Philosophical Form Vol.

6 1974-5

THE ABSOLUTE AS THE BEGINNING OF HEGBL'S LOGIC

ROLF AHLERS

I.

THE RELATION OF THE LOGIC TO ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE IN THE PHENOMENOLOGY

In the section which prepares for the investigation of the Logic, entitled "Wherewith must the Beginning of Science be made?," Hegel characterises the relation of the Phenomenology to the Logic by saying that the former work is the "science of the appearing spirit," which must be understood as the "presupposition " of "pure science." The "unmediated consciousness" is in the Phenomenology the object of its "unmediated science."* By distinction, the Logic is "pure science," i.e., "pure science in the total implication of its development."2 The Logic as pure science has th Phenomenologythe. unmediated science of unmediated consciousness as its own presupposition. The latter work is therefore the presupposition of the former insofar as the result of the analysis of the appearing spirit is the absolute knowledge. In this absolute knowledge, the result of the Phenomenology, "spirit has gained the concept" and develops its essence and movement "in this ether of its life, and is science."8 In this science "the moments of its movement present themselves no longer as determined forms of consciousness," but rather as definite concepts and as their own "organically self-founding movement" which is possible through their difference retreating into "their self."4 We could therefore expect the Logic to spell out with precision the determinants of pure science. But in this we are mistaken. If the moments of appearing spirit lead to the necessity to determine precisely the inner movement of that science itself, we are surprised to find that the Logic does not begin here, but rather with "undetermined immediacy." In looking at the relation of Book I of the Logic, the logic of being, Sein, to Book II, the logic of essence or reflection, we are surprised to find that the relation of being to essence is circular insofar as only the results of
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the process of thought can spell out the legitimacy and therefore rationality of the presuppositions. The point of the logic of being is that the very presuppositions of logical thought lie beyond the realm of reflection, and only after these presuppositions have been dealt with in all their "undetermined immediacy," can legitimate reasons be arrived at in the logic of reflection (Book II). y It is Hegel's point that a beginning in logical thought cannot be made by reflecting on that beginning. That procedure would imply placing difference into the beginning even before its identity has been permitted to be the origin of that difference. And precisely a beginning is to be made. Hegel's use of the words "absolute" and "absolute knowledge" arise from the attempt not to describe how a beginning can be made, but rather to make a beginning. The deliberations on essence in the second book differ from the deliberations of being in Book I insofar as the former is the reflexive aspect of pure being. The first sentence of Book II states that the "truth of being is essence." Only in this new development within selfsufficient being the determination of being takes place, and being is determined in its specificity. Therefore we read in thefirstbook, in the opening sentences on being, that "being is the undetermined immediacy."5 The concept "undetermined" is a reflex of the determination which takes place in the logic of essence in Book II, Here is the place where the term "undetermined immediacy" has its material origin, and not at the beginning of the logic of being, where it appears first.0 The spelling-out of being itself in the logic of essence is therefore the reflex of being, and only in this mirrored image can ont see precisely what being is in itself. But since all reflection is to be kept away from a determination of being, since being is to remain altogether free from the reflexive structures of determinating reason, being is spoken of in Book I only in the negative form of "undetermined immediacy." Being as it is in itself can be talked of only in terms of the negated forms of reflection (which have themselves negating quality). The reason for this protection of pure being from the forms of reflection must be sought in Hegel's attempt to preserve being from misunderstanding. Hegel observes that the beginning of all science cannot be found in reflecting on the way in which thought proceeds. That was rather the method employed in the Phenomenology. The Logic is now to be the beginning of all science by reflecting in the second part of the Logic on the beginning of thought which has actually taken place in the first part. But such a determination cannot take place by repeating what the Phenomenology has done. The Logic has often, indeed, almost universally, been misunderstood as a determination of the dynamic of thought standing over
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against that which is thought. But the positing of being over against nothing and insisting on their identity cannot have that meaning, if Hegel's professions are to have any meaning that those critics are on the wrong path, who assault the dynamic of being and nothing with their reflexive forms.7

II.

