Hegel Screws Up

Hegel Screws Up

This is a very elementary summary of some of Hegel's more important and serious logical errors written for novices not experts. This isn't just an academic exercise; the political implications of this screw up are detailed here.

[Any who object to the alleged 'pedantry' below should check this out, and then think again.]

Dialectical 'Logic' derives from Hegel's (deliberate) misunderstanding of Aristotle, and from a linguistic dodge invented in the Middle Ages.

First of all, Hegel thought that certain sentences contained an in-built contradiction.

If we use Lenin's example, we can see where this idea came from, and thus where it goes astray:

J1: John is a man.

[Hegel in fact used the sentence, "The rose is red".]

First of all, Hegel accepted a theory invented by Medieval Roman Catholic theologians (now called the Identity Theory of Predication), which re-interprets propositions like J1 in the following way:

J2: John is identical with Manhood.

The former "is" of predication was replaced by an "is" of identity.

[Predication is to say something about someone or some thing. So, in J1, the sentence is saying something about John. "John" is the subject, and "a man" is the predicate. When this "is" is turned into one of identity, J1 becomes the following monstrosity, "John is identical with a man." That's why J2 is often used, even though it, too, is bizarre.]

The argument then went as follows: Since John can't be identical with a general term/predicate ("a man/Manhood" -- or, rather, with what it represents: a universal), we must conclude the following:

J3: John is not identical with Manhood.

But then again, if John is a man, he must be identical with (or at least he must share in) what other men are, so we must now conclude:

J4: John is not not identical with Manhood.

Or, more simply:

J5: John is not a non-man.

It's hard to believe, but out of this was born the Negation of the Negation and the Unity and Interpenetration of Opposites.

Hegel thought this showed that motion was built into our concepts, as thought passes from one pole (one opposite conclusion) to another, which indicated to him that speculative (i.e., properly 'philosophical') thought, and thus all of reality, had dialectics built into it.

It also prompted him into casting doubt on the validity of the 'Law of Identity' [LOI] -- a 'Law', incidentally, that cannot be found in Aristotle's work, but which was invented by Medieval Roman Catholic theologians, once more.

Hegel concluded that this showed it was now possible to state the LOI negatively.

However, in order to proceed, Hegel not only employed a barrage of impenetrably obscure jargon, he relied on some hopelessly sloppy syntax. He plainly thought he could ignore the logical/grammatical distinctions that exist between the various terms he used, or, at least, between the roles they occupied in language -- i.e., those that exist between naming, and describing. This 'enabled' him to pull-off several neat verbal tricks --, and from the ensuing confusion, 'the dialectic' emerged.

So, Hegel thought that the LOI could be stated negatively, and that this implied the so-called Law of Non-contradiction [LOC]:

When the principles of Essence are taken as essential principles of thought they become predicates of a presupposed subject, which, because they are essential, is "everything". The propositions thus arising have been stated as universal Laws of Thought. Thus the first of them, the maxim of Identity, reads: Everything is identical with itself, A = A: and negatively, A cannot at the same time be A and Not-A. This maxim, instead of being a true law of thought, is nothing but the law of abstract understanding. The propositional form itself contradicts it: for a proposition always promises a distinction between subject and predicate; while the present one does not fulfil what its form requires. But the Law is particularly set aside by the following so-called Laws of Thought, which make laws out of its opposite. It is asserted that the maxim of Identity, though it cannot be proved, regulates the procedure of every consciousness, and that experience shows it to be accepted as soon as its terms are apprehended. To this alleged experience of the logic books may be opposed the universal experience that no mind thinks or forms conceptions or speaks in accordance with this law, and that no existence of any kind whatever conforms to it. [Hegel, Shorter Logic, quoted from here.]

[See what I meant by "impenetrable"!]

So, when Hegel tells us that a proposition "always promises a distinction between subject and predicate", he has already run together identity propositions and predications. But, if there is no distinction between these then this can't be the case: "a proposition always promises a distinction between subject and predicate". He can't have it both ways: if predications are identities, then propositions do not "always promise a distinction between subject and predicate".

At which point the 'dialectic' stalls. And it's not easy to see what can get it moving again.

Be this as it may, from A = A Hegel thought he could obtain "A cannot at the same time be A and not-A", which is supposed to be the LOC. But, the LOI concerns the conditions under which an object is identical with itself, or with something else; it's not about the alleged identity of propositions, nor that of clauses with propositions, or clauses with clauses.

Indeed, if a proposition had no identity, it wouldn't be a proposition to begin with. That is, if it were unclear what was being proposed, then plainly nothing has yet been proposed, and so nothing could follow from it.

