Divisions of the Logic of the SelfConcept

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Divisions of the Logic of the Self-Concept

• Logic of the Subjective Self-Concept
• Logic of the Objective Self-Concept
• Logic of the Idea

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Logic of Subjective Self-Concept

• Moments within each self-concept are
• Universality (e.g., animality, genus, generality)
• Particuliarity (e.g., rationality, specific
  difference)
• Singularity (e.g., this man, the individual
  substance).
• What is universal or general becomes singular by
  particularizing itself. What is true in general
  must particularize itself without end to in order
  to be true in general. As cross-examination
  assumes, the truth of a general statement is in
  ability to give details.
• What is relatively singular is also relatively
  universal this man remains general, remains
  indeterminate, in relation to how he will
  particularize himself tomorrow.

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• To be in general is to be in particular, and so
  to be singular. What is singular is at once
  general and particular.
• All three moments of the self-concept explicitly
  refer to each other. The universal differentiates
  itself in the particular to constitute the
  singular. The particular differentiates the
  universal to constitute the singular. The
  singular includes both the universal and the
  particular.
• What is singular is an individual subject or
  substance (Aristotle). Like Aristotles God, it
  thinks itself. The earth is such a subject, since
  it includes us on its surface, and we think the
  earth, which thus thinks itself in and through
  us.
• A particular (mammal) is subordinate to the
  universal (animal) particular species within a
  universal are coordinate.

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• The acorn, the oak tree in potency, contains in
  potency both being a tree and being oak. It is
  not a conscious self-thinking or self-concept of
  the oak tree. But it is a potential self-concept
  or self-thinking of an oak tree. This
  self-concept of the oak tree becomes actual when
  the acorn grows into an actual oak tree, and when
  conscious earthly intelligence like our own
  thinks the oak tree. One part of planet earth,
  the human mind, thinks another part, the oak
  tree. But what the part does the whole does
  through the part. The whole planet earth both
  expresses itself as the oak tree and thinks that
  same tree. Earth particularized as the tree is
  thought by earth particularized as human
  intelligence. The tree thinks itself through its
  substantial whole which is earth expressing
  itself both as the tree and as our thought of the
  tree.

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• 1. The self-concept divides into subject and
  predicate, which are then reunited by the copula
  is.
• To judge in German means first to divide
  (Urteilen). The singular individual divides into
  subject and predicate. Judgment then reunites by
  predication what is divided. (228)
• The creation of the world is its division into
  subject and predicate. It is Gods self-division
  into subject of predication and the predicate of
  having created the world. Creation of the world
  is God self-constitution as the subject of
  predication to which the predicate of having
  created the world is attached.
• Creation of the world is an objective judgment or
  fact, like the fact of the apple as a subject of
  predication has the predicate of being red. A
  fact is a true judgment, dividing subject and
  predicate in order to unite them. (230)

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• In one sense a subject is a topic of discourse, a
  subject opposed to a predicate. In a second sense
  a subject is a conscious mind, a subject opposed
  to an object of consciousness.
• In judgment, the subject can be both be a subject
  over against a predicate and a conscious subject
  over against an object.
• A subject of predication is a conscious subject
  over against an object in self-predication, when
  the conscious subject judges him- or herself to
  have a predicate.
• When we, as belonging to God, judge God to have
  created the world, through us God judges himself
  to have created the world.

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• A judgment shows judgment, discernment This
  painting is beautiful.
• A mere proposition shows no judgment This
  painting is has hung in the Louvre for a
  century. (229, 231)
• Judgment is not independent of the content of the
  terms of judgment. A whale is not a mammal
  shows more judgment than A snake is a reptile.
  (229)
• In This flower is red, universal redness
  inheres in the flower. In All red things are
  intense universal redness subsumes the flower
  (233)

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• Judgments are of four types qualitative,
  reflective, necessary, and conceptual. (234)
• Qualitative judgments are simple
  subject-predicate judgments.
• 1. Positive qualitative judgment. E.g.,
• The cat is black. The cat is a mammal A cat
  is in the house
• 2. Negative qualitative judgment. E.g., The
  cat is not black
• 3. Infinite qualitative judgment. E.g., The cat
  is something. The cat is not Monday.
  (234-235)

