The opening topics of Hegel's system

indeterminateness, the not, and becoming

James H. Wilkinson

pp. 267-304

in: Olav K. Wiegand, Robert J. Dostal, Lester Embree, Joseph Kockelmans, Mohanty (eds), Phenomenology on Kant, German idealism, hermeneutics and logic, Berlin, Springer, 2000

Abstrakt

Hegel's project concerns itself with what can be the same for every thinker, i. e., with concepts, though not with the traditional kind of concept but rather with a novel, active kind of concept. Whereas the traditional, static kind of concept is (with two exceptions to be discussed below) a conjunction of other, separate, non-contradictory static concepts,² an active concept is an engendering of a further concept. For ease of signification I shall call active concepts "topics' and static concepts "representations'. As I shall discuss briefly below, each kind of concept requires a different kind of reasoning, and the executions of these kinds of reasoning belong to different genera of philosophical projects. Unfortunately, several of Hegel's remarks obscure the clarity of these distinctions,³ but, even if readers attain this clarity, because the kind of reasoning required by topics is for most readers an unacquired habit, and because some of Hegel's assertions about the opening topics are also misleading, many readers find it difficult even to begin the execution of Hegel's project. Holding firmly to the distinction between topic and representation, the first section of the following article very briefly distinguishes both the required kinds of reasoning and the accordant genera of philosophical projects. I argue that the definition of Hegel's project involves not only its genus but also its opening concept. The second section isolates this opening concept, while the third and fourth sections specify the immediately succeeding concepts. Throughout I use less noticed helpful claims which Hegel offers to criticize his misleading assertions.⁴

Cited authors

Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich