Critique and Speculation: Reconsidering Hegel's Early Dialectical Logic

Abstract

The aim of this article is to clarify the critical role of Hegel's early logic, through an assessment of the dialectical process of sublation [Aufhebung] of the determinations of finite thinking at stake within its exposition. I want to show that the dialectical-critical work of logic has a speculative meaning for Hegel, thereby displaying the inward correspondence between critical and speculative aspects of philosophical activity. By pointing out the evidence from fragmentary texts on logic relating to Hegel's teaching activity in 1801–1802, I will first put into question the idea of an introductory role of logic. In so doing I challenge a widespread reading which argues for the presence of a sharp separation between critical logic and speculative metaphysics. I will then focus on the texts on logic in the 1804–1805 Reinschrift, reading them as the worksite wherein the dawning form of a full-fledged dialectical logic is first prepared and elaborated. More generally, if this paves the way for establishing a continuity between Hegel's early and mature logic and his concept of dialectic, it is also paramount for understanding how the activity of systematic philosophy in the mature version of the system essentially constitutes an ongoing work on the forms of the finite.

The barbarian […] is frightened of understanding and stays with intuition.

Reason without understanding is nothing,

while understanding is still something even without reason.

Hegel's Wastebook, 1803–06

Since his first attempt to display the nature of systematic philosophy, with the publication of the Difference essay in Jena,¹ Hegel is confronted with the difficulties associated with beginning a non-foundation science.² The main difficulty consists in holding together two apparently opposite requirements: on the one hand, philosophical science must begin with itself and have no introduction; on the other hand, philosophy must be critical of any presupposition of finite knowledge, which in turn produces the need for philosophy's own emergence. This difficulty reappears throughout Hegel's entire reflection, involving in different ways the problematic coexistence of aprioristic and critical aspects of Hegel's idea of philosophy.³ In my paper, I will address such a problematic horizon by focusing on the role of logic as the first part of Jena system-drafts.

By pointing out the evidence from fragmentary texts on logic relating to Hegel's teaching activity in 1801–02, I will first put into question the idea of an introductory role of logic. In so doing I challenge a widespread reading which argues for the presence of a sharp separation between critical logic and speculative metaphysics. I will then focus on the texts on logic in the 1804–05 Reinschrift, reading them as the worksite wherein the dawning form of a full-fledged dialectical logic is first prepared and elaborated. The aim of my paper is to clarify the critical role of Hegel's early logic through an assessment of the dialectical process of sublation (Aufhebung) of the determinations of finite thinking at stake within its exposition. I want to show that the dialectical-critical work of logic has a speculative meaning for Hegel, thereby displaying the inward correspondence between critical and speculative aspects of philosophical activity. More generally, if this paves the way for establishing a continuity between Hegel's early and mature logic and in his concept of dialectic, it is also paramount for understanding how the activity of systematic philosophy in the mature version of the system essentially constitutes an ongoing work on the forms of the finite.

I. Logic as introduction to philosophy: Hegel's lectures in 1801–02

As Privatdozent, during the winter semester 1801–02, Hegel teaches two classes: Introductio in philosophiam and Logica et Metaphysica.⁴ The Difference essay has been published a few months earlier, and the habilitation thesis has been discussed just a few weeks before the beginning of the semester. Through these two lecture series, Hegel tries to establish a reputation within the Jena academic environment,⁵ but his strategy is not, for various reasons, successful.

There is no certainty that the class Introductio in philosophiam even took place; while the class Logica et Metaphysica was dismissed before the end of semester, due to lack of attendance: Hegel's first teaching experience was thus a disappointment.

I will now briefly focus on the objective of Hegel's first two classes to challenge the idea widely accepted by Hegel scholarship, of a merely introductory role of logic and a sharp separation between logic and metaphysics in the early configuration of his system of philosophy. I will in fact deal with the problematic connection that exists between an introduction to philosophy and logic on the one hand, and the internal division of the first part of the system of philosophy into logic and metaphysics, on the other.

First of all, it is important to point out that the two lecture series put into question exactly what they announce to address in their respective titles. In the Introductio in philosophiam, Hegel resolutely claims that philosophy does not require an introduction: ‘These lectures, in which I promised to give an introduction to philosophy, cannot begin with any remark other than philosophy as science neither needs nor tolerates an introduction’ (Introductio in Philosophiam: 259, translation mine).⁶

Similarly, in his presentation of the class Logica et Metaphysica, Hegel puts forward an interesting coincidence between logic and metaphysics. Indeed, in the fragment Die Idee des absoluten Wesens… (1801–02), he writes:

As science of the idea in itself, [logic] is metaphysics, which destroys the false metaphysics of the limited philosophical systems; then science will pass into the science of the reality of the idea, and will first expose the real body of the idea. (Die Idee des absoluten Wesens…: 263, translation mine)

In this sense, the relation between logic and metaphysics cannot be taken for granted, especially after the Kantian demolition of a traditional account of metaphysics that echoes in these remarks. Logic must be understood neither as a neutral instrument of metaphysics, nor as a mere propaedeutic. Instead, it belongs essentially to the system of scientific philosophy within which it plays a peculiar negative role. This role requires clarification.

