Preface to the Second Edition

I HAVE embarked upon the new elaboration of the Science of Logic of which this is the first volume, with full consciousness both of the difficulties of the subject in itself and of its exposition, and also of the imperfection of the elaboration contained in the first edition; earnestly as I have striven, after many years’ further occupation with the subject, to remedy this imperfection, I still feel that I have good reason to bespeak the indulgence of my readers. The title to such a claim for indulgence may well be based in the first instance upon the circumstance that for the content of the science hardly anything but merely external material was to be found in the earlier Metaphysic and Logic. Though both of these subjects have been universally and assiduously cultivated, the latter even up to our own day, the speculative aspect has met with but slight attention; on the contrary, we have, for the most part, the same things repeated again and again—sometimes thinned down to shallow triviality, while sometimes the old ballast is unloaded afresh and dragged about in ever greater bulk after such a fashion that the efforts expended—to a large extent merely mechanical—could bring no gain to the philosophic content. Hence it had come to pass that to present the realm of thought in its philosophical aspect—that is, in its own immanent activity, or (which comes to the same thing) in its necessary development—this had to be a new undertaking, and to be begun from the very beginning; but the traditional material—the well-known forms of thought—must be regarded as a highly important pattern—in fact a necessary condition, a presupposition to be thankfully acknowledged, even if only providing here and there a barren clue or, as it were, the lifeless bones of a skeleton, sometimes even flung together in disorder.

It is in human Language that the Forms of Thought are manifested and laid down in the first instance. In our day it cannot be too often recalled, that what distinguishes man from the beasts is the faculty of Thought. Language has penetrated into whatever becomes for man something inner—becomes, that is, an idea, something which he makes his very own;—and what man transforms to Language contains—concealed, or mixed up with other things, or worked out to clearness—a Category; so natural to man is Logic—indeed, Logic itself is just man’s peculiar nature. But if Nature in general is opposed, as physical, to what is mental, then it must be said that Logic is rather that something Super-natural which enters into all the natural behaviour of man—Feeling, Intuition, Desire, Need, Impulse—and thereby alone transforms it all to something human—to ideas and purposes—though, perhaps, only formally human. It is a great advantage to a language when it has a wealth of logical expressions—that is, expressions characteristic and set apart—for the determinations of thought; of prepositions and articles many belong to those relationships which depend upon thinking; the Chinese language is said not to have developed so far, or only in a very small degree; these particles in fact perform an entirely subordinate office, the same as prefixes and suffixes, and in an only slightly more independent form. It is much more important that in a language the determinations of thought should be manifested in Substantives and Verbs and thus receive the stamp of objective form; the German language has here many advantages over other modern languages; indeed, many of its words have the further peculiarity that they have not only various, but even opposed, meanings, so that we must recognize here a speculative spirit in the language; it is a joy to thought to stumble upon such words, and to meet with the union of opposites (a result of Speculative Thought which to Human Understanding seems senseless) in the naive shape of one word with opposite meanings registered in a dictionary. For this reason, in German, Philosophy for the most part requires no peculiar terminology. Of course some words from foreign languages (which indeed have already acquired by prescription the right of citizenship in the philosophic realm) have to be adopted in German, and an affected purism would be least in place where it is the thing and not the word that is of capital importance. The progress of culture generally, and of the sciences in particular, gradually brings to light higher relations of thought, or at any rate raises these relations to greater generality, and thereby attracts to them more attentive consideration. This is true even of those sciences which relate to what is empirical and sensuous, since they use in general the most familiar categories (for example. Whole and Parts, a Thing and its Properties, and the like). For instance, though in Physics the idea of Force had become supreme, in more modern times the most important part here has been played by the Category of Polarity—which indeed has been too much dragged in everywhere at random, and even into the theory of Light. In this determination of thought a distinction is drawn, while the things distinguished are inseparably bound up together. It is of infinite importance that in this way the abstract form (Identity) by which a thought-determinateness is endowed with independence (as, for example, Force) has been abandoned, and the form of the determination, of a distinction which remains all the while in identity because it is inseparable, is emphasized and becomes a current idea. Owing to the reality which appertains to natural objects, the observation of nature compels us to establish those natural Categories which we cannot ignore even when they may be thoroughly incoherent with others to which also validity is allowed, and does not permit here that passage from opposites to abstracts and universals, which more easily takes place in the case of ideational objects.

