David Rapport Lachterman Hegel and The Formalization of Logic

Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal
j Volume 12. Number 1 & 2
I
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i HEGEL AND THE FORMALIZATION

( OF LOGIC
' David R. L achterman
Introduction: The Status of Hegel's Logic in Contemporary

Perspective
I: Heidegger's critique of Symbolic Logic and its

significance for Hegel
II: The formalization of Hegel's Logic

A. Hegel's Logic as a Formalism an sich?
B. Hegel's Logic as a Formalism Filr sich?
Ill: The Genealogy of Modern Formalism—A Hegelian

Diagnosis
A. Frege's Begriffsschrift and the Project of a
Mathesis Universalis (Descartes, Leibniz)
B. Hilbert's Metamathematics
C. The Fundamental results of Modern Meta-
Mathematics and their Hegelian Character
D. Lessons for the understanding of Hegel's
Science of Logic
Introduction: The Status of Hegel's Logic in

Contemporary Perspective
i Hegel is never mo re severely reproached than when the standing of

his Science of Logic is at issue. Challenges to the legitimacy of hi s
undertaking, to its authenticity as a logic, began as early as
Trendelenburg and find a familiar and pointed expression in
Popper's claim that the Logic is a work "which is not merely
obsolete, but typical of pre-scientific and even pre-logical
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GRADUATE FACULTY PHILOSOPHY JOURNAL
ways of thinking."1 For Popper and many like-minded critics the 1
line dividing "pre-logieal" from genuinely logical "ways of thinking" | 1
can be drawn with considerable precision: the advent and i

development of mathematical or symbolic logic, yielding as it does
powerful techniques of formalization and axiomatization, for t he '
first time placed the discipline of logic on a securely scientific i
footing and provided a trustworthy touchstone for assaying the
claims of rival "logics" or conceptual systems both past and present. I
When applied by modern logicians to Hegel's logic this touchstone
supposedly shows it to be "fool's gold." At most, then, Hegel might
be made to serve as a "pedagogical object-lesson in what lo gic 1
definitely is not and in how it ought not be pursued."2 1
If w e consider the systematic and methodological importance ol '
the Science of Logic within Hegel's thought, the gravity o f th is I
challenge is unmistakeable. The Logic is the armature on which his J
philosophy as a whole may be said to turn. It is no mere prelude to
the "real" philosophies of Nature and Geist; rather, it is th eir
"animating soul."3 The "concrete sciences", as Hegel calls th em,
"were and continue to be moulded by 'the Logical', their in wardly
formative source."4 The pure or absolute Idea, reached at the end of
the Logic proper, begins by exfoliating itself into external Nature,
only to come full circle in the philosophy of Geist where it discovers
"the highest concept of itself in logical science, in the form of t he
pure concept which conceptually grasps itself."5 Logic, the n, is the |
alpha and omega of Hegelian philosophy. And it is understood by
him as an "objective, demonstrated science," fulfilling the st an- |
dards of deductive necessity set, but not met, by mathematics.6 It |
exemplifies, paradigmatically, what it is for rational discourse to be i
scientific and, hence, integral. Accordingly if the logical armatureof
Hegel's thinking were to be effectively immobilized by the critique of i
modern formal logicians, Hegel's systematic discourse as a whole
would also come to a halt.
In this essay I want to explore three paths of response to t his
critique, which continues to throw its shadow over the contempo
rary reception of Hegel's philosophy.
I
I: Heidegger's Critique of Symbolic Logic and its Significance :
for Hegel I
The first path is the one taken by Heidegger. Far fro m b eing |
abruptly dismissive—compare the words of his contemporary Ernst I
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LACHTERMAN/FORMALIZATION OF HEGEL'S LOGIC
" i
t I Bloch: "Logistic is the act of incest of thinking with itself"—

"| Heidegger's res ponse to the institution of modern formal logic was
) I topographical: h e aimed at locating it not simply within contempo-
i rary thin king but, more fundamentally, within the history of
' Western meta physics as a whole. This topography was not meant,
I of course, as an exercise in the "history of ideas," but, ultimately, as
I a ro ute tow ards a manner of thinking and speaking other than
| those which hav e prevailed since the onset of "metaphysics."
Having beg un by criticizing the alliance between mathematics
and logic and by questioning the capacity of the new symbolic logic
1 to solve genuinely foundational questions either in mathematics or
j in the traditional theory of judgment, Heidegger went on, especially
I in his writings after Being and Time (1927), to press his diagnosis
| deeper; what he discovered was the complicity, the "elective
' affinity" between symbolic logic and the contemporary technologi
cal domain. 7
| This "elective a ffinity" is not simply a matter of the factual link
i between, say, Turing's theory of digital computers and the theory of
I calculable f unctions in formal systems (Church's thesis); rather,
j Heidegger came to see the style of thinking peculiar to the new logic
I and the mechanisms of computation as standing equally under the
I dominion of what he named "das Gestell," the enframing power
I within which truth is disclosed and the character of entities gets
I articulated in the contemporary epoch.
' This is clearly not the place for a more thorough exploration of
| Heidegger's conception of "technology" and his subtle tracing of its
| ties to, and differences from, the original unity of techne and
' poiesis in Greek thinking. It is necessary, however, to examine a bit
more closely the technological syndrome for which symbolic logic is
taken to be sy mptomatic.
Not surprisingly, Heidegger found the essential source of the
technological in the drive to mathematicize all thinking and
knowing, th e drive that inaugurated and still shapes the "new age."
But, the mathematical itself must in turn be understood as
expressing an even more basic transformation in the relation
, between human speech and thought and the beings and entities in
the wo rld to which they are responsive. The novelty of this "new
| relation" is encapsulated in the word 'Vorstellung', taken not as an
| act or res ult of mentally representing something but rather quite
literally as setting or placing something before oneself, to objectify
j it so as to put it at one's disposal. For something to be at all
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I
henceforth means for it to come to stand in relation to t he

'representative' subject. Modern mathematical science, technology
and, consequently, symbolic or mathematical logic find their place i
within this new constellation of subjects striving to "gain mastery I
over that which is as a whole," the world of "represented" objects.8
Under the impulse of that striving, modern thinking takes the
form of calculating, a willful reckoning that by its nature consumes
while giving itself the look of productivity. "Logistic" is, thus, the
"logically consistent degeneration of modern thinking,"9 or,
alternatively, "the most effective offspring" of the latter's u nchal
lenged power.10 It i s the machination of the world.
Three points need to be raised in light of this account.
The first is more narrowly "technical." Despite the appreciative
comments Heidegger made early in his career about the logical work
of Frege, Russell and Whitehead,11 his criticisms of "logistic," when
they are specifically focussed, rather than global, are not lik ely to
inspire immediate or complete confidence among its practitioners,
Heidegger seemed to have thought that the structure of the
proposition or judgment, as it was understood by contemporary
symbolic logicians, remained merely "the linking-together of
presentations (Vorstellungsverknu.pfu.ng)-,"12 this overlooks the
analysis of the deep-structure of the proposition (or, the predicational
tie) offered by Frege and enshrined in contemporary quantification
theory (in many versions or "ontological" interpretations). Th is
limitation hangs together with the fact that in discussing logistic as
a calculus Heidegger, as far as I can discern, always had th e
elementary propositional-calculus exclusively in mind.13 This has
two consequences bearing on the theme of the present paper: it is
the richer predicate-calculus which is presupposed by cri tics of
Hegelian logic such as Russell; secondly, by concentrating on t he
simpler prepositional calculus Heidegger, in effect, denied himsell
the opportunity to detect at what points and for what internal
reasons the "elective affinity" between symbolic logic and machine
technology broke down in the course of the former's development
(see below, section III). Hence, while in no way detracting from the
power of his diagnosis, these limitations tend to make into i t
something other than a purely immanent critique that might prove
telling to the partisans of modern logistic.14
Nor, in the second place, has Heidegger done complete justice to
the "symbolic" character of symbolic logic. The triad of designations
still in use: "formal logic"—"mathematical logic"—"symbolic logic"-
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Isaconstant reminder that modern logic emerges (e.g., in Leibniz)

from the generalization of the specious logistic [logistica speciosa]
j devised b y Viete a nd Descartes, and this means as well, from the
latter's project of a mathesis universalis. Central to that program
I (a nd alr eady at work in Cartesian "algebra") is the thesis that
whatever is to be learned and known must first undergo
| imaginative t ransformation into a symbolic "representation" (cp.
j Regulae, Rule XII). The cognitive transactions between the mind
and the world are necessarily (and, for Descartes, sufficiently)
mediated by the presence of symbolic forms themselves (figures,
| lines, equations, for example), generated in concert with the mind's
reflexive turn to its own self-transparent activity.15
| I shall have more to say about this genealogy of symbolic, i.e.,
modem, logic in section III below. For the moment, I w ant only to
! explore th e q uestion whether Heidegger's presentation of Vorstel-
lung as the ontological signature of the modern age sufficiently
captures this t heme of symbol-formation and symbolic intermedia
tion and, th erewith, the outstanding differences between ancient
and modern "logics".
Heidegger c omes closest to addressing this theme in his essay
The Age of the World Picture" (1938), in which he meditates on the
interwoven origins of modern subjectivity (man's becoming a
subjection) and the transformation of the world into a picture or
structured image (Gebild). The latter event occurs when the world
in its entirety has its being "only insofar as it is set in place by man
who sets it before him and sets it up."16 However, Heidegger
interprets 'Bild' not, primarily, in the sense of 'image' or 'imitative
replica', b ut rather in the spirit of the colloquial expression 'wir
sind iiberetwas im Bilde', as we might say in English, "we get the
picture" or, "put someone in the picture."17 To be in the picture is
to be in a position from which one can "provide the measure for all
that i s." What s eems to be ignored here is the prior, and possibly
more potent, transformation of the world understood as (pwis or
Kocrpo? into a theoretical network of mathematical (or, "logistical")
symbols.18
Similarly, in his intricate study of the schematism in Kant's first
Critique, Heidegger brings to light the "antecedently formed
IgebildetJ horizon of transcendence," in virtue of which a finite
"knower" can assure himself of encountering a sensible entity as an
"object."19 According to his interpretation of Kant, it is the office of
the trans cendental imagination (Einbildungskraft) to render this
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horizon "sensible" by forming (bilden) a schema and, therewith, t