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• In reflective judgment the subject is seen in the
  reflected light of something else
• 1. Singular reflective judgment. The vase is
  brittle. (The vase is not brittle.)
• 2. Particular reflective judgment. Some animals
  are tame. (Some animals are not tame.)
• 3. Universal reflective judgment. All metals
  conduct electricity. (Not all metals conduct
  electricity.)
• Such judgments are empirical, not necessary.
  (236-238)

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• In necessary judgments the subject is the
  universal or genus (238-239)
• 1. Categorical judgment. The elephant (as a
  universal or species) is an animal.
• 2. Hypothetical judgment. If one sex is male,
  the other sex is female.
• 3. Disjunctive judgment. Human beings are either
  male or female.

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• In conceptual judgment a singular subject is
  said to conform, in the outer conditions of its
  existence, with what by its inner essence it
  ought to be
• 1.Assertoric judgment He is a good man. This
  is a true diamond.
• 2. Since no justification is given for the above
  judgment, it becomes a problematic judgment It
  is possible he is a good man.
• 3. If a justification for the assertoric judgment
  is given, the problematic judgment becomes a
  grounded conceptual judgment The man is good
  because he is rational. He fits the concept of
  being a man because he is rational.
• 4.The universal (man) conjoined with the
  particular (rationality) is identical with the
  singular individual. Necessary conceptual
  judgment thus ends in an identity statement.
  (239-241)

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The Logic of Syllogisms

• A well-grounded conceptual judgment exhibits the
  judgment as following from the relation of its
  subject and predicate to a third or middle term.
  Rationality is the middle term by which man is
  connected with the predicate good in a syllogism.
• Syllogisms in which the middle term is externally
  connected to subject and predicate are syllogisms
  of the understanding.
• Syllogisms in which the middle term connecting
  subject to predicate is the self-mediation of
  subject are rational syllogisms.
• 4. Syllogisms may be qualitative syllogisms,
  reflective syllogisms, or necessary syllogisms

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• Necessary Syllogisms
• Categorical syllogism. Copper is metal. Metal
  conducts electricity. . Copper conducts
  electricity.
• Hypothetical syllogism. If one is a man, one is
  mortal. One is a man. . One is mortal.
• Disjunctive Syllogism. The light is either red
  or green. It is not green. . It is red. The
  absolute is merely determinate or merely
  indeterminate. It is not merely determinate. .
  It is merely indeterminate. But to be
  indeterminate is to be determinate. . It is not
  merely indeterminate. Rather, indetermination in
  general is mediation by being determinate in
  particular.

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• The absolute is a conjunction of deabsolutized
  disjuncts. The absolute as self-knowing spirit is
  not either merely logical categories nor merely
  nature, but is both. The disjunctive syllogism is
  still a syllogism of the understanding,
  concluding that the absolute is something
  one-sided.
• The rational syllogism that comes out of the
  disjunctive syllogism asserts that the absolute
  spirit is nature insofar as nature is
  self-mediated by (is what it is through its
  relation to) logical categories. It is the
  syllogism of the both/and in place of the
  either/or.

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The Objective Self-Concept

• 1.One subjective self-concept empathetically
  communes with and merges with others. Each is the
  syllogistic interpenetration of universality,
  particularity, and singularity. As the
  distinction between them is erased, they become
  indistinct, a mere object. But the object remains
  implicitly intersubjective.(255)
• 2. The objective world is first, most abstractly,
  mechanistic (universal) secondly chemical
  (particular) and lastly teleological (singular).

