The Logic of Hegel

174.] The individual put as individual (i.e. as reflected-into-self) into the judgment, has a predicate, in comparison with which the subject, as self-relating, continues to be still an other thing.—In existence the subject ceases to be immediately qualitative, it is in correlation, and inter-connexion with an other thing,—with an external world. In this way the universality of the predicate comes to signify this relativity—(e.g.) useful, or dangerous; weight or acidity; or again, instinct; are examples of such relative predicates.

The Judgment of Reflection is distinguished from the Qualitative judgment by the circumstance that its predicate is not an immediate or abstract quality, but of such a kind as to exhibit the subject as in relation to something else. When we say, e.g. 'This rose is red.' we regard the subject in its immediate individuality, and without reference to anything else. If, on the other hand, we frame the judgment, 'This plant is medicinal,' we regard the subject, plant, as standing in connexion with something else (the sickness which it cures), by means of its predicate (its medicinality). The case is the same with judgments like: This body is elastic: This instrument is useful: This punishment has a deterrent influence. In every one of these instances the predicate is some category of reflection. They all exhibit an advance beyond the immediate individuality of the subject, but none of them goes so far as to indicate the adequate notion of it. It is in this mode of judgment that ordinary raisonnement luxuriates. The greater the concreteness of the object in question, the more points of view does it offer to reflection; by which however its proper nature or notion is not exhausted.

175.] (1) Firstly then the subject, the individual as individual (in the Singular judgment), is a universal. But (2) secondly, in this relation it is elevated above its singularity. This enlargement is external, due to subjective reflection, and at first is an indefinite number of particulars. (This is seen in the Particular judgment, which is obviously negative as well as positive: the individual is divided in itself: partly it is self-related, partly related to something else.) (3) Thirdly, Some are the universal: particularity is thus enlarged to universality: or universality is modified through the individuality of the subject, and appears as allness Community, the ordinary universality of reflection.

The subject, receiving, as in the Singular judgment, a universal predicate, is carried out beyond its mere individual self. To say, 'This plant is wholesome,' implies not only that this single plant is wholesome, but that some or several are so. We have thus the particular judgment (some plants are wholesome, some men are inventive, &c.). By means of particularity the immediate individual comes to lose its independence, and enters into an inter-connexion with something else. Man, as this man, is not this single man alone: he stands beside other men and becomes one in the crowd, just by this means however he belongs to his universal, and is consequently raised.—The particular judgment is as much negative as positive. If only some bodies are elastic, it is evident that the rest are not elastic.

On this fact again depends the advance to the third form of the Reflective judgment, viz. the judgment of allness (all men are mortal, all metals conduct electricity). It is as 'all' that the universal is in the first instance generally encountered by reflection. The individuals form for reflection the foundation, and it is only our subjective action which collects and describes them as 'all.' So far the universal has the aspect of an external fastening, that holds together a number of independent individuals, which have not the least affinity towards it. This semblance of indifference is however unreal: for the universal is the ground and foundation, the root, and substance of the individual. If e.g. we take Caius, Titus, Sempronius, and the other inhabitants of a town or country, the fact that all of them are men is not merely something which they have in common, but their universal or kind, without which these individuals would not be at all. The case is very different with that superficial generality falsely so called, which really means only what attaches, or is common, to all the individuals. It has been remarked, for example, that men, in contradistinction from the lower animals, possess in common the appendage of ear-lobes. It is evident, however, that the absence of these ear-lobes in one man or another would not affect the rest of his being, character, or capacities: whereas it would be nonsense to suppose that Caius, without being a man, would still be brave, learned, &c.

The individual man is what he is in particular, only in so far as he is before all things a man as man and in general. And that generality is not something external to, or something in addition to other abstract qualities, or to mere features discovered by reflection. It is what permeates and includes in it everything particular.

176.] The subject being thus likewise characterised as a universal, there is an express identification of subject and predicate, by which at the same time the speciality of the judgment form is deprived of all importance. This unity of the content (the content being the universality which is identical with the negative reflection-in-self of the subject) makes the connexion in judgment a necessary one.

The advance from the reflective judgment of allness to the judgment of necessity is found in our usual modes of thought, when we say that whatever appertains to all, appertains to the species, and is therefore necessary. To say all plants, or all men, is the same thing as to say the plant, or the man.

177.] The Judgment of Necessity, i.e. of the identity of the content in its difference (1), contains, in the predicate, partly the substance or nature of the subject, the concrete universal, the genus; partly, seeing that this universal also contains the specific character as negative, the predicate represents the exclusive essential character, the species. This is the Categorical judgment.