"providing for the possibility of an 'image' [Bild] in general.'™
Heidegger takes 'image' to be co-extensive in reference with t he
"look" or "aspect" (Anblick) of something, but goes on to
distinguish four senses of 'image', three of which play a part in
Kant's account.21 What is inevitably striking is that Heidegger
omits from consideration the third of these four senses initially
discriminated, namely, "an aspect which provides a model f or
something yet to be produced," for it is this sense that most nearly
coincides with the Cartesian or generally modern understanding of
the productive or constructive symbol. (Kant's own theory o f
mathematical "construction" remains tied to the original algebraic
sense of constructing an equation, i.e., producing its intuitable
geometrical equivalent).22 Once again what drops out of the picture i
Heidegger draws is the characteristic duality of the "image" or
"symbol" as it appears in modern thought: on the one hand, in
forming symbols, the mind "abstracts" from the "naturally" or
"pre-theoretically" given looks and aspects of the world (thus, f or
example, the symbolic-mathematical figures and characters in the
Regulae cancel and replace the Aristotelian perceptible eide),23
while, on the other hand, the manifest symbols, now invested with
the mind's own intentions, allow for the reconstitution of th e
world's original "looks" and, indeed, of the world as a whole.
Consequently, the "conquest of the world as picture" which
Heidegger so rightly emphasizes as "the fundamental event of t he
modern age" cannot be understood except in tandem with th e
reconstitutive transformation of Nature on the basis of the
symbolic "language" of mathematics, the indispensable matrix of
modern logic and, therefore, of contemporary "logistics" as well.
Finally, and most relevantly to my chief concern in the e ssay,
Heidegger's critical diagnosis of symbolic logic as a metaphysical
signature of the present time leaves Hegel completely exposed to the
attacks of his formalistic antagonists, despite the fact that, as I
shall show in more detail later, he anticipates several of the m ain
features of Heidegger's critique (both agree, for example, th at
"formal logic" does not constitute a "contemplation or recollection
[Besinnung]" of the meaning of logos and both call severely into
question the reduction of "logic" to a calculative technique).24
The following considerations make the reason for Hegel's
vulnerability plain:
Hegel's thinking is, in the first instance, the consummation of
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that epoch of metaphysics dominated by Vorstellung, i.e. the

institution of man as subject and of entities as objects. Hegelian
thinking and symbolic logic come to light within one and the same
constellation. Thus, for example, Leibniz's thesis concerning the
"representative" c haracter of each monad determines both "the
development of modern logic into logistic and into the thinking-
r machine and the more radical explication of the subjectivity of th e
1 subject within the philosophy of German Idealism."25 Similarly,
Hegel's will to absolute, systematic knowing, itself the culmination

of K ant's transcendental philosophy, points inexorably ahead to
Nietzsche's wi ll-to-will and, thence, to the planetary dominion of
"das Gestell" or "die Technik" for which logistic is symbolic.26
Hegel's thi nking, both in the Phenomenology and in the Logic,
displays the way in which "unconditioned subjectivity, as the act of
representing (thinking) which becomes unconditionally manifest to
itself (das u nbedingte sich erscheinende Vorstellen (Denken)) is
the Being of all that is."27
Even more fun damentally, in Hegel's Logic, western metaphysics
as a whole, and not only "modern" philosophy, reaches its
denouement, and it does so because western metaphysics has
been, from i ts inception, conceived as "logic". "Hegel renamed the
highest stage of his thinking and western thinking generally, which
formerly bore the name 'Metaphysics' and gave it the name 'logic' or,
| more precisely 'Science of Logic'."28
And, in this connection Heidegger insists: "we have reasons for
asserting that precisely 'logic' has not only hemmed in the essential
unfolding o f logos, but has prevented and continues to prevent it
from unfolding."29
Heidegger suggests that "Logic" is "a descendant of metaphysics,
not to say an abortion; if Metaphysics were itself to prove a
misadventure (Missgeschick) of essential thinking, then 'logic'
would be the abortive offspring of an abortion."30 Contemporary
symbolic logic, we would have to conclude, is in its turn the
deformed offspring of Hegelian logic.
This sketch, needless to say, comes nowhere close to capturing
the intricacy and persistence of Heidegger's confrontation with
Hegel: a confrontation or thoughtful dialogue that runs like a red
thread through his works from his Habilitationsschrift to the
seminars o n his own "Time and Being" and on Hegel s Differenz-
schrift.31 What I have been concerned to bring out is simply the
nature of the difficulty into which Heidegger's reading of the
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epochal history of being and of the place of symbolic logic within

that history throws the contemporary reader of Hegel's Lo gic.
Insofar as "logistic" is the consistent or consequential degeneration
of modern thinking as such and, qua logic, of Hegel's Science of
Logic (the denouement of Vorstellung) in particular, then th e
technical criticisms logistic mounts against Hegel are in their own
right the reassertion of the latter's own logical assertiveness,
Although the criticisms may not warrant acceptance on "formal"
grounds—Heidegger, on at least one occasion, endorses Hegel's
dialectical expose of the so-called formal principles of thought 32-
their proponents and Hegel share the same epochal destiny; and
Hegel's logic cannot outstrip an antagonist which is its ow n
offspring.
II: The Formalization of Hegel's Logic
A second, quite divergent, path is taken by those who appear to

believe that formalist censures can be undercut, or at least
mitigated, by applying the procedures and canons of logical
formalization to Hegel's own work or to its putative analogues (i.e.
dialectical logics). Hence, even though Hegel did not present his
Science 0/Logic as a formalism, we might try to do so on hisbehalf,
hoping, perhaps, to "understand Hegel better than he understood
himself." The outcome will have the force of a redemptive
paraphrase.
The motives behind such undertakings are no doubt many, but
almost all mix together interpretation and vindication; in o ther
words, formalizations of Hegel's logic are intended both to ex hibit
its structure and to justify its claim to be a logic, either b y
embedding it in a conventionally acceptable formal logic, b y
deploying an already-extant alternative logical system or mathemat
ical structure or, finally, by creating ab ovo a new "system" with its
own special operators, axioms, rules of inference and so on. These
attempts pursue what we might call a Trojan-horse strategy; Hegel
"formalized" will strip his formalistic critics of their weapons.
It wo uld not be appropriate here to examine in detail each of the
various formalizations of Hegel's logic which have been proposed;
these run the gamut from simple notational transcriptions, having
only mnemonic or didactic utility, to what initially look like genuine
logical systems with all the conventional apparatus and w ith at
least gestures towards specifying metamathematical properties o(
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' the system. 33 No o ne, however, has yet succeeded in producing a

system that stands to Hegel's Science of Logic the way, for example,
the Zermelo-Fraenkel axiomatization stands to classical set-theoiy.
At all even ts, we have to distinguish here between questions of
I fact and questions of entitlement, in something close to Kant's
sense. Pe rhaps someone, someday, will write for Hegel's logic the
textual analogue of Principia Mathematica; it would still be worth
asking wh ether the formalization, in principle, "does justice" to
what has been formalized.
What is m eant here by 'doing justice'? Every "interesting" formal
system remains wedded to the preformal body or bodies of
discourse it formalizes. The formal system is not, of course, an
exact notational replica of the pre-formal "text"; on the other hand,
the c onstruction of the formalism is governed by the desire to
express or c apture the structural and inferential features that give
the pre-formal text its identity. Intuitive number-theory, for
example, is meant to be "captured" in the syntax (or, metalanguage)
of Prin cipia M athematica; the former is the intended or principal
"model" (or semantic interpretation) of the latter. Accordingly,
elements and structures ingredient in the pre-formal text ought to
have their counterparts in the formalism, conclusions counte
nanced in the intended model ought to correspond to formal
derivations.34
When int erpretation in a philosophical (or hermeneutical) sense
is conjoined with interpretation in the previously discussed
model-theoretic sense, the question of doing justice to the
preformal tex t becomes even more delicate, for it seems a natural or
"intuitive" requirement that an interpretation in the former sense
somehow preserve the spirit of the text or discursive practice under
scrutiny. (It is, needless to say, inordinately difficult to spell out
rigorously w hat an interpretation salvo spiritu consists in.)35 The
twin-tasks of formalizing and "interpreting" Hegel's logic are, I
think, difficulties in principle that further technical innovations
can only exa cerbate rather than overcome.
Let me restate what is at issue here and thereby define more
clearly the object and sequence of the following two sub-sections.
The pr oject of formalizing Hegel's logic is multivalent; it can, in
principle, a ttach itself to three distinct ambitions and interpreta
tions. One could aspire to show that Hegel's logic is intrinsically, an
sich, a formalism; or, secondly, that it was a formalism for Hegel
himself; o r, finally, that it can be transformed into a formalism/or
161
f us. Although the partisans of formalization waver among th ese

' three possibilities, their interconnection suggests that one n eed
only convincingly show that Hegel's logic is not a formalism either
an sich or/ur sich to be persuaded that it makes no sense to regard
it as a formalism fur uns.
HA: Hegel's Logic as a Formalism An Sich?
Face-to-face with the existing sketches for a formalization of

Hegel's logic the attentive reader of the Science of Logic is likely to
feel a certain perceptual discomfiture: these expanding algebraic
matrices, hyperboolean algebras of the second order, infinitely
converging Taylor-series to represent Hegelian inference-chains,
special symbols standing for 'Aufhebung' and so forth, simply don't
"look like" what appears in Hegel's text.36 The situation seems
comparable to the transition from "revealed religion" to "absolute
knowing" in the finale of the Phenomenology—the content o f
revealed religion is "the absolute spirit," but the form of re ligious
representation (Vorstellen) betrays its content.
Nevertheless, this perceptual discomfiture should probably not be
taken too seriously. A musical score neither "looks nor sounds like"
a musical performance, but a capable performer can "translate"the
score into musical sound. Can we do the same in the case o f
formalized versions of Hegel? Can we retrieve the spirit and content
of his enterprise from the logico-mathematical forms intended to
symbolize it? Or will they all, in the last analysis, succumb to the
objection already made by one critic about one sample attempt: "it
is a parody of f ormalization"?37
Any (axiomatic) formalization comprises a list of elementary
symbols (or symbol-types), connectives, rules for generating
admissible or well-formed formulae, rules of inference (or re place
ment) and axioms (or axiom-schemata).
In addition, formalizations can be (semantically) interpreted in
one or more domains, such that the elementary symbols, statement-
forms, etc., can be mapped onto the elements, statements, etc.,of
the intended domain or domains.
How does a formalization of Hegel's logic fare as regards these
features? Let me consider, in turn, three classes of problems
endemic to such a project, before taking up two further issues of
even deeper relevance to the understanding of Hegel's intended
162
science and thus to the conditions for its possible formal, or

