But we know that this order, this supposed succession, is illusory and is simply the product of abstract analysis. In the predicate to which verbal prominence is given, there is concentrated or understood every predicate, because in every judgment complete reality[2] is predicated of the subject. Moreover this is shown just by the observation, which reveals the insufficiency of an isolated and abstract predicate, and requires for sufficiency nothing less than the totality of the predicates, the full concept of the Real, of the Spirit or of the Idea. The concept of Reality, of Spirit or the Idea, can without doubt be developed, in its unity and in its distinctions; but (let us yet again repeat) logical Science has for its object, not the effective unity and distinction of the Real, but the concept of unity and distinction..
The necessity of the order of the predicates, not founded in Logic in particular, but in the whole of Philosophy.
The ordering of the variety of the predicates, their gradation according to their greater or less adequacy to reality, arises from the fact that disputes as to reality show themselves as one-sided affirmations of this or that predicate or group of predicates, coupled with the neglect or negation of others, which are not less indispensable. When, therefore, we attack such one-sidedness and affirm the complete indivisibility of the predicates, the single predicates, the objects of the one-sided affirmations, are scrutinized one after the other, in order to demonstrate their insufficiency, and for this very reason a certain order is given to them. This order is, without doubt, necessary, because the possibility of errors, or of one-sided thoughts, is a consequence of the distinctions, in which the unity of the Real lives, and which are necessary to it. But for this very reason the order must be sought, not in logical Science, but in the total conception of Reality. For instance, in researches concerning the ethical concept, only he who thinks, not the concept of the concept (logical science), but the concept of ethical activity (ethical science), will be able to determine what one-sided concepts are there possible and what is their order. Only he who thinks a whole philosophy will be able to determine how many and what and how connected are the one-sided and erroneous modes of philosophy. This cannot be found in the concept of the concept; or rather only those erroneous modes are there found which derive from a one-sided thinking of the concept of the concept. This we shall see in its place. The order of the categories in the sense indicated is certainly not subjective and arbitrary, as a didactic ordering of them would be, a πρότερον prὸs ἡμᾶς; it is a πρότερον φύσει. But since this first by nature is identical with the whole concept of Reality, it is not wholly contained in the concept of Logic.
False distinction of philosophy into two spheres, Metaphysic and Philosophy, rational philosophy and real philosophy, etc., due to the confusion between Logic and doctrine of the categories.
If the confusion between Logic and the Doctrine of the Categories, or between the thinking of the logical category and the thinking of the other categories, had produced no other effect than that of introducing into books of Logic a method of treatment that exceeds their bounds, the evil would not be great. It would chiefly affect literary harmony and clarity of didactic exposition. But from that confusion there has sometimes as rational Philosophy and real Philosophy, sometimes as Gnoseology and Anthropology (or Cosmology), sometimes as Logic and System of Philosophy, and so on. The conception of Reality is thus twice described: once as part of Logic (the Doctrine of the Categories, Ontology, etc.); and again as effective or applied Philosophy. Philosophy is divided into a Prologue to Philosophy and Philosophy, or into Philosophy and a Conclusion to Philosophy. But Philosophy, although it is distinguishable into philosophies (for example, Æsthetic, Logic, Economic and Ethic), is this distinction itself, or the unity immanent in it. It never gives rise to a duality of grades. It is never prologue, development and conclusion, being, at its every point, prologue, development and conclusion. As from empirical and formalist Logic arose the idea of a Logic which should not be philosophy, but an organ or instrument or rule or law for the rest of philosophy; so from the confusion of Logic with the Doctrine of the Categories has arisen the idea of a Logic, or Metaphysic, or general Philosophy, or whatever else it may be called, which should be opposed to or above the rest of philosophy. But the Science of thought, Logic, is at once thought and effective philosophy; it is thought itself which in thinking the Real, thinks itself and places itself, as logical Science, in the place which belongs to it in the system of the Real.
Philosophy and pure logic: overcoming of the duality.
It may seem that in this way thought and reality are again divided and a metaphysical dualism created. But the exact opposite is the truth. When Philosophy is distinguished into general and particular, into rational and real, into pure and applied, into Logic-metaphysic and into Philosophy of nature and of man, an irreparable breach is made, which can only be concealed or attenuated in a more or less ingenious manner. But when that doubleness of degree is destroyed (and thought thinking the real thereby thinks itself), and in the construction of Philosophy, the Philosophy of philosophy, namely Logic, is constructed, the dualism is for ever overcome. This thought is the thinking of the distinctions, which the real presents; but to think distinctions and to think unity is, as has been already demonstrated, the same thing.
[1] Logik, pp. 532-3.