Trisokkas, Ioannis (2008), ‘Truth, Judgment and Speculative Logic’, Bulletin of the Hegel Society Britain 57/58, 154-172
[154]
Review Article: Truth, Judgment and Speculative Logic
Chong-Fuk Lau, Hegels Urteilskritik: Systematische Untersuchungen zum Grundproblem der spekulativen Logik (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2004), pp. 319. ISBN 3-7705-3898-6
I. Introduction Chong-Fuk Lau’s long book Hegel’s Critique of Judgment: Systematic Investigations into the Fundamental Problem of Speculative Logic1 is one of the most interesting and lucidly written products of current German Hegelian scholarship. It was initially written as a doctoral dissertation at Heidelberg University (accepted in 2002) under the supervision of the late Rüdiger Bubner and published two years later (2004) by Wilhelm Fink Verlag as part of the important series jena-sophia, edited by Christoph Jamme and Klaus Vieweg. Besides its very informative — although rather excessive in number and length – footnotes, the book also offers comprehensive and insightful comparisons of Hegel’s thought with the philosophies of Aristotle, Kant and Frege. It also manages, especially in the footnotes, to give the reader a valuable sense of the central positions of Germany’s major post-war Hegel scholars, such as Dieter Henrich, Klaus Düsing, Rüdiger Bubner, Klaus Hartmann, Hans-Friedrich Fulda and Michael Theunissen, citations from and comments on whose work appear on almost every page of the book; on the other hand, important current English-speaking Hegel scholars, such as Robert Pippin, Stephen Houlgate, Robert Stern, John Burbidge, Richard Winfield and Kenneth Westphal, are either only very briefly mentioned or not mentioned at all.2 The book aims firstly to offer a detailed analysis of the systematic relation between (a) the speculative notion of truth, (b) the theory of the speculative proposition and (c) the ontological and logical structure of the judgment, and secondly to employ this analysis for the elucidation of Hegel’s Science of Logic. To achieve this twofold aim Lau proceeds in three steps that correspond to the three main parts of his book. In the first part, ‘Conditions of the System and Critique of Judgment’, he defines the speculative notion of truth and relates it to the notion of the presentation of truth. The upshot of this first part is that the relation between those two notions creates a problem, which Lau, following Lorenz Bruno Puntel,3 sees as the ‘fundamental problem of speculative logic’ and which arises from the problematic ontological and logical structure of the judgment. The latter appears on the scene because it constitutes the core of the notion of presentation. In the second part, ‘Speculation and
Speculative Proposition’, Lau tries to establish a direct connection between (a) Hegel’s theory of the speculative proposition (especially as it is expounded in the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit) and (b) the ontological and logical structure of the judgment. Finally, in the third part, ‘Logic and Ontology’, Lau seeks to use and expand the results of his analysis of the theory of the [155] speculative proposition so as to explain and/or elucidate the central ontological and logical aspects of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Although in the course of the book Lau quite often offers detailed and insightful analyses of philosophers other than Hegel and of works by Hegel other than the Science of Logic, in the present essay I will concentrate on that thread of his argument (which, as the subtitle suggests, is intended to be conceived as the main argument or thesis of the book) that aims at resulting in an explicit and successful explanation and/or elucidation of the project of the Science of Logic alone. With this restriction in mind, I will now formulate the essence of what I take to be Lau’s main argument and then proceed to flesh it out and finally evaluate it: Given the speculative notion of truth and its inherent relation to the notion of the presentation of truth, the judgment proves to be (a) intrinsically related to the speculative notion of truth, but (b) unsuitable to express it. The first is the case because the presentation of truth cannot be made without the use of judgment; the second because the judgment has a logical and ontological structure (or ‘essence’), manifested in the everyday or ‘natural’ understanding of the world (natürliches Weltverstehen), that prevents it from ever expressing the speculative truth. This paradox (Lau calls it a Janusköpfigkeit) is resolved through the speculative proposition, which denotes nothing other than the immanent self-critique of judgment (and not, as Düsing and others maintain, a new kind of judgment): The judgment, when embedded in a speculative framework, exhibits a specific movement that destroys its logical and ontological structure and thereby forces it to be transformed into a new judgment (that is, into a new judgment-token, not into a new judgmenttype). This process continues up to the point where a whole system of perfectly interconnected judgments is established, something that signals the actualisation of speculative truth. Lau’s distinctive claim is that this is exactly what happens in the Science of Logic, from which claim it follows that the judgment (and, of course, its self-critique) is the moving force (das Movens) of the dialectical development of the logical categories. II. Truth Lau begins his investigations by correctly specifying the main concern of Hegel’s speculative logic as the definition and acquisition of truth (35). In order to achieve this aim Hegel had to confront both the influential Thomistic
correspondence theory of truth and the Kantian reaction to it. The former professed that truth takes place whenever the content of the intellect corresponds to things or states of affairs that are external to the intellect. Kant complained that this definition of truth has no philosophical significance whatsoever, for it cannot help us decide whether a particular intellectual content (a judgment) is true or false (to wit, it fails to function as a criterion of truth); such a decision would require that we are able to compare the intellectual content with the external things; but this is impossible, since external things appear always as intellectual contents (43-44). Intellectual contents can be compared only with other intellectual contents. Truth, Kant [156] continues, can be determined only with respect to its formal aspect, the universal rules of the understanding (e.g. the law of non-contradiction), to which the intellectual contents as judgments must conform (45). For Kant, this determination of truth affects only the form of judgment not its content. Because it says nothing about the content of things, it has only a negative function, and so it helps us only with the exclusion of some false judgments from the domain of truth, i.e. those whose form fails to satisfy the universal rules of the understanding; it does not also enable us to positively identify those judgments whose content designates something true (45). Thus, if one follows Kant on this issue, one should abandon the project of saying something true about the content of things. Kant, of course, tried to reduce the negative ramifications of this determination of truth by (a) distinguishing between formal or universal logic, on the one hand, and transcendental logic, on the other, and then (b) defining the latter’s project as the provision of the a priori universal conditions for the possibility of knowledge of objects. Yet, precisely because these ‘conditions’ belong to or emerge solely from the ego, the determinations they assign to the objects – ‘objective’ determinations – are not determinations of the objects as they are in themselves, but only determinations of them as they are for us. Thus, the judgment, for Kant, can reveal (through its various structures) the most abstract universal features of the content of things, but only when this content is taken as the content of their appearances.4 When Kant, therefore, uses the terms ‘content’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘objectivity’, he assigns a very peculiar meaning to them, since they are synonymous to ‘content-for-us’, ‘knowledge-for-us’ and ‘objectivity-for-us’. Being dissatisfied with the Kantian conclusion, while at the same time acknowledging the deficiency of the traditional formulation of the correspondence theory, Hegel, Lau argues, attacks them both by reconciling (or sublating) them in a new notion of truth, the speculative one. This is achieved in two steps: Firstly, he shows through the Phenomenology of Spirit that the fundamental premise of the Thomistic formulation of the correspondence theory, namely that the intellect (or, in Hegel’s terms, ‘concept’ or ‘thought’)
