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Single Idea 21764

[filed under theme 1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 6. Metaphysics as Conceptual ]

Full Idea

In the course of (Hegel's) logic, we come to understand that to think being is to think becoming, quality, quantity, specificity, essence and existence, substance and causality, and, ultimately, self-determining reason itself.

Gist of Idea

Thought about being leads to a string of other concepts, like becoming, quantity, specificity, causality...

Source

report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'The Method'

Book Ref

Houlgate,Stephen: 'An Introduction to Hegel' [Blackwell 2005], p.38


A Reaction

Extraordinary! Houlgate spells out nicely what some commentators seem to gloss over, the huge a priori ambitions of Hegel's thought. I find his entire programme utterly implausible.


The 24 ideas with the same theme [metaphysics as study of our conceptual schemes]:

For any subject, its system of non-experiential concepts needs a metaphysics [Kant]
Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts [Hegel]
Metaphysics is the lattice which makes incoming material intelligible [Hegel]
If we start with indeterminate being, we arrive at being and nothing as a united pair [Hegel, by Houlgate]
Thought about being leads to a string of other concepts, like becoming, quantity, specificity, causality... [Hegel, by Houlgate]
We must start with absolute abstraction, with no presuppositions, so we start with pure being [Hegel]
Metaphysics is just the oversubtle qualification of abstract names for phenomena [Comte]
Metaphysical reasoning is simple enough, but the concepts are very hard [Peirce]
The syntactic category is primary, and the ontological category is derivative [Frege, by Wright,C]
Nietzsche has a metaphysics, as well as perspectives - the ontology is the perspectives [Nietzsche, by Richardson]
We aren't stuck with our native conceptual scheme; we can gradually change it [Quine]
Enquiry needs a conceptual scheme, so we should retain the best available [Quine]
Many philosophers aim to understand metaphysics by studying ourselves [Chisholm]
Descriptive metaphysics concerns unchanging core concepts and categories [Strawson,P]
Serious metaphysics cares about entailment between sentences [Jackson]
Philosophy devises and assesses conceptual schemes in the service of worldviews [Harré/Madden]
Maybe such concepts as causation, identity and existence are primitive and irreducible [Lowe]
Philosophy aims not at the 'analysis of concepts', but at understanding the essences of things [Lowe]
It seems unlikely that the way we speak will give insights into the universe [Sider]
Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it) [Sidelle]
Modern empirical metaphysics focuses on ontological commitments of discourse, or on presuppositions [Loux/Zimmerman]
Kant survives in seeing metaphysics as analysing our conceptual system, which is a priori [Maudlin]
Modern metaphysics pursues aesthetic criteria like story-writing, and abandons scientific truth [Ladyman/Ross]
Logic doesn't have a metaphysical basis, but nor can logic give rise to the metaphysics [Rumfitt]