The Interplay Between Logic and Metaphysics

To appear in: A. de Laurentiis, Hegel and Metaphysics, Berlin/New York:De Gruyter 2016.
Elena Ficara
[email protected]

Walter Jäschke has argued that Hegel – not unlike Kant – substituted metaphysics with logic and that
this implies a critique, and ultimately the dismissal, of metaphysics. In Jäschke’s view, the
commentators who variously stress that Hegel’s (but also Kant’s) critique of metaphysics implies the
foundation of a new metaphysics are essentially mistaken because they do not take into account “the
historical concept of metaphysics” (Jäschke 2012), according to which metaphysics is dead after Kant
and Hegel. In this paper I take up the challenge, focusing on what Hegel says explicitly on the
concept of metaphysics and its relation to logic in his mature writings (among them, the 1812 Preface
to the Science of Logic, the Preliminaries of the 1830 Encyclopaedia, and the letter to Niethammer of
October 23, 1812). The analysis reveals that Hegel does not simply want to substitute metaphysics
with logic, ultimately dismissing the former. He does criticize, not unlike Kant, the pre-Kantian
dogmatic meaning of “metaphysics”, but explicitly defends an ancient and specifically Aristotelian
view. In particular, Hegel aims at both tracing metaphysics back to its logical roots and logic back to
its metaphysical roots, thus developing the idea of an interplay between the two disciplines. My claim
is that this idea is the main reason of Hegel’s importance for contemporary debates in the philosophy
of logic and metaphysics. In what follows, I first present the Hegelian view, then I show its
importance for current debates.

1. Hegel on logic and metaphysics

Hegel’s reflections on the link between logic and metaphysics move along Aristotelian lines.1 For
Hegel as well as Aristotle, the question of effective truth, intended as thought’s relation to and

                                                                                                               
1
Hegel famously defends a peculiar interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy, underlining the substantial continuity
between Plato’s and Aristotle’s thought. In particular, he views Aristotle as the philosopher who manages to set the
Platonic idea in motion. On Hegel’s Aristotelianism see Verra 2007, pp. 349-370. On Hegel and Aristotle see
Ferrarin 2001. On the continuity between Hegel’s and Aristotle’s concept of thinking see de Laurentiis 2002, pp.
263-285 and de Laurentiis 2005.
correspondence with what is, is fundamental in order to explain the meaning of logical validity and
necessity.
In the famous letter to Niethammer of October 23, 1812, Hegel observes that “metaphysics is a
science about which one is nowadays accustomed to feel embarrassment” (HW 4, p. 406). Among the
philosophical disciplines that are taught in the gymnasium, “metaphysics seems to go away empty-
handed” because psychology and logic have taken its place (HW 4, p. 406). At the same time
metaphysics is treated as being completely contained within logic.

According to my view, the field of metaphysics in any case falls entirely within the field
of logic. Here I can cite Kant as predecessor and authority. His critique reduces hitherto
metaphysics to a consideration of the understanding and reason. Logic in Kant’s sense can
thus be understood in such a way that, beyond the usual content of so-called general logic,
what he calls transcendental logic is bound up with and premised to it. In point of content
transcendental logic refers to the doctrine of categories, of reflective concepts, and of the
concepts of reason: the Analytic and the Dialectic. These objective thought forms
constitute an independent content corresponding to the role of the Aristotelian Categories
[organon de categoriis] or erstwhile ontology. Further, they are independent of one's
metaphysical system. They occur in transcendental idealism as much as in dogmatism.
The latter calls them determinations of beings [der entium], while the former calls them
determinations of the understanding. (HW 4, pp. 406-407)

Already Kant points out that the subject matter of metaphysics and that of logic coincide. More
specifically, he traces metaphysics back to logic (in his philosophy, according to Hegel, metaphysics
becomes an enquiry into understanding and reason). Kant’s logic deals both with what used to be the
subject matter of ordinary logic and what traditionally belonged to the canon of metaphysics, namely
categories like quantity, quality, and relation, concepts of reflection like identity and difference, and
concepts of reason. Thus Kant’s logic restores the Aristotelian conception and addresses topics that
constitute the main field of the Organon de categoriis, that is, it treats fundamental concepts which
underlie every philosophy, dogmatic as well as transcendental. It is in opposition to pre-critical
metaphysics, and not primarily to Aristotle, that Kant points out that those fundamental concepts are
determinations of thought and not of being, and as such belong to the logical, not the metaphysical
domain. They are functions and determinations of thought rather than, as is the case in Wolff and
Baumgarten, qualities or properties of entities (entia). This is evidently the core of Kant’s (and also
Fichte’s) transcendental turn. Accordingly, the main thematic object of philosophy as transcendental
is thought, and this means that it is a logical field. Hence philosophy is thought about thought
(Wissenschaftslehre). Hegel shares this basic insight.