and the thing (or, in Hegel’s terms, ‘reality’ or ‘being’) are originally divided, can have absolutely no justification, independently of how it is framed. This allows for the positing of a starting-point in which concept and reality are originally united (50-51, 69-70). But, secondly, this original unity cannot possibly be exemplified as a simple identity, for in that case the terms would collapse into each other with the result that instead of a relation we would have two self-subsistent existences: a reality-less concept and a concept-less reality. Clearly, such a conclusion would revive the two positions Hegel wants to sublate. The only way to escape this impasse is to respect the fact that the original unity of concept and reality is a relation and, therefore, accept that the difference of the relata must also be explicated. Consequently, Hegel’s reconciliatory project requires a single structure that would manage to satisfy both of these demands, to wit, the unity and difference of concept and reality. Hegel discovered this structure in the operation of absolute negativity, through which the correspondence of concept and reality becomes processual in nature: The concept [157] corresponds to reality by turning itself into its other (i.e. into its negation) which it then embraces (and, therefore, negates) (50-52). This process and its result constitute the formal character of the speculative notion of truth. In this way, Hegel succeeds in reconciling the correspondence theory with the Kantian critique: Truth indeed requires the correspondence between concept and reality, but since these are originally united, Kant’s objection does not hold; on the other hand, Kant was, in a sense, right to stress that there is no truth outside the concept, for reality (the content of things) exhibits itself in its truth only when the concept has fully embraced its other (p. 52). Thus, truth, as the absolute negativity of the concept, consists of two, theoretically distinct, basic elements: (a) an element which exemplifies the concept’s being the other of itself and (b) an element which exemplifies its embracing its other. In the first case, considered in isolation from the second, the concept does not correspond to reality (for the relata show themselves to be different); in the second case, it does correspond to it (for the relata reunite after having shown themselves to be different). Clearly, however, the noncorrespondence that the first case designates has a totally different meaning from the one it had in the Thomistic-Kantian framework (53). To say that the concept does not correspond to reality cannot now possibly mean that they have nothing to do with one another, that they are self-subsistent existences which have only an indifferent relation. This is so because they are originally united. The reality which the concept fails to correspond to is its reality; and, vice versa, the concept which reality fails to correspond to is its concept (53). Logically, then, the concept’s being-the-other-of-itself must be a purely internal phenomenon, a state of affairs developed from within the horizon of that
original unity of concept and reality (55). According to Lau, such a deficient state of affairs could arise in this instance only in terms of a comparison between the two basic elements of the speculative notion of truth. The concept’s being-the-other-of-itself is a deficient state of affairs because it falls short of that state of affairs which denotes the concept’s embracing-its-other. Since (a) the latter exemplifies the (full) correspondence of concept and reality and (b) the former cannot possibly exemplify the (absolute) non-correspondence of concept and reality, the concept’s-being-the-other-of-itself must necessarily denote a partial correspondence of concept and reality (58). Thus, for Lau, the speculative notion of truth consists of two fundamental and irreducible elements: (a) the concept’s-being-the-other-of-itself which exemplifies the partial correspondence of concept and reality and (b) the concept’s-embracing-its-other which exemplifies the full correspondence (or correspondence proper) of concept and reality. Realisation of the second element requires passing through the first, for the difference of concept and reality must necessarily first appear as that state of affairs which is the concept’s being-the-other-of-itself. But, at the same time, realisation of the first element requires the presence of the second, because the concept’s being-the-other-ofitself denotes the partial correspondence of concept and reality only if it falls short of their full correspondence. [158] Now, since the Science of Logic is meant to provide a manifestation of the speculative truth, those two fundamental elements must be present in it. And since the full correspondence of concept and reality is exemplified therein by the absolute idea (54), each and every foregoing logical category or constellation of categories must necessarily exemplify the partial correspondence of concept and reality, to wit, a state of affairs in which the concept is the other of itself. Although this picture requires some qualifications and refinements, Lau takes it that the core of the Logic’s formal structure has now been determined. III. Judgment The preceding discussion has led Lau to the conclusion that Hegel’s Logic represents a process whereby (a) the partialness of each logical category is dissolved or ‘washed away’ (aufgelöst ist) and (b) through this dissolution, more and more of that state of affairs which represents the full correspondence of concept and reality is revealed (enthüllt ist). The whole process culminates in that state of affairs which requires no other content for its determination than the content and perfect interconnection of all the categories that lead up to it. Such a state of affairs Hegel calls ‘system’ or ‘whole’ or ‘absolute idea’. Of course, the character of the dissolution of partialness (or ‘untruth’) and the revelation of
truth is not uniform throughout the Logic (Lau points out the important differences between the logics of being, essence and concept on this matter), but each and every logical category or constellation of categories dissolves untruth (or is a manifestation of critique) and reveals (or discloses) truth (64). The point we have now reached is the single most important moment in Lau’s book, for his whole argument depends upon it – and it is the point where the reader should consider carefully whether or not she/he agrees with the move he now makes. As already pointed out, the speculative notion of truth is processual in character, the reason being that, first, difference, and, second, its sublation in a state of identity, must become explicit in the unity of the concept. Clearly, this processual character of truth excludes the possibility of it existing immediately, as if “shot from a pistol.”5 Rather, truth must be presented (dargestellt), in the sense that there has to be an active expression (Ausdruck) of a movement from an event of difference to one of speculative unity (or identity). Now, Lau maintains that Hegel holds the view (which he shares with Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Kant and Frege) that no presentation or expression of truth can take place without the employment of judgment, for the latter is the minimal locus of the expressed truth (56). In fact, Lau ascribes an even stronger belief to Hegel; for, according to Lau, the latter takes the position that the judgment is constitutive of the dynamic structure of speculative truth, i.e. of the dialectical movement of the logical categories.6 It is not as if truth has a certain structure which the judgment comes to express only afterwards; rather, speculative truth acquires its structure through the judgment. Here is how Lau puts it: [159] It is in the judgment where thought develops and presents itself. For one cannot avoid using the form of judgment whenever one wants to refer to a certain entity in the world or to determine a certain thought. Indeed, when the subject-matter is the truth, the form of judgment is always already presupposed. (84)
In short, the presentation of truth is constitutive of speculative truth and since the presentation of truth cannot be made without the use of judgment, the latter is constitutive of speculative truth as well. What underlies this argument is Lau’s conviction that, for Hegel, speculative truth is not only expressed by, but also exists in language (considered here in its essence, its core, what Chomsky would call ‘the universal grammar’). Or, to put it differently, in being expressed in language, speculative truth becomes what it is. For Lau’s Hegel, without language there can be no speculative truth. This claim affects the above argument because the
