Resultados de la evaluación del Programa de acuerdo al criterio de especialistas.

Before going properly into Hegel’s critique of Wolffian ontology

something more has to be said about the way in which the Logic replaces

former metaphysics. I have so far twice quoted the passage claiming that the

Logic is supposed to replace former ontology, but the passage has a

continuation that I have so far omitted. It is not, it seems, that only ontology, or

general metaphysics, is to be replaced by the Logic, but special metaphysics as

well:

[I]t is first and immediately ontology whose place is taken by

objective logic… But further, objective logic also comprises the rest of metaphysics in so far as this attempted to comprehend with the forms of pure thought particular substrata taken primarily from figurate conception [Vorstellung], namely the soul, the world, and God; and the

determinationsofthought constituted what was essential in the

mode of consideration.19

18 _{By this I do not mean that Sein or Dasein are what Hegel understands ens to be. As}

we shall soon see, Hegel does not posit a clear category of either ens or das Seiende and closest he comes to Wolffian conception of ens is das Ding, with characteristics similar to those of Wolffian of ens being first discernable under the category of Etwas.

The reason I am pointing this out now is due to the fact that Hegel criticises pre-Critical metaphysics both in its general and special mode and, while the two are criticised in a different way, I will show that Hegel’s criticism of each can be seen as contained in a critique which encompasses both. To begin with, and I will elaborate on this later, we should note that the objective

logic is supposed to both replace ontology or general metaphysics andcomprise

what was known as special metaphysics.

2. 1. The Logic and the Entity qua Entity

How is this replacement of ontology supposed to be understood? So far we have seen that when referring to ontology Hegel sees it as a science of the

ens, or to on, which he translates by its German morphological correlate ‘das

Seiende’. If the Logic is supposed to be the replacement of Wolff’s ontology it

will, however, not be a replacement that takes the same form of proceeding.

Specifically, while the Logic is seen to replace Wolffian general metaphysics,

Hegel will not do so by proposing an alternative science of an entity qua entity.

The Logic is not presented as the study of das Seiende selbst, or of the predicates that are supposed to be applicable to an abstractly conceived Entity lacking

internal contradictions. In fact, the Logic will be seen as “the science of the Idea

in and for itself,”20 _{or of “thinking, of its determinations and laws,” although}

“not as formal thinking, but as the self-developing totality of its own peculiar determinations and laws which thinking gives to itself, instead of finding it

already had it.”21 Unlike what we have seen in Wolff (and earlier in for

example Clauberg), Hegel’s Logic is not supposed to begin with the most

abstracted internally non-contradictory thought, name that of ‘an entity’, and proceed to analytically derive predicates that apply to that possible thought, or

to the object of that thought. Hegel does start with a pure thought, but this is

the pure thought of Being – Sein – free from any determination. But what is in a

name? Is it the case that Hegel simply decides to call the thought occurring at the starting point ‘Being’ instead of ‘Entity’? If this were the case it seems there

20 _{EL, §18.} 21 _{EL, §19 & 19*.}

198

would not be much difference between Wolff’s ontology and Hegel’s

replacement of it, at least with regards to the starting points they posit for their

systems. The beginning of the Logic with Sein rather than das Seiende or ens,

however, is something more significant than a mere terminological preference.

Firstly, in Wolff’s system the ens is treated as the most abstract subject of

predication. The aim is to posit it as a starting point from which we can discover predicates which are to be predicated of any possible entity, be that entity finite, infinite, empirically existing, or imaginary. Since some of the predicates are mutually exclusive on pain of contradiction (e.g. finite-infinite, simple-complex), they cannot apply to one and the same entity. But since what

we are investigating, and starting from, is an entity qua entity, rather than an

entity in any particular determination, we have at our disposal a certain

abstraction of which these predicates can be predicated. Since Hegel does start

from an abstraction, indeed, what he sees as the greatest possible abstraction,

the starting position is similar. But for Hegel, Being from which the logic starts

a) does not serve as a possible subject of predication, and b) is not a starting

point from which we derive predicates applicable to it, guided by principles of

thinking such as contradiction and sufficient reason. In fact, the thought of “Being, pure Being, without further determination” vanishes into Nothing.

Neither Nothing, nor later Becoming, is predicated of Being. There is no talk of

the subjects of predication, possible predicates of those subjects, or predication at all – at least until very late in the Logic.

Another difference between the conception of Wolff and Hegel’s

system regarding the science of an entity qua entity can be inferred from the

quotation regarding the Logic and the concept ens given above. “Ens,” Hegel

tells us, “comprises both being and essence, a distinction for which the German

language has fortunately preserved different terms.”22 Later on in the Logic, he

states that: “The German language has preserved essence in the past participle [gewesen] of the verb to be [sein]; for essence is past – but timelessly past –

being.”23 The first thing to note is that in Latin and Ancient Greek there is no

22 _{SL, p. 63.}

form of a past participle for the verb to be.24 But all three languages have a

morphological correlate of the present participle in to on, ens, and das Seiende.

So why go with Sein? A clue might be in Hegel’s description of the relation

between sein and gewesen. Since the Doctrine of Essence is supposed to follow

the Doctrine of Being we can assume that Hegel sees the participle form of expression of something to be more determinate or derivative from the infinitive form of expression. This, however, is not to say that for Hegel it

simply ‘sounds better’ to use the infinitive to begin the Logic rather than a

participle. Hegel believes that language (or at least German language) itself possesses a speculative spirit that can display the relations of the categories

present in the Logic. 25 This would mean that the concept das Seiende could not

serve as a starting point of the Logic since its participle form suggests it to be a

“further determination” – something from which “Being, pure being” needs to be without.

But this argument does not have to be seen as resting only on a grammatical fact that participles are derivable from infinitives. If we keep in mind that the participle form of ‘to be’ in Latin and Greek can also be

translated as ‘that which is’ or ‘the one which is’, we could say that it is quite intuitive that these kinds of expressions sound more determinate than simply saying ‘to be’. Even without being overly familiar with the relations between

thought-determinations of the Logic we could agree that simply saying, or

more precisely thinking, ‘to be’, or Sein/Being does not provide us with much.

But also that to think ‘the one which is’ or ‘that which is’ seems to be to think something richer in determination. Such phrases have a ring to them

suggestive of particulars with properties, of a certain one or a certain something

24 _{Strictly speaking, Latin, unlike Greek, does not have a naturally forming present}

participle of esse, with ens or essens, being purposefully invented to translate Greek philosophical term ousia.

25 _{See EL, §96ad and Letter to Rosenkranz in EL, p. xvi. Interestingly, Melamed (2009,}

pp. 45-7) argues that a similar position, i.e. that in Spinoza’s Compendium to Hebrew Grammar “one an easily find some of Spinoza’s most crucial metaphysical doctrines,” such as that nouns, adjectives, and participles correspond to substance, attributes, and modes.