has received in our text-books a position and significance as though
it gave expression only to the activity of the understanding as
consciousness; hence it is said to direct us how to think correctly.
Thus it appears as though the movement of thought were something
independent, unaffected by the object of thought; in other words, as
if it contained the so-called laws of thought of our understanding,
through which we attain to perception, but through a medium which was
not the movement of things themselves. The result must certainly be
truth, so that things are constituted as we bring them forth according
to the laws of thought; but the manner of this knowledge has merely
a subjective significance, and the judgment and conclusion are not a
judgment and conclusion of things themselves. Now if, according to
this point of view, thought is considered on its own account, it does
not make its appearance implicitly as knowledge, nor is it without
content in and for itself; for it is a formal activity which certainly
is exercised, but whose content is one given to it. Thought in this
sense becomes something subjective; these judgments and conclusions
are in and for themselves quite true, or rather correct—this no one
ever doubted; but because content is lacking to them, these judgments
and conclusions do not suffice for the knowledge of the truth. Thus by
logicians they are held to be forms whose content is something entirely
different, because they have not even the form of the content; and the
meaning which is given to them—namely that they are forms—is found
fault with. The worst thing said of them, however, is that their only
error is their being formal; both the laws of thought as such, and
also its determinations, the categories, are either determinations of
the judgment only, or merely subjective forms of the understanding,
while the thing-in-itself is very different. But in that point of
view and in the blame awarded the truth itself is missed, for untruth
is the form of opposition between subject and object, and the lack
of unity in them; in this case the question is not put at all as to
whether anything is absolutely true or not. These determinations
have certainly no empirical content, but thought and its movement
is itself the content—and, indeed, as interesting a content as any
other that can be given; consequently this science of thought is on
its own account a true science. But here again we come across the
drawback pertaining to the whole Aristotelian manner, as also to all
succeeding logic—and that indeed in the highest degree—that in thought
and in the movement of thought as such, the individual moments fall
asunder; there are a number of kinds of judgment and conclusion, each
of which is held to be independent, and is supposed to have absolute
truth as such. Thus they are simply content, for they then have an
indifferent, undistinguished existence, such as we see in the famous
laws of contradiction, conclusions, &c. In this isolation they have,
however, no truth; for their totality alone is the truth of thought,
because this totality is at once subjective and objective. Thus they
are only the material of truth, the formless content; their deficiency
is hence not that they are only forms but rather that form is lacking
to them, and that they are in too great a degree content. Thus as many
individual qualities of a thing are not anything, such as red, hard,
&c., if taken by themselves, but only in their unity constitute a real
thing, so it is with the unity of the forms of judgment and conclusion,
which individually have as little truth as such a quality, or as a
rhythm or melody. The form of a conclusion, as also its content, may
be quite correct, and yet the conclusion arrived at may be untrue,
because this form as such has no truth of its own; but from this
point of view these forms have never been considered, and the scorn
of logic rests simply on the false assumption that there is a lack of
content. Now this content is none other than the speculative Idea.
Conceptions of the understanding or of reason constitute the essence
of things, not certainly for that point of view, but in truth; and
thus also for Aristotle the conceptions of the understanding, namely
the categories, constitute the essential realities of Being. If they
are thus in and for themselves true, they themselves are their own,
and thus the highest content. But in ordinary logic this is not the
case, and even as these are represented in the Aristotelian works
they are only universal thought-determinations, between which the
abstract understanding makes distinctions. This, however, is not the
logic of speculative thought, _i.e._ of reason as distinguished from
understanding; for there the identity of the understanding which
allows nothing to contradict itself is fundamental. However little
this logic of the finite may be speculative in nature, yet we must
make ourselves acquainted with it, for it is everywhere discovered in
finite relationships. There are many sciences, subjects of knowledge,
&c., that know and apply no other forms of thought than these forms of
finite thought, which constitute in fact the general method of dealing
with the finite sciences. Mathematics, for instance, is a constant
series of syllogisms; jurisprudence is the bringing of the particular
under the general, the uniting together of both these sides. Within
these relationships of finite determinations the syllogism has now,
indeed, on account of its terms being three in number, been called the
totality of these determinations, and hence by Kant (Kritik der reinen
Vernunft, p. 261) also the rational conclusion; but this syllogism
addressed to the intelligence as it appears in the ordinary logical
form, is only the intelligible form of rationality, and, as we saw
above (p. 76), is very different from the rational syllogism proper.
