Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
Then the thought-forms are themselves incorporeal. But, according to
the Stoics, only the corporeal can make an impression or bring about
an alteration.[134] That is to say, on the one hand, because corporeal
and incorporeal are unlike they cannot be one; and, on the other,
incorporeal thought-forms, as capable of no alteration, are not the
content, for this last is the corporeal only.
If the thought-forms could in fact have attained the form of content,
they would have been a content of thought in itself. But as they were
they had value as laws of thought (λεκτά)[135] merely. The Stoics
indeed had a system of immanent determinations of thought, and actually
did a great deal in this direction; for Chrysippus specially developed
and worked out this logical aspect of things, and is stated to have
been a master in it (_supra_, pp. 240, 241). But this development took
a very formal direction; there are the ordinary well-known forms of
inference, five of which are given by Chrysippus, while others give
sometimes more and sometimes fewer. One of them is the hypothetical
syllogism through remotion, “When it is day it is light, but now it is
night and hence it is not light.” These logical forms of thought are
by the Stoics held to be the unproved that requires no proof; but they
are likewise only formal forms which determine no content as such. The
wise man is specially skilful in dialectic, we are told by the Stoics,
for all things, both physical and ethical, are perceived through a
knowledge of logic.[136] But thus they have ascribed this perception
to a subject, without stating who this wise man is (p. 250). Since
objective grounds by which to determine the truth are wanting, the
ultimate decision is attributed to the will of the subject; and this
talk about the wise man consequently has its ground in nothing but
the indefiniteness of the criterion, from which we cannot get to the
determination of content.