Notes on Andy Blunden's "The Meaning of Hegel's Logic"

Gena Kozak, notes on

# Andy Blunden’s "The Meaning of Hegel's Logic"

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/mean.htm

(After finishing
Hegel’s logic, go to J.S. Mill’s)

There is a logic of a social revolution. There is a logic to
a scientific enquiry. Is there a logic “in itself”, i.e. a generalization of
these logics? And since we know the prior logics very imperfectly, can we help
ourselves by jumping to the higher level of logic?

(Read this text as a supplement to Hege's Logic)

**I: The Structure of *The Logic***

Read.

**II: The Meaning of “Being”**

first being the
Law of the Unity (Interpenetration) of Opposites

second –
development of quantity into quality, and quality into quantity

third being the
Law of the Negation of the Negation

“the beginning is
not pure nothing, but a nothing from which something is to proceed; therefore
being, too, is already contained in the beginning. The beginning therefore
contains both, being and nothing, is the unity of being and nothing; or is
non-being which is at the same time being, and being which is at the same time
non-being”. [*Science of
Logic, With what Must Science Begin?*]

A. Blunden’s
comment: “Here is the archetypal disclosure of the identity of opposites: Being *is* Nothing! Being, not any particular
type or stage of existence, just pure Being, precisely because it is simply
Being, undifferentiated, undetermined, undeveloped Being, has no feature, no
quality, you cannot be aware of it; in other words it is nothing”

**III: The Meaning of “Essence ”**

Essence - the most
important or defining aspect of thing, besides which other aspects
are just accidental or "unessential"

=== (cont.
The
Sub-divisions of Essence) ===
As soon as, by the accumulation of the properties of a
science or a thing or event, we have been able to identify *what it is*, there begins a process of penetration from
essence to deeper essence. This is the dialectic of form and content or
Appearance. – from one “essence” to a deeper one.

Actuality is the dialectic of Cause and Effect, which
reaches its fullest development in the concept of Reciprocity, a totality in
which every aspect and form of the thing is both cause and effect of every
other; and the truth of Reciprocity is Necessity, and the truth (or
"understanding") of Necessity is Freedom, which is the Notion.

The problem of science, and especially of philosophy,
undoubtedly consists in eliciting the necessity concealed under the semblance
of contingency. Аналогично
для любви – понять что есть человек, за видимостью «прически», макияжа, и т.д.

When we try to explain something, we enquire into its cause.
At this point the Cause is absolutely independent of the Effect. But the cause
is also an effect… In its fullest development, this cause - effect/cause -
effect - cause chain *bends back* upon
itself, becomes a circle in which there is no beginning, but a reflection of
the all-sided interconnection of things which have their ground equally in
themselves as in an Other. This concept is called *Reciprocity*.

... in so far as the relation of cause and effect is
admitted, although improperly, the effect cannot be *greater*
than the cause; for the effect is nothing more than the manifestation of the
cause. It has become a common jest in history to let great effects arise from
small causes and to cite as the primary cause of a comprehensive and profound
event an *anecdote*. Such a so-called cause is
to be regarded as nothing more than an *occasion*, an *external stimulus*, of which the *inner spirit* of the event had no
need, or could have used a countless host of other such in order to begin from
them in the sphere of Appearance, to disengage itself and give itself
manifestation.

Necessity is blind only so long as it is not understood

"Freedom is the understanding of Necessity"

The Essence of capitalism is the production of surplus value
– A. Blunden doesn’t understand that surplus value is necessary in any
production mode

**IV The Meaning of “Reflection”**

the concept of contradiction as the essence of a concept

a dialectical unfolding of the concept of Identity through a
series of stages in which Identity is successively transformed to reveal the
concepts of Difference, Opposition, Contradiction and finally Ground

It is a universal law of the objective world and thus the
world of thought, that "Identity comes to Difference"

“"A = A" only makes sense even in the strictest and
valid application of formal logic if the first A is indeed *not* the second A” – hence, in the law of identity
there is implicit a law of difference

Whatever exists is concrete, with difference and opposition
in itself

**“Contradiction** is the very moving principle of
the world: and it is ridiculous to say that contradiction is unthinkable. The
only thing correct in that statement is that contradiction is not the end of
the matter, but cancels itself. But contradiction, when canceled, does not
leave abstract identity; for that is itself only one side of the contrariety.
The proximate result of opposition (when realised as contradiction) is the
Ground.” – Contradiction within a thing reveals to use its “Ground”.

Hence: “Identity” -> “Opposition” -> “Contradiction”
-> “Ground”

“The maxim of **Ground** runs thus: Everything has its
Sufficient Ground: that is, the true essentiality of any thing is not the
predication of it as identical with itself, or as different (various), or
merely positive, or merely negative, but as having its Being in an other,
which, being the self-same, is its essence” – everyone one thing has its ground
in another thing. It’s like a constructor, where one piece is based on another,
and so on.

