Abstract
In his introduction to the General Concept of the Logic, Hegel writes: “What propels the concept onward is the already mentioned negative which it possesses in itself; it is this that constitutes the truly dialectical factor.” Negation is typically regarded as the fundamental engine of Hegel’s Science of Logic and for good reason. I call this the common thesis, although its hues are many. The method can be described as a ‘triplicity of negation’, consisting of (i) content, (ii) negation, and (iii) negation of the negation, or speculative identity. In this article, I defend an interpretation that both affirms and rejects the common thesis. I argue that negation is both central to, yet ultimately wrongly identified as the “engine” of the Logic. I argue that to understand Hegel’s logic of negation, we must keep clearly in view what Hegel calls the scientific status of the Logic, the opening moment of the Logic, and to the concluding moment of negation in the logic of the Idea. I engage with Henrich, Pippin, Brandom, Bowman, and Ng.
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Notes
- 1.
C.f., GW 21.378. All citations of Hegel’s work are to the academy edition: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Gesammelte Werke, eds. Hartmut Buchner and Otto Pöggler. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, (1968), hereafter abbreviated as GW.
- 2.
While the “triplicity” of negation is Hegel’s term, Pippin orients his account around it; see Pippin (2019, 147).
- 3.
The three parts of the Logic might be regarded as exemplifying the meta-movements of this triplicity: (i) Logic of Being, (ii) Logic of Essence, and (iii) Logic of Concept.
- 4.
The purpose of this distinction is purely to gain a better sense of the diverse possibilities that nevertheless fall under the common thesis. I am not committed to any particular claim about the epistemic and metaphysical limits of
- 5.
Brandom calls negation “Hegel’s most fundamental conceptual tool” (2002, 180).
- 6.
Pippin calls negation the “engine” of thought thinking itself, (2019, 146).
- 7.
In his account of “autonomous negation,” Henrich writes that negation is the “key” and “single term” by which a system of philosophy can achieve what Hegel thinks it needs to achieve, (2003, 316–17).
- 8.
Bowman (2013, 27, 54).
- 9.
Horstmann (1984, 90).
- 10.
These classifications of the common thesis are problematic in a variety of ways and are not intended to indicate uniformity within each group. For instance, Rödl shares much in common with Pippin in his interpretation of the origin of negation in becoming from the initial whole of abstract being. However, Rödl’s identification of “abstract” with “empty content” to derive negation is not an argument Pippin makes. Rödl’s account of the logical origin of negation looks like a sleight of hand, and minimally makes classification challenging: “Being […] the first universal […] is nothing but identity with itself. […] As it contains no difference, it is abstract. And since it is abstract, it is empty. Thought thinking itself as being thinks nothing. Thinking being is thinking nothing.” See Rödle (2018a, b, 112).
- 11.
Henrich and Bowman place perhaps the greatest interpretive weight on negation, with Bowman arguing that the method of negation and the absolute concept are one and the same. They form an absolute identity; or (what ends up amounting to the same thing) the concept is to be understood as the process of absolute negation and is thus the primordial basis of all metaphysics and all accounts of reality (Bowman 2013, 54).
- 12.
I think that Longuenesse’s interpretation could readily grant a larger role to negation than the local discussion given its elemental nature as presented in Chap. 2 of her 2007 book, but even if she did grant a greater role, it marks a stark contrast with the common thesis (in both the ECT and MCT variants). Longuenesse takes up negation in her discussion of the “positive” and “negative” quality of a determinate whole, within her broader discussion of the limited role of contradiction as a transition to Ground in the Doctrine of Essence, 66–67.
- 13.
Ng criticizes Henrich’s variation of the common thesis, arguing that his account of “autonomous negation” follows the trajectory of modern philosophy in “severing the connection between life and mind,” (2020, 66).
- 14.
Ng’s speculative identity thesis is a subject-object inner purposiveness of judgment, in which the resulting identity is achieved through “doubling.”
- 15.
I agree with Ng’s general concern, but take her alternative to fall prey to the absolutizing criticism in a parallel way to the MCT variation, for reasons that will become clearer at the end of this paper.
- 16.
“Formalism, it is true, has also seized hold of triplicity, attending to its empty schema; the shallow nonsense and the barrenness of the so-called construction of modern philosophy, that consists in nothing but fastening that formal schema everywhere for the sake of external order, with no concept or immanent determination, has rendered that form tedious and has given it a bad name” (GW 12.247).
- 17.
Franks has a nice account of the agrippan trilemma and its importance for the Idealists: (2005, 140–45). Franks defines the agrippan trilemma as the following problem for an adequate justification: “If challenged, it turns out to lead either to an arbitrary assumption, or to a vicious circle, or to an infinite regress,” (2005, 8). Even Bowman acknowledges that this motivates Hegel’s conception of what a science of logic must accomplish, (2013, 130–31). The claim to a presuppositionless method of the logic has been a point of criticism since Hegel’s own time (from Schelling to the present, e.g.: Schelling (1994, 148).
- 18.
Houlgate (2006, Chap. 2., esp. 29–35).