symbolic representation.
1. An y formal representation that includes initial axioms or
axiom-schemata must immediately face the difficulties posed by
Hegel's claim th at the Science of Logic begins immediately, that is,
without presuppositions and in the shape of indeterminate
immediacy, pure Being. Put otherwise, to make a presupposition-
less beginning is to "decide" to take thinking as such into
consideration; this arbitrary act, insofar as it is an act, is not
reproducible in an axiom-schema.38 It is rather like the conductor's
silent signal to a n orchestra to begin.
Suppose, how ever, that axioms are assigned the status of "laws of
thought" (as they were by Frege and Russell and by still earlier
traditions); or, i n other words, that the "thinking" freely taken into
consideration at the start of the Logic exhibits itself from the start
as im plicitly governed by logical, not psychological, rules. This
construal of axioms has to confront an equally severe challenge
within the i ntended model, inasmuch as Hegel, at the start of the
Introduction to the Science of Logic, writes: "Logic, on the
contrary, cannot presuppose any of these forms of reflection or
rules and laws of thinking, for these make up a part of its content
and first need to be grounded within it."39 Furthermore, several of
the traditional "laws of thought" are themselves subjected to
analysis in th e second part of the Logic; the results of t his analysis,
to speak in formal jargon, are, first, that the axiom-set consisting of
these "laws" is inconsistent and, second, that no one of them is
"independent" of t he others. Neither result could be embraced with
equanimity by most contemporary formal logicians. (It should also
be noted t hat Hegel always energetically and thoughtfully opposed
the attempt to construct philosophical systems from a "motionless
tautology," an absolutely basic principle, or from "formal proposi
tions" such as he believed he found in Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre
or in the contemporary "reflexion-systems" of Reinhold and
Bardilli.)40
2. L et me pass on to the second class of problems. Hegel s logic
has been symbolically transcribed (at least in part) into the
prepositional or the predicative calculus (or quantification theory).
Discord between the formalism and its principal model results from
either choice.
a. A prepositional representation obscures the fact that the
primary elements in play in the course of the Logic are not
163
sentences or assertions but "concepts", pure determinations of

thinking, or categories, as Hegel variously calls them. (Ultimately,
to be sure, these plural designations are inadequate, inasmuch as
the true subject-matter of the Science of Logic turns out to have
been all along the absolute or the logical idea, singulare tantum.
This complication can be overlooked for the moment.) Certainly
Hegel, as the author of the Science of Logic, makes statements
about these determinations of thinking; nonetheless, the st ate
ments he makes concern what we might call the internal structure
and history of those concepts and categories themselves-thus, for
example, Finitude, Quantity, Ground, Absolute Necessity, an d so
on. Thus, logical transitions do not come by way of truth-functional
connectives but by virtue of what thinking discovers when it
examines those internal structures and, to speak crudely, tests
them for conceptual self-sufficiency and self-consistency. This is at
least part of what Hegel has in mind when he raises the question of
the intrinsic truth of thought-determinations and characterizes
truth in this case as "the concordance of a content with itself."41 Or,
as he writes elsewhere: "When the determinations of thinking. ..
are truly inspected in their own right, what alone can emerge is
their finitude and the untruth of the intention to give each of them
separate being for itself. . . ."42
The fact that Hegel's logic concerns conceptual units and their
interplay has the additional consequence that negation and
contradiction are internal to these suppositious units or arise out
of their relationships; they are not external in the fashion o f
sentence-negation or the contradiction between sentences. Thus,
Hegel says of the category 'Becoming': "it contradicts itself,
therefore, within itself. . . ."43 Attempts to capture or to p alliate
the Hegelian notion of contradiction by dropping or modifying the
precept ex falso quodlibet, by introducing new non-classical
operators on sentences (or propositions) or by assimilating
Hegelian to three-valued logic are, therefore, beside the point.44
b. The remaining alternative is to "translate" Hegel's Lo gic into
the language of the predicate calculus; this option is no m ore
successful than the first, for at least three primary reasons.45
(i) The basic schema for the (first-order) predicate calculus is F(x)
or ". . . is F." 'x' is the sign for an individual variable the values of
which range over some domain. We can also speak of substitution-
instances of 'x'. What counterpart do the values of an individual
variable have in Hegel's Logic?
164
^I
^ It is crucial here to distinguish between two questions. "What are
,, the item s in the domain over which the values of an individual
variable range (i.e. what is it to correspond to an individual
w constant)?" and "What is the ontological (or, for Hegel, conceptual)
n constitution of the individuals in a given domain?" All sorts of items
l' can b e bro ught forward as specimen answers to the first question
ts (e.g., spatio-temporal individuals, physical particles, numbers and
e. sets), which n onetheless differ in regard to their constitutions.
re Hegel, by s howing that attempts to answer the latter question
|r lead, time and again, to conceptually untenable and inadequate
0 results, also w ants to demonstrate that the very notion of referring
j to a "pure" individual is self-vitiating.
1 This comes out, first of all, in the sheer variety of terms canvassed
in the Logic, e ach of which might look like the counterpart of an
I individual v ariable or of (the class of) its substitution-instances.
[• Thus, in the Logic of Being, he studies "something" (Etwas) or,
[ synonymously, " that which is there" (das Daseiende) and, later,
j "the One" (d as Eins); in the Logic of Essence he examines "the
existing s omething" (das existierende Etwas) or, synonymously,
"the thing", (das Ding).46 At a minimum, then, any formal
representation of Hegel which uses the predicate calculus would
have to discriminate among these different types of individual
| variables or constants. Furthermore, the so-called existential
| quantifier would have to be made sensitive, if that is formally
, possible, to Hegel's distinction between Dasein (in the Logic of
I Being) and Existenz (in the Logic of Essence), to say nothing of
i Wirklichkeit, which "stands higher than existence."47
Much more importantly, Hegel takes pains to bring out the
| conceptual insufficiency of these allegedly singular referring
| expressions; we might say that they are opaque, not because it is
I unclear which individuals they pick out but because they fail
systematically to pick out individuals. His analysis of "Dieses" in
the first c hapter of the Phenomenology is familiar; equally, in the
I Science of Logic, for example in the section on "Something and
I Other", he tries to subvert both the common-sense and the
philosophical belief that individuals ("somethings') are genuinely
distinct an d hence referentially distinguishable from one another;
the Other, one of the Eleatic Stranger's greatest kinds, has to be
I woven into the logical texture of each and every something .
| "Being-for-another and being-in-its-own-right (Ansichsein) make
up the two factors of the Something."48 Similarly, at a later stage o
165
the Logic of Essence, Hegel argues that distinct things (Dinge)

"herewith fall only within this continuity which is property (sc. the
property relating them] and vanish as subsistent extremes meant to
have an existence independently of this property."** Hegel's general
point, here and in the corresponding discussion of "the Thing and
its Properties" is neither that individuals mysteriously change their
identities nor, simply, that there is "no identification without
description," but, more challengingly, that allegedly referential
discourse is so thoroughly intertwined with property-ascriptions
that no single description can be disengaged from a network of
shareable, or, better, mutually implicative descriptions. Purely
individuating reference is, so to say, a contradiction in terms.50
(ii) Let me leave the question of individual variables and
constants behind and turn to the predicate-symbols of a formalized
version of Hegel's Logic. Although predicate-symbols are not
themselves names or variables, but, instead, schematic letters, as
Quine has eloquently urged, nonetheless, the question of what
answers to these formal symbols in pre-formal discourse is |
unavoidable. If p redicates, rather than schematic predicate-letters,
are taken extensionally, that is, as equivalent to the class of items of
which they hold true, then problems of individuation similar to
those just discussed reappear, since a class uniquely determined by
a predicate (cp. the axiom of comprehension in naive set-theory)
plays a role very much like that of "the Something", "the One" or |
"the Thing". If predicates are taken intensionally, that is, as i
matched with meanings, then, although this move is relatively less '
problematic from a Hegelian point of view, the would-be formalizer
has to face two fundamental perplexities arising from the
"behavior" of meanings within Hegel's logic.
First, most, if not all, of the categorial terms that play a p art in I
the course of the Logic are essentially and hence irremediably '
ambiguous, while securing univocity of meaning (and reference) is
close to the heart of the formalistic project itself. This ambiguity or
multivocity of Hegelian Categorial terms, far from being "acciden
tal" or coincidental, is part and parcel of their status as factors and
moments within the progressive unfolding of the categorial
whole.51 Thus, to take a key example, 'Being' ('Sein') takes o n
numerous semantic roles both within the Logic of Being and within
the Logic in its entirety. In the "General Division of Bein g", Being
shows up (1) as what discriminates itself from Essence (2) as "the
sphere" encompassing the three major determinations belonging to
166
~ I
ge) the L ogic of Being, viz., Quality, Quantity and Measure, and (3),
the I finally, in the form of "abstract immediacy," as confined to the one
t to | sphere of quality. (This trichotomy by no means exhausts the range
ral of senses 'Being' exhibits throughout the course of the Logic.)
nd Similarly, 'immediacy', after having occupied a pivotal position at
eir the start of th e Logic of Being, reappears, in the Logic of Essence,
iut in th ree d istinguishable senses, as Dieter Henrich has recently
ial | made clear.52 The progression of Hegel's argument seems vitally to
ns | depend on the intelligibility of the shifts or displacements among
of j these sense s. The multivocity in question is not denotational—
ily ' 'Being' is not vague in the way 'mountain range' is—nor is it a
| matter of stra ightforwardly lexical ambiguity as in the case of the
id English word 'bore'; instead, the successive expansions and
id | contractions of its semantic force record its history within the
>t | search for (in Hegel's terms, the self-unfolding of) a single
s . conceptual structure in which complementary and contrastive
it ' differences are incarnate, rather than extrinsic. The determina-
s j tions of th inking are, as Professor Findlay puts it, "iridescent."53
, | Moreover, Hegel does not decry, but, instead, celebrates the
f I ambiguity of ce rtain terms in a natural language such as German;
) 'aujheberi i s only the most famous instance. This indicates that,
r I for Hegel, the relation between a natural (or object) language and its
I logical reg imentation (or metalanguage) is far different from that
| enshrined in t he prevailing contemporary understanding: the latter
I seeks to eliminate multivocity by assigning different symbols to
I "different" meanings, while Hegel exploits the ambiguity of his
| thematic and his operative terms.54
The situation, from a formal point of view, only worsens when we
I take into account still another feature of Hegel's use of categories
I (or, th ought-determinations). This is their self-predicativity, espe
cially manife st in the central Logic of Essence.55 Thus, Hegel can
treat what, in any familiar formalization, would appear as the sign
I for the logical connectives identity (e.g. = ) a nd non-identity (e.g.
I '^) as potentially self-applicable. Thus, Hegel is prepared to claim
I that "Id entity is in its very own right absolute non-identity, and
| "Difference ( Unterschied) in its own right is difference that relates
' itself to itself."56 To all appearances, Hegel is concerned here to
determine whether identity is identical or non-identical with itself,
i whether difference is different from itself or not. The specter of
Plato's trit os anthropos seems to hover over this phase of Hegel s
discussion. This is not the occasion for a more extended inquiry
167
either into the legitimacy of what here appears to be self-predication

