LOGIC 797
Throughout the Kantian work there appears a constant tendency to regard the ego, or central unity of self-consciousness, as merely abstract, as related mechanically, not organically, to the complex of experience in which its inner nature is unfolded. This tendency finds expression in various ways. Thus the synthesis, which has been shown to be the essential feature of cognition, is regarded as on its subjective side a union of intellectual function and receptivity of sense, and the contributions from either side are viewed as somehow complete in themselves.[1] Knowledge, in accordance with this, might be considered to be the mechanical result of the combination or coherence of the two, a combination which in the last resort must appear to the conscious subject as contingent or accidental. (2) Knowledge, the systematic union of universal and particular in experience, is thought as containing in some obscure fashion a reference to the most real world, the realm of things in themselves, and therefore as being, in antithesis thereto, strictly subjective. The processes of thought, by which unity is given to experience, thus manifest themselves as limited in scope, and as being the very ground or reason of the restriction of knowledge to phenomenal in opposition to noumenal reality.[2]
The presence of these two difficulties or perplexities in the Kantian system, which are, indeed, at bottom but one, led to revision of transcendental logic in two directions. The one line proceeded from the analysis of knowledge as the product of intellectual function and receptivity, and, uniting therewith metaphysical conceptions of varied kinds, culminated in a doctrine of cognition which, retaining the distinction between real and ideal as ultimate, endeavoured to show that the forms of the ideal, i.e., of thought, and the forms of reality were parallel. Logic, under this new conception, appeared as a comprehensive theory of knowledge, the systematic treatment of the modes in which thought, conditioned by its own nature and by the nature of the reality upon which it is exercised, develops into knowledge, i.e., of the modes in which a representation of things characterized by universality and evidential force is obtained. On the whole this is the position assigned to logic by Schleiermacher, whose view is followed in essentials, though with many variations in detail, by a large and important school of logical writers.[3]
The second direction may be characterized generally as the at tempt to develop fully what is involved in Kant's conception of thought as the essential factor of cognition. Any opposition between metaphysic as dealing with the real and logic as dealing with the ideal element in knowledge appears, in this view, as a mere effort of false abstraction. The very nature of reality is its nature in and for thought. The system of pure determinations of objectivity, which Kant had imperfectly sketched, is not to be regarded as a piece of subjective machinery, because it expresses the inmost conditions of intelligence as such. Nothing is more real than the ego, than intelligence or thought. Transcendental logic, or logic which is at the same time metaphysic, is the only discipline to which the title logic by right belongs. For it contains the complete system of the forms in and through which intelligence is realized. The notion, judgment, and syllogism are doubtless forms of thought, but they have their definite content. They are the modes in which the forms of objectivity are realized for intelligence, and are thus at once abstract and concrete. The so-called formal logic is a mere caput mortuum, a descriptive study of some few types of the application of thought to matters of experience. On the whole this is the view of logic developed through Fichte (and in part Schelling) by Hegel, and the Hegelian system shall here be regarded as its complete and only representative.
Logic as Theory of Knowledge.
29. The position assigned to logic as theory of knowledge and the range of problems included in it are determined by the general philosophic view of the distinction between the reality to be apprehended by thought and the subjective nature of thought itself. There may be, therefore, numberless variations in the mode of treating logic with general adherence to the one point of view.[4] In the Dialektik of Schleiermacher, for example, the fundamental characteristic is the attempt to unite some portions of the Kantian analysis of cognition with Spinozistic metaphysic. Knowledge is regarded as the complex combination of intellect, the formative, unifying, idealizing faculty, and organization or receptivity of sense. The generality or common validity of cognition rests on the uniform nature of organization and on the identity of all ideas in the one ideal system. The objective worth of cognition is referred on the one hand to the determined connexion between the real universe and the organization through which the individual is part of the real order of things, on the other hand to the ultimate metaphysical parallelism between the system of ideas and reality. The primary forms of knowledge, notion, and judgment, distinct from one another only as being knowledge viewed now as stable now as in process, correspond to the ultimate elements of the real, the permanent force or substance and its variable manifestations. Syllogism and induction, with the subordinate processes of definition and division, analysis and synthesis, are technical modes of the development of notions and judgments, modes by which inchoate notions are rendered definite, by which incomplete judgments are rendered complete.[5]
That there is much valuable and suggestive material in this mode of regarding logic is undoubted, and in the discussion of isolated forms of knowledge, such as judgment, it is always desirable that there should be kept in mind the reference to the ultimate character of objectivity. But the whole point of view seems imperfect and open to such objections as will always present themselves when a principle is not carried out to its full extent. It may, for propædeutic purposes, be desirable to separate the handling of logical forms from metaphysic, but such separation cannot be ultimate. The system of forms of reality to which the forms of knowledge are assumed to correspond must in some way enter into knowledge, and they cannot enter in as an absolutely foreign ingredient, to which knowledge has simply to conform itself. For, if so, these metaphysical categories would be discoverable only by an analysis of concrete knowledge, and they would remain as inferences from the nature of cognition, not as data directly known. The cardinal difficulty which appears in all treatments of logic from this point of view is that of explaining how there comes to be known an objective system of things with characteristic forms or aspects, and it is not hard to see that the acceptance of a reality so formed is but a relic of the pernicious abstraction which gave rise to the Kantian severance of knowledge from noumenal reality.[6] In short the position taken by Schleiermacher and his school, as final standing ground, is but an intermediate stage in the development of that which lay implicit in the critical philosophy.
