What, according to Hegel, is the subject of the science of logic? What does he see as the importance of logic and philosophizing for the spiritual development of man? Concepts of concrete thinking according to Hegel

Introduction

Dialectics (Greek) ?????????? - the art of arguing, reasoning) - a method of argumentation in philosophy, as well as the form and method of reflexive theoretical thinking, which has as its subject the contradictions of the conceivable content of this thinking. The dialectical method is one of the central ones in the European and Indian philosophical traditions. The word “dialectic” itself comes from ancient Greek philosophy and was made popular by Plato’s Dialogues, in which two or more participants in a dialogue might hold different opinions but wanted to find the truth by exchanging their opinions.

Dialectical logic - in a broad sense, was understood as a systematically developed presentation of dialectics as logic (the science of thinking) and the theory of knowledge of the objective world. In a narrow sense, it was understood as a logical discipline about the forms of correct reasoning, as in formal logic, but taking into account the operation of the laws of dialectics.

The subject of dialectical logic is thinking. Dialectical logic had as its goal to unfold its image in its necessary moments and, moreover, in a sequence independent of either the will or consciousness, and also to establish its status as a logical discipline.

The concept of dialectics plays a significant role in Hegel's philosophy. For him, dialectics is such a transition from one definition to another, in which it is discovered that these definitions are one-sided and limited, that is, they contain a negation of themselves. Therefore, dialectics, according to Hegel, is “the driving soul of any scientific development of thought and represents the only principle that introduces an immanent connection and necessity into the content of science...”.

Logic as understood by Hegel

Hegel from the very beginning focuses on scientific form knowledge, to the form of “concept”, i.e. a strictly defined definition fixed by a term, and a system of such definitions. That combination of “unbridled fermentation of thought” with the wooden formalism of Kantian logic does not satisfy him in any way. Thus, Logic - the “scholastic moment” - falls into the center of his attention.

At one time, Schelling accepted Kant's Logic as an absolutely accurate depiction of the principles and rules of “thinking in concepts.” Hegel doubted this. In the fact that it is precisely the rules of this logic that prevent us from understanding the process of transition of a “concept” into an “object” and back, from “subjective” to “objective” (and in general, opposites into each other), Hegel saw not evidence of the organic inferiority of thinking, but only the limitations Kant's concept of "thinking".

Kantian logic is only a limitedly correct theory of thinking. Genuine thinking - the real subject of Logic as a science - is actually different. Therefore, it is necessary to bring the theory of thinking into agreement with its true subject, it is necessary to revolutionize this theory in order to make it capable of correctly describing what thinking itself actually does.

Hegel sees the need for a critical revision of traditional logic, first of all, in the extreme, glaring discrepancy between those “principles” and “rules” that Kant considers absolutely universal “forms of thinking in general”, and those real results that have been achieved by human civilization in the course of development: “Comparison of the images to which the spirit of the practical and religious worlds and the scientific spirit has risen in all kinds of real and ideal consciousness, with the image that logic bears (its consciousness of its pure essence), reveals such a huge a difference that even with the most superficial examination cannot help but be immediately evident that this last consciousness is completely inconsistent with those ascents and is not worthy of them.”

Hegel strictly distinguishes two things here: the Logic of real thinking, the real historical development of thought embodied in science, in the products of purposeful activity in general, and Logic as a theory, as the science of thinking.

Defining Logic as “the consciousness of the spirit in its pure essence,” Hegel acts entirely in the spirit of the traditions of this science. This, in essence, is nothing more than the idea expressed in other words that in Logic, unlike all other sciences, thinking is “its own subject” and is the object of research. Logic is thinking about thinking. This is how it has been understood from time immemorial. This is how any philosopher before Hegel understood it, and this is how most theorists of the post-Hegelian era understand it - as the science of “specific forms and laws of thinking,” as “thinking about thinking,” as “self-consciousness” of real thinking.

Thinking

Hegel’s formulation of the question of Logic played a special role in the history of this science, first of all, because here for the first time all the basic concepts associated with the problem of Logic, and, above all, the concept of “thinking” were subjected to the most thorough analysis.

By “thinking” we mean a special kind of activity, quite consciously carried out by each individual. This activity, in contrast to “practical” activity, is aimed at changing ideas, at restructuring those images that exist in the mind of the individual, and directly at the verbal and speech formulation of these ideas, which, being expressed in speech, in a word, in a term, are called "concepts".

When a person no longer changes “ideas” expressed in speech, but real things outside the head, this is no longer considered “thinking,” but, at best, only actions in accordance with thinking - according to the laws and rules dictated by “thinking.”

“Thinking” is identified with reflection, with “reflection”, i.e. with mental activity, during which a person is fully aware of what and how he is doing, i.e. is aware of all the patterns and “rules” by which he acts. “Intellectual actions” are called only those actions that a person performs with full awareness of their patterns and rules.

In this case, it goes without saying, the only task of Logic is only the ordering and classification of those schemes and rules that each individual person can discover in his own consciousness, those abstract general schemes by which he was previously quite consciously guided (only perhaps maybe not systematically). As Hegel rightly states, in the case of Logic “would not have given anything that could not have been done just as well without it. The old logic actually set itself this task.”

A person who has studied such Logic will naturally think in exactly the same way as before - perhaps a little more methodically... Kant's followers also could not escape from this idea of ​​the task of Logic. As a result, their Logic remained only a pedantically schematized description of those schemes of the work of the intellect that already existed in the consciousness of every thinking being. As a result, “Kantian philosophy could not have any influence on scientific research. It leaves completely intact the categories and method of ordinary cognition.” She only put in order the schemes of existing consciousness, she only built them into a system (though, at the same time, she came up against the fact that these schemes contradict each other). In short, “thinking”, as an active and creative ability of a person, reveals itself (“objectifies itself”) in the form of the entire world of culture, which was created by the work of previous generations of thinking beings and surrounds each individual person from the cradle.

In this position, a fulcrum was finally found for a radical revolution in Logic as a science, for the first time critical light was shed on its fundamental principles and principles. By this, Hegel simultaneously overcame both the limitations of the old logic’s view of thinking and the subjectivism of the Kantian-Fichtean attempt to reform this view, keeping its deepest prejudices intact.

Dialectics of logic

Thinking, which recognizes itself in the form of traditional, purely formal Logic, “lacks the simple consciousness that, constantly returning from one to another, it declares each of these separate definitions unsatisfactory, and its lack consists simply in the inability to bring together two thoughts ( in form there are only two thoughts.”

This manner of reasoning, according to which all things in the world should be considered (“think”) both “from the point of view of their identity with each other” and “from the point of view of their differences from each other”; on the one hand - so, and on the other hand - just the opposite; “in one respect as one and the same”, and “in another respect - as not the same”; this manner of thinking “both this and that”, “not only this way, but also that way (i.e. just the opposite)” - precisely constitutes the true “logic” of this Logic. Therefore, this Logic precisely corresponds to that very practice of thinking, which is “logical” only in appearance, but in fact represents only a type of cheeky eclectic reasoning, purely subjective schematization, the content of which is always given either by a whim or by a brilliant “intuition.” ”, or simply selfish-selfish motives - in short, any extra-logical factors.

This Logic is thoroughly “dialectical” - in the sense that it is teeming with unresolved contradictions, which it piles on top of each other, while pretending that there are no contradictions here. She constantly commits actions that are prohibited from the point of view of her own principles, “laws” and “rules”, but does not bring this fact to consciousness, i.e. to direct expression through these principles. Therefore, she falls into “dialectics” in the process of combining opposite and contradictory definitions and statements, but only outside of her consciousness and contrary to her own intentions.

Within the theory of Logic itself, this “dialectic” is already expressed in the fact that the so-called “absolute laws of thought” turn out to be “on closer examination, opposite to each other; they contradict each other and mutually cancel one another...”

Hegel, as is easy to see, criticizes traditional logic and thinking, corresponding to this logic, in the same “immanent way”, which precisely constituted his main achievement. Namely, he contrasts the statements, “rules” and “fundamentals” of this Logic not with some other - opposite - statements, rules and principles, but with the process of practical implementation of its own principles in real thinking. He shows her her own image, pointing out those features of her physiognomy that she prefers not to notice, not to realize.

