts is the outcome of the self-

differentiation of the universal that is the process of the generation on inferentially

interrelated empirical concepts; hence, the particular moment of the ontological

structure that Hegel calls concept is a system of the determinate conceptual content

through which we relate to the world, including to our own selves as parts of this

world. The claim of this content being the outcome of the self-differentiation of the

universality should be understood as pointing to the relation that this system of

empirical concepts stands to the process of thinking in the Hegelian understanding

of the term. Thought, for Hegel at the stage of his transcendental ontological system

we have reached in the Doctrine of the Concept, is no longer confined to merely

mental phenomena; universality as the process of thinking that generates

determinate conceptual content includes not merely mental activity taking place in

the subject, but also the activity in the inter-subjectively shared reality. Social and

political institutions, the whole normative landscape that guides our activity as a

member of a given community are the actualizations or applications of the

conceptual content that guide the process of further revision and transformation of

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the process of generation and piecemeal revision of the conceptual content.

Application of a concept in judgment and action are both activities that are included

in the process that Hegel calls universality. This assimilation of the concepts and

institution is a part of the overall rejection of the dualistic, mental vs. non-mental,

bifurcated traditional ontology. Institutions cannot function without a certain set of

empirical concepts, neither can the subjective states of the mind that have nothing

in common with the determination in the inter-subjectively shared sphere qualify as

concepts.

The chief example of such a concept that is actualized in social and political

institutions and plays a crucial role in the development of history the way Hegel

sees it is that of Freedom. In Philosophy of Right, Hegel outlines the basic schema he

considers to be the reasonable social institutions culminating in the modern state

that he sees as the actuality of concrete freedom (PR, par 260). Hegel’s lectures on

the philosophy of history are also a detailed examination of the formative process of

this concept and the institutions and processes associated with it. The determinate

meaning of the concept freedom is formed through complex historical processes that

involve individual reflection, formation and functioning of political and social

institutions, their downfalls and transformations, revision of the meaning of these

determinations and their application through the actions of individuals and

institutions.

In the above-cited passage, Hegel describes abstract universality as the form

of the determinations of the particular: “the universality is form in it, and the

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determinateness as such is its content. Universality becomes form” (WL 608). This is

one more direct evidence of the Kantian roots of Hegel’s ontology, as for Kant,

universality is the form of all concepts both empirical and a priori. Moreover, Kant

explicitly associates the form of the concepts, their universality, with the process of

their generation, “the form of the concept [its universality] as discursive

representation is always made” (Longuenesse 1998, 119) as an outcome of the

process of comparison, reflection, abstraction. Further, as we have seen in Chapter

3, the basic forms of operation of this process through which, according to Kant, the

form of the concept is generated correspond to the determinations of reflection

presented by Hegel in the Logic of Essence. Forms of all three subcategories of the

concepts—empirical, mathematical, and the categories—are made, according to

Kant; they are the products of the activity of the mind. In other words, universality

in all three cases is associated with the determination-generating activity.

With the matter or the content of these three types of the concepts, however,

the situation is quite different. In the case of the mathematical concepts, the matter

is also made; just like the form, it is generated by the activity of the mind. This is

what Kant means when, on numerous occasions in the Critique of Pure Reason, he

claims that mathematical concepts can be exhibited in pure intuition. Both empirical

and a priori concepts are different from the mathematical ones in this respect, as

their matter instead of being, generated by the effort of the mind, is given, but given

in different ways. With the empirical concepts, the matter is given via experience,

while with the categories it is given a priori—that is, prior to experience. Hence,

universality as the form of the Kantian notion of the concept is generated through

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the activity of the mind, and this applies to both a priori and empirical concepts.

Moreover, this activity of “comparison, reflection, abstraction” is guided by the very

same forms as the determinations of reflection in Hegel’s account of it in the

doctrine of essence. As such, down to the most intricate details, the most

fundamental element of the Hegelian transcendental ontology—his theory of the

concept—has Kantian themes ingrained in it; this makes it self-evident that Hegel’s

system is Kantian through and through.

3.3.3) Abstract Universals Lack the Principle of difference

One way in which Hegel sets apart the genuine from the abstract universality

is the lack of principle of difference in the latter. Abstract universals is empty

concept; “since its determinateness is not the principle of its difference; a principle

contains the beginning and the essential nature of its development and realization”

(WL 610.1). What Hegel means by this claim becomes clear when considered

together with another important distinction he makes between his own conception

of the universality (tied with the concrete universal) and the abstract universal, in

his description of the former self-contained and turned-towards-itself, with abstract

universal being outward-going.

But in regard to the other side, in which the genus is

limited by its specific character, it has been observed
that this as a lower genus, has its resolution in a higher
universal. The latter, in its turn, can also be grasped as
genus but as a more abstract one; but it always pertains
only to that side of the determinate Concept which has a
reference outwards. The truly higher universal is that in

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 which this outward-going side is taken back into the
universality, the second negation, in which the
determinateness is present simply as posited or as
illusory being. Life, ego, spirit, absolute Concept, are not
universal merely in the sense of higher genera, but are
concretes whose determinateness, too, are not species
or lower genera but genera which, in their reality, are
absolutely self-contained and self-fulfilled. (WL 604-
605)

Now, as we have seen, the Hegelian notion of the universality is the process guided

by the functions presented as determination of reflection—identity, difference,

contradiction, etc. —through which the revision and generation of new empirical

concepts takes place. The claim of the presence of the principle of differentiation in

the genuine universality is directly related to the claim of it being “turned toward

itself,” instead of being “outward-going” as the abstract universals are. The idea is

that the process of generation and the revision of conceptual content of a set of

empirical concepts go hand in hand with them comprising a self-enclosed system of

interrelated determinations. If we are not dealing with such a totality, but only with

an isolated determination or even with a limited subset of a system of

determinations, the conditions for the process of revising and generation of the

conceptual content do not obtain. The key role in the process of revision of a given

system of empirical concepts is played by contradiction that obtains between its

elements tied to one another via the inferential relations, which in turn originate

from the conceptual content generating process guided by the determinations of

reflection (identity, difference etc.). But if the given set of determinations does not

comprise a self-enclosed autonomous system, but is instead “outwards-going,” then

what appears as a contradiction when a given subset of determinations is

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considered in isolation does not necessitate the process of revision and generation

of new determinations, as the apparent contradiction might be resolved by merely

bringing a larger context in the picture. In other words, the necessary conditions for

the process of revision and generation of the new content are present only within

the constellation of empirical concept that are linked to one another by inferential

relations and form a holistic system.

The key point here is that the contradiction and, therefore, the need for

revision of the conceptual content have different consequences in the holistic self-

enclosed system vs. in a none-self-enclosed set of abstract determinations. When

Hegel calls the former “bent inwards” and the latter “pointing outside,” he speaks

with the language of spatial metaphors about the nature of the inferential relations

that will ultimately determine the developments necessitated by the emergence of

contradiction. If in the holistic system, the revision of the existing conceptual

content is the only way of resolving the contradictory state with the outward-

pointing set of determinations, resolution can be located in the domain external to

the given set of determinations.

Here we can see how the two kinds of systems will exhibit radically different

patterns of “behavior.” When confronted with cases of contradiction, the former will

be directed inwardly on the revision of the existing determinations, generating new

conceptual content through the process of thinking (in Hegel’s technical meaning of

the term), guided by the formal schema of determinations of reflect. With the latter,

no such necessity arises. This absence of the condition for the process of generation

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and revision of the determinate conceptual content is what Hegel has in mind when

claiming that the abstract universals lack the principle of difference. In other words,

the principle of differentiation is the key element that conditions the process of

generation of conceptual content that comprise the schemata of the determinations

of reflection, and it is realized within the given domain of articulated and yet still

further articulable holistic system of empirical concepts. Hence, abstract universals

lack this critical feature that is present in the Hegelian notion of universality,

rendering the latter—not the former—into a dynamic content-generating process.

3.3.3.1) “Fixity” as a Problem of Abstract Universal

The unavailability of the principle of differentiation in abstract universals is

closely tied with their “fixity,” which Hegel sees as a major reason of their

inadequacy. “Here we have the circumstance that explains why the understanding is

nowadays held in such a low repute and is so much discredited when measured

against reason; it is the fixity which it imparts to determinacies and consequently to

anything finite. This fixity consists in the form of the abstract universality just

considered that makes them unalterable” (WL 610, gio538). What Hegel is pointing

to here is the inadequacy of the perspective that takes the particular moment of the

concept in its isolation without contextualizing it in the larger picture with the other

two moments of the basic transcendental ontological structure of his system. If we

abstract from the conceptual content generating process that we have looked at

above and exclusively focus on its product, i.e., the constellation of the empirical

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concepts as abstract universals, we end up with an inadequate account. This is the

case because the dynamic aspect that plays the fundamental role in the generation

of the conceptual content is left out of the picture. The point is that we are not

dealing merely with an incomplete account with the universal moments omitted

from it, but the particular moment itself is misconstrued, as due to the removal of all

dynamism it is taken as consisting of the “fixed” or “unalterable” determinations.

The misconstrual of the abstract universals as rigid and unalterable

determinations invites the semantic atomist perspective, according to which the

conceptual content of the empirical concepts are taken to be not the outcome of the

process of continuous formation and revision that is taking place through their

application in cognition claims and in action, but antecedent and semantically

independent of these processes. This semantic indifference can be of a variety of

kinds. It can take the form of the Aristotelian-representationalist model, according

to which the world and the minds are divided by the ontological gap, and when it

come to the epistemological and semantic concerns, the content of the former

determines the content of the latter. In other words, the fixed determinations are

antecedent in the sense that their content precedes any cognitive effort on the part

of the mind; the locus of their origin is the mind-independent realm. An alternative

form this semantic indifference can take is the rationalist-Leibnizian approach,

according to which the determinations are pre-given not in the mind-external world

but in the mental realm itself. This is why Hegel compares the Leibnizian approach

to the generation of the conceptual content with formation of bubbles in the mind

(WL, II, 10, WL 396).

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 What both of these alternatives lack is the appreciation of the role that the

process of application of the systematically related empirical concepts plays in

furnishing their conceptual content. This is what Hegel is pointing out when

maintaining that once the universal moment of the concept is included in the

picture, the fixity is dissolved and the dynamic character of the transcendental

ontological substructure, the Concepts, comes to the fore:

The fixity of the determinacies which the understanding

appears to run up against, the form of the imperishable,
is that of self-referring universality. But this universality
belongs to the concept as its own, and for this reason
what is found expressed in it, infinitely close at hand, is
the dissolution of the finite. This universality directly
contradicts the determinateness of the finite and makes
explicit its disproportion with respect to it. … the
abstract determinate is posited … as the unity of itself
and the universal, that is, as concept. (WL 611-12;
gio540)

3.3.4) Identity of Content

The third aspect of the relation between the universal and the particular

moments of the concept concerns the identity of their respective conceptual space.

Hegel describes this identity in the above-cited passage as the universal, being the

totality of its diversity. By diversity is obviously meant the particular moment of the

concept. In the same passage Hegel also maintains that universality is with itself in

this diversity. Here we are dealing with the explicit assertion of what has been

implied by Hegel’s earlier claim of each moment of the concept being not merely a

part of the concept but embracing it in its entirety. But the question is how we ought

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to think of the identity of the dynamic (the universal) and the static (the particular)

moments. It certainly does not mean that there are no characteristics present in

either one of these moments that is absent in the other one, as we have just pointed

out significant differences between the two. What Hegel has in mind here, rather, is

the specific relation between the process through which the determinations are

generated on the one hand, and the conceptual content that we end up with as an

outcome of this activity. He claims that there is nothing to the conceptual content

that has not been originated from the process of its production. This is what has

been described by Wilfrid Sellars and his followers as the rejection of the myth of

the given.

3.3.4.1) Intension identical

According to the traditional conception, every concept can be analyzed

regarding its extensional and intensional aspects. Extension of a concept basically

means the domain that is carved out by the concept, thus it includes all other

concepts that can be subsumed under it or stand in species-genus relation with the

given concept. The intension of a concept, on the other hand, includes the complete

set of concepts that are parts of its determination. For example, the extension of the

concept of polygon includes concepts like triangle, square, rectangle, pentagon, etc.

The intension, on the other hand, includes such concepts as line, angle, extension,

etc. One way we can think of this distinction is that extension is geared to the

ontological import of the concept, while intension to its semantic aspect. Now, when

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Hegel claims that the universal moment exhausts the totality of determinations that

makes up the particular moment of the concept, what he has in mind is that both the

intension and the extension of the conceptual content that make up the particular

moment originate from the determination-generating process of reflection that he

calls universality.

I shall start with the intensional aspect. In this respect, it is important to

recall that the principle of self-differentiation of the universal into the plurality of

determinations of the particularity, according to Hegel, is immanent to the universal

itself. The “universality … contains within itself the standard by which this form of

self-identity … [is] pervading and embracing all the moments” (WL 600). As we have

seen, the principle under consideration is the principle of differentiation that

consists of the basic determinations of reflection that guide the process of

generation of conceptual content. Hence, when Hegel claims that the universal

determines the nature of its diversification into the determinations that comprise

the particular, he is pointing to the grounding role of the basic function of

differentiation, identification, diversification, etc. and particularly, as we have seen,

contradiction, in the process of generation of the empirical concepts. Hegel’s point

here is that no matter at which level of analyzing the given empirical content we

start, we will be proceeding with the basic rules of reflection that characterize the

universal moment of the concept and will be arriving at the conceptual content that

is a product of the application of these very functions. In other words, no matter

how far such spelling out of the intensional content is pursued, there is no point at

which we arrive at the elements that are given to the universality from a source

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external to it. The totality of the particular moment of the concept is mediated by its

universal moment through and through. This is what Hegel means in the claims such

as these: “particularity has universality within it as its essential being” (WL 608), or

“a principle contains the beginning and the essential nature of its development and

realization” (WL610). The complete conceptual content of each specific

determination and their totality taken together originate from the principle present

in universality.

3.3.4.2) Extension identical

The identity of the extension of the two moments of the concept is the other

side of the same coin; “by virtue of the identity of the particulars with the universal,

their diversity is, as such, universal; it is totality. The particular, therefore, not only

contains the universal but through its determinateness also exhibits it;

consequently, the universality constitutes the sphere that must exhaust the

particular” (WL 606). The process of the generation of the conceptual content,

claims Hegel, carves out the onto-logical space within which the products of the

particularization of the universal are exhibited. In other words, there is no extra-

conceptual content that serves as an external boundary to the determination-

generating process. The onto-logical space that is carved out by self-differentiation

of the universal is the domain to which the particulars with the totality of their

determinations belong.

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3.3.5) Primacy of universal

Both intension and extension of the two moments are identical; universality

and particularity are two different moments of the very same ontological structure,

the totality of which is present in each one of these moments; “each of these

moments is no less the whole Concept” (WL 600). Notwithstanding this important

aspect of co-extensiveness and the identity of content of the two moments, it should

be kept in mind that there is an important difference between them, which shows

why Hegel gives the pride of place to the universal moment. While particularity is

the only means by which universality actualizes itself as a creative power and hence

an indispensable moment of the concept, nevertheless as we have already seen, it is

universality that has the principle of particularization through which it posits

particular determinations. It is also the creative potential of universality that

particularity represents, not vice versa.

