Thought and Reality in Hegel's System

Thought and Reality in Hegel’s System/45tion here — apart from the fact that it comes out as the final result in theLogic itself — it needs no justification here, because it got its justificationthere. And it is capable of no other justification than just this productionof it by consciousness, all whose own peculiar forms are resolvedinto this conception as their truth. . .This conception of the purescience and the deduction of it are presupposed in the present treatise, inso far as the Phenomenology of Spirit is nothing else but such a deductionof it “ 110 Again, later in the same work, we read: “It has been remarkedin the introduction that the Phenomenology of Spirit is the scienceof consciousness, the exhibition of the fact that consciousness hasthe conception of our science, that is, of pure knowledge as its result. Tothis extent, then, the Logic has the science of the phenomenal Spirit asits presupposition; for that science contains and displays the necessity,and hence the proof of the truth of the standpoint of pure knowledge, aswell as the way in which that standpoint is reached.” 111 In addition tothese explicit statements of the Logic, I may be permitted to quote oneother passage from the preface to the Phenomenology itself. Havingtraced in a sentence or two the development of the Phenomenology fromthe standpoint of sensuous consciousness to that of absolute knowledge,where we have completely mediated being, Hegel continues: “Just herethe Phenomenology comes to an end. In it the way has been preparedfor the element of knowledge wherein the moments of Spirit have unfoldedthemselves in the form of simplicity which knows its object asitself. These moments no longer stand opposed to each other as beingand knowing, but remain in the simplicity of knowledge; they are thetrue in the form of the true, and their difference is only difference ofcontent. Their development, which in this element is organized into awhole, is Logic or Speculative Philosophy.” 112 Comment on such plainpassages as these seems superfluous: Hegel’s meaning in them is unmistakable.The science of Logic assumes the conclusion of the Phenomenologyas its starting point and its procedure and result are to be judgedonly in the light of this assumption.Without further discussion of this point, then, we pass to the mainproblem before us. What is the aim of the Logic in the light of its presupposition?The passage quoted last in the preceding paragraph givesus a basis for an answer to this question. In this passage Hegel tells uswhat the purpose of the Logic is, viewed from the standpoint of absoluteknowledge. The passage, translated into simpler language, amounts tothis. At the conclusion of the Phenomenology we reached the true defi-