He, in other words, agrees with her that the “conscious thinking” that she only explores operates precisely according to the very schemes and rules that it sets for itself - and therefore recognizes it as a “code” by which it can be judge. He requires only one thing from this thinking - inexorable and fearless consistency in carrying out the exposed principles. Nothing more. He does not set forth any other criteria for evaluating her theory. It only shows that it is the consistent implementation of principles (and not deviation from them) that inevitably, with inexorable force, leads to the denial of these very principles as one-sided, incomplete and abstract.

This is the same critique of “reason” from the point of view of “reason” itself that Kant began.

"Parties" of dialectical logic

Dialectics, according to Hegel, is a form (or method, scheme) of thinking, which includes both the process of clarification, clear awareness of contradictions unconsciously produced by the “reason”, and the process of their specific resolution as part of a higher and deeper stage rational knowledge the same subject, on the path of further research into the “essence of the matter,” that is, on the path of further development of science, technology and “morality” - that is, the entire sphere that he calls “objective spirit.” This movement forward, according to Hegel, takes place on the basis of logic itself, on the path of a logically strict development of definitions, and not on the path of returning to the sphere of contemplation or “ intellectual intuition", like Fichte or Schelling.

This understanding immediately causes constructive shifts in the entire system of Logic.

If for Kant “dialectics” was only the last, third part of Logic (the doctrine of the forms of reason and reason), where we're talking about, in fact, about the statement of logically unsolvable antinomies of scientific, purely theoretical knowledge, then with Hegel the matter looks completely different. The sphere of “logical” is divided into three main sections, or aspects; three “sides” are distinguished in it:

) abstract, or rational,

) dialectical, or negatively reasonable,

) speculative, or positively reasonable.

Hegel specifically emphasizes that the three named sides in no way “constitute three parts of logic, but are the essence of moments of every logically real, i.e. every concept or everything true in general.”

Composition of logic

In the empirical history of thinking (as in any given historically achieved state of thinking), these three sides appear every now and then in the form of three successive “formations” or in the form of three different and adjacent “systems of logic”. Hence the illusion arises that these three sections of “logical thinking” can be outlined in the form of three different, successive sections (or “parts”) of Logic.

Logic as a whole cannot be obtained by simply combining the indicated “three sides,” each of which is taken uncritically in the very form in which it was developed in the history of thought. This requires a critical reworking of all three aspects from the point of view of the highest - historically only later achieved - principles. Hegel characterizes three “moments” of logical thinking that should be part of Logic:

) “Thinking, as reason, does not go beyond fixed certainty and the difference between the latter and other certainties; it considers such a limited abstraction to have an independent existence.” A separate - isolated - historical embodiment of this “moment” in the activity of thinking is dogmatism, and the logical-theoretical “self-awareness” of this dogmatism is “general”, i.e. purely formal logic.

) “The dialectical moment is the sublation of such finite determinations of themselves and their transition into their opposite.” Historically, this moment appears as skepticism, that is, as a state when thinking feels confused among opposing, equally “logical” and mutually provoking “dogmatic systems”, unable to choose and prefer one of them. The logical self-awareness corresponding to the stage of “skepticism” was molded into the Kantian understanding of “dialectics” as a state of undecidability of antinomies between “dogmatic systems”. Skepticism (“negative dialectics” of the Kantian type) is historically and essentially higher than dogmatism, for the “dialectic” contained in “reason” is already realized here, already exists not only “in itself”, but also “for itself”.

) “The speculative, or positively rational, moment comprehends the unity of determinations in their opposition, the affirmation contained in their resolution and their transition.” In the systematic development of this last “moment” - and, accordingly, in the critical rethinking of the first two from the point of view of the third - Hegel sees a historically mature task in Logic, and therefore his own goal of work and mission.

Having been critically rethought in the light of principles only now discovered, these three “moments” cease to be independent “parts of logic” and turn into three abstract aspects of the same logical system. Then Logic is created, guided by which thinking becomes fully self-critical and does not risk falling into either the stupidity of dogmatism or the sterility of skeptical neutrality.

From here follows the external, formal division of Logic into:

) the doctrine of being,

) the doctrine of essence and

) the doctrine of concept and idea.

The division of Logic into “objective” (the first two sections, about “being” and “essence”) and “subjective” (about the concept and idea) coincides at first glance with the old division of philosophy into “ontology” and “logic itself.” This is not so, Hegel emphasizes, such a division would be very inaccurate and conditional, since in Logic “the opposition between the subjective and the objective (in its usual meaning) disappears.”

"Concept"

Hegel demands from Logic a more serious and profound solution to the problem of “concept” and “thinking in concepts.” For him, “concept” is, first of all, a synonym for a real understanding of the essence of the matter, and not just an expression of any “general”, any “sameness” of objects of contemplation. The “concept” expresses the true nature of a thing, and not its “similarity” with other things, and in the “concept” should therefore find its expression not only “abstract community” (this is only one aspect of the concept, which makes it related to representation), but also feature of the concept object. The form of the concept therefore turns out to be the dialectical unity of “universality and particularity,” which is revealed through various forms judgments and conclusions. In a judgment, this property of the “concept” comes out, and therefore any judgment already breaks the form of abstract identity and represents its most self-evident negation.

Hegel clearly distinguishes “universality,” which dialectically includes, in its definitions, “all the richness of the particular and the individual,” from simple “abstract generality,” from simple “allness.” The universal concept expresses the actual law of the emergence, development and disappearance of “individual things”. And this is a completely different angle of view on the “concept”, much more true and deep, because, as Hegel shows in a lot of cases, the true law (the immanent nature of an individual thing) does not always appear on the surface of phenomena in the form of simple “sameness”, in form " common feature", in the form of "identity".

If this were the case, then there would be no need for any Science. It is not much work to record empirically general characteristics everywhere. This is not the task of “thinking” at all, although in any thinking this “moment” is always present.

The central concept of Hegel’s Logic is therefore concreteness, the concrete-universal, and Hegel brilliantly illustrates the difference between this “concrete-universal” and the simple abstract universality of the sphere of representation in his famous pamphlet “Who Thinks Abstractly?” “To think abstractly” means to be in slavish subordination to the power of current buzzwords, current cliches, one-sided meager definitions; it means to see in real, sensually contemplated things only an insignificant fraction of their actual content, only those definitions that have already “frozen” in consciousness and function in it as ready-made, like dead-petrified stamps. This is related to the “ Magic force“current words and expressions that block reality from a thinking person instead of serving as a form of its expression, of bringing it to consciousness - to a form “for oneself.”

In this interpretation, Logic only becomes the real logic of thinking cognition of the not yet known “unity in diversity”, and not a scheme for manipulating ready-made ideas, the logic of critical and self-critical thinking, and not the logic of uncritical classification and pedantic schematization of existing ideas.

Criticism of Hegel's dialectical logic

Hegel really contrasts man with his real thinking with some impersonal and impersonal - “absolute” - Thinking, as a certain scheme that has existed from eternity, in accordance with which the act of “divine creation of the world and man” proceeds. In this regard, logic is understood by Hegel as an “absolute form”, in relation to which the real world and real human thinking turn out to be something essentially derivative, secondary, created.

“Logic, according to this, should be understood as a system of pure reason, as the kingdom of pure thought. This kingdom is truth as it is without veils, in itself and for itself. Therefore, one can express it this way: this content is the image of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and any finite spirit.”

Defining Logic as the “image of God,” Hegel, of course, only wants to make his understanding of thinking understandable and acceptable for the religious-official consciousness of his era, for its characteristic way of representation, nothing more. However, this assimilation is not accidental, a purely external, purely tactical move. It is in this that the idealism of his understanding of thinking is revealed - and it is specifically Hegelian, objective idealism, which by its interpretation turns thinking into some new god, into some kind of supernatural force located outside of man and dominating over man. This is true. However, in this specifically Hegelian illusion it would be wrong to see simply a view uncritically adopted by Hegel from religion, a simple atavism of religious consciousness, as Feuerbach explained, but much deeper and more serious circumstances.