Aristotle is thus the originator of the logic of the understanding; its
forms only concern the relationship of finite to finite, and in them
the truth cannot be grasped. But it must be remarked that Aristotle’s
philosophy is not by any means founded on this relationship of the
understanding; thus it must not be thought that it is in accordance
with these syllogisms that Aristotle has thought. If Aristotle did so,
he would not be the speculative philosopher that we have recognized him
to be; none of his propositions could have been laid down, and he could
not have made any step forward, if he had kept to the forms of this
ordinary logic.
Like the whole of Aristotle’s philosophy, his logic really requires
recasting, so that all his determinations should be brought into a
necessary systematic whole—not a systematic whole which is correctly
divided into its parts, and in which no part is forgotten, all being
set forth in their proper order, but one in which there is one living
organic whole, in which each part is held to be a part, and the whole
alone as such is true. Aristotle, in the Politics, for instance
(_supra_, pp. 207-208), often gives expression to this truth. For
this reason the individual logical form has in itself no truth, not
because it is the form of thought, but because it is determinate
thought, individual form, and to be esteemed as such. But as system
and absolute form ruling this content, thought has its content as a
distinction in itself, being speculative philosophy in which subject
and object are immediately identical, and the Notion and the universal
are the realities of things. Just as duty certainly expresses the
absolute, but, as determinate, a determinate absolute which is only
a moment and must be able again to abrogate its determination, the
logical form which abrogates itself as this determinate in this very
way gives up its claim to be in and for itself. But in this case logic
is the science of reason, speculative philosophy of the pure Idea
of absolute existence, which is not entangled in the opposition of
subject and object, but remains an opposition in thought itself. Yet we
certainly may allow that much in logic is an indifferent form.
At this point we would leave off as far as the Aristotelian philosophy
is concerned, and from this it is difficult to break away. For the
further we go into its details, the more interesting it becomes, and
the more do we find the connection which exists among the subjects.
The fulness with which I have set forth the principal content of the
Aristotelian philosophy is justified both by the importance of the
matter itself, because it offers to us a content of its own, and also
by the circumstances already mentioned (p. 118), that against no
philosophy have modern times sinned so much as against this, and none
of the ancient philosophers have so much need of being defended as
Aristotle.
One of the immediate followers of Aristotle was Theophrastus,
born Ol 102, 2 (371 B.C.); though a man of distinction, he can
still only be esteemed a commentator on Aristotle. For Aristotle
is so rich a treasure-house of philosophic conceptions, that much
material is found in him which is ready for further working upon,
which may be put forward more abstractly, and in which individual
propositions may be brought into prominence. However Aristotle’s
manner of procedure, which is to take an empirical starting point of
ratiocination [Raisonnement], and to comprehend this in the focus of
the speculative Notion, is characteristic of his mind, without being
one which, on its own account, can be freely elevated into a method
and a principle. Thus of Theophrastus as of many others (Dicæarchus
of Messina, for instance), amongst whom Strato of Lampsacus, the
successor of Theophrastus, is best known, there is not much to tell.
As regards Dicæarchus, Cicero says, (Tusc. Quæst. I. 31, 10) that he
controverted the immortality of the soul, for he asserted that “the
soul is no more than an empty name, and the whole of the capacities
and powers with which we act and feel are equally extended over all
living bodies, and inseparable from the body; for it is nothing
but the body so constituted as to live and feel through a certain
symmetry and proportion in its body.” Cicero gives in an historical
manner a result as he made it comprehensible to himself, without any
speculative conception. Stobæus (Eclog. phys. p. 796), on the other
hand, quotes from Dicæarchus that he held the soul to be “a harmony of
the four elements.” We have only a little general information to give
of Strato, that he acquired great fame as a physicist, and that his
conception of nature went upon mechanical lines, and yet not on those
of Leucippus and Democritus, and later, of Epicurus; for, according to
Stobæus (Eclog. phys. p. 298), he made warmth and cold into elements.
Hence, if what is said of him is accurate, he was most unfaithful to
the beliefs of Aristotle, because he led everything back to mechanism
and chance and did away with the immanent end, without accepting the
false teleology of modern times. At least, Cicero (De nat. Deor. I. 13)
relates of him that he maintained that “divine strength lies altogether
in nature, which has in itself the causes of origination, of growth,
and of decay, but lacks all sensation and conformation.” The other
Peripatetics occupied themselves more with working up individual
doctrines of Aristotle, with bringing out his works in a commentated
form, which is more or less rhetorical in character, though similar
in content. But in practical life the Peripatetic school maintained
as the principle of happiness, the unity of reason and inclination.