(or, more bizarrely, the application of a "logical connective" to itself)
or into the reasons why such examples are preponderant in Hegel's
survey of the "determinations of reflexion," i.e., the terms o f
discourse figuring in the philosophy of Kant and Fichte.57 It will
have to suffice to point out that the kinds of self-predicativity or
self-application exhibited there violate the notational and logical
spirit of contemporary predicate logics.
(iii) The third perplexity which has to be confronted by anyone
setting out to formalize Hegel's Logic as a predicate-calculus comes
to sight in his critique of the form of predication itself.
Hegel more than once charges that the form of predication lacks
the aptitude for expressing speculative claims or truths.58 To make
complete sense of this charge we would need to inspect in detail
Hegel's theory of judgment and his theory (or theories) of language
as such; at present I have to content myself with elucidating, in
brief outline, how Hegel's indictment of predicational expression
bears on the narrow issue of formalization.
For Hegel a proposition (or judgment),59 in a philosophical
setting, is a proposal to "identify" something, to reveal its identity,
to state what it essentially is. Hegel provoked Russell's acerbic
wrath for allegedly confounding the 'is' of identity with the 'is' of
predication,60 but the criticism ignores the role 'identification' is
meant to play in theoretical discourse. Here the predicate-term is
read as expressing what the referent of the subject-term "really" or
"truly" is; predication and identification merge into one ano ther
when what is at stake is the disclosure of the essential nature or
definition of some subject. (Correspondingly, Aristotle recognizes
that to state an essence of that which is essentially so-and-so is to
deviate from the ordinary schema of predication in which one thing
is said of another (tL Kara tcvos).61
Why, then, does Hegel find the form of predication construed as
theoretical identification representationally inadequate to that
task?
First, the standard logic, but not the ordinary grammar, of a
proposition in subject-predicate form is committed to two in com
patible presuppositions: First, that the subject "refers" on its own
and, second, that the essential nature of the subject (and, hence,
the referential force of the subject-term) is specified only by the
predicate.
The subject- and predicate-terms, grammatically considered, are
168
indifferent and external to one another, "two words externally

bound together;" on the other hand, the logical force of the copu la
is such that the p redicate is meant to "belong to the Being of the
subject and not merely externally bound to it."62 Nonetheless, in the
representation o f this bond in a proposition the relation between
| subject and predicate ret ains the appearance of mere "externality";
I In other words, ea ch of the two seems to have a subsistence on its
I own and, consequently, the prepositional form does not convey the
| "motion" or logical transaction through which the intended work of
; the predicational tie is achieved.
Another aspect of this situation comes out in Hegel's treatment of
I philosophical assertions as, one and all, "definitions of the
I Absolute," or "metaphysical definitions of God."63 In a proposition
' such as "t he Absolute is Essence," the subject-term denotes an
undetermined substratum, a thought merely "meant," which
receives its conten t only through the identifying predicate (here a
second abstract singular term, viz. 'das Weseri). But, in this case,
no d eterminate conceptual weight is borne by the subject-term
itself, despite its denotational position. The grammatical and
logical separation of subject and predicate thus appears to be futile.
Hegel summarizes this aspect by saying that "the judgment thanks
to its form is one -sided and to this extent false."64 We can also say
that the " motion" indicated by the form of predication is in one
direction only, i.e. from the subject, assumed to be a fixed and
independent basis, to the predicate, regarded as expressing the
essential character of that basis. But, if the subject is only an
undetermined substratum, its designation an "empty name, then
the ad vance from subject to predicate also seems to entail the
disappearance or loss of the subject as something fixed in its own
right and in advance of its inclusion in the proposition. The
propositional form, s o construed, fails to bring to light the manner
in w hich the subject determines itself, articulates itself as the
predicate by differ entiating itself into what is, in turn, responsible
for identifying it. These comments set the stage for Hegel s doctrine
of the "speculative proposition", in which the nature of pre
philosophical judgments or propositions is said to be destroyed.
cannot dw ell o n the possible interpretations and ramifications of
this notori ously difficult doctrine; several brief and unfortunately
dogmatic observations will have to suffice;65
1) A "speculative proposition" does not have a nove or unusu
grammatical or l ogical form in comparison with standard proposi-
169
tions, nor is it simply the negation of a given non-speculative

proposition. To take one of Hegel's examples: 'The Actual is th e
Universal' is linguistically represented as a normal statement of
identity (or tautology): similarly, its negation still falls within the
standard subject-predicate mould. Everything will depend, then, on |
how a proposition occurring in philosophical speech is "read" or j
"deciphered."
2) A speculative reading of a philosophical proposition is meant, |
first, to overcome the mutual indifference and isolation of subject |
and predicate and, at the same time, to deprive the subject of its
apparent independence or fixity prior to its role in the proposition. I
It accomplishes these aims by thinking through the content |
expressed by the predicate so as to determine why this content is ,
essentially relevant ot the nature of the subject. The speculative I
reading establishes the reason for the Actual's being the Universal, |
for instance. Hegel apparently refers to this grounding when h e ,
says that speculative thinking must "be intimate with the self of the '
content" expressed in the predicate.66 (As I shall indicate below, the |
term 'self is not adventitious here.) Ultimately, this "grounding" i
will have to be seen as the result of the self-movement and, hence, I
self-determining of the Concept or Absolute Idea.
3) Finally, the absence of a novel or characteristic (logical o r
grammatical) form for "expressing" a speculative proposition leads I
to a seemingly paradoxical result: all, or almost all, of the assertions |
occurring in the main body of the Science of Logic are to be taken i
in their speculative mode, even though no speculative proposition '
as such occurs in the Logic, that is, no single assertion-generally
of the form 'the ip is the vfr' — is, without further ado, speculative.67
The propositions (Satze) actually enunciated in the Logic are a bit
like those in Wittgenstein's Tractatus: "Anyone who understands ]
me . . . must overcome these propositions, and then he will see the
world rightly."68
What do these exotic notions and claims have to do with th e
prospect of formalizing Hegel's logic in the predicate calculus?
Most simply, if n o "speculative propositions" occur as such in the
principal model it is at best problematic, at worst, nonsensical, to |
try to symbolize them in a formal system using only the apparatus j
of predication (even in the wide sense that allows for quantification
over predicates and for identity). Hegel's speculative "language" is a
very moving affair, which undercuts or "destroys" the form of
standard predication: to reinstate that form, even in non-standard
170
symbolism, or to invent a new form for Hegel's necessarily formless

speculative pr opositions, is in either case to betray, by immobiliz
ing, the c haracter of the model. This same immobility is also in
evidence in fo rmal representations of inference in Hegelian logic.
4) A question as elementary as it is crucial must be faced by every
interpretation (both formalistic and "informal") of Hegel's Logic:
Hegel (or the Concept) passes from one "thought-determination" to
another, " new" thought-determination (or, alternatively, from one
assertion a bout a thought-determination to another, new asser
tion); what are the "rules" governing this passage? How does the
Hegelian l ogician "get" from 'a' to 'b' in the sequences of logical
science? Or, in other words, in what manner or manners is 'b' the
consequence of ' a'?
It is instructive to recall that this question, and the difficulties in
answering it straight away, are coeval with the publication of the
first edition of the Science of Logic (1812). In a letter to Hegel
written in that year the distinguished mathematician Julius W.
Pfaff asked, in tones whose poignancy still echoes in our day: "The
mysteiy is always this: How does the thinker develop? How does the
new content arise, how does it emerge from the previous content
which was n ot already present to thinking? How does the thought
make forward progress?"69 (I am taking it for granted that to
answer that the thought moves forward "dialectically" is to turn in a
vacuous circle.)
A formal s ystem (whether axiomatic or not) embodies a precise
conception of logical consequence or formal derivability, namely,
that a formula 'Q' is a logical consequence of t he set of formulae (Pn)
(i.e. the premises of the argument) if and only if 'Q ' can be obtained
from (Pn) by applying admissible rules of inference (modus ponens
and the like, depending on the base-system); the claim that the
sequence 'P n -) Q' is a "proof" of 'Q' is effectively or mechanically
testable. As Copi puts it, "No 'thinking' is required: neither
thinking about what the statements mean, nor using logical
intuition to check the validity of any step's deduction. 70 It is also
customary to refer to this conception of formal derivation as
'syntactic', ' combinatorial' or 'typographical'. More technically, we
can say that the theorems derivable in a formal system constitute a
recursively-enumerable set (but not, in the case of quantification
theory, a recursive set—see below, Section III, on Church s
Theorem); in other words, there is an algorithm for generating all
the th eorems of the formal system. A further, extremely salient
171
feature of this syntactic version of derivation is that a derived

theorem remains valid (in the chosen system) when all its
non-logical constants are replaced by different constants of th e
same types; as Quine puts it, formal derivation is indifferent to the
"meaning" or "intended interpretation" of the non-logical con
stants; it is a matter of form alone, not of content.71
Does this conception of logical consequence answer to the rules
and rights of passage in Hegel's Logic or, more liberally, doe s it
provide us with a means of adequately representing what occurs
when Hegel makes a transition from one topic to its successor (or,
when he makes transitions within the compass of a "single" topic)?
The moderately attentive reader of Hegel might be tempted to
block this line of inquiry at the outset by recalling Hegel's ow n
sarcastic warnings concerning the reduction of logic to mechanical
reckoning, as when one tries to calculate whether "this or th at
mood of the syllogism can occur in a given figure."72 However, we
have already seen that the would-be formalizer implicitly claims to
"understand Hegel better than he understood himself" and so the
question posed above does seem provisionally legitimate. Nonethe
less, several considerations vital to Hegel's procedure will sh ow, 1
think, that this question must be answered negatively in the end.
1) First, what I said above concerning the status of axioms
applies with similar force to rules of inference. Any formal system of
genuine "logical" interest strives to codify and to systematize
patterns of inference actually endorsed or implicitly embraced by
informal argumentation or by scientific (including mathematical)
reasoning. Once these patterns have been codified within a given
system they are, so to speak, impregnable.73 And yet, Hegel takes as
one of the chief tasks of his logical science that it criticize the forms
of thinking uncritically adopted by the pre-philosophical commu
nity. Thus, he writes in the preface to the second edition:
For this reason logical science, in dealing with the de termina

tions of thought which in general run through our mind
instinctively and unconsciously and, even when they en ter in to
speech, remain unobjective, unregarded-this logical scie nce will
also be the reconstruction of those determinations of thi nking
which are brought into relief by reflection and fixed by the latter as
subjective forms, e xtrinsic to their matter and content. 74
(To retort that the rules of inference are fixed by "convention" is

to become enmeshed in the vicious regress exposed by Quine in his
172
I ~~
^ essay 'Tru th by Convention," namely, that "if logic is to proceed
mediately from conventions [i.e. to conventional assignments of
meaning to the various logical expressions one by one, then) logic is
needed for inferring logic from the conventions.")75
| Consequently, the rules of inference have to be made to abandon
j their intra-systematic inviolability and submit to logical scrutiny,
as they ind eed do later in the Logic, in Hegel's discussion of the
| so-called "laws of thought."
I 2) A second aspect of Hegel's thinking about logical procedure
brings still another negative argument to the fore. The traditional
I apparatus of "synthetic demonstration" (i.e. deduction from
| premises) is surveyed in the next-to-the last section of the Logic,
under the rubric: "The Idea of the True". Having begun by
| dissecting the "analytical method" of resolving a complex concept
| into its simple components, Hegel turns to the synthetic method,
paradigmatically present in classical geometry, and examines its
I elements. Foremost among these are constructions and proofs.
I Neither fulfills t he expectation of intrinsic necessity Hegel initially
associates with both:76 an auxiliary construction is brought into a
I demonstration fr om outside, that is, it is not generated ineluctably
and unm istakably by the theorem to be proved (e.g. extending the
base o f a triangle to prove Euclid 1,4); but is rather an "invented
contrivance";77 synthetic proofs, for Hegel, do not meet the demand
| articulated by A ristotle in the Posterior Analytics, namely, that the
demonstration of a property show that it necessarily follows from
' the essence of its subject-genus {An. Post. 1, 73b 29-33). As Hegel
puts the point: "The proof is not a genesis of the relation which
constitutes the content of the theorem; necessity here is only
relative to our insight and the entire proof is only subjectively in aid
| of o ur co gnition." A proof, in the synthetic sense, is "a subjective
deed without objectivity."78
Putting to gether a formally valid derivation of a formula is, to be
sure, a different matter from testing whether a sequence of
formulae is a proof of that formula. The former is mechanical and
effective; t he latter is not. For Hegel we can only be said to have
rational (verniinftige) knowledge (as distinct from the cognition
afforded by the understanding) when the relationships educed from
a concept (o r, the Concept) are intrinsic to it (cp. the Aristotelian
criterion of koc&' ocuto predication mentioned above) and exhibit
that s ame concept in its self-otherness.79 That is, the method
suitable to t he "absolute Idea" or to logical science must be at once
173
analytic and synthetic. Spinoza's own capacity for speculative