Although only a few fragmentary texts are available, they contain important evidence of Hegel's early elaboration of a general systematic framework. These fragments—which have not been translated into English—are seldom discussed by scholars. Nevertheless, I am going to use them, on the one hand, to show that Hegel treats logic and metaphysics as a unified topic and, on the other, to support my reading that the critical role of logic cannot be understood in terms of an introduction to true philosophy. In the next section I will then deepen these aspects by analysing some passages from Hegel's Jena Logic, in order to provide an assessment of its dialectical character.

Hegel's first attempt to elaborate a system of philosophical sciences does not leave the distinction between logic and metaphysics unaltered. If a distinction between the two still exists, this distinction is already the result of the rejection of both the ‘old’ metaphysics and the traditional logic and of a revaluation that posits metaphysics in an intrinsic relation with logic. Indeed, in this early elaboration, the system is not divided into three parts: logic, metaphysics and real philosophy. Instead, it presents a first ‘idealistic’ part, called ‘Science of the Idea’ (Wissenschaft der Idee), comprising logic and metaphysics. In second place it presents the ‘real’ part which is called ‘Science of the reality of the Idea’ (Wissenschaft der Realität der Idee), comprising philosophy of nature and philosophy of spirit. Thus, logic together with metaphysics constitutes the first moment of the system and produces the pure idea of philosophy⁷ through the transition from the finite forms of thought to the infinite forms of thought. Different versions of the same outline are presented during the following years of teaching. During the winter semester of 1803 Hegel teaches the class System der speculativen Philosophie, structured in three parts: (a) Logica et metaphysica sive Idealismus trascendentalis; (b) philosophia naturae; and (c) philosophia mentis. One year later, during the winter semester of 1804, the class is called Tota Philosophiae Scientia and it is divided into: (i) philosophia speculativa (logica et metaphysica); and (ii) philosophia naturae et mentis.

On the one hand, already in his first system drafts, Hegel does not assign to metaphysics an independent position. Here metaphysics appears together with logic and is likened to logic's activity. On the other hand, he clearly challenges the position of logic, assigning it a role that is essential for the conceptual organization and method of the system of philosophy as science.

If it is clear that logic and metaphysics are indeed not independent of each other, it is more difficult to define the boundary between them. Moreover, such a difficulty is exacerbated by the following textual incongruences.

In Troxler's notes of Hegel's first lectures on logic, while logic is defined as ‘science of the forms of finiteness (of Intellect)’, metaphysics is referred to as ‘metaphysics of the destruction of forms or metaphysics of infiniteness’ (VLM (1801–02): 3, translation mine). The moment of the annihilation, which has been defined as the moment of ‘transition’ from understanding to reason or of the elevation of the finite to the infinite, coincides with the whole of metaphysics. On the contrary, in the fragment Daß die Philosophie…, Hegel presents the Aufhebung of the forms of finiteness as the third step of logic, differentiating between the critical moment (that belongs to logic) and the speculative moment (that belongs to metaphysics). As Hegel writes:

According to this general concept of logic I will proceed in the following order, whose necessity will result in the science itself:

1. (I) to present the general forms or laws of finitude […] as a reflexion [Reflex] of the absolute.

2. (II) to examine the subjective forms of finiteness, or finite thinking, the understanding […].

3. (III) to show the sublation of this finite cognition by reason […].

From this third part of logic, namely the negative or destructive side of reason, the transition will be made to actual philosophy or metaphysics. (Daß die Philosophie…: 273–74, translation mine)

According to this last fragment, it could thus seem that between logic and philosophy (as metaphysics, or ‘eigentliche’ philosophy) there is now the same relationship that there was between philosophy and religion in the Frankfurt period. However, this reading is, in my view, untenable, or problematic at best.

Before moving to Jena, in Frankfurt, Hegel claims that philosophy expresses the process of unification of Leben only in the limited form of reflection. Thinking itself is affected by the internal contradiction of presupposing being as the material of its activity and, at the same time, of fixing it in a formal and abstract determination that could not capture the processual—living—character of being itself. In the Frankfurt period, solving the paradox involving reflective and discursive thinking means, for Hegel, finding a different form of unification capable of understanding being as Leben and activity. In Fragment of a System, the form of unification is expressed by religion: it is not a form of knowledge, but faith: according to a position similar to the one taken by Jacobi, truth has the form of something believed, not of something known. The task of philosophy is fulfilled in showing the ‘finiteness’ in each finite being and in putting the real infinite outside the domain of the finite, which is built and governed by the understanding and its laws. By elevating the finite to the infinite through reason, and by revealing presuppositions and contradictions inside the understanding (Verstand), philosophy (as philosophy of reflection) constitutes the necessary introduction to religion. Jacobi's critique of the discursiveness of the understanding and of reflective thinking represents a crucial achievement, not only in this early phase, but more generally for the development of Hegel's thought.

We no longer see this framework operating in the lecture series of 1801–02.

Logic now constitutes the system of reflection which aims at annihilating that very same system. And metaphysics constitutes the system of speculation. It could seem, then, that logic has now taken the place of philosophy in preparing the path for metaphysics (and not for religion), becoming a sort of introduction to true philosophy. However, how could logic be presented as an introduction to philosophy, when philosophy does not need an introduction? Moreover, to consider the role of logic as analogous to the introductory role that philosophy played in the Frankfurt period would mean to posit the same irreconcilable cleavage between the forms of finiteness and infiniteness. This would directly contravene one of Hegel's main and explicit intentions in the Jena period. That is, to find a solution to this dichotomy (Diff.: 93–94/16).