presentation (Darstellung) of truth, and hence the judgment, which constitutes its core, are taken by Lau to be linguistic phenomena: For Hegel, the problem of language plays […] a crucial role, because he proposes a notion of truth that is indistinguishable from its presentation. For the presentation of truth develops itself necessarily in language, and, in fact, in a human language, in which one can think and understand. (85)
So, in terms of the actual order of the basic premises of Lau’s argument, it seems that, first he asserts the inherent relation between the presentation of truth and the speculative truth, second he claims that the presentation of truth cannot be made without the employment of judgment, third he makes it explicit that the presentation of truth and the judgment are linguistic phenomena, and fourth he affirms that language is constitutive of the speculative truth, i.e. of the rational or of the dialectical movement of the logical categories, in the sense that the latter cannot exist without the former. Here is how he formulates this fourth premise: ‘For Hegel, the rational [die Vernünftigkeit] and language [die Sprachlichkeit] are at the end of the day identical.’ (100) And a few pages further (p.) he supports this claim by reference to Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy: ‘And when the word and the subject-matter [die Sache] are opposed to one another, it is the word which is the highest; because the unexpressed subjectmatter [die nicht ausgesprochene Sache] is really an irrational thing; the rational exists only as language’.7 In this relation language shows itself not only as something that belongs to reason, but rather as what constitutes [ausmacht] reason as such. What does not allow itself to be expressed [was [160] sich nicht aussprechen läßt] withdraws from the rational. Language, then, is the existence of reason. (114)
If, now, one accepts (a) that the essence of language is constitutive of speculative truth, (b) that the presentation of truth, and hence the judgment, are linguistic phenomena, and (c) that the judgment is the minimal locus of an expressed (or presented) truth, then it necessarily follows that the previous description of the structure of speculative truth can be translated in terms of judgment. Recall that the speculative notion of truth has the following two fundamental characteristics: (1) It consists of logical categories which perform two functions: on the one hand, they dissolve partialness or untruth; on the other, they reveal or disclose truth.
(2) It also consists of the whole or system or absolute which is the state of affairs that (i) completes the movement of the logical categories and (ii) functions as their criterion of truth (or, if you like, completeness). Since the judgment is constitutive of these two elements, it must be essentially characterised by both (a) an ability to dissolve untruth and disclose truth and (b) an ability to relate to and culminate in the absolute. Lau’s problem is to explain or illuminate how exactly the judgment’s structure of partialness, i.e. a deficient structure, can actually exercise those two externally projected abilities. How they can actually be exercised in the Logic (in simple terms, how exactly the deficient structure of judgment can actually come to express the absolute) Lau sees as the fundamental problem (das Grundproblem) of speculative logic. In his opinion, Hegel’s theory of the speculative proposition is intended to elucidate and provide a specific solution to this particular problem. Let us, then, turn our attention to this notion. IV. Speculative Proposition A necessary consequence of Lau’s argument is that the inherent correlation between the logical category and the judgment must now be followed by the fulfilment of three tasks: It should namely be explained (a) in what sense the judgment has a structure of partialness (i.e. a deficient structure), (b) how exactly it manages to dissolve partialness (or untruth) and disclose truth and (c) how exactly this process allows it to culminate in and, therefore, express the absolute. An explanation of this kind has to be given in terms of the judgment, not in terms of the actual development of the logical categories. In other words, reconstructing the linear logical movement from pure being to the absolute idea will not do the trick, for Lau’s problem can be resolved only if the judgment, considered in its own terms, is shown to exemplify (or ‘reflect’) that movement. This does not mean that logical categories could not be employed in the formulation of the required explanation, but in such case they should prove to be relevant to the judgment’s own peculiar structure and movement. [161] The required explanation unfolds in three stages: In the first stage Lau attempts to fulfill the first task by employing elements from the prelude to the immanent analysis of the category of judgment in the Logic (147-168).8 In the second stage he refers to the theory of the speculative proposition (as developed in the Preface to the Phenomenology)9 with the aim of fulfilling the third task and providing a sketch of the way in which the second task could be approached (168-192, 269-287). In the third stage he combines (a) information relevant to the notion of judgment found in various writings by Hegel with (b) the theory of the speculative proposition so as to give a more detailed account of how the second challenge is to be met (pp. 193-269). In this section we will
follow the first and second stages of his explanation; in the next we will deal with the third stage, which is the most complex and difficult to comprehend. To begin with, the structure of the judgment is deficient because the subject-predicate relation that constitutes it exemplifies only a partial unity or identity between the relata (p. 171). There is a unity because the copula, being an essential element of the judgment, cannot be removed. But this unity is partial, for the scopes (Umfänge) of the relata do not fully overlap. This is manifested in two different ways: On the one hand, the subject, which refers to an individual, relates to the predicate, which refers to a universal quality; but the latter has many instantiations, only one of which is the individual designated by the subject; this shows that in the locus of judgment the subject is only partially united or identical with the predicate, since the scope of the latter is clearly wider. On the other hand, the individual which the subject refers to has many qualities, not just the one assigned to it by the predicate; in this sense, the scope of the subject is wider than the scope of the predicate and, therefore, it is once more shown that the only identity the judgment can express is a partial one. The judgment is what it is only if it exemplifies those two fundamental partial identities. It is thus a unity of subject and predicate, whose scopes are always only partially united. But since the judgment is constitutive of speculative truth, it must be shown how the partial unity of subject and predicate is transformed into a full unity, i.e. how subject and predicate will come to correspond perfectly with one another. However, in this case, the result will no longer be accommodated in the locus of the judgment, for without the relata being only partially identical there can be no judgment. This paradox confronts speculative logic with the huge problem of how to achieve the presentation of speculative truth. According to Lau, the theory of the speculative proposition (der speculative Satz) is meant to provide a metatheoretical resolution of exactly this paradox and thereby enable the expression of the dialectical development of the logical categories and its culmination in the absolute (168-169). For scholarly and philosophical reasons (176-183), one can be sure that, for Hegel, it achieves this, not by establishing a new kind of philosophical judgment (as Düsing, for example, argues),10 but by showing how the judgment itself, when embedded in a speculative framework, destroys its own structure through self-critique. The latter takes the form of an immanent movement from the subject to the predicate and back again, through which movement what sustains [162] the partial correspondence of subject and predicate (identified by Lau with the logic and ontology of the ratiocinative thinking – räsonierendes Denken – and the natural understanding of the world – natürliches Weltverstehen) collapses (175, 185ff.). The concrete result of this collapse is a new kind of relation in which subject and predicate prove to be fully identical and, therefore, strictly speaking no longer subject and predicate.