The fact is that the Hegelian concept of thinking is simply an uncritical description of the real state of affairs that develops on the basis of a narrowly professional form of division of social labor - and precisely on the basis of the separation of “mental labor” from physical labor, from directly practical, sensory-objective activity, on the basis of the transformation of spiritual-theoretical work into a special profession, into “science”.

In the conditions of a spontaneously developing division of social labor, a peculiar reversal of real relations between real human individuals and their own collective forces, collectively developed abilities inevitably arises, i.e. universal (social) methods of activity, which received the name “alienation” in philosophy.

Here, in social reality, and not just in the imagination of religious people and idealist philosophers, all universal (collectively carried out) methods of activity are organized in the form of special social institutions, are constituted in the form of professions, a kind of castes with their own special rituals, with their own special language, traditions and other “immanent” structures that have a completely impersonal and faceless character.

As a result, it is not a single human individual who turns out to be a “carrier” - i.e. “subject” of one or another universal ability (active force), but on the contrary, this “alienated” and increasingly “alienating itself” force from him (i.e. the force of cooperative individuals) acts as a “subject”, dictating from the outside to each individual the ways and the forms of its life activity. The individual as such turns here into a slave - into a “speaking instrument” - of “alienated” universal human forces and abilities, methods of activity, personified in the form of money, in the form of capital and further - in the form of the state, law, religion, etc. and so on.

The critical overcoming of Hegelian Logic, carefully preserving all its positive results and clearing them of the mysticism of admiration for “pure thinking”, for the “divine concept”, was possible only for Marx and Engels.

No other philosophical system after Hegel could cope with it with the “weapon of criticism”, since not one of them took the position of a revolutionary critical attitude towards those objective conditions that feed the illusions of idealism, i.e. to a situation of “alienation” of a person’s real active abilities from the majority of individuals - a situation within which all general (social) forces, i.e. The active abilities of a social person act as forces independent of the majority of individuals, as forces that dominate them as an external necessity, as forces monopolized by more or less narrow groups, strata and classes of society.

The only way to really critical overcoming Hegel’s concept of Thinking as the existing “absolute creative power of the Concept” outside and independently of man lay only through a revolutionary-critical attitude to the “world of alienation,” that is, to the world of commodity-capitalist relations, to its characteristic form of division of social labor, to the fact of real separation and isolation of “mental labor” (thinking) from physical labor, and thereby to all the practically inevitable illusions that persons in mental labor create about themselves, about the causes and goals, about the conditions and forms of their own work.

On this - and only on this - path, the objective-idealistic illusions of the Hegelian concept could be truly explained, and not just cursed as “mystical nonsense”, “atavism of theology” and other offensive, but explaining absolutely nothing, epithets.

Marx and Engels for the first time saw the deepest - already purely theoretical and factual-historical error, underlying all the fundamental defects of the Hegelian concept of Thinking and Logic, where most post-Hegelian philosophical systems (and still) see the banal truth, sharing, therefore, with Hegel all other errors.

This mistake lies in the fact that Hegel, although he understands that language, speech is not at all the only form of “external manifestation” of the creative power of thinking, nevertheless, considers language to be the first (both in time and in essence) external form , in which this thinking for the first time becomes “an object for itself.”

Language - this understanding, formulated by Hegel in the “Jena Real Philosophy”, is preserved in Logic - seems to him the “first tool” of the external embodiment of the creative power of thinking. And the real instrument of labor - an ax, a plow, and then a machine, a system of machines, etc. - is only in time and essentially the second, later and derivative form of the “external detection” of this creative power...

The scheme is therefore this: at the beginning of the history of “spirit” (i.e. the history of self-knowledge, “alienation and removal of alienation”) there was the Word. Man awakened to spiritual life, to self-conscious thinking at the moment when he “invented the word,” when the ability to “express himself” in speech awoke in him. And only then - on the basis of the achievements that this spirit developed in the verbal form of its “incarnation”, it moved on to the invention of real tools...

Thus, it is the Word, it is Speech, Statement, Judgment, etc. and actions in the verbal plane here turn out to be the cradle in which the “thinking spirit” is born - Thinking in its external manifestation... And not sensory-objective activity in real world, not the creation of tools and products of this labor, as a process initially independent of any “thinking” as conscious activity.

Hegel repeats this thought in Logic:

“Forms of thought are revealed and deposited, first of all, in human language. In our time, we must constantly remind ourselves that man differs from animals precisely in that he thinks. In everything that for him (man) becomes something internal, in general a representation, in everything that he makes his own, language has penetrated, and everything that a person turns into language and expresses in language contains in itself, whether hidden , confused or more developed form, some category...".

This is the deepest root of Hegelian idealism. If you accept this Hegelian assertion as something indisputable, you will no longer be able to cope with Hegel and his interpretation of “thinking”. Then, following him, you will be forced to declare the real “tool of labor” to be a consequence of human activity in the verbal plane, i.e. V specific form theoretical activities, "alienated logical thinking”, which manifested itself before and independently of this in the Word. And then you, like Hegel and like modern neo-positivists, will have to say after the Apostle John: “In the beginning was the Word,” and then everything else...

With this move, “thinking”, as an activity carried out in the head precisely in the form of “inner speech”, turns into the starting point for understanding all phenomena of culture, both spiritual and material - including historical events, all socio-economic and political structures, and so on and so forth. Then the whole world of products human labor- the whole story - and begins to be interpreted as a process arising “from the head”, from the “power of thinking”.

And “thinking” itself in this case no longer flows out of nowhere. It is simply taken as something given, as something that has existed from time immemorial, as one of the original “forces of the universe” in man, and it is through the Word that it first begins to act with consciousness - as “spirit,” as self-conscious thinking. And then the entire system of Hegelian philosophy is obtained completely automatically.

It is here - in the critical understanding and overcoming of the Hegelian version of the relationship between “spiritual-theoretical activity” (directly carried out through the Word) and the immediate sensory-objective activity of a social person, as an activity completely independent at first from any “spirit”, from any kind of “consciousness and will”, from any kind of “thinking” (conscious or unconscious) lay the point of growth of Logic after Hegel - the supporting point of the revolution in Logic carried out by Marx and Engels at the beginning of the 40s ?s of the XIX century.

Conclusion

logic thinking hegel

Hegel's logic is at the same time his dialectical teaching.

Hegel's dialectic is a doctrine of universal connection and development, it is a philosophy of the universe, a view of the world as a whole.

Principle:

) The principle of interconnection (the world is fundamentally one)

) The principle of universal movement, said by Heraclitus, and these opposite transitions into each other, everything in the world is constantly developing.

The principle of the triad extends to dialectics, therefore, it is believed that it overcomes the one-sidedness of Kant (Thesis - antithesis), we can cognize not only the phenomenon, but also the essence.

Hegel believed that contradiction is not an anomaly, but the source of all development.

Being - (destruction) - Nothing - (the emergence of a new) - Existing being (being in space and time)

Our world is a constant process of becoming (if something is destroyed, then something new arises, development occurs in a spiral, everything returns but moves forward in a spiral.

Hegel's law of dialectics:

The law of unity and struggle of opposites (the source of development in the struggle of opposites);

The law of mutual transition, quantitative and qualitative transformations (accumulated quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes and mechanical development);

The law of negation (a grain in the ground - rots - a sprout - a new grain, any stage in the development process is replaced by a new stage, which is then replaced by an even newer stage).

Hegel’s system is conservative, since the absolute idea returns to itself, but on the other hand, dialectics is the doctrine of the development of the world, but the Absolute Idea must also develop.

Hegel’s contradictions between philosophy and logic and the dialectical world are seen in the fact that the system is conservative and closed, and the world is dialectical, i.e. the endless development of this system is assumed. Hegel's philosophy stands on its head , said the Marxists.

Bibliography

1.Dialectics and its critics. - M., 1986.

2.Dialectical contradiction. - M., 1979.

.Hegel G.V.F. Works, vol. 5.

.Sadovsky G.I. Dialectics of thought. Logic of concepts as a theory of reflection of the essence of development. - Minsk, 1982.

.Petrov Yu.A. Logical function of the categories of dialectics. - M., 1972.