Here, the shortage of textual evidence creates an interpretative difficulty. In 1801–02 Hegel does not write a logic and the scant information about both the ‘metaphysical’ and the ‘speculative’ parts of the Logica et Metaphysica lecture series is extremely vague. Nevertheless, it is possible to reconstruct the notion of a logical discipline in general that emerges when Hegel finds himself in the position of thinking philosophy in a systematic way for the first time. The emerging issue involves the determination of the borderline between logic and metaphysics, and the peculiar object, task and method of each part. While this difficulty presents an internal hurdle for the comprehension of the two parts of the beginning of philosophy, there is also the general problem of understanding the beginning of philosophy as a moment that is differentiated in itself and that is yet unitary. In fact, if one considers logic and metaphysics together as the first part of the system of philosophy, this first part is also called by Hegel ‘Idealism’, or science of the idea as such, or ‘Logic’ in a wider sense (‘the extended Science of the Idea as such will be Idealism or Logic’ (Die Idee des absoluten Wesens…: 263, translation mine). This means that logic is at the same time one part and the whole of the beginning of philosophy: it is the system of reflection and the unity of the systems of reflection and of speculation. Logic, in its general, speculative or metaphysical meaning, constitutes a presuppositionless access point to the knowledge of the einfache Idee der Philosophie. Paradoxically, the first part of the system of philosophy is an introductory, founding, critical, sceptical moment that already belongs to philosophy as science. Yet, at the same time, it is not the ‘foundation of philosophy, criticism, sceptical method’ (Diese Vorlesungen…: 260, translation mine), which are all theoretical endeavours that imply philosophy's identification with, and reduction to, an ‘introduction’. The idea of philosophy is not a presupposition of science, and its knowledge constitutes an inner moment of the partition of philosophy: ‘First, we know the simple idea of philosophy itself [die einfache Idee der Philosophie], and then we deduce the division of philosophy’ (Die Idee des absoluten Wesens…: 263, translation mine).

An analysis of the role of logic and of the link between logic and metaphysics is not just a matter of terminological exactness. On the contrary, it allows us to think the process that dialectically produces the contents of philosophical thought, not as a preparatory task to yield and to overcome once and for all at the beginning of science, but as the only object of a true logic that Hegel has been elaborating during these early Jena years. Logic as introduction to philosophy does not end with a purely infinite point of view belonging to a philosophy of the absolute. Rather, the process of bringing the forms of finite knowledge within philosophy constitutes the essential core of the science of speculative thought, in so far as it activates and sublates the abstractness of reflection through critique.

II. The dialectic of Jena Logic in 1804–05

The Logic of 1804–05 belongs to a fairly wide systematic fragment that the editors of the critical edition, Horstmann and Trede, decided to entitle Logik, Metaphysik, Naturphilosophie. ⁸ Thus far, I have reconstructed the idea of logic grounding my analysis from Hegel's presentation of his lecture series and on the notes taken by Troxler. This fragment, however, constitutes the first example of logic written by Hegel himself. In this section, I am going to focus on the activity of sublation of the logic of understanding in order to provide an assessment of its dialectic. Indeed, as I tried to show in the previous section, the critique of understanding represents for Hegel a properly speculative moment at the intersection of logic and metaphysics, even though the boundaries of the latter can be hardly defined during these early Jena years.

In a letter to Goethe, Hegel writes that he is working on a manuscript for his lectures. It is announced as ‘a purely scientific treatment of philosophy’ (Letters: 85), that is, according to the shift in the status of philosophy made by Hegel in Jena. As is known, Hegel decides never to publish the 1804–05 version of his system. Instead, in 1807, he publishes the Phenomenology of Spirit, which was meant to be the first part of a—once again—never published System der Wissenschaft.⁹

Beyond a missing first part, numbered by Hegel himself, we do not have any introduction and we do not even know if an introductory part actually preceded the manuscript for Logik, Metaphysik, Naturphilosophie. It likely did and that makes its loss unfortunate, since in this introduction we hypothetically could have found a brief exposition of the different parts composing this systematic fragment and of the peculiar object of investigation of each of them. In other words, this lost introduction would have been extremely useful in shedding light on Hegel's idea of logic. In so far as I cannot refer to it, it is necessary to base our understanding of the main features of the dialectical movement displayed by the critical activity of logic on the analysis of some passages of Hegel's manuscript.

The problems associated with the introduction to philosophy are essential to Hegel's idea of philosophy. They cannot and must not be considered accidental to his project of building a philosophical system. Thus, it is important we get clear about the inward ambiguities involved in Hegel's attribution of an introductory role to logic. As Baum puts it (Baum 1980), in Jena the introductory role of logic has to be understood (1) in a ‘subjective sense’, as the activity of elevating the philosopher to speculation; and (2) in an ‘objective sense’, as an exposition of the necessary passage from logic to metaphysics. Thus, on the one hand, the introductory character of logic involves (1) the individual and historically determinate dimension of the philosopher, which cannot be nullified. Indeed, this dimension is the expression of the epoch that philosophy seeks to comprehend, as its need: that is, as both possibility of its emergence and end towards which philosophy addresses itself in light of human action.¹⁰ On the other hand (2), logic as introduction has to show the necessity of moving philosophy beyond the determinations of finite thought, and yet only by moving from finite thought. In other words, between logic and metaphysics a necessary link has to be established.

While I agree with Baum's general framework, I think his account leaves open to interpretation the way the passage from the critique of finite thought (logic) to speculative thought (metaphysics) should be construed.