In Hegel, however, it is clear that the transcendental philosophical insight does not have anti-
metaphysical implications. In the Introduction to the Science of Logic Hegel considers the question of
the relation between logic and metaphysics in the contexts (a) of an explanation about what is the
specific field of logic and (b) of the critique of merely formal or subjective conceptions of thought. In
this respect, Hegel argues, ancient metaphysics had a higher conception of thought than modern
philosophy. According to the Ancients, the real is only what is graspable through thought, and
thought is the very ground on which we can grasp something as existent. According to Anaxagoras,
for instance, “nous is the principle of the world, and the essence of the world is to be determined as
thought” (HW 5, p. 44). According to Plato, “something has reality only in its concept” (HW 5, p.
44). Hegel also remarks that the objective, neither psychological nor subjective, conception of thought
is already present in our general and ordinary idea of logic.

One can appeal to one’s own conceptions of ordinary logic; for it is assumed, for example, that
the determinations contained in definitions do not belong only to the knower but are
determinations of the object, constituting its innermost essential nature. Or, if from given
determinations others are inferred [geschlossen], it is assumed that what is inferred [das
Erschlossene] is not something external and alien to the object, but rather that it belongs to the
object itself, [or] that being corresponds to this thinking. (HW 5, p. 45)

According to the ordinary conception of logic, logical rules are neither arbitrary nor dependent on
who thinks them. They are rather the very expression of the structure of what really is. In other words,
when I derive a conclusion from premises, saying for example: “all conservative politicians lie, Mitt
Romney is a conservative politician, therefore Mitt Romney lies”, I claim to adequately grasp the
object of what I say (in this case Romney and his truthfulness).
Consequently, in the Preliminaries of the Encyclopaedia Logic Hegel calls the logical forms that
constitute the subject matter of logic “objective thoughts”.
 With these explanations and qualifications, thoughts may be called objective thoughts —
among which are also to be included the forms which are more especially discussed in the
common logic, where they are usually treated as forms of conscious thought only. Logic
therefore coincides with Metaphysics, the science of things set and held in thoughts —
thoughts accredited able to express the essential reality of things. (Enz § 24)

Logic thus coincides with metaphysics because the forms we use when we think and reason
express the very structures of what is. The forms analysed in logic are both determinations of
thought (and not of things), and determinations of reality since, according to Hegel (who follows
Aristotle) thought has the ability to grasp things as they are. Hence metaphysics, the science of
the essence of things, is one and the same as logic, the science of valid inference. Hegel observes
that “When thought tries to form a concept of things, this concept (as well as sentences and
arguments) cannot be composed of determinations and relations which are alien and irrelevant to
the things” (Enz § 24).
All this suggests that Hegel follows the ancient Aristotelian conception according to which the
necessity of logos is not ontologically neutral. As a matter of fact, we also read in the
Introduction to the Science of Logic that

When logic is taken as the science of thinking in general, it is understood that this thinking
constitutes the mere form of a cognition, that logic abstracts from all content, and that the so-
called second constituent of a cognition, namely its matter, must come from somewhere else;
and that since this matter is supposed to be wholly independent of logic, the latter can provide
only the formal conditions of genuine cognition and can neither itself contain real truth, nor
even be the pathway to real truth, because just what is essential in truth, the content, would lie
outside logic. But in the first place, it is quite inept to say that logic abstracts from all content,
that it teaches only the rules of thinking without any reference to what is thought or without
being able to consider its nature. For as thinking and the rules of thinking are supposed to be
the subject matter of logic, these directly constitute its peculiar content; in them, logic has that
second constituent, a matter, about the nature of which it is concerned. (HW 5, p. 36)

Here Hegel observes that since logic is indeed the science of thought in general (separated from every
particular content), or the consideration of the mere form of thought, this formal character of logic is
at the origin of the common critique according to which logical forms are empty and have nothing to
do with truth.2 But Hegel takes this view to be misguided, as forms are forms of something (thought),
and thought itself both is a specific content (the field of logic as theory) and is able to express what
truly is.

