The Meaning of Hegel's Logic

by Andy Blunden

• Introduction
• I: The Structure of The Logic

Being - Notion - Absolute Idea, Being - Essence - Notion, The triad, System and Method.

• II: The Meaning of ‘Being’

Being – Notion – Idea, The Subdivisions of Being – Quality – Quantity – Measure, With What must Science Begin?, Being in Natural and Social Movements, The Immediate and Development. Piaget, Historical and Psychological Development.

• III: The Meaning of ‘Essence’

Being – Essence – The Notion, The Development of Essence, The Sub-divisions of Essence – Simple Essence (Reflection) – Appearance – Actuality, Reflection, Appearance (Form & Content), Form & Content, The Subdivisions of Appearance: Existence – Appearance – Essential Relation, The Development of Appearance, The Appearance of Capitalism, Actuality (Cause & Effect), Substance (Possibility & Contingency – Real Possibility), Causality (Cause – Effect – Reciprocity), Freedom and Necessity, Reciprocity and the Notion, The Actuality of Capitalism, Essence in Natural and Social Developments, The Essence of Capitalism, The Essence of the Women's Liberation Movement, The Essence of Philosophy, The Essence of Humankind.

• IV: The Meaning of ‘Reflection’

The Essential and Unessential, Identity, Difference, Opposition and Contradiction, Ground, Identity, Diversity (Essential Identity), Opposition (or Essential Difference), Contradiction (or Essential Opposition), Ground (or Essential Contradiction), Reflection in Nature and Society, Reflection of social developments in politics, etc., Reflection and Development.

• V: Formal Logic and Dialectics

The Law of Identity, The Law of Excluded Middle, The Law of Non-Contradiction, The Law of Sufficient Ground, The Notion, Judgement and Syllogism – Universal, Particular and Individual, The Notion and the Abstract Universal, The limits and negation of formal logic, Complexity, Mathematics and Dialectics, Formal Logic in Nature and Society.

• VI: The Notion in Hegel's Logic

Truth is Historical, The Notion of a Thing is the Truth of its Genesis, The Truth is both Subjective and Objective, The Crisis in Modern Physics, The Correspondence Principle, Operational Definition of Physical Concepts, The Principle of Complementarity, The problem of Visualisation, Absolute and Relative, The Truth is both Immediate and Mediated, Truth is Concrete, Knowledge proceeds from the abstract to the concrete, The Notion is a Unity of Opposites, Marx's concept of the Commodity as a unity of Exchange Value and Use Value, Lev Vygotsky's Concept of Word Meaning, The Notion is equally Analytic and Synthetic, The Notion is the truth of Actuality, The Notion in Nature and Society. The Notion of Capitalism.

• VII: The Development of the Notion in Hegel’s Logic

The Notion: Subject – Object – Idea, Subjectivity – Individual, Universal and Particular, Objectivity – Mechanism, Chemism and Teleology, The Idea – Life, Cognition and the Absolute Idea, Object: Mechanism – Chemism – Teleology, Mechanism – Mechanical Object, Mechanical process – Absolute Mechanism, Chemism – Chemical Object, Chemical process – Absolute Chemism, Teleology (Means & End), Means and Ends, The Idea (Life and Cognition), Life (The Living Individual & the Life Process, or the Personal & the Political), Cognition (The True and The Good), The True – Analytic & Synthetic Cognition, The Good, Absolute Idea – Unity of Practical and Theoretical Idea, Theoretical Idea, Practical Idea.

• VIII: Why do we say that Hegel is an “idealist”?

What is The Logic About?, The “Logic of Events”, “Levels” of Movement of Matter, The Categories of Logic, Materialism and Idealism, Subjective Idealism and Objective Idealism, “Spirit”, Materialist Dialectics, Hegel's Objective Idealism.

• IX: A Very Brief History of Materialism

Galileo, Bacon and Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes and Locke, Berkeley and Newton, The French Enlightenment and Hume, Kant, Summary.

• X: The Dialectical Method

Lenin’s “Elements of Dialectics”, Summary