Realities of Logic? (2023 - 2023)

Abstract

Hegel's Science of Logic poses many difficulties for its readers. This project is dedicated to one especially significant but rarely considered difficulty: on the one hand, Hegel's logic falls under the tradition of logic as the science of thought, which remains formal; on the other hand, various realities appear in his logic, which seem to contradict its formal character and furthermore seem to have nothing to do with logic - for instance "life", "love", and "God".

It should be emphasized that Hegel does not only consider the concepts "life", "love", and "God" concepts of logic, but also considers the realities of life, love, and God which they designate as things which essentially constitute logic.

This project is guided by the assumption that Hegel has good grounds for letting these realities appear in logic, and that it is not simply a case of illustrations of abstract logical relations or anticipations of real-philosophical connections. Rather, these realities belong essentially to logic as logic, "so that material contents can fit into formal structures" (M. Theunissen).

If this assumption is correct, Hegel's genuine contribution to logic cannot be understood if the occurrence of these realities is ignored or marginalized, and nor can it be understood if the occurrence of these realities is treated and understood in such an isolated way that the connection to logic as the science of thought is lost.

In so far as the project calls attention to this looming interpretational dilemma and attempts to overcome it critically, the project also seeks to fill a gap in the scholarship, which arises precisely because two types of interpretations of Hegel's Science of Logic are dominant, each of which can be associated with one of the horns of the dilemma described above:

• Those interpretations which keep silent about "life", "love", and "God" in Hegel's logic, which can thereby make it clear how Hegel's logic fits into the tradition of logic as the science of thought from Aristotle via Kant up to the present day, and so also quash the suspicion that Hegel is doing something else entirely than the science of thought under the name of "logic", for instance theology.
• Those interpretations which do fruitfully investigate Hegel's discussion of "life", "love", and "God", but which cannot explain why these realities should appear in logic, construed as the science of thought.

Project information

Publications, events and more

Research visit (with two guest lectures) by Dr. Tereza Matějčková (Prague) at LMU Munich in June 2023.

Talk "Hegels Logik der Bewährung" by Dr. Thomas Oehl at the International Hegel Congress in Stuttgart in June 2023.