The collapse of the partial identity of the relata through the self-critique of judgment, i.e. through the speculative proposition, is ‘verified’, as it were, in the Logic by the appearance of statements of identity (e.g. ‘being and nothing are the same’ or, simply, ‘being is nothing’, Hegel 1986:Vol. I: 83). These, contrary to what many Hegelians think, are not special judgments, but rather exemplifications of that state of affairs in which the partial identity of subject and predicate collapses; and, therefore, they are no judgments at all (173-174, 185-186). In other words, the speculative proposition is a structure that denotes both the movement of self-critique and the result of this movement, the statement of identity. Considered specifically as a statement of identity, the speculative proposition has two functions.11 Firstly, it concludes the dialectic between the subject and predicate of a specific judgment and, therefore, dissolves partialness and discloses truth. Secondly, it is the state of affairs that enables the emergence of a new judgment (i.e. a new judgment-token), which once more exemplifies a partial identity between the relata (188-192). Of course this general picture needs to be filled in with quite a lot of details if it is to meet anyone’s approval. Before we attempt to do that, though, let us complete Lau’s overall argument by providing his response to the third task specified earlier: How does the speculative proposition enable the judgment to relate to and culminate in the absolute? The relation to the absolute arises in that specific moment when the judgment is transformed into a statement of identity. For a new judgment will emerge from the movement of the selfcritique of judgment only if what that identity denotes somehow falls short of the whole or system (otherwise there would be no need for a further judgment). In other words, Lau sees each speculative proposition, i.e. the self-critique of a specific judgment, as aiming at the satisfaction of an “intentional correlate” (intentionales Korrelat), that is, the complete identity of concept and (its) reality or the absolute (275). Thus, the movement from one judgment to another will continue until the absolute is fully exemplified. In that state of affairs all judgments will bind together (through speculative propositions) in a perfect, organic unity (56, 189). Now, clearly, given the constitutive affinity between the judgment and the logical category, this argument entails that what enables the movement from one category to another in the Logic is the fundamental discrepancy between a speculative proposition and its ‘intentional correlate’ or the absolute. This discrepancy, however, exists in the first place because the judgment, even in its dynamic existence as a speculative proposition, cannot accommodate all the determinations of the absolute. Lau maintains that Hegel sees this structural discrepancy between what the judgment expresses and the absolute as a contradiction, a state of affairs in which the concept corresponds and does not correspond to (its) reality (57-58, 284). It corresponds to it because the
speculative [163] proposition is a disclosed truth; it does not correspond to it because the speculative proposition does not express the whole truth. Lau argues that it is only because the inevitably appearing contradictions must be resolved that there is a movement from one category to another (276). And since the contradictions emerge due to the specific (deficient) structure of judgment, the latter shows itself as the moving force (das Movens) of the dialectic of the categories (6, 275). Consequently, even though Hegel criticises Kant for deducing the categories from the table of judgments, he still uses the judgment, albeit now in a negative fashion, ‘as a guiding thread (Leitfaden) for the development and presentation of the categories in the Logic’ (275). All in all, for Lau, the dialectic of the categories in Hegel’s Logic is a necessary consequence of the discrepancy between the category the concept each time exemplifies and its fully realised truth, which is the whole system of the categories in their interconnection (24, 287). This discrepancy denotes a contradiction and its resolution can be achieved fully only at the end of the logical system, as the absolute idea. What is distinctive in Lau’s position is his claim that this contradiction not only is expressed by the judgment, but also occurs because of this expression (193, 275-276). In other words, the occurrence of contradiction in a certain category arises from the expression (or presentation) of this same category through the judgment. But, peculiarly, Lau adds to this argument that a certain contradiction is resolved only if there is a movement to another judgment, which expresses a new category: Every individual judgment, every individual sentence in the Logic is therefore a contradiction that resolves itself. Every individual determination of the concept in the judgment is at the same time an expression (Ausdruck) of its difference from the truth, so that this determination must resolve itself by […] passing over into an other, which, of course, is once more burdened with a (new) contradiction. For a judgment – a structure that contains contradiction – is untrue and causes (zwingt) the move to the next one, which indeed resolves that contradiction, but in its turn entangles itself in another, more complex one. In this way, the movement of the judgment develops itself further and further. In this process of discovery and resolution of contradictions […] vague and confused determinations of the concept become transparent, so that those differences which have not yet been transparent are now gradually conceived as internal differentiations of the concept, and, in fact, as constitutive moments of its self-identity. This movement of the concept, which is always motivated by contradiction, continues up to the point where the concept unfolds into a monistic-holistic system, in which it realises itself and corresponds fully to itself. This realised truth of the concept that has freed
