# The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Harris - Hegel's Logic

The appearance of a work on Hegel's Logik, by one who has been so long regarded as the champion of Hegelianism in this country, has ​awakened an unusual interest. The author, in his preface, tells us how, in the course of his studies of Hegel, he felt himself gradually turning around "from an attitude of faith to an attitude of criticism." The work shows that the author has made a thorough and persistent attempt to understand and appreciate Hegel's system; but, in reading it, we are often led to wish that the critical attitude were a little more pronounced.
In the second chapter, which deals with the Greek and Roman principles, Dr. Harris tells us that "the significance of Hegel in the History of Philosophy is to be found in the fact that he unites in one system the Aristotelian, and the Kantian, movements of thought." Hegel identified the results which Kant and Fichte had reached by the subjective method, with those which Plato and Aristotle had long before arrived at objectively. He combines Aristotle's "entelechy" with the modern conception of subject, as active Consciousness, and names this self-active being, Notion (Begriff). In the exposition of the Phenomenology of Spirit the author shows very clearly how the position of immediate sense-perception, the stage of thinking where we use the category "thing," is found inadequate, and advance is necessitated to a higher stage of thought, where things are explained as manifestations of Force. Later, Consciousness perceives that Force cannot exist as an isolated impulse, and so arrives at the idea of Law.
Dr. Harris attempts (pp. 128-135) to meet the objection which critics like Trendelenburg have advanced, that Hegel's "pure thought" is, at every step, empirically conditioned. It does not appear to me that Dr. Harris answers this objection by pointing out that the pure thought determinations are identified with categories already used and named in experience. The question still remains, Have pure thoughts in themselves any movement whatever? Do not these conceptions form a fixed system, and remain eternally just what they are?
This book renders excellent service in putting the reader at Hegel's point of view; and in explaining many terms and phrases, which are, at first, quite inintelligible to a reader of the Logik. It cannot, however, be said that it has rendered the formal deductions of the categories comprehensible. Dr. Harris' exposition is not easier reading than the Logik itself; and one misses, besides, those keen and admirable remarks which Hegel intersperses among his formal proofs.
Further, one might naturally expect to find in the work a fuller discussion of the problems which deal with the relation of the Absolute to the Finite Spirit. The author, it is true, criticises Hegel's doctrine of the Trinity, which he tells us "justifies to some extent the censure of Pantheism which has been so freely cast upon him." He attaches great importance to this point, and returns to it several times (pp. xv, 106, 379 et seq.). Hegel's failure was in identification of the Second ​Person of the Trinity with the world, instead of making it the Processio of the Holy Spirit. "Nevertheless, freedom and immortality in the most. concrete way are held by Hegel." It is to be regretted, in view of the different opinions on this point, and the different schools which have claimed Hegel as master, that Dr. Harris has not favored us with a fuller treatment of this question.
J. E. Creighton.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1924, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 99 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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