.Popov P.S. History of modern logic. - M., Moscow State University Publishing House, 1960.

.Trendelenburg A. Logical Research, vol. 1. Moscow, 1868.

Tutoring

Need help studying a topic?

Our specialists will advise or provide tutoring services on topics that interest you.
Submit your application indicating the topic right now to find out about the possibility of obtaining a consultation.

Abstract thinking is considered a sign of highly developed intelligence. This misconception became the theme of the thoughts of the German philosopher Georg Hegel, who believed that such thinking could express both intelligence and stupidity. Why you shouldn’t judge a subject without bothering to study it, and what imaginary education is - in Hegel’s essay “Who Thinks Abstractly?” translated and with comments by the Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkov.

Think? Abstractly? Sauve qui peut! - “Save yourself who can!” - some hired informant will probably scream here, warning the public against reading an article that talks about “metaphysics.” After all, “metaphysics” - like “abstract” (and, perhaps, like “thinking”) - is a word that evokes in everyone a more or less strong desire to run away, like from the plague.

I hasten to reassure you: I am not at all going to explain here what “abstract” is and what it means to “think.” Explanations are generally considered in decent society a sign of bad taste. I myself feel uneasy when someone starts to explain something - if necessary, I myself will be able to understand everything. And here any explanations about “thinking” and “abstract” are completely unnecessary; A decent society avoids communication with the “abstract” precisely because it is too familiar with it. What you know nothing about, you can neither love nor hate. Alien to me is the intention to reconcile society with “abstract” or “thinking” with the help of cunning - first by sneaking them there secretly, under the guise of small talk, in such a way that they would sneak into society without being recognized and without arousing displeasure, they would sneak in into it, as people say, and the author of the intrigue could then announce that the new guest, who is now being accepted under a false name as a good friend, is that same “abstract” that was not allowed on the threshold before. Such “scenes of recognition,” which teach the world against its wishes, have the unforgivable miscalculation that they simultaneously confuse the audience, while the theater engineer would like to gain fame for himself with his art. His vanity, combined with the embarrassment of everyone else, can spoil the whole effect and lead to the fact that the teaching, bought at such a price, will be rejected.

“In a decent society one does not think abstractly because it is too simple, too ignoble”

However, even such a plan would not have been possible; under no circumstances should the solution be disclosed in advance. And it is already given in the title. If you have already planned the trick described above, then you need to keep your mouth shut and act like that minister in the comedy who plays in a coat throughout the entire performance and only unbuttons it in the final scene, shining with the Order of Wisdom. But unbuttoning the metaphysical coat would not achieve the same effect that unbuttoning the ministerial coat produces - after all, the world did not recognize anything here except a few words - and the whole undertaking would, in fact, boil down to establishing only the fact that society had long ago lost this thing disposes; Thus, only the name of a thing would be acquired, while the order of a minister means something very real, a wallet with money.

We are in a decent society, where it is generally accepted that everyone present knows exactly what “thinking” is and what “abstract” is. Therefore, all that remains is to find out who thinks abstractly. As we have already mentioned, it is not our intention to reconcile society with these things, nor to force them to bother with anything difficult, nor to reproach them for frivolously neglecting what it is fitting for every rational being, according to his rank and position, to value. On the contrary, our intention is to reconcile society with itself, since, on the one hand, it disdains abstract thinking without experiencing any remorse, and on the other hand, it still has a certain respect for it in its soul, like why - something sublime, and avoids it not because it despises, but because it exalts, not because it seems something vulgar, but because it is taken for something noble or, conversely, for something special, which the French called “espèce” (a person worthy of contempt), which is indecent to stand out in society, and which does not so much distinguish as separates from society or makes it funny, like rags or overly luxurious clothing, decorated with precious stones and old-fashioned lace.

Who thinks abstractly? - An uneducated person, and not at all an enlightened one. In a decent society they don’t think abstractly because it is too simple, too ignoble (ignoble not in the sense of belonging to a lower class), and not at all out of a vain desire to turn up their noses at what they themselves do not know how to do, but due to the inner emptiness of this activity .

The reverence for abstract thinking, which has the force of prejudice, is so deeply rooted that those with a keen nose will sense satire or irony in advance, and since they read the morning newspapers and know that there is a prize for satire, they will decide that I am better off. try to earn this prize in competition with others, rather than laying out everything here bluntly.

To substantiate my thought, I will give only a few examples in which everyone can see that this is exactly the case. A murderer is being led to execution. For the crowd, he is a killer - and nothing more. Ladies may perhaps notice that he is a strong, handsome, interesting man. Such a remark will outrage the crowd: how can that be? Is the killer handsome? Is it possible to think so badly, is it possible to call a murderer beautiful? You yourself are probably no better! This testifies to the moral decay of the nobility, perhaps the priest, accustomed to looking into the depths of things and hearts, will add.

“To think abstractly - to see in a murderer only one abstract thing - that he is a murderer, and by naming this quality to destroy everything else in him”

A connoisseur of the human soul will examine the course of events that shaped the criminal, will discover in his life, in his upbringing, the influence of bad relations between his father and mother, will see that this man was once punished for some minor offense with excessive severity, which embittered him against the civil order, which forced him to resist, which led to the fact that crime became for him the only way of self-preservation. There will almost certainly be people in the crowd who, if they had a chance to hear such reasoning, will say: yes, he wants to acquit the murderer! I remember how a certain burgomaster complained in the days of my youth about writers who undermined the foundations of Christianity and law and order; one of them even dared to justify suicide - it’s scary to think about! From further explanations it turned out that the burgomaster meant “The Sorrows of Young Werther.”

This is what is called “thinking abstractly” - seeing in a murderer only one abstract thing - that he is a murderer, and by calling this quality to destroy in him everything else that makes up a human being.

The sophisticated and sentimental secular public of Leipzig is a different matter. This one, on the contrary, strewed the wheeled criminal with flowers and wove wreaths into the wheel. However, this is again an abstraction, albeit the opposite one. Christians are in the habit of arranging a cross with roses, or rather roses with a cross, combining roses and a cross. The cross is a gallows or wheel that was once turned into a shrine. It has lost its one-sided significance as an instrument of shameful execution and combines in one image the highest suffering and the deepest self-sacrifice with the most joyful bliss and divine honor. But the Leipzig cross, entwined with poppies and violets, is peace in the style of Kotzebue, a kind of dissolute conciliation - sensitive and bad.

I once had a chance to hear how one naive old woman from an almshouse dealt with the abstraction of a “murderer” in a completely different way and justified him. The severed head lay on the scaffold, and at that time the sun began to shine. How wonderful it is, she said, for the sun of God’s mercy to shine on Binder’s head! You are not worth the sun shining on you - this is what they often say, wanting to express condemnation. And the woman saw that the killer’s head was illuminated by the sun and, therefore, deserved it. She lifted her from the scaffold into the bosom of the solar mercy of God and brought about pacification not with the help of violets and sentimental vanity, but by seeing the murderer joined to heavenly grace by a sunbeam.

- Hey, old woman, are you trading? rotten eggs! - says the customer to the merchant. - What? - she screams. - Are my eggs rotten?! You yourself are rotten! You dare tell me that about my product! You! Wasn’t it your father who got lice in the ditch, wasn’t it your mother who was hanging out with the French, wasn’t it your grandmother who died in the poorhouse! Look, you used up a whole sheet for a handkerchief! We probably know where all these rags and hats come from! If it weren't for the officers, you wouldn't have to show off in finery! Decent people take care of their home, but such people belong in jail! I could mend the holes in my stockings! - In short, she doesn’t even notice a grain of good in the offender. She thinks abstractly and bases everything - from her hat to her stockings, from head to toe, along with her dad and the rest of her family - solely on the crime that she found her eggs rotten. Everything in her head is painted the color of these eggs, while those officers whom she mentioned - if, of course, they really have anything to do with this, which is very doubtful - probably noticed completely different details in this woman.