itself from all contradictions is called […] absolute idea, and the movement toward it dialectic. (285-286)
The first and second stages of Lau’s argument have now been presented; what remains is the fulfilment of the second task, which demands a more detailed account of what is involved in that event in which judgment dissolves partialness (or untruth) and discloses truth, enabling thereby the move to another judgment. However, before we proceed to the next section, we should bring forth certain oddities one encounters in Lau’s general account of the speculative proposition. Firstly, even though Lau does not explicitly acknowledge it, he seems to develop his argument based on two different notions of partial identity. On the one hand, there is the partial identity of subject and predicate in the judgment; on the other hand, there is the partial identity of the speculative proposition, taken as a statement of identity, and the absolute. I have presented him as saying that while the first partial identity is indeed dissolved through the speculative proposition (see esp. 173), the dissolution of the second requires the culmination of the dialectical development of the categories in the absolute (see esp. p. 190). This understanding would fit in with his talk of (a) resolution of individual contradictions through speculative propositions and (b) resolution of all contradictions through the system. Secondly, however, the resolution of an individual contradiction would, according to his own argument, require the full identity of the scopes of subject and predicate. But such identity is exactly what he ascribes to the absolute (recall that the judgment had been assigned a structure of partialness in the first place because the scopes of the relata were not fully identical). Thus, as far as I can see, when Lau refers to the resolution of a contradiction in a certain judgment through the speculative proposition, he should not identify this with the emergence of the full identity of the scopes of that judgment’s relata (since this is not supposed to be attained until the end of the logical movement; cf. p. 190-192). What kind of resolution this would then be remains to be seen. Finally, there is the issue of the emergence of a new judgment. For if the speculative proposition indeed resolves the contradiction in a judgment, by Lau’s own definition of contradiction there should be no need for another judgment. Yet maybe this will be clarified as soon as we discover in what sense the speculative proposition resolves a contradiction before the full identity of the absolute is exemplified. [164]
V. Substantiality, Determination and Contradiction In the preceding section the speculative proposition has been identified with the immanent self-critique of judgment (considered both as a process and as a result) and its content has been determined as the movement from subject to predicate and back again. Lau conceives this movement as a forceful critique of the logic and ontology of the so-called ‘natural understanding of the world’ or ‘ratiocinative thinking’ (5, 16, 168-169). In ontological terms, this understanding holds the view that the fundamental basis of reality [165] (the ‘really real’) consists of immediate individuals whose status is superior to their universal qualities; this view translates to the more concrete claim that while universal qualities cannot exist without inhering in individuals, the latter can exist without having universal qualities (195, 229). In logical terms, this ontological picture gives rise to the claim that an immediate individual can be determined without relating to any universal quality. Since the subject refers to an essential individual and the predicate to an inessential universal quality, the natural world-understanding is committed to the belief that the judgment exemplifies only an external relation between subject and predicate, a relation namely in which the subject is logically-ontologically prior to the predicate and, therefore, its existence and determinate character is not affected by its relation to the latter (173, 228). Due to these specific features of the relata, the natural world-understanding takes the position that the subject refers to a substance and the predicate to an accident (194, 202-203, 232). Hegel’s laborious analysis of this theoretical standpoint, especially in the first chapter of the Phenomenology, ‘Sense Certainty’ (Hegel 1970: 82-92), and in the dialectic of ‘something’ in the Logic (Hegel 1986:Vol. I: 122-139), shows clearly that it cannot be sustained (217-224, 234). In logical terms, the determination of an individual requires, paradoxically, reference to its universal qualities, because it is only through the latter that it can be individuated, i.e. distinguished from other individuals (210, 216, 223, 234). In ontological terms, to continue claiming that there exist substances despite the fact that they cannot be determined is to assert the existence of the thing-in-itself, a totally selfcontradictory notion, a content-less content (208, 221). The very notion of the individual, therefore, requires its inherent relation to and dependence upon the notion of universal quality if it is to be sustained. In this way, the logicalontological priority or ‘substantiality’ of the subject has been transferred to the predicate, since without the latter’s referent (the universal quality), the referent of the subject (the individual) would remain indeterminate. The essence of the thing, the substance, lies now in its properties or universal characteristics (174, 186, 210, 235, 236).