At stake here is not just the recognition of the essential and critical side of philosophical work—as one unavoidable aspect of its wider and more complex operation—but also the very notion of speculation. Worse still, it leaves us unable to understand Hegel's mature dialectical-speculative thought, which, I argue, cannot be understood apart from the development of Hegel's early logic. Generally, I think it is a mistake to tackle the problem of the passage from logic to metaphysics by hinting at a ready-made speculative dimension, for which one simply has to find the right access point. The idea of the processual nature of the speculative is not a mature or a post-phenomenological acquisition for Hegel. It belongs to the Kantian legacy that frames his philosophical production from the very beginning. This is crucial for understanding the critical work of philosophy at the beginning of the system of philosophy and for the interpretation of the speculative dimension of thought in general. Even though one admits the transition from the intellectual to the speculative as a necessary path, as well as an inner relation between finite and infinite thought, metaphysics should not be grasped as true before intellectual logic (the ‘logic of understanding’, as Hegel calls it in the manuscript for Logik, Metaphysik, Naturphilosophie), as if the latter simply resulted from the former, displaying a lower level of truth and belonging to a limited point of view.

In so far as the speculative is a product of philosophical activity and not something to be revealed, it is constituted through the ongoing philosophical work of making intellectual determinations contradictory. For this reason, philosophy does not dismiss the intellectual and finite dimension of thought in favour of another dimension that is posited beyond. The contradiction produced by philosophy is not formal or indeterminate. It must have a content. But what does this mean, concretely?

In relation to the problem of a Hegelian redefinition of the meaning of the speculative, which stems from a critical conception of logic, Förster (2018) considers the method of the conceptual movement in the Logic (1804–05) as a necessary and immanent passage of categories and interprets infinity as the absolute restlessness of determinacy.¹¹

In general, I agree with Förster's reading. However, in relation to the link between logic and metaphysics, Förster maintains a sharp distinction between logic and metaphysics in Hegel's 1804–05 manuscript. Although in Förster's view logic has a dialectical meaning, it is still the introduction to a metaphysical discipline that during these years has to be understood analogously to Schelling's philosophy of identity. In Förster's reading, this frame is about to change not because of the takeover of new features of logic (e.g., the passage from logic as a mere critique of understanding to a full-fledged speculative logic),¹² but because of the dialectical turn involving the idea of philosophy itself, which determines the real breaking point with the philosophy of identity. While logic, in its critical and introductory task, has already in Jena a proper dialectical meaning, it is now metaphysics, as science of the idea, that has to become dialectical. According to Förster, it is in this transformation of metaphysics that its identification with logic has to be retrieved; evidence of such a change can be found for the first time in Hegel's lectures on the history of philosophy (1805–06), hence after the Reinschrift. In substantial agreement with Düsing (1976: 150–53), Förster claims that during Hegel's early years in Jena, dialectic is related to logic alone, and it plays no role within metaphysics; however, Förster also argues that dialectic is productive, and its task is primarily the production of antinomies.

I think this is an essential issue: the dialectical capacity of producing antinomies indeed constitutes the core of the meaning of the speculative. Hegel retains the critical role of logic in the process of redefining the meaning of speculation (and the passage from a critical logic to a speculative logic is not a sudden leap but a progressive development)—but he retains it only in so far as the critical or negative activity of logic is understood neither as merely introductory nor as aporetic. Thus, in the mature logic speculation must be held together with critique. Speculative logic inwardly retains a critical character. This is evident if one considers the development of Hegel's idea of logic and the kind of dialectic already at work in Jena critical logic. The ‘erosive’ character of Hegelian philosophy is not a technique, that is a procedure without or indifferent to its own content. Instead, there is an identification between i) the production of antinomies, ii) the production of the content of thought and iii) the activity of bringing the material of finite knowledge within the philosophical system. In the interpretation I am going to advance, such a process, which defines the meaning of the speculative in Hegel's mature logic, is already on display in the Jena Logic.

Therefore, I am now addressing the crux of the problem of Hegel's Jena Logic: is dialectic an external destruction of the determinations of understanding, or is it already the method of self-movement of the determinations of thought?¹³ Is the negativity of understanding and understanding's constant falling into contradictions, a discovery of critical reason, or does it coincide with the activity of reason itself? In other words, is reason the dialectical activity of contradiction arising through understanding?

II.i. Limit: the first dialectical category within the logic of understanding

Hegel's Jena Logic is structured as a sequence of categories necessarily linked to each other and leaning towards a higher degree of complexity and concreteness.

The 1804–05 manuscript is composed of neither a set of unrelated categorical determinations, nor a set of mere progressive negations of the previous category. Rather, the simplest form of unity, which is identity as the ‘self-equivalent’ (Sichselbstgleich), goes through the entire exposition: it constitutes the beginning of the Logic and it reappears as enriched through a stratification process that culminates with Metaphysics. Although the first part of the manuscript is missing, and we do not know how Hegel meant to open this version of his Logic, at the opening of the Metaphysics section, he looks back at the beginning of the logical pathway by claiming that ‘Logic began with unity itself as the self-equivalent’ (LM: 134/129). The title ‘simple connection’ (Einfache Beziehung), referring to the first set of categorical determinations (quality, quantity, infinity), is a conjecture of the editors; moreover, we do not have the first two categories (reality and negation) of quality, and the text starts with the conclusive category of limit, showing the passage from qualitative to quantitative categories.

