Hegel’s Logic: An Essay in Interpretation. John Grier Hibben 1902
The course of the development of philosophical thought it was natural that there should follow a reaction against the abstract vague, and indefinite results which had been the outcome of the metaphysical speculations.
This reaction found expression in the teachings of the empirical school of philosophy. The empiricists insisted that the starting point of all thought most be something definitely fixed and secure, some concrete reality such as can be found only in actual experience. The metaphysical procedure started with abstract universals, and the difficulty which it could not overcome lay in the fact that there was no way of passing from vague generalities to the abundant variety of particular manifestations which correspond to such universals in the world of reality It is the function of thought to interpret experience and not to anticipate it. Therefore the empiricists urged that the logical as and natural beginning of all inquiry after truth should he the particular instances which nature presents in such prodigal profusion. They insisted, moreover, that the true and only source of all experience is to he found in our sensations and perceptions. According to this view the foundations of knowledge rest solely upon the direct testimony of the senses; here, and here alone, can consciousness he certain of itself and the results of its own operations. Whatever may he doubted, here at least is certitude, a firm footing, and the assurance of substantial progress. And so we find the fundamental doctrine of empiricism formulated in the words, “Whatever is true must he in the actual world and present to Sensation.” This would seem to he indeed a common-sense basis for all serious investigation and for the construction of a sound practical philosophy; and there is, indeed, much to recommend and to justify its claims, Hegel calls attention to the very valuable contribution to thought which has come directly from the empirical school, and to which ho himself fully subscribes, – namely, that it is necessary for every man to see for himself and to feel that be is present in those primary facts of knowledge which he feels constrained to accept. If one is really to know things, he must see them as they ore. This is certainly in complete accord with the modern scientific spirit of inductive inquiry which grounds all investigation upon a study of actual sources, and that, too, at first hand The weakness of empiricism, however, as Hegel points not most conclusively consists in the fact that any sensation, or combination of sensations which according to the empiricist is the ultimate ground of appeal, is always a particular and individual experience. It is impossible to pass from such experiences to the universal idea or law which they illustrate without introducing some conceptions which transcend the purely empirical presupposition that we knew only particular phenomena and their immediate connections and relations.
Hume had long since drown attention to the fact that when we interpret the phenomena of experience as manifesting universal principles and as related by necessary causal connections, we are thereby reading into the phenomena what they themselves do not contain, but that with which they have been invested by our thought. Granted chat necessity and universality are found everywhere in our consciousness, what reason have we, Hume would say, to assert that these characteristics are also the attributes of things themselves. If sensation is to maintain its claim to he the sole basis of all that men hold as truth, then these ideas of universality and necessity must he regarded as merely convenient fictions of the mind, clever it is true, but by no means trustworthy. Hume very frankly accepted this conclusion; mid so must every thoroughgoing empiricist. Hegel insists, however, that the reason joins to these fundamental processes of sensation and perception its peculiar function of interpreting in the light of their universal and necessary significance that which they present as particular experiences. This relation between the reason on the one hand and the elementary data of the senses on the ether, follows logically from the basal postulate of the Hegelian system that whatever is found to le an ultimate characteristic of reason must also apply in like manner to reality itself.
Again, the method of empiricism is essentially one of analysis, that is, the subjecting of our experiences to a kind of dissecting process which separates them into their constituent elements. The defect or such a method is that it makes no provision whatsoever for any corresponding synthesis. After the work of analysis is complete, it is necessary to have some unifying and constructive function of the mind units natural and necessary complement. It is such a function which enables us to pass from phenomena to the laws which underlie them. Dissection as an exclusive process is suggestive only of death, and can never reproduce the living organism.
Moreover, if thought is active in systematizing the crude material which is given by the senses, then it must tiring to the process something more than that which the crude sensation of itself is able to give.
An to the questions which are of special moment for the philosophical thinker, concerning God, the soul, and the world, the empirical school took the position teat the mind of man in so constituted that it can deal only with finite material. Finding truth only in the outer world an mediated by the senses, they insisted that even if the existence of a supersensible world be granted, any knowledge of that world would be impossible. From this point of view it follows that therein no place in such a system either for a theory of morals or a philosophy of religion.
Both ethics and religion thus lose all objective character, and at the some time their universal validity. The logical outcome, therefore, of this doctrine is materialism, which in its general methods and results is diametrically opposed to Hegelianism. There have been, however, some philosophers who have styled themselves disciples of Hegel and yet have been pronounced materialists. They are the so-called Hegelians of the left; they are such writers an Feuerbach and Strauss, This peculiar development of the Hegelian school must be regarded as a perversion of Hegel’s teaching rather than the logical outcome of his system. Hegel’s criticism of materialism is so clear and emphatic an to give no uncertain sound. He draws attention to the fact that materialists in general regard matter in the light of an abstractions; it is after all the unknown somewhat behind phenomena, of which they are merely flee manifestation And when the materialists come to explain what matter itself is, its fundamental nature and essential characteristics, they are constrained to employ certain concepts as force, causation, action and reaction, and the like, which are essentially metaphysical concepts for which materialism pure and simple can give no warrant whatsoever.
Moreover, the world of sense-perception, as materialism conceives it, can give only a series of isolated and separate phenomena. To think of them as terming component parts of an interrelated system, and as sustaining necessary relations to each other and to the whole, would he equivalent to the rationalizing of the material universe, and this means the introduction of some non-materialistic factors, This procedure, of course, would contradict the fundamental postulate of materialism, that all knowledge is confined to the material data furnished by the senses, Materialism is here confronted by a practical dilemma. To defend its position, it must use the weapons of metaphysics; but the moment one appears as a metaphysician he ceases immediately to he a materialist.
The materialistic creed, therefore, must suffer either from inadequacy or inconsistency. And it is to overcome these limitations that Hegel seeks a solution in the creed of absolute idealism.