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• 3. Mechanism views the objective self-concept,
  the world, even society, as an aggregate of
  atoms. Atoms refer to one another by uniformly
  excluding one another. It leads the world to fall
  apart.(255-60)
• 4. Chemism views the objective self-concept,
  nature, even society, as consisting in
  individuals with elective affinity or disaffinity
  for one another. (For Hegel, it is panpsychist.)
  (260-263)
• 5. Teleology views the world as consisting in
  individuals who project goals which they proceed
  to realize in the world. The objective
  self-concept is the purpose realized by the
  materials and means at hand. (263-268)

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• Logic of the Idea
• The idea (Plato) is the identity of the
  subjective and objective self-concepts under
  different descriptions.(268-269)
• The idea is reason overcoming the one-sidedness
  of the understanding found in the subjective and
  objective self-concepts taken separately.
  (269-270)
• The idea appears first in universal sentient
  life, (271-272), then in biological life
  (272-274), then in the individual human living
  being (275-276), and lastly in human knowledge or
  recognizance.

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The Idea as Universal Sentient Life

• The universal world soul individuates itself in
  each body. Finite embodied souls touch and
  intercommunicate in each souls identity as
  subject with the others as object. (As fingers
  touch, the finger that touches is the finger that
  is touched.) (271)
• The rational soul, under the imprint of the
  abstractive understanding, isolates itself from
  the empathetic feeling of its universal soul in
  which the animals partake. (272)

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• 3. A living organism is the embodied idea it is
  an objectified subjective self-concept in which
  the universal (the head, sensibility) is the
  singular (the self-reproductive whole organism)
  by being self-mediated through the particular
  (the heart, the seat of action).(273)
• 4.The particular sensory knowledge and action of
  the individual organism gradually fall into
  universal repetitive habit, lifelessness, and
  death. (273)
• 5. In sexual self-reproduction different
  particular genders are neutralized and
  extinguished in their universal sexual
  satisfaction, but give birth to a new singular
  organism (the newborn infant). (275)
• .

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• 6. Before death and resurrection in the new
  infant, the organism encounters nature as its own
  inorganic nature outside itself. An organisms
  need is met only by finding satisfaction in
  canceling the gap between itself and its world or
  inorganic nature.(274)
• 7. The individual spirit attains immortality by
  dying as an individual and yielding its
  individual spirit to the universal spirit
  resurrected in other individuals. (276)

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• Knowledge as Recognizance
• Human organisms win knowledge, the identity of
  subjective and objective ideas, by finding, in
  the alien world, familiar intelligible markers.
  (277-278)
• While theoretical knowledge finds such markers,
  practical reason imposes them on the external
  world. (278-279) Practical reason actualizes
  theoretical reason. (288)
• Knowledge, recognizance, is dialectically
  analytic (abstractive) and synthetic in method.
  (281-283)
• Knowledge undertakes 1. identifying description
  of the species, 2. classification of particular
  species in a universal genus, and proof of what
  the concrete concept is that includes the
  particular species. Rational proof is without
  presupposed premises (indirect proof). (286-287)

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• 5. The universal genus (animal, abstract color)
  does not imply its particular species. But the
  particular species imply one another (green
  implies the red which it is not), and the
  concrete singular whole (color taken concretely)
  constructs itself by their mutual implication.

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• The Absolute Idea
• The absolute idea (Plato) is the absolute form of
  thought actively thinking itself
  (Aristotle).(291-92)
• The absolute idea is the absolute identity of the
  objective idea (the intelligible world) and the
  subjective idea (the human mind).
• The objective idea in the modern world has been
  worked up practically by the French Revolution in
  human rights. The success of this practical
  historical striving has been crowned by being
  theoretically greeted through philosophy (Kant,
  Hegel). You never succeed until you know you
  succeed. (289)

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• 4. The absolute idea (the logos, the word,
  Christ), is still pure imageless logical thought.
• 5. Now at the end of the science of logic the
  absolute idea steps outside itself into the alien
  realm of the sensory natural world.
• 6. This self-alienation of the absolute idea is
  the factual truth lurking behind the Christian
  image of the creation of the world, the fall of
  man, and even the fall of God into lordship over
  alien nature.
• 7. God in his truth reveals himself in the
  infinite incarnation of the absolute idea in
  nature as the infinite Christ, the infinite Holy
  Spirit.