Nevertheless, the ‘substantialisation’ of the predicate cannot be the end of the story, for, as the second chapter of the Phenomenology, ‘Perception’ (Hegel 1970:93-107), shows, there arises the problem of how to avoid a state of affairs in which the determinations or universal qualities have only an indifferent relation to one another (an auch-relation, 230ff.). What is it that makes them be determinations of one thing and not of another? What is it that unites them and turns them into a single, specific thing? Lau claims that, for Hegel, this can be achieved only if the substantiality of the predicate is in turn denied (or ‘negated’), facilitating thereby a return to the subject and its substantiality. But the restoration of substance in the subject is not a relapse to the immediate individual, the underlying substrate to which the universal qualities relate only externally, for the latter have been shown to be indispensable for the determination of individuality. Rather, the subject that has become substance again signals a change in perspective (Perspektivenwechsel), whereby the ‘really real’ is now constituted, not by substrata which [166] carry properties externally, but rather by the pure development of an active principle, the selfdetermination of the single concept. This is the movement that exemplifies an original unity’s becoming determinate through its own differentiation and maintaining itself by negating this differentiation (6, 174, 236). Thus, for Lau, the speculative proposition has a specific onto-logical content. It is the movement through which (a) the immediacy and logicalontological priority of the subject is destroyed, (b) the predicate shows itself as a multiplicity of universal qualities (or simply determinations) and (c) this multiplicity of universal qualities becomes the self-determination of a single element, the concept. But how does this ‘content’ fit in with the Science of Logic? Lau gives two answers here, only one of which addresses the question we raised in the previous section, namely how exactly the speculative proposition illuminates (a) the dissolution of partialness and disclosure of truth within a single logical category (or judgment) and (b) the emergence of a new logical category (or judgment). The irrelevant answer, which I will not develop here, is that the first stage of the movement of the speculative proposition corresponds to (or ‘reflects’) the logic of being, the second to the logic of essence, and the third to the logic of the concept (235-236; see too 192, 194, 218). As far as I can see, this reading of the Logic as a ‘giant’ speculative proposition contributes nothing to the aforementioned problem, because its approach is too macroscopic. To say that the first stage of the speculative proposition ‘reflects’ the logic of being might illuminate the general character of the development of the logical categories in that logical sphere, but it does not explain how it is that each logical category or constellation of categories in the logic of being has the structure of the whole speculative proposition. (And, as seen, the structure of Lau’s argument demands that an explanation should be
given of how it is that each logical category exemplifies the whole speculative proposition (see 185, but compare with 190-191).) The relevant answer goes as follows: Each judgment constitutive of a logical category is initially an expression of the immediate existence of the absolute or concept in that logical category (215). The immanent dialectic developed within it, however, shows that it must relate to another judgment, expressive of a logical category that is opposite or contradictory to the one initially posited, if it is to have a determinate content. In this way, a constellation of judgments arises, whose relation is one of opposition. According to Lau, such relation is accommodated in the second stage of the speculative proposition, where a multiplicity of predicates is manifested. But the immanent dialectic operative within each of those constellations shows that as soon as the relation of opposition is established, the self-subsistence of each of the relata cannot be thought outside of the relation itself. This gives rise to a higher category (or ‘higher perspective’), which, however, cannot be expressed by a judgment, for the latter, by its very nature, cannot incorporate oppositional or contradictory determinations (236, 280). In this way, the movement of the speculative proposition completes itself by establishing the unity of the oppositional judgments through a process whereby their opposition emerges from and dissolves itself into a common ground. It is exactly when the latter becomes explicit that the speculative [167] proposition crystallises itself as a statement of identity and thereby fulfils its third stage, the return of substantiality to the subject from the predicate. It has thus been shown how the speculative proposition, that is, the immanent self-critique of judgment, dissolves partialness and reveals truth. It achieves the former by destroying (a) the immediacy, i.e. self-subsistence, of a logical category and (b) the fixed opposition of a pair of inter-determining categories. It achieves the latter by disclosing the common ground, the higher category, from which the inter-determining categories emerge as meaningful entities. The crucial question, however, remains unanswered: How is it that this disclosure of the common ground formally enables the move to another judgment, facilitating thereby a process that culminates in ‘a holistic unity, in which all differences are enclosed as integrated’? (256) As far as I can see, Lau responds to this crucial question by employing the same notion as before, namely the discrepancy between the logical content and the absolute or system or the whole. At this stage of the argument, though, and despite the fact that Lau does not explicitly state this, the logical content in question has been crystallised as the higher category that grounds a constellation of contradictory categories, the statement of identity that completes the immanent movement of an individual speculative proposition. Here is what Lau says:
If one recalls that the Hegelian truth is nothing else than the correspondence of the concept with itself, then it becomes apparent that, for Hegel, contradiction must be understood as the negative correlate of truth. Only in the fully-fledged truth is contradiction missing; in all other stages of the development of the concept it always pops up. […] That which Hegel designates as contradiction shows itself as the difference between the concept that is still on the way to the truth and this same concept in its truth. To put it differently: A contradiction is present when there exists a discrepancy between what something actually is and what something, given its truth, ought to be. […] The decisive point here is that the concept, being on its way to its full realisation, must go through all those stages that do not yet (noch nicht) correspond to its realised form or truth. It is because of this state of affairs that there emerges a continuous difference between a certain developmental stage and the full realisation of the concept. (284)
And here is how this relates to the judgment and the question we raised above: Given the structure of the judgment […] being and ought cannot correspond to each other fully, for any individual judgment may express only one determinate side of the concept. In the judgment the concept must become, so to speak, one-sided, insofar as it does not find itself therein [168] fully. Because of this structural one-sidedness there emerges in every judgment a discrepancy between what is said and what is intended. This discrepancy gives rise to the ‘counterthrust’ (‘Gegenstoß’) one sees in the speculative proposition [i.e. the statement of identity that expresses the completion of the self-critique of judgment (I.T.)], which negates (aufhebt) the natural (verständig) reading of the judgment and thereby forces (zwingt) thought to conceive it anew, i.e. to pass over to a new judgment. (285)
Thus, each logical category entails a contradiction because the content its constitutive judgment expresses falls short of the full truth of the concept. However, as we have seen, each logical category entails also another contradiction (i.e. the fixity of some inter-determining categories), the one that is required for its local determination, which is indeed resolved in the higher category, expressed by the speculative proposition and finally exemplified as a statement of identity. Thus, it must be the case, for Lau, that it is this statement of identity that expresses a content that is only partially true (cf. pp. 190-191). This ‘contradiction’ next forces (zwingt) thought (das Denken) to pass over (übergehen) into a new judgment (i.e. a new logical category or constellation of