THE PROBLEMATIC OF THE BEGINNING IN THE LOGIC

How is then this dynamic to be understood? We will attempt to clarify this interrelation by trying to give an argument for a beginning of all thought to be able to be accomplished at all. Hegel mentions in the Anmerkungen to the first chapter of the logic of being the names Parmenides, Hcraclitus and Spinoza.8 The "Spinozistic substance" appears then again at the end of the logic of being, just prior to the "transition to essence" at the end of thefirstbook.9 In the first three terse formulations concerning being, nothing and becomingwhich incidentally were kept unchanged in the second editionthe identity of being and nothing is maintained. But simultaneously Ilegel insists that both being and nothing are "undetermined" and "immediate." The undetermined and immediate nature of being and nothing must be maintained, because the opposition of nothing to being is in the form of negation usually the determining and specifying factor. But here, where Hegel confronts the secret of being and nothing itself, such reflective aspects must not yet be applied. Hegel knows that the dynamic process of being itself cannot be maintained, if reflexive forms, which appear only in the second book of the Logic, are already introduced here, and that thereby a beginning can in fact not be made. Rather, reflection is to be an action of that dynamic itself. So the simple and unreflected presentation of this dynamic of the relation of being and nothing must be accomplished first, if a beginning is to be made in this process at all. The secret of being able to present that beginning of all thought is at the same time the key to understanding Hegel's Wissenschaft des Absoluten. In the presentation of the secret of being in view of its potential to be the beginning of thought, it is appropriate for Hegel to refer to the first form of Kant's Antinomy of Pure Reason.10 Whereas Kant's intention was, however, to show that theoretical reason has certain limitations beyond which reason may not proceed, in order to make room for the engagement of moral reason,11 Hegel probes the secret of that logical dilemma itself. For Kant the inescapable contradictions of theoretical reason, presented convincingly in the first Widerspruch of the Antinomy of Reason concerning the beginning of the world, becomes the motor driving practical reason
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to its goals. (Because the question whether the world was created and thus had a beginning or has existed eternally ends in a theoretical aporia, I am called upon practically to realize that reasonableness which is theoretically unasccrtainablc.) That means that for Kant the logically unresolved contradiction becomes the beginning of moral reason. But Hegel picks up that Widerstreit and asks himself, how it can be the beginning of logic. To answer that question, a different approach than Kant's was necessary. And this approach is to begin with the "indefinite immediacy," "which is no something nor a thing (at all) nor any indifferent being which is outside of its determinateness and relation to the subject," as Hegel says in the first chapter of the logic of essence.12 The transition from Kant's scepticism to Hegel's idealism13 is not possible by assuming knowledge to be recognition of a thing in itself, as Kant did, a thing which is outside of the knowing subject. Rather, the path to a more logical idealism is to resolve that logically unresolved dualism (pointed out first by Jacobi) and to let being and the negating reflection on being evolve out of one indefinite immediacy. But that becoming cannot take place by reflecting on it. By doing that one falls back into Kant's problem. Being and reflection on it must rather arise out of the undifferentiated origin of the two. That is also the reason why the logic of reflection follows upon the logic of being. Reflection can only follow out of being if being is to be capable of specification and determination. The simple, unreflected14 presentation of that secret in the Logic becomes the driving motor of Hegel's science of the absolute itself. Hegel, influenced by the Kant-critique of Jacobi and Fichte and Schelling, therefore immerses himself anew into the secrets of being. Spinoza and Parmenides are important figures in this task. He realizes that neithei Parmenides' nor Spinoza's being could be as an absolute principle at the same time a beginning. A becoming, a development is possible only if being and nothing are understood as identical. Hegel made this problematically clear in the four notes16 to thefirstsection of the logic of being, particularly in note four. There can be no beginning, either if one thinks beinghere there is no becoming, because being is alreadyor if one thinks non-being here there is nothing and therefore there can be no becoming. Therefore, Hegel argues, nothing of substance is brought against becoming or cessation, nor against the unity of being and nothing. And because no argument of substance is produced, the thesis of the unity of being and nothing and becoming remains intact for Hegel as the basis and absolute principle of the Logic. It is significant to observe how Hegel strives to protect this thesis in spite of its indisputability from the destructive assaults of reflection.
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Being is from the start the "undetermined immediacy; it is free from determination over against the essence,"10 and that means over against reflection. For that reason the naive thought is "more consequent" in its assertion that the unity of being and nothing cannot be; it is more consequent than the reflected notion that being and nothing can be conceived only as being separate, which reflection asserts while at the same time insisting that becoming and cessation can be as well. This thought lacks internal consistency. Therefore it remains for Hegel, who starts from within the context of the problem, a secret, that the absolute principle from w|iicb all thought must start, is that being and nothing are in their identity at the same time the basis for becoming. Only as that secret develops and unfolds its internal workings through the logic of being, essence and concept, will it specify its internal workings. At the end of the Logic will the secret therefore be explicated. Only at the end of the Logic will that enigmatic identity therefore have a beginning in the sense of being well-grounded. But the beginning of that development cannot start with that explication. This beginning of the dialectic remains rather something which is "inconceivable."17 "That which makes the beginning, the beginning itself, is therefore to be takpn as something which is not analysable, in its simple, unfulfilled immediacy,, and therefore (it is to be taken) as being, as the complete emptyness."10 This emptyness becomes consequently the "ground," that is, the adequate ground for all further arguments, while these further arguments explicate that ground and fill it with content. Anything short of this unfulfilled, indetermined, pre-reflected immediacy of the absolute, which is the .principle of the unity of being and nothing, will be incapable of providing any reasonable progress in logical thought. It will be incapable of progressively determining itself into the specificity which makes out reality. It is important to note how unconstructed this notion of the absolute is. The very call to keep distant the categories of reflection and to simply look at the dynamic of thought itself by immersion into this dynamic prohibits a forced interpretation, such as that of Kojve, indicating that "Hegel becomes God in thinking or writing the Logic"19 The problematic of Hegel's absolute is so easily misinterpreted because the result of the Phenomenology, the "idea as pure knowledge"20 is not to become the center of attention. Reason does not stand over against that pure knowledge. Much less does reason create or produce it. To the contrary. How reasonable progress of reflection is possible is to be shown in the first place. Whereas the Phenomenology was concerned with the structure of the "appearing spirit" which, in its description becomes the "unmediated knowledge,?' the Logic is to be the unfolding of pure knowledge itself. It might seem reasonable therefore to assume that a description of this pure knowledge is;a 292