Although Hegel keeps the Kantian framework of the categories as it features in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason, the movement of the categories composing the triad of each group is already Hegel's elaboration of the outcomes of the Transcendental Dialectic, that is, of the emergence of contradictions involving the categories of Verstand. For this reason, one notices that Hegel makes recourse to arguments belonging to the Dialectic (particularly to the discussion of infinity concerning the cosmological antinomies) when the collapsing point of the categories of quality approaches and these same arguments serve to propel the development of the categories of quantity. Kant's notion of dialectic is thus both taken up and yet crucially redefined. For Hegel, dialectic is no longer conceived as the critique of reason's illegitimate extension of understanding's categories. Rather, what is important for Hegel in the Kantian notion is that dialectic comes to be a critique of understanding led by reason itself. It is in these initial passages of Hegel's manuscript that a dialectical sense of logic emerges as negation of the logic of understanding. I will now show how such a dialectic works within the exposition of the categories of the ‘simple connection’, by focusing, in particular, on the first dialectical category of limit and on the meta-categorical role of infinity.

In the first section of the Logic, the discussion shows the insufficiency of the logic of understanding in regard to two main levels: (1) the determination of determinacy, and (2) the connection between categories.

There is also a third level of analysis, which involves critique of the logic of understanding as it occurs in specific philosophical systems. In the first set of categories of his Logic, Hegel refers once again to Fichte's and Schelling's systems, engaging for the first time in an explicit criticism of his friend Schelling. The critique of understanding, as critique of those philosophies that are grounded on understanding, can also be considered another aspect of the legacy of the Transcendental Dialectic, in its destructive task against traditional metaphysics. All these three levels—(1) of determinacy, (2) intra-categorical, and (3) of philosophical criticism—constitute for Hegel the object of the same logical analysis. This kind of multilevel consideration will recur more extensively in the Science of Logic, when, for example, Hegel puts crucial figures such as Plato, Heraclitus, Spinoza and Schelling into conversation in the context of the discussion of the first categories of Being.

As Hegel inform us, the opening of the Logic deals with the abstract character of determinacy in light of the concept of self-equivalency (Sichselbstgleichheit) (A=A). Hegel shows how a conception of determinacy in the form of an identity with itself, which is for the logic of understanding something isolated and self-sufficient, necessary leads to the establishment of a relationship with an opposite element and then to a re-comprehension of the identity of determinacy in the form of limit. Hegel's argument is very concise, and it is quite difficult to unfold each passage and the different levels of analysis, which constantly appear entangled. Nevertheless, by following the development of the concept of limit, it is possible to shed light on the dialectical procedure that is at stake here.

While the first category of reality expresses the unity of determinacy as simple self-reference and self-equality, the second category of negation indicates the relation to the other as an accidental determination of what the reality, as independent determinacy, is not. Within such a framework, the limit conjoins reality and negation, by means of the ‘and’, as simple juxtaposition.

As an aggregate of unrelated determinations of thought, for the logic of understanding, determinacy corresponds to an aggregate of unrelated qualities. Moreover, the construction of the unity as unification of opposed activities also constitutes, for Hegel, the method of idealism, which involves the unifying process of cognition: ‘the so-called construction of the idea out of the opposed activities, of the ideal, and real ones, as unity of both, has produced nothing but the limit’. And again: ‘The construction out of opposed activities that is called idealism is itself nothing other than the logic of understanding’ (LM: 5/4). According to Hegel, both Fichte's and Schelling's versions of idealism fail to consider the unity of the manifold: by grasping that unity as an I opposed to a non-I, or as an identity excluding the difference, both systems result in expressing the principle of their philosophies in the static form of limit.

Through these considerations on determination, Hegel discloses the dynamic and paradoxical nature of the concept of limit, which drives the conceptual qualitative structure of determinacy. The relation between reality and negation expressed in the form of limit lets reality and negation subsist in an undifferentiated manner on their own account. Because of such an indifference, as in the case of equivalent yet opposed forces, reality and negation turn out to be equal. They are both self-subsisting qualities and their relation is just an external act of conjoining. If we consider reality and negation together, their opposition appears empty (similar to the opposition between the force of attraction and that of repulsion, which is merely an opposition of direction): their self-sufficiency makes reality and negation lack a criterion for differentiation. Moreover, the determinacy, as reality and negation, is always determinate; it is constituted by a specific quality affirmed or negated, equal to itself and different from another. In my reading, limit is the categorical structure that ‘realizes’ quality because of the determinate nature of the qualitative form of determinacy that generates the relation of indifference holding together each determinacy:

In the limit the nothingness of reality and negation is posited, as well as their being apart from this nothingness; in this way quality itself is realized in the limit; for the limit so expresses the concept of quality as being per se of the determinacies, that in it both determinacies, each on its own account, are posited as indifferent to each other, as subsisting apart from each other. At the same time each, in accordance with its content, expresses not determinacy in general (as it does in the concept) but rather determinacy as determinate, as reality and negation; in other words, with respect to each [each expresses] what it would be only in the antithesis or in connection with the other; this connection with the other (being taken back into itself and because as relation it is only external to it) [is] now itself posited with respect to it; the one, itself the nothingness of the qualities, the other, their being. (LM: 6–7/5)

What does it mean that quality is realized in the limit?

