more on this theme     |     more from this thinker

Single Idea 15616

[filed under theme 2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 3. Non-Contradiction ]

Full Idea

If truth were nothing more than lack of contradiction, one would have to examine first of all, with regard to each concept, whether it does not on its own account, contain an inner contradiction.

Gist of Idea

If truth is just non-contradiction, we must take care that our basic concepts aren't contradictory

Source

Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §33 Rem)

Book Ref

Hegel,Georg W.F.: 'The Hegel Reader', ed/tr. Houlgate,Stephen [Blackwell 1998], p.148

A Reaction

This is a very nice thought, which modern analytic philosophers, steeped in logic, should think about. It is always presumed that a contradiction is between a proposition and its negation, not some inner feature.

The 46 ideas from 'Logic (Encyclopedia I)'

5644 In Hegel's logic it is concepts (rather than judgements or propositions) which are true or false [Hegel, by Scruton]
15607 We don't think with concepts - we think the concepts [Hegel]
15608 The act of thinking is the bringing forth of universals [Hegel]
15609 The sensible is distinguished from thought by being about singular things [Hegel]
15610 Active thought about objects produces the universal, which is what is true and essential of it [Hegel]
19070 Superficial truth is knowing how something is, which is consciousness of bare correctness [Hegel]
19072 In the deeper sense of truth, to be untrue resembles being bad; badness is untrue to a thing's nature [Hegel]
19071 The deeper sense of truth is a thing matching the idea of what it ought to be [Hegel]
19073 True philosophy aims at absolute unity, while our understanding sees only separation [Hegel]
21768 Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts [Hegel]
22081 Let thought follow its own course, and don't interfere [Hegel]
22078 Even simple propositions about sensations are filled with categories [Hegel]
15613 Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates [Hegel]
15612 Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves [Hegel]
15614 Old metaphysics tried to grasp eternal truths through causal events, which is impossible [Hegel]
15615 Older metaphysics became dogmatic, by assuming opposed assertions must be true and false [Hegel]
15616 If truth is just non-contradiction, we must take care that our basic concepts aren't contradictory [Hegel]
15617 In abstraction, beyond finitude, freedom and necessity must exist together [Hegel]
15618 If God is the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God is a mere Beyond, and unknowable [Hegel]
15619 Empiricism made particular knowledge possible, and blocked wild claims [Hegel]
15620 Empiricism contains the important idea that we should see knowledge for ourselves, and be part of it [Hegel]
15622 Empiricism unknowingly contains and uses a metaphysic, which underlies its categories [Hegel]
15621 Empiricism of the finite denies the supersensible, and can only think with formal abstraction [Hegel]
15623 Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic [Hegel]
15624 Free thinking has no presuppositions [Hegel]
15625 Sense perception is secondary and dependent, while thought is independent and primitive [Hegel]
15626 Categories create objective experience, but are too conditioned by things to actually grasp them [Hegel]
15628 The idea that contradiction is essential to rational understanding is a key modern idea [Hegel]
15629 Tenderness for the world solves the antinomies; contradiction is in our reason, not in the essence of the world [Hegel]
15630 Antinomies are not just in four objects, but in all objects, all representations, all objects and all ideas [Hegel]
15631 The ideal of reason is the unification of abstract identity (or 'concept') and being [Hegel]
15632 The Humean view stops us thinking about perception, and finding universals and necessities in it [Hegel]
15633 We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking [Hegel]
15634 Thought about particulars is done entirely through categories [Hegel]
15635 The older conception of God was emptied of human features, to make it worthy of the Infinite [Hegel]
15636 The Cogito is at the very centre of the entire concern of modern philosophy [Hegel]
15637 Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation [Hegel]
15638 Dialectic is the moving soul of scientific progression, the principle which binds science together [Hegel]
21767 Dialectic is seen in popular proverbs like 'pride comes before a fall' [Hegel]
15639 Socratic dialectic is subjective, but Plato made it freely scientific and objective [Hegel]
21980 God is the absolute thing, and also the absolute person [Hegel]
21981 The one substance is formless without the mediation of dialectical concepts [Hegel]
21986 Hegel's system has a vast number of basic concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
21984 We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed [Hegel]
21595 Excluded middle is the maxim of definite understanding, but just produces contradictions [Hegel]
22300 Existence is just a set of relationships [Hegel]