3.3.6) Bowman on two moments of the concept and the limitations of his
position

Having looked at the relation between the universal and the particular

moments of the concept, we can see that the overall framework on which the

dynamic and the static elements are unified in a self-relational unity at the most

fundamental level of Hegel’s transcendental ontological system. A more detailed

account of this unity will be taken up in the following chapter, but the basic picture

should already be clear: the unity between the dynamic and the static aspects of the

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Hegelian transcendental ontology rests on the unified structure of the concept, and

specifically on the identity between its universal and particular moments.

Brady Bowman in his Hegel and the Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity

advances a somewhat similar claim. Drawing on the works of Dieter Henrich and

Rolf Peter Horstmann, he claims that “Henrich’s analysis of the dynamic logic of

Hegel’s grundoperation turns out to correspond exactly to Horstmann’s relational

account of the Hegelian Concept and the structure of subjectivity. The two are at

bottom one and the same, considered first from the dynamic perspective, then from

the static or structural perspective” (Bowman 2013, 54). Henrich’s analysis of the

reflective activity as the autonomous negation that takes the Doctrine of Essence as

the fundamental kernel of the dynamic account of the Hegelian system is argued by

Bowman to have a structure identical to what he sees as Hegel’s notion of the

concept. Both exhibit the three-partite structure of the “relation-to-self – relation-to-

other – relation-to-other-as-relation-to-self” (Bowman 2013, 41). The dynamic

manifestation of this structure is presented by Bowman from the Logic of Reflection:

Reflection is at first the movement of the nothing to the

nothing, and thus negation coinciding with itself. This
self-coinciding is in general simple equality with itself,
immediacy. But this falling together is not the transition
of negation into equality as into a being other than it;
reflection is transition rather as the sublating of
transition, for it is the immediate falling together of the
negative with itself. And so this coinciding is, first, self-
equality or immediacy; but, second, this immediacy is
the self-equality of the negative, and hence self-negating
equality, immediacy which is in itself the negative, the
negative of itself: its being is to be what it is not. The
self-reference of the negative is therefore its turning
back into itself; it is immediacy as the sublating of the

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 negative, but immediacy simply and solely as this
reference or as turning back from a one, and hence as
self-sublating immediacy. – This is positedness,
immediacy purely as determinateness or as self-
reflecting. This immediacy, which is only as the turning
back of the negative into itself, is the immediacy which
constitutes the determinateness of shine, and from
which the previous reflective movement seemed to
begin. But, far from being able to begin with this
immediacy, the latter first is rather as the turning back
or as the reflection itself. Reflection is therefore the
movement which, since it is the turning back, only in
this turning is that which starts out or returns.
(Bowman 2013, 53; WL 11.250-51; G 347)

The identical structure is to be found in Hegel’s theory of the concept, Bowman

argues, and presents as an example of this the relation between identity, difference,

and ground.

While Bowman is right about the dualistic aspect (dynamic and static) of the

basic ontological substructure of the Hegelian system, as well as about the identity

of these moments, the specific interpretation of these moments and their unity he is

advancing is clearly problematic. First, the manifestation of the static structure,

relation-to-self – relation-to-other – relation-to-other-as-relation-to-self, that

Bowman is looking at (identity, difference, ground) is taken from the determinations

of reflection, not from the doctrine of the concept. Hence, what is presented as the

static structure of the concept that corresponds to the identical dynamic structure of

the process of reflection as autonomous negativity is borrowed from the

determinations of reflection or the dynamic moment itself. In other words, Bowman

uses the schema borrowed from the dynamic moment, interprets it as a static

structure, and then tries to prove on this basis the parallelism between the two

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sides. Unfortunately, Bowman has no choice but to revert to this or some other

similar tactics as he is hardly going into the analysis of the Doctrine of the Concept,

confining his attention to the Doctrine of Essence. For sure the Doctrine of Essence is

important for understanding some of the key aspects of Hegel’s transcendental

ontology, and as my analysis in Chapter 3 has shown, it is essential for the proper

comprehension of the mechanism involved in process of generation of empirical

concepts. But at the same time, it is certainly not the place where the thesis of the

self-relational unity between the most basic elements of Hegel’s ontology (i.e.,

universality, particularity, individuality) is advanced. Had he paid more careful

attention to the pivotal third part of the Logic, Bowman would have uncovered the

most fundamental ground on which the identity of the dynamic and the static

moments in the Hegelian system rests.

As we have seen from the above analysis of the basic structure of the

Hegelian transcendental ontology, his theory of the concept, the dynamic aspect of

the system is associated with the universal moment, which is the activity of the

generation and continuous revision of the conceptual content of the empirical

determinations. Moreover, as we have seen, this activity is not confined merely to

the mental sphere, but also includes the interaction of the individuals in the inter-

subjective, socially shared space within which the action has no other meaning but

the application of concepts. The determinations of reflection that Hegel presents in

the doctrine of the essence are the basic formal structures that guide this content-

generating activity. Discerning identities, differences, diversity, etc., in the

experience that is already mediated by the existing empirical concepts is the most

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fundamental operational move in the process through which the revision of the

existing and formation of the new empirical determinations are carried out. The

static aspect of the concept, on the other hand, is the totality of this systematically

interrelated empirical concept that Hegel calls the particular. The identity of the

dynamic and the static aspects, that is, the universal and particular moment with the

static the particular one that I have shown has the Kantian origins, will be the topic

of our discussion in the following chapter where I take a close look at the Syllogism

section of the doctrine of the concept.

3.4) Individuality

Hegel introduces the third moment of the fundamental structure of his

transcendental ontological system, individuality, as determinate universality:

“Individuality, as we have seen, is already posited through particularity; this is

determinate universality and hence self-referring determinateness, the determinate

determinate” (WL 618.2; G 546), and again, “The particular, for the same reason that

makes it only a determinate universal, is also an individual, and conversely, because

the individual is a determinate universal, it is equally a particular” (WL 620.2; G

547). These passages make it clear that what he means by individuality should not

be identified with the pre-conceptual, brute given, something that is out there in the

world individuated prior to any reflection. Instead, individuality stands for

something “posited through particularity.” It is, in other words, the outcome of the

process of reflection that generates determinate conceptual content. Instead of

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being a thing given to the reflection from some external sources, it is individuated

by the conceptual content generating process. Individuality, therefore, is the fully

mediated totality of relations. This is what Hegel means when he claims that

through individuality, concept re-asserts its unity by returning to itself after positing

diverse determinations.

in this reflection universality is in and for itself,

individuality is essentially the negativity of the
determinations of the concept, but not merely as if it
stood as a third something distinct from them, but
because what is now posited is that positedness is
being-in-and-for-itself; that is, what is posited is that
each of the distinct determinations is the totality. The
turning back of the determinate concept into itself
means that its determination is to be in its
determinateness the whole concept. (WL 621.1; G548)

Individuality is the totality of determinations that make up a systematically

related whole—not any set of determinate conceptual content will qualify for the

term. This is why Hegel introduces the example of the already familiar concrete

universals, “Life, spirit, God, as well as the pure concept” when describing

individuality. What is capable of being individuated is not a singular object

confronting consciousness externally, but a totality of objects internally related to

one another due to the systematic relations present in the conceptual content on

which they are grounded. Hence, a finite object enters a given onto-logical space as a

part of a totality of objects with which it shares the basic conceptual content, and it

is this totality that is individuated. Only certain systematically related totalities can

be considered fully individuated, that is, to present an articulated system of

conceptual content related by inferential commitments and doxastic claims about

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the reality that can be described as autonomous that is not depending on any

external conditions. In this passage, Hegel clearly specifies the problem with the

traditional take on individuality.

Universality, when referred to these individuals as

indifferent ones – and it must be referred to them, for
they are a moment of the concept of individuality – is
only their commonality. If by the universal one
understands that which is common to several
individuals, the indifferent subsistence of these
individuals is then taken as the starting point, thus
mixing in the immediacy of being into the
determination of the concept. The lowest conception
one can have of the universal as connected with the
individual is this external relation that it has to the
latter as a mere commonality. (WL 621.4; G 549)

The independent subsistence of the individuals is the illusion that is associated with

the matching conception of the abstract universality, which Hegel describes as its

“lowest conception.” In other words, the conception of individual objects as existing

indifferently from one another as well as from the universal is a fundamentally

flowed one; objects are individuated together and via the conceptual content

posited through the process of universalization.

As such, individuality is inseparable from concrete universality and this is

what sets apart the latter from the abstract universality, which is related to the

individuality externally:

The universal is for itself because it is absolute

mediation in itself, self-reference only as absolute
negativity. It is an abstract universal inasmuch as this
sublating is an external act and so a dropping off of the
determinateness. This negativity, therefore, attaches
indeed to the abstract universal, but it remains outside

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 it, as a mere condition of it; it is the abstraction itself
that holds its universal opposite it, and so the universal
does not have singularity in itself and remains void of
concept. – Life, spirit, God, as well as the pure concept,
are for this reason beyond the grasp of abstraction, for
abstraction keeps singularity away from its products,
and singularity is the principle of individuality and
personality. And so it comes to nothing but lifeless
universalities, void of spirit, color, and content. (WL
619.2)

In other words, what makes the abstract universal “lifeless” is not its externality to

the immediate sensible given, but its externality to the totality of determinations, its

“dropping off of the determinateness” thereby becoming “void of … content.”

3.5) Against Representationalist Model

Hegel associates the approach that takes the moments of the concept in

isolation from one another with representational thinking. On the one hand, the

representational model itself sets apart the concept and the object on the opposite

ends of the epistemological and ontological gap, abstract universality on the one

hand and the individuality on the other. But for Hegel, all three moments of the

concept taken in isolation from the rest of the concept are abstractions. Hence, not

only can the universal and the particular be abstract, but so can the individual.

Representational thinking is working with such an abstract notion of individuality

when postulating it as a singular standing outside of reflection, as something that is

given to thought. This way of thinking can be captured by a certain inadequate

ontological model:

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 each of the determinations established in the preceding
exposition of the concept has immediately dissolved
itself and has lost itself in its other. Each distinction is
confounded in the course of the very reflection that
should isolate it and hold it fixed. Only a way of thinking
that is merely representational, for which abstraction
has isolated them, is capable of holding the universal,
the particular, and the singular rigidly apart. Then they
can be counted; and for a further distinction this
representation relies on one which is entirely external
to being, on their quantity, and nowhere is such a
distinction as inappropriate as here. (WL 620.4; G 548)

The representationalist stance therefore implies an ontological model that

conceives the three moments of the concept as self-sufficient determinations

persisting in isolation from one another. We shall see that this stands quite close to

one of the alternative ontological models that Hegel will consider and reject in the

Syllogism chapter.

Hegel describes two alternative options available to us for relating the

particular and the universal moments in order to restore the unified structure of the

concept; he calls these “return of the concept into itself” (WL 621.1). The first option

is based on abstraction, “which lets drop the particular and rises to the higher and

higher genus.” This option uses the impoverished conception of universality that

operates within the representationalist framework, keeping and widening the gap

between the universal on the one hand and the individual on the other. It is “the

lowest conception one can have of the universal in its connexion with the individual

is this external relation” (WL 621).

The alternative option is via “descent” into individuality (WL 619). This

descending of the universal into individuality does not mean putting aside the

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particular moment and delving into the non-conceptual given. Rather, it means the

drive toward exhaustive determination of totality through generation of an

interdependent system of conceptual content. It is through this drive toward full

determination that the totality of the content individuates itself or enters actuality:

“But the individuality is not only the return of the Concept into itself, but

immediately its loss. Through individuality, where the Concept is internal to itself, it

becomes external to itself and enters into actuality” (WL 621).

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CHAPTER 5: Syllogism as the Basic Ontological Schema of
Hegel’s Transcendental Ontology

1) The Syllogism

The main goal of the present chapter is to give an account of the inner

structure of the concept, which Hegel sees as the fundamental ontological schema of

reality. Up to this point in describing this structure, I have outlined the basic

features of the three moments that the concept is made up of: universality,

particularity, and individuality. But this is insufficient for the proper understanding

of the Hegelian notion of the concept. What is needed in addition to the account of

the moments is to spell out the exact character of their relation to one another. In

examining the moments in isolation, we tend to regard them as self-subsistent

elements and thus downplay their key characteristic of being integral parts of the

holistic structure within which all three moments are completely mediated with one

another. One way to appreciate the extent of originality of Hegel’s position is to

attend to the fact that, if in the traditional view only universals are the products of

abstraction from actuality, for Hegel taking particularity and individuality in

isolation are abstractions as well. To regard actuality as consisting of merely

individual entities (or any given system of particular determinations) is to uphold

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just as impoverished a view of actuality as with ignoring the individuality

altogether.

The section of the text where Hegel investigates the splitting of the concept

into its three components is the Judgment chapter, in which he states that “the

judgment is the self-diremption of the Concept” (WL 625). The Syllogism chapter, on

the other hand, is dedicated to the reconstitution of its unity. This reconstitution,

however, does not cancel the difference between the separate moments of the

concept; rather, it is a sublation of the difference, not an abolition of it. In other

words, it is not the difference between the moments of the concept that is

undermined in the Syllogism chapter, but the opposition between the difference and

the unity. A close study of the Syllogism chapter is important not only for exposing

the nature of unity between the constitutive parts of the concept, but also for

clarifying the meaning of each one of the three elements. For example, as we shall

see, the notion of universality with which the Syllogism chapter commences is a

mere abstract universality, hence very different from the Hegelian meaning of the

term as the conceptual content generating process guided by the determinations of

reflection we have looked at in Chapter 3. Universality is also not an exception; each

one of the three moments undergoes transformation as we make our way through

the stages of mediation presented by Hegel as syllogistic structures.

Thus, the Syllogism chapter includes not one but a whole series of different

schemata of mediation between the moments of the concept, and each model is

distinct from others not only in the specific manner of unity of universality,

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particularity, and individuality, but also in the very nature of the moments that are

being mediated. The progression is from a less adequate model to increasingly more

successful ones, ultimately culminating in Hegel’s own vision of the immanently

mediated structure of the concept—the fundamental schema of his transcendental

ontology. But before arriving there, he takes us through the complex twists and

turns of different stages of syllogistic mediation, examining and leaving behind

alternative ontological outlooks. As we make our way through these models, I will

be pointing out the key features of the basic ontological assumption lying in the

background of each major stage of the development. This should serve a double

function: on the one hand, it will clarify the trajectory of the overall progression

taking place in the Syllogism chapter by mapping Hegel's complex technical

vocabulary onto more easily accessible and familiar theories; and on the other hand,

it will help in understanding what Hegel sees as the most philosophically significant

differences between his ontological view and the available alternatives, as well as

the superiority of the former over the latter ones.

1.1) Self-relational Structure as the Criterion and Pippin’s

Epistemological Reading

The criterion that drives the development of the Syllogism chapter is the self-

relational unity of the immanent structure of the concept. The moments of the

concept, as we shall see, ought to be not merely related to one another, but their

relation should have the nature of self-relation. This is the norm Hegel uses to

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evaluate the ontological models he investigates in the Syllogism chapter, the norm

that each one of the alternative models will fail to meet, rendering Hegel's own

stance superior to them in his own eyes. The fact that Hegel is using this criterion

reveals how thoroughly Kantian his undertaking is, as it is Kant who identified the

objective purport conferring functions with the self-relationality when in the

Transcendental Deduction identified the logical functions of judgment with the

transcendental apperception. Hence, the self-relational structure under

consideration is clearly the Kantian transcendental apperception recast into Hegel’s

own technical vocabulary and integrated into his ontological system.