The category of limit is the breaking point of the level of concept and the level of being; it shows the inconsistency between the conceptual form of determinacy in general and the real determination of determinacy. However, I do not think that this insufficiency is expressed as an insufficiency at the conceptual level: the form of thought of determinacy in general as self-equivalence itself is the self-equivalence of something determinate, and therefore it initiates a sequence of relations between otherness (in this case, between determinacies) that were only implicit in the simple conceptual unity of self-equivalence. In other words, the qualitative determination describes a process of non-conformity between the conceptual identity of determinacy with itself and the determinateness of the content, which undermines that starting self-sufficiency. Limit, in this sense, is the expression of a conflictual movement between the conceptual pure self-identity of determinacy and the real content of determinacy that pushes towards a categorical redefinition of determinacy. In Hegel's view, quality finds its essence with the concept of limit by becoming the contrary of itself: limit contains the dialectical process leading the concept of quality to sublate itself. In regard to the relation of quality's different categories, now understood as different moments of its development, quality is expressed as ‘the reality out of which it has come to be the contrary of itself, negation; and out of this it has come to be the contrary of the contrary of itself, and has thus come to be itself again as totality’ (LM: 8/7). From this angle, the concept of limit is the first emergence of contradiction within the logic of understanding, which has its own ground in the principle of non-contradiction (the pure self-identity of determinacy). However, such a contradiction emerges as double negation. The quality in the form of limit expresses a negative relation with itself by means of the negation of the otherness: ‘the limit is true quality only insofar as it is self-connection, and it is such only as negation, which negates the other only in connection with itself’ (LM: 7/6).¹⁴

For Hegel, therefore, the figure of limit has two senses: there is a static sense of limit and a dynamic one. If reality is self-reference as equivalence with itself, and negation is its contrary (the reference to the other as inequivalence), limit in its static sense represents the and between the relation to itself and the relation to the other. It is their unessential and indifferent being held together, the opposition of a determinate with what that determinate is not. Indeed, the affirmation of A corresponds to the affirmation of ~A, and the negation of A corresponds to the negation of ~A; this generates the contradiction A=~A, making the quality A the contrary of itself.¹⁵

According to the static sense of limit, determinacy is already and necessarily expressed as determinate, as opposition of contents. The relation of opposition posited in the form of limit is the simultaneous reality and negation of the opposites; in this way, for Hegel, the figure of limit is ‘activated’, that is, it becomes the point at which the opposites refer to each other and vanish in each other by means of such a reference. In the limit, each determinate is and is not itself. The contradiction emerges with the failure of the independency and self-sufficiency of determinacy: being an ‘opposite’, each quality does not exist as indifferent.

Dialectic operates on the emergence of the contradiction, that is, dialectical logic works within intellectual logic, overturning the latter's point of view. Limit is the first dialectical figure of totality;¹⁶ it determines the unity of opposites in the form of a dialectical unity of opposite qualities. Every particular determinacy is a result of a negative self-connection through the relation to another particular determinacy. As Hegel writes, ‘the limit is thereby the totality or true reality, which, [when] compared with its concept, contains its dialectic as well, because the concept sublated itself therein in such a manner that it has become its own contrary’ (LM: 8/6).

From these few considerations on the figure of limit it is possible to take a glimpse at the dialectical method. How does the dialectical procedure work? Where does the contradiction originate?

The dialectical procedure, which Hegel employs during the exposition of these first categorical determinations, involves the analysis of a concept and the discovery that such a concept pushes towards its own overcoming. The general formal structure can be easily tracked and follows the triadic composition of each set of categories: starting from a first category, independently conceived, we notice that it implicitly or ideally contains a second category; then a third category synthesizes the first two categories, resulting in the real unity of the two moments. Therefore, the conceptual analysis at stake is at first an external reflection on the logical categories.¹⁷ However, the emergence of contradiction enriches the external point of view: the logical analysis is vitalized by the necessity of the link between the categories, by their reference to each other. The necessity of the logical analysis is thus the necessity of the relation between the logical categories, the latter being in turn the expression of an incongruent reference to the real side of determinacy. In other words, the contradiction transversally works on these different aspects of the Logic and allows Hegel's logic to assume that apodictic form based only on the self-exposition of the logical categories. That is, the logical movement is based neither on the procedure of an external reflection on the logical categories, nor on the phenomenological attempt to formally express the given.

Again, where does the contradiction originate? Does the contradiction come simply from the self-exposition of the categories? Or does the empirical domain actually constitute the dialectical thrust? All these questions are extensively discussed within the Marxian critique of Hegel, sometimes as a reformulation of Trendelenburg's well-known refutation of Hegelian dialectic. Generally speaking, one of the main criticisms against Hegel's logic consists in unmasking a surreptitious use of the empirical field that makes the dialectical development possible.

In my view, it is important to highlight, as I have done in this section, that by addressing the qualitative categories Hegel deals with the determinate nature of determinacy and that this is a decisive aspect of the logical definition of determinacy. Although I think this is a fundamental aspect of the emergence of contradiction within Hegel's logic, I do not think that Hegel was forced to get it in ‘through the back door’ as Trendelenburg argues. Instead, I think the question of the origin of contradiction needs to be reformulated.