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product of mediation and therefore a construct of reflection. But the Logic does not describe. Rather, a beginning of reflection is made with the Logic. The interpretation of this fcook as a construct of reason is, as Henrich has shown,21 a misinterpretation. Hegel's theory of the absolute is guided altogether by the intention to make evident a thought which does not lend itself in any way to such a tour de force of thought. When Hegel insists that the Logic is to be "pure science"22 it is the exact opposite of that wilful determination which attempts to make manageable and which hopes to control that which is objectified by scientific thought. Hans-Georg Gadamer properly questions that "method" of scientific thought.23 But it is a questionable interpretation of Hegel's absolute when Gadamer identifies this rightfully criticised method of scientific thought with Hegel's "infinite knowledge."24 The entry into this "infinite science" must be sought in its unavailability over against the will to methdicate. It appears that Hegel was himself not capable of formulating the method of his thought. Hegel rarely reflected from the outside of his system as to the method in which his thought proceeds. Such a description is foreign to him.25 The enigma of Hegel's absolute as the inner dynamic of his "pure science" can apparently be approached only by freely, with Gelassenheit,2Q i.e., iinconstructively following27 the inner consequence of the issue which formulates itself at the beginning of the Logic in the thesis of the identity of being and nothing.28

III.

THE ORIGIN OF THE SCIENCE OF THE ABSOLUTE IN THE SYSTEMFRAGMENT OF 1800

How consistently Hegel followed the inner necessity of the issue, once grasped at Frankfurt in the circle of his friends, is evident in the "definition of the absolute" with the help of a formula which he stated in the Dierenzschrijt of 1801, but which has a history even longer than that first publication. In the logic of being, where Hegel deals with the question how science can make a beginning, he says "The analysis of the beginning gives us therewith the concept of the unity of being and nothingor, in reflected form, the unity of being differentiated and being not differentiatedor the identity of identity and non-identity. This concept could be taken as the first, purest, i.e. most abstract definition of the absolute."20 Hegel picks up here the formula which he had stated in his first publication on the Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of 1801: "But the absolute itself is therefore the identity of the identity and the non-identity; juxtaposi293