In that case, the alleged 'negative' version of the LOI can have nothing to do with the connection between a proposition and its contradictory.

The LOC, on the other hand, is about propositions (or clauses), not objects. Only by confusing objects (or the names of objects) with propositions (and clauses) -- that is, by confusing objects and their names with what we say about them -- was Hegel able to concoct the 'dialectic'.

[The full details here are rather complex, so I have omitted them. However, readers can find out what these are here, here, here and here.]

Furthermore, propositions aren't objects, either. If they were, they couldn't be used to say anything. Sure, we use signs to express propositions, but these signs become symbols (i.e., they signify things for us, and convey meaning) in use. We achieve this by the way we employ such signs according to the grammatical complexity our ancestors built into language.

To see this, just look at any object or collection of objects and ask yourself what it/they say to you. You might be tempted to reply that it/they say this or that, but in order to report what it/they allegedly say, you will be forced to articulate whatever that is in a proposition. You could not do this by merely reproducing the original objects, or just by naming them. This isn't surprising, since objects have no social history, intellect or language, whereas we do, and have.

Unfortunately, Engels and Lenin swallowed this spurious Hegelian line of reasoning hook, line and sinker; and that's because neither knew any logic, but they both had a wildly inflated view of Hegel and his expertise in this area.

[This is not to demean these two great revolutionaries; many others, who should know better, have similarly been duped.]

However, because of this misplaced respect for Hegel, Marxists have been saddled with his fractured logic ever since (upside down, or 'the right way up').

Here is Lenin, for example:

To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other….

Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a "nucleus" ("cell") the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general. [Lenin (1961), i.e., Philosophical Notebooks, pp.359-60.]

In this passage, Lenin felt he could 'derive' fundamental truths about reality, not from a scientific investigation of the world, but from examining a few words seen through Hegel's distorting lens!

[And yet, dialecticians still tell us with a straight face that their theory has not been imposed on nature!]

However, J1 is a descriptive sentence, so it can't be treated in the way Hegel imagined. In fact, Aristotle would have approached it differently. In order to explain its structure, he would have said:

A1: Manhood applies to John.

[J1: John is a man.]

In other words, in J1 the predicate is used to describe John; it's not expressing an identity.

Indeed, it makes no sense to suppose with Hegel that John (or his name) could be identical with a general term (any more than it would make sense to suppose that you, for example, are identical with a conjunction, a preposition, or an adverb) --, or even with what any of these supposedly 'represent'.

In which case, this example of Medieval Roman Catholic 'logic' is not simply misguided, it's bizarre in the extreme!

It surely takes a special sort of 'genius' (which we are assured by Lenin that Hegel possessed) to suppose that an object like John could be identical with a predicate, or with the abstraction which it designated!

[To be sure, some call propositions like J1 "essential", in that they tell us what kind of being John is. Even if that were so, and there are good reasons to suppose it isn't (on that see Essay Thirteen Part Two, when it is published), that wouldn't affect the argument presented below. Nor would it affect the point that J1 is still a description, albeit one of a special kind.]

Now, if we return to the original sentence, translated this time into Hegel-speak, we can see in more detail where the argument goes astray:

J2: John is identical with Manhood.

It's now impossible to explain what the extra "is" here means (highlighted in green), which has to be used to make the alleged identity between John and Manhood (or whatever) plain.

In fact, if all such uses of "is" expressed disguised identities (as we are assured they must), J2 would now have to become:

J2a: John is identical with identical with Manhood.

as the green "is" is replaced with what it is supposed to mean, i.e., "is identical with" --, in turquoise. After another such dialectical switch, J2a would in turn become:

J2b: John is identical with identical with identical with Manhood.

as the new "is" we had to use in J2a is given a similar 'dialectical make-over' to yield J2b. And so on:

J2b: John is identical with identical with identical with identical with Manhood.

These untoward moves can only be halted by those who do not think "is" always expresses an identity in such propositions; but dialecticians gave up the right to lodge that particular appeal the moment they accepted the Identity Theory of Predication.

Fortunately, Aristotle's approach short-circuits all this; there is no "is" at all in A1:

A1: Manhood applies to John.

In contrast, Hegel's 'analysis' can't avoid this verbal explosion; on the contrary, it positively invites it.

Anyone who thinks this is nit-picking need only reflect on the fact that Hegel, or anyone who agrees with him, cannot explain his theory without using J2:

J2: John is identical with Manhood.

