Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 3 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
There is another question however: Are these general determinations
absolutely true? And whence come they not alone into my consciousness,
into my mind and understanding, but into the things themselves? Space,
cause, effect, etc., are categories. How do these categories come into
the particular? How does universal space arrive at determining itself?
This point of view, the question whether these determinations of the
infinite, of substance, etc., are in and for themselves true, is quite
lost sight of. Plato investigated the infinite and the finite, Being and
the determinate, etc., and pronounced that neither of these opposites is
of itself true; they are so only as together constituting an identity,
wherever the truth of this content may come from. But here the truth
as it is in and for itself is entirely set aside and the nature of the
content itself is made the main point. It does not matter whether the
understanding or experience is its source, for the question is whether
this content is in itself true. With Locke, the truth merely signifies
the harmony of our conceptions with things; here relation is alone in
question, whether the content is an objective thing or a content of
the ordinary conception. But it is quite another matter to investigate
the content itself, and to ask, “Is this which is within us true?” We
must not dispute about the sources, for the Whence, the only important
point to Locke, does not exhaust the whole question. The interest of the
content in and for itself wholly disappears when that position is taken
up, and thereby the whole of what is aimed at by Philosophy is given up.
On the other hand, when thought is from the beginning concrete, when
thought and the universal are synonymous with what is set before us, the
question of the relation of the two which have been separated by thought
is destitute of interest and incomprehensible. How does thought overcome
the difficulties which itself has begotten? Here with Locke none at all
have been begotten and awakened. Before the need for reconciliation can
be satisfied, the pain of disunion must be excited.