thinking notwithstanding, his use of the mos geometricus in
philosophy proved perniciously seductive.80
3) However, the formalist might vigorously object that Hegel
explicitly construes the notion of proof much too narrowly, in a
fashion much too closely tied to traditional geometry. It might still
be the case that his logic is in itself a system of formal derivation
and can thus be made into a formalism/or us.
If this were to be achievable, then the Quinean criterion of
meaning-indifference discussed just above would have to be
installed in the representation of Hegel's logic. Once it is, the
discrepancy between formalism and intended model will become
egregious.
The criterion of meaning-indifference clashes with the Hegelian
model in two interconnected ways. First, most generally, form and
content cannot be divorced by a mere legislative sanction. Hegel is
relentless in his critique of the abstraction of "logical form" ("laws
of thought," Kantian categories or rules of inference) from the
content or meaning of the "items" from which they are supposedly
abstracted. Thus, under some substitutions for lexicon, Hegelian
assertions would turn out to be ill-formed or indeterminate (not
admitting of any truth-value); for example, if one were to construct
a "Hegelian" rule of inference to the effect that from (F) (G) (F tKJM
(F R1 G) [where 'R1' stands for '. . . is internally related to ...'], then
'the Infinite, being distinct from the complete ground, is internally
related to the complete ground' would fail the test of relevance,
since the category 'Infinity' is no longer a salient factor in the
analysis of what it means for something to be "the complete
ground."81
However, the failure of the criterion of meaning-indifference is
grounded in something still deeper within the intended or principal
model: just as the meaning of 'predicates' (thought-determinations)
proved inconstant, so, too, the behavior of the many and various
"logical constants" of Hegel's discourse is extraordinarily labile. Key
operative terms (or "means of explication") such as 'immediacy',
'relationship' (Beziehung), and 'distinction' (Unterschled), seem to
take on successively the colors of their immediate explanatory
environments. It is as though one had to introduce different rules
for the logical connectives such as V or 'D' depending on th e
different extralogical constants they link (or, on the different senses
174
of the "same" constant)! This obligation would reduce a formalism

to syntactic chaos.
What, the n, are the "rules" for Hegelian inference? Is it possible
to respond int elligibly and consistently to Pfaff's question or must
we fall back de spairingly on self-mystifications? Almost everything
germane to an understanding of Hegel's Logic falls within the scope
of this question, including, most prominently, the identification of
the "subject-matter" of the logic itself. Although I shall go on to say
a very few thin gs about this vast issue in the next subsection (and
in the last main section), for the present I want to keep my focus on
the topic of in ference, the "rights of passage" from one conceptual
moment to the next, less in the desire to "solve" the issue than in
the hope of bringing some major structural considerations into
relief. These will, I hope, corroborate the suspicion that the
"framework" of t he Logic is neither formalistic nor formalizable.
The Sc ience of Logic has a three-fold or three-tiered structure:
the lo gics of being, of essence and of concepts. Correspondingly,
there are three styles of transition distinctive of these three tiers or
phases respectively. Hegel brings this architectonic of inference out
most clearly in a passage from the Encyclopedia:
The on-g oing movement IFortgehen] of the concept is no longer
(i.e. once the level of the BegriJJslogik has been reached) simple
passing-over [Ubergehen] nor a showing-off, a self-display ISchei-
nenl in the Other, but development, self-explication 1Entwi-
cklungl . . .H2
Briefly, whi le in the logic of being, a prior thought-determination

apparently loses itself in its successor, in the logic of essence, prior
and posterior terms are more intimately bound to one another—the
latter ma kes its appearance in the former which, although other,
resembles it; finally, in the logic of the concept the distinction
between conceptual factors is at one and the same time their
identity with one another and as well with the whole—"the
determinateness [of each factor] is a free being of the whole
Concept."83
What th is complex passage makes plain, at the minimum, is that
the rules go verning the logical operators must be kept sensitive to
these discriminations; a single cluster of formal operators appropri
ate to sim ple transition will prove unsuited to "self-display in its
Other" and to "development." Furthermore, the behavior of these
operational terms is indissociable from the meaning of what is
175
r GRADUATE FACULTY PHILOSOPHY JOURNAL
thought or intended in each and every determination within these

three phases. As I have emphasized several times already, an
understanding of how the rules apply emerges hand-in-hand with
the semantic evolution and transformations of the very "terms" to
which they apply. The latter cannot be "effectively" generated by the
institution of purely formal rules on their own.84
However, the situation is even more intricate than I have
represented it so far. The three "divisions" are definitely not
hermetically sealed off from one another; their boundaries are, on
the contrary, highly permeable; thus, Being shows up again in the
logic of essence (as, e.g. Schein) and in the logic of the concept (as
"intensive totality"). More startlingly, determinations apparently at
home in later divisions in fact have migrated into earlier sections,
without explicit justification. For example, "Concept" in its
systematic sense is introduced at the start of the explanation of
affirmative infinity;85 "the Ought" (Sollen), a phase of the Idea of
the Good, is thematically anticipated in the treatment of " fini-
tude,"86 while syllogism {Sch.lu.ss) figures in the account of " the
complete ground" in the logic of essence.87 Most perplexing is t he
proleptic use of reflective-determinations, including "reflexion"
itself, in the logic of being.88
The interplay between putative independence or self-identity and
inexorable relation to an other, between immediacy and mediation,
position and presupposition, is already at work in the logic o f
being, despite the fact that these structures or procedures o nly
become thematic, only receive theoretical legitimacy, in the
following logic of essence, while, conversely, the operation w hich
proves central to the entire Logic and which is first brought under
explicit scrutiny in the middle section, namely, negation of
negation, itself presupposes the concerted movements and result of
the prior section. However this peculiar double-circularity is to be
interpreted, its presence makes it clear that Hegelian inferences,
derivations or "proofs" are not linear or one-directional: it would be
as though in a formal system numerous theorems were d educed
directly from the primitive symbols long before the formation and
derivation-rules were expressly introduced and as though the latter
could be justified or given sense only against the background of the
theorems derived without their help. At all events, perhaps a more
thoroughgoing and more finely-grained inspection of the idi oms of
the Science of Logic will confirm the following speculation; th e
movement of Hegel's exhibition of the logical idea (if not, as well, o(
i
176 I
the latter's self-movement),99 is a shuttling-motion between

anticipation a nd recollection, prolepsis and anamnesis.90 Thus,
the v ery b eginning, while remaining somehow immediate, recol
lects t he outcome of the Phenomenology and grasps, in anticipa
tion, the developed whole of the "logical idea."91 And every
subsequent m oment in the course of the Logic (including the last,
the Absolute Id ea) is equally poised between its recollected genesis
and its future destiny. The timing indigenous to the logical Idea (or
to its scientific exhibition and re-enactment by Hegel) is therefore
comparable to the three-fold unity of the ecstases of primordial
temporality in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit. The Logic, irreducible to a
chain of linear inferences, is rather a lesson in what Schelling, in a
rather different context, called "the salutary ecstasy which leads to
Besinnung."92
Be that as it may, both the formalist and the would-be formalizer
are likely to respond, "What is it about the subject matter of the
Logic itself t hat militates against patterns of linear inference? Why
shouldn't these stylistic and methodological convolutions be treated
as Hegelian idiosyncracies, rather than being taken as evidence
against a formalization of the logical system he actually con
structed?"
To answer these questions in full requires, as I have previously
suggested, a detailed account of the subject-matter of the Science of
Logic and, in addition, an argument directed at showing that it is
the nature of this specific subject-matter that, at bottom, makes the
project of formalization not only technically infeasible, but
substantively misconceived.
One could say that the Science of Logic furnishes a logic of logics,
or, in another idiom, that it is itself already a metalanguage,
although n ot a formalized metalanguage. Thus, over the course of
the tex t, Hegel attempts systematically to articulate and to emend
"natural logic" ( that is, the logic of the categories embedded in the
grammar of an ordinary language), the "school-logic" or "formal
logic" of concepts, judgments and syllogisms and the "transcenden
tal lo gic" i ntroduced by Kant.93 In addition, the Science of Logic
incorporates the thought-forms of traditional metaphysics and
ontology by way of critically examining their logical credentials. So,
Hegel's own "metalogical" stance might well seem to render an
extrinsic meta-logic otiose.
But, this is not altogether satisfactory since it does not settle the
question of formalizability; the intelligibility of Hegel s informal
177
metalanguage must still be held to depend on its capacity to b e

transcribed into a formal system.
The decisive clue towards an answer comes from his appropria
tion of Kant's transcendental logic, for it is in this and in his own
transformative interpretation of Kant that Hegel finds the true
"subject" of the Science of Logic.
What he discovers, of course, is just this: the Subject, or better,
Subjectivity as self-identically the form of the pure Concept and its
fully congruent content. Let me try to spell out just a few of the most
relevant details of this initially strange account.
According to Hegel, "it is among the deepest and most correct
insights to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason that the unity
which constitutes the essence of the concept is recognized as the
original synthetic unity of apperception, as the unity of "I th ink" or
of self-consciousness."94 Furthermore, Kant's theory of the catego
ries shows that "the unity of the concept is that unity through
which something ... is an object, [and] this objectivating unity is
the unity of the Self with itself."95 Nonetheless, Kant did not carry
through these insights to the point of grasping that the Self and the
Concept share the same internal structure and, even more
crucially, exhibit the same movement, the same immanent history.
Thus, while Kant, especially in the Paralogisms, reduces the Self to
a "representation bare of all content: 'I', about which we can not
even say that it is a Concept, but only a simple consciousness which |
accompanies all concepts,"96 for Hegel "the Self is the pure concept |
itself."97 1
This is not the place to weigh more carefully the legitimacy or I

illegitimacy of Hegel's "reading" of Kant's transcendental logic;98 (
nor is it possible here to work through in fuller detail Hegel's '
identification of the objectivity (Objektivitat) of an item ( Gegen- |
stand) of knowledge with the unity of self-consciousness. I s hall I
simply emphasize certain of the consequences Hegel's position has
for the formalistic enterprise: I
1) First, to identify objectivity, as achieved through categorial and
conceptual synthesis, with the unity of self-consciousness is also to
deny that the content synthetically unified and the "activity" of
synthesis can be truly heterogeneous. The distinction between the
conceptual or categorial "form of synthesis and the content must
somehow be the work of that form itself; equally, the differences
within a content must somehow be the self-differentiations of t he
form. So, the pattern of self-identity within difference which might
178
be taken initially to mark our self-consciousness sensu stricto, that