In the Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics of 1817 Hegel maintains that not only the forms of thought,
but also their truth, constitute the research field of logic. This also implies that logical forms are
necessarily linked to nature and natural language: “Logic is for us a natural metaphysics. Everyone
who thinks has it. Natural logic does not always follow the rules which are established in the logic as
theory; these rules often trample on natural logic” (Logik und Metaphysik 1817, p. 8).

Significantly, Hegel distinguishes between logic as theory and logic as natural logic or natural
metaphysics.3 First, he underlines the role of concrete experience (natural logic and natural
metaphysics) for the discovery and fixation of logical rules in the logical theory; second, he
understands experience in an expanded way as already structured by language and thought (natural
logic and natural metaphysics). This conception perfectly coheres with Hegel’s Aristotelianism, as
Hegel repeatedly underlines that Aristotle’s empiricism is speculative (Verra 2007, p. 364).
Similarly, in the Preface to the second edition of the Science of Logic, we read that logical rules are
sunk in human language and human nature, and that the general task of logic as theory is to become
aware of this, making the rules that are implicit in our effective speaking and thinking into the
thematic field of our inquiry. In other words, when we speak or reason we use specific patterns, for
instance, the disjunctive syllogism (“the light is on or off, it is not on, therefore it is off”), without
knowing this. This is the sense in which Hegel speaks about natural logic or natural metaphysics:
logical rules are operative, but implicit. Logic as theory (where “logic” is taken in its common
meaning, as referring to the discipline) consists in recognizing these patterns and making them the
object of inquiry.
The logical theory however sometimes “tramples on” natural logic or metaphysics because it fixes
rules, taking them as valid for every linguistic context, despite the fact that these rules are refuted by
                                                                                                               
2
See for instance Kant’s conception of formal logic as the negative condition of, rather than the path towards, truth,
in the Critique of Pure Reason [KrV], AA B 84-85.
3
On the concept of natural logic see Nuzzo 1997, pp. 39-82. Nuzzo explains here (pp. 47-48) that both expressions
“natural logic” and “science of logic” are originally used by Kant.
the natural logic of language, or by natural metaphysics. For instance, logic finds within the natural
logic of language forms of the disjunctive syllogism and forgets that this valid form per se does not
lead to truth (that is, to semantic validity and soundness). While the argument “the light is on or off; it
is not on; therefore it is off” is sound, the argument, equally grounded in the disjunctive syllogism,
“you are either for the New York Yankees or for the Boston Red Sox; you are not for the Yankees;
therefore you are for the Boston Red Sox” is not sound. It is unsound because the predicates “being
for the NY Yankees” and “being for the Boston Red Sox” do not exhaust the logical domain, which
contains further possibilities, e.g., rooting for the Chicago White Sox. A logic that dogmatically
claims that the rules it establishes are the norm of truth tramples upon natural logic and metaphysics
because it disregards the question about the ability or inability of words and arguments to express
what truly is.
Significantly, doubts about disjunctive syllogism, conditionals, and other forms of classical logic have
led to the development of non-classical logics (Priest 2008). From a Hegelian point of view they are
symptoms of the controversial normativity of logic when referred to natural logic and metaphysics.
In the context of his discussion of Atomism Hegel observes that one cannot escape metaphysics
(defined here succinctly as tracing nature back to thoughts) by throwing oneself into the arms of
Atomism. The atom is in itself a thought and the atomistic conception of matter is in itself a
metaphysical conception.