- 19.
Henrich (2003, 316–17).
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
G.W.F. Hegel, Differenzschrift, ed. H.S. Harris and Walter Cerf. Albany: State University of New York Press (1977).
- 23.
See, for example, his critique of Kant’s categories (GW, 21.18, 48) and synthetic principles as “given” instead of “demonstrating this truly synthetic progression, that of the self-producing concept” (GW, 12.205) on Kant, and his critique of Fichte for grounding his 1794 Wissenschaftslehre on an arbitrary standpoint, or presupposition 21.63. Hegel’s offers more robust critical accounts of both later on. These are just two examples he notes by way of differentiating his own “scientific” method in the Logic.
- 24.
- 25.
I take Ng’s critique to be concerned with a similar sublation of negation into a purposive method of the logic. As I see it, my variation, while sympathetic to Ng, retains a stronger agreement with the common thesis and sees the sublation of absolute negation as a vital feature of the absolute method even if inadequately and “externally” understood as “absolute negation” or “triplicity of negation” by the common thesis. A further difference is in Ng’s account of the Logic as reliant on foundational presuppositions, whereas I take Hegel’s commitment to a presuppositionless beginning and the pure inner necessity of the method where the determinations of that logical method is considered to be the sine qua non of Hegel’s aim in the Logic, as I will discuss further on. Nevertheless, I am in substantial agreement with Ng.
- 26.
- 27.
My thanks to Brady Bowman for this helpful critical feedback.
- 28.
Nicholas Stang’s account of negation in relation to the opening of the logic and specifically how we ought to understand the indeterminate abstraction of pure being, accords with my own, (2021, 119).
- 29.
It might be objected that Hegel makes regular use of presuppositions and postulates throughout the Science of Logic. I agree that Hegel does quite intentionally admit the valid uses of presuppositions; however, presuppositions and postulates cannot be foundational if they are to have validity in a science of knowledge.
- 30.
Of course, the end itself cannot be assumed; only the inner necessity of the method itself should be traced through to the gradual emergence of the whole. This reading has much in common with Goethean thought (see for instance Förster 2012, 285–301 and to a lesser extent Hölderlin, 1995; although Förster doesn’t draw attention to it, there is an important connection between Hegel’s triplicity and Hölderlin’s short Urteil und Sein; compare this with Henrich’s productive analysis of the mutual influence between Hölderlin and Hegel on a related topic, though arguably less significant than the connection with Goethe’s thought, 1971, 27, 39; 2004; and 1966, 73–96), but the method cannot assume such a result; instead, the result of the Logic will be an affirmation and normative basis for the Formtätigkeit (emergent methodological form) in organic life that Goethe describes. Whatever assumption we make about the starting point of Hegel’s Logic, this assumption inevitably predetermines the possible status and form that the self-emergent negation must take.
- 31.
Brandom (2019, Chap. 5).
- 32.
For a similarly helpful account of negation in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, see Schwab (2018, 131).
- 33.
Hegel critiques static (non–self-developmental), formulaic logic throughout the Logic; one such instance occurs here: GW 12.247.
- 34.
Similarly, Dina Emundts rightly argues that “Time is the negation of spatial dimensions, its dimension (of the one after the other) owes itself to this negation” (Emundts 2021, 148). For an overview of the parallel between space and time as the beginning of Realphilosophie and Sein and Nichts as the beginning of the Logic, see Hösle (1988, 106–110). Although Hösle does not explore the parallel between time and nothing, I think this connection, and more so the parallel between time and negation is key, since Hegel suggests that time is the real self-negation or becoming of space.
- 35.
For Ng’s account of the “second negative” or “negative of the negative” see (2020, 293).
- 36.
As I discuss in the final section, in the concluding chapter of the Logic Hegel both names this tendency to formalize the triplicity of negation and critiques it an empty and “external” shape of the actual method.
- 37.
Wolff (1979, 343).
- 38.
Hösle argues for a quadruplicity in Hegel’s system as an import modification to more common recognition of triplicity, (Hösle 1988, 133–154). My argument here is not that the triplicity of negation is sublated into something like a quadruplicity. On the contrary, any such numerical division will inherently fail to adequately approximate the life-like nature of intelligibility. Triplicity is about the best that formalistic structures can do to approximate the actual method intelligibility, but it is not the method itself. The adequate concept of the method of intelligibility (i.e. the absolute idea) is a life-like self-determining, or “inner purposiveness,” by which intelligibility is both fixed yet a becoming. This of course is radically counter to the common conception of intelligibility as a fixed and static reality.
- 39.
In Pippin’s account of the triplicity (Pippin 2019, 147), he rightly identifies these as (i) content, (ii) negation/difference, and (iii) sublation/negation of negation. While his description is correct, there are many layers of negation internal to each of these. C.f. GW 12.247.
- 40.