I is, "the 'Ego' t hinks the 'Ego'," is in fact instanced in the relation
j between think ing and any other object.
Now i t is precisely the pre-philosophical attitude or activity of
| Vorstellung tha t estranges thought from its content, renders them
| indifferent to one another. Thus, in the Propaedeutic-Logic Hegel
writes: "What is heteronomous to thinking is something given by
I Vorstellung generally."" Whether one represents objects as though
they possessed determinate content apart from their relation to the
' forms of thinking or tries to extricate those forms on their own from
their complicity with contents, in both cases one betrays the
underlying u nity which, for Hegel, is the essence of thinking, or
more exactly, of thinking in its logical purity.
' The conflict between Hegel's logic and any formalized version of it
j comes out sharply in this light: a formalization, qua formal, is
obliged to put asunder what its principal model, in virtue of its
j subject-matter, j oins together in indissociable unity.
Furthermore, that unity is not static or ready-made; it should
j rather be understood as the unification of form and content
actively achieved or, perhaps, aspired to. This brings onto the
scene Hegel's central and prodigiously elusive claim that the
Science of Logic portrays or records the self-movement of its own
contents. Hence, for example, the move from Being to Essence is
| "the mo vement of Being itself."100 Or, more generally, the method
I in use in the Logic is simply "consciousness of the form of the inner
I self-movement of the content of the logic itself."101 Or, finally, "the
| movement of the concept is the universal, 'absolute activity', a
movement de termining itself and bringing itself to realization."102
| However these and related descriptions might be more completely
| interpreted, their emphasis on motion, indeed, on self-movement,
suggests that logical content and logical form are perfectly congruent
! only as a result or outcome of a self-initiating process. Their partial
i discord durin g all earlier phases is the motive source of t hat very
process. The symbolism employed in any formalization must
substitute representational fixity for this mobile and protean
interplay between congruence and incongruity.
The point of this discussion can also be summarily put in this
way: Hegel's logic is the theory of subjectivity, not, of course, in the
sense of something empirical, idiosyncratic, or psychologistic, but
as identical w ith what he calls "pure thinking," or Thinking as
j such" and "thinking which is free and for itself, no longer
I
179
constrained by the opposition between consciousness and a

heteronomous object, but, instead, at liberty to unfold according to
its own necessity.103 But, then, one might well ask, "what 'objects'
does this 'pure thinking' have?" Hegel's reply will be that thinking
has itself for an object; the Aristotelian prototype-the actuality of
the Divine Mind consists in noesis noeseos—the thinking of
thinking-is never far from Hegel's mind.104 At all events, thinking
does not have in advance its own characteristic determinations and
laws, but produces these in the course of its autonomous
progression. As he puts it in the Niirnberg Propaedeutic: "One
learns to think more correctly through the study of logic si nce,
when we think the thinking of thinking, the spirit thereby procures
its own power."105
The formalization of some body of discourse might arise from a
survey of the thinking that issued in that discourse, but inasmuch
as it must fix the elements and rules of the discursive corpus itself,
it is powerless to re-enact or to actualize the active thinking which
originally produced those elements and rules. We could also say that
a formalization represents its intended model from the immobile
standpoint of the Understanding; in doing so, it loses touch with
Reason.
The difficulties canvassed in this section are not such as to yield
to future technical resourcefulness. Rather they seem to me to
indicate that the intelligibility and communicability of Hegel's Logic
as a logic resist, for reasons of principle, the varieties of f ormal
representation to which the partisans of formalization are pledged.
Bar-Hillel, in his article "A Pre-requisite for Rational Philosophical
Discussion" issued a clear challenge to the speculative philosopher:
"I am ready to listen and argue with him only if the (meta-1
language, in which he explains to me his reasons for challenging
my standards, itself complies with these standards."106 As th e
preceding considerations have been designed to illustrate, although
the formalist program might begin with an ingenuous appeal for
droit de cite, it inevitably ends with a more seductive demand for
droit de seigneur. The legitimacy of any offspring will be dubious at
best.
IIB: Hegel's logic as a formalism fiir sich?
Hegel's own thoughts might have alerted latter-day partisans to

this danger. Ironically, he himself was the first to clothe a sm all
180
i .
I
a • fragment of his logic in quasi-mathematical dress. This occurred in
t0 | the midst of h is correspondence with Pfaff who was trying valiantly
ts | to come to grips with the putatively deductive sequence of H egel's
text and who ended his last letter with the prophetic declaration: "A
of | mathematician cannot bear for there to be a faculty for expressing
°' I thought which he can't exercise as well."107
' i Moreover, the idea of symbolically representing the content of a
^ philosophical system was certainly not foreign to some of Hegel's
s I important c ontemporaries. Fichte, for example, promised in 1801
e ' to provide "later on, a sign-system [Zeichen-system] for pure
' I concepts (in the sense of the universal characteristic sought by
| Leibniz, which has first become possible with the advent of my
Science of K nowledge)."108
a Nonetheless, Hegel mounted an energetic and illuminating attack
^ ' on the very notion of giving logic the shape of a calculus or
( mathematical system. By the time of the Differenzschrift (1801) he
^ , was already calling into question the "reduction of philosophy to
11 logic," that is, to a system of abstract principles of thought and the
e conclusions derived from them. "What the final outcome of the
^ reduction of philosophy to logic will be, it is not easy to say in
I advance. The device serves too well the desire to remain outside
^ ! philosophy while continuing to philosophize not to be in demand,"
' ' Hegel sardonically and prophetically wrote.109 Moreover, the
j ( expressions 'der Formalismus', 'das Formelle', and even 'der
| logische Formalismus' appear quite frequently in Hegel's mature
I works as terms of reproach (although it would be unwise to identify
these completely with their contemporary homophones).110 For
I 1 example, he remarks pointedly (and with ironic foresight into the
, 1 future of Hegel-appropriation) that "formalism has . . . seized upon
! 1 triplicity and has clung to its empty schema."111
But it is in the Logic itself that he brings specifically into focus
i the attempts of Leibniz and others (Euler, Lambert, Ploucquet) to
refashion logic along mathematical lines and to give it the look of a
machine for calculation. Even when viewed superficially, the
contrasts between his and their conception of what logic is and
I
should be are transparent:
"This recommendation [of Ploucquet's] namely, that the whole of
logic be m echanically imparted to the uncultivated by means of t he
(logical] cal culus is surely the worst thing that can be said of an
I invention ha ving to do with the presentation of logical science.
I
, 181
I
Or, Euler and others have in mind to "elevate modes of lo gical

relation to a calculus-or, rather, in fact to degrade them.. . . "m
Or, "the Concept as such can only be grasped in its essence by
Geist. It is vain to try to fix the concept and hold it fast through
spatial figures [e.g. Venn diagramsl or algebraic signs [e.g.
Schroder, Peirce] in behalf of the external eyes and in the service of
a concept-less, mechanical treatment, a calculus."114
Or, finally the whole enterprise of treating logic as a calculus is
"the work of m adness."115
The argumentative grounds of these contrasts, however, must be
sought at a deeper level. One group of arguments concerns the
expressibility of logical relations in mathematical terms, the other
pertains to the questions of symbolism and notation in general. In
their ensemble, these two groups establish that Hegelian logic is
not a formalismfursich, any more than it proved to be one ansich.
Hegel appends his lengthiest comments on the mathematization
of logic to three topics in the Science of Logic: number, the
particular concept and the mathematical syllogism (i.e. the fourth |
figure of the so-called "Syllogism of Determinate Being"). As w e
shall see, what these topics have in common furnishes one of th e
primary grounds for his antipathy to logical calculi.
The notion of transcribing concepts and their relations into
mathematical symbols and signs, and the desire to transform
logical thinking into a mechanically teachable and mechanically |
executed procedure are, for Hegel, two sides of a single coin, or, .
stated differently, it is only because any such transcription I
transposes conceptual thinking into an expressive medium alien to |
its nature that the transformation of "thinking" into reckoning
becomes possible. Hegel is at pains to show that these transforma- I
tions are deformations.116
Pythagoras was the first to transpose conceptual thinking into
numerical or figurative representations; later, more sophisticated
versions of logic as a mathematical calculus continue to draw on !
the Pythagorean legacy and to recapitulate both of i ts fundamental ,

errors, even when the jejune numerology of the Ancients ha s I
"matured" into the more abstract combinatorial art or algebraic
calculi of Leibniz and his successors. I shall label these two errors,
for convenience, the error of externality (i.e., the mutual indiffer
ence (Gleichgiiltigkeit) of factors in a concept) and the error of '
extensionality (a concept taken as the purely formal unity of a i
multiplicity). At bottom, these are two descriptions of the sa me '
I
182 I
state of affairs; both, in any case, have their roots in the

Pythagorean or primordial conception of number.
Pythagoras established "number" as a "bridge between the
sensible and the supra-sensible."117 Hegel interprets this as
meaning that number is, so to speak, the proto-form of a concept or
genuine tho ught inasmuch as it is an abstraction from empirical
sensibility; a number reassembles and reconstitutes a sensoiy
multiplicity by retaining "only the abstract determination of
externality/exteriority itself." As the inchoate exhibition of a
genuine thought, number becomes an "inward, abstract external
ity.""8 What do these claims signify?
According to Hegel, the plural "items" reassembled as pure formal
units into a number are external to one another both before and
after their enumeration; they entertain relations with one another
only per a ccidens, in virtue of their (arbitrary) inclusion in the
same "set." In other words, Hegelian numbers are (Cantorian)
"cardinal numbers" understood as "any collection of definite,
well-distinguished objects m of our intuition or our thought . . .
into a whole," without regard to the order of these elements.119 The
paradigm or matrix of number in this context is space, the pure
form of external intuition, or, in other terms, Kant's transcenden-
tally ide al v ersion of Leibniz's relational theory of space, in which
relations (of distance, contiguity, seriality, etc.) among spatial
points or regions are coincidental to the natures (or, in Hegel's
idiom, the concepts) of real "substances." Thus, a number is the
manyness of mutually indifferent, external (ausserlichej items
gathered together and stamped with the seal of inwardness
characteristic of thought as contrasted with sensory intuition. We
could also say that a number, taken as a protoform of a concept (in
the Pythagorean manner), is an intellectual mongrel, bred from the
conceptually e mpty outwardness of the sensible manifold and the
potentially rich inwardness of thinking; Hegel goes even further to
say that "number is the pure thought of the self-alienation,
self-externalization (Entausserung) of thought." The activity of
thinking insofar as it ranges over numbers is "at the same time the
most extreme external (ausserste) self-alienation of the thought
itself."120 That is to say, if numbers are retained as the unique
model of what it is to be a thought or to be a concept, then
"numerical thinking" inevitably takes on precisely those features of
the external manifold of mutually indifferent items which are most
alien to conceptual thinking, for the latter is at work, not in
183
aggregative, but in integrative, structures; structures, in other