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tion and unity arc simultaneously in it."30 But this formula of 1801, almost identical with the one in the Logic of 1812, stems from the germinal philosophical insights wliicli Hegel had had at Frankfurt in 1800, where he wrote the famous Systemfragment, llcre Hegel uses the term "Leben" instead of "Seyn" in the Logic, and states of life that it is the "unification of the unification and non-unification."31 It is in the context of this earliest of Hegel's conception of the system quite clear that a beginning and the impetus of the whole thought can be guaranteed only if that "which was called the relation between the synthesis and antithesis is not something posited, nothing rational (nichts Verstndiges), nothing reflected, but that rather its character for reflection can alone be that it |ias its being outside of reflection."32 Reflection must be kept apart from this "living whole," which here is still called "life." Only by keeping reflection apart from the whole of life, is it possible to have a genuine beginning of thought out of, this whole. For, to continue quoting this fragment of asysteni, 6t 1800, "death, juxtaposition, reason is posited simultaneously in the living whole; it is posited as a living multiplicity which is vital and is capable as something living to posit itself as a whole."38 But a beginning of thought in the sense of a systematic and scientific progress of reason implies the quality of being "guided" and having a "Ruhepunkt,"u a point of rest. Thought "being eternally driven along" between the contradictions of reason is a dynamic which one of the friends at Frankfurt, Zvvilling, envisioned. That is, Zwilling did conceiye the contradictions of {hought to arise out of the whole, but he was incapable of getting out of the eternal progress of these contradictions; therefore his conception was lacking internal "guidance." The other friend, Isaak von Sinclair, who was so important a mediator between Hlderlin and Hegel,35 had been capable of achieving the unity of difference and non-difference only by means of comparisons. Therefore also he was incapable of achieving the needed guiding stability in the system.30 From this insightflowsright from the start the demand that philosophy must end with religion.37 The reason why Hegel claims this termination of philosophy in religion, which still maintains itself in the Phenomenology in chapter VII on Religion, is identical with the thesis in the Logic that being and nothing are identical, that their identity alone can make a beginning which guarantees the scientific progress of the system, and that this progress is possible only on condition of keeping reflection distant from this identity, i.e., understanding both being and nothing in all their indefinite immediacy. Reflection, the activity of philosophical reason, has the task to "point out finality in all that is final," but especially "to recog294

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l U ' G E l / s LOGIC

nizc the errors through its own infinity," which it can accomplish only by "positing the truly infinite outside of its own circumference,"118 The thesis'of the logic of being, to start reflection in the absolute, is therefore identical with the claim of the fragment of the systematic conception of 1800. For the absolute is this prereflected "unity of being and non-being," which has its reflected counterpait in the unity of the "identity of the identity and difference."39 But the Logic as a whole, composed of the logic of being in Book I, progressing to the logic of essence in Book II to the logic of the concept in Book III has the task to conceptualize precisely at the end of the process the science of logical discourse. For the sake of that precise determination, a beginning has to be made in the unconceptualized and undefined absolute. The progress of that precise determination in the Logic, ending in the logic of the concept with the absolute idea,40 is conceived already in the systematic fragment of 1800. This progress is to be definite and precise. It is not to be a "progress into the infinite"41 but rather "guided." The eternal progress of Zwilling and Sinclair which comes to no definite conclusion is avoided by beginning in the Logic with the absolute as the prereflected unity of being and nothing. In the fragment of 1800 this "elevation" appears as the elevation to religion: "The elevation of the finite to the infinite characterizes itself thereby as the elevation of the finite life to the infinite as religion, that it does not posit the being of the infinite through reflection, as an objective or subjective (being), adding thereby to the limited the limiting, recognizing this again as a posited, itself as a limited, progressing from here to the renewed search for the limiting, and making the demand to continue this process into infinity."42 Such a progress from the limited to the limiting and so forth is incapable of determining the precision of logically proceeding thought. It is, as Hegel indicated in the fragment of 1800 "driven along without a point of lest," and therefore without "guidance," For the sake of that guidance the system has to start with a "being outside of reflection,"43 which circumstance takes form in the Logic's beginning with "being," characterized as "without all further determination." Being is the start of the Logic in its "undetermined immediacy."44 Being as undetermined and therefore empty is identical with nothing, which is therefore also "this identical determination or rather indtermination and therefore the same which the pure being is."4r' It has often been remarked that both in the early manuscripts and in the Phenomenology religion is the end-point of the process developed.40 The fragment of 1800 makes the demand that "philosophy must end with religion."47 But if the elevation of the fragmented life to the whole life is the elevation out of which a scientifically proceeding reflection can alone