But whilst logical objects and the expression of them are thus something that is everywhere familiar in cultivated thought, still, as I have elsewhere observed, what is familiar is not on that account necessarily understood. It even rouses one’s impatience to have to go on merely busying oneself about what is thus familiar—and what is more familiar than just those determinations of thought of which we make use at every turn, which proceed out of our mouths with every sentence that we speak? This foreword is intended to give the fundamental points in that course of the progress of Cognition which starts from what is thus known and familiar, and in the relation of Scientific thinking to Natural thinking; this, together with what is contained in the earlier Introduction, will suffice to furnish that general notion of the meaning of logical Cognition which one is accustomed to demand in the case of any Science, as a preliminary to the presentation of the Science itself.

In the first place, it is to be regarded as an immense advance that the Forms of Thought should be disengaged from the Matter of Thought in which they are imbedded in self-conscious Intuition and Ideation as well as in Desire and Will—-or rather (since there is no human Desire nor Will without Ideas) in ideating Desire and Will; it is an immense advance that these Universals should be drawn forth and set up as objects of contemplation on their own account, as was done by Plato and then more especially by Aristotle; we have in this the beginning of knowledge. “It was only,” says Aristotle, “after nearly everything that was necessary, and that pertained to the convenience and intercourse of life, had been obtained, that people began to trouble themselves about philosophic knowledge.” “In Egypt,” he had previously remarked, “the mathematical sciences were early developed, because there the priestly caste at an early period was in such a position as to make leisure possible.” In truth the need to busy oneself with pure thought presupposes a long stretch of road already traversed by the mind of man. It is, one may say, the need of a need already satisfied as regards necessaries, the need of an attained absence of need, of abstraction from the matter of intuition, imagination, and so forth—from the concrete interests of Desire, Impulse, and Will, in which the determinations of thought are wrapped up and concealed. In the still spaces of Thought which has come to itself and is purely self-existent, those interests are hushed which move the lives of peoples and of individuals. “In so many directions,” says Aristotle in the same connexion, “the nature of man is dependent; but this science, which is not sought for the sake of utility, this alone, in itself and for itself, is free, and seems therefore to be a possession not wholly human.” Philosophy generally still has in its thinking to deal with concrete objects—God, Nature, Mind—; but Logic is concerned with such thought wholly and solely on account of the thought itself, in complete abstraction from its objects. It is customary to assign to Logic a place among the studies of youth, because the young have not yet entered upon the interests of concrete life. Youth lives at leisure in respect of these interests; its business is to acquire the means and power of entering actively upon the objects of these interests, and even these objects are considered in a merely theoretic manner. In opposition to the view of Aristotle already quoted, logical science is reckoned as part of this equipment; occupation with Logic is a preliminary business, its place is said to be the school, which ought to precede the seriousness of life and action for solid ends. In Life, categories are used—they are degraded from the honour of being contemplated on their own account to serve in intellectual exercise upon living content by production and interchange of the ideas appropriate thereto. They serve, first, as abbreviations, in virtue of their generality; for what an endless multitude of particulars of external existence and of action do ideas comprise, for example, Battle, War, Nation, or Sea, Animal, and so forth;—how in the Idea of God, or of Love, and so on, in the simplicity of such ideating, we have an endless multitude of ideas, activities, conditions, and so on, epitomized! Secondly, Categories serve for the closer determination and discovery of objective relations, in which, however, content and purpose, the validity and truth of the thought which enters into this process, are made entirely dependent on the material presented, and no efficacy in determining the content is ascribed to the determinations of thought in themselves. Such use of the Categories, which has above been called Natural Logic, is unconscious, and when in scientific contemplation the mind assigns to the Categories the function of serving as means, then Thinking in general is turned into something subordinate to other mental functions. We do not say of our Feelings, Impulses and Interests that they serve us—rather, they are regarded as independent faculties and powers, the fact being that so to feel, thus to desire and will, to take interest in this or that—all this is just what we are. On the other hand again, we are likely to become conscious that we are at the disposal of our Feelings, Impulses, Passions, and Interests, let alone Habits, rather than that we are the owners of these or (still less) that they serve us as means, seeing how intimately they are incorporated in us. Such determinations of disposition and intellect soon show themselves as Particulars in contradistinction to that Universality of which we are conscious in ourselves and in which we find our Freedom; and indeed we think that we are entangled in these Particularities, and that they tyrannize over us. Consequently we are much less able to hold that the Forms of Thought serve us than that we serve them—that we are their masters and not much rather that they are our masters—those Forms of Thought which permeate all our ideas, whether those ideas are just theories or have a content of Sensation, of Impulse, or of Will. What surplus have we as against them, how shall we—how shall I—set myself up as more universal than they—they who are the Universal itself? When we give ourselves up to a sensation, a purpose, an interest, and then feel ourselves to be limited and unfree, the place into which we can withdraw therefrom and get back into freedom is the place where we are certain of ourselves, the region of pure abstraction, the region of Thought. So, when we mean to speak of things, we call the Nature or Essence of them their Concept—and this exists only for thought: but of the concepts of things we cannot say that we govern them, or that the thought-determinations of which they are the complexes serve us; on the contrary, our thought has to limit itself in accordance with them, and our arbitrary choice or Freedom ought not to try to frame them after its own fancy. In so far, then, as subjective Thinking is our own-est and innermost act, and the objective concept of things constitutes their own reality, we cannot get beyond that own act of ours, we cannot stand above it, and just as little can we get beyond the nature of things. We can, however, disregard the latter determination; it coincides in so far with the former, since it would furnish a relation of our thoughts to the thing, giving, however, only an empty result, the real thing being set up as a standard for our concepts, while that thing can for us be nothing else than our concepts of it. When the Critical Philosophy understands the relation of these three Terms so as to make Thoughts intermediary between Us and Things in such a sense that this intermediary rather excludes us from things than connects us with them, this view may be met by the simple observation that these very things which are supposed to stand beyond ourselves, and beyond the thoughts referring to them, at the opposite extreme, are themselves things of thought, and, as being quite undetermined, are just one such thing (the so-called Thing-in-itself), the product of empty abstraction.