words, whose elements are self-differentiating and thus mutually I
implicative. A mathematics of thinking is the self-disfiguration of j
thought. I
This discussion of Pythagorean numbers might seem to have |
taken us far afield from the question of a mathematical logic. On I
the contrary, it has brought us to the heart of the matter, as Hegel
viewed it, for the remaining discussions of mathematical logic in '
the Science of Logic presuppose this account of "Pythagorean" i
number and enrich it by bringing onto the stage the (equally
erroneous) principle of extensionality as well.
Pythagoreans treat numbers as containing many mutually
indifferent units, all of them preserving the reciprocal externality
that characterized the sensible manifold from which they were I
"extracted." Later variants of the Pythagorean initiative treat I
numbers themselves as having the form of a unit, while nonetheless
being determined by the multiplicities they subsume. Thus, for
example, Euler's calculus of classes, an ancestor of Boole's algebraic
logic, treats the universal, the particular and the singular (the
individual) as differing only in their extensions: S<P<U. For Hegel,
the "concept is the most concrete and the richest, since it is the
ground and the totality of earlier determinations, [viz.] the
categories of Being and the determinations of reflection ...
However, the nature of the Concept is completely mistaken ... if |
the 'wider extension' (Umfang) of the universal is taken to m ean ,
that it is something more, or a quantum larger than the particular '
and the singular."121 |
To reduce the interconnections among these factors in a concept ,
to quantitative comparisons of equality and non-equality is to I
degrade the concept itself back into the sphere of Being where those |
quantitative comparisons, and, indeed, number proper, are |
categorially at home. To treat a concept (or a factor ingredient in a '
concept, e.g. particularity) as identical with its extension, i.e. with 1
the class of items that fall under it (cp. the axiom of comprehension
in set-theory) is, then, to commit a "category-mistake." The items '
subsumed by the extension of the concept preserve their mutual s
indifference (as in the case of the units within a number); on the s
other hand, the class-concept as a formal unity is itself def ormed p
into a unit capable of entertaining merely quantitative relations ' tl
with other such units (as in the case of the distinct numbers i d
themselves).
184
I
I This u nwarranted descent from the "highest" to the "lowest"
| categorial sphere also explains why the topic that provokes Hegel's
final critical remarks concerning mathematical logic is the so-called
| "mathematical s yllogism."122 Here, in accordance with the mathe-
I matical axiom that two things equal to a third are equal to one
another, "all qualitative distinctions among the elements of the
I syllogism are left aside and only their equality or non-equality is
| taken up." 123 In other words, the syllogism, intended in general to
display th e intermediation of its constitutive elements, is trans-
! formed into a sequence of equations (or inequalities) suitable to
i mechanical re ckoning. (Leibniz's combinatorial analysis, for exam-
pie, yielded th e result that there are 2048 possible combinations of
I judgments, of which only 24 are serviceable.)
j What the three passages in which Hegel discusses attempts to
I clothe logical science in mathematical dress have in common, then,
is first, and quite obviously, that they all occur in contexts
i appropriate to mathematics itself (i.e. number, extension of classes,
J propositions in a syllogism construed as equations or inequalities),
second, that they bring to light, in various ways, how greatly a
concept is disfigured when it is interpreted as having the structure
of a number (i.e. the mutual indifference of its ingredient units and
the purely f ormal unity of each concept vis-a-vis other concepts)
and, finally—an aspect not yet explicitly considered—that in each of
the three passages Hegel emphasizes the philosophically fatal
I danger of confounding the fixity or motionlessness of a mathemat-
| ical unit (o r class) with the essential mobility of a concept, thanks
to which all of its intrinsic differentiations are, in the end, to be
' understood as products of its self-movement. Establishing the
I equality or non-equality of extensional classes, to take an example
from the second passage surveyed above, is the work of what Hegel
I calls "exte rnal reflection," that is, grosso modo, of the subjective
| consciousness of the mathematician who must prove that a
one-to-one mapping of the elements of one class onto the other does
or does not exist. The quantitative distinction or sameness of any
two cl asses is extrinsic to the nature of the items assembled
together in those classes. We saw in section IIA a bove that the
structure of the Concept is identical, for Hegel, with the structure of
subjectivity; self-motion, motion in virtue of its own nature
(Aristotle, Phys. Bl), is definitive of subjectivity.125 Furthermore,
the motion in question here has to be understood as self-
differentiation and, subsequently, self-identification: the career o a
185
living creature furnishes the most natural instance of this dual

movement. A mathematical item has to be stable if i t is to be made
available for calculation; but. this very stability is incompatible with
the vitality or plasticity of a concept, entailing, as it does, the
semantic instability that makes for logical progression. Hegel states
this central contrast in the following terms (referring specifically to
Euler and Lambert): "The determinations [of a concept] are not
dead matter lying before us (ein Totliegendes) like numbers and
lines, whose relation(s) do not belong to those items themselves."126
A mathematical logic is a "dead bone,"127 the computational
counterpart of phrenology.
However, these considerations do not complete the argument that
Hegel's logic is not a formal system fur sich. After all, Frege, for
reasons I shall go on to study in greater detail, raises analogous
objections to the extrinsic use of mathematical operations (and the
signs for them) in Boole's algebraic logic, the lineal descendant of
the calculi of Euler and Lambert with which Hegel took issue. One
might, then, concede that a purely extensional logic is vulnerable to
Hegel's criticisms, without having to abandon the ideal that a
symbolic or notational language for the "senses" or "intensions" of
concepts might nonetheless be erected. In other words, Hegel's
logical science might not be "mathematical," insofar as that notion
entails the principles of externality and extensionality; it might still
have been, fur sich, a "symbolic" logic, that is, a systematic
co-ordination of signs and their conceptual designata (or in ten
sions).
To show that this last line of defense is also unavailing I m ust
consider, very briefly, Hegel's own treatment of sy mbols, signs and
their relations to what they symbolize or designate.
Hegel's major discussion of symbols and signs occurs in th e
Encyclopedia within the section of Psychology devoted to imagina
tion, which is, in turn, a sub-division of Vorstellung-representa-
tion. Vorstellung as a whole occupies the middle position between
perception (Anschauung), in which the (empirical) intelligence is
passively responsive to an externally given content, and thinking |
(Denken), in which intelligence begins to move freely in its own
"inner" medium.128 This median position of Vorstellung is a n
initial clue to Hegel's understanding of symbols and signs as well,
since both issue from the attempt to appropriate the external |
materials of perception for the sake of giving expression to inwardly
entertained meanings or thoughts; both enact, each in its o wn |
186
manner, a co mpromise between heteronomous determination and

autonomy.
Investing something with the quality of a symbol, for Hegel, is an
advance over the simple production of (inward) mental images (the
work o f reproductive imagination), since the symbol, unlike the
mental image, takes on the external perceptibility (Anschaulich-
keit) o f wh at previously fell within the domain of the sensuously
given.129 Imagination trades on certain external, pictorial features
of a sensuous intuition in order to render it apt to "symbolize" a
content appropriate to thinking, that is, a content through which
thought can furnish proof of i ts own activity. At the same time, the
symbolic imag ination is tied to the selectively appropriated details
of the particular sensuous representation: the eagle symbolizes the
strength of Z eus because the eagle is itself strong.
A sign (Zeichenj differs from a symbol since in the case of a sign
the sensuous depiction no longer puts itself forward but represents,
i.e. is made to deputize for, something else, namely, its meaning or
reference ( Bedeutung).130 In other terms, the "sign" produced by
the imagination has become liberated from the sensuous detail of
the symbol; intelligence gives proof of more ample freedom in
arbitrarily choosing such-and-such an outward, perceptible sign to
designate a content (a meaning) that makes sense in intellectual,
not in purely sensuous, terms. (For instance, both 'D' and can
be taken as signs of material implication; their sensuous differ
ences do not bear on their representative identity.) However,
despite their differences in degree of freedom from the detail of th e
sensuous presentations which they utilize, symbols and signs alike
succeed in investing what, for Hegel, is initially heterogeneous to
thought with the significance of thinking.
This account inspires the following reflections. The sign or
symbol is always mid-way between a sensuous intuition (the
designative m ark spatially displayed) and the thought-content it is
meant to symbolize or designate. Consequently, to read a sign or a
symbol in accordance with its intended significance is to negotiate
between the sensuous and the cognitive, the "outer and the
"inner." Far from exonerating us from the burden of th inking, the
imaginative sign (or symbol) is a continual provocation to retrieve
the thinking through which it was endowed with meaning.
Hegel dra ws this lesson from the hybrid character of signs (and
symbols) in two instructive passages. First, in an addition to the
text of the E ncyclopedia: "The arbitrary nature of the link between
187
the sensuous material and the general idea present in the sign :
necessarily entails that the significance of the sign must first be !
learned. This is especially true of signs in a language.""' And, j
secondly, in a remark following a discussion of mathematical
symbolism in the Philosophy of Nature: when there are many (
relations among the combined numbers and figures, it is |
"completely ambiguous to which of them we are meant to adhere
That ambiguity can be removed only by an elucidation. But I
then, the essential expression of the thought-content [represented i
in the mathematical symbols] is the elucidation and the symboliza-
tion is a worthless superfluity."132 Using signs in a significant way |
presupposes a pre-symbolic grasp of the relation between the |
thought-content or activity and its designation; as Wittgenstein
puts it in his early Notebooks, prefiguring many of his la ter '
observations from the post-Tractatus period, "not every featureofa 1
symbol symbolizes. . . ."133 '
Hegel's remarks on symbols and signs seem to warrant th e |
following three conclusions:
1) The rules for the use of s igns, i.e. for recovering the intended
cognitive (or logical) significance of signs from the external,
sensuous medium in which they are inscribed, are not available in
that medium itself. We cannot read the intended relation o r
correspondence between sign and designatum straightforwardly
from the sensuous shape of the sign alone. If th is "reading" is the / :
unique responsibility of non-symbolic thinking, then this is a
responsibility that can never be usurped by the manipulation of •
signs themselves. i i
2) The production of signs, bridging as it does the gap between i
the sensuously given and the activity of thought, is a station on the f
way to fully independent thinking; the use of linguistic signs, | £
names, for example, abets what Hegel calls 'mechanical memory',151 ; c
But, this is no reason to confuse an antecedent, preparatory stage ' I
with what, in Hegelian idiom, both succeeds it and is presupposed a
by it. Signs take their sense and reference from thinking, notife , v
versa.
3) Finally, the specific nature of the signs deployed in a | n
systematic context (e.g. a formal system) can be, and, perhaps, has i tl
to be, at odds with their designata. Thus, to return to H egel's ' n
discussion of Euler's calculus of classes: "The very attempt t o ! tr
designate thought-contents shows itself to be futile and v ain as "<
soon as we compare the nature of the sign and the nature of what it I
188
i is intended to s ignify."135 A spatial array of mathematical signs, in

