The Logic of Hegel

by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The various kinds of judgment are no empirical aggregate. They are a systematic whole based on a principle; and it was one of Kant's great merits to have first emphasised the necessity of showing this. His proposed division, according to the headings in his table of categories, into judgments of quality, quantity, relation and modality, can not be called satisfactory, partly from the merely formal application of this categorical rubric, partly on account of their content. Still it rests upon a true perception of the fact that the different species of judgment derive their features from the universal forms of the logical idea itself. If we follow this clue, it will supply us with three chief kinds of judgment parallel to the stages of Being, Essence, and Notion. The second of these kinds, as required by the character of Essence, which is the stage of differentiation, must be doubled. We find the inner ground for this systematisation of judgments in the circumstance that when the Notion, which is the unity of Being and Essence in a comprehensive thought, unfolds, as it does in the judgment, it must reproduce these two stages in a transformation proper to the notion. The notion itself meanwhile is seen to mould and form the genuine grade of judgment.

Far from occupying the same level, and being of equal value, the different species of judgment form a series of steps, the difference of which rests upon the logical significance of the predicate. That judgments differ in value is evident even in our ordinary ways of thinking. We should not hesitate to ascribe a very slight faculty of judgment to a person who habitually framed only such judgments as, 'This wall is green,' 'This stove is hot.' On the other hand we should credit with a genuine capacity of judgment the person whose criticisms dealt with such questions as whether a certain work of art was beautiful, whether a certain action was good, and so on. In judgments of the first-mentioned kind the content forms only an abstract quality, the presence of which can be sufficiently detected by immediate perception. To pronounce a work of art to be beautiful, or an action to be good, requires on the contrary a comparison of the objects with what they ought to be, i.e. with their notion.

(α) Qualitative Judgment.

172.] The immediate judgment is the judgment of definite Being. The subject is invested with a universality as its predicate, which is an immediate, and therefore a sensible quality. It may be (1) a Positive judgment: The individual is a particular. But the individual is not a particular: or in more precise language, such a single quality is not congruous with the concrete nature of the subject. This is (2) a Negative judgment.

It is one of the fundamental assumptions of dogmatic Logic that Qualitative judgments such as, 'The rose is red,' or 'is not red,' can contain truth. Correct they may be, i.e. in the limited circle of perception, of finite conception and thought: that depends on the content, which likewise is finite, and, on its own merits, untrue. Truth, however, as opposed to correctness, depends solely on the form, viz. on the notion as it is put and the reality corresponding to it. But truth of that stamp is not found in the Qualitative judgment.

In common life the terms truth and correctness are often treated as synonymous: we speak of the truth of a content, when we are only thinking of its correctness. Correctness, generally speaking, concerns only the formal coincidence between our conception and its content, whatever the constitution of this content may be. Truth, on the contrary, lies in the coincidence of the object with itself, that is, with its notion. That a person is sick, or that some one has committed a theft, may certainly be correct. But the content is untrue. A sick body is not in harmony with the notion of body, and there is a want of congruity between theft and the notion of human conduct. These instances may show that an immediate judgment, in which an abstract quality is predicated of an immediately individual thing, however correct it may be, cannot contain truth. The subject and predicate of it do not stand to each other in the relation of reality and notion.

We may add that the untruth of the immediate judgment lies in the incongruity between its form and content. To say 'This rose is red,' involves (in virtue of the copula 'is') the coincidence of subject and predicate. The rose however is a concrete thing, and so is not red only: it has also an odour, a specific form, and many other features not implied in the predicate red. The predicate on its part is an abstract universal, and does not apply to the rose alone. There are other flowers and other objects which are red too. The subject and predicate in the immediate judgment touch, as it were, only in a single point, but do not cover each other. The case is different with the notional judgment. In pronouncing an action to be good, we frame a notional judgment. Here, as we at once perceive, there is a closer and a more intimate relation than in the immediate judgment. The predicate in the latter is some abstract quality which may or may not be applied to the subject. In the judgment of the notion the predicate is, as it were, the soul of the subject, by which the subject, as the body of this soul, is characterised through and through.

173.] This negation of a particular quality, which is the first negation, still leaves the connexion of the subject with the predicate subsisting. The predicate is in that manner a sort of relative universal, of which a special phase only has been negatived. [To say, that the rose is not red, implies that it is still coloured—in the first place with another colour; which however would be only one more positive judgment.] The individual however is not a universal. Hence (3) the judgment suffers disruption into one of two forms. It is either (a) the Identical judgment, an empty identical relation stating that the individual is the individual; or it is (b) what is called the Infinite judgment, in which we are presented with the total incompatibility of subject and predicate.