categories). Despite having read Lau’s book again and again, this is the only answer I could find to the aforementioned problem. VI. Conclusion Hegel’s theory of judgment has received relatively little attention from Hegel scholars or continental philosophers in general.12 Lau is therefore to be commended for systematising Hegel’s various comments on and analyses of the notion of judgment in such a lucid and bold manner. His account is extremely informative and engaging, packed with descriptive richness and critical acuity and he does manage to build a link between the theory of the speculative proposition and the Logic. Thus, I would strongly recommend his book to anyone interested in Hegel’s Science of Logic and/or his philosophy of language. However, if my presentation and analysis of his main argument is correct, I believe that some serious flaws can be detected in it. Firstly, the way Lau sets up the problematic of speculative logic seems to commit him to a slightly more sophisticated version of that mistaken picture of the Logic put forth by Schelling. Like Schelling, Lau sees the absolute or the whole as being present in each logical category and playing a functional role in the movement from one category to another. Both of them conceive each logical category in the Logic as what is not yet (noch nicht) the absolute/whole and the movement from one category to another as being motivated by the lack of full correspondence with the absolute/whole. The difference between them is only that while Schelling uses this conception to ground what he believes to be the introduction of [169] external factors in the movement of the categories (and in this way destroy Hegel’s aspiration to a purely immanent project),13 Lau, who does not in principle doubt the immanent character of Hegel’s project, uses the same conception to justify his idea of a constitutive affinity between the logical category and the judgment. Nevertheless, the same objection one could raise against Schelling, one could also raise against Lau, namely that for Hegel the absolute, both as a result and as a process, emerges from the dialectic of the categories and, therefore, plays no functional role in the movement from one category to another.14 Lau, just because he bases his whole inquiry on what Hegel says in the Preface to the Phenomenology, takes it that Hegel begins the Logic by wondering how he is going to express the absolute/whole. This, however, assumes that at the beginning of the Logic it is known that the truth is the absolute/whole and the only problem the philosopher has is how to express it. In my opinion, this is a mistaken view of the Logic’s project because it deliberately ignores the fact that the Logic aspires not only to express the truth, but also to define or discover it in the first place. The question Hegel asks is not
‘How can one express the absolute?’ but rather ‘What is truth and what is there in truth?’15 Yet, if I am right, and the absolute or whole plays no functional role in the movement of the categories, the judgment, as Lau conceives it, could not possibly be the ‘moving force’ of the dialectic. This is so because (a) according to him the structure of the judgment (considered specifically in its appearance as a statement of identity) is deficient because it falls short of the absolute and (b) in fact, the deficiency of a certain judgment emerges independently of its relation to the absolute; put simply, one can explain how and why a category is deficient without even mentioning its ‘falling short of the absolute’.16 Secondly, Lau’s view that language is constitutive of the rational or the dialectical development of the categories, in the sense that without language the rational could not exist, finds no textual support in Hegel’s Science of Logic and, more importantly, goes against the realist character of its programme.17 For if one accepts Lau’s suggestion, one would have to accept that without language what there is in truth would not have the structure it actually has, which is absurd. Rather, speculative logic shows how being determines itself independently of whether this self-determination is expressed or not (and the fact that it is expressed through it does not affect the validity of this claim). All Hegel wants to say with his remarks on language is that a certain level of language (its ‘universal grammar’ or essence, to use Lau’s terminology) does not oppose the expression of the rational, because the latter is constitutive of the essence of language, in the sense that without the rational, i.e. the logical categories, language would not be what it is. But the opposite does not hold, for the logical categories would still be what they are, i.e. determinations of what there is in truth, even if no language expressed what there is in truth. In other words, pace Lau, language is not the condition of reason considered as an ontological principle. Thus, the following claim is fallacious: What does not allow itself to be expressed withdraws from the rational. Language, then, is the existence of reason. (114)
The first sentence is true, because for Hegel it is one of the fundamental features of the rational that it can be expressed in language. But the second sentence does not logically follow from the first, because what it actually says is that the rational must be expressed in language in order to be what it is. It is true that Lau devotes more than thirty pages of his book trying to establish that there is indeed textual support for his claim (85-117), but it seems to me that besides the previously cited passage from the Lectures on the History of Philosophy no other passage from the ones he mentions actually supports it. Unfortunately, given the nature of the text of the Lectures (a compilation of Hegel’s lecture [170]
notes and notes from his students) and the uniqueness of the passage, one is not permitted to ground such a crucial point upon it. Now, Lau offers also a philosophical justification for his claim: Language is constitutive of the rational because (a) the presentation (Darstellung) of the rational is constitutive of it and (b) language is constitutive of the presentation of the rational. This argument, though, is extremely problematic because while Lau himself introduced the notion of presentation in order to denote simply the movement from an original unity to a speculative unity, i.e. a unity that would incorporate difference, he then suddenly and with no warrant started using that notion as if it denoted the linguistic expression of this movement. The ‘presentation of truth’ denotes first and foremost the development of a primordial, immediate state of affairs (‘sense-certainty’ in the Phenomenology, ‘pure, indeterminate being’ in the Logic), not the linguistic expression of this development. It is correct to say, therefore, that the ‘presentation of truth’ is constitutive of truth, but this does not entail that language is constitutive of this notion. Thirdly, there is a problem regarding Lau’s account of the deficient structure of the judgment. On the one hand, he explains this in terms of a discrepancy between the scopes of subject and predicate in that judgment. On the other hand, he explains it in terms of a discrepancy between what has resulted from the self-critique of a certain judgment (i.e. the statement of identity) and the absolute. The difficulty here is to understand the exact relation between the statement of identity and the deficient structure of the judgment out of which it emerges. Does the statement of identity dissolve that deficiency? Lau implies that it does, if only in terms of local determination. Yet, does this not mean that there is no deficiency left with respect to that judgment and that therefore, there is no need for another judgment? In other words, why should local determination not be enough for a judgment to express what it intends to express? Lau, of course, avoids this question because he associates the deficiency of each judgment with the absolute; but, for us, who do not accept this arbitrary association, the question remains. Finally, and in relation to the previous point, although Lau continuously maintains that the speculative proposition as a statement of identity gives rise to a new judgment or logical category, he never explains, in the formal framework in which he develops his argument, how this actually takes place. Sure, each speculative proposition is deficient as long as it falls short of the whole/absolute, and this discrepancy will ‘force’ [171] ‘thought’ to move to another judgment, but how is this supposed to tell us how exactly the new judgment will emerge immanently from the individual speculative proposition?18
