The Logic of Hegel

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

CHAPTER II.

P. [31], § 19. Truth:—as early as Werke, i. 82, i.e. 1801, Hegel had come—perhaps influenced by the example of Jacobi—to the conclusion that 'Truth is a word which, in philosophical discourse, deserves to be used only of the certainty of the Eternal and non-empirical Actual.' (And so Spinoza, ii. 310.)

P. [32]. 'The young have been flattered'—e.g. by Fichte, Werke, i. 435: 'Hence this science too promises itself few proselytes amongst men already formed: if it can hope for any at all, it hopes for them rather from the young world, whose inborn force has not yet been ruined in the laxity of the age.'

P. [38], § 20. What Kant actually said (Kritik der reinen Vernunft: Elementarlehre, § 16), was 'The I think must be able to accompany all my conceptions' (Vorstellungen). Here, as often elsewhere. Hegel seems to quote from memory,—with some shortcoming from absolute accuracy.

From this point Fichte's idealism takes its spring, e.g. Werke, ii. 505: 'The ground of all certainty,—of all consciousness of fact in life, and of all demonstrative knowledge in science, is this: In and with the single thing we affirm (setzen) (and whatever we affirm is necessarily something single) we also affirm the absolute totality as such.... Only in so far as we have so affirmed anything, is it certain for us,—from the single unit we have comprehended under it away to every single thing in the infinity we shall comprehend under it,—from the one individual who has comprehended it, to all individuals who will comprehend it.... Without this absolute "positing" of the absolute totality in the individual, we cannot (to employ a phrase of Jacobi's) come to bed and board.'

'Obviously therefore you enunciate not the judgment of a single observation, but you embrace and "posit" the sheer infinitude and totality of all possible observations:—an infinity which is not at all compounded out of finites, but out of which, conversely, the finites themselves issue, and of which finite things are the mere always-uncompleted analysis. This—how shall I call it, procedure, positing, or whatever you prefer—this "manifestation" of the absolute totality, I call intellectual vision (Anschauung). I regard it—just because I cannot in any way get beyond intelligence—as immanent in intelligence, and name it so far egoity (Ichheit),—not objectivity and not subjectivity, but the absolute identity of the two:—an egoity, however, which it was to be hoped would not be taken to mean individuality. There lies in it, what you' (he is addressing Reinhold, who here follows Bardili)' call a repetibility ad infinitum. For me, therefore, the essence of the finite is composed of an immediate vision of the absolutely timeless infinite (with an absolute identity of subjectivity and objectivity), and of a separation of the two latter, and an analysis (continued ad infinitum) of the infinite. In that analysis consists the temporal life: and the starting-point of this temporal life is the separation into subject and object, which through the intellectual vision (intuition) are still both held together.'

P. [44], § 22, the mere fact of conviction. Cf. Rechtsphilosophie, § 140 (Werke, viii. 191): 'Finally the mere conviction which holds something to be right is given out as what decides the morality of an action. The good we will to do not yet having any content, the principle of conviction adds the information that the subsumption of an action under the category of good is purely a personal matter. If this be so, the very pretence of an ethical objectivity is utterly lost. A doctrine like this is closely allied with the self-styled philosophy which denies that the true is cognoscible: because for the Will, truth—i.e. the rationality of the Will—lies in the moral laws. Giving out, as such a system does, that the cognition of the true is an empty vanity, far transcending the range of science (which recognises only appearance), it must, in the matter of conduct, also find its principle in the apparent; whereby moral distinctions are reduced to the peculiar theory of life held by the individual and to his private conviction. At first no doubt the degradation into which philosophy has thus sunk seems an affair of supreme indifference, a mere incident in the futilities of the scholastic world: but the view necessarily makes itself a home in ethics, which is an essential part of philosophy; and it is then in the actual world that the world learns the true meaning of such theories.

'As the view spreads that subjective conviction, and it alone, decides the morality of an action, it follows that the charge of hypocrisy, once so frequent, is now rarely heard. You can only qualify wickedness as hypocrisy on the assumption that certain actions are inherently and actually misdeeds, vices, and crimes, and that the defaulter necessarily is aware of them as such, because he is aware of and recognises the principles and outward acts of piety and honesty, even in the pretence to which he misapplies them. In other words, it was generally assumed as regards immorality that it is a duty to know the good, and to be aware of its distinction from the bad. In any case it was an absolute injunction which forbade the commission of vicious and criminal acts, and which insisted on such actions being imputed to the agent, so far as he was a man, not a beast. But if the good heart, the good intention, the subjective conviction, are set forth as the true sources of moral worth, then there is no longer any hypocrisy, or immorality at all: for whatever one does, he can always justify it by the reflection on it of good aims and motives; and by the influence of that conviction it is good. There is no longer anything inherently vicious or criminal: instead of the frank and free, hardened and unperturbed sinner, comes the person whose mind is completely justified by intention and conviction. My good intention in my act, and my conviction of its goodness, make it good. We speak of judging and estimating an act. But on this principle it is only the aim and conviction of the agent—his faith—by which he ought to be judged. And that not in the sense in which Christ requires faith in objective truth, so that for one who has a bad faith, i.e. a conviction bad in its content, the judgment to be pronounced must be bad, i.e. conformable to this bad content. But faith here means only fidelity to conviction. Has the man (we ask) in acting kept true to his conviction? It is formal subjective conviction on which alone the obligation of duty is made to depend.

'A principle like this, where conviction is expressly made something subjective, cannot but suggest the thought of possible error, with the further implied presupposition of an absolutely-existing law. But the law is no agent: it is only the actual human being who acts; and in the aforesaid principle the only question in estimating human actions is how far he has received the law into his conviction. If, therefore, it is not the actions which are to be estimated and generally measured by that law, it is impossible to see what the law is for, and what end it can serve. Such a law is degraded to a mere outside letter, in fact an empty word; which is only made a law, i.e. invested with obligatory force, by my conviction.

'Such a law may claim its authority from God or the State: it may even have the authority of tens of centuries during which it served as the bond that gave men, with all their deed and destiny, subsistence and coherence. And these are authorities in which are condensed the convictions of countless individuals. And for me to set against that the authority of my single conviction—for as my subjective conviction its sole validity is authority—that self-conceit, monstrous as it at first seems, is, in virtue of the principle that subjective conviction is to be the rule, pronounced to be no self-conceit at all.