We thus may set aside any further expansion of the Peripatetic
philosophy, because it has no longer the same interest, and later on
tended to become a popular philosophy (Vol. I. p. 479, Vol. II. p.
130); in this mode it no longer remained an Aristotelian philosophy,
although this, too, as what is really speculative, must coincide most
closely with actuality. This decay of the Aristotelian philosophy is,
indeed, closely connected with the circumstance already mentioned (pp.
126-128), that the Aristotelian writings soon disappeared, and that the
Aristotelian philosophy did not retain its place so much through these
documents as through the traditions in the school, whereby they soon
underwent material changes; and amplifications of Aristotle’s doctrines
were brought about, as to which it is not known whether some may not
have slipped into what pass for his works.
Since Aristotle’s leading thought has penetrated all spheres of
consciousness, and this isolation in the determination through the
Notion, because it is likewise necessary, contains in every sphere
the profoundest of true thoughts, Aristotle, to anticipate here the
external history of his philosophy as a whole, for many centuries
was the constant mainstay of the cultivation of thought. When in the
Christian West science disappeared amongst the Christians, the fame
of Aristotle shone forth with equal brilliance amongst the Arabians,
from whom, in later times, his philosophy was again passed over to the
West. The triumph which was celebrated upon the revival of learning,
on account of the Aristotelian philosophy having been expelled from
the schools, from the sciences, and specially from theology, as from
the philosophy which deals with absolute existence, must be regarded
in two different aspects. In the first place we must remember that
it was not the Aristotelian philosophy which was expelled, so much
as the principle of the science of theology which supported itself
thereon, according to which the first truth is one which is given and
revealed—an hypothesis which is once for all a fundamental one, and by
which reason and thought have the right and power to move to and fro
only superficially. In this form the thought which was awakened in the
Middle Ages reconstructed its theology more especially, entered into
all dialectic movements and determinations, and erected an edifice
where the material that was given was only superficially worked up,
disposed and secured. The triumph over this system was thus a triumph
over that principle, and consequently the triumph of free, spontaneous
thought. But another side of this triumph is the triumph of the
commonplace point of view that broke free from the Notion and shook off
the yoke of thought. Formerly, and even nowadays, enough has been heard
of Aristotle’s scholastic subtleties; in using this name, men thought
that they had a right to spare themselves from entering on abstraction,
and, in place of the Notion, they thought that it justified them
in seeing, hearing, and thus making their escape to what is called
healthy human understanding. In science, too, in place of subtle
thoughts, subtle sight has commenced; a beetle or a species of bird is
distinguished with as great minuteness as were formerly conceptions and
thoughts. Such subtleties as whether a species of bird is red or green
in colour, or has a more or less perfect tail, are found more easy than
the differences in thought; and in the meantime, until a people has
educated itself up to the labour of thought, in order to be able thus
to support the universal, the former is a useful preparation, or rather
it is a moment in this course of culture.
But inasmuch as the deficiency in the Aristotelian philosophy rests in
the fact, that after the manifold of phenomena was through it raised
into the Notion, though this last again fell asunder into a succession
of determinate Notions, the unity of the absolute Notion which unites
them was not emphasized, and this is what succeeding time had to
accomplish. What now appears is that the unity of the Notion which is
absolute existence, makes its appearance as necessity, and it presents
itself first as the unity of self-consciousness and consciousness, as
pure thought. The unity of existence as existence is objective unity,
thought, as that which is thought. But unity, as Notion, the implicitly
universal negative unity, time as absolutely fulfilled time, and in its
fulfilment as being unity, is pure self-consciousness. Hence we see it
come to pass, that pure self-consciousness makes itself reality, but,
at the same time, it first of all does so with subjective significance
as a self-consciousness that has taken up its position as such, and
that separates itself from objective existence, and hence is first of
all subject to a difference which it does not overcome.
Here we have concluded the first division of Greek philosophy, and
we have now to pass to the second period. The first period of Greek
philosophy extended to Aristotle, to the attainment of a scientific
form in which knowledge has reached the standing of free thought. Thus
in Plato and Aristotle the result was the Idea; yet we saw in Plato
the universal made the principle in a somewhat abstract way as the
unmoved Idea; in Aristotle, on the other hand, thought in activity
became absolutely concrete as the thought which thinks itself. The next
essential, one which now is immediately before us, must be contained in
that into which Philosophy under Plato and Aristotle had formed itself.
