(Geist) has in itself the elements of nature and conformity to natural law; and the series of the branch sciences of the philosophy of mind begins with the science of mental life from the side of nature and natural law-viz. with Psychology. The personal power of self-determination, by which mind is raised above nature, is conditioned by the consciousness of regulative laws or laws of what should be. Since these laws follow from the universal demand to realise ideas in life, each of the three chief tendencies of the life of the spirit-knowledge, will, and feeling is governed by its special idea. Thus arise three sciences of ruling or ideal laws, co-ordinate to each other-viz. the sciences of the laws of truth, goodness, and beauty. Lastly, since the opposition of the laws of nature and of the regulative laws points towards an adjustment in which the opposites become one (for, under the government of the divine spirit, what should be and what is are one and the same), the theory of Paedagogic and the philosophy of history must follow psychology and the regulative sciences, and close the series of the branch sciences of the philosophy of mind. The ideas of truth and beauty stand in essentially like relation to the idea of moral goodness. They can and should all be placed in relation to the divine spirit, for all earlier categories are destined to return as moments in the last and higher sphere; but truth and beauty, as well as moral goodness, must find their nearest scientific explanation from the essence of the finite spirit. We cannot, therefore, find (with Hegel) the opposition to the subjective spirit' yet linked with nature, and running through the first course of its selfliberation, in the ethical relations exclusively, but must assign aesthetic and logic, as well as ethics, to the second sphere. The doctrine of the regulative laws of thought forms part of the doctrine of the regulative laws of knowledge. It has no claim to the rank of an independent philosophical doctrine. The attempt to unite the doctrine of knowledge with metaphysics in one and the same science-metaphysical or onto logical logic-is untenable; because it contradicts the fundamental principles of any rational attempt at systematisation, by placing under the same notion with one of the branch sciences of the philosophy of spirit that philosophical science which has to do with the most general principles. This difficulty would vanish, if we could (as Hegel does) explain the laws of knowledge to be the universal forms of all existence-of things in nature as well as of spiritual existences. But this is a violent proceeding. Hegel's metaphysical logic treats not only of notion, judgment, and inference, but also of the analytic and synthetic methods, of definition, of division, of theorem, of construction, of proof, &c. All these forms must be explained as metaphysical, and, consequently, as forms of nature and of spirit; but this is evidently incorrect. And even if this presupposition could be granted, the essential distinction would still exist, that those forms attain in the outer world only to an unconscious and limited, but in the knowing spirit to a free conscious existence. This distinction is significant enough to require a special consideration of these forms as forms of spirit; and, in fact, with Hegel, the doctrine of the notion has three different positions in the system. It is ever coming forward in Logic, in the phenomenology of reason and in the psychology of the intelligence. Even if Hegel's presupposition, therefore, were true (which it is not), we would need a special theory of human knowledge besides metaphysics; and of the two disciplines, the doctrine of knowledge, both on verbal and historical grounds, has the better right to the name of Logic. § 7. In a system of philosophy divided according to purely scientific principles, Logic would not have the first place; yet it is both lawful and suitable that the study of Logic should precede that of the other philosophical disciplines as a propaedeutic-lawful, for its purposes are served when a few universal definitions, which are comprehensible and capable of a certain justi fication outside of their own peculiar science, are taken out of the preceding disciplines, Metaphysics and Psychology; suitable for these reasons: (a) The study of Logic offers less difficulty than that of those philosophical disciplines which go before it in scientific arrangement. (b) Logic makes us conscious of the methods which find application in itself and in the other branches of philosophy, and the study of Logic is a valuable exercise of thinking. In formal reference, therefore, it is convenient that Logic should be placed at the beginning of the whole study of philosophy. (c) The scientific representation of the system of Philosophy requires an introduction, in order to lead the consciousness to the stand-point of the philosophical treatment by means of the theory of the relations which exist between phenomena and Being; and the task of this introduction is most completely and most scientifically accomplished by Logic as the critical theory of knowledge. Hegel says, in his Letters to v. Raumer1 on philosophical propaedeutic, that it has to see to the education and exercise of thinking. It is able to do this by removing thinking entirely from the region of the phantastic, by means of the determinateness of its notions and its consistent methodical procedure. It is able to do this in a higher measure than mathematics, because it has not the sensible content which mathematics has.2 § 8. The forms and laws of knowledge can be treated partly in their general character and partly in the particular modifications which they take according to the 1 Werke, xvii. 355. 2 It is this thought which is the grain of truth in Sir W. Hamilton's ill-judged attack on mathematics. Cf. Discussions, p. 282 ff. different nature of the object-matter known (§ 2). The first is the problem of pure or general, the second that of applied or particular Logic. Pure Logic teaches both the laws of immediate knowledge or perception, and those of mediate knowledge or thought. And since, speaking generally, knowledge mirrors the actual in its forms of existence, so more particularly— Perception mirrors the outer order of things or their existence in space and time, and represents or copies their real motion in an ideal way; and— Thought mirrors their inner order, which is the foundation of the outer. The forms of thought separate into as many divisions as there are forms of existence in which the inner order of things exists, and correspond to them in the following way : Intuition or individual conception, to the objective individual existence; Notion, with content and extent to the essence and genus or species; Judgment, to the fundamental relations among things; The division of Applied or Particular Logic depends upon the sciences to which the logical doctrines find application. It treats of, for instance, the methods of mathematics or of the science of quantity and form, of the explanatory and descriptive sciences of nature, of the explanatory and descriptive sciences of spirit, and of philosophy or the science of principles. C The justification of this division in its particulars, so far as it rests on logical principles, remains to be considered below, cf. §§ 36, 45, 56, 67, 74, 138; but in so far as it depends on metaphysical principles, cf. the first remark to § 2. The most common division of Logic since Kant's time has been-A. General Logic: 1. Pure General Logic: a. The doctrine of elements; b. The doctrine of method. 2. Applied General Logic. B. Special Logic. Comparing this with our division, we remark: In so far as Applied Logic is understood to mean the doctrine of perception and of the relation of thought to perception, it belongs to our Pure Logic; but in so far as it means the practical hints for the most suitable behaviour under the many subjective hindrances to thinking -[or as it is said to exhibit the laws of thought modified in their actual applications by certain general circumstances, external or internal, contingent in themselves, but by which human thought is always more or less influenced in its manifestations]-it cannot be allowed to form a special division of Logic, because it has more a didactic than a logical character (cf. § 5); and Applied Logic can only be understood in the same sense as we speak of applied mathematics, &c., viz. the application of its general rules to particular wider spheres in which they hold good, and the consideration of the modifications under which they find application to each one of them. In this sense the notion of applied Logic does not differ from that of special Logic, while, on the other hand, Pure Logic is identical with General Logic. The division of Pure Logic into the doctrine of Elements and doctrine of Method3 confuses its scientific interest with its didactic. Scientifically, notion, judgment, and inference are not merely elements of method. The notion is also an element in the judgment, and both are elements in inference. Besides, the notion, the doctrine of elements, is too relative to denote the opposite of Methodology. 1 Cf. Kant, Kritik der r. Vern. Werke, ed. Hartenstein, iii. 84; Logik, viii. 18. 2 [Hamilton, Lect. on Logic, i. 60.] 3 [Cf. Hamilton, ibid. i. 61.] |