Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 2 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
In the earlier tropes we see the lack of abstraction appearing as
the incapacity to grasp their diversitude under more simple general
points of view, although they all, in fact, partly under a simple
conception and partly in their difference, do in fact converge into
some necessary simple determinations. From all alike, in relation to
immediate knowledge, is the insecurity demonstrated of that of which
we say “it is.” Sextus Empiricus (Pyrrh. Hyp. I. c. 14, § 38) even
remarks, that “all the tropes may be summed up in three: the one is the
judging subject; the other that respecting which the judgment is made;
the third that which contains both sides”—the relation of subject and
object. If thought is developed further, it embraces things in these
more general determinations.
a. “The first trope is the diversitude in animal organization,
according to which different living beings experience different
conceptions and sensations respecting the same object. This the
Sceptics conclude from the different nature of their origin, because
some are brought into being through copulation and others without
copulation” (from a _generatio æquivoca_): “but of the first some are
hatched from eggs, and others come immediately living into the world,
&c. Thus it is a matter of no doubt that this difference of origin
produces opposite constitutions, temperaments, &c. The variety in
the parts of the body, and particularly in those which are given to
the animal for purposes of distinguishing and feeling, thus produces
in them the greatest differences in conceptions. For instance, the
jaundiced patient sees as yellow what to others appears white,” and as
green, what to the latter seems blue. “Similarly the eyes of animals
are differently constructed in different species, and have different
colours, being pale, grey or red; consequently what is perceived
thereby must be different.”[197]