Moreover, it is hardly possible to assume this point of view without tending to fall back into that mechanical view of knowledge from which Kant had endeavoured to free philosophy. If there be assumed the severance between real and ideal, it is hardly possible to avoid deduction of all that is characteristic of the ideal order from the observed or conjectured psychological peculiarities of inner experience. The real appears only as ultimate point of reference, but in no other way determines the form of knowledge. The characteristic relations which give content to notions, judgments, and syllogisms are deduced psychologically.[7] In the long run, it would no doubt be found that the real key to the position is the belief, more or less expressed, that the systematic view of thought as comprehending and evolving the forms of reality is an unattainable ideal, – that metaphysic, to put it briefly, is impossible. To some extent this is the position taken by Lotze, whose cautious and ever thoughtful expositions are invariably directed to the elucidation of the real nodi, the real roots of perplexity or incompleteness of doctrine. In his view logical forms are the modes in which thought works up the material, supplied in inner experience by the psychological mechanism of the soul, in conformity to the ultimate presuppositions with the aid of which alone can harmony, or ethical and æsthetic completeness, be gained for our conceptions of things. But with this doctrine, which approaches more clearly than any other of the type to the metaphysical logic, there is coupled the reserve that any actual point of view from which the development of these presuppositions, their rational explanation, might become possible is unattainable. Our confidence in them is finally of an ethical character, and depends upon our conviction of the ethical end or purpose of all the surroundings within which human life and
- ↑ See vol. xiii. pp. 851, 852.
- ↑ It is unnecessary to consider what exactly was Kant's leaching on either of these points, or what the significance of the relative doctrine may be in his system. It is sufficient, for the historical purpose in hand, to indicate the apparent tendency of his work, for from this the later developments take their rise.
- ↑ See, for an enumeration of the more prominent members, Ueberweg's Logik, § 34, a work which itself is an admirable exposition from the same point of view.
- ↑ It appears an historic error to identify the point of view here referred to with the Aristotelian. The notion of a parallelism between the forms of reality and the forms of knowledge is too definite to be covered by the mere expression, whether in Aristotle or in Plato, of the doctrine that knowledge is knowledge of being.
- ↑ Perhaps the most complete treatment of logic from this point of view is that of George, Logik als Wissenschaftslehre, 1868. Ueberweg, dissenting from Schleiermacher's view of syllogism and the systematic processes of reasoning, lays out more fully what in his view are the aspects of reality corresponding to the typical forms of knowledge. Trendelenburg endeavours to fill up the gap between real and ideal by emphasizing the community of character between motion, as the ultimate reality, and constructiveness in knowledge, the central activity of the ideal.
- ↑ Thus we find in Schleiermacher (Dial., 132-34) that the ultimate difference of ideal and real is accepted as simple datum. In Ueberweg (Logik, § 8 and passim) there is continuous reference to an Inner order of things, the forms of which are the metaphysical categories, but the actual treatment is altogether independent of these forms, and we may conjecture that, in the last resort, Ueberweg would have explained the characteristics of logical thinking by reference rather to the psychological mechanism than to a supposed nature of things (see Logik, §§ 40-42), and thus approximated to the position of Bencke rather than to that of Schleiermacher.
- ↑ This tendency, which appears in Schleiermacher and Ueberveg, and indeed in all the logics of that school (George's Logik, e.g., is hardly to be distinguished from psychology), is prominent in Beneke. It is curious to note a precisely similar result in the logical theory of Mr H. Spencer. Mr Spencer supposes himself to be throughout referring to the nature of reality, but in fact all that is specific in the forms of reasoning developed by him is of psychological origin (see Pr. of Psych., ii. §§ 302-9).