Enough said, however, of that point of view at which the relation vanishes away, according to which determinations of thought are regarded merely as means and instrument; more important is the further point connected therewith, according to which it is customary to regard these determinations as external Forms.—That activity of Thinking which works in all our ideas, purposes, interests, and deeds is, as has been already remarked, un-self-consciously active (Natural Logic); what is present to consciousness is the content, the objects of our ideas, that in which we are interested \ in this connexion the determinations of Thought are regarded as Forms, which are not the content itself but only attached to the content. But if it is true, as was asserted above and is generally admitted, that in an object the nature, the peculiar essence, the truly permanent and substantial among the multiplicity and contingency of its appearance and fleeting manifestation, consists in the concept of the thing, in the Universal immanent in it; as every human individual, though infinitely unique, is so only because it belongs to the class of man, every animal only because it belongs to the class of animal: if this be true, what remains of such an individual if this basis (i.e. the universal) be removed, however many other predicates it have, and although the universal be only one among them? The indispensable basis, the Concept, the Universal, which is Thought itself—in so far, that is, as in using the word Thought one can abstract from the idea—this cannot be regarded as a merely indifferent form which is attached to some content. But these thoughts of all natural and spiritual things, even the substantial content, are yet such as to possess manifold determinations and to contain the distinction between Soul and Body, between a concept and its respective reality; the deeper basis is the soul in itself, the pure concept, which is the very core of objects, their very life-pulse, as it is the core and pulse of subjective thinking itself. To bring into clear consciousness this logical character which gives soul to mind and stirs and works in it, this is our problem. Instinctive action is distinguished from intelligent and free action broadly by this, that the latter is accompanied by clear consciousness; when the content of that which stirs the mind is drawn out of its immediate unity with the Subject, and made an Object for it, then there begins Freedom for the mind, which while caught in the workings of instinctive mental activity is broken up within the meshes of its Categories into an infinitely various material. In this web strong knots are formed now and then, which are foci of arrest and direction in mental life and consciousness: they owe their firmness and strength to the fact that, brought before consciousness, they are found to be independent concepts of the latter’s essentiality. The most important point for the nature of mind is not merely the relation of that which it is in itself, but furthermore of that as which it knows itself, to that which it is in actuality; this self-knowledge, because it is essentially consciousness, is the fundamental determination of mind’s actuality. These Categories function only instinctively and as impulses—they are at first introduced into consciousness piecemeal, and therefore are mutable and mutually confusing, and thus yield to mind only a piecemeal and insecure actuality. To purify these Categories and to raise the mind through them to Freedom and Truth, this it is which is the loftier task of Logic.