“ The
refutation of a philosophy, therefore, only means that its barriers are
crossed, and its special principle reduced to a factor in the completer
principle that follows.” – this applies to Marxism. The “completer principle”,
I think, is the idea that the principle means of production in modern times is
knowledge. The task is examination and unification of knowledge. That is not
only theoretical, but also practical and social.

*everything is inherently contradictory*, and in
the sense that *this law* in contrast to the others expresses
rather the *truth and the essential nature of things*

contradiction is the *root of all movement and vitality*;
it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it *moves, has an urge and
activity*

**V: Formal Logic and Dialectics**

Logic, is the science of the
operations of the understanding which are subservient to the estimation of
evidence: both the process itself of advancing from known truths to unknown,
and all other intellectual operations in so far as auxiliary to this. It includes,
therefore, the operation of Naming; .. Definition and Classification. [*System of Logic*, J S Mill]

Bluden talks about formal
logic, without giving us an idea of what it is, in modern developments. Probably,
does not know it.

Formal logic is present in
mathematics.

The syllogism is the method of
inference, first developed by formal logic, in which from two statements a
third is inferred. For example, "All A are B", "C is an A",
*therefore* "C is B"

The Universal, Particular and
Individual are categories closely related to the syllogism:

* the Universal is a truth which applies always and

```
    everywhere, such as "A", "B" (notions) and "All A
    are B" in the above example, as aspects of knowledge are the outcome
    of a protracted period of social development;

```

* the Individual ("C" in the above example) is

```
    knowledge as given in immediate perception;

```

* the Particular is a kind of joining of individual and

```
    universal, a finite but generalised truth ("C is an A" and
    "C is B").

```

The universal in its true and
comprehensive meaning is a thought which, as we know, cost thousands of years
to make it enter into the consciousness of men. [*Shorter Logic*, § 163n, The
Subjective Notion]

Limitations of formal logic:

1) The whole is *not* equal to the sum of the parts.
E.g. the phenomena of “Emergence”.

2) If a system is sufficiently complex
and "rich", then the phenomena that arise in it cannot be reduced to
the properties of the system's component sub-systems

3) transitions, leaps

4) Formal logic works fine in
physics, so long as atoms are hard little balls; but as soon as quantum behaviour
slips into the picture and particles "leap", transform one into
another, disappear and reappear, behave like waves and so on, formal logic gets
into trouble.

(Skimmed chapter 6-10. Boring)

Andy Blunden’s summary of Hegel’s logic:

* The validity of things as

```
    moments or stages of development; - validity of
    stages as moments in development of a thing

```

* Not definitions, but the

```
    genesis of a thing; - very important, e.g. in
    application to the problem of USSR, socialism

```

* Knowledge begins with Immediate

```
    perception, but all knowledge is mediated: Being is Nothing; - knowledge starts withh empiricism, but continues as
    thinking on experience

```

* The objective immanent movement

```
    of a thing itself; - each thing has its own stages
    of development, immanent to the nature of the thing

```

* Both phenomenon and essence are

```
    objective;

```

* Subjection of all concepts to

```
    criticism the source of movement and change is internal to external;

```

* The Conception of a thing as a

```
    Unity of Opposites;

```

* The discovery of the internal

```
    contradictions within a thing;

```

* Practice is the Criterion of

```
    Truth;

```

* Not the Thing or its Other but

```
    the Transition between them;

```

* The Absolute is Relative and

```
    there is an Absolute within the Relative;

```

* Negation of Negation: the

```
    retention of the positive within the negative;

```

* Quantitative change at a

```
    certain point becomes qualitative change;

```

* The struggle of form and

```
    content, the content is also a form, the shedding of form and the
    transformation of content into form and form into content;

```

* Cause and effect are relative

```
    moments, merged and canceled in actuality;

```

* Chance and necessity are relative moments, merged and canceled in

```
    actuality;- necessary laws manifest themselves through chance,
    random events, random personalities

```

* All that is rational is real,

```
    all that is real is rational and all that is real deserves to perish;

```

* Freedom is the understanding of

```
    Necessity;

```

* The truth of actuality is a

```
    concept;

```

* Knowledge proceeds from

```
    Abstract to Concrete;

```

* The truth is concrete;
* Subjectivity is also Objective,

```
    objectivity includes the subject;

```

* Analysis and Synthesis are

```
    inseparable, the alternation between synthesis and analysis;

```

* The Means is realised in the

```
    End, the End is realised in the Means; - in other
    words, you can tell the end by the means used

```

* Life *is* Cognition;
* Theory is the comprehension of

```
    Practice.

```