(2) Conformably to their substantiality, the two terms receive the aspect of independent actuality. Their identity is then inward only; and thus the actuality of the one is at the same time not its own, but the being of the other. This is the Hypothetical judgment.

(3) If, in this self-surrender and self-alienation of the notion, its inner identity is at the same time explicitly put, the universal is the genus which is self-identical in its mutually-exclusive individualities. This judgment, which has this universal for both its terms, the one time as a universal, the other time as the circle of its self-excluding particularisation in which the 'either—or' as much as the 'as well as' stands for the genus, is the Disjunctive judgment. Universality, at first as a genus, and now also as the circuit of its species, is thus described and expressly put as a totality.

The Categorical judgment (such as 'Gold is a metal,' 'The rose is a plant') is the un-mediated judgment of necessity, and finds within the sphere of Essence its parallel in the relation of substance. All things are a Categorical judgment. In other words, they have their substantial nature, forming their fixed and unchangeable substratum. It is only when things are studied from the point of view of their kind, and as with necessity determined by the kind, that the judgment first begins to be real. It betrays a defective logical training to place upon the same level judgments like 'gold is dear,' and judgments like 'gold is a metal.' That 'gold is dear' is a matter of external connexion between it and our wants or inclinations, the costs of obtaining it, and other circumstances. Gold remains the same as it was, though that external reference is altered or removed. Metalleity, on the contrary, constitutes the substantial nature of gold, apart from which it, and all else that is in it, or can be predicated of it, would be unable to subsist. The same is the case if we say, 'Caius is a man.' We express by that, that whatever else he may be, has worth and meaning, only when it corresponds to his substantial nature or manhood.

But even the Categorical judgment is to a certain extent defective. It fails to give due place to the function or element of particularity. Thus 'gold is a metal,' it is true; but so are silver, copper, iron: and metalleity as such has no leanings to any of its particular species. In these circumstances we must advance from the Categorical to the Hypothetical judgment, which may be expressed in the formula: If A is, B is. The present case exhibits the same advance as formerly took place from the relation of substance to the relation of cause. In the Hypothetical judgment the specific character of the content shows itself mediated and dependent on something else: and this is exactly the relation of cause and effect. And if we were to give a general interpretation to the Hypothetical judgment, we should say that it expressly realises the universal in its particularising. This brings us to the third form of the Judgment of Necessity, the Disjunctive judgment. A is either B or C or D. A work of poetic art is either epic or lyric or dramatic. Colour is either yellow or blue or red. The two terms in the Disjunctive judgment are identical. The genus is the sum total of the species, and the sum total of the species is the genus. This unity of the universal and the particular is the notion: and it is the notion which, as we now see, forms the content of the judgment.

178.] The Judgment of the Notion has for its content the notion, the totality in simple form, the universal with its complete speciality. The subject is, (1) in the first place, an individual, which has for its predicate the reflection of the particular existence on its universal; or the judgment states the agreement or disagreement of these two aspects. That is, the predicate is such a term as good, true, correct. This is the Assertory judgment.

Judgments, such as whether an object, action, &c. is good, bad, true, beautiful, &c., are those to which even ordinary language first applies the name of judgment. We should never ascribe judgment to a person who framed positive or negative judgments like, This rose is red, This picture is red, green, dusty, &c.

The Assertory judgment, although rejected by society as out of place when it claims authority on its own showing, has however been made the single and all-essential form of doctrine, even in philosophy, through the influence of the principle of immediate knowledge and faith. In the so-called philosophic works which maintain this principle, we may read hundreds and hundreds of assertions about reason, knowledge, thought, &c. which, now that external authority counts for little, seek to accredit themselves by an endless restatement of the same thesis.

179.] On the part of its at first un-mediated subject, the Assertory judgment does not contain the relation of particular with universal which is expressed in the predicate. This judgment is consequently a mere subjective particularity, and is confronted by a contrary assertion with equal right, or rather want of right. It is therefore at once turned into (2) a Problematical judgment. But when we explicitly attach the objective particularity to the subject and make its speciality the constitutive feature of its existence, the subject (3) then expresses the connexion of that objective particularity with its constitution, i.e. with its genus; and thus expresses what forms the content of the predicate (see § 178). [This (the immediate individuality) house (the genus,) being so and so constituted (particularity,) is good or bad.] This is the Apodictic judgment. All things are a genus (i.e. have a meaning and purpose) in an individual actuality of a particular constitution. And they are finite, because the particular in them may and also may not conform to the universal.