Hence, when Hegel makes claims like “everything actual is syllogism” or

“syllogism is the truth of being,” he has in mind not the entire Syllogism chapter,

where a whole series of ontological models is presented and analyzed, but the fully

mediated syllogistic schema that is attained at the end of the chapter—the stage at

which the Kantian self-relationality criterion is fulfilled. While emphasizing this

deeply running Kantian current at the epicenter of Hegel’s project, it is important to

keep in mind that we are dealing here not with an epistemological project, but with

a transcendental ontology—a theory of actuality, the fundamental schema or reality.

The Kantian idea of the transcendental unity of apperception as the source of

objective purport-conferring determinations is fundamentally reworked and

reinstated on a new ontological ground that is free of the psychological implications

that Hegel saw as problematic. The self-relational unity is still the source of

objective purport, but the epistemological account is replaced by the Hegelian

transcendental ontology.

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 As I have argued in Chapter 1, the Kantian origins of the project, instead of

precluding its reading as an ontological theory, sets us on the path of advancing a

new kind of ontology that constitutes a kind of paradigm shift from its traditional

precursors. This emphasis on the ontological nature of the theory under

consideration is what sets my reading apart from Robert Pippin’s position. While

discussing the Concept chapter of Hegel’s logic, Pippin draws a line between the

“good” Kantian current in Hegel’s position from a “waxing Platonic” theme that he

considers to be peripheral to it.

When he wants to talk like a Kantian, Hegel claims that

‘the Notion’ comprises the major categories of the Logic
itself, being and essence (e.g. at EL, 307; EnL 223). This
is, as we have seen, the major line of attack in SL.
Following it means that the basic claim is: For there to
be any possible judgment about objects, there must be
possible an original determinacy, a pure discrimination
presupposed prior to any empirical or specific
judgmental discrimination…. All of this leads to Hegel’s
basic claim that the originally required qualitative
determinacy itself ultimately depends on (in some
sense) subjectively projected theories … This is the
basic, stripped down version of Hegel’s idealist case for
the required Notion interdependence of being and
essence. (Pippin 1989, 241-242).

Pippin traces the Kantian thread in Hegel through the need of contextualization of

the categories of being and essence within the theory of the concept. Here Pippin is

putting his finger on the central nerve of the Kant–Hegel relation, but I’m skeptical

of whether this necessarily commits us to the thesis of the “subjectively projected”

content onto reality. Does not Pippin’s thesis assert the dependence of the

categories of being on essence and ultimately on the concept? And if this is the case,

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does not this thesis contradict with his claim about the subjective projection, which

assumes the bipolar picture of the subject and actuality on which the subjective

content is being projected? If the concept grounds the categories of being, then there

is no being independent of concept onto which the “subjective projection” would

have been possible.

Pippin continues to expose what he sees as a darker side of Hegel’s position:

But as just noted, Hegel is happy to go far beyond what

is, in essence, his own reconstitution of the Kantian
categories of quality, quantity, relation, and modality.
And he is often also given to waxing Platonic about such
Notions. He claims that "man" is a Notion in the relevant
technical sense, and he praises Christianity for first
treating man in terms of his Notion…. It would indeed
be odd if the transcendental-logical requirements for a
conceptual scheme could develop in a way that would
not only have consequences for how man might be
defined, or accounted for, but could actually provide the
definition. (Pippin 1989, 242)

Pippin is absolutely right in drawing the line between Kant and Plato and positing

“the good Hegel” on the Kant side of the divide. Where I disagree with him is

confining the domain of ontology to the Plato side of the divide. Hegel is indeed

advancing a theory of transcendental-logical schema about how man or any

particular determination can be defined, but this does not limit his project to merely

an epistemological one. And going beyond this does not imply that he is advocating

for any specific definition of man or any other particular determination. Hegel’s

transcendental ontology is not concerned with producing definitions of essences

along the lines of Platonic forms, but with the ontological implication of the very

same transcendental-logical schema that Pippin so exemplarily outlines in his book.

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Having given up the traditional idea of the transcendent being and the

corresponding representation in thought, Hegel is advancing a theory of being as

thought and thought as being that is grounded on the ontological schema elaborated

in the theory of the concept. In other words, “the active universal,” as a creative

power that Pippin acknowledges as the key element of Hegel’s position

(Pippin1989, 237-239), is not merely a process of reflection with strictly

epistemological function, or a meaning-generating power with merely semantic

purport, but a determination-furnishing process within which the identity of being

and thought is actualized.

2) The Syllogism of Existence

2.1) The Qualitative Syllogism

Hegel presents three groups of syllogistic mediational models: the Syllogism

of Existence, the Syllogism of Reflection, and the Syllogism of Necessity. The first

model in the Syllogism of Existence, i.e., the Qualitative Syllogism, has the following

structure: Individual — Particular — Universal. The defining feature of this initial

form of mediation is that “each [moment] is present in its immediate

determinateness” (WL 667). Immediate determinateness for Hegel means

endogenous content—being determined without reference to anything else.

However, this is a problematic notion because, for him, conferral of a content is

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possible only by simultaneously excluding some other possible content, and any

determination for Hegel implies negation. Therefore, immediate determination is a

mere illusion of determination and each one of the three moments of the syllogistic

structure under consideration is fundamentally misconstrued. “The individuality is

any immediate concrete object; particularity a single one of its determinatenesses,

properties or relationships; universality again a still more abstract, more individual

determinateness in the particular” (WL 670). Each one of the three definitions is

problematic. As we have already seen, individuality, conceived as “any immediate

concrete object,” ignores the role of the universal as the determination-conferring

power that makes individuation of entities possible. In the present syllogism, the

individuality is taken to be as given prior to conceptualization—the paradigm

example of the myth of the given.

The particular and the universal moments are just as misconstrued. They are

taken to be as merely different degrees of abstraction from the individuality—the

“immediate concrete object.” This for Hegel means regarding the entire mediational

structure of the concept as standing on its head and his verdict for the first

Syllogism of Existence is complete failure to mediate between the moments of the

concept, which stems from misunderstanding of their nature.

In the first syllogism, the syllogism’s objective

significance is only superficially present, since in it the
determinations are not yet posited as the unity which
constitutes the essence of the syllogism. It is still
subjective in so far as the abstract significance
possessed by its terms is not thus isolated in and for
itself but only in subjective consciousness. (WL 667).

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Thus, the ontological model presented in the first syllogism is inadequate to do

justice to Hegel’s Kantian criterion of self-relational unity. Not only does it fail to

present an account of the structure of the concepts in which each moment is related

to itself within the other two moments, but it cannot even present any account of

unity between them requiring an external element—subjective reflection—for it.

The mediation is accomplished not within the logical space of the concept but

through the subjective reflection standing external to it. Hegel concludes that the

first schema of mediation fails to function as a genuine syllogism, as ”its ground and

seat” is not the determinate middle term “which is pregnant with content” but “only

subjective reflection” (WL 668-669).

2.2) The Second Syllogism

The principle that governs the emergence of each new stage in the series of

syllogistic mediation after the downfall of the preceding one is determinate negation.

The idea behind this important conceptual tool is that the culminating point of a

given model is a determinate indicator of the form that its successor model will

have. In the specific case of transition from the first to the second Syllogism of

Existence, the key role is played by the realization of the individuality as the locus of

the mediation under consideration: “the truth of the first qualitative syllogism is

that something is united with a qualitative determinateness as a universal, not in

and for itself but through a contingency or in an individuality” (WL 674). The model

of mediation that emerges from the downfall of the first syllogism ought to do

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justice to the truth of the first syllogism, hence it has to grant the key role in

mediation to the individuality: “In such a quality, the subject of the syllogism has not

returned into its Concept, but is apprehended only in its externality; immediacy

constitutes the ground of the relation and consequently the mediation; thus the

individuality is in truth the middle term” (WL 674).

2.2.1) Middle Term’s Special Function and the Problems of the

Second Syllogism

Before looking closely at the second syllogistic model, it is important to note

that the middle term plays a special role not only for the present model, but also for

the ontological structures presented by Hegel in the Syllogism chapter in general:

“The essential feature of the syllogism is the unity of the extremes, the middle term

which unites them, and the ground which supports them” (WL 665). The middle

term at each stage of development of the syllogistic mediational models stands for

the element through which the purported unity between the moments is attained; it

is the ground of mediation. But clearly, as we progress through the series of models,

this ground does not remain the same. It undergoes transformation that reflects not

only the modification of the formal structure of the syllogism, but also the change

taking place in the extremes. Thus, the middle term is the key element of each stage

of mediation where the developments taken place in the preceding mediational

models get cemented.

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 Thus, if the truth of the first syllogism was that mediation was accomplished

via the individuality, as Hegel claims in the above-cited passage, and granted his

principle of determinate negation and the centrality of the middle term for

mediational models, in the second Syllogism of Existence we should have the

individuality as the middle term. The new syllogism, therefore, has the following

form: Universality — Individuality — Particularity. However, the progress it makes,

compared to the previous model in successfully mediating the moments of the

concept, is quite modest. The reasons for this failure are several. To begin with, both

major and minor premises of the new syllogistic model are insufficiently mediated.

The former (Universality — Individuality) is an outcome of the first Syllogism of

Existence that, as we know, was an unsuccessful attempt at unifying the terms,

basing the mediation on a mere subjective, external reflection. Due to this

insufficient form of mediation, the universality and the individuality are still

abstract determinations posited as independent of each other, as well as of the

particularity. The latter, the minor premise ( Individuality — Particularity ), stands

on an even more shallow ground than the former, as it lacks even that inadequate

form of mediation that has been attempted in the case of the major premise. In other

words, the subjective-consciousness-based, and thus defective, form of mediation

that was in place between the terms of the major premise is lacking here. Also,

clearly the mere abstract determinateness of the terms is still not overcome yet—

while particularity has already acquired some content (although an externally

imposed one) due to it having served as the middle term of the previous syllogism,

individuality still remains a completely abstract determination. Therefore, the

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second model of the Syllogism of Existence also fails to carry out an adequate

mediation and posit the unified logical structure of the concept.

While relating the first Syllogism of Existence to the second one, Hegel

writes: “the mediation of the first syllogism was in itself a contingent one; in the

second syllogism this contingency is posited” (WL 677). This “in itself” contingency is

certainly related to basic ontological assumptions of the first syllogistic model. As all

three moments were declared to be self-sufficient, there was no presence of an

immanent mediation between them. In other words, the particular moment related

to the given individual via external reflection (which, as we have seen, is the ground

of mediation) was not immanent to the individual itself. The particular was just as

self-sufficient as the individual, or as Hegel would put it, they are indifferent to one

another. Therefore, the particular abstract determination that was associated with

the given individuality was in principle not determined by the individuality, hence

contingent. Moreover, since the universality in the first mediational model was

conceived (or rather misconceived) as “a still more abstract” determination, the

same indifferent relation obtains between it and the particular moment. Therefore,

we end up with the possibility of attributing to the individuality not only the

determinations that didn’t belong to it, but even mutually contradictory properties.

Depending on which middle term was used (and due to the logical distance between

it and the other two terms, any determination that is externally relatable to the

extremes could be used here), we would end up with attributing contradictory

properties to the very same individual.

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 It appears that all the elements of contingency of mediation were already

there in the first syllogism. If that is indeed the case, why is Hegel describing it as

contingent only “in itself”? What makes this contingency “posited” in the second and

not in the first mediational model? The answer here lies in the corresponding formal

structures of the syllogisms. The first mediation, I—P—U, as far as its formal

structure is concerned, does not reveal the contingency at hand. Individuality is

subsumed under general determination, which is further subsumed under

determination of even more higher order of generality. In the second syllogism, on

the other hand, contingency is already posited in the formal structure of mediation

itself as the ground of mediation there is individuality. The middle term,

individuality, is subsumed in both the major and the minor premises (WL676),

hence the two arbitrarily picked determinations that external reflection related to

the given individual will end up being linked to each other. As Hegel laconically puts

it, “If the conclusion in the second figure … is correct, then it is so because it is so on

its own account, not because it is the conclusion of this syllogism” (WL 676).

Since the middle term is the ground of mediation in the syllogistic models, it

also reflects the level of development achieved at each stage. Here is how Hegel

describes the ground of mediation of the present syllogistic model: “Immediate

individuality is determined in an infinitely manifold and external manner. In it,

therefore, is rather posited the self-external mediation” (WL 677). The claim that the

immediate individuality relates extreme terms through “self-external” mediation

refers to the above-mentioned point by Hegel about mediation via subjective

consciousness. The idea is that the particular moment on the one hand and the

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universal on the other are determining the middle terms “in an infinitely manifold

and external manner;” they are the abstract determination under which the

subjective reflection subsumes the individual. While individuality is still immediate,

determination will necessarily be both external and infinitely manifold, since the

lack of self-mediation dictates that the external-subjective reflection be required for

determination and this external perspective brings along with it infinite variability

of the features that can be ascribed to the individual. Therefore, neither this specific

model of mediation nor any other one that is grounded on an inadequately

determined middle term can present a successful account of unified structure of the

concept.

The externality of the mediation we encounter in the present model results

in its ultimate failure, but at the same time just with the previous stage it shows the

way forward. Since the real ground for the mediation in the second syllogism has

been revealed to be external to the middle term, and as Hegel reminds us at this

stage of development that “the externality of the individuality is the universality”

(WL 677), it is the universal moment that comes to the fore as the new ground for

mediation. This realization of the central role that universality has to play this

function is one of the most important developments that have taken place up to this

point in the Syllogism chapter. There is a long way to go before we reach the point of

sufficiently developed ontological model wherein the role of universality as a “free

creative power” establishing unity within the logical structure of the concept by

mediating its different elements fully manifests itself, but the first step toward it is

already taken here. And even though universality itself at this stage is still the

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abstract universal, hence incapable of fulfilling its function, the very fact of it being

placed at the epicenter of mediating is already a significant step forward.

2.3) The Third Syllogism

The third Syllogism of Existence in which individuality is mediated with

particularity through universality (I—U—P) has a significant advantage over the

previous two forms of mediation: both premises, Particularity—Universality and

Individuality—Universality, have already been mediated in the previous syllogisms.

Hence, the third syllogism, in some sense, carries out a successful mediation of the

three moments of the concept, as both premises have already been established.

Having said this, we should keep in mind that all three moments are still

inadequately developed and the unity between them is based on “self-external”

“mere subjective reflection.” In other words, neither in the case of the particular, nor

in the case of the individual, has universality been mediated in its own right. As

Hegel puts it, “the extremes are not contained in the middle term according to their

essential determinateness” (WL 678). As such, although formally both premises

have already been established, they have been established on proper grounds and

we are still dealing with mere abstractions that require external reflection to be

related to one another.

At this point, it has become clear that the fundamental ontological

commitment that frames the entire development of the Syllogism of Existence is the

existence of two types of entities: on the one hand, individuals or the spatiotemporal

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objects that can be described as concrete particulars (obviously in non-Hegelian

understanding of the term) that we encounter through experience; and on the other

hand, the abstract entities that are often understood as including such things as

properties, numbers, relations, laws of nature, etc. These two kinds of entities

within the given ontological model are declared to be “self-sufficient,” not

depending for their existence on each other. There is of course also the third

element that plays the key role in mediating between the individuals and abstract

entities—subjective reflection or external reflection. But this third moment is more

an external element problem than an integral part of the ontological model under

consideration. Without the subjective reflection, you cannot have the mediation

between the elements of the given ontological model; but with the subjective

element in it, you no longer have the ontological model in its pure form, as it cannot

be described as belonging to either one of the moments. This is the reason Hegel

describes the mediation carried out through it as “self-external.”

2.3.1) Plato and Stern

The dualistic model with abstract-universal vs. individual-spatiotemporal

entities, which frames the entire development of the Syllogism of Existence, clearly

has much in common with Platonic metaphysics. The realm of forms, or that of being

vs. the realms of sensible entities, or that of becoming is mirrored in the opposition

between the abstract determination, on the one hand, and sensible individuality on

the other hand in the Syllogism of Existence. The two domains are juxtaposed and

contrasted as existing independently from one another. It is not only that the model

under consideration is upholding the one-over-many conception of the relation

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between the universal and the individual, but it also grants to them ontological “self-

sufficiency.” Hegel’s own conception of universality, as we have seen in the previous

chapter (and which will be realized at the end of the Syllogism chapter), rejects both

of these aspects of the view under consideration. Hence, I agree with Stern when he

claims that for Hegel “the substance universals which constitute the nature of the

individual qua individual do not exist in the abstract, but only as particularized

through property universals, and thus as instantiated in the form of individuals.” So

Stern is right in his conclusion that, according to Hegel, “Plato is false” (Stern 2009,

157), but he is following Hegel only halfway.

While acknowledging the rejection of the ontological self-sufficiency of the

universals, Stern does not do justice to the extent to which Hegel departs from Plato.

He wants to ascribe to Hegel a conception of the universal, which, while no longer

ontologically independent from the individuals in which it is instantiated, still

stands in one-to-many relation to them as their substance which constitutes their

nature. He ultimately ascribes to Hegel an Aristotelian position by internalizing the

very same rigid Platonic universal within the individual and rendering the latter

into manifestation of these “concrete,” immanent universals. “A rose is not an

individual rose by virtue of exemplifying the abstract universal ‘red,' whereas it is

an individual rose by virtue of exemplifying the concrete universal ‘rose’” (Stern

2009, 156). This way, Hegel’s distinction between the abstract and genuine

conceptions of universality is reduced by Stern to a trivial distinction between mere

property of a thing vs. its essential nature, along the lines of the Aristotelian

distinction between accidents vs. substantial form. But as we have seen in the

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previous chapter and as the further development of the Syllogism chapter shall

confirm, the Hegelian conception of universality is much more interesting and

unorthodox than this. The universal moment of the concept, instead of being

reduced to any determinateness (in Stern’s interpretation this is determination of

essential abstract universal that stands in one-to-many relation to its individuations

internally structuring them), is the process of generations of determinations.

Instead of being an abstract universal internalized into individual as its immanent

but still abstract universal structure, it is the activity that produces the

determinations and the condition for individuation of entities through them. Stern

even cites the passages in which Hegel is explicit about this: “the universality here is

no longer a form external to the content, but the true form which produces the

content from itself” (Stern 2009, 154 from SL603-604). But Stern clearly thinks of

Hegel’s stance as too far off from common sense, and he ultimately sticks to a

domesticated version of Hegel’s position that is closer to Plato’s student Aristotle’s

conception of the universality than to Hegel’s own.

Rejecting conceptual Platonism does not necessitate committing oneself to

conceptual Aristotelianism, and neither is Aristotle’s substantial form the only

option in making Hegel’s technical vocabulary accessible to contemporary readers.

Hegel, together with rejecting Plato, is also leaving Aristotle behind. Both Platonic

and Aristotelian positions have one fundamental thing in common: the order of

reality is given. In the former case, the order of reality is given as the rational

structure of the world that can be grasped directly independently of the experience,

while in the latter it is given both as the immanent structure of the experienced

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world and the formal logico-rational principles of the mind (and somehow these

two are supposed to be in harmony with each other). Now Hegel takes a

fundamentally different stance from both of them; for him, the order, instead of

being given, is generated. This of course does not mean that individual subjects

somehow construct the world as it pleases them. Instead, it is a collective activity of

social practices which includes applications of concepts, social institutions, and

guiding individuals’ actions, acquiring doxastic claims from experiences and

drawing inferences from them, attempting to reconcile these newly acquired claims

with the ones already upheld, and through this process generating the content

through which we relate to the world. This is what Hegel means when claiming in

the passage cited by Stern that “the universality here is no longer a form external to

the content, but the true form which produces the content from itself” (Stern 2009,

154; SL603-604).

While the exteriority of the moments to one another modeled after Platonic

metaphysics is the defining feature of the Syllogism of Existence, the development

that has taken place through the three forms of mediation we examined sets the

stage for the reduction of the onto-logical gap between the moments of the concept.

As has been pointed out, the third syllogism offers a flawed (since it is based on

external reflection) but still a formally complete mediation of the moments, granted

the two earlier mediations are presupposed. But the same can be said about the

earlier syllogisms. “It[the third syllogism] presupposes the first two syllogisms; but

conversely, they both presuppose it, and in general each presupposes the other two”

(WL 678). Thus, each one of the three syllogisms considered so far can be regarded

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as presupposing the other two, and all three together form a full circle of purely

formal mediation. This brings us to the point where the qualitative differences

between the three Syllogisms of Existence and, more importantly, the terms

themselves, lose their significance—as long as the other two terms have also been

the grounds of mediations and these mediations are presupposed, it does not make

much difference which moment of the concept is presently the middle term. Hence,

we are standing at the threshold of a new important development where the

qualitative differences between the moments are put aside (the next model has the

form U-U-U) and the first step is taken toward building up of their shared content.

2.4) The Fourth Syllogism of Existence: the Mathematical

Syllogism

The last form of mediation in the Syllogisms of Existence is the Mathematical

Syllogism: Universal-Universal-Universal. It has a somewhat paradoxical character.

On the one hand, abstraction has reached its highest point, as the mathematical

syllogism abstracts from all qualitative distinctions between the terms. This also

transforms the modality of relation between the terms, which as we shall see will

have far-reaching consequences, as it can no longer be inherence or subsumption,

instead it is equality (WL 679). The kind of mediation that the mathematical

syllogism offers is possible only on the basis of complete abstraction from the

specific determination of each one of the three terms. “Lines, figures, posited as

equal to one another, are understood only in terms of their magnitude; a triangle is

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affirmed to be equal to a square, but not as triangle to square, but only in regard to

magnitude, etcetera”(WL 680). Abstractness that has been the main problem of the

moments of the concept in the Syllogism of Existence, when pushed to its limits,

breaks down the given framework and takes us to a new stage of mediation.

Although minimal, shared content is nevertheless established between the term:

“abstract determinateness has had its other posited in it and thereby has become

concrete” (WL 680). The quantitative equality between the three terms is attained

through pushing abstraction from the qualitative element to its limit and although

minimal, genuine unity between the terms of the syllogism is attained for the first

time. The content that is equal in each of the three terms is posited internally with

each term’s own resources—the area of triangle that equals the area of square has

this and such area independent of square or any other shape that it is united with—

hence the ground of unity between the terms is internal to each term. We have “the

positive reflection of one [term] into the other” (WL 681).

What lies ahead in the subsequent mediational models is that the minimal

shared content between the terms that has been attained so far will be further

developed to the point of embracing the terms completely. If the central principle of

the first phase (Syllogisms of Existence) of mediation was the self-sufficiency of the

moments of the concept, the second phase (Syllogisms of Reflection) is driven by a

new principle—generation by each moment the content of the other two moments

internally to itself. Hence, if in the Syllogisms of Existence the two basic ontological

categories (abstract universals and the sensible individuals) were posited as self-

sufficient entities with content autonomous from one another, the new development

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is geared to overcoming the ontological gap between the content immanent to the

universal and individuals. This is a first significant step of the overall development

taking place in the Syllogism chapter that can be described as rejecting the Platonic

theory of the origin of conceptual content. The thesis of equality of the three

moments brings forth a qualitatively new model of mediation between them.

Universal determination is no longer completely external to the individual and what

transpires within the individual is also relevant for the universal. An important part

of the Platonic presupposition of the externality of the universal was the

immutability of its content, but if now they are equated to and put in place of the

other moments of the concept, their immutability is also undermined. Ultimately,

pursuing this strategy will lead us to the incorporation of the conceptual content of

the universals within the practices of their application. Hegel is leaving behind the

Platonic account of the conceptual content and heading toward a dynamic theory of

generation of the determinate content, within which the process of application of

concepts, drawing inferences from this application, added new bits of inferential

content via experience. These are the processes thorough which this very content is

generated and made accessible for us.

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3) The Syllogism of Reflection

3.1) The Syllogism of Allness

The first form of mediation in the Syllogism of Reflection is the Syllogism of

Allness. It has the same formal structure as the initial model of the Syllogism of

Existence, I—P—U. However, as we shall see, the formal similarity is far outweighed

by the differences found in the content of the terms. While in the first Syllogism of

Existence the middle term was a mere abstract determination, in the present form

of mediation it is the totality of the individuals falling under the given particular:

“it[the middle term] contains (1) individuality, but (2) individuality extended to

universality as all” (WL 687). Hegel brings the following inference in order to

demonstrate the ontological model under consideration: “All men are mortal / Gaius

is a man / therefore Gaius is mortal.” Instead of an arbitrary determination as the

middle term of the syllogistic structure, now we have the particular (in this case,

“men”) under which all individual men are subsumed. The externality between the

terms is replaced by the inclusion of one moment within another.

This inclusion of the other two moments of the concept within the middle

term is a step taken toward the generation of determinate content internally to the

middle term. Hegel writes, “The syllogism of allness is the syllogism of

understanding in its perfection, but is as yet no more than that. That the middle term

in it is not abstract particularity but developed into its moments and is therefore an

essential requirement for the Concept” (WL 687). As we know, Hegel distinguishes

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between understanding and reason as between fixed and mechanical way of thinking

vs. fluid and dynamic power that remolds and redefines the fixed determinations

that the understanding confines itself to. Hence, the claim that the Syllogism of

Allness is “the syllogism of understanding in its perfection” is pointing us to the

nature of determination that is in place in the present model of mediation and

allows us to see its limitations.

The major advantage of the Syllogism of Allness over the Syllogisms of

Existence is that the complete abstractness of the moments of the concept is left

behind, but the determinate content we have in the present stage is still in

rudimentary form. The power of universal as the fluid determination generating

force has not been integrated in the mediation yet. Thus, although the middle

term—the particular moment of the concepts—is “not abstract,” it has content of its

own and through this content is related to the individuals on the one hand and to

the universal (as to a determination of a higher abstraction) on the other; the

immanent content generated is still underdeveloped. At the same time, even this

rudimentary form of determination overcomes the difficulties we have encountered

in the Syllogism of Existence; for instance, the problem of attributing contradictory

universals to an individual that haunted the Syllogism of Existence is no longer

there. In the first Syllogism of Existence, we were dealing with the problem of

contingency because the middle term there was a mere abstract quality, hence

mutually contradictory abstract universals could be related to the same individual

depending on which abstract determination was chosen as the mediating term. In

the present mediational model this is no longer possible, as Hegel explains: “since

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the middle term has the determination of allness, it contains the greenness or

regularity as a concrete, which just for that reason is not the abstraction of

something merely green or merely regular; with this concrete then only those

predicates can be connected which confirm to the totality of the concrete thing” (WL

688).

In the present ontological model, the process of reciprocal infiltration of the

moments of the concept is well on its way, but the method that is used for it is still

inadequate: “the single determinations still form the bases of the universality of

reflection that embraces them within itself; in other words, allness is still not the

universality of the Concept but the external universality of reflection” (WL 687). The

unification that is attained in the middle term is still only an externally imposed

unity of a set of abstract individuals and an abstract universal. The nature of

unification we are dealing with here can be extrapolated from Hegel’s use of the

terms “reflection” (in the passage just quoted) and “understanding” (in an earlier

cited passage) when referring to the present form of mediation. As already

mentioned, Hegel distinguished understanding from reason and associated the

former with Kant’s position. What rendered the Kantian stance problematic in

Hegel’s eye was its inability to go beyond the rigid determinations of thought,

whether it referred to the systematization of the empirical knowledge in the

inferentially related rational structure (the Kantian reason within the theoretical

domain) or the practical reason’s alleged capacity to determine the will, that is, to

give it a determinate content (the Kantian reason within the practical domain). This

rigidity can be exhibited both in the form of relating given abstract determination to

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other abstract determinations or in applying the given determination to individuals

aiming at subsuming them and thus unifying them under it. In the former case, we

have a fixed interrelation of abstract determinations, in the latter case the rigid

structure is imposed on empirical realm. For Hegel this form of mediation is flawed,

as it takes the determination present in the middle term and projected to the

extremes as the only ground of unity between them.

What is needed is a better grounded unity between the mediated terms, a

unity that stems from within them, rather than one that is an externally imposed.

Therefore, the next form of syllogism will be geared to establishing immanent unity

between individuality and universality. The middle term of the second Syllogism of

Reflection will have individuality as a collective individuality, comprised of the

complete set of individuals falling under the given universal. Since universality will

have the key function in the formation of the middle term as a collective

individuality, there is a sense in which universality becomes immanent to

individuality.

3.2) The Syllogism of Induction

In the Syllogism of Induction, which has the form of Universality —

Individuality — Particularity, the middle term is “individuality as complete,” and the

individual term is a collectivity of entities that share the given universal in common.

The other extreme is the “immediate genus as it is found in the middle term of the

preceding syllogism or in the subject of the universal judgment, and which is

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exhausted in all the individuals or species collectively of the middle term” (WL 689).

As the middle term is the essential part of syllogistic mediation in general, it is

important to note a significant transformation that has taken place here compared

to the previous syllogisms, specifically regarding the way the middle term integrates

different moments of the concept. If in the Syllogism of Allness we had as the middle

term the particular determination, conjoining multiplicity of individuals under itself,

now we have an individuality so crafted that it encapsulates universality instead of

being merely externally related to it. This relation between the moments of the

concept already has some resemblance with Hegel’s overall vision of the ontological

structure of the concept and the nature of its elements’ mediated unity. The

universality is made into an immanent, structuring element of the individuality, and

as we shall see, this development will further deepen in the subsequent forms of

mediation.

The Syllogism of Induction occupies a special place in the second stage

mediational models presented as the Syllogisms of Reflection, as it is here that the

key role of reflection for relating the three moments of the concept is most self-

evident. The middle term that is itself the unity of individuality and universality is

not only the ground of mediation, but also implicitly the product of reflective

activity itself. The individuality as “the complete, namely, posited with its opposite

determination, universality” is an outcome of reflection that combines the given

complete set of individuals together. When contrasting the present form of

mediation with the corresponding one from the Syllogism of Existence, Hegel

describes it as the “syllogism of experience,” while the earlier syllogism is referred

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to as the “syllogism of mere perception or contingent existence” (WL690). By

experience Hegel here means “subjective taking together of the individuals into the

genus and of the conjoining of the genus with a universal determinateness” (WL

690). In other words, if the second mediational model in the Syllogism of Existence

we had a mere “perception” of a specific determination of an individual, which was

related to an abstract universal, now we are dealing with a complex process of

comparison, reflection, abstraction in order to determine the complete set of

individuals related to the universal property under consideration. Without this

reflection, the middle term of the Syllogism of Induction—and thus the entire

mediational structure—would not be possible. This is what renders the present

model of mediation the canonical form of the Syllogism of Reflection.