What we have laid down as the first step in Philosophy (a step the high value of which both on its own account and also as a condition of genuine cognition we have already recognized)—namely, that concepts in general and the moments of concepts (that is, the determinations of thought) should be treated at first as Forms which are distinct from Matter, and merely attached to it,—this procedure advertises itself at once as inadequate for the attainment of truth—truth, which is announced as the subject-matter and goal of Logic. For, taken thus as bare forms, as distinct from the content, they are taken to be standing in a determination which stamps them as finite, and makes them incapable of comprehending the truth, which is in itself infinite. If the true can, in whatever reference, be elsewhere associated with limitation and finitude, this is its aspect of negation, of untruth and unreality—in fact of its end—not its aspect of affirmation, which it is by virtue of being truth. Against the baldness of the merely formal categories, the instinct of common sense has at last felt itself so confirmed as contemptuously to abandon the knowledge of them to the domain of School Logic and School Metaphysics, with a want of appreciation of the intrinsic value that this clue possesses, and completely unaware that it (that is, common sense) is itself held captive when it adopts the instinctive activities of Natural Logic, and still more when it deliberately rejects both cognition and recognition of thought-determinations,—captive by a mode of thinking that is unpurged and therefore unfree. The simple basic or common determination of all these forms is Identity, which as the Law of Identity as A = A, and as the maxim of contradiction, is maintained in the Logic of this collection of forms. Common sense has so thoroughly lost its reverence for the school which is in possession of these laws of truth and still fosters them, that it derides the school on account of the laws, and would regard anyone as insufferable who, in accordance with these laws, made true statements such as, “The plant is—a plant,” “Science is—Science,” and so ad infinitum. And as to the formulas which constitute the rules of syllogizing (which, in fact, is one of the principal employments of Understanding)—mistaken as it would be not to recognize their place and validity in cognition and the fact that they are essential material for rational thought, yet the equally just view has been established that these laws are, quite as much, impartial instruments of error and sophistry, and—however Truth may be determined—that they are unserviceable for higher Truth—for instance, for religious Truth;—that, broadly, they are merely a matter of epistemological correctness and not of Truth itself.

The inadequacy of this way of regarding thought, which leaves Truth on one side, can only be supplemented when in the contemplation of Thought, Content is included as well as that which is habitually reckoned as belonging to external form. It very soon appears that what at first is to ordinary reflection, as Content, separated from Form, cannot in fact be formless, cannot be without internal determination; if it were so, it would be only emptiness, the abstraction of the Thing-in-itself. It appears that, on the contrary, Content has in itself Form, indeed it is only through Form that it has Soul and subsistence, and that it is Form itself which changes only into the show of a Content, as also into the show of a something external to this show. With this introduction of Content into logical consideration, the concrete concepts of things become the object of thought, instead of the mere things. And in this connexion we may recall that there is a multitude of Concepts, a multitude of concrete Things. The way, however, in which this multitude is limited and confined is (as has already been pointed out) partly this, that the Concept as Thought in general, as Universal, immeasurably abbreviates the endless Particularity of mere Things, which in their multitudinousness hover before the eye of indeterminate intuition and ideation; partly, however, a Concept is, to start with, the Concept in itself, and the Concept is One, and is the substantial basis; and secondly though it is a definite Concept, and this definiteness in it is what appears as Content, yet on the other hand the definiteness of the Concept is a Form-determination of that substantial One-ness, a phase of Form as Totality, of the Concept itself, which is the basis of determinate Concepts. This is not sensuously intuited nor ideated; it is only the object, product, and content of Thinking, and the Real Thing which exists in and for itself, the Logos, the reason of that which is, the Truth of what we call a mere thing (Ding); and it is Logos which should least of all be left outside logical science. We cannot therefore include it in the science, or leave it outside, at our discretion. When the thought-determinations which are only external forms are truly considered in themselves, only their finitude, and the untruth of attempts to make them exist for themselves, show up, and what shows up as their truth is the concept. Hence logical science, since it deals with the determinations of thought (which generally run through our mind instinctively and unreflectively, and—even though they enter into language—remain unidentified and unregarded)—logical science, I say, will be the re-construction of those thought-determinations which are thrown into relief by reflection, and by reflection are fixed as subjective forms, forms external to matter and content.

No unfolding of any subject-matter of Thought is in itself capable of such strictly immanent plasticity as is that of the development of Thinking in accordance with its own necessary Laws; no other carries with it this demand in such a degree of intensity; in this respect the science of Logic must surpass even Mathematics, for no subject-matter of thought has in itself this freedom and independence. By such a free and independent exposition—which after its fashion is present in the process of mathematical thought—it is demanded that there should not appear at any stage of the development, any thought-determination, any reflection, that does not immediately arise at this stage, and that has not passed into it from the stage preceding. However, such abstract perfection of exposition must, I confess, be generally given up; since the Science must begin with the absolutely simple, that is, with what is most general and most empty, the exposition would permit only quite simple expression of that simplicity, without the addition of a single word;—what would be admissible in accordance with the conditions of the case would be negative considerations, the objects of which were to ward off and to banish elements which might otherwise be introduced by imagination or unregulated thinking. Such invasions of the simple immanent process of development are, however, in themselves contingent, and consequently the effort to ward them off is itself tainted with contingency; besides which Just because such occurrences lie outside the subject-matter it is vain to try to meet them all, and the systematic completeness demanded would itself be something imperfect. But the peculiar unrest and distraction of our modern consciousness force us to take into account reflections and fancies that lie more or less near at hand. And an explanation which lends itself to the subject calls for a corresponding docility of temper in those who would apprehend and comprehend; but youths and men thus docile, with such tranquil self-denial in the matter of reflections and fancies of their own, in which “original” thought is so impatient to manifest itself—listeners (such as Plato feigns) who only want to follow the argument—such could hardly be set up as interlocutors in a modern dialogue; still less could we reckon upon readers of such a temper of mind. Quite the reverse—I have been only too often and too fiercely attacked by opponents who are incapable of the simple reflection that their onslaughts and objections contain categories which are themselves assumptions and themselves need to be criticized before being employed. Want of knowledge in this matter goes incredibly far; it is guilty of the fundamental misunderstanding, the uninstructed and barbarous procedure of taking a category which is under consideration for something else and not for what it is. This ignorance is the less to be justified because this something else consists of other thought-determinations and concepts, and in a system of Logic these other categories themselves must likewise have found their place, and be themselves awaiting consideration in their place in the system. Where this is most surprising is in the great majority of the objections and attacks which are directed against the primary concepts or starting-points of Logic, Being and Nothing, and Becoming, as that which contains the two previous determinations (Being and Nothing) as Moments;—Becoming, which is itself without question a simple determination, as appears on the simplest analysis. Thoroughness seems to demand that the beginning—as the foundation upon which everything is to be built—should be examined before anything else, in fact that we should not proceed further until it has proved itself solid, and on the other hand, if it does not prove so, that everything that follows should be rejected. This thoroughness of procedure has at the same time the advantage that it guarantees a vast easing of the work of thought; it has before it, enclosed in this germ, the whole development of the science, and regards itself as having done the whole of its business when it has done the first part of it. This piece of the work is the easiest to dispatch, for it is the simplest, it deals with simplicity itself; it is the trifling labour that is here required that really recommends this “thoroughness” of procedure, which is so well satisfied with itself. This restriction to what is simple gives full scope to the free play of thought—thought which cannot go on being simple, but must bring in its reflections on the subject. Having good right to be busied at first only with the fundamental principle and, at that stage, not to allow itself to enter upon what is beyond, this thoroughness, even when employed on its own business, works in a contrary sense, and brings in what goes beyond the fundamental principle—it brings in, that is, other categories and other presuppositions and prejudices. Such presuppositions as that Infinity is different from Finitude, that Content is other than Form, that the Inner is other than the Outer, that Mediacy is not Immediacy—as though anybody did not know such things—are brought forward by way of information, and related and insisted upon rather than proved. A habit of such instruction is a childish procedure—we can call it nothing else; technically it is unjustifiable, because it presupposes and immediately assumes such things; and it is even more guilty of ignorance of the fact that it is the need and business of logical thought to investigate just this—whether a Finite without Infinity is something true, whether such abstract Infinity, and moreover a Content without Form and a Form without Content, similarly an Inner by itself that has no Outer, an Externality without Inwardness, and so forth—whether these can be something true, or something actual. But this education and discipline of thought, by which an adaptable attitude of thought is brought about, and the impatience of intrusive reflection overcome—all this can be procured only by going further, only by study, and by actualization of the whole course of development.

Anyone who works at building up anew an independent structure of philosophical science in modern times, may; when referring to the Platonic exposition, be reminded of the story of how Plato revised his Republic seven times over. The remembrance of this, the comparison in as far as such may seem to be implied here, should only urge one all the more to the desire, that for a work which, as pertaining to the modern world, has to deal with a deeper principle, a more difficult subject, and material of wider scope—for such a work leisure might have been vouchsafed, to go through it seventy times and seven. The author however, in face of the greatness of the task, has had to content himself with what it has been possible to accomplish under pressure of external necessity, inevitable distractions due to the greatness and many-sidedness of the interests of the time, and under a doubt whether the noisy clamour of everyday affairs, and the bewildering volubility of undisciplined fancy (which takes a pride in limiting its interests to such affairs)—whether these leave any room for sympathy with the passionless calm of purely speculative knowledge.

Berlin, 7th November 1831.