180.] In this manner subject and predicate are each the whole judgment. The immediate constitution of the subject is at first exhibited as the intermediating ground, where the individuality of the actual thing meets with its universality, and in this way as the ground of the judgment. What has been really made explicit is the oneness of subject and predicate, as the notion itself, filling up the empty 'is' of the copula. While its constituent elements are at the same time distinguished as subject and predicate, the notion is put as their unity, as the connexion which serves to intermediate them: in short, as the Syllogism.

181.] The Syllogism brings the notion and the judgment into one. It is notion,—being the simple identity into which the distinctions of form in the judgment have retired. It is judgment,—because it is at the same time set in reality, that is, put in the distinction of its terms. The Syllogism is the reasonable, and everything reasonable.

Even the ordinary theories represent the Syllogism to be the form of reasonableness, but only a subjective form; and no inter-connexion whatever is shown to exist between it and any other reasonable content, such as a reasonable principle, a reasonable action, idea, &c. The name of reason is much and often heard, and appealed to: but no one thinks of explaining its specific character, or saying what it is,—least of all that it has any connexion with Syllogism. But formal Syllogism really presents what is reasonable in such a reasonless way that it has nothing to do with any reasonable matter. But as the matter in question can only be rational in virtue of the same quality by which thought is reason, it can be made so by the form only: and that form is Syllogism. And what is a Syllogism but an explicit putting, i.e. realising of the notion, at first in form only, as stated above? Accordingly the Syllogism is the essential ground of whatever is true: and at the present stage the definition of the Absolute is that it is the Syllogism, or stating the principle in a proposition: Everything is a Syllogism. Everything is a notion, the existence of which is the differentiation of its members or functions, so that the universal nature of the Notion gives itself external reality by means of particularity, and thereby, and as a negative reflection-into-self, makes itself an individual.

Or, conversely: the actual thing is an individual, which by means of particularity rises to universality and makes itself identical with itself.—The actual is one: but it is also the divergence from each other of the constituent elements of the notion; and the Syllogism represents the orbit of intermediation of its elements, by which it realises its unity.

The Syllogism, like the notion and the judgment, is usually described as a form merely of our subjective thinking. The Syllogism, it is said, is the process of proving the judgment. And certainly the judgment does in every case refer us to the Syllogism. The step from the one to the other however is not brought about by our subjective action, but by the judgment itself which puts itself as Syllogism, and in the conclusion returns to the unity of the notion. The precise point by which we pass to the Syllogism is found in the Apodictic judgment. In it we have an individual which by means of its qualities connects itself with its universal or notion. Here we see the particular becoming the mediating mean between the individual and the universal. This gives the fundamental form of the Syllogism, the gradual specification of which, formally considered, consists in the fact that universal and individual also occupy this place of mean. This again paves the way for the passage from subjectivity to objectivity.

182.] In the 'immediate' Syllogism the several aspects of the notion confront one another abstractly, and stand in an external relation only. We have first the two extremes, which are Individuality and Universality; and then the notion, as the mean for locking the two together, is in like manner only abstract Particularity. In this way the extremes are put as independent and without affinity either towards one another or towards their mean. Such a Syllogism contains reason, but in utter notionlessness,—the formal Syllogism of Understanding. In it the subject is coupled with an other character; or the universal by this mediation subsumes a subject external to it. In the rational Syllogism, on the contrary, the subject is by means of the mediation coupled with itself. In this manner it first comes to be a subject: or, in the subject we have the first germ of the rational Syllogism.

In the following examination, the Syllogism of Understanding, according to the interpretation usually put upon it, is expressed in its subjective shape; the shape which it has when we are said to make such Syllogisms. And it really is only a subjective syllogising. Such Syllogism however has also an objective meaning; it expresses only the finitude of things, but does so in the specific mode which the form has here reached. In the case of finite things their subjectivity, being only thinghood, is separable from their properties or their particularity, but also separable from their universality: not only when the universality is the bare quality of the thing and its external inter-connexion with other things, but also when it is its genus and notion.

On the above-mentioned theory of syllogism, as the rational form par excellence, reason has been defined as the faculty of syllogising, whilst understanding is defined as the faculty of forming notions. We might object to the conception on which this depends, and according to which the mind is merely a sum of forces or faculties existing side by side. But apart from that objection, we may observe in regard to the parallelism of understanding with the notion, as well as of reason with syllogism, that the notion is as little a mere category of the understanding as the syllogism is without qualification definable as rational. For, in the first place, what the Formal Logic usually examines in its theory of syllogism, is really nothing but the mere syllogism of understanding, which has no claim to the honour of being made a form of rationality, still less to be held as the embodiment of all reason. The notion, in the second place, so far from being a form of understanding, owes its degradation to such a place entirely to the influence of that abstract mode of thought. And it is not unusual to draw such a distinction between a notion of understanding and a notion of reason. The distinction however does not mean that notions are of two kinds. It means that our own action often stops short at the mere negative and abstract form of the notion, when we might also have proceeded to apprehend the notion in its true nature, as at once positive and concrete.