By calling the given mediational model “Syllogism of Experience” and

describing it as “subjective taking together of the individuals,” Hegel is clearly

implying that the outlook under consideration is akin to Empiricism. But it is an

empiricist model approached from the Hegelian perspective. On the one hand, we

have the middle term as the syllogism that is composed of the externally conjoined

individuals “indifferent” to one another. And on the other hand, we have the

development of internalization of the universal moment within the individual. The

former is the empiricist aspect of the model, and the latter indicates the direction

toward Hegel’s own version of transcendental ontology. Clearly, the second aspect,

the immanence of the universal to the individual, is artificial in the way it is

presented in the present model. The reason is that the ontological presuppositions

based on which the model is framed is not Hegelian but empiricist. The theme of

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immanence of the universal to the individual moment is just an indication of the

direction in which the Syllogism chapter will develop. Given the way things stand at

this stage, the immanence of the universal to the individuals is attained only through

coming up with a highly unusual conception of individual as a totality of entities

sharing relatedness to the same abstract universal, while each individual entity by

itself is only externally related to the universal, as well as to other individuals.

For a better understanding of the ontological model Hegel is presenting in

the Syllogism of Induction, it is helpful to look at James Kreines’s examination of the

Hegelian notion of the immanent concept in counter-distinction to the empiricist

stance. The position that Kreines in his Reason in the World associates with Hume

(although acknowledging that it might not do full justice to the complexity of

Hume’s position and thus refers to it as “humean,” with a lower-case ‘h’) and a

contemporary metaphysician David Lewis is quite similar to the model discussed in

the Syllogism of Reflection in general and the Syllogism of Induction in particular:

a ‘humean’ holds that all reality is composed of ‘loose

and separate’ particulars or (now in Hegel’s terms)
mutually ‘indiferent’ particulars. There are no necessary
connections, for example. …. So there are in particular
nothing like immanent concepts in virtue of which
certain effects must follow. Terminology from David
Lewis’ more recent humeanism provides a powerful
image: ‘humean supervenience’ is ‘the doctrine that all
there is to the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of
particular fact, just one little thing and then another.’
(Kreines 2014, 70)

The individuality of the Syllogism of Induction, taken not as the collective

individuality as presented in the middle term of the syllogism, but rather the

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individual entities from which the middle term is composed of, is much like

“individual tile” of Lewis’ humean account, the totality of which is making up a

specific mosaic that could have been arranged in any other order. In both the Lewis-

humean, as well as the Syllogism of Induction, models, the immanent connection

between the individuals is lacking “nothing else is ever a reason in the world for

anything else” (Kreines 2014, 70). The reason is externally imposed by “subjective

taking together of the individuals … with a universal determinateness” (WL 690).

At the same time, the peculiar kind of individuality presented as the middle

term in the Syllogism of Induction introduces the key element that Kreines identifies

as the Hegelian alternative to the empiricist approach.

What distinguishes anti-humeans, in general, is that

they hold that the statement of a law does not refer to a
pattern or regularity, and so to a great many
particulars; it refers rather to something else that
governs those particulars, and that is reason for any
pattern or regularity in them. Generally this ‘something
else’ will be something like universals, natural kinds, or
Hegel’s immanent concept. (Kreines 2014, 72)

The immanence of the universal moment to the individual that is actualized for the

first time at this stage in the syllogistic models is what Kreines correctly identifies as

Hegel’s response to the empiricism. The notion of the universals that internally

structure or “govern,” and thus “is the reason for any pattern of regularity” we

observe in individuals, is the key Hegelian theme that will be developing further in

the subsequent syllogisms. At this stage, the immanence is forced as it is not the

individuals that are internally governed by the universal, but the very peculiar kind

of the middle term that is construed as individuality comprised of complete set of

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actual individual entities. The reason for this, again, is that the ontological model

that the Syllogism of Induction stands for is that of empiricism, hence Hegel’s

description of it as “Syllogism of Experience.”

The empiricist background assumption is another problematic aspect of the

present mediational model, and specifically the conception of universality in place.

Hegel points out this flaw by describing it as “universality [as] only completeness”

The idea is that the empiricist commitment to experience as the only source of

knowledge renders generation of genuine universality impossible. As Kant had

already pointed out in the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, universality

should not be mistaken for generality; the latter can be originating from experience

but the former cannot:

experience never gives its judgments true or strict but

only assumed and comparative universality (through
induction), so properly it must be said: as far as we have
perceived, there is no exception to this or that rule.
Thus if a judgment is thought in strict universality, i.e.,
in such a way that no exception at all is allowed to be
possible, then it is not derived from experience, but is
rather valid absolutely a priori. (CPR137)

The middle term of the Syllogism of Induction that is aimed at embracing

universality within itself through grouping of the totality of individuals will be able

to furnish only generality, but not universality. This is what Hegel has in mind when

claiming that no matter how exhaustive our set of individuals in the middle term is,

in relation to universality it remains “only a perennial ought-to-be” (WL691). As we

shall see, the universal moment of the concept is one that shall undergo the most

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fundamental transformation as we progress through the syllogistic mediational

models.

3.3) The Syllogism of Analogy

The next mediation mediational model, the Syllogism of Analogy, is a

transitional point that sets the ground for the third stage of mediations, the

Syllogisms of Necessity. Due to the nature of its middle term—the “universality that

is the reflection-into-self of a concrete” (WL 692) —the Syllogism of Analogy takes

one step further the internalization of the universal to the individual moment of the

concept. Universality here is presented in the form of an individuality grasped

through its essential nature. Hegel’s example of the present form of mediation is

“The earth is inhabited / the moon is an earth, / therefore the moon is inhabited”

(WL 692). Hence, although on the face of it the middle term is an individual entity,

the earth here is taken as “a concrete-reflected-into-self” as universality. The

universal under consideration—the heavenly body—is the essential nature of the

earth and is functioning here as the middle term or the ground for mediation. The

key development that takes place in this model is the complete internalization of the

universal to the individual, and in this respect we are dealing with an important step

taken toward the Hegelian transcendental ontology. At the same time, the

internalization of the universal is only an initial stage. There remains much to be

done in order to arrive at Hegel’s standpoint, and the key direction is the further

development and transformation of the nature of internalized universality.

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 Internalization of the universal to the individual at the point of transition

from the empiricist standpoint to his own ontological model is an interesting topic

to explore in light of the Kantian origins of Hegel’s position. The key aspect of the

Syllogism of Analogy that sheds light on the complex relation between the two

philosophers’ positions is the unity of the individual and the universal moments that

is central to this model of mediation. The middle term of the syllogism is the

individuality (the earth) taken as universality (heavenly body), and the entire

mediation rests on the issue of unity between these two moments. A particular

determination, in this case—being inhabited—that belongs to the middle term, is

also attributed to the other extreme term—the moon as a result of the inferential

mediation. Now, if the particular determination belongs to the earth due to its

essential nature (granted that the essential nature is the heavenly body), then the

conclusion will be valid. But the mediation fails since “the earth is inhabited [not] as

a heavenly body in general” but “as this particular heavenly body” (WL 694). The

key issue here is clearly the unity of the universal and the individual moments in the

middle term and how exhaustively the former immanently determines the latter.

The theme of the relation between universality and individuality is also one of the

central threads of Hegel’s critical appropriation of Kant’s insights.

Kant in the Critique of Judgment presents the notion of an intuitive

understanding as an alternative kind of intellect, in contrast to which he is

highlighting the key characteristics of our discursive understanding. What make this

distinction relevant for our discussion is that Kant outlines the differences between

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these two types of intellect in terms of the distinct ways in which they relate

universality, particularity, and individuality:

Our understanding is a power of concepts, i.e., a

discursive understanding, so that it must indeed be
contingent for it as to what the character and all the
variety of the particular may be that can be given to it in
nature and that can be brought under its concept. Now
all cognition requires not only understanding but also
intuition; and a power of complete spontaneity [as
opposed to receptivity] of intuition would be a cognitive
power different from, and wholly independent of
sensibility: thus a power of complete spontaneity of
intuition would be an understanding in the most
general sense of the term. Hence we can conceive of an
intuitive understanding as well (negatively, merely as
one that is not discursive), which, [unlike ours,] does
not (by means of concepts) proceed from the universal
to the particular, and thus to the individual. For such an
understanding there would not be that contingency in
the way nature’s products harmonize with the
understanding in terms of particular laws. (KU , 406)

The point here is that our understanding, being discursive, is capable of cognition

only through concepts—universal and reflected representations. In other words,

our understanding can only think, that is, relate to individuals mediately via

concepts (as well as relate concept to one another), but not intuit, that is, grasp the

individual immediately (only our receptive faculty of sensibility is able to afford us

direct relations to individuals). In other words, our discursive understanding is

incapable with its own resources of proceeding from the universal to the particular

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and the individual; it needs receptivity that presents sensible intuitions in order to

“proceed from the universal to the particular and thus to the individual” (KU 406).1

In both Hegel’s Syllogism of Analogy and Kant’s discursive understanding,

the mediation between the universal, the particular, and the individual moments is

unsuccessful and the nature of failure is identical. The key problem in both cases is

the lack of mediated unity between the universal and the individual. In the Syllogism

of Analogy, the unity of the universal and the individual moments found in the

middle term is a mere “immediate unity” —only postulated but not grounded. Were

we able to “proceed,” as Kant puts it, from the universal to the individual via the

particular, the syllogistic mediation would be successful. The evidence of the

similarity with the situation in the Kantian discursive understanding is that Kant’s

explanation for the limitation of the discursive understanding can be directly cited

here to explain the failure of the Syllogism of Analogy: “When cognition occurs

through our understanding, the particular is not determined by the universal and

therefore cannot be derived from it alone” (KU 406). Were the particular

determinations of the individual middle term (the earth) fully derivable from the

universal immanent to it (the heavenly body), the mediation would have been

successful. The property of being inhabited could be validly attributed to the moon.

But as is the case with the Kantian discursive understanding, so with the ontological

1
One thing to be noted here is that Kant in these passage is using not merely universal and particular as
he typically does while referring to different kinds of representations, but the universal, the particular,
and the individual—all three moments of the Hegelian notion of the concept. Considering these passages
from the Critique of Judgment were one of the most commonly referred to by Hegel from Kant’s corpus,
we can speculate that it is here that Hegel’s tripartite notion of the concept originates.
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model presented in the Syllogism of Analogy, the nature of the failure is the

universal’s inability for self-particularization.

Reading the syllogistic mediational models in parallel with the Kantian

juxtaposition of the discursive vs. intuitive understanding is helpful not only for a

better comprehension of the nature of the problem at hand, but also for seeing the

way to the Hegelian solution to it. Hegel thinks that Kant, when discussing the

limitations of discursive understanding in the Critique of Judgment, had the key to

the solution in front of his eyes and failed to recognize it. The intuitive

understanding, which Kant presents as merely a negative example, for Hegel holds

the potential of overcoming the problem of contingency in the relation between the

universal and the individual, as Kant himself had suggested in the above-cited

passage. The key to the solution is a different conception of universality, not the

analytic but what Kant calls the synthetic universality:

Our understanding has the peculiarity that when it

cognizes…it must proceed from the analytically
universal to the particular (i.e., from concepts to the
empirical intuition that is given); consequently, in this
process our understanding determines nothing
regarding the diversity of the particular. Instead our
understanding must wait until the subsumption of the
empirical intuition under the concept provides this
determination…But we can also conceive of an
understanding that, unlike ours, is not discursive but
intuitive, and hence proceeds from synthetically
universal (the intuition of a whole as a whole) to the
particular, i.e., from whole to the parts. (KU 407)

Kant continues: “Hence such an understanding as well as its presentation of the

whole has no contingency in the combination of the parts in order to make a

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determinate form of the whole possible. Our understanding, on the other hand,

requires this contingency” (KU 407). Thus, while the discursive understanding has

to proceed from parts to the whole and is incapable of doing this without external

input through sensible intuitions due to the analytic nature of its universality, the

intuitive understanding that possesses the synthetic universality has no need for

combining parts into a systematic whole, since qua intuition in it, the whole is given

prior to the parts (here we arrive at parts by isolating the segments of the whole). At

the same time, the intuitive understanding operates with synthetic universal and

universality being the form of a concept for Kant, the synthetic universal of the

intuitive understanding has the elements of both concepts and intuitions or

universality and individuality. The synthetic universal thus offers what is lacking in

the Syllogism of Analogy, i.e., the self-differentiation of the universality, and thus

successful mediation between the particular and individual moments of the concept.

And as we shall see, the promise that Hegel saw in this model presented by Kant as a

merely negative example is the guiding thread of the development that shall take

place in the third stage of syllogistic mediation: the Syllogism of Necessity.

Beatrice Longuenesse, while discussing the relevance of the intuitive

understanding for Kant–Hegel relation, associates the intellectual intuition with the

Transcendental Ideal from The Critique of Pure Reason:

In the first Critique, the Transcendental Ideal or the idea

of a whole of reality, which ultimately becomes
identified with the idea of an ens realismum as the
ground of all reality, is described as a concept that has
not merely ‘under it’ but ‘in it’ the totality of positive
determinations or realities by limitation of which all

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 empirical things could be completely determined. In the
third Critique, intellectual intuition is contrasted with
our own discursive intellect as thinking (and thus
generating by its very act of thought) the whole of
reality from a ‘synthetic universal’… both the idea of a
whole of reality (CPR) and the ‘synthetic universal’ (KU
) combine features of representations that has been
carefully distinguished in the Transcendental Aesthetic
of the first Critique” (Longuenesse 1998, 261-262)

The features of the representations that have been distinguished in the

Transcendental Aesthetics and are re-combined in both the intuitive understanding

and the Transcendental Ideal are of course concepts and intuitions, or the universal

and the individual representations. The synthetic universal and the Transcendental

Ideal as “the ground of all reality” clearly have much in common with the Hegelian

notion of the universal moment of the concept, which as we have seen in the

previous chapter, is the central moment of the concept in general. It contains its own

particular determinations instead of being a product of an external abstraction from

them; it is synthetic in the sense of generating content, which is not analytically

extractable from the original determination; and it contains the system of

determinations through which empirical reality is cognized. Hence, the Syllogism of

Analogy, both with its model of mediation and the nature of the failure of this

mediation, serves as a transitional point from the traditional ontological models

examined in the Syllogism of Existence and the Syllogism of Reflection to the

Hegelian transcendental ontology that will be emerging in the Syllogism of

Necessity. Locating Kant’s footprints at this very important transitional point is one

more testimony of the deeply running continuous current between the Kantian and

the Hegelian stances.

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4) The Syllogism of Necessity

4.1) The Categorical Syllogism

The next and last set of mediations presented in the Syllogism chapter is the

Syllogism of Necessity. Here, as Hegel claims, all three terms of the logical structure

of the concept are pervaded by the same “essential nature” (WL 696.2, 697.2).