Contradiction emerges neither on the ideal level nor on the real level. With the concept of limit, as the first figure of contradiction within the logic of understanding, Hegel makes contradiction derive from a necessary, although conflictual, reference between those two levels. From the initial unity as self-equivalence, the reflection leads to the comprehension of that unity as a negative and dialectical self-reference of determinacy. Hegel writes:

determinacy as connection of determinacy with itself, has returned into itself; not just determinacy connecting with itself but determinacy as it has come to be the contrary of itself and from this has again come to be itself, and, as this its-having-become-other, is just on that account—in that it itself is—at the same time the other of itself; the concept is only this: the quality itself, its connections with itself; the real concept, or the totality, however, [is] quality's having become itself form its being other, or [the fact] that in its being other it is itself. This quality's being-other-than-itself is the side of its antithesis, the determinacy of quality, or its content, a negative connection […]. (LM: 10/8)

For Hegel, the logic of understanding turns out to be dialectical because it generates contradiction. This contradiction is a component of the necessary separation between the conceptual and the real level; however, it also describes the movement of their necessary unity. In other words, dialectical logic is the science of the movement of the mutual and incongruent reference of thought and being.

II.ii. The paradoxical nature of quantum

Further clues as to the structure of the dialectical method can be found only by moving forward in the categorical development. A consideration of the section dedicated to the dialectic of quantum and the category of infinity—which Hegel puts at the end of the set of categories composing the Simple Connection part—will be particularly fruitful in this regard.

Like the concept of limit for the qualitative categories, the concept of quantum holds in itself the synthesis of the movement of the quantitative categories. The result of the qualitative section keeps playing a role within the new set of categories; indeed, in the exposition of quantum we can find an in-depth analysis of the concept of limit.

If, with the categories of quality, we see the collapse of determinacy in general on the determinate, in the analysis of the categories of quantity, a reverse movement seems to be at stake: from the determinate as a magnitude to its indeterminateness.

Hegel defines quantum as the ‘limit of the many’: it ‘expresses the determinacy of the thing itself only as an accidental’, it is ‘only the sign of the determinacy of the thing itself’ (LM: 19/17). Like the mathematical operation of addition, the limit of quantum determines an inessential composition, which does not affect the thing itself. In the section where Hegel deals with the ‘dialectic of quantum’,¹⁸ the process of going ad infinitum of the limit as quantitative distinction makes its appearance: ‘going out beyond the limit ad infinitum and dividing inwardly in infinitum is one and the same for each, so that the limit or determinacy posited in it is no limit, no determinacy’ (LM: 17/15).

This is the description of what Hegel calls ‘bad infinity’, characterized as an indefinite progression.

However, just like limit as qualitative category, quantum has a paradoxical nature that makes it the figure of both bad and true infinity. Linked to the very nature of quantum, bad infinity (like a mathematical series) can be understood as the pars destruens of the dialectic of quantum.¹⁹ Because of the exteriority of the relation between quantum and the thing itself, Hegel says that quantum is ‘a limitation that is in fact no limitation’ (LM: 17/15). It constitutes an indeterminate determination that seems to bring the logical analysis a step back with respect to the result of the qualitative limit. The quantitative difference conceptually expresses the concreteness of the thing as a certain grade, a magnitude; in this way the manifold is comprehended in the indefinite conceptual unity of quantum. For Hegel, the result of the dialectic of quantum also functions as a critique of the Schellingian idea of the absolute essence, according to which the differentiation is external and does not affect the essence itself. Moreover, through the exposition of the dialectic of quantum, Hegel also has the chance to criticize the Kantian confutation of Mendelssohn's theory of the permanence of soul presented in the Transcendental Dialectic.²⁰ Indeed, in his attempt to give an answer to Mendelssohn, Kant recognizes soul as an intensive magnitude.

And yet Hegel also shows the pars construens of the dialectic of quantum, and the passage to a true concept of infinity. This passage is expressed as a movement from a quantitative and inessential determination of quantum to a qualitative and essential determination of quantum. In regard to soul, ‘Only consciousness having no degree is true consciousness’(LM: 20/18).

Once again, in order to progress in the logical exposition, as happens for the category of quality, the contradiction has to emerge. The reflection of the relational concepts used in mathematics allows Hegel to distinguish different levels of infinity. Since at least Faith and Knowledge—where he deals with the outcomes of relational mathematics by referring to Spinoza's actu infinitum (FK: 106–14/354–59)—Hegel had bestowed great philosophical importance upon the mathematical representation of an infinite multitude. The relation between the whole and the infinite parts is realized in the mathematical relation that at once expresses the self-subsistence of each part and their dependence on the whole. The quantitative determination then assumes in the mutual relation a qualitative form. Quantum is negated in its essence. For Hegel, the qualitative determinacy of quantum is well expressed in the mathematical concept of the infinitely small: it is a certain magnitude and yet smaller than any certain magnitude. The infinitely small corresponds to the philosophical concept of true infinity in so far as it defines the vanishing of magnitude.²¹ Hegel can thereby claim: ‘in quantum the absolute contradiction or infinity is posited’ (LM: 17/15).

In the section on ‘Infinity’, which constitutes the end of the part of Logic dedicated to the Simple Connection, and concentrates in itself the conceptual movement that has been developing so far, Hegel underlines the contradiction affecting determinacy, which ‘so far as it is, is not, and so far as it is not, is’ (LM: 32/29). Such a character of determinacy is also expressed as ‘the striving to be itself’ (LM: 32/29) That is, determination has to be able to express conceptually the contradiction of this struggle of the identity of something with itself. Far from Schellingian quietude, within Hegelian logic the original identity (the simple sameness) is rife with a ferment. Hegel writes: ‘this contradiction is the true reality of determinacy—for the essence of determinacy is to nullify itself’ (LM: 32/29–30).

