McTaggart, Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic

42/John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart
the two questions are considered by Hegel as identical. “The same evolution
of thought,” he says, “which is exhibited in the history of philosophy
is presented in the System of Philosophy itself.” It is clear, therefore,
that he regards the process traced in Section 12 as one which is not
only historically accurate but also philosophically valid, and that he
holds the relation of experience to the dialectic, which is there defined,
as that which really exists.
37. We find similar statements in his criticism of the Intuitionist
School. In explaining their position, he says (Section 70), “What this
theory asserts is that truth lies neither in the Idea as a merely subjective
thought, nor in mere being on its own account; that mere being per se, a
being that is not of the Idea, is the sensible and finite being of the world.
Now all this only affirms, without demonstration, that the Idea has truth
only by means of being, and being has truth only by means of the Idea.
The maxim of immediate knowledge rejects an indefinite empty immediacy
(and such is abstract being, or pure unity taken by itself) and
affirms in its stead the unity of the Idea with being. And it acts rightly in
so doing. But it is stupid not to see that the unity of distinct terms or
modes is not merely a purely immediate unity, i.e., unity empty and
indeterminate, but that it involves the principle that one term has truth
only as mediated through the other, or, if the phrase be preferred, that
either term is only mediated with truth through the other.”
On the one hand then he asserts that truth does not lie in the idea as
separated from the sensible and finite being of the world. But the idea in
its unity with the sensible and finite being of the-world is experience.
This unity, however, is only mediate—that is to say, it is not, as the
Intuitionists supposed it to be, perceived immediately, nor evident from
the nature of thought itself. It lies rather in the mediation of each with
truth only by means of the other, which supports the view asserted
above—that Hegel makes no attempt to use pure thought in abstraction
from the data of sense, but holds truth to lie only in the whole from
which these two elements are abstracted.
Hegel here denies one immediacy and admits another, both of which
are called by the same name in English. He denies the validity of intuition,
if by intuition is meant Jacobi’s unmittelbares Wissen, which perceives
immediately the unity of thought and being. But he admits that
intuition, if we mean by it the Kantian Anschauung, is essential to knowledge,
for without “the sensible and finite being of the world” the idea
has no truth.