小逻辑-黑格尔(英文原版)

CHAPTER IIntroductionCognitionThe objects of philosophy, it is true, are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In both the object is Truth.What is reasonable is actual; and, what is actual is reasonableIn its own field this empirical knowledge may at first give satisfaction; but in two ways it is seen to come short. In the first place there is another circle of objects which it dose not embrace. These are Freedom, Sprit, and God.Unless it is a system, a philosophy is not a scientific production. Unsystematic philosophizing can only be expected to give expression to personal peculiarities of mind, and has no principle for the regulation of its contents.Thus philosophy is subdivided into three parts:1.Logic, the science of the Idea in and for itself.2.The philosophy of Nature: the science of the Idea in its otherness.3.The philosophy of Mind: the science of the Idea come back to itself out of that otherness.CHAPTER IIPreliminary NotionIt is true that Logic, being the absolute form of truth, and another name for the very truth itself, is something more than merely useful. Yet if what is noblest, most liberal and most independent is also most useful, Logic has some claim to the latter character. Its utility must then be estimated at another rate than exercise in thought for the sake of the exercise.The world of spiritual existences, God himself, exists in proper truth, only in thought and as thought. If this be so, therefore, thought, far from being a mere thought, is the highest and, in strict accuracy, the solo mode of apprehending the eternal and absolute.Thought, in short, made itself a power in the real world, and exercised enormous influence influence.In earlier days men meant no harm by thinking: they thought away freely and fearlessly. They thought about God, about Nature, and the State; and they felt sure that a knowledge of the truth was obtainable through thought only, and not through the senses or any random ideas or opinions. But while they so thought, the principal ordinances of life began to be seriously affected by their conclusions. Thought deprived existing institutions of their force.In this point Conception coincides with Understanding: the only distinction being that the latter introduces relations of universial and particular, of cause and effect, and in this way supplies a necessary connection to the isolated ideas of conception; which last has left them side by side inits vague mental spaces, connected only by a bare ‘and’The difference between conception and thought is of special importance: because philosophy may be said to do nothing but transform conceptions into thoughts, --though it works the further transformation of a mere thought into a notionNow language is the work of thought:: and hence all that is expressed in language must be universal. What I only mean or suppose is mine: it belongs to me,--this particular individual. But language expresses nothing but universality; and so I cannot say what I merely mean.Nor it is unimportant to study thought even as a subjective energy. A detailed analysis of its nature would exhibit rules and laws, a knowledge of which is derived from experience. A treatment of the laws of thought, from this point of view, used once to form the body of logical science. Of that science Aristotle was the founder.For instance, we observe thunder and lightning. The phenomenon is a familiar one, and we often perceive it. But man is not content with a bare acquaintance, or with the fact as it appears to the senses; he would like to get behind the surface, to know what it is, and to comprehend it.Into this variety we feel a need of introducing unity: we compare, consequently, and try to find the universal of each single case.We said above that, according to the old belief, it was the characteristic right of the mind to know the truth. If this be so, it also implies that everything we know both of outward and inward nature, in one world, the objective world, is in its own self the same as it is in thought, and that to think is to bring out the truth of our object, be it what it may. The business of philosophy is only to bring into explicit consciousness what the world in all ages has believed about thought. Philosophy therefore advances nothing new; and out present discussion has led us to a conclusion which agrees with the natural belief of mankind.The real nature of the object is brought to light in reflection; but it is no less true that this exertion of thought is my act. If this be so, the real nature is a product of my mind, in its character of thinking subject-generated by me in my simple universality, self-collected and removed from extraneous influences, -in one word, in my Freedom.Logic therefore coincides with Metaphysics, the science of things set and held in thoughts,-thoughts accredited able to express the essential reality of things.In all human perception thought is present; so too thought is the universal in all the acts of conception and recollection; in short, in every mental activity, in willing, wishing and the like. All these faculties are only further specializations of thought.Man is a thinker, and is universal: but he is a thinker only because he feels his own universality. The animal too is by implication universal, but the universal is not consciously felt by it to be universal: it feels only the individual. The animal sees a singular object, for instance, its food, or a man. For the animal all this never goes beyond an individual thing.。