Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy, and Especially of His LogicWallace, William
Philosophy
Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy, and Especially of His Logic
Wallace, William
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831; Logic
There remains the answer to the same question as regards the objects
of Metaphysics. These objects are according to Kant inferences, and
illegitimate inferences. They are not necessary elements or factors
in the constitution of experience. In order that there should be
experience, knowledge, science, there must be an endless hold of
space and time in which to stow it clearly and distinctly away: and
there must also be ties and relations binding it part to part, links
of reference and correlation, a sort of logical elastic band that
will stretch to include infinitely copious materials. But each real
knowledge attaches to a definite assignable perception, in a single
place and time. From this point we can travel--by means of like
points--practically without limit in any direction. But though the old
margin fades forever and forever as we move, a new margin takes its
place: the limitation and finitude remain: and new acquisitions are
always balanced in part by the loss of the old. Yet the heart and the
imagination are clamorous, and the intellect is ready to serve them.
Such an intellect Kant has called Reason, and its products (Platonic)
'Ideas.' The (Platonic) Idea expresses not so much an object of
knowledge as a postulate, a problem, an act of faith. The 'Vaulting
ambition' Intelligence 'o'erleaps itself and falls on t'other,'
Unsatisfied with a bundle of sensations and ideas, it demands their
abiding unity in a substantial Soul. To simplify the endlessness of
physical phenomena, it sums them up in a Universe. To gather all mental
and physical diversities and divisions into one life, it creates the
ideal of God.
Each single experience, and the collected aggregate of these
experiences, is felt to fall short of a complete total: and yet this
complete total, the ultimate unity, is itself not an experience at
all. But, if it be no object of experience, it is still an idea on
which reason is inevitably driven: and the attempt to apprehend it, in
the absence of experience, gives rise to the theories of Metaphysics.
Everything, however, which can be in the strict sense of the word
known, must be perceived in space and time, or, in other words, must
lie open to experience. Where experience ends, human reason meets a
barrier which checks any efficient progress, but refuses to recognise
the check as due to a natural limit which it is really impossible to
pass. The idea of completeness, of a rounded system, or unconditional
unity, is still left, after the categories of the understanding have
done their best: and is not destroyed although its realisation or
explication is declared to be impossible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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