Only animals are, as a matter of fact, pure physicists, because they do not think, while the
human being as a thinking being is a born metaphysician. The question is only whether the
metaphysics one uses is of the right kind, namely, whether we hold fast to the understanding’s
univocal and fixed thought determinations as the basis of our theoretical and practical activity,
instead of keeping with the concrete, logical idea. (HW 8, p. 207)

Similarly we read in the Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Nature:

What more precisely distinguishes the philosophy of nature from physics is the kind of
metaphysics they adopts. As a matter of fact, metaphysics is nothing else than the range
of universal thought determinations, the rigorous network into which we bring every
content and through which we make it understandable. Every educated mind has its
metaphysics, the instinctual thinking, the absolute power in us over which we become
 masters only when we make it the object of our knowledge. (HW 8, p. 20)

Metaphysics is thus the structure of thoughts we use in order to grasp what is. Whether we want it or
not, as thinking and acting human beings we always think and act according to some general orienting
view (the natural, i.e. unconscious metaphysics). What is more, Hegel observes that these general
orienting views can be problematic because they force us to think in certain ways and do particular
things. When Hegel points out that the main problem is therefore not whether we have a metaphysics
or not, but whether our metaphysics is wide ranging and flexible enough, he also mentions the risks of
holding to a too rigid metaphysics. He therefore states that there is only one right metaphysics. This is
the “concrete, logical idea”. By “concrete logical idea” Hegel means dialectical logic, which Hegel
typically defines as a logic of “concreteness”, that is, of “connection”. In this sense, dialectical logic
appears to be both the individuation of most general patterns of thought (in Kant’s as well as in
contemporary understandings of formal logic) obtained by abstracting from all content and focussing
on mere form; and the critical reflection on these forms, a reflection which compels us to ask about
their truth, i.e., their effective ability to grasp what is. If for instance we assume atomism as our
metaphysics, then we encounter difficulties in accounting of phaenomena, such as the space-time
continuum, which are not adequately graspable under the assumption that matter consists of atoms.
Thus our logic and metaphysics have to be wide ranging enough for us to grasp what experience
presents us with in every case; they must also be flexible, i.e., open to the discussion of their own
structures when they reveal themselves to be inadequate.

2. Hegel’s view within current debates

In sum, Hegel’s view on the relationship between logic and metaphysics moves along the following
lines:
1. In Hegel (as well as in Kant) metaphysics, understood pre-critically as an analysis of the
determinations of being, is traced back to and ultimately identified with logic as the analysis of
thought determinations. This is the meaning of the transcendental turn in philosophy, which, as
Jäschke himself observes, is fundamentally maintained within Hegel’s speculative-dialectical
conception.
2. However, to interpret the critical-transcendental turn in philosophy in anti-metaphysical terms tout
court is reductive and does not capture the complexities of Hegel’s conception. According to Hegel,
the forms analysed in logic are not only determinations of thought (and not of things), they are also
determinations of the essence of things. As a matter of fact according to Hegel, who in this matter
largely follows Aristotle and the Greek tradition, thought has the ability to grasp things as they truly
are and to deliver their essential meaning. This is the sense of Hegel’s insight: “Logic therefore
coincides with metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts” (Enz § 24).
3. Logic is the theory of logical-metaphysical forms and their validity, and it is also natural logic and
metaphysics, that is, the web of implicit theories about the nature of both thought and being, a web
which can be subject to enquiry and thus lead to logic as theory.
4. It is impossible to rid ourselves of metaphysics. The attempt to dismiss metaphysics is in its turn
informed by metaphysical conceptions, that is, by presuppositions about what there is and its nature.
5. At issue therefore is not metaphysics per se but rather the kind of metaphysics we always already
rely upon to orient our thought and action.
These five points allow an assessment of Hegel’s view in light of contemporary debates in
metaphysics and philosophy of logic.
Theses 1. and 2. are substantially coherent with the self-understanding of metaphysics today. The
work of a metaphysician implies thesis (1.), that is, the idea (already developed by Kant) that our
theories about what there is and about the fundamental structures of reality must be traced back to
logic. In this way, our theories can be made precise and eventually criticised by using different logical
tools such as, among others, the analysis of validity and soundness, conceptual analysis, or theory of
argumentation.4 A contemporary metaphysician also shares thesis 2., which goes back to the ancient
Greek tradition, according to which our thought is able to grasp and express reality, and the forms
analysed by logic are neither “empty” nor merely subjective.5
The thesis about the interplay between implicit natural logic/metaphysics on the one hand, and
logic as theory (3.) on the other, means that our confuse theories about what there is should be made
the object of enquiry. This implies that they may be critically examined through the use of logical
tools (thesis 1.). Thesis 3. also means that natural logic/metaphysics itself should in turn be the critical
proof of logico-metaphysical theories. Logical laws should be open and flexible in order to account

