Relating Hegel’s Science of Logic to Contemporary Philosophy Relating Hegel’s Science of Logic to Contemporary Philosophy Luis Guzmán The New School, New York, USA © Luis Guzmán 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 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To Luis and Irza, who once created me, and Caetano and Lautaro, who do not cease doing so Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 The In-Itself-For-Consciousness: The Third Dogma 8 1.1 Introduction 8 1.2 Detour via Davidson 9 1.3 Introduction to the Introduction 12 1.3.1 Epistemological paradoxes 12 1.3.2 Starting point and drive of the Phenomenology 17 1.3.3 Natural consciousness and the question of truth 19 1.4 The problem of the criterion or measure 20 1.4.1 Criticisms raised against Hegel 22 1.4.2 The nature of consciousness 26 1.4.3 The instability of the object: paragraph 85 30 1.4.4 The negativity of experience: paragraph 86 31 2 The True Infinite and the Idea of the Good: Internal Excess 37 2.1 Introduction 37 2.2 Detour via Levinas/Derrida 38 2.3 Introduction to the issue of the infinite 41 2.3.1 Being 41 2.3.2 Dasein 43 2.3.3 Something 43 2.3.4 Determination, determinateness, and constitution 45 2.3.5 Determination as vocation 48 2.4 Finitude 50 2.4.1 Limitation and the ought 54 2.5 The spurious and the true infinite 55 3 Necessity Is Contingency: The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction 72 3.1 Introduction 72 3.2 Detour via Quine 73 3.3 Location of the chapter on actuality within the Science of Logic 75 3.4 The concept of actuality 78 vii viii Contents 3.5 Movement of the concept 80 3.5.1 Contingency, or formal actuality, possibility, and necessity 81 3.5.2 Relative necessity, or real actuality, possibility, and necessity 84 3.5.3 Absolute necessity 87 4 Everything Rational Is a Syllogism: Inferentialism 95 4.1 Introduction 95 4.2 Detour via Brandom 96 4.3 Placement of the section on the syllogism within the Science of Logic 99 4.3.1 The concept 99 4 .3.1.1 Parallel between the concept and Kant’s “I think” 100 4 .3.1.2 Infinite objects 102 4 .3.1.3 Correctness and truth 105 4.3.2 The judgment 107 4.4 The syllogism 114 4.4.1 The syllogism of existence 117 4.4.2 The syllogism of reflection 119 4.4.3 The syllogism of necessity 121 4 .4.3.1 The hypothetical syllogism 122 4 .4.3.2 The disjunctive syllogism 124 5 The Most Stubborn Opposition: Mind and World 129 5.1 Introduction 129 5.2 Detour via McDowell 130 5.3 The Idea 132 5.3.1 The Idea of the true 139 5.3.2 The Idea of the good 140 5.3.3 Overcoming the Idea of the good 143 5.4 The absolute Idea 149 5.4.1 Lack of content 149 5.4.2 Consummation ( Vollendung ) 153 5.4.3 Totality 155 Conclusion 164 Notes 168 Bibliography 194 Index 199 Acknowledgments In my second year of undergraduate studies at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá I was introduced to Hegel by Ramón Perez Mantilla, nicknamed “e l maestro absoluto. ” In a seminar dedicated to Phenomenology we barely made it to the inverted world. Twenty-five years later, I have barely made it through the Introduction. After a detour through Heidegger, I re-encountered Hegel at The New School for Social Research, at the hands of Agnes Heller and Richard Bernstein. It was Hegel’s S cience of Logic which now drew me in, with the argument that if one was to offer a non-metaphysical interpretation of Hegel, this was the work to test it against. A Dissertation Fellowship offered by The New School allowed me to spend 2000–2001 in Berlin, where I worked on what amounts to Chapter 4 of this book. I must thank Dmitri Nikulin, a member of my Dissertation Committee, who encour- aged me to undertake this project. An abridged version of Chapter 3 was published in Spanish under the title “El Carácter Contingente de la Necesidad Absoluta en la Ciencia de la Lógica de Hegel” in Ideas y Valores , Universidad Nacional, Bogotá, Colombia, No. 131, August, 2006, under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Many fruitful discussions among a group of doctoral candidates at The New School helped shape various of the ideas offered here. I am grateful to Morgan Meis, Stephen Levine, Howard Ponzer, and John Blanchard, among others, for their dedicated probing. The connection between Hegel and certain neo-pragmatists was honed at various papers delivered and seminars held between 2011 and 2013 at Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and Universidad Autónoma de Mexico. I am grateful to William Duica and Efraín Lazos for extending invitations to offer month-long seminars on Hegelian philosophy and neo-pragmatist thought during Spring 2011 (Bogotá) and Spring 2012 (Mexico City). On a more personal level, I cannot fail to mention Lucía Pulido, who insisted on sharing a life with someone who was busy sharing a life with Hegel. Lastly, this book is dedicated to my parents, whose perseverance, hard work, and selflessness were a simple matter of course. ix