M3 is clearly the “second immediate” here because P2 is the mediated negation of negation in the idea of cognition, whereas the first immediate was P1, the idea of life. This is what Hegel means when he says that the third, M3, is the second immediate. This follows the familiar pattern throughout the Logic of (1) immediate (Being), (2) mediated (Essence), and (3) immediate (Concept), and subtriplicities (and sub-subtriplicities) of the same internal to each of those three. So, for example, internal to the third moment (Doctrine of Concept), he offers the further sub-divisions: (3.i) mediation (subjectivity: 3.i.a concept, 3.i.b judgment, 3.i.c syllogism), (3.ii) immediacy (objectivity: 3.ii.a mechanism, 3.ii.b chemism, 3.ii.c teleology), and sublation of both in the third (3.iii) sublation of mediation and immediate in immediate truth (Idea: 3.iii.a life, 3.iii.b cognition, and 3.iii.c absolute). It is clear from this why Hegel cautions about the temptation to treat this triplicity as a logical formalism, that is, a formula whose application we expect to remain normative for truth. The exterior form of triplicity is the effect of the internal living normativity of intelligibility whose absolute method is the subject/content of the Logic. The external form of triplicity becomes an empty formalism when treated as if it were the living method of the logic instead of mere exteriority or byproduct (GW 12.247–248).
- 41.
For my account of the historical significance of Kant’s free lawfulness or he autonomy for Hegel’s Logic of inner purposiveness, see Gentry (2019, 2021b). For the inheritance of Aristotle’s principle of life in de Anime in Hegel’s conception of the inner purposiveness structuring Realphilosophie, see Gentry (2021a). For Hegel’s conception of inner purposiveness in art and formation of knowledge, see Gentry (2020, 2022a); for Goethe’s influence on this concept in Hegel, see Gentry (2022b), and for an application of this conception of art to contemporary debates, see Gentry (2022c).
- 42.
When Hegel identifies the absolute method as emerging through its “sublating of the negative,” this “negative” here refers to the [P2] mediation of cognition in the second moment of the logic of the Idea, as opposed to the [P1] immediacy of life in the first moment of the logic of the Idea. So, absolute negation is not the method of the absolute idea, but rather the final mediated moment preceding the sublation of negation (negation of negation as something distinct from the identity of the absolute idea) into the absolute method as nothing but a movement of the method itself.
- 43.
GW 12.248.
- 44.
If the “logical idea thus has itself, as the infinite form, for its content” and if “the absolute idea itself has only this for its content, namely that the form determination is its own completed totality, the pure content” then the self-determining infinite, or “absolute idea has come forth for itself” and is the “absolutely universal idea” whose “universal character” as form is its “method” (GW 12.237).
- 45.
A key passage that Bowman cites in defense of his interpretation of absolute negation, one which agrees with Henrich’s autonomous negation, stems from the second part of the Logic, the Doctrine of Essence, GW 11:250–51 (Bowman 2013, 54; Bowman places equal emphasis on the following passage from Hegel’s review of Jacobi, GW 15:10–11). It is important to remember the context of this passage in the Logic. This is not yet the adequate concept of the logic’s own method, which is given first in its result at the end of the Doctrine of the Concept: the Idea. However, the immediate context for Bowman’s reliance on this passage is as an interpretation of the absolute method. Bowman’s account is compelling and helpful, but the problem is that negation at that stage of the Logic (i.e., the Doctrine of Essence in the passage above), still problematically takes negation as something in itself, as the method itself. Of course, this is not a problem by Bowman’s lights, since that is his thesis; however, it is a problem for the Logic, since this is explicitly a stage in which the logical method has yet to show itself to be internally purposive as a self-determining in-and-for-itself. It is also worth noting that this passage is from the 1812 Objective Logic, but after completing the Doctrine of the Concept and refining his account of the absolute method, Hegel returns in the final 1832 version to clarify the role of negation as an emergent, complex process and as an (eventually sublated) internal feature of the logical method. For example, in 1812, Hegel had originally titled Chap. 3 (of the Doctrine of Being) “Reality and Negation,” but now in 1832 he clarifies that “reality” and “negation” are internal features of “Being-for-itself” and renames the chapter accordingly.
- 46.
Hegel describes these premises and moments of the Idea from life to cognition and finally to absolute idea as “purposive” here: GW12.234.
- 47.
On this point, I think Pippin’s (1989) account (see pp. 248–249) does a better job resisting the formalization of the triplicity of negation than his otherwise more detailed 2019 account. Specifically, he integrates the purposiveness of the method more thoroughly in his 1989.
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Acknowledgments
My sincerest thanks to Robert Pippin, Karen Ng, Mark Alznauer, Tobias Rosefeldt, Brady Bowman, Sally Sedgwick, Greg Moss, and Philipp Schwab for critical feedback and support in all or portions of this work. Thanks also to the support of the University of Potsdam (particularly Johannes Haag), Humboldt University of Berlin, and the University of Freiburg. I am grateful to acknowledge the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung for their support of this work. Thanks above all to Megan, my friend and spouse, and our beautiful four seasons that dictate the rhythms of the year: Eliana, August, Lillian, and Aurora.
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Gentry, G. (2023). Hegel’s Logic of Negation. In: Moss, G.S. (eds) The Being of Negation in Post-Kantian Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13862-1_23
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