It is e.g. the mere understanding, which thinks liberty to be the abstract contrary of necessity, whereas the adequate rational notion of liberty requires the element of necessity to be merged in it. Similarly the definition of God, given by what is called Deism, is merely the mode in which the understanding thinks God: whereas Christianity, to which He is known as the Trinity, contains the rational notion of God.

183.] The first syllogism is a syllogism of definite being,—a Qualitative Syllogism, as stated in the last paragraph. Its form (1) is I—P—U: i.e. a subject as Individual is coupled (concluded) with a Universal character by means of a (Particular) quality.

Of course the subject (terminus minor) has other characteristics besides individuality, just as the other extreme (the predicate of the conclusion, or terminus major) has other characteristics than mere universality. But here the interest turns only on the characteristics through which these terms make a syllogism.

The syllogism of existence is a syllogism of understanding merely, at least in so far as it leaves the individual, the particular, and the universal to confront each other quite abstractly. In this syllogism the notion is at the very height of self-estrangement. We have in it an immediately individual thing as subject: next some one particular aspect or property attaching to this subject is selected, and by means of this property the individual turns out to be a universal. Thus we may say, This rose is red: Red is a colour: Therefore, this rose is a coloured object. It is this aspect of the syllogism which the common logics mainly treat of. There was a time when the syllogism was regarded as an absolute rule for all cognition, and when a scientific statement was not held to be valid until it had been shown to follow from a process of syllogism. At present, on the contrary, the different forms of the syllogism are met nowhere save in the manuals of Logic; and an acquaintance with them is considered a piece of mere pedantry, of no further use either in practical life or in science. It would indeed be both useless and pedantic to parade the whole machinery of the formal syllogism on every occasion. And yet the several forms of syllogism make themselves constantly felt in our cognition. If any one, when awaking on a winter morning, hears the creaking of the carriages on the street, and is thus led to conclude that it has frozen hard in the night, he has gone through a syllogistic operation:—an operation which is every day repeated under the greatest variety of conditions.

The interest, therefore, ought at least not to be less in becoming expressly conscious of this daily action of our thinking selves, than confessedly belongs to the study of the functions of organic life, such as the processes of digestion, assimilation, respiration, or even the processes and structures of the nature around us. We do not, however, for a moment deny that a study of Logic is no more necessary to teach us how to draw correct conclusions, than a previous study of anatomy and physiology is required in order to digest or breathe.

Aristotle was the first to observe and describe the different forms, or, as they are called, figures of syllogism, in their subjective meaning: and he performed his work so exactly and surely, that no essential addition has ever been required. But while sensible of the value of what he has thus done, we must not forget that the forms of the syllogism of understanding, and of finite thought altogether, are not what Aristotle has made use of in his properly philosophical investigations. (See § 189.)

184.] This syllogism is completely contingent (α) in the matter of its terms. The Middle Term, being an abstract particularity, is nothing but any quality whatever of the subject: but the subject, being immediate and thus empirically concrete, has several others, and could therefore be coupled with exactly as many other universalities as it possesses single qualities. Similarly a single particularity may have various characters in itself, so that the same medius terminus would serve to connect the subject with several different universals.

The point of view indicated in the paragraph shows how this style of syllogism can 'demonstrate' (as the phrase goes) the most diverse conclusions. All that is requisite is to find a medius terminus from which the transition can be made to the proposition sought. Another medius terminus would enable us to demonstrate something else, and even the contrary of the last. And the more concrete an object is, the more aspects it has, which may become such middle terms. To determine which of these aspects is more essential than another, again, requires a further syllogism of this kind, which fixing on the single quality can with equal ease discover in it some aspect or consideration by which it can make good its claims to be considered necessary and important.

Little as we usually think on the Syllogism of Understanding in the daily business of life, it never ceases to play its part there. In a civil suit, for instance, it is the duty of the advocate to give due force to the legal titles which make in favour of his client. In logical language, such a legal title is nothing but a middle term. Diplomatic transactions afford another illustration of the same, when, for instance, different powers lay claim to one and the same territory. In such a case the laws of inheritance, the geographical position of the country, the descent and the language of its inhabitants, or any other ground, may be emphasised as a medius terminus.