Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Dialectical Method
Within the architectonic model, Kant’s categories were isolated from each other and appeared to impose themselves upon the structure. However useful the categories were in explaining Kant’s theory of human reason, Hegel wanted to find a starting point, a first cause. For Hegel, “cause” was “reason”—-what is the reason that this event happened? The “reason” has a “consequence”—-because of this, that happened. Therefore the first cause must be reason and the world is the consequent of reason. Reason, for Hegel is not an ideology, as it was for the Enlightenment philosophers. Reason is an abstraction, which becomes part of a process, which produces a consequence. It follows that each category must be logically deduced from the other, so that they all relate, with each emerging from the other. The categories, then, had to be a single unified whole. The key concept of Hegel is the “organic,” which has less to do with the natural and more to do with the logical deduction of one thing from another, due to a process that binds all elements together into an organic whole. The whole that is produced is composed of necessary parts, none of which can be discarded.
The first principle of the world, Hegel reasoned, must be Being. Being is both universal and necessary. All things have being and Being must be the highest possible abstraction. Having located the first cause, or first category, the philosopher then had to develop a mechanism from which other categories could be deduced from Being. These categories, unlike Kant’s, could not be arbitrary; they had to be necessary and universal, not just because they sounded “logical,” but also because the categories were linked through deduction. The method of deduction was the Dialectical Method. The Method was the philosopher’s way of avoiding pictorial thinking or the tendency of humans to think in images or things. For example, Kant’s philosophical structure was like a building or resembled an architectonic model. One could easily imagine a house within which the categories become rooms. Although one can certainly envision Hegel’s dialectic, the dialectic is process orientated and dynamic, compared to a more static model. Hegel invented the dialectical method, based upon his realization that every concept necessarily contains its own opposite, hidden away, and that this opposite must be extricated or deduced and revealed from the first term. For Hegel, his categories had to be objective and ontological, meaning that they had to be a proiri and independent.
Therefore, Hegel began with Being. If Being was to be the starting point, it must be the primal cause. Being must necessarily be the first category because, without being, nothing else could exist. Being, Hegel reasoned, as an abstract and pure category contains Nothingness and therefore can be ultimately reduced to Nothingness–its logical opposite. But to have deduced nothingness from being is to also say that being and nothingness are the same. Being passes into Nothingness; Nothingness passes into Being. This passing (process) is called Becoming. In other words, from Being and Nothingness, we can deduce Becoming. These are the first three Categories of Hegelian Logic. It is not we, however, who deduce these categories; the categories necessarily deduce themselves. The first triad: Being, Nothingness, Becoming is based upon a founding affirmative, the thesis, the founding negative, the antithesis, and the process that resolves the contradiction or the dialectic between the two, the founding synthesis. These are the three highest and most abstract categories, universal and existing by virtue of necessity and deduced by the method of deduction. Equally obvious is the consequence of the system which unfolds in three parts: the powers of Reason will always force the system forward. The Dialectic will push onward until a point is reached when no contradiction or antithesis is possible. At that point one has reached the Absolute. Here in the final category all distinctions are merged, because as the dialectic moves forward, nothing is lost, all is retained and assimilated. The unity of the Absolute is necessary, grounded in the Logic of the thesis/antithesis conflict itself. The antithesis will never discard the thesis and the synthesis will contain both the thesis and the antithesis, carrying the sequence of triads forward towards the Absolute. The terminus of Hegel’s system is the category of the Absolute Idea, where nature and idea are transcended be the Spirit.
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Tags: Absolute, Becoming, Being, Dialectical Method, G. W. F. Hegel, Hegelian Logic, Nothingness