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arise, the systematic conception of the fragment of 1800 appears not to be contradictory to the procedure of the Logic which begins with that prereflected absolute, The unresolved problem with which Kant had left the philosophical scene was the task to provide adequate grounds for the guided progress of reason. To see a contradiction in the claim of the fragment of a system of 1800 to have philosophy end with pierefiected unity of all being which is religion, whereas the Logic beging wSfrltttfT prereflected absolute unity of being and nothing indicates a lack of understanding that even though the system was conceivecf ' in one instance, "im Nu" as Henrich expressed himself once,48 that does not mlian that the spelling out of that systematic conception was also done in that^sme instant. Hegel did have at one instant around 1800 the brilliant insight which guided all his further thought. But the development of the various "moments" of appearing consciousness in the Phenomenology served to arrive at that absolute ground out of which the ability to differentiate:and unify arises. Once that ground has been reached, it can serve as the basis from which the process of logic can itself proceed. Because Hegel 4qes not artificially construct a system but rather follows diligently the,;inner logic and necessity of his original insight of 1800 he must fi^st \yr& Jus way through the phenomenological appearance of the various forms pi consciousness/up to the high ground of absolute knowledge, from wljich the inner dynamic of logical thought can be traced. Only if the logic of reflection in Book II is understood to originate out of the prereflected and undetermined being in Book I, for .which the ground was prepared in the Phenomenology, can the manifold and preise determinations of the concept in Book III come to expression. Hegel voices this circumstance with the first words of the logic of essence: "Essence comes out of being; insofar it is not immediate and in and for itslfi,: bot rather a result of that movement."40 But the Hegelian dialectic understands being to be also a result of essence.50 Being as immediacy is the immediacy over against essence which is the "definite negation" of being: "Essence has the immediacy (of being) over against itself as one out of which it .has become and which preserves itself in this elevation (Aufheben) S'*1\Only because being is posited in its immediacy by essence as the ground out of which it comes, does essence have its definity and defining potential. Positing (Setzen) implies mediation and negation. If being is posited by essence, it is mediated by its own ground, essence. But being is mediated in its immediacy. Being is therefore the result of essence insofar asJt -is the negation of negating essence.52 Essence, in positing being, mediates^ ;b^tJn positing being, it posits the absolutely immediate. Essence as the relationcreation determination is the determination of being itself. Th reflection 296

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of the logic of essence is a reflection not from the outside of being on being, but rather the reflection of being upon itself. The merely external reflection, as it appeared in Spinoza,53 is the end of the logic of being, not yet having "reached" essence. Substance had in Spinoza been understood as being that pure negativity which "absorbs" everything into itself. In Spinoza, difference is introduced altogether from the outside. The attributes in Spinoza's understanding of substance have no more significance than that they express this substance altogether. But the difference is external and therefore merely quantitative, not qualitative. But if being is to be understood as the posited immediacy of essence, which itself is the "definite negation" of being, then this difference must not be merely external. It must be a difference which appears within being itself. In Spinoza's understanding of substance, "difference is not immanent to her (substance); as quantitative it is rather the opposite of immanence, and the quantitative indifference is the externality of unity. Herewith also difference is not understood qualitatively, and substance is not determined as that which differentiates itself, not as subject."54 In this last formulation the famous sentence of the Preface of the Phenomenology is repeated, that truth is to be grasped and expressed not as substance, but rather just as much as subject.55 The Logic is now the process by means of which truth comes to its own self-understanding. And the secret of the relation of being to essence must be sought in the lack of any presupposition setting this process in motion. Truth comes to selfunderstanding altogether out of itself. Only if in this manner the logic of reflection and finally the determinations of the concept arise as internal reflections out of indeterminate and immediate being will the well guided science of the absolute, which is Hegel's Logic, and in a broader sense Hegel's whole thought, be able to unfold. We hope to have made with these remarks a small ccmtribution to a better understanding of Hegel's logic of the absolute. Russell Sage College