                                                                                                               
4
See Varzi 2009, pp. 13-36, in particular pp. 13-14: “Because all metaphysical theorizing takes place in language ...
and because logic is to a great extent a theory of language, metaphysics can hardly get off the ground without the
help of logic”. For an overview about the meaning of metaphysics in both analytical and traditional philosophy see
D’Agostini 2008, pp. 244-270.
5
Macdonald 2005, pp. 8-13, underlines Aristotle’s influence on contemporary metaphysics.
for new or different states of affairs that emerge from the consideration of natural logic and
metaphysics. That logic should be ready to revise its laws in consideration of new evidence emerging
within natural logic and metaphysics is a distinctly non-classical insight. It shows the fundamental
continuity between Hegel’s dialectical conception of logic and the attempts, carried on since the
second half of the twentieth century, to broaden and revise the classical logic of Frege and Russell by
developing logics able to account for paradoxes, vague predicates, abstract objects, or non-existing
objects. That logic is not a fixed canon, but a complex field in development is an insight shared by
most contemporary philosophers of logic. As a matter of fact, research in the philosophy of logic
recognises that classical logical patterns of inference are sometimes inadequate to preserve truth as
they, in principle, should.6 For this reason, Read defends the importance of a critical reflection on
basic logical notions:

There are few books on the philosophy of logic. One reason is a widespread but regrettable
attitude towards logic, one of deference and uncritical veneration. It is based on a mistaken
belief that since logic deals with necessities, with how things must be, with what must follow
come what may, that in consequence there can be no questioning of its basic principles, no
possibility of discussion and philosophical examination of the notions of consequence, logical
truth, and correct inference. (Read 1995, p. 2)

Restall observes that:

Logic is not a completed science, and teaching it as it is one gives the mistaken impression
that all the important issues have been decided and all of the important questions have been
given definitive answers. This is a misrepresentation of the state of the art. (Restall 2006, p. 4)

As for Hegel, so for Read and Restall logic is not a rigid canon that must be accepted as it is once and
for all. Logic as theory has to be continuously re-thought in consideration of the natural logic of
language and of our implicit metaphysics.
Similarly, according to Haack, thinking about logical necessity involves the reconsideration of
implicit epistemological and metaphysical assumptions:

                                                                                                               
6
Haack 1978; Read 1995; more recently, Beall/Restall 2006, Berto 2006 and D’Agostini 2012.
 The very rigour that is the chief virtue of formal logic is apt, also, to give it an air of authority,
as if it were above philosophical scrutiny. And that is a reason, also, why I emphasise the
plurality of logical systems; for in deciding between alternatives one is often obliged to
acknowledge metaphysical or epistemological preconceptions that might otherwise have
remained implicit. (Haack 1978, p. 10)

This idea is specifically defended by Hegel, but it is already hinted at by Kant in his distinction
between natürliche Logik and Wissenschaft der Logik (on which see Nuzzo 1997).
Theses 4. and 5. clarify two aspects concerning the meaning of “metaphysics”. Hegel’s view
that we as thinking beings are essentially “metaphysical and logical beings” corresponds to the
commonly shared metaphysical view according to which thoughts, beliefs and propositions
necessarily carry ontological commitments.7 For Hegel even the atomist, who wants to be free of
metaphysics, is a metaphysician because she thinks. The atom is a thought, that is, a conceptual
structure through which we grasp what is. The problem therefore is not the presence of metaphysics in
our thought but the kind of metaphysics (the network of thought determinations) we adopt in order to
grasp the world. For this reason, Hegel claims that the right metaphysics is the concrete logico-
dialectical idea, i.e., a non-rigid network of thought determinations that includes a sceptical, self-
critical instance.
Today’s metaphysicians practice their discipline accordingly. By “metaphysics” today is
meant a non-dogmatic, critical enterprise. Even Armstrong’s physicalistic metaphysics, which –
among contemporary metaphysical theories – is probably the closest to the image of the world
defended by physics, recognises that this image can be modified and revised.

                                                                                                               
7
See the debate between Russell and Quine about ontological commitments: Russell 1905, p. 479-493; Quine 1948,
p. 1-19. The debate is at the core of recent discussions about the foundations of metaphysics. See Van Inwagen 2009,
p. 472-506 and McDaniel 2009, p. 290-319.
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