Lectures on Logic: Berlin, 1831 (review)

Clark Butler has given us an English version of Hegel’s 1831 Lectures on Logic, the last course he was to complete before his death. The course was transcribed by his son Karl and first published in 2001 (Vorlesungen über die Logik. Berlin 1831, ed. Udo Rameil). Although the manuscript is not Hegel’s own, its contents are unmistakably authentic, opening an interesting window on Hegel’s thinking while he was preparing a second edition of the Logic. Readers familiar with that work will find that the content of the lectures conforms to the standard version. But the real interest of these lectures lies in Hegel’s freer discussion of the logical categories, in the course of which he frequently gives illustrations from ethics and history.

Butler’s interest in the lectures is in keeping with Hegel’s intention to reach a wider audience (xiii); accordingly, Butler has introduced numerous interpolations in order to “produce a readable text for those who are not Hegel scholars” and to “make the science of logic not only readable but teachable” (ix). It may be questioned, however, to what extent Butler has succeeded. One difficulty stems from his intention to heed “Hegel’s professed true intent” (xvii), even where this brings him into conflict with the letter of the text. Noting that Hegel’s “panlogicist” style has “left many readers puzzled” (ibid.), Butler asserts, on the basis of a single passage, the controversial thesis that Hegel “was in fact a nominalist” (ibid.). He sees himself licensed by this conviction “to correct a mode of expression which [Hegel] himself criticized in 1830, but which still remained an ingrained habit of his in the 1831 lectures” (xviii). Given the general difficulty of ascertaining authorial intentions with certainty, the notorious difficulty of doing so in the case of Hegel particularly, and the fact that an author’s actual words constitute the only possible basis for inquiring into his intentions, systematic “correction” of an author’s mode of expression seems an unacceptably high price to pay for rendering that author “less off-putting” (ibid.).

Butler’s interpolations are distracting. Though many of them simply highlight references within the text, even this can grow wearisome, and in fact the interpolations often go further. An example: “One speaks of transcendental [deduction]” (35). In the original there is no mention of deduction, and the context makes clear that Hegel is explaining the use of ‘transcendental’ in contrast to ‘transcendent’. Butler’s interpolation is both superfluous and misleading, and the sheer number of such instances appreciably skews the original.

Butler states in the introduction (ix) that he has bracketed all of his interpolations; however, comparison with Rameil’s edition proves this not to be the case. Here is a passage from the original followed by Butler’s translation: [D]er Ursprung der Logik [ist] kein anderer als der der anderen Wissenschaften: Es kommen in ihrem Bewußtsein Bestimmungen vor, die den Sinnen nicht entnommen sind (4); “The origin of logic is no different from that of any other science. Determinations come forth in the conscious mind that, in logic but not in geometry, have not been extracted from the senses” (2). Apart from the fact that ‘vorkommen’ (‘occur’) has been mistranslated as ‘come forth’, and ‘ihrem Bewußtsein’ (‘their [sc. the sciences’] consciousness’) as ‘the conscious mind’, the insertion of a contrast between logic and geometry lacks any basis in the original. A similar instance occurs on the next page. The original reads: Das Denken sind wir, das Denkende bin ich (5). Butler turns this into “As human beings we are the activation of thinking. I am this very activation” (3). Such unmarked interpolations and transmogrifications make for uncertainty whether, at any given juncture, readers are dealing with a straight representation of the original. This lack of reliability affects the usefulness of Butler’s translation in precisely the academic contexts for which he intends it.

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