NOTES 1 Logik I, p. 53, ed. Lasson, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg, Phil. Bibl. number 56, 1969. The second volume is Phil. Bibl. number 57. 2 Logik I, p. 53. 3 Phnomenologie des Geistes, ed. Hoffmeister, Hamburg, 1952, 6th ed., Phil. Bibl. number 114, p. 562. * Ibid., p. 562. 297

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5

Logik I, p. 66. * See Henrich, Hegel im Kontext, Suhrkump Verlag, Frankfurt, 1971, p. 85. 7 Logik I, p. 80. a Ibid., pp, 69, 68. 0 lbid.r p. 396. 10 Kant, Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, ed. Raymund Schmidt, Phil. Bibl. number 37a, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg, 1956, pp. 454ff. 11 See Peter Cornchl, Die Zukunft der Vershnung, Vandenhock & Ruprecht, Gttingen, 1971, see esp. p. 64: "Die Restriktion der theoretischen steht bei Kant im Dienste des Primats der praktischen Vernunft. Der 'letzte Zweck,' die 'Endabsicht' cier Vernunft liegt nicht im Horizont des Wissens, sondern des Willens."* See also p. 75: "Kant kommt alles darauf an nachzuweisen, dass die Einschrnkung' unse^r theoretischen Vernunft gerade unserer praktisch-sittlichen Bestimmung angemessen ist und dass also die 'unerforschlichen Weisheit, durch die wir existieren, nicht minder verehrungswrdig ist in dem, was sie uns versagte, als in dem, was sie uns zuteil werden Hess.' (K.d.Pr.Vernunft, p. 266. 9th ed., Hamburg, 1959, Phil. Bibl. number 38, ed. by Vorlnder, Felix Meiner Verlag.) Denn die Mglichkeit theoretischer Einsicht in die letzten Dinge hiitlc in praktischer Hinsicht fatale Folgen." 12 Logik II, 9.

Ibid., 9f.
" See Henrich, Hegel im Kontext ( = H i K ) , p. 85ff. 15 Problematically, because the footnotes reflect on that secret of the beginning of the logic, rather than being that beginning. Because Hegel realized this problem, he relegated these rejections to mere "notes." i Logik I, 66. 17 ibid., p. 91. Ibid., p. 60. 19 Kojve, Hegel, Versuch einer Vergegenwrtigung seines Denkens, Kohlhammcr Verlag, Stuttgart, 1958, p. 86. See also p. 109: "Wenn man wie Hegel behauptet, dass alles Verstehen dialektisch und die natrliche Welt verstehbar ist, dann behauptet man damit . . . dass diese Welt das Werk eines Demiurgen, eines nach dem Bilde de arbeitenden Menschen aufgefassten Schpfergottes ist. Und das sagt Hegel tatschlich in der Logik, wenn er ausfhrt, dass seine Logik (d.h. seine Ontologie) 'das Denken Gottes vor der Schpfung der Welt1 ist. Daraus wrde folgen, dass Hegel die Welt versteht, weil die Welt auf Grund des Begriffes erschaffen ist, den Hegel hat.' Und damit sind wir mitten im Paradox: Der Hegeische Anthropo-theismus hrt auf, ein Bild zu sein; Hegel ist tatschlich Gott der Schpfer und ewiger Gott. Nun kann aber kein Mensch von sich behaupten (es sei denn im Wahnsinn), er habe die Welt geschaffen. Wenn also das sich in der Logik offenbarende Denken, das die Welt erschaffende ist, so ist es sicherlich nicht das Hegels, sondern das eines Schpfers, der weder Hegel noch der Mensch im allgemeinen ist: das Denken Gottes. Die Logik ist daher, auch trotz ihres Titels, nicht einfach Logik, sondernwie Spinozas Ethik~ Theo-logie, also Logik, Denken oder Rede Gottes." Theunissen is closer to a more appropriate interpretation. The remark about Hegel becoming God when thinking the Logic is a "silly remark," Hegels Lehre vom Absoluten Geist als Theologisch-Politischer Traktat, DeGruytcr, Berlin, 1970, p, 6. 20 Logik I, p. 53. 2i Henrich, HiK, 89. 22 Logik I, 53. 298