But let's leave the women alone; Let's take, for example, a servant - nowhere does he live worse than that of a person of low rank and low income; and, conversely, the more noble his master, the better. A simple man thinks abstractly here too, he puts on airs in front of a servant and treats him only as a servant; he clings tightly to this single predicate. The best life for a servant is with a Frenchman. An aristocrat is familiar with a servant, and a Frenchman is such a good friend to him. The servant, when they are alone, chatters all sorts of things, and the master smokes his pipe and glances at his watch, without bothering him in any way - as you can read about in the story “Jacques and His Master” by Diderot. The aristocrat, among other things, knows that the servant is not only a servant, that he knows all the city news and girls and that good ideas come into his head - he asks the servant about all this, and the servant can freely talk about what interests the owner . With a French master, a servant even dares to reason, have and defend his own opinion, and when the master needs something from him, an order will not be enough, but first he will have to explain his thought to the servant and also thank him for the fact that this opinion will prevail with him top.

The same difference exists among the military; The Prussians are supposed to beat a soldier, and therefore a soldier is a scoundrel; indeed, the one who is obliged to passively endure beatings is the rascal. Therefore, an ordinary soldier looks in the eyes of an officer as a kind of abstraction of the subject of a beating, with whom a gentleman in a uniform with a sword belt is forced to tinker, although for him this activity is damn unpleasant.

Evald Ilyenkov

Doctor of Philosophy, psychologist-educator, researcher of Marxist-Leninist dialectics

– So who thinks abstractly?

– An uneducated person, and not at all an enlightened one

Even today, this unexpected answer may seem like a mischievous paradox, a simple illustration of that “literary device of using a word or expression in its opposite meaning for the purpose of ridicule,” which literary scholars call irony. The same irony that, according to M.V. Lomonosov, “sometimes consists of one word, when we call a small man Atlas or a Giant, a powerless man Samson”...

There really is irony here, and a very poisonous one. But this irony special properties- not a witty play on words, not a simple turning inside out of the “usual meanings” of words, which does not change anything in the essence of understanding. Here it is not the terms that are reversed, but the phenomena that they denote suddenly turn out in the course of their consideration to be completely different from what they are accustomed to seeing, and the edge of ridicule strikes precisely the “habitual” use of words, revealing that it is precisely the “habitual” and completely the thoughtless use of terms (in this case the word “abstract”) is absurd and does not correspond to the essence of the matter. And what seemed only an “ironic paradox” reveals itself, on the contrary, as a completely accurate expression of this essence.

This is dialectical irony, expressing verbally, on the screen of language, a completely objective (that is, independent of will and consciousness) process of transforming a thing into its own opposite. A process during which all the signs are suddenly reversed, and thinking unexpectedly comes to a conclusion that directly contradicts its starting point.

“The great dialectician is making fun of the imaginary education here - the lack of education, which imagines itself to be educated, and therefore considers itself the right to judge and dress up philosophy, without bothering itself to study it.”

The soul of this peculiar irony is not lightweight wit, not linguistic dexterity in playing with epithets, but the well-known “treachery” of the real course of life, long ago recognized by folk wisdom in the saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Yes, the best intentions, refracted through the prism of the conditions for their implementation, often turn into evil and disaster. It also happens the other way around: “I am a particle of the power that forever desired evil and did only good,” Mephistopheles, the poetic personification of the “power of denial,” is recommended.

This is the same serious pattern that Marx, following Hegel, liked to call “the irony of history” - “the inevitable fate of all historical movements, the participants of which have a vague idea of ​​​​the causes and conditions of their existence and therefore set purely illusory goals for them.” This irony always appears as an unexpected retribution for ignorance, for ignorance. She always lies in wait for people who climb into the water without knowing the ford. When this happens to pioneers, it is a tragedy. Man has always had to pay dearly for knowledge. But when people who cannot and do not want to reckon with experience become victims of this inexorable irony, their fate takes on a tragicomic character, because it is not ignorance that is punished here, but rather stupid conceit...

And when Hegel suddenly cites the abuse of a market woman as an example of “abstract thinking,” the lofty philosophical categories are not used here for the purpose of ridiculing the “little man,” the uneducated old woman. There is ironic ridicule here, but its address is completely different. This ridicule hits here with a ricochet, like a boomerang, on the high forehead of the very reader who saw in this an ironic grin at “lack of education.” Ignorance is not a fault, but a misfortune, and to mock it from the heights of one’s learned greatness is hardly an activity worthy of a philosopher. Such mockery would not reveal intelligence, but only stupid conceit of one’s own “education.” This pose already deserves ridicule - and Hegel gives himself such pleasure.

The great dialectician is making fun of the imaginary education here - the lack of education, which imagines itself to be educated, and therefore considers itself the right to judge and dress up philosophy, without bothering itself to study it. The merchant scolds without claiming the “philosophical” meaning of her words. She had never even heard of such words as “abstract.” Therefore, philosophy also has no claims against it. Another thing is the “educated reader” who grins, seeing “irony” in the qualification of her thinking as “abstract” - this is the same as calling the powerless Samson...

So he fell for the insidious hook of Hegelian irony. Seeing here only a “literary device,” he completely betrayed himself, revealing complete ignorance in the area where he considers himself an expert - in the field of philosophy as a science. Here, after all, every “educated person” considers himself an expert. “With regard to other sciences, it is believed that study is required in order to know them, and that only such knowledge gives the right to judge them. They also agree that in order to make a shoe, you need to study shoemaking and practice it, although every person has a measure in his foot for this, has hands and thanks to them the natural dexterity required for this work. Only philosophizing does not require this kind of study and work,” Hegel sneers at such experts. Such an expert discovered here that he knows the word “abstract”, but he doesn’t even have a vague idea about that insidious dialectic that philosophy has long identified as part of the named category of phenomena. That is why he saw a joke where Hegel is not joking at all, where he exposes the inflated emptiness of “customary” ideas, beyond which pretentious half-education, imaginary education, the entire baggage of which lies simply in the ability to use, never goes beyond. learned words as is customary in a “decent society”...

Such an “educated reader” is not uncommon these days. Living in a cozy world of stereotyped ideas with which he has become fused as with his own skin, he is always irritated when science shows him that things are not really what they seem to him. He always considers himself a champion " common sense“, and in philosophical dialectics he sees nothing but a malicious tendency to “turn inside out” the ordinary, “generally accepted” meanings of words. In dialectical thinking, he sees only “ambiguous and lax use of terms”, the art of juggling words with opposite meanings - the sophistry of ambiguity. So, they say, here too - Hegel does not use words in the way that is “accepted” - he calls “abstract” what all sensible people call “concrete” and vice versa. Even many scientific and philosophical treatises written over the last hundred and fifty years are devoted to such an interpretation of dialectics. And every time they are written on behalf of “modern logic”.

Meanwhile, Hegel is concerned, of course, not with names, not with the question of what should be called and how. Hegel himself treats the issue of names and disputes about words purely ironically, only teasing learned pedants who, in the end, are only concerned with this, placing simple traps in their way.

Along the way, under the guise of small talk, he popularly - in the best sense of the word - sets out very serious things that are not at all related to the “title”. These are the core ideas of his brilliant “Science of Logic” and “Phenomenology of Spirit”.

“There is no abstract truth, truth is always concrete,” because truth is not a “minted coin” that can only be put in your pocket, so that on occasion it can be pulled out and applied as a ready-made measure to individual things and phenomena, sticking it on like a label, on the sensory-given diversity of the world, on contemplated “objects”. The truth does not lie at all in bare “results”, but in the ongoing process of an ever deeper, ever more dissected into details, ever more “concrete” comprehension of the essence of the matter. And the “essence of the matter” nowhere and never consists in simple “sameness”, in the “identity” of things and phenomena with each other. And to look for this “essence of the matter” means to carefully trace the transitions, the transformations of some strictly recorded (including verbal) phenomena into others, which, in the end, are directly opposite to the original ones.

“In one case, the “abstract” turns out to be the most powerful means of analyzing concrete reality, and in the other, it turns out to be an impenetrable screen blocking this same reality.”

