Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy, and Especially of His Logic — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy, and Especially of His Logic
Georg Hegel · en
The new chapters present, amongst other things, a synopsis of the
progress of thought in Germany during the half-century which is
bisected by the year 1800, with some indication of the general
conditions of the intellectual world, and with some reference to the
interconnexion of speculation and actuality. Jacobi and Herder, Kant,
Fichte, and Schelling have been especially brought under succinct
review. In the first edition I did Kant less than justice. I have now,
so far as my limits allowed, tried to rectify the impression; and even
more perhaps, by a clear palinode, to tender my apology for the meagre
and somewhat inappreciative notice I gave to the great names of Fichte
and Schelling. For like reasons, and from a growing perception how
much post-Kantian thought owed to the pre-Kantian thinkers, Spinoza
and Leibniz have been partly brought within my range. If, furthermore,
I may seem to have transgressed the due amount of allusions and
comparisons drawn from Plato and Aristotle, Bacon and Mill, the excuse
must be sought in that fixture of philosophical horizon which can
hardly but creep on after a quarter of a century spent in teaching
philosophy under the customs and ordinances of the Oxford School of
Classical Philology.
It would be to mistake the scope of this survey to seek in it a
history of the philosophers of the period I have named. They have
been presented, not in and for themselves, but as _momenta_ or
constituent! factors in producing Hegel's conception of the aim and
method of philosophy. To do this it was necessary to lay stress on
their inner purport and implications: to treat the individual thinker
in subordination to the general movement of ideas: to give, as far as
was possible, a constructive conception of them rather than an analysis
and chronicle. Yet as the picture had to be done, so to say, with a few
vigorous touches, and made characteristic rather than descriptive, it
cannot have that fairness and completeness which only patient study of
every feature and untiring experiment in reconstruction can enable even
the artist to produce. I may have seemed to confine the environment
too exclusively to continental thinkers: but this is not, I think,
due to any anti-patriotic bias. English (by which term, I may explain
to my countrymen, I mean English-writing) thought, if it has its own
intrinsic value, has after all been only an occasional influence,
of suggestion and modification, in Germany. It is not therefore an
integral portion of my theme. Even in Kant's case, too much may be made
of the stimulus he received from Hume.