Ioannis D. Trisokkas Department of Philosophy University of Warwick
Notes 1
All references in the text are to Lau’s book. All translations are mine. But Lau refers quite extensively to Brandom, Strawson, and Quine. 3 L. B. Puntel (1973), Darstellung, Methode und Struktur. Untersuchungen zur Einheit der systematischen Philosophie G. W. F. Hegels, Bonn: Bouvier, 34. 4 I. Kant (1998), Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Hamburg: Felix Meiner, A490 / B518. 5 G. W. F. Hegel (1986), Wissenschaft der Logik, in two volumes, E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel eds. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, here vol. I: 65. 6 Compare this with A. F. Koch (2002), ‘Dasein und Fürsichsein (Die Logik der Qualität)’, in A. F. Koch and F. Schick eds., G. W. F. Hegel: Wissenschaft der Logik, Klassiker Auslegen, Berlin: Akademie Verlag: ‛Anders stünde es mit vorpropositionalen Sachverhalten, kurz Ursachverhalten […]. Viele der notorischen Seltsamkeiten der Wissenschaft der Logik rühren daher, daß sie keine Logik der Aussagen und Prädikate, sondern eine Logik der Ursachverhalte […] ist.’ (28) Lau is diametrically opposed to this position. 7 The reference is to G. W. F. Hegel (1986), Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. I, E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel eds., Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp: ‛Und wenn Wort und Sache einander entgegengesetzt wird, ist das Wort das Höhere; denn die nicht ausgesprochene Sache ist eigentlich ein unvernünftiges Ding, das Vernünftige existiert nur als Sprache.’ (527). 8 Hegel 1986: Vol. II: 301-310. 9 G. W. F. Hegel (1970), Phänomenologie des Geistes, E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel eds., Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1970, 11-81, esp. 57-64. 10 See K. Düsing (1986), ‘Syllogistik und Dialektik in Hegels spekulativen Logik’, in D. Henrich (ed.), Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik. Formation und Rekonstruktion, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 20ff. and K. Düsing (1995), Das Problem der Subjektivität in Hegels Logik. Systematische und entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Prinzip des Idealismus und zur Dialektik, Bonn: Bouvier, 198ff. According to Düsing, Lau argues, the notion of the speculative proposition, as described in the Preface, denotes a special philosophical judgment, through which the absolute identity of the relata would be expressed. The predicate would in this case refer, not to just one of the determinations of the subject, but to its essence, to what defines it and makes it what it is. However, as Düsing himself acknowledges, if that is the meaning of the speculative proposition, it must by the standards of the Logic dramatically fail to express the speculative truth. This is because, firstly, the Logic explicitly denies that the definition could function as the locus of truth, since in this case the subject would become a ‘sheer opinion,’ an ‘indeterminate substrate,’ that is, an element which is superfluous in the judgment; secondly, such speculative proposition would fail to accommodate the difference and non-identity of the relata; and, thirdly, with no difference and non-identity the processual structure of the absolute would be turned into something static. Moreover, Düsing’s understanding of the speculative proposition entails that that there is a special form of sentence in which speculative truth could be accommodated; but Hegel is very clear that no sentence could ever express the speculative truth. Given these problems, Düsing is forced to claim that Hegel 2
[172] formulated the theory of the speculative proposition in his Phenomenology years and
abandoned it by the time he developed the Logic. However, as Lau correctly points out, Düsing must be mistaken here, for (a) Hegel had already expressed his criticism of the sentence as a locus of truth in his Frankfurt and Jena writings and (b) the Preface to the Phenomenology, in which the notion of the speculative proposition is developed, was intended to serve as the introduction to the whole system (including the discipline of speculative logic). 11 Note that the speculative proposition is now a complex structure, constituted by (a) the movement of self-critique and (b) its result, the collapse of the partial identity of the relata. 12 For a notable exception see Werner Salomon’s magnificent study (1982) Urteil und Selbstverhältnis: Kommentierende Untersuchung zur Lehre vom Urteil in Hegels ‘Wissenschaft der Logik’ Frankfurt a.M.: R. G. Fischer Verlag. 13 See F. W. J. Schelling (1856-1861), Sämmtliche Werke, K. F. Schelling ed., Part I, Vol. 10 Stuttgart: Cotta, 126-164, esp. 131-135. For the definitive refutation of Schelling’s understanding of the Logic see S. Houlgate (1999), ‘Schelling’s Critique of Hegel’s Science of Logic’, The Review of Metaphysics 53: 99-128 and A. White (1983), Absolute Knowledge: Hegel and the Problem of Metaphysics Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, esp. 43-66. It is here worth emphasizing that Lau does not cite these two works in his bibliography, despite the fact that they were published long before he published his book. 14 Cf. S. Houlgate (2006), The Opening of Hegel’s Logic: From Being to Infinity (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press: ‘Although earlier categories prove to be imperfect in comparison with later categories, the disclosure of such relative imperfection is not what drives thought on from one category to another in the first place. Thought does not compare a specific category with the absolute Idea, judge that category to be deficient, and then move on to a new category that better approximates to the Idea.’ (48) 15 Compare my position to E. E. Harris (1983), An Interpretation of the Logic of Hegel (Lanham: University Press of America: ‘The general principle of the dialectic, so often and so variously misrepresented, is the fundamental holism which grounds it and of which it is the expression, and when this is clearly and firmly grasped, many difficulties and obscurities melt away, and what (at first sight) seem arbitrary connexions and transitions are seen to be in place).’ (xii) See also Harris (1993) The Spirit of Hegel, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities: ‘The essential feature of Hegelian dialectics is not the triadic arrangement of opposites so much as the holism from which the triadic structure results.’ (142) 16 This is exactly what Houlgate does with the dialectic of the categories in the logic of being in Houlgate 2006. 17 Cf. Hegel 1986:Vol.I:20: ‛Die Denkformen sind zunächst in der Sprache des Menschen herausgesetzt und niedergelegt; es kann in unseren Tagen nicht oft genug daran erinnert werden, daß das, wodurch sich der Mensch vom Tiere unterscheidet, das Denken ist. In alles, was ihm zu einem Innerlichen, zur Vorstellung überhaupt wird, was er zu dem Seinigen macht, hat sich die Sprache eingedrängt, und was er zur Sprache macht und in ihr äußert, enthält eingehüllter, vermischter oder herausgearbeitet eine Kategorie; so sehr natürlich ist ihm das Logische, oder vielmehr: dasselbige ist seine eigentümliche Natur selbst.’ Note that this passage does not support Lau’s position. Hegel is not saying here that the ‘thought-determinations’ (i.e. the determinations of the concept or of what there is in truth) are born in or by language. What he says is that with respect to human beings, the ‘thought-determinations’ appear first in (their) language. Humans appropriate the logical structure of the world through language, and the former permeates their life and thinking through the latter. But, of course, this does not mean that if there was no language, the world would have no logical structure. 18 I am grateful to Professor Stephen Houlgate for detailed comments on this article. I would also like to thank Sebastian Stein and Chris Bassett for helpful discussions.
