Science of Logic
III. Advertisement
Section summary
Hegel’s notice for Book III, dated Nuremberg, 21 July 1816. The Doctrine of the Notion also appears separately as “Subjective Logic”. It inherits a finished but “ossified” school logic that must be made fluid, like replanning an old, inhabited city. The greatness of its subject, truth, and the distractions of his office excuse its imperfections.
This part of the Logic, which contains the Doctrine of the Notion and constitutes the third division of the whole, is published also under the separate title of System of Subjective Logic for the convenience of those friends of this science who generally are more interested in the matters here treated, and comprised in logic commonly so-called, than in the further logical subjects which were dealt with in the first two divisions.—For those earlier divisions I could claim the indulgence of a fair judge on the score of the scanty work done in this field which could have afforded me either starting-point, matter, or line of direction. Here I may appeal to such indulgence from the opposite ground; for the Logic of the Notion finds ready a perfectly finished and compact or, so to say, ossified material, and the task is to render it fluid and to rekindle the life-spark of the Notion in such dead matter. It is difficult to build a new city in a waste land: on the other part, there is material enough at hand, but there are also all the more obstacles of another kind, when it is desired to give a new plan to an old city, firmly built and never without owners and inhabitants. It is necessary to make this resolve among others—that no use at all shall be made of a great deal of the stock which elsewhere is held in value.—
But chiefly the greatness of the subject itself may be urged as an excuse for the imperfect execution. For what subject is more sublime for cognition than truth itself?—And the doubt whether perhaps it is not this subject itself which requires excuse is not impertinent if it is remembered in what sense Pilate put his question “What is truth?”:—as the poet says, “with the air of the courtier, which, short-sighted and smiling, damns the cause of gravity.” This question implies the meaning (which may be regarded as a component part of courtliness), and a reminder thereof, that the goal—to know the truth—has of course long been abandoned and dropped, and that the unattainable nature of truth is recognized even among professional philosophers and logicians.—And if the enquiry of religion about the value of things, sentiments, and acts—an enquiry which has substantially the same meaning—lays claim to its rights more and more in our days, then philosophy too may hope that it may no longer be held surprising if once more it asserts its real aim (in its immediate field at first), and, having sunk to the methods of other sciences and to their renunciation of truth, now once more endeavours to rise to its goal. It cannot really be permitted to advance any excuse for this attempt; but, with regard to its execution, I may plead this for myself, that the conditions of my office and other personal circumstances allowed me only a distracted labour upon this science, which demands, and is worthy of, an effort undistracted and undivided.