HEGEL'S SCIENCE OF LOGIC
TRANSLATED BY
A. V. MILLER
FOREWORD BY PROFESSOR J. N. FINDLAY
Humanity
Books
an imprint of Prometheus Books
59 John Gleaa Drive, Amberst, New York 14228-211
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1770-1831.
[Wissenschaft der Logik. English]
Hegel's science of logic I translated by A.V. Miller; foreword by J.N. Findlay.
p. cm.
Originally published: London: Allen & Unwin, 1969. Includes bibliographical references.
THIS TRANSLATION IS
DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF
FRANCIS SEDLAK
I873-I935
I am happy to recommend this new translation of Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik by my friend Arnold Miller. His deep enthusiasm for, and passionate self - identification with the thought of Hegel has opened his eyes to the sense of many of the most difficult passages in the book, and has given his style some of the unfailing readability, the often homely charm, of the original.
That he has been always wholly successful in rendering every passage would be too much to expect, but where he is dark, and his words doubtfully chosen, the darkness and doubtfulness are generally to be found in the original, and do not stem from a poor mastery of Hegel's thought, vocabulary and syntax. His book brings the pattern of the Logic across in English with astonishing faithfulness, and makes clear that, like all Hegel's writings, it represents the honest, if transforming, commerce of what can reasonably be called a world - mind with a whole world of detailed understanding and knowledge.
The book will go far in dispelling the picture of Hegel as a magus of false dialectic. He will appear as the greatest of European thinkers, engaged in a self - critical enterprise which even he only half understood, whose most obscure, botched utterances are often worth many of the lucidities of modern philosophers. As a practical teacher, concerned to put Hegel across to English - speaking students, I am grateful to Mr Miller for his new translation.
J. N. FINDLAY
Clark Professor of Moral Philosophy
and Metaphysics
Yale University
It is now nearly forty years since the first complete translation of Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik was published. With the current revival of interest in Hegel both in this country and across the Atlantic, there is perhaps a need for a more accurate rendering of this important work which is indispensable for an understanding of his system. The present translation is an attempt to satisfy this need and I have done my best to provide the student who is unfamiliar with German with a rendering which, I hope, will give him some idea of the real meaning of Hegel's thought. How far I have succeeded, only those who are able to judge, but who do not themselves know German, can say; and it is to these latter especially that I should like to appeal for their labour. It is my hope that the translation will prove useful not only to professional students but also to the interested layman. As Mr G. R. M. Gore says in his Introduction to Hegel(p. 89), “Philosophy is no more the exclusive business of professors than is art or religion. If there were not every man, however unconsciously, he feels it, and however idiosyncratically he interprets it within the narrow circle of his mind or soul-self-consciousness, there would be no professional philosophers”. To attain the knowledge of absolute truth, it is necessary to study Hegel himself. For the student who is desirous of undertaking such a task of vital importance, I can recommend no better introduction than Mr J. N. Findlay's admirable lectures on Hegel's Logic. These lectures were given at the University of Glasgow some few years ago and were attended, I believe, by several hundred students. But above all, he must “mark, learn, and inwardly digest” what Hegel himself has to say in his Preface and Introduction to the Science of Logic, and particularly in the chapter entitled “With What Must the Science Begin?”. This chapter is of great importance for an understanding of the beginning of the Science of Logic, for in it Hegel has made it quite clear why he begins with pure being. It may safely be said that the main obstacle to a grasp of the Logic is the fact that we are unaccustomed to dialectical thinking and are loath to make the effort to rid ourselves of the prejudices and presuppositions on which our ordinary thinking rests. We rely solely upon the understanding, the abstractive intellect, which holds its concepts rigidly apart in isolation and overlooks their essential connections. This is what Hegel calls “die Anstrengung des Begriffs”, the effort demanded by the Notion for its comprehension. The translation here presented has been made from Lasson's edition of the Wissenschaft der Logik, published in 1923. I have been sparing in my use of capitals for Hegel's categories except where it was clearly required for clarity. Thus, in accordance with modern usage, I have written ‘Being’ and ‘Not-being’ with initial capitals to stand for Existenzand Nichts, while ‘being’, ‘nothing’, etc., are written without them, as also Hegel's usual translation of Schein by ‘show’ hardly does justice to his use of this term in his Logic, where it denotes a category of reflection which is not to be confused with appearance which denotes solely in the sublatedness of being, in its nothingness; this nothingness has in essence and apart from its appearance. In accordance with the same modern usage, I have written ‘Spirit’ for Geist; for Hegel says in his Phenomenology of Spirit that “its name is the name which is immediately a self and a non-being”. “Show” and “appearance” will therefore be used to render Hegel's meaning in this connection. In conclusion I wish to thank Professor J. N. Findlay for the encouragement and assistance he has given me to complete a task which before we had met.
A.V. MILLER
Whiteway,
Glos,
May, 1969.