Hegel's Trinitarian Claim: A Critical Reflection

2. Hegel’s Logic of Pure Thought

2 Hegel’s Logic of Pure Thought 1. Through Etwas to Being Understanding logic, the movement of pure thought, as logically formulated “immanent” trinitarian divine self-positing subjectivity provides the fundamental justification for first examining the Logic and then Hegel’s explicit trinitarian texts. It grounds earlier methodological considerations ,1 where the term “methodology” unfortunately but initially almost inevitably rings of externality and merely generalized applicability not only for moderns conditioned by bureaucratizing technology2 but already for Hegel almost 200 years ago.3 This examination of logic, whose inner movement itself constitutes for Hegel its method, is therefore to be carried out internally on the general basis of thought’s inherent capabilities and limitations.4 This chapter’s examination and critique progress in five somewhat overlapping steps: first, a focus on the primordial, elementary movement of logic or pure thought and its context; second, a summary of Hegel’s presentation of this elementary movement; third, several more general remarks on Hegel’s absolute dialectic; fourth, a detailed critique of Hegel’s argumentation to establish logic in its primordial movement; fifth, a conclusion to the determinate nature of any beginning. Any examination of the Logic should pay attention both to the total movement of self-positing, self-determining thought and to the specific categorical moments constituting that movement. The necessity for these two focuses of attention is rooted in Hegel’s very conception of logic as distinguishable difference within unity, as the dynamic of pure thought or absolute form wherein each category is dialectically the non-temporal momentary totality.5 The prior imperative, never to lose sight of the total movement of thought, arises out of each category’s being momentary totality first of all in so far as each logical moment 25 26 Hegel’s Trinitarian Claim must be thought through to the point of transition into its categorical other, whether that transition be realized within the logic of being as the immediacy of “having gone over into,” within the logic of essence as the reflective form of “appearance in the other,” or within the logic of the Concept as “self-development into the other.”6 Therefore, this and the earlier description of Hegel’s logical dialectic as pure form and method7 establish the constantly presumed context within which specific thought determinations are to be analyzed. These remarks concerning total movement, form and method should not give the vague impression of some deeper dialectic underlying or independent of the movement realized in each category or in each major logical sphere. Rather, they represent an attempt to capture the sense of wholeness Hegel himself stresses by elaborating on method in the final, inclusive logical moment, the absolute Idea. The second focus and imperative, to think through and examine the logical moment of the absolute Idea itself or any other specific moment, is likewise rooted in the same category characteristic of nontemporal momentary totality. Each of the logical determinations is in its own way the totality of the Concept. There is for Hegel simply no substratum underlying the thought category, nothing else to think through beyond the immanent arising of the specific categories. Furthermore, the immanence demanded by Hegel’s method means that the specific categories have to justify their own coming into being. They have to arise out of one another both without appeal beyond the inadequacy of the previous category and within the context of the movement of thought itself.8 On the basis of the characteristic of momentary totality, it is necessary to keep sight of the overall context while always examining particular moments or categories.9 This double focus both justifies and necessitates the study of specific logical moments in order to understand and critique the Logic as a whole. Two specific moments come to mind immediately in regard to Hegel’s triadically structured presentation of logic as self-positing divine subjectivity: Etwas10 and syllogism (Schluß).11 Etwas or “something,” but without emphasis on “thing” (Ding), which is itself a thought determination in the logic of essence,12 is according to the second edition of the “Logic of Being” “only the beginning of the Subject”13 but is nevertheless a beginning. Characteristic for the logic of being, Hegel’s brief discussion of the arising of this logical category presents the total movement of the Concept in a logical nutshell, in the form of immediacy. Because 27...