Therefore, the problems of externality and presupposition of the conclusion that

haunted the previous two sets of syllogisms are no longer present here. There can

be neither fundamental externality between the moments of the concept, nor is

there any need for presuppositions in order to relate the terms as each one of the

terms is declared to be an expression of the same essence, “the terms, in keeping

with their substantial content, stand in a relation to one another which is in and for

itself identical; we have here one essential nature pervading the three terms” (WL

697). The determinate content-generating activity, the complete system of

particular conceptual content, and objects individuated through them are no longer

taken as ontologically distinct. For a better understanding of the model under

discussion and key features, it will be helpful to relate it to some central theses of

John McDowell’s position that, as he himself acknowledges, has been inspired by his

reading of Hegel.

The key difference that sets McDowell’s position apart from the Sellarsian

one that we have looked at above is his denial of the transcendental function to what

he calls “the below the line” elements of experience.

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 Below the line in the Sellarsian picture of a visual
experience, there is a complex or manifold of visual
sensations, non-concept-involving visual episodes or
states. Why does Sellars think the picture has to include
this elements as well as conceptual episodes of the
relevant kind? … it is for transcendental reasons that we
need to acknowledge the below-the-line element in the
picture. The idea is that we are entitled to talk of
conceptual episodes in which claims are ostensibly
visually impressed on subjects – the above-the-line
element in the picture – only because we can see the
flow of such conceptual representations as guided by
manifolds of sensations. (McDowell 2009, 23-24)

In other words, the objective purport of the conceptual content that subjects are

through experience saddled with rests, according to Sellars, on them being “guided

by” sensible manifold. It is this transcendental function of sensations that is absent

from McDowell’s picture, and the reason for this is that the objective purport of the

conceptual episodes is decoupled from them by McDowell. Hegel’s claim about the

unity of the three moments, wherein not only the particular and the universal but

also the individual are stated to be “invaded by the same essential nature,” meaning

that the schism setting apart the conceptual from the sensory content is overcome,

corresponds to the move McDowell makes when setting apart the “below-the-line”

or “non-concept-involving” content from objective purport of determinations of

thought. The individual that was formerly taken to stand with one leg in the

conceptual and the other in the sensible is now understood as an actualization of the

conceptual capacities. This is how we ought to understand Hegel’s claims that all

three moments are imbued by the same essential nature and that the middle term is

“not some alien immediate content, but the reflection-into-self of the

determinateness of the extremes” (WL 695.4).

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 What McDowell calls the “transcendental” function of the sensible given—

that is, the thesis that in order for thought to pass the master of objective purport or

to be considered of objective reality its conceptual content has to be guided from the

without, i.e., from sensible manifold or sheer receptivity—is removed from the

picture in the Syllogisms of Necessity. This is what McDowell has in mind when

claiming that Hegelian reason has no need for an external constraint, because it

itself includes as one of its moments the receptivity that Sellars and Kant (according

to Sellars’s reading of him) had attributed to sensibility (Having the World in View

39). The claim of the identical essential nature of the individual to the other two

moments of the concept means that there is no content in the individuals that is

heterogeneous to the determinations of understanding that make up the middle

term of the syllogism.

At the other extreme, the activity of generation of determinations that carves

out the logical space under consideration is related to the individual via the

conceptual makeup of the middle term. The idea is that the relation of thought with

the empirical realm is concept ladenness—thought relates to the world via the

conceptual content available to it. This is in place both in apprehension of objects or

when entities first enter our view, as well as when relating or making judgments

involving already apprehended objects. As McDowell puts it, perceptual experience

“contains” claims (HWV 30): “An ostensible seeing that there is a red cube in front of

one would be an actualization of the same conceptual capacities that would be

exercised in judging that there is a red cube in front of one” (HWV 30). Hegel

explicitly connects the objective purport of the determinations of thought with

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overcoming the schism between the determination of the three moments: “we have

here one essential nature pervading the three terms, a nature in which the

determinations of individuality, particularity and universality are merely formal

moments. To this extent therefore the categorical syllogism is no longer subjective;

in the above identity, objectivity begins” (WL 697.4). Hence, overcoming the schism

between the moments of the concept brings the syllogistic structure to a whole new

level of development; the conceptual content first occupies the center-stage of all

three mediated moments of the ontological structure. The transcendental function

of the sensible given is left behind, just like with the transition from the Sellarsian to

the McDowellian stance, and what remains to be done in the rest of the Syllogisms of

Necessity is fleshing out the results that have been attained with this move. This

requires a more detailed examination of the nature of the relation between the

moments of the concept.

Hegel does not give an example of the Categorical Syllogism, but he describes

each one of the three moments in sufficient details to paint an adequate picture of

the ontological model under consideration. The middle term that he describes as the

genus stands in relation to one of the extremes—individuality as “the essential

nature of the individual and not just any of its determinateness or properties” (WL

697). Hegel further specifies the nature of determinateness of the middle term as

“the essential nature as content” posited as totality (WL 696). The middle term,

therefore, should be understood as a systematically related network of

determinations through which the essential characteristics of the individuated

entities are conceived. The middle term as the essential nature, however, should not

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be understood here along the lines of the Aristotelian substantial form, as the latter

retains the elements of accidentality when mediating between an individual with its

universal properties. Instead, as Hegel explains, the nature of the relation we have in

place is that of necessity or concept-determination.

The categorical syllogism in its substantial significance

is the first syllogism of necessity, in which a subject is
united with a predicate through its substance. But
substance raised into the sphere of the Concept is the
universal, posited as being in and for itself in such a
manner that it has for the form or mode of its being, not
accidentality, which is the relationship peculiar to
substance but Concept-determination. (WL 696.4)

This rejection of accidentality is indicative of difference from the Aristotelian

model according to which, in addition to the determinations inhering in the

individual through its substantial form, there are others that are mere accidental.

For example, being mortal belongs to Socrates as belonging to the genus of man, but

being sentenced to death by his fellow citizens does not. Now the ontological model

under consideration is different from this due to the absence of the accidental

element in the relation between the individuality and universality. There is no

determination related to the individuality via the process of conceptualization that

the universal moments stands for, which is not related to the web of conceptual

content making up the middle term. What he calls concept-determination is a

holistic constellation of inferentially related empirical concepts ever striving but

never truly attaining full completion.

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4.1.1) Only the Middle Term is Fully Determined

While all three moments of the present form of mediation are identical due to

the shared content of their “essential nature,” Hegel makes it clear that only the

middle term presents this content in its fully determined form. At this initial stage of

the Syllogism of Necessity, only the middle term is asserted to be “objective

universality” (WL 696.3). This special status of the particular moment of the concept

and the insufficient development of the individual and the universal ones is crucial

for understanding the ontological model Hegel is examining here, as well as its

shortcomings due to which he moves onto the subsequent relational structures. The

systematically related constellation of empirical concepts that make up the middle

term is placed here at the epicenter of the ontological model as the immanent

structure of actuality. Both individuated entities that figure in perceptual

experiences and the determination forming process of reflection are grounded on

the middle term, which is the “reflection into themselves of the determinations of

extremes” (695.4). In other words, the conceptual makeup that immanently

structures reality is the ground of relation to the individual entities, on the one

hand, and the content that the process of reflective activity operates with, on the

other. This is another point where the proximity of the position under consideration

with that of McDowell comes to the fore.

The basic commitment shared with McDowell is that the structure of

actuality constrains the structure of thought. Paul Redding sees this as a clear

evidence of McDowell’s Aristotelianism. Aristotle’s rejection of the Platonic

ontological model of the two separate realms, one of ideas or true being and the

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other of sensible finite entities or of becoming, is seen by Redding as mirrored in the

move McDowell makes in relation to the widespread view amongst the

contemporary philosophers, which can easily be traced back to Descartes and more

immediately to Frege. “The Fregean view involved ‘a suspect conception of how

thought related to reality, and ultimately suspect conception of mind’. On the

Fregean view, the sense of a term is a possession of the mind that is unaffected by

the fact that there may be nothing in the world to answer to it” (Redding 2007, 37).

The position being criticized assumes a “sideway-on” view that only a God

could have. It postulates the transcendent perspective from which, on the one hand,

is made possible to accesses the mind and its content, and on the other hand is

gaining the view of the world directly bypassing the mind altogether. Both Aristotle

and the McDowell, according to Redding, reject this “trans-realm” conception of

philosophical vision and reject the decoupling of the mind from the world. The mind

for them is not the “mythical repository” of autonomous content that stand

unconstrained from the ultimate structure of experienced reality. Instead, the mind

is rationally constrained by the world—the defining feature of the ontological model

presented in the Categorical Syllogism. The middle term that presents the

systematically related conceptual content as objective universality is the ultimate

structure of reality that determines the extreme terms—the determination-

generating reflective activity and the perception of individual entities. Hence, the

ontological model presented in the Categorical Syllogism offers as its key feature the

immanent structure of the world that has priority over the perceptual individuation

of entities on the one hand and the determination forming process on the other.

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4.1.2) Universal moment as a principle of difference and mere immediate
unity

Hegel makes clear that, unlike the middle term, the other two moments of the

present syllogistic structure are not full manifestations of the determined totality

under consideration; moreover, it seems impossible to clearly define what exactly

such a manifestation by individuality and universality in the present configuration

would amount to. The insufficient development of the individual and the universal

moments is the main reason behind the failure of attaining the fully mediated state

of the concept; “this syllogism still continues to be subjective, in that the said

identity is still the substantial identity or content, but is still not at the same time

identity of form” (WL 697), and the middle term only possesses “positive identity,

but is not equally the negativity of its extremes” (WL 697).

As such, while the middle term at this stage can already be described as the

complete self-determination of the given essence that captures the totality of its

content, the same cannot be said of the extremes. Although both universality and

individuality are related to the middle term, the relation, however, is not of

mediated but of merely immediate nature. In other words, there is a lack of

grounding of the relation between the universal and the particular moment on the

one hand and the individual and the particular on the other. In order to make sense

of these claims, it is helpful to consider them on the background of McDowell’s

position, which as I have claimed above closely resembles the model under

consideration.
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 The key thesis advanced by McDowell in his influential work Mind and World

is the direct perception of the conceptually structured world. He sees it as the only

viable option to avoid the two bad alternatives: the myth of the given (the

widespread positions amongst philosophers, especially those sympathetic to the

empiricist tradition) and the frictionless spinning in the void (which is advanced by

Donald Davidson in his attempt to overcome the problems associates with the myth

of the given, but which has problems of its own according to McDowell). Instead of

conferring to the environmental stimulus the causal function, as a result of which we

acquire observational judgments, McDowell wants to maintain that we have the

capacity to procure the perceptual knowledge via immediate access of the

conceptually structured actuality. In other words, instead of experience standing in

a causal relation to our beliefs and affecting conceptually articulated responses in

us, it has to serve as a rational constraint, since only the latter can ground the

normative role that experience plays for the objective purport of out believes. The

rational “friction” with the world, which allows McDowell to walk the fine line

between Scylla of the myth of the given and Charybdis of the Davidsonian spinning

in the void, is provided by the direct perception of the conceptually structured

world. Hence, perceived individuals, instead of effecting conceptually structured

observational beliefs in us, already “contain” conceptual content. This distinction

between the perceptual and observational knowledge allows McDowell to maintain

that the former (the perceptual knowledge) affords us a direct access to the world.

Clearly, in this picture the key element is the differentiation between the

perceptual vs. mere observational judgment. It is what allows McDowell to set his

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position apart from that of Davidson. But it is not clear that McDowell’s stance is

free of problems, as Robert Brandom points out McDowell has difficulties with

maintaining a clear distinction between the perceptual and observational

judgments.

What sort of a fact is it that in some cases where we

non-inferentially acquire a true belief by exercising a
reliable disposition non-inferentially to respond to the
fact in question by acquiring the belief there is a
perceptual experience present, while in others there is
not? How would we go about settling the question of
whether the physicist has genuine perceptual
experiences of mu mesons? Is there any way in
principle to tell other than asking? And if we do ask, is
there any chance that the physicist is wrong, because
the physicist has been taught a bad theory? Could I
think I was having perceptual experiences of mu
mesons or the maleness of chickens when I was not, or
vice versa? Do we know just by having a perceptual
experience what sensory modality it corresponds to (so
that the—supposed—fact that the chicken sexers get
this wrong is decisive evidence that they do not have
genuine perceptual experiences)? The answers to
questions such as these determine just how classically
Cartesian McDowell’s notion of perceptual experience
is—and so, from my point of view, just how suspicious
we should be of it. (Brandom 2002, Reading McDowell,
100)

The difficulty in McDowell’s position that Brandom is pointing out here is of exactly

the same nature as the one we are dealing with in the ontological model of the

Categorical Syllogism. The system of determinate conceptual content is asserted as

the ground of actuality by being presented as the middle term of the syllogism, but

its relation to perceptual experiences of individuals is merely postulated, not well

justified. While McDowell maintains that the conceptually structured world is

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directly perceived by us, it is not clear on what grounds he can argue that any

specific non-inferentially acquired conceptual content does better justice to the

world than any other, granted that we have no other source of objective purport

than perceptual experience itself.

As with McDowell’s position, just like with the ontological model Hegel

considers in the Categorical Syllogism, the relation between the particular and the

individual moments of the concept lacks justification—this is the meaning in the

Hegelian technical vocabulary of the critical point raised by Brandom against

McDowell in the above-cited passage. Brandom, however, does not merely place his

finger on the problematic aspect of the ontological model under consideration, he

also points out a way toward a solution. What appears to be the ultimate ground of

objective purport of the given beliefs is not finding oneself in a state of being in

possession of some conceptually articulated beliefs, but through drawing inferences

from the given conceptually structured perceptual episodes, deciding how well it

squares with other beliefs we hold, and in general engaging in the social practice of

giving and asking for reasons.

Thus, with the ontological model of the categorical syllogism, just like with

the McDowellian version of it, the lack of mediation or mere postulation of the unity

of the moments constitutes the key problem that needs to be addressed. Hence,

what remains to be done is to transform the immediateness of the relation between

the middle term and the extremes to mediated unity. This would mean reworking of

the present conceptions of the individual and the universal moments and putting

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forth a relational structure in which all three moments are fully mediated with one

another. This would mean, in the McDowellian version of the model, not a mere

postulation of the rational constraint via perceptual experience but offering a well-

grounded account of how the individuated entities are related to the conceptual

framework on the one hand and how both of these are related to the process of

generation of determinations on the other. This will be accomplished through the

development that takes place in the remaining part of the Syllogism of Necessity; the

very same posited totality found at the present stage only in the middle term will be

developed in the extremes as well.

4.2) The Hypothetical Syllogism

The theme of the relationship between the individual and the particular

moments of the concept comes to the center of attention in the Hypothetical

Syllogism in the form of the relation between the diversity of individuals and the

inner substantial identity that underlies them. The syllogistically expressed

ontological model has the following form: “If A is, then B is / But A is / Therefore B

is.” The major premise of the syllogism is the hypothetical judgment described by

Hegel in the following words: “The relation of the hypothetical judgment is necessity

or inner substantial identity associated with external diversity of existence, or

mutual indifference of being in the sphere of Appearance—an identical content

which forms the internal basis” (WL 699). It is natural to think of the two sides of

the relationship as the former standing for the conditioned and the latter for the

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condition. But Hegel’s picture is more complex; he wants to sublate the rigid

division between the essential, the more important moment on the one hand and its

manifestation on the other. In the hypothetical judgment (the major premise of the

present syllogism), either side can be taken both as the condition and the

conditioned (WL 699).

