Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Publication Citation Style
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Naturalism, Plato, Kant, and Hegel on Reason, Freedom, Responsibility, Ethics, and God
- 3 Reality, Freedom, and God (Science of Logic I)
- 4 Identity, Contradiction, Actuality, and Freedom (Science of Logic II)
- 5 Freedom, God, and the Refutation of Rational Egoism (Science of Logic III)
- 6 Nature, Freedom, Ethics, and God (The Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit)
- 7 Conclusion
- Index
5 - Freedom, God, and the Refutation of Rational Egoism (Science of Logic III)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Publication Citation Style
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Naturalism, Plato, Kant, and Hegel on Reason, Freedom, Responsibility, Ethics, and God
- 3 Reality, Freedom, and God (Science of Logic I)
- 4 Identity, Contradiction, Actuality, and Freedom (Science of Logic II)
- 5 Freedom, God, and the Refutation of Rational Egoism (Science of Logic III)
- 6 Nature, Freedom, Ethics, and God (The Philosophy of Nature and the Philosophy of Spirit)
- 7 Conclusion
- Index
Summary
From Substance to the “Concept”
Hegel introduces the Concept as a permutation of the pattern that was constituted by the “active” and “passive” substances. The two sides of necessity – actuality and possibility – which had taken the form of the active and the passive substance, now become the “singular” (das Einzelne) and the “universal” (das Allgemeine). The difference, however, from the previous pattern, is (1) that the two moments that I just mentioned, the singular and the universal, are joined by a third moment, the “particular” (die Besonderheit), which shares features with each of them (determinateness with the singular, and “reflection into itself” with the universal), and especially (2) that all three are now described as “totalities” (WL 6:240/GW 11:409,20,25/571), by which Hegel means that each contains, implicitly, the entire system composed of all three of them (WL 6:252/GW 12:16,26/582, and EL §160). All of this is due to the fact that, since the two sides of the previous pattern (namely, the active and passive substances, and their predecessors) have now been “manifested” as “identical,” they can be distinguished and related to each other only by a completely new type of concept, which is what “totality” and the “Concept” will be.
The Concept, Hegel writes,
is to be regarded in the first instance simply as the third to being and essence, to the immediate and to reflection (WL 6:245/GW 12:11,23–24/577). [It is] the unity of being and essence. […]
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- Information
- Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God , pp. 214 - 267Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005