But, Hegel's theory stalls at this point, for this extra "is" cannot be one of identity (for the above reasons), and if it isn't, then the theory that tells us that "is" is always one of identity (in such contexts) is defective.

In fact, this Hegelian trick can only be carried out in Indo-European languages. By-and-large, other language groups do not have this particular grammatical feature. The above moves depend solely on the subject-predicate form taking the copula "is" (or its cognates), which is found almost exclusively in the aforementioned family of languages.

This shows that Hegel's 'logic' isn't just bizarre, it's parochial. Hence, no general conclusions (or any at all) can follow from it.

To illustrate these bogus moves in yet more detail, consider, for example, J1 again:

J1: John is a man.

Given traditional grammar, its general form is in effect:

G1: S is P.

[Where, "S" = "Subject", "P" = "Predicate".]

Now, we already have the facility in language to express identity (and genuinely so). For example, here is an uncontroversial identity statement:

G2: Cicero is Tully.

["Tully" was Cicero's other name. Cicero was a right-wing git who lived in Ancient Rome, about the same time as Julius Caesar.]

So, G2 quite legitimately means:

G2a: Cicero is identical with Tully.

Or:

G3: A = B.

[Where "A" is "Cicero" and "B" is "Tully"; using "=" as the identity sign, here.]

G3 expresses an unambiguous use of the "is" of identity. No problem with that. But, it's important to note that the identity expressed here is between two names, or between two named individuals (depending on how identity is understood). This is typical of the use of the "is" of identity.

Now, just look at the superficial similarity between the following two forms -- especially between G1 (a predication) and G2 (an identity):

J1: John is a man.

G1: S is P.

G2: Cicero is Tully.

G3: A = B.

Highly influential ancient and medieval logicians noticed this, too, and combined the two distinct forms into one, reading the "is" of predication as an "is" of identity. [Why they did this will be explained presently.]

But this now turns the predicate "P" into a name, for identities are expressed between names (or between other singular terms -- for example, "The previous President of the United States is the son of George Bush senior"). Unfortunately, if "P" is a name, it can't now be a predicate. [Why that is so will also be explained presently.]

Hegel also adopted this approach to such propositions, confusing the "is" of identity with the "is" of predication. This then 'allowed' him to claim that propositions like J1 were in fact identity statements.

Of course, that means this part of Hegel's 'logic' was based solely on what is in effect a grammatical stipulation (i.e., a dogmatic assertion that these two forms are one and the same, which then created the sorts of problems we have seen above). Moreover, this stipulation destroys the capacity language has for expressing generality, for that is what predicates do (they allow us to say general things about named individuals, etc.).

Given the 'Hegel treatment', J1 thus becomes J1a and/or J1b:

J1: John is a man.

J1a: John = man/Manhood.

J1b: John is identical with man/Manhood.

[Unfortunately, however, in his old age Aristotle was beginning to move in this direction -- i.e., he too was beginning to confuse predication with identity, or, rather, he was beginning to confuse predicates with names (or "terms" as he called them), and describing with naming.]

Hence, on this view, just as "Tully" names Cicero, "man" 'names' Manhood --, or perhaps, the class/set of all men.

The rationale underlying these moves had already been established by earlier theorists and mystics, who were, among other things, concerned to explain the alleged union or identity between the human soul and 'God'/'Being'. Hence, they played around with the Greek verb "to be" (and thus with the "is" of predication) until it was made to say what they wanted it to say.

Of course, this grammatical sleight-of-hand helps account for the emphasis placed by subsequent Idealists on the 'identity' of 'Thought' and 'Being', which later became the main problematic of German Idealism --, a problematic Engels also adopted.

[On that, see his Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy.]

There is in fact no other reason than this for adopting the Identity Theory of Predication, which also helps explain why it was theologians and mystics who invented it (and why Hegel, the Mystery-Meister Himself, employed it).

[Of course, none of this occurred in an ideological or political vacuum; a brief outline of some of the relevant issues can be found here.]

Anyway, logicians after Aristotle, and especially those working in the Middle Ages (as they used this theory to help them tackle the incomprehensible Christian Trinity), began to conflate these two distinct forms as a matter of course. This fed into, and was fed in return by, an increasingly elaborate and complex metaphysic supposedly about the ultimate structure of reality and the relation of 'Thought' to 'Being'/'God' --, all based solely on this ancient linguistic sleight-of-hand, and nothing more!

[Similar moves also underpinned Anselm's infamous Ontological Argument for the existence of 'God'. In this case, too, Anselm thought he could 'derive' profound 'truths' about 'divine reality', valid for all of space and time -- and beyond -- solely from language/thought, just like Hegel and Lenin.]