Clearly, here the central difficulty of the previous model—the relation

between the particular and the individual moments of the concept—is being re-

examined by Hegel from a different angle. On the one hand, “the inner, abstract” side

can be seen as the conditioning that stands behind its manifestation in the

multiplicity of individuals. On the other hand, though, the separate, scattered

appearances of individuals can be described as the conditions for the manifestation

of the genuine reality that is revealed through them. One way to think of this

relation is to compare it with the way physicists typically conceive of a force (for

example, electromagnetic or gravitational force). We can think of the force as the

underlying essential reality that manifests itself through a series of appearances,

which is the effect it has on the observable object. In this sense, the interior, the

invisible is the essential, while the exterior and the observable the unessential. On

the other hand, however, we can also think of the series of appearances as the

essential aspect of reality and reduce existence to what manifests itself to us; in this

case, the postulated force is a mere theoretical hypothesis and the only reason that

we come to posit its existence is the series of appearances observed. Hence, in the

hypothetical syllogism through its major premise, the hypothetical judgment, the

theme of the relation between the individuals and the particularity as determinate

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“content which forms the internal basis” is introduced and their mutual

“indifference” is put in question. In other words, Hegel is focusing on the crucial flaw

of the previous model, the theme of the relation between the particularity and the

individuality, and is clearly paving his way toward overcoming the insufficient

degree of mediatedness between them.

The relation between the condition and the conditioned and complexities

involved with this is a prominent theme for the Hegelian system in general. In

gaining a better understanding of it, it might be helpful to look at one example of

how the condition vs. conditioned interrelatedness is played out, namely the

relationship between the theoretical vs. practical stance. “In the theoretical attitude,

we attempt to ‘make’ the objective subjective; and in the practical attitude, we

attempt to make subjective objective” (Pippin 1989, 134). While the practical

philosophy can be seen as a translation of the inner, the subjective into the outer,

the objective; thus, the inner is the condition and the outer the conditioned. Within

the theoretical stance, the objective reality presents the conditions that are being

internalized. Hegel’s overall position is that the very same schema is in operation in

two different guises in these stances, “The distinction between thought and will is

simply that between theoretical and practical attitudes, but they are not two

separate faculties; on the contrary, the will is particular way of thinking” (PR, par4

35). This positing of the identical schema in operation in both of these stances

undermines the traditional rigid distinction between them and is clearly related to

the sublation of the distinction between the condition and the conditioned that is

taking place in the Hypothetical Syllogism. The re-description of the relation

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between the theoretical and practical attitudes as a manifestation of the very same

schema operating in two different modalities is related to the overcoming of the

schism between the individual and particular moments of the concept—in the

Categorical Syllogism, the particular moment occupied the pride of place of the

ontological ground, hence the condition, while the individuality was the conditioned.

In the present model, the distinction between the two is problematized, and

individuality—just as much as the particular moment of the concept—is at the

ground of the model under consideration. Just like with the theoretical vs. practical

stances with the particular and individual moments of the concept, we also reach

the realization of their identity, their mutual mediatedness.

The crucial difference between the Hypothetical Judgment and the

Hypothetical Syllogism is that the nexus of relations between the conditions and the

conditioned as presented in the former (which also is the major premise of the

latter) is a mere potentiality still lacking actualization—the feature that is

introduced in the latter. The schematic content of the nexus is a mere potentiality

standing beyond the immediate being still requiring an additional element for

actualization. This element is supplanted by the minor premise “A is” of the

hypothetical syllogism, “The conditions are a scattered material that waits and

demands to be used; this negativity is the mediating element; the free unity of the

Concept. It determines itself as activity… This middle term is therefore no longer

merely an inner necessity, but necessity that is; the objective universality contains

self-relation as simple immediacy, as being” (WL 700). Hence, to the inner necessity

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of the major premise, the minor one adds the missing element for its actualization—

immediate existence.

Here Hegel is using an important element of his system without explicitly

naming it—the notion of true infinity. Unlike the spurious infinity, which for Hegel is

a mere endless reiteration of the finite, the true infinity is not extraneous to the

finitude. Infinity is a process of self-relation that is immanent and in fact constitutive

of any concrete finitude. Hegel describes the middle term of the preset syllogism, “A”

as an “individuality as self-related negative unity,” but clearly it is not mere

individuality as the middle term is already mediated with the particular moment

and this is what renders it into a self-related unity. Thus, with the middle term and

its “simple immediacy,” the true infinity enters the picture as the driving force of the

actualization or the concretion of the nexus of necessity. The whole syllogism thus is

acquiring the quality of self-related objective universality—the feature that will be

further developed in the following model—the Syllogism of Disjunction.

Now, how does this move map onto the contemporary renditions of the

ontological and epistemological models we have looked at above? As has been

argued, some interesting aspects of the problems of the previous stage of mediation

of the Syllogism of Necessity—the Categorical Syllogism—could be brought forth

through the examination of Robert Brandom’s criticism of John McDowell’s position.

In a similar vein, the development that has taken place in the present stage of

mediation—the hypothetical syllogism—can be clarified by attending to some

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important features of Brandom’s own position, specifically those features that set

him apart from McDowell.

One of the most fundamental disagreements between them, as Brandom sees

it, is McDowell’s insufficient appreciation of the role that our conceptual content

generating activity plays in the individuation of the entities that figure in our

perception experiences. McDowell’s emphasis on the direct access of the

conceptually structured reality, according to Brandom, ultimately commits him to

positing the conception of the world populated by entities individuated prior to any

conceptualizing activity on our part. Brandom is skeptical of this commitment of

McDowell and wants to reverse the relation—it is not that our cognition grasps the

conceptually structured worlds, but our conceptual content generating and applying

activity is the condition of the possibility of both individualization of the entities

that makes up the world, as well as the specific conceptual determinations (the fact

that entities appear of being this and such kinds, having this and such properties,

etc.) that structure the world that manifest itself to us.

This is exactly the move that is made in the Hypothetical Syllogism in relation

to the Categorical Syllogism. The actualization of the relation between the individual

and the particular moment is carried out through the universal moment of the

concept. That is to say, the individuation of entities as instances of a given

constellation of determinate conceptual content is conditioned on the conceptual

content generating activity—the process of formation of determinations through

which concepts are applied in judgments, inferences are drawn from doxastic

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commitments, as well as the conceptual content of determinations used in

judgments, the revisions are made to them in case incompatibility between two or

more commitments arise, etc. In other words, if in the previous model the particular

moment of the concept—a system of determinate conceptual content structuring

reality—was granted the fundamental ontological role, now the move is made

toward emphasizing the centrality of the conceptual content generating activity—

the universal moment of the concept. It is only through the latter that the former is

actualized and manifests itself as the immanent structure of reality.

This development clearly maps on the move Brandom makes in relation to

McDowell, echoing the critical point cited earlier as captured by these words:

What sort of a fact is it that in some cases where we

non-inferentially acquire a true belief by exercising a
reliable disposition non-inferentially to respond to the
fact in question by acquiring the belief there is a
perceptual experience present, while in others there is
not? How would we go about settling the question of
whether the physicist has genuine perceptual
experiences of mu mesons? Is there any way in
principle to tell other than asking? And if we do ask, is
there any chance that the physicist is wrong, because
the physicist has been taught a bad theory? (Brandom
2002)

Brandom’s distancing of himself from McDowell’s position that mirrors the

differences between the last two syllogisms can be described as a rejection of the

Aristotelian stance regarding the primary locus of conceptual content and its

replacement with a form of conceptual pragmatism. Instead of postulation of the

conceptually structured world as the ultimate source of intentional content that is

actualized in us as we come into “rational friction” with the world, the sources of
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conceptual determination are to be sought in the practical activity of application of

concepts in judgments, drawing inferences from them, and in general from the

functional role of semantic content generating activities that are carried out in “the

logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says.”

The conclusion of the hypothetical syllogism is “therefore B is.” Hegel

explains that this is a manifestation of the B as having “its being through an other.”

Here the central theme of the Hegelian transcendental ontology, self-relation, is

brought to the fore one more time. B’s existence is grounded on the existence of A.

But at the same time, the inner substantial identity that binds the two makes this

relation to the other into a self-relation. The identity of the individual and the

particular moments of the concept, “the absolute content of A and B are the same,” is

not an immediate but a mediated identity, a unity that has been posited through

“form’s activity”: “the difference of A and B is an empty name. Thus it is a unity

reflected into itself—hence and identical content; and it is so not merely implicitly

but it is also posited as such through this syllogism” (WL 701). As it has been argued

in the previous chapter, Hegel is using the Kantian notion of the universality as the

form of concepts. Here in the Hypothetical Syllogism, as we have seen above, the

mediation between the individual and the particular moments has been

accomplished via the universal moment. Hence, in the passage just quoted, Hegel is

tying the self-relation that obtains between the moments of the concept with

universality or “form’s activity.” This is an important thesis that will be further

elaborated in the subsequent syllogistic model—the universal moment as the

ground of the self-relational structure of the concept. I will present a more detailed

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analysis of this crucial feature of the Hegelian transcendental ontology in the

following section, where a more comprehensive account of the self-relational

structure of the concept will be laid out. At this point, it is important to note a

significant step taken in the present form of syllogism that sets the stage for the next

and the final model of mediation—the overcoming of the clear-cut distinction

between the contents of the three moments.

In the beginning of the Syllogisms of Necessity, all three terms were

described by Hegel as “pervaded” by the same essential nature; the content of the

moments, however, were not developed to the same degree. Now, not only is the

clear-cut distinction between the two sides of the major premise (individuality and

particularity) problematized in regard to the issue of which is the condition and

which the conditioned, or cause vs. effect, ground and consequence, but also the

middle term—A is declared to have the same absolute content as B (WL 700). In

other words, the content given in individuals has no element that is not reducible to

the system of empirical conceptual determinations that make up the particular

moment of the concept. Moreover, the universal moment that is the conceptual

content generating and applying process guided by the determinations of reflection

plays the mediating role between the individual and the particular moments. That is,

instead of the mind passively acquire the specific content caused by the perceived

individual, it is actively engaged in determination of its conceptual content. The

mediation goes the opposite direction as well—the universal moment is not only

engaged in determining the individual by means of the constellation of the concepts

available to it, but it also is the process through which conceptual determinations

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are generated and revisions made based on the individuals entities encountered in

experience and the doxastic endorsements and inferential commitments they result

in.

This mutual dependence of the individual and the particular moments of the

concept, and the function that the universality plays in it, have clear resemblance

with the Kantian determinative and the reflective judgment. In the former case, it is

the concept that is at hand and the individual is to be subsumed under it; in the

latter, individual intuitions are presented to the mind, which searches for the

concept through which they can be determined. Kant’s and Hegel’s positions are

closer here than is often taken to be. Some commentators have read Kant as

discriminating between two types of judgments, determinative and reflective, as two

different modalities of operation of the mind. But as Longuenesse has convincingly

shown, these are not two different, but instead the very same, activity of the mind—

although with two different outcomes. In the former, the individual is subsumed

under a concept, while in the latter the very same process of searching for a concept

fails: “They [reflective judgments] differ in this regard from other judgments related

to the sensible given, which are not merely reflective, but determinative as well.

What makes judgments merely reflective is that in them the effort of the activity of

judgment to form concepts fails” (Longuenesse 1998, 164). Hence, the Kantian

picture of the process of reflection that related concepts and intuitions has much in

common with the Hegelian model of the universal moment as the actualization of

the relation between the individual and the particular moments of the concept.

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4.3) The Disjunctive Syllogism

The Kantian norm Hegel uses to evaluate the ontological models in the

Syllogism chapter states that the moments of the concept ought to be not merely

related to one another, but their relation should also have the nature of self-relation.

This norm, as we have seen, has not been met by any of the alternative models

discussed so far. Only the last model considered by Hegel, the Disjunctive Syllogism,

does justice to this criterion. As Hegel puts it, in the Disjunctive Syllogism the three

moments of the concept—universality, particularity, and individuality—attain the

state in which “the distinction of mediating and mediated [as well as form and

content, … ] has disappeared” (WL 703). Hence, the Disjunctive Syllogism, the last

ontological model presented in the Syllogism chapter, lays out Hegel’s vision of the

basic structure of actuality. It is the culminating point of the development taking

place in the Syllogism chapter that can be best described as the epigenesis of the

logical structure of the concept—the development through which the concept

attains “its positedness“ (WL704).

One of the most distinctive features that set the disjunctive syllogism apart

from all others is that it has the middle term in both premises and conclusion. The

syllogism is presented in two different versions: “A is either B or C or D / But A is B /

Therefore A is neither B nor C” and “A is either B or C or D / But A is neither C nor D

/ Therefore A is B.” Either one of these versions presents the middle term, A, as the

subject in both the major and the minor premises, as well as in the conclusion.

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Overall, the middle term comes to the fore as embodying the totality of the concept,

representing all three of its moments. In the major premise, the middle term is

universality, in the minor one it is particularity, and in the conclusion it is presented

as individuality (WL 702). Each one of these components has significant

implications and warrants a close examination.

The first premise, “A is either B or C or D,” presents “a universal, and in its

predicate, the universal sphere particularized in the totality of its species” (WL 702).

Thus, we have on the one hand the universal moment as the determinate content-

generating process through which the particular ground-level empirical concepts

are furnished and their content is revised. Once more, the major premise of the

syllogism draws on the result of the previous form of mediation—the universality as

grounding the particular moment of the concept. The middle term of the Disjunctive

Syllogism carves out the logical—or, rather, the ontological—space within which the

systematically related constellation of empirical concepts is generated: “As

universality it is first the substantial identity of the genus; but secondly an identity

that embraces within itself particularity.” Hegel uses the term substance and

Substantial identity in a peculiar sense here, reflecting his ontological vision; it is

declared to be “activity-of-form” of the possibility passing into actuality (par150, EL

225). Hence, the universality is the substance in the sense of the underlying ground

or the condition from the activity of which its potentialities are materialized. What

Hegel has in mind here is clearly the generation of empirical determinate content

through the universal moment of the concept as the “creative power” (WL 556).

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 At the same time, as we already know from the development that has taken

place in the Syllogisms of Necessity, the schism between the moments of the concept

is overcome; therefore, the products of the universal moment of the concept cannot

be different from it. This is what Hegel wants to bring home in the passages like the

following: “When substance, as self-identical being-in-and for-self, is distinguished

from itself as totality of accidents, that which mediates is substance as power” (WL

557). If “the substance” stands for the underlying creating power, the determinate

content generating activity, “the totality of accidents” that it furnishes is the

determinations posited by the power. But as Hegel makes clear in this passage, the

universal moment needs to distinguish from itself in order to be considered as

merely the empirical concept generating activity, because at this stage in the

development of the syllogistic mediational structure, the state of complete unity

between the moments is attained. Hence, for Hegel, the totality of the constellation

of the empirical concepts is identical to the process through which they are

generated and revised. This thesis is deeply rooted in the Kantian heritage of Hegel’s

transcendental ontology. Recall Kant’s dual notion of the concept as the unity of the

act of synthesis, as well as the universal and reflected representation. The activity of

the combination of the manifold on the one hand, and the determinate universal on

the other in the Kantian account correspond to the empirical content generating

process (the universal moment) and the totality of the determinations furnished

through them (the particular moment) in the Hegelian account.