The real “universality” that binds two or more phenomena (things, events, etc.) together, as part of a certain “whole,” is hidden not at all in their similarity to each other, but in the need to transform each thing into its own opposite. The fact is that such two phenomena seem to “complement” one another “to the whole”, since each of them contains such a “sign” that the other is precisely lacking, and the “whole” always turns out to be a unity of mutually exclusive - and at the same time mutually presupposing - parties, moments. Hence the logical principle of thinking, which Hegel put forward against all previous logic: “Contradiction is the criterion of truth, the absence of contradiction is the criterion of error.” This also sounded and still sounds quite paradoxical. But what can you do if you real life develops through “paradoxes”?

And if we take all this into account, then the problem of “abstraction” immediately begins to look different. “The abstract” as such (as “general”, as “the same”, fixed in a word, in the form of a “generally accepted meaning of a term” or in a series of such terms) in itself is neither good nor bad. As such, it can express intelligence and stupidity with equal ease. In one case, the “abstract” turns out to be the most powerful means of analyzing concrete reality, and in the other, it turns out to be an impenetrable screen blocking this same reality. In one case it turns out to be a form of understanding things, and in the other - a means of killing the intellect, a means of enslaving it to verbal cliches. And this dual, dialectically insidious nature of the “abstract” must always be taken into account, must always be kept in mind, so as not to fall into an unexpected trap... This is the meaning of Hegel’s feuilleton, an elegant and ironic presentation of very, very serious philosophical and logical truths.

First level- abstract rational thinking. It is inflexible, presents objects and their properties as static and rigidly demarcated, without transition between them. Such “dogmatic” thinking was characteristic of earlier metaphysics. Second level- negative rational thinking - negative dialectics. It represents objects and their properties as fluid, relative, while the mind is divorced from reason and produces only naked denial, skepticism.

Third, highest level- positive-reasonable, speculative thinking - positive dialectics, which allows reason, based on reason, to come to a positive result, establishing unity in the diversity of sides and changes. “Reason without reason,” says Hegel, is nothing, but reason without reason is something.”

Hegel believes that his dialectical method (he himself calls it “speculative”) corresponds to highest level thinking that gives an understanding of the subject systematically and in development. The philosopher brings extremely close the logic of theoretical research (subjective) and the universal forms of existence of reality (objective logic). In both cases, development proceeds in triads: through the bifurcation of the whole into opposites (thesis, antithesis) and the dialectical removal of contradictions (synthesis). Synthesis is both negation and, in a certain respect, the preservation of antithesis. The general patterns of progressive development are the unity and struggle of opposites, the transition of quantitative changes into qualitative ones and the negation of negation. The most important principle of dialectical logic- ascent from the abstract to the concrete, i.e. movement from a one-sided, “poor” state to a multi-sided, complete, whole in the development of the subject and knowledge about the subject. Theorist who owns dialectical method, analyzes the subject, recording its various aspects in abstractions, identifies the essential element, the relationships that necessarily connect it with other elements. The result is a rich, complete theoretical construct that combines the virtues of specificity and generality.

The absolute idea is the absolute and complete truth. Truth is the coincidence of concept and objectivity; it has both epistemological and ontological status. In the epistemological sense, truth is the correspondence of a concept to its object. Truth is concrete and historical: philosophical truth, which achieves the greatest concreteness, represents the world in a system of dialectical categories.

Private truth- one-sided, relative. Hegel pursues the principle of the unity of the historical and logical. For example, in the history of philosophy, the content is logical, the form is historical: each subsequent teaching “sublates” the previous one, relative truths “add up dialectically” into an absolute one.

Truth develops; it is not only a result, but also a process leading to a result (truth, says Hegel, is not a minted coin that can be put into your pocket).

Truth in ontological terms is the correspondence of an object to a concept. In this sense, we can talk about a true good deed, a true work of art. There are untrue objects that do not correspond to their concept: a bad (bad) teacher, a student. One can have a correct idea of ​​such an object, which is far removed from its concept, but it will not be true in terms of conceptual content. The idea of ​​practice connects both meanings of truth. Our activity, aimed at transforming what directly exists, is necessary for the knowledge and implementation of truth. Truth is objective, it must mature, its time must come.

Thus, truth appears in theoretical and practical form. Practical is higher in value: it has the dignity of universality and immediate reality. The unity of theory and practice, subjective and objective - in the Absolute Idea.

Hegel’s system is constructed dialectically, in the form of triads representing the spheres of development of the absolute idea:

1) pure thinking, logic, it is studied in the section of philosophy “science of logic”:

2) nature, which is the subject of “philosophy of nature”:

3) spirit, to the consideration of which “philosophy of spirit” is devoted.

Within each of these spheres there are several levels, each of which is formed according to the principle of a triad. In the “element of pure thinking” the idea exists “in itself” - in a system of developing, interconnected categories that transform into each other. Since categories express connections of extreme generality, their relationships, Hegel believes, are revealed not through generic behavior, but through comparison. The driving force for the development of categories is contradiction, the form of development is the negation of the negation. The philosopher identifies three main spheres of “pure thinking” - being, essence, concept. In nature, where the idea is “outside itself,” “in the other,” it unfolds in space as external manifestation self-development of logical categories. Nature is material and therefore there is, as it were, a self-negation of an idea - an idea “in the form of otherness,” “petrified spirit.” There is no freedom here. According to Hegel, nature is systemic, but does not evolve. Matter actually exists in motion, in which space and time transform into each other.

In nature, there are three sequential systems:

1) mechanics, 2) physics, 3) organics.

In the spirit, that is, in consciousness and history, the absolute idea exists “in itself and for itself.” She returns from “other existence” to herself in man (her elements are reason and freedom), comprehends her content in the types of human consciousness and activity. Spirit is the synthesis (sublation) of the purely logical and natural.

Three main areas of development of the spirit: 1) subjective spirit - in individual life, 2) objective spirit- V public life, 3) absolute spirit - in the spiritual life of society - in art, religion, philosophy.

In Hegel's philosophy, rationalism is united with dialectics, which acts as the universal logic of self-knowledge of reason, or the absolute idea, as the logic of the universal world process and at the same time as the fundamental theory of knowledge. Identification of thinking and reality (panlogism) gave Hegelian rationalism the character of speculative natural philosophy, which, with its style and methodological orientation, contrasted with the dominant style of science, although dialectical ideas in the 19th century. noticeably resonated with methodological reflection on major scientific results in biology, physics, chemistry, cosmology (which was noted by K. Marx and F. Engels). In Hegelian philosophy, the classical paradigm of rationalism received its most consistent expression, having essentially exhausted its possibilities. The further development of rationalism was associated with attempts to resolve the internal contradictions of this paradigm, as well as a reaction to criticism of it from those thinkers who considered the claims of reason to dominate in all spheres of reality, to the role of the universal basis of human activity and the historical process, as unfounded. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard pointed out the main ways of criticizing rationalism, which were subsequently traversed and repeated many times by philosophers of the 20th century.

Hegel created a strong philosophical school, in which two directions gradually emerged: orthodox and unorthodox (young Hegelian). The Orthodox were inclined towards the theological interpretation of the teacher; the Young Hegelians, on the contrary, turned Hegel's ideas upside down, giving his system an atheistic sound.

Friedrich Engels, in his work “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy,” points out the contradiction that exists between Hegel’s “revolutionary” dialectical method and his “conservative,” “dogmatic” philosophical system. According to the method, improvement has no limit; stopping development is tantamount to death. Hegel’s system claims to be complete, to find absolutely perfect forms of development in various areas. Such forms, according to Hegel, are: in history - the German world, in society - bourgeois civil society in the state structure - constitutional monarchy with class representation, in religion - Protestantism, in philosophy - the type of philosophy proposed by Hegel.

* Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel(1770 - 1831) - professor at Heidelberg and then Berlin universities, was one of the most authoritative philosophers of his time both in Germany and in Europe, a prominent representative German classical idealism.

Hegel's main service to philosophy lies in the fact that he was put forward and developed in detail:

The theory of objective idealism (the core concept of which is the absolute idea - the World Spirit);

Dialectics as a universal philosophical method.

TO the most important philosophical works of Hegel relate:

"Phenomenology of Spirit";

"Science of Logic";

"Philosophy of Law".

2. The main idea of ​​ontology (the doctrine of being) of Hegel - identification of being and thinking. IN As a result of this identification, Hegel derives a special philosophical concept - the absolute idea.