So, in the end, J1/G1 and G2-type sentences were both modelled along the lines expressed in G4 and G5 -- i.e., as identity statements:

J1: John is a man.

G1: S is P.

G2: Cicero is Tully.

G4: A = B.

G5: John = Manhood.

But, once more, this turns predicates into Proper Names -- i.e., "a man" becomes the proper name of Manhood, which it plainly is not. Naming is not the same as describing. We name our children when they are born, we do not describe them. [If we do, we use predicates, not names, to do so.] We do not name children "is a man", or "is tall". Not even pop stars do that to their off-spring! We describe the world around us, we do not name it.

The untoward result of linguistic confusion like this is explained by Professor E J Lowe:

What is the problem of predication? In a nutshell, it is this. Consider any simple subject-predicate sentence, such as..., "Theaetetus sits". How are we to understand the different roles of the subject and the predicate in this sentence, "Theaetetus" and "sits" respectively? The role of "Theaetetus" seems straightforward enough: it serves to name, and thereby to refer to or stand for, a certain particular human being. But what about "sits"? Many philosophers have been tempted to say that this also refers to or stands for something, namely, a property or universal that Theaetetus possesses or exemplifies: the property of sitting. This is said to be a universal, rather than a particular, because it can be possessed by many different individuals.

But now we have a problem, for this view of the matter seems to turn the sentence "Theaetetus sits" into a mere list of (two) names, each naming something different, one a particular and one a universal: "Theaetetus, sits." But a list of names is not a sentence because it is not the sort of thing that can be said to be true or false, in the way that "Theaetetus sits" clearly can. The temptation now is to say that reference to something else must be involved in addition to Theaetetus and the property of sitting, namely, the relation of possessing that Theaetetus has to that property. But it should be evident that this way of proceeding will simply generate the same problem, for now we have just turned the original sentence into a list of three names, "Theaetetus, possessing, sits."

Indeed, we are now setting out on a vicious infinite regress, which is commonly known as "Bradley's regress", in recognition of its modern discoverer, the British idealist philosopher F. H. Bradley. Bradley used the regress to argue in favour of absolute idealism.... [Lowe (2006).]

So, a collection of names is just a list, and lists say nothing --, just as objects say nothing. For example, this says nothing:

L1: John, book, car.

It can only be made to say something if it is articulated with words that do not function as names:

L2: John found my book in his car.

Of course, it could be objected that there are languages in which names do describe. For example, Native Americans use names such as "Sitting Bull", "Crazy Horse", or "Rain In The Face", which describe what the individual concerned either did or was reminiscent of.

Even so, no Native American would argue as follows:

N1: Sitting Bull has just stood up.

N2: Therefore Sitting Bull is no longer Sitting Bull, he is Standing Bull.

But they would argue as follows:

N3: That animal over there is a sitting bull.

N4: It has just stood up, so it's now a standing bull.

These show that the logical use of names is distinct from that of descriptions. Any contingent psychological or idiosyncratic associations a name has are logically irrelevant to its use as a name, no matter how important these are to a given culture.

Hence the name "Sitting Bull" here is a logical unit, and cannot be split up like a description can. That is because, as Aristotle noted (De Interpretatione, Section 3), names are tenseless, but predicates are not. The above examples bring this out, since change (expressed by the use of tensed verbs, like "stood" or "sitting") applies to predicates (or rather descriptions), not to names. That is why, whatever Sitting Bull does, he is still Sitting Bull.

[These and other complications are discussed at length in Geach (1968), pp.22-80. See also here.]

So, for Hegel, "a man" became the Proper Name of Manhood, which was then dignified by being called an "abstraction", or even worse, an "essence" -- both of which entities were conjured into existence by this linguistic dodge, and nothing more.

In this way then, dialectics follows solely from ancient and defective logic like this, compounded by a crass misconstrual of a sub-branch of Indo-European grammar!

Hard to believe? Well, Marx himself indicated that this was so:

The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life. [Marx and Engels: The German Ideology, p.118. Bold emphases added.]

So, philosophy and dialectics are based on distorted language. The above analysis shows why Marx was right to say this (although, it's not being argued here that Marx would have agreed with this assessment! Though, if were consistent, he should have!).

Now, even if the above analysis is incorrect in some way, neither Aristotle nor Hegel (nor anyone else for that matter) has been able to explain how or why contingent features of Indo-European grammar could possibly have such profound implications built into them --, that is, how they could reveal such fundamental truths about the deep structure of reality, valid for all of space and time.

I call this approach to knowledge Linguistic Idealism.