Infinity has a meta-categorical role:²² it criticizes the intellectual way of considering the logical categories, making the contradiction that has progressively emerged from our reflection on the categories of the logic of understanding a necessary element of logic. Moreover, it suggests the speculative value of logic by unfolding it from the critique of understanding. The meaning of speculation is therefore to be retrieved in the critical activity of producing contradictions. This is a crucial aspect of Hegel's meaning of logic: this is not only the case for the Hegel of Jena, but informs the meaning of speculation—the speculative ‘turn’—in the mature Logic.

Harris (1983: 29–30) underlines that the implicit work of infinity throughout the whole series of the categories of Simple Connection addresses the recognition of contradiction. As the climactic moment of Simple Connection, the becoming explicit of ‘true infinity’ determines a change in the dialectical process. Instead of being the work of external reflection, dialectic is now an intrinsic character of the development of the logical concepts themselves. With the category of infinity, it becomes clear that the externality of our reflection on the categorical development was only ever the appearance of the inner dialectic which had been implicitly present since the beginning. And it is worth noting that it is this implicit presence which makes the logic of the understanding a speculative science in the proper sense. According to Düsing (1976: 25, 43, 93, 102–8) at this point of Hegel's systematic reflection, there is a complete identification between critical logic and dialectic. This means that the use of dialectic is restricted by Hegel to the sole domain of the logic of understanding and with the essentially negative meaning of destruction of the logic of understanding. Baum's position is different (1980: 119–38): he suggests that even if the dialectical method is the method of logic, it constitutes an ongoing process throughout the exposition of metaphysics. Similarly to Baum, I think that the use of dialectic is not exclusive to logic and it does not end with the mere destruction of the intellectual categories. Already in the logical section of the early logic it is possible to detect a development of the dialectical method that makes it possible to understand the relation between logic and metaphysics as a development of the negativity of thought, i.e., without reverting to a methodological dualism. Noting this is important not only for a correct interpretation of the dialectical character of Hegel's early logic, but also for understanding the indispensable and necessary role that the intellectual moment plays within the mature dialectical-speculative logic.

III. Conclusion

The position of logic within the Reinschrift seems to be consistent with the position it occupies in the previous system drafts: logic precedes and leads to metaphysics as speculation through its own destruction and through the overcoming of the domain of intellectualistic abstraction. If this sketch is generally correct, because of its generality it does not, however, account for the meaning of the introductory role of logic and for the dynamics through which logic can accomplish the sublating of the logic of understanding. By considering previous Hegelian elaborations on the matter, I have pointed out that: (1) there is a terminological ambiguity: logic is at the same time the whole of the first part of the system (composed of logic and metaphysics) and logic is just one part of the first part; moreover, according to this configuration, metaphysics is not an autonomous science, but a branch of logic in its wide sense; (2) the meaning of speculation does not belong exclusively to metaphysics as if it were a point of view to reach, but it also indicates the general rational activity of Aufhebung of the intellectual abstraction. About this activity, there is then another ambiguity: Aufhebung belongs to logic (therefore speculative logic is the dialectic of the logic of understanding), but it also said that it belongs to metaphysics (therefore speculative metaphysics is—at least partially—a dialectic of the logic of understanding). In the Jena Logic, as I tried to show by analysing the dialectical movement of some specific categories (namely the categories of limit and quantum, and the meta-categorical role of infinity), the activity of Aufhebung has been defined as an activity of producing contradictions arising from a recurring and each time specific incongruence affecting determinacy. Contradiction and its speculative value are indeed to be retrieved within the horizon of the dichotomy between thought and being that understanding frames, in so far as they constitute both the destruction and the possibility for a new determination to emerge. Far from making the point of view of understanding something absolute, this critical meaning of speculation in fact makes understanding a necessary moment of the dialectical movement. Thus the insuperable separation between forms of finite thinking and forms of infinite thinking is rejected.

As is well-known, after the Reinschrift, metaphysics will disappear from the configuration of Hegel's system, even as a part of the logic (in its wide sense, as speculative science). Metaphysics will reappear in the Encyclopaedia Logic as ‘First Position of Thought with Respect to Objectivity’, as the name for an inadequate way to consider the relationship between thought and being that, according to Hegel, Kant's dialectic has definitively defeated. However, I contend that this sort of ‘upheaval’ in the historical evolution of Hegel's metaphysics²³ cannot be read in light of a radical change of the character of logic (from critical logic to speculative logic, where ‘critical’ stands for merely ‘introductory’), which thus simply takes the place of metaphysics. On the contrary, I think that an investigation of Hegel's Jena fragments, systematic drafts and of the Jena Logic suggests a continuity in the development of logic, precisely in regard to its critical character. This is important not only for the comprehension of the development of Hegel's logic, but, more decisively, for the comprehension of the critical inner core that philosophy, in its systematic character, has for Hegel in both Jena and Berlin. Speculation is not a point of view somehow accessible at the beginning of science—neither after a phenomenological introduction nor through a pure decision that looks like the Schellingian ‘shot from a pistol’. Rather, it is the rational dialectical activity on the intellectual moment running through the logic and, more generally, through the whole mature system. In other words, critique innervates the meaning of systematic philosophy.