This necessity is none other than the fact that the universal must now
be proclaimed free for itself as the universality of the principle, so
that the particular may be recognized through this universal; or the
necessity of a systematic philosophy immediately enters in, what we
formerly called one in accordance with the unity of the Notion. We
may speak of the Platonic and Aristotelian systems, but they are not
in the form of a system; for that it is requisite that one principle
should be maintained and consistently carried through the particular.
In the perfect complex of the conception of the universe as it is
to Aristotle, where everything is in the highest form of scientific
knowledge led back to what is speculative, however empiric may be his
manner of setting to work, there certainly is one principle brought
forward, and that a speculative one, though it is not brought forward
as being one. The nature of the speculative has not been explicitly
brought to consciousness as the Notion—as containing in itself the
development of the manifold nature of the natural and spiritual
universe, consequently it is not set forth as the universal, from which
the particular was developed. Aristotle’s logic is really the opposite
of this. He in great measure passes through a series of the living
and the dead, makes them confront his objective, that is, conceiving
thought, and grasps them in his understanding; each object is on its
own account a conception which is laid open in its determinations,
and yet he also brings these reflections together, and thereby is
speculative. If even Plato on the whole proceeded in an empiric way,
taking up this and that idea, each of which is in turn examined, with
Aristotle this loose method of procedure appears still more clearly. In
the Aristotelian teaching the Idea of the self-reflecting thought is
thus grasped as the highest truth; but its realization, the knowledge
of the natural and spiritual universe, constitutes outside of that
Idea a long series of particular conceptions, which are external
to one another, and in which a unifying principle, led through the
particular, is wanting. The highest Idea with Aristotle consequently
once more stands only as a particular in its own place and without
being the principle of his whole philosophy. Hence the next necessity
in Philosophy is that the whole extent of what is known must appear as
one organization of the Notion; that in this way the manifold reality
may be related to that Idea as the universal, and thereby determined.
This is the standpoint which we find in this second period.
A systematic philosophy such as this becomes in the first place
dogmatism, in antagonism to which, because of its one-sided character,
scepticism immediately arises. In the same way the French call
what is dogmatic _systématique_, and _système_ that in which all
the conceptions must consistently proceed from one determination;
hence to them _systématique_ is synonymous with one-sided. But the
philosophies that ensue are one-sided, because in them it was only the
necessity of one principle that was recognized, without their meanwhile
developing from themselves, as might well have come to pass in and
for itself, the Idea as the real universal, and thus comprehending
the world in such a way that the content is only grasped as the
determination of the self-reflective thought. Hence this principle
stands up formally and abstractly, and the particular is not yet
deduced from it, for the universal is only applied to the particular
and the rules for this application sought out. In Aristotle the Idea
is at least implicitly concrete, as the consciousness of the unity of
subjective and objective, and therefore it is not one-sided. Should
the Idea be truly concrete, the particular must be developed from
it. The other relation would be the mere bringing of the particular
under the universal, so that both should be mutually distinguished;
in such a case the universal is only a formal principle, and such a
philosophy is therefore one-sided. But the true difficulty is that the
two endeavours, the development of the particular from the Idea, and
the bringing of the particular under the universal, collide with one
another. The manifestations of the physical and spiritual world must
first, from their respective sides, be prepared for and worked into the
Notion, so that the other sciences can form therefrom universal laws
and principles. Then for the first time can speculative reason present
itself in determinate thoughts, and bring perfectly to consciousness
the inwardly existing connection between them. As dogmatic, however,
those philosophies, it may be further said, are assertive likewise,
because in such a method the principle is only asserted and is not
truly proved. For a principle is demanded under which everything is
subsumed; thus it is only pre-supposed as the first principle. Before
this we have had abstract principles such as pure Being, but here the
particular, with which begins the distinction from what is different,
became posited as the purely negative. That necessity, on the other
hand, makes for a universal which must likewise be in the particular,
so that this should not be set aside, but should have its determinate
character through the universal.
This demand for a universal, even though still unproved principle,
is henceforth present to knowledge. What answers to this demand
now appears in the world through the inward necessity of mind—not
externally, but as being in conformity with the Notion. This necessity
has produced the philosophy of the Stoics, Epicureans, New Academy, and
Sceptics, which we have now to consider. If we have remained too long
in the consideration of this period, we may now make amends for this
protraction, for in the next period we may be brief.
SECTION TWO
SECOND PERIOD: DOGMATISM AND SCEPTICISM.