Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T15:04:23.424Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hegel and the Problem of Beginning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2020

Robb Dunphy
Robb Dunphy*
Affiliation:
University of Sussex, [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

In this article I develop an interpretation of the opening passages of Hegel's essay ‘With what must the beginning of science be made?’ I suggest firstly that Hegel is engaging there with a distinctive problem, the overcoming of which he understands to be necessary in order to guarantee the scientific character of the derivation of the fundamental categories of thought which he undertakes in the Science of Logic. I refer to this as ‘the problem of beginning’. I proceed to clarify the nature of the problem, which I understand to be motivated by a concern to avoid arbitrariness, and then to detail the nature of Hegel's proposed solution, which turns on understanding how the concept of ‘pure being’, understood in a specific sense to be both mediated and immediate, avoids the concerns about arbitrariness which accompany attempts to begin merely with something mediated, or merely with something immediate. On this basis, I offer a number of criticisms of alternative approaches to the beginning of Hegel's Logic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hegel Bulletin , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , December 2021 , pp. 344 - 367
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bowman, B. (2013), Hegel and the Metaphysics of Absolute Negativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, D. G. (2007), A Commentary to Hegel's Science of Logic. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunphy, R. (forthcoming), ‘On the Incompatibility of Hegel's Phenomenology with the Beginning of his Logic’, Review of Metaphysics.Google Scholar
Fichte, J. G. (1970), Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre), trans. Heath, P. and Lachs, J.. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.Google Scholar
Franks, P. (2005), All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henrich, D. (1971), Hegel im Kontext. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Houlgate, S. (2005), An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Houlgate, S. (2006), The Opening of Hegel's Logic. West Lafayette IN: Purdue University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1998), Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Guyer, P. and Wood, A.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreines, J. (2015), Reason in the World: Hegel's Metaphysics and Its Philosophical Appeal. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maker, W. (1994), Philosophy Without Foundations. Albany: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
McGilvary, E. (1897), ‘The Presupposition Question in Hegel's Logic’, The Philosophical Review 6:5: 497–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nuzzo, A. (2011), ‘Thinking Being: Method in Hegel's Logic of Being’, in Baur, M. and Houlgate, S. (eds.), A Companion to Hegel. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Pippin, R. (2019), Hegel's Realm of Shadows: Logic as Metaphysics in the Science of Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rosen, M. (1992), Problems of the Hegelian Dialectic. Dialectic Reconstructed as a Logic of Human Reality. Boston: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, S. (2014), The Idea of Hegel's Science of Logic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Westphal, K. (1988), ‘Hegel's Solution to the Dilemma of the Criterion’, History of Philosophy Quarterly 5: 173–88.Google Scholar
Winfield, R. D. (2013), Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: A Critical Rethinking in Seventeen Lectures. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Wolff, M. (1996), ‘Die ‘Momente’ des Logischen und der ‘Anfang’ der Logik in Hegels philosophischer Wissenschaft’, in Fulda, H. F. and Horstmann, R.-P. (eds.), Skeptizismus und Spekulatives Denken in der Philosophie Hegels. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.Google Scholar
Wolff, M. (2014), ‘Hegels Dialektik—eine Methode? Zu Hegels Ansichten von der Form einer philosophischen Wissenschaft’, in Koch, A. F., Schick, F., Vieweg, K. and Wirsing, C. (eds.), Hegel—200 Jahre Wissenschaft der Logik. Hamburg: Felix Meiner.Google Scholar