Skip to main content

Hegel, the Other and the nature of his Logic

Hegel's endeavor in the Wissenschaft der Logik witnesses some different senses of what is meant with 'logic'. I was into the chapter on Dasein (chapter 2 of Lehre vom Sein) where he discusses something and its other in the context of presenting something as a double negation that increases determination and produces concreteness. Hegel offers a theory about negation as concrescence that draws from the Spinozist association between negation and determination. He also offers a route of thinking that expresses determinate negation as it follows thought from indeterminate being towards something - and towards the other through a determination. Further, he explores how the border (the limit, the distinction) between something and (its) other appears both when we focus on what is near to its negation. It is hence simultaneously a study on determinate negation, a study on how it is thought and how it moves around the focus of thought. It is, of course, a grand project that eludes formalization and contrasts with the usual way of doing formal logic. But logic has gone a large way since Hegel's time, and the formal study of explosion through contradiction is perhaps a crucial step. Hegel intends to study the negative and negation in different ways simultaneously. Formal logic can perhaps approach it by employing several systems at once - a universal or abstract logic approach will pull them together even if what binds them cannot be properly formal. Of course, the contemporary friction between Hegel's project and formal logic would have to deal with the issue of the limits of formalization; Hegel argued that thinking is somehow tied to the ingredients of natural languages - but this is so perhaps precisely because ordinary language enjoys a plasticity no formal system has yet achieved. But Reza Negarestani association of language, logic and computation could be a path in which the landscape could be changing.

In any case, Hegel assumes what I call substantivism. That is, the Other (or Grenze) is not really indexical, rather it can be described as symmetrical with a something it contrasts with. Asymmetry is thought thoroughly as provisional, and ultimate symmetry is the goal if the whole picture is somehow to be envisaged. This is like the fourth axiom in Euclid's system: once the ultimate system is thought through a assymmetrical, a different picture emerges from the beginning. I was wondering if there is a way to explore these alternatives in a manageable way - not necessarily through an axiomatic system. I believe there is a way to show that Hegel's Logik is also what inaugurates a genre that doesn't collapse in that of formal logic. If this is so, the structure of the genre could also provide a basis for a(n artificial) language that is neither ordinary nor formal.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hunky, Gunky and Junky - all Funky Metaphysics

Been reading Bohn's recent papers on the possibility of junky worlds (and therefore of hunky worlds as hunky worlds are those that are gunky and junky - quite funky, as I said in the other post). He cites Whitehead (process philosophy tends to go hunky) but also Leibniz in his company - he wouldn't take up gunk as he believed in monads but would accept junky worlds (where everything that exists is a part of something). Bohn quotes Leibniz in On Nature Itself «For, although there are atoms of substance, namely monads, which lack parts, there are no atoms of bulk, that is, atoms of the least possible extension, nor are there any ultimate elements, since a continuum cannot be composed out of points. In just the same way, there is nothing greatest in bulk nor infinite in extension, even if there is always something bigger than anything else, though there is a being greatest in the intensity of its perfection, that is, a being infinite in power.» And New Essays: ... for there is nev
1 comment
Read more

Talk on ultrametaphysics

 This is the text of my seminar on ultrametaphysics on Friday here in Albuquerque. An attempt at a history of ultrametaphysics in five chapters Hilan Bensusan I begin with some of the words in the title. First, ‘ultrametaphysics’, then ‘history’ and ‘chapters’. ‘Ultrametaphysics’, which I discovered that in my mouth could sound like ‘ autre metaphysics’, intends to address what comes after metaphysics assuming that metaphysics is an endeavor – or an epoch, or a project, or an activity – that reaches an end, perhaps because it is consolidated, perhaps because it has reached its own limits, perhaps because it is accomplished, perhaps because it is misconceived. In this sense, other names could apply, first of all, ‘meta-metaphysics’ – that alludes to metaphysics coming after physics, the books of Aristotle that came after Physics , or the task that follows the attention to φύσις, or still what can be reached only if the nature of things is considered. ‘Meta-m
Post a Comment
Read more

Memory assemblages

My talk here at Burque last winter I want to start by thanking you all and acknowledging the department of philosophy, the University of New Mexico and this land, as a visitor coming from the south of the border and from the land of many Macroje peoples who themselves live in a way that is constantly informed by memory, immortality and their ancestors, I strive to learn more about the Tiwas, the Sandia peoples and other indigenous communities of the area. I keep finding myself trying to find their marks around – and they seem quite well hidden. For reasons to do with this very talk, I welcome the gesture of directing our thoughts to the land where we are; both as an indication of our situated character and as an archive of the past which carries a proliferation of promises for the future. In this talk, I will try to elaborate and recommend the idea of memory assemblage, a central notion in my current project around specters and addition. I begin by saying that I
Post a Comment
Read more