THE ABSOLUTE AS THE BEGINNING OF HEGEL'S LOGIC 23 Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, Tubingen, 2nd ed., 1965, p. 426. 24 ibid,, p. 461. 25 See Henrich, HiK, p. 104f. 26 I am using this Heideggcrian term provocatively to indicate that the Heidegger School's rejection <of Hegel's absolute science possibly might fail to interpret properly Hegel's intentions. 27 Gadamer does acknowledge Hegel's "logical instinct" with which he follows in "unbewusster Weise'* the inner consequence once opened up by the beginning. Sec Gadamcr, Hegels Dialektik, Mohr, Tbingen, ' 1971, esp. the essay Die Idee der Hegeischen Logik, ibid., pp. 50ff. The acknowledgement of following unconsciously the logical instinct, pp. 63ff. But Gadamer insists that the hermeneulical experience which unfolds itself through language is missing in Hegel's dialectic. With Hegel's dialectic he "makes a false claim'1 (p. 5 7 ) . "Diese Dialektik, die wir in unserer eigenen Reflexion ausspinnen, stellt . . . lediglich eine bestndig hineinspielende Vermittlung mit den natrlichen Vormeinungen des Bcwusstseins dar. Dagegen ist die 'Erfahrimg' die das Bewusstsein selber macht und die wir beobachten und begreifen, und sie allein, der Gegenstand der Wissenschaft" (p. 57), That seems to be a problematical intcrpictation of Hegel's intention. Reflection is to be kept distant, if a beginning in logical discourse is to be made at all. Gadamer finds however, that the Logic is a restriction of that hermeneutical experience of all reality which unfolds itself in and through language {ibid., p. 6 4 ) . 28 Henrich, HiK, 101. 20 Logik I, 59.
30

Jenaer Schriften, Suhrkamp Verlag, Hegel in Zwanzig Bnden, vol. 2, Frankfurt, 1970, p. 96 ( = J S , SuII).

31 Dieter Henrich has indicated in Hegel im Kontext, p. 27, that the evolving continuum between the terms Sein, Liebe, Leben and Geist can be explained with good reasons. 32 See Rohrmoser's comments to this formula in Subjektivitt mid Verdinglickwtg, Gttingen, 1961, p. 55; and Theunisscn, Hegels Lehre ( ~ HL) (p. 3 5 ) . 33 Frhschriften Hegel in Zwanzig Bnden, vol. , Frankfurt, 1971, ed. by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Marcus Michel, p. 422. ( = FS, Su I). " Ibid., p. 422. 33 See Henrich, HiK, 9ff, Hegel und Hlderlin. 30 See Hannclorc Hegel, Isaak von Sinclair, Klostcrmann Vcilag, Frankfurt 197J, p. 65.
37

FS, SU I, pp. 422f. Sec to this problem Lukacs, Der Junge Hegel, Zrich, Wien, 1948, p. 282. Theunisscn, HL, p. 16, Rohrmoscr, Subjektivitt und Verdi'nglichu/n; ( = S V ) , p . 56.
FS, Su I, p. 423. The action of that positing is also called the "elevation of the finite to the infinite," and the "elevation of finite to the iniinile life," characterized as "religion" maintains itself thcmnlically through the Phenomenology and the Logic into the later writings, and can be found with the almost identical wording in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion in the Vorrede. ;i0 Logik I, p. 59. 10 Logik N, p, 483fT. il FS, Su I, p. 423. 4 " Ibid., p. 423. 43 Ibid., p. 422.

38

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44 Logik I, p. 66. 45 Ibid., p. 67. 46 See, for example, Theunissen, HL, 75. 47 FS, Su I, 422f. 48 HiK, in the essay Hegel und Hlderlin, pp. 9ff. 49 Logik H, p. 7. 60 See preliminary remarks concerning this situation above, pp. 289 and 291. l Logik II, p. 8. 52 See also Henrich to this point in HiK, 107: "Sein kann als Resultat des Wesens; als durch es gesetzt, also als 'Gesetztsein' gelten, das garz ohne Umstand aus deitf Gedanken der doppelten Negation gewonnen ist. Gesetztsein heisst abefr aufgehobenes' Sein,Sein, welches das Wesen zu seinem Grund hat, und zwar so, das| Wsn ' ! seinerseits im Setzen von Unmittelbarkeit besteht." - 'x * ? 3 Logik I, pp. 3?6, 397. 54 Logik I, p. 396. 55 Phnomenologie, ed. Hoffmeister, ibid., p. 19.

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