Absolute idea- This:

the only true reality that exists;

The root cause of the entire surrounding world, its objects and phenomena;

A world spirit with self-awareness and the ability to create.

The next key ontological concept of Hegel's philosophy is alienation.

The absolute spirit, about which nothing definite can be said, alienates itself in the form of:

The surrounding world;

Nature;

Human;

And then, after alienation through human thinking and activity, the natural course of history returns to itself again: that is, the cycle of the Absolute spirit occurs according to the scheme: World (Absolute) spirit - alienation - the surrounding world and man - human thinking and activity - realization by the spirit of itself yourself through human thinking and activity - the return of the Absolute spirit to itself. Self alienation includes:

Creation of matter from air;

Complex relationships between an object (the surrounding world) and a subject (a person) - through human activity, the World Spirit objectifies itself;

Distortion, a person’s misunderstanding of the world around them.

Human plays a special role in Hegel’s ontology (being). He - bearer of an absolute idea. The consciousness of each person is a particle of the World Spirit. It is in man that the abstract and impersonal world spirit acquires will, personality, character, individuality. Thus, man is the “ultimate spirit” of the World Spirit.

Through man the World Spirit:

Manifests itself in the form of words, speech, language, gestures;

Moves purposefully and naturally - actions, human actions, the course of history;

Knows himself through cognitive activity person;

Creates - in the form of the results of material and spiritual culture created by man.

Relying on the dialectical ideas of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and developing them, Hegel at the same time rejects a number of erroneous positions contained in the teachings of these thinkers. Hegel rightly regards Kant's attempt to explore the human ability of knowledge outside the history of knowledge, outside its real application, as fruitless scholastic.

Hegel spoke out just as definitely against the subjectivism of Kant and Fichte. Nature, according to Hegel, exists independently of man, and human knowledge has objective content. Rejecting Kant's subjectivist opposition between essence and appearance, Hegel taught that appearances are just as objective as essence; essence appears, i.e. is revealed in the phenomenon, which is why the phenomenon is essential. By cognizing phenomena, we thereby cognize the essence.

Based on the dialectical position about the unity of essence and appearance, Hegel rejected Kant’s doctrine of the unknowability of the “thing in itself”; in the nature of things there are no insurmountable barriers to knowledge. “The hidden essence of the universe does not possess within itself a force that would be able to resist the daring of knowledge; it must open up to him, unfold before his eyes the riches and depths of its nature and allow him to enjoy them.”

Hegel sharply criticized Schelling for underestimating the role of logical thinking and logic in general, for intuitionism, which ultimately led Schelling to outright irrationalism. However, being an idealist, Hegel was unable to criticize the main idealistic flaw of his immediate predecessors: for him, as well as for other idealists, nature is derived from a supernatural spirit. That is why Hegel was unable to solve those great dialectical problems that were posed by the predecessors of his own philosophy.

He believed that neither matter nor human consciousness can be considered primary, because consciousness cannot be logically deduced from matter, and matter is also not deducible from human consciousness, which itself must be understandable as the result of the previous development of the absolute substantial principles.

Identity of being and thinking

– starting point of Hegel’s philosophy

Hegel rejects Schelling's assertion that the first principle must be conceived as the absolute identity of the subjective and objective, excluding any difference between them. Identity and difference are dialectical opposites, inseparable from each other.

The original identity that forms the substantial basis of the world is, according to Hegel, the identity of thinking and being, in which, however, there is initially a difference between the objective and the subjective, but this difference itself exists only in thinking. Thinking, according to Hegel, is not only a subjective, human activity, but also an objective essence independent of man, the fundamental principle, the primary source of everything that exists.

Thinking, Hegel claims, “alienates” its existence in the form of matter, nature, which is the “other being” of this objectively existing thinking, which Hegel calls the absolute idea. From this point of view, reason is not a specific feature of a person, but the fundamental principle of the world, from which it follows that the world is fundamentally logical, exists and develops according to laws internal to thinking and reason. Thus, thinking and reason are considered by Hegel as the absolute essence of nature, man, and world history, independent of man and humanity. Hegel seeks to prove that thinking, as a substantial essence, is not located outside the world, but in it itself, as its internal content, manifested in all the diversity of phenomena of reality.

Trying to consistently implement the principle of the identity of thinking and being, Hegel considers thinking (the absolute idea) not as a fixed, unchanging primary essence, but as a continuously developing process of cognition, ascending from one stage to another, higher one. Because of this, the absolute idea is not only the beginning, but also the developing content of the entire world process. This is the meaning of Hegel’s well-known position that the absolute must be understood not only as a prerequisite for everything that exists, but also as its result, i.e. the highest stage of its development. This highest stage of development of the “absolute idea” is the “absolute spirit” - humanity, human history.

Thinking, compared to sensory perceptions, is the highest form of knowledge of the external world. We cannot sensually perceive something that no longer exists (the past), something that does not yet exist (the future). Sensory perceptions are directly related to objects, objects that affect our senses; science discovers, reveals phenomena that we do not see, do not hear, do not touch. However, no matter how great the importance of thinking, no matter how limitless the possibilities of theoretical knowledge, thinking is based on the data of sensory experience and is impossible without it. Hegel, due to his characteristic idealistic underestimation of sensory data, did not see the deep dialectical unity of the rational and empirical, did not understand how thinking draws its content from sensory perceptions of the external world. The content of thinking (the content of science), according to Hegel, is the content inherent in it alone (thinking alone); it is not received from the outside, but is generated by thinking. Knowledge, from this point of view, is not the discovery of what exists outside of us, outside of thinking; this is the discovery, awareness of the content of thinking, science. It turns out, therefore, that thinking and science cognize their own content and knowledge turns out to be self-consciousness of the spirit. Ultimately, Hegel comes to the fantastic conclusion that human thinking is only one of the manifestations of some absolute thinking that exists outside of man - an absolute idea, i.e. God. The rational, the divine, the actual, the necessary coincide with each other, according to the teachings of Hegel. From this follows one of the most important theses of Hegelian philosophy: everything that is real is rational, everything that is rational is real.

Thinking reflects objective reality, and since it correctly reflects it, we can talk about a reasonable view of the world. But Hegel identifies the reflection of reality (reason) and what is reflected - objective reality. This identity of the world mind with the diverse world of phenomena, this process of thinking, contains all the diversity of reality, and is called the “absolute idea”, on the one hand, it is filled with completely real natural and historical content, and on the other hand, it turns out to be a refined idea of ​​God .

The main form of thinking is the concept. Since Hegel absolutizes thinking, he inevitably deifies the concept. It, according to his teaching, “is the beginning of all life” and is “an endless creative form that contains within itself the entirety of all content and at the same time serves as its source.” Speaking against the materialist doctrine of the concept as the highest form of reflection of objective reality, Hegel turns the real relationship between thinking and being on its head: it is not thinking, he says, that reflects being, but being is the embodiment of thinking, concept, idea.

So, the starting point of the Hegelian philosophical system is the idealistic identification of thinking and being, the reduction of all processes to the process of thinking. Real history is reduced to the history of knowledge, and the growth and deepening of knowledge about the world is considered as the development of reality itself. Hegel deifies the process of knowledge carried out by humanity, passing it off as divine self-knowledge, as well as humanity’s knowledge of God and thereby itself.

Hegel's logic

The main parts of Hegel's philosophical system are logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy of spirit, to which are directly adjacent the philosophy of law, philosophy of history, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, history of philosophy. Logic, as it follows from the initial position of Hegel’s philosophy, is the most important part of his system, since the identity of thinking and being means that the laws of thinking, which logic deals with, are the true laws of being: both nature, human history and knowledge. Before Hegel, logic was considered the science of subjective (human) forms of thinking. Without denying the need for such a scientific discipline, i.e. formal logic, as the science of elementary forms and laws correct thinking, Hegel sets before logical science the task of exploring the most general laws of the development of knowledge.

Hegel declares logic to be the doctrine of the essence of all things. Therefore, in Hegel’s “Science of Logic”, in addition to the usual questions and concepts for logic, judgments, conclusions, questions are considered that formal logic has never dealt with: questions about the laws of reality itself, about the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative ones, about the relationship between philosophical categories, etc. .

