Ebook: Essays on Hegel's Logic

This volume contains the papers and the replies delivered at the Tenth Biennial Meeting of the Hegel Society of America that was held at Loyola University of Chicago on October 7-9, 1988. The first paper discusses the possibility of a speculative logic by relating Hegel's dialectical logic to the transcendental type of Kant. The second and the third both argue that Hegel's logic does not require a metalogic to found it; on the contrary, an 'absolute beginning' is essential to it. The fourth considers a related issue, viz. whether 'abstract' and 'concrete', which are used throughout the Logic but do not appear as categories officially, ought to be considered as 'metacategories'. The fifth argues that, although the Logic ought to begin with 'being' and 'nothing' indifferently, it actually privileges 'being' in its transition to Dasein. The following two papers both focus attention on the relation of 'being' to 'essence', one by describing the play of 'show' (Schein) enacted by 'essence' and the other by calling into question Hegel's critique of Spinoza's idea of attribute. The seventh paper argues that Hegel's evolving treatment of the categories of modalities signals a struggle on his part with a problem that very likely remains unresolved. The next two take radically different views of the role of the 'understanding' in Hegelian logic and, by implication at least, a radically different view of the necessity underlying this logic. The final paper brings Hegel back to Aristotle by arguing that Hegel dialectical logic succeeds in resolving a problem posed by Aristotle's notion of differentia.