The Relevance of Hegel's Logic

• Main Author: John W Burbidge
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cosmos and History Publishing Co-op. 2007-12-01
• Series: Cosmos and History : the Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy
• Subjects: Hegel; Conceiving; Dialectical Reason; Gottlob Frege; Infinity; Logical Necessity; Mechanical Memory; Psychologism; Science of Logic; Speculative Reason; Thinking; Understanding
• Online Access: http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/76

Hegel defines his Logic as the science that thinks about thinking.nbsp; But when we interpret that work as outlining what happens when we reason we are vulnerable to Fregersquo;s charge of psychologism.nbsp; I use Hegelrsquo;s tripartite distinction among understanding, dialectical and speculative reason as operations of pure thought to suggest how thinking can work with objective concepts.nbsp; In the last analysis, however, our ability to move from the subjective contingency of representations and ideas to the pure concepts we think develops from mechanical memory, which separates sign from sense so hat we can focus simply on the latter.nbsp; By becoming aware of the connections that underlie our thinking processes we may be able to both move beyond the abstractions of symbolic logic and clarify what informal logicians call relevance.