display all the ideas for this combination of texts
6 ideas
| 21762 | To grasp an existence, we must consider its non-existence [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: It is only to the extent that we can say that something is not, that we can say what it actually is. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'From indeterminate' | |
| A reaction: A key idea for Hegel, but it leaves me flat. Thinking about the non-being of something throws no light at all for me on the inexpressible actuality of its existence. |
| 21977 | Nothing exists, as thinkable and expressible [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Nothing can be thought of, imagined, spoken of, and therefore it is. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], I.i.i.C.1 Rem 3 p.101), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.4 | |
| A reaction: This sounds like Meinong on circular squares. Does this mean that the negation of every truth also somehow exists? I struggle with this idea. Lewis Carroll nailed it. |
| 21760 | Thinking of nothing is not the same as simply not thinking [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: Thinking of nothing is not the same as simply not thinking. Thought that suspends all its presuppositions and so ends up thinking of nothing determinate still remains thought, albeit utterly indeterminate and inchoate thought. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'From indeterminate' | |
| A reaction: This is the very starting point of Hegel's dialectical inferences in his 'Logic'. It is hard to entirely disagree, though I wonder whether the exercise is actually possible. What are you aware of if you have a thought with no content? |
| 21765 | The ground of a thing is not another thing, but the first thing's substance or rational concept [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: Hegel's logic reveals that the true ground of something is not something other than it is, but the substance of that thing itself, or the rational concept that makes the thing what it is. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'The Method' | |
| A reaction: This seems to be classic Aristotelian essentialism, though Aristotle was also interested in dependence relations. |
| 22059 | Kant's thing-in-itself is just an abstraction from our knowledge; things only exist for us [Hegel, by Bowie] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel there is no thing-in-itself, because the thing only becomes a something by being for us. Kant's thing-in-itself is the result of abstracting from the thing everything we know about it. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Andrew Bowie - German Philosophy: a very short introduction 3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to pinpoint why Hegel is an idealist philosopher. Frege objected to abstraction for similar reasons. I don't understand how the tree outside my window can only exist 'for me'. I have a much better theory about the tree. |
| 22083 | Hegel believe that the genuine categories reveal things in themselves [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: Hegel believed, unlike Kant, that the categories of the understanding, when properly understood, disclose the nature of things in themselves and not just the character of things as they appear to us. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.101 | |
| A reaction: 'Properly understood' sounds like 'no true Scotsman'. This is thoroughgoing idealism, because reality is determined by the activity of the mind, and not from outside. The Hegel story makes more sense if you see the categories as evolutionary. |