Hegel's formulation of the question of dialectical logic is idealistic in nature, since Hegel identifies the laws of nature with the laws of logic and thinking. One cannot agree with Hegel’s understanding of the objectivity of forms of thinking, but it contains a deep guess that various shapes thinking in its very structure is similar to the relationships and processes that took place in objective reality.

Concepts, according to Hegel, are in continuous motion, pass, “flow” into each other, and change. develop, turn into their opposite, revealing their inherent contradictions, which constitute the driving force of their development. The development of concepts goes from the abstract to the concrete, from a one-sided concept poor in content to a concept increasingly rich in content, embracing in unity various, even opposite, sides. Hegel shows that quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes, which are accomplished through a leap, a break in continuity.

Hegel's doctrine of the dialectics of thinking, the interconnection and movement of concepts indirectly points to the content and patterns of development of those real material processes, which, contrary to the teachings of Hegel, exist independently of cognition, of thinking. Of course, Hegel could not “invent” the dialectic of concepts: its real source was the real dialectic of things in nature and society.

Characterizing essence as a philosophical category, Hegel indicates that it should include both that which distinguishes phenomena from each other, and that which is the same, identical in them. But in contrast to metaphysics, Hegel argues that identity and difference do not exist separately from each other, but represent opposite, interconnected moments of essence. When we talk about identity, we mean differences; when we talk about difference, we assume identity.

Hegel contrasts the metaphysical idea of ​​an abstract identity that excludes differences with the dialectical idea of ​​a concrete identity containing differences. The concept of abstract identity presupposes the existence of unchanging, always the same things. The concept of concrete identities, on the contrary, indicates that each phenomenon changes, i.e. does not remain itself, always the same, but passes into something else, contains this other as the opposite, negation, the embryo of the future.

Characterizing the concept, Hegel correctly notes that it is not only general. The general is taken by itself, without connection with the particular, i.e. with what distinguishes one phenomenon from another is meaningless. In reality, and, consequently, in the concept, the general, the particular and the individual are also inseparable, like identity and difference in the essence of phenomena. Revealing the multiplicity of the concept, the unity of various aspects in reality itself, Hegel comes to the conclusion that truth is truth only insofar as it contains in unity various, including opposite, aspects of the real. In this sense, Hegel asserts: there is no abstract truth, truth is always concrete. The concept of how, the unity of the general, the particular and the individual, receives its necessary expression in various types of judgments and inferences, which are depicted by Hegel as the discovery and implementation of the creative power inherent in the “concept” as the internal basis of all those processes that are observed in nature and society throughout history .

Hegel's concept is a process of theoretical thinking raised to an absolute. The activity of thinking and all conscious, purposeful practical activity of people that transforms the world is idealistically interpreted by Hegel as creativity, self-knowledge of the “absolute idea”, which reveals in itself everything that directly, on the surface, appears as the development of nature and societies. Thus, recognizing development and trying to give a picture of it, Hegel portrays it as a process of cognition taking place in the bosom of the “absolute idea.”

The main parts of Hegel's philosophical system are logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy of spirit, to which are directly adjacent the philosophy of law, philosophy of history, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, history of philosophy. Logic, as it follows from the initial position of Hegel’s philosophy, is the most important part of his system, since the identity of thinking and being means that the laws of thinking, which logic deals with, are the true laws of being: both nature, human history and knowledge. Before Hegel, logic was considered the science of subjective (human) forms of thinking. Without denying the need for such a scientific discipline, i.e. formal logic, as the science of the elementary forms and laws of correct thinking, Hegel sets before logical science the task of investigating the most general laws of development of knowledge.

Hegel declares logic to be the doctrine of the essence of all things. Therefore, in Hegel’s “Science of Logic”, in addition to the usual questions and concepts for logic, judgments, conclusions, questions are considered that formal logic has never dealt with: questions about the laws of reality itself, about the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative ones, about the relationship between philosophical categories, etc. .

Hegel's formulation of the question of dialectical logic is idealistic in nature, since Hegel identifies the laws of nature with the laws of logic and thinking. One cannot agree with Hegel’s understanding of the objectivity of forms of thinking, but it contains a deep guess that various forms of thinking are, by their very structure, similar to the relationships and processes that took place in objective reality.

Concepts, according to Hegel, are in continuous motion, pass, “flow” into each other, and change. develop, turn into their opposite, revealing their inherent contradictions, which constitute the driving force of their development. The development of concepts goes from the abstract to the concrete, from a one-sided concept poor in content to a concept increasingly rich in content, embracing in unity various, even opposite, sides. Hegel shows that quantitative changes lead to qualitative changes, which occur through a leap, a break in continuity. (3.33)

Hegel's teaching about the dialectics of thinking, about the interconnection and movement of concepts indirectly points to the content and patterns of development of those real material processes that, contrary to Hegel's teaching, exist independently of cognition and thinking. Of course, Hegel could not “invent” the dialectic of concepts: its real source was the real dialectic of things in nature and society.

Characterizing essence as a philosophical category, Hegel indicates that it should include both that which distinguishes phenomena from each other, and that which is the same, identical in them. But in contrast to metaphysics, Hegel argues that identity and difference do not exist separately from each other, but represent opposite, interconnected moments of essence. When we talk about identity, we mean differences; when we talk about difference, we assume identity.

Hegel contrasts the metaphysical idea of ​​an abstract identity that excludes differences with the dialectical idea of ​​a concrete identity containing differences. The concept of abstract identity presupposes the existence of unchanging, always the same things. The concept of concrete identities, on the contrary, indicates that each phenomenon changes, i.e. does not remain with itself, always the same, but passes into another, contains this other as the opposite, negation, the embryo of the future. (1.45)

Characterizing the concept, Hegel correctly notes that it is not only general. The general is taken by itself, without connection with the particular, i.e. with what distinguishes one phenomenon from another is meaningless. In reality, and therefore in the concept, the general, the particular and the individual are also inseparable, like identity and difference in the essence of phenomena. Revealing the multiplicity of the concept, the unity of various aspects in reality itself, Hegel comes to the conclusion that truth is truth only insofar as it contains in unity various, including opposite, aspects of the real. In this sense, Hegel asserts: there is no abstract truth, truth is always concrete. Concept how. the unity of the general, the particular and the individual receives its necessary expression in various types of judgments and inferences, which are depicted by Hegel as the discovery and implementation of the creative power inherent in the “concept” as the internal basis of all those processes that are observed in nature and society throughout history.

Hegel's concept is a process of theoretical thinking raised to an absolute. The activity of thinking and all conscious, purposeful practical activity of people that transforms the world is idealistically interpreted by Hegel as creativity, self-knowledge of the “absolute idea”, which reveals in itself everything that directly, on the surface, appears as the development of nature and societies. Thus, recognizing development and trying to give a picture of it, Hegel portrays it as a process of cognition taking place in the bosom of the “absolute idea.”

In his doctrine of knowledge, Hegel also raises the question of the relationship of theoretical knowledge to practical activity, trying to reveal the unity and interaction between theory and practice. Developing the position of Kant and Fichte on the activity of cognitive thinking, Hegel shows that the transformation of reality and its knowledge constitute a single process. In this regard, Hegel goes further than the materialists of the 17th and 18th centuries, who considered the process of cognition contemplatively, i.e. primarily as the impact of an object on the cognizing subject and, accordingly, the perception of this impact by the subject. The Marxist understanding of practice is fundamentally opposite to Hegel’s, since for dialectical materialism practice is the use of material means with the aim of changing and understanding material reality. According to Hegel, practice is the activity of thinking, and ultimately the cosmic activity of the “absolute idea”, which creates the world by cognizing itself. (1.37)

For Hegel, the logical process of development ends with the concept of the “absolute idea,” which first “alienates” its being, imparts to it movement, as a result of which being becomes meaningful. Then it reveals itself as an essence, as a concept and, finally, thanks to the development of the concept, as an “absolute idea”, which acts as a systematic, diverse unity of all aspects, logical definitions, characterizes not only the world as a whole, but also its knowledge.