The identity of the two moments within the Hegelian account means the

ultimate reducibility of the content of each one of the moments to the other. There

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are no particular determinations of the systematically related constellation of

empirical concepts that is not produced by and therefore also revisable via the

determination furnishing activity. In other words, the totality of the content of the

particular moment is posited through the universal one, which incorporates the

immediacy of experience into the mediate system of empirical concept that it

continuously forms, alters, revises, clarifies, etc. On the other hand, the universal

moment, the activity of the empirical determinations generating process, is none

other than the application of the very same empirical concepts that make up the

particular moment. The universal moment of the concept is not some transcendent

ground from which the content of empirical concepts is formed and altered. Instead,

it is the process of application of these concepts itself, through which the inferential

relations between different determinations are drawn through discerning the

consequences and incompatibilities that a given doxastic commitment or conceptual

content requires. Through experience, the systematically related empirical concepts

are being applied, but every new episode of experience that adds bits of doxastic

and inferential commitments implies transformation of the whole spectrum of

interrelated empirical determination through an inferential chain of

interdependencies. Hence, the universal moment is the continuously evolving

process of application of the empirical concepts through which shaping and

transformation of the content of these systematically interrelated determinations is

taking place. Thus, the mutual dependency of the universal and the particular

moments of the basic ontological structure that Hegel calls the concept is how we

ought to understand the claim of their identity.

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4.3.1) Contrast with Bowman’s Interpretation of Unity

When introducing the universal moment of the concept, Hegel described it

not merely as a creative power, but as a free creative power. Freedom, however, for

Hegel means “being with self in its other.” Hence, we can see that up to this point in

the process of mediation between the three moments of the concept, universality has

been free merely potentially. It is only in the Disjunctive Syllogism that it fully

actualizes its freedom—as the rupture between the form and content, mediated and

mediating aspects of the immanent structure of the concept, is overcome, and

universality comprehends the totality of the particularization as identical to it.

Universality, as the creative power, “is therefore the universal sphere that contains

its total particularization” (WL 701). The unity between the dynamic and the static

aspects of the Hegelian ontology is one of the central claims of Bowman’s recent

interpretation of the dualistic aspect of the Hegelian notion of the concept. The basic

account of the static ontological structure is borrowed by Bowman from Rolf

Horstmann’s influential work on Hegel’s ontology Ontologie und Relationen, which

he synthesizes with the dynamic account of the very same structure as the source of

all finite determination as presented in Dieter Henrich’s works.

As my reading of the unity between the universal and the particular

moments of the concept has demonstrated, the basic idea behind Bowman’s project

is indeed correct, as the moments of the concept are two sides of the same coin (one

static, the other dynamic) and only with keeping this dual aspect of the Hegelian

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concept can we gain proper understanding of him. But just as the overall thrust of

his position is right, the specific account of the self-relational structure Bowman

offers is mistaken. The determinations of reflection—identity, difference, ground—

that Bowman describes as the “single complex rational structure” of the concept, in

reality are the determinations of reflection or the basic functions guiding the

conceptual content generating activity. This is the reason that Hegel presents them

not in the Doctrine of the Concept but in the Doctrine of Essence. The dynamic part

that Bowman discusses, on the other hand, relying on Henrich’s account, also

belongs to the Doctrine of Essence and in fact is nothing but a close investigation

into the structural elements of the determinate content generating process, which

he earlier misidentified as the basic features of the Hegelian notion of the concept.

Hence, his conclusion, “the Concept and absolute negativity are two sides of a single

‘speculative’ coin, one structural, one dynamic” is fundamentally misleading as what

he has described as the immanent structure of the concept in reality is the set of the

functions guiding “the dynamic” moment of the dualistic picture.

The unity of the dynamic and the static aspects, as my reading has

demonstrated, is indeed fundamental to Hegel’s transcendental ontology, but it is

not the identity of the concept on the one hand and dynamic process on the other as

Bowman would have it. Rather, it is the self-relational structure of the concept itself

and the unity between its moments. Indeed, if the self-relational unity is the

fundamental feature of the Hegelian ontology, as Bowman claims, it ought to be

located on the bottom floor of the ontological theory under consideration—it has to

be discerned on the level of the concept (i.e., not the essence as Bowman would have

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it). As my analysis in the last three chapters has shown, Hegel does indeed present

such self-relational structure in the concept; moreover, this self-mediation is the

defining characteristic of the concept unifying the dynamic element (the universal

moment as the process of generation and revision of the systematically related

empirical concepts that proceeds through incorporating experience within the web

of these inferential interdependencies) with the static one (the particular moment

as the constellation of inferentially interrelated empirical concepts generated

through the dynamic moment) and the individual (the unity of the other two

moments). As we have seen, the attainment of the complete mediation between

these three moments of the concept has been the normative force behind the

development that we have traced in the present chapter. Each new syllogistic model

took us one step closer to the fulfillment of this criterion, which is fully met only in

the Disjunctive Syllogism.

Having looked at the major premise of the Disjunctive Syllogism and the

ontological commitment implied in it, I shall briefly outline the key aspects of the

remaining parts of the mediational model under consideration. If in the major

premise, the term “A” is subject, which is universal that in its predicate

particularizes itself (WL 702.2), in the minor premise the same term appears as

“determinate or as a species” (WL 702.2), which Hegel also describes as “the

reciprocal exclusion of the terms” (WL 701.3). Here the very same term that was

exhibited as universality in the major premise is particularized into determinations

related by the inferential pathways. The totality of this conceptual content is making

up the particular moment of the concept. If the focus of the major premise was the

266
self-differentiation of the universal moment as the creative power positing

determinations, the minor premise offers a look at the nature of interrelatedness of

the empirical concepts and role that this interrelatedness place in determining their

content. The point is that the determinate boundaries of how things are is possible

only through the inferential web of interrelations between the concepts that spell

out the relations of necessary implication and incompatibility. The specific meaning

of a given determination is constituted by the totality of the inferential relations it

has with other determinations through which the necessary implications and

incompatibilities are articulated.

Here Hegel is again tying the particularization with the third moment, the

individuality. This particularly vividly comes to the fore in the conclusion of the

Disjunctive Syllogism: “Further, this exclusion is not merely a reciprocal exclusion,

or the determination merely a relative one, but it is just as essentially a self-related

determination, the particular as the individuality to the exclusion of the others”

(701.3). The already familiar theme of the individuation of entities via particular

determination is brought to the fore again. One more time we are dealing with the

Kantian insight (integrated within the complex architectonics of the Hegelian

concept) that objects, instead of being given to the mind as already individuated,

existing out there in the world as objects of this and such nature making up

determinate furniture of the world, are conditioned by the conceptual content

through which the mind relates to the world. Hence, both extreme terms of the

Disjunctive Syllogism, particularity and individuality, are grounded on the universal

moment that makes up the middle term of the final ontological model presented by

267
Hegel in the Syllogism chapter. The central thesis of the Hegelian transcendental

ontology is that the conceptual content generating process is what grounds the

particular determination and their meanings, as well as the entities individuated

through them: “The extremes, in distinction from this middle term, appear only as

positedness which no longer possesses any determinateness peculiar to itself as

against the middle term” (WL 702).

4.3.2) Ontology of Formal Logic

With positing the universal moment as the middle term of the last

mediational model, the dynamic nature of the Hegelian vision of the world came to

the fore with its full force for the first time. Not only the complex empirical concepts

through which we relate to the world, but even the most basic determinations, from

which they are made up and which tie the empirical concepts and their content into

a system of interrelated elements, are the products of the determinate content

generating activity, a process that is neither merely mental, nor merely discursive

justificatory or explanatory, nor merely practical and action guiding—rather, it is

one that underlies and conditions all these. It is interesting to note in this respect

the change that has taken place in the last three syllogistic models regarding the

different implications they have on the laws of logic (in the traditional, not the

Hegelian sense of the term).

Within the ontological vision that was expressed in the Categorical Syllogism,

where the particular moment was given the central role, the validity of the laws of

268
logic was ultimately rooted in the structure of the world. By maintaining that the

systematically related determinations that make up the particular moment of the

concept constitute the basic structure of actuality, we were also implicitly granting

the same status to the formal relation between these determinations. Hence,

according to the model expressed in the Categorical Syllogism, our thought is bound

by the laws of logic because they structure and describe the relations within the

world; actuality is the source of normativity of the rules of inference. In the

Hypothetical, and especially the Disjunctive Syllogism on the other hand, the center

of gravity is shifting from the particular to the universal moment of the concept.

What this means is that the laws of logic, instead of being anchored in the

conceptually structured world that we somehow directly intuit, are an abstract and

formalized version of the rules in place in the social practices of applying empirical

concepts through which the process of generation and revision of their content is

taking place. The laws of correct inference are the implicit rules guiding everyday

social practices and made explicit in what Brandom has called “the language game of

giving and asking for reasons.”

Paul Redding, in his article entitled “Brandom, Sellars and the myth of the

logical given,” contrasts Robert Brandom’s Hegel-inspired stance with that of early

Bertrand Russell regarding their respective position on the question of the origins of

the laws of logic. Russell had put forth a position that Redding describes as the myth

of the logical given, echoing that “What we believe, when we believe the law of [non-

]contradiction, is not that the mind is so made that it must believe the law of [non-

]con-tradiction. This belief is a subsequent result of psychological reflection, which

269
presupposes the belief in the law of [non-]contradiction. The belief in the law of

[non-]contradiction is a belief about things, not only about thoughts” (Redding 2007,

60-61; Russell 1912, 88-89).

When it comes to the question of the ontological status of the laws of logic,

Russell’s position has much in common with the model put forth in the Categorical

Syllogism. While Brandom’s alternative is inspired by Hegel and shares the basic

approach on the issue presented in the Hypothetical and more explicitly in the

Disjunctive Syllogism, for both Hegel and Brandom the basic laws of inference,

rather than being given to us as some form of transcendent metaphysical

substructure of being, are the immanent element in the patterns of social practices

from which emerge the determinate conceptual content and the normative force of

the formal relations between its elements. This shift from the objective to the

subjective side as the fundamental locus of the laws of logic reminds us one more

time of the Kantian origin of Hegel’s position, as Paul Redding puts it in his

comparison of Hegel’s Kantian stance with Russell’s Aristotelian one:

With this, then, Russell, following Moore, had reverted

to a position closer to Aristotle’s representationalist
interpretation of the logical categories than to Kant’s.
For Aristotle, it would seem, the categories reflected in
the logical behaviour of our words reflect structures
properly belonging to being, while for Kant the worldly
structures – in the sense of the way that they are for us
– reflect the logical structures of our judgements.
(Redding 2007, 61)

At the end of the Syllogism chapter we are presented with the Hegelian vision of

these “worldly structures,” which Kant had traced to the logical forms of our

270
judgment. But in Hegel’s hands, they are no longer anchored within the Kantian

psychologism. While the Syllogism chapter of the Logic is the culmination of the

project announced by Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason—replacing metaphysics

with logic, that is, tracing the basic determinations of reality to the unified self-

relational structure of thought, the nature of this self-relational structure has

undergone radical reinterpretation as I have demonstrated. Hegel sees the relation

between empirical multiplicities of the phenomena we find in the world, the

determinate conceptual content on which our cognitive and practical relation to it

stands, and the continuous process of application and revision of this content to the

empirically experiences reality (the process guided by the determinations or

reflection presented in the logic of essence) as the three moments of the holistic

self-relational onto-logical structure that constitutes the most basic schema of

Hegel’s transcendental ontology.

The process of fundamental reformulation of the traditional metaphysics into

the transcendental ontology driven by the Kantian principle of self-relational unity

that I have retraced here culminates in the ontological outlook that is far from its

widespread misinterpretation. The thesis that Hegel’s system integrates within itself

the totality of the world from the ordinary mundane object to the abstract logical

forms of inference, from the religious practices of Hindus to Kant’s categorical

imperative, etc., ought not to be understood as a claim to present an exhaustive list

of the totality of phenomena, an encyclopedia of every single entity making up the

furniture of the world. Instead, Hegel presents the schema of the interrelation of the

activity (in both theoretical and practical senses of the term, or thought and deed),

271
the determinations furnished through it, alongside the logic structure of

individuated entities that rests on these. Hence, the concept and its self-relational

schema presented in the Syllogism section instead of mirroring the world

immanently constitutes it; or, the order that we find in the world instead of being

given, is constituted.

272
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Curriculum Vitae

Giorgi Lebanidze

406 Warburton Ave, Apt. 2s [email protected] Hastings on

Hudson, NY, 10706 (443) 345-7319

AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION Hegel, Kant

AREAS OF COMPETENCE 20th century European Philosophy, Early Modern

Philosophy, Nietzsche, Existentialism, Plato, Political

Philosophy

EDUCATION Johns Hopkins University, Philosophy Department

Dissertation Title: Hegel’s Transcendental Ontology.

Defend on February 5th, 2016

Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts & Science

Masters Degree. Awarded May 2004

287
 Interdisciplinary Humanities Program in Liberal Studied;

Modern European Studies, Areas of focus: 19th & 20th

century European Philosophy and Social Theory.

Tbilisi State University, Republic of Georgia

Bachelors and Masters [Combined] Degree. Awarded

June1995. Theoretical Nuclear Physics.

DISSERTATION Hegel’s Transcendental Ontology

Committee: Dean Moyar(chair), Yithak Melamed,

Hent de Vries, Katrin Pahl, Jenifer Culbert

AWARDS Dean’s Teaching Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University

Academic year 2011-2012

Dean’s Prize Fellowship, Johns Hopkins University

Academic year 2012-2013

288
TEACHING Johns Hopkins University, Philosophy Department

Existentialism(Dean’s Teaching Fellowship) Fall 2011

(Dean’s Prize Fellowship) Fall 2012

Introduction to Modern Philosophy 2013

Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy 2012

Kant’s Copernican Revolution 2012

Foucault's Genealogical Inquiries:

Biopolitics, the Prison, and Sexuality 2011

Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY (Philosophy Dept.)

Philosophical Perspectives (2 sections) Fall 2015

Ethics (2 sections) Spring 2016

Fordham University, New York, NY (Philosophy Dept.)

Philosophy of Human Nature Spring 2016

289
Towson University, Towson, MD (Department of Philosophy

and Religious Studies)

Introduction to Philosophy (2 sections) Spring 2014

Introduction to Philosophy (3 sections) Fall 2014

Teaching Assistant at Johns Hopkins University (Philosophy

Department):

Formal Logic Spring 2011

Introduction to Bioethics Fall 2010

Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy Spring 2010

Spring 2009

Introduction to Greek Philosophy Fall 2009

Philosophic Classics Fall 2008

Fall 2007

Introduction to Ethics Spring 2008

290
REFEREES Dean Moyar, Associate Professor of Philosophy &

Director of Graduate Studies at Johns Hopkins

University

Email: [email protected]

Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Professor of Philosophy at Johns

Hopkins University

Email: [email protected]

Anne Ashbaugh, Chairperson, Department of

Philosophy and Religious Studies, Towson University

Email: [email protected]

LANGUAGES Reading knowledge of German and French

Fluent in Russian and Georgian

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