: which these signs are quite literally external to one another, each
i 1 having a designative or operational meaning on its own, is no
I , longer sensitive to the peculiar intimacies of what Hegel means by a
' i concept: "If concepts are now understood as corresponding to such
i ' signs, then they cease to be concepts."136 Symbolism, once granted
autonomy, c an only disfigure, deform, the rational thinking from
which it partially issued.
Most of what I ha ve said in earlier sections about the "speculative
sentence" and the self-productive, self-articulating movement of
I subjectivity bears on the present theme with equal force: the nature
I of subjectivity undercuts any attempt to give it a fixed linguistic or
, notational representation. Consequently, this result is simply
reinforced b y Hegel's explicit analyses of the status and claims of
symbols an d signs in the Encyclopedia—Philosophy of Geist (i.e.
( Der subjektive Geist).
I The considerations pursued in this section reach their climax in
this conclusion: Neither in its own right, potentially or an sich, nor
in term s of Hegel's own self-understanding, Jilr sich, can Hegel's
logic be formal, mathematical, or symbolic. To make it so for
! ourselves alone is either an exercise in futility or a gesture towards
a vacuous rapprochement between rival traditions.
111. The Genealogy of Modern Formalism—A Hegelian Diagnosis
' The importance of his reflections notwithstanding, Hegel's

diagnosis of the mathematical and the calculative leaves us in an
( uncomfortable position from a Hegelian point of view: anti-
formalism is counterposed to formalism, the one the simple or
abstract negation of the other. (It is noteworthy that his comments
, on formalism all appear in Anmerkungen; Formalismus, unlike e.g.
Mechanismus, is not itself an official Denkbestimmung.) In the
absence of a ny criterion of judgment, we appear to be faced simply
with "one b arren assurance" opposed to an other.
Accordingly, a new and final strategy must be undertaken: we
| must, in the manner of Hegel himself, enter more intimately into
the position of Formalism, in order to re-enact the experience that
results from its originative intentions and the effort to bring these
I to fruiti on. The project of formalization must become for us a
"shape of consciousness" with its own intrinsic histoiy and its
I own crit erion. Only in the light of what that histoiy illumines can
189
we eventually discern the adequacy or inadeqacy, in principle, of

proposals to gauge Hegel's logic by the standards of formal, i. e.
non-Hegelian, logic.
Let me emphasize one important aspect of this final strategy
before starting to carry it through.
Discursive or epistemic practices, in becoming objectified and
institutionalized, at the same time become deracinated, detached
from the intentions and shared understandings in which they were
initially rooted. Or, to use Husserl's metaphor, the histories of these
practices become sedimented; the question of t he mode of discovery
—or, more exactly—of origination, gets separated from the question
of immanent and, eventually, self-confirming justification. What is
thus required is not a recital of historical or archival facts, but a
genealogy. As Hegel suggests in the Introduction to the Phenome
nology, for the naive consciousness the variously new objects or
objectivities which arise in the course of its experience are only
objects, fixed under each present intentional focus. For the
phenomenological observer, what arises in this way is "at the same
time movement and becoming."137
It is just such a "phenomenological genealogy" of modern formal
or mathematical logic that I want to sketch in this section,
inspired, in part, by Russell's remark "Mathematical logic, even in
its most modern form, is not directly of philosophical importance
except in its beginnings."138 At the end of this sketch I s hall try to
suggest reasons for thinking that the destination of modem logic,
as determined by its beginnings, can most suitably be understood
in Hegelian, not formal, terms.
MA: Frege's Begriffsschrift and the Project of a Mathesis

Universalis (Descartes, Leibniz)
A significant convention dates the advent of t ruly "modem" logic

from the publication of Frege's Begriffsschrift in 1879; Quineonce
drew an analogy between its effect on logic and that of Copernicus'
De revolutionibus on physics.139 Although Frege's own h istorical ,
awareness will eventually compel us to look back to Leibniz and to |
Descartes for a fuller understanding of his ambitions, the i
now-standard estimate of his revolutionary influence can serve us '
as an initial guide to his intentions and to their fulfillment or '
failure. After all, it was Frege himself who began a much l ater
manuscript note entitled "What can I regard as the result of my I
190
work?" wit h the comment: "Almost everything is connected with

the Be griffsschrift'."140
What set into motion the Copernican turn put into effect by
Frege's w ork? Apart from its technical tours de force (e.g., the
treatment of multiple quantifiers), the Begriffsschrift is generated
from three governing intentions; (1) to exhibit scientific inferences
in the most thorough and perspicuous fashion; (2) to analyze the
formation of fundamental scientific concepts in light of the roles
they play in the contents of, and relations among, judgments; and
(3) to depict, to represent, the activity of "pure thinking" in an
intuitively or perceptually accessible medium. The sequence in
which I have presented these intentions runs from the relatively
unproblematic to the precarious and ambivalent, as we can see by
inspecting each both in its own right and in relation to its
counterpart in the Leibnizian program to which Frege himself
subscribed.
What ar e commonly regarded as "proofs" in mathematics, or in
scientific discourse generally, in fact lack both rigor and complete
ness. The/irst task of an adequate notational system is, thus, to fill
in the lacunae left open in the communally-accepted practices of
mathematicians and scientists. In particular, appeals to shared or
shareable "intuitions" associated with pivotal terms and proce
dures (e.g., 'function', 'series', etc.) should be replaced with
perspicuous and unambiguous representations of all the inferential
"moves" involved in a rigorous demonstration. The format of a proof
should be totally transparent and precise; in other words, a proof
should itself share in the "mathematical" or calculative character of
the objects with which it is concerned.
Furthermore, the whole body of proofs in a scientific discourse
should c onstitute a "system." According to Frege, "Euclid had an
inkling of this idea of a system" of mathematics, but neither he nor
contemporary mathematicians succeeded in carrying it through.141
Frege's conceptual notation, by setting out with maximum
precision t he "web of inferences" from "primitive" to derived truths,
should make it possible to achieve at last the systematization of the
sciences.
These aspects of Frege's program belong to what was traditionally
called the ars iudicandi, the art of discerning when validity is
preserved in a chain of inferences. Given an adequate symbolism
and unambiguous rules of inference, this art can be practiced in an
algorithmic fashion; it then becomes what Frege, borrowing from
191
Leibniz, calls a calculus ratiocinator. a ratiocinative calculus which

operates independently of the content of arguments.
In the Begriffsschrift itself, as well as in his many polemical
defenses of his work, Frege insists with some vehemence that his
aim is not limited to providing such a calculus ratiocinator; he also
wants to establish a lingua characterica, of Leibnizian provenience
as well.142 How do these differ and what does their difference signify
for Frege's general understanding of a mathematical logic?
Boole is the most frequent target of Frege's criticism, since his
own concept-script was often assimilated to, and compared
unfavorably with, Boole's logical algebra. The heart of the matter is
that, for Frege, in the symbolism devised by Boole (and others in
this tradition) logical form is divorced from the content symbolized;
a genuine Begriffsschrift, on the contrary, requires that "these
(logical) forms must be suited to being linked with a content in the
most intimate way."143 Boole uses letters and arithmetical signs
such as ' + ', '0' and '1' to represent logical judgments which can
then be treated as algebraic equations; however, as Frege po ints
out, these signs here and in arithmetic itself are not used in t he
same sense. (E.g., '1' in Boole's logic stands for the "universeof
discourse" germane to an argument.) This inconcinnity means that
Boole's symbolism is not suited to depict mathematical contents
and relationships as such. This shortcoming furnishes the first
clue to the identity of a lingua characterica in Frege's sense: it is
intended to be a complete and exact exhibition of the structures of
the concepts figuring in a body of scientific discourse. This should
be taken quite literally: the mode of outward, symbolic designation
ought to conform to the inner constitution of t he items designated.
However, this conformity is not achieved by analyzing a concept
into its constituent "marks" such that its appropriate symbol is
their sum; for Frege, a concept comes to life, so to say, only in the
"web of inferences" in which it plays its role or roles.144
Consequently, a notation of the desired sort will display concept-
formation as a function of the inferential ties among judgments.
This is, it seems to me, the essence of Frege's so-called "logicism": I
the nature of a concept (e.g., in arithmetic) is a function of t he |
logically admissible inferences in which it is implicated. (Hence, a
"reduction" of the "concept of ordering in a sequence" to tha t of '
"logical consequence" is meant not to eliminate, but to illuminate 1
the former; the definition of a number as the extension of the J
192 I
concept ' equinumerous with the concept F' is not an exercise in

ontological economy, but an account of its essence.)
Accordingly, an ideal notational language will capture and
perspicuously reproduce everything in a (scientific) concept rele
vant to logical deduction, while omitting any irrelevant rhetorical or
grammatical nuances. The scope of such a language is virtually
unrestricted, a s Frege repeatedly makes plain. Not only arithmetic
and geometry (including analysis situs), but kinematics, mechan
ics, and physics as well should be brought into its embrace. Indeed,
wherever logical relations occur, and they occur everywhere, the
Begriffsschrift is potentially applicable.145 It is fair to conclude,
then, tha t Frege's ambitions were as wide as those of Leibniz: the
Begriffsschrift, as a formalized language allowing for the represen
tation of all concepts, is not simply an ars iudicandi, but, even
more impo rtantly, an ars inveniendi, a tool for the discovery and
systematic ge neration of all logically-grounded truths. Frege cites
the following passage from Leibniz by way of indicating his
allegiance:
"If there were to exist an exact language or a kind of a truly
philosophical script . . . everything which can be rationally
attained from data could be discovered by a sort of calculus."146
Similarly, in h is account of the necessarily systematic character of a
science, Frege emphasizes that the "whole of mathematics is
contained in germ in the primitive truths. Our task is only to
develop, t o explicate it from the germ,"147 in such a way that the
sequence of logical derivations preserves the order of deductive and,
thus, conceptual priorities. In short, the Begriffsschrift is not
merely a formal tool for arranging or re-arranging already-extant
knowledge; it is, above all, an instrument of discovery, including
the discovery and inculcation of "quite new mental processes, as
Frege claimed in a letter to Husserl (1906).148 Hence, the
Begriffsschrift, following the example set by Leibniz, both retrieves
and expa nds Descartes' projected mathesis universalis; while the
Cartesian prototype restricts the reliably knowable to what can be
brought u nder the yoke of order and measure (i.e. the generalized
theory of proportions), the new version of mathesis universalis
contemplated by Frege encompasses everything that can be
univocally c aptured and "characterized" by a unique formal, i.e.,
symbolic, language in which all deductively relevant connections
among intelligible contents are perspicuously registered.149 This
symbolic l anguage draws its power from its expressive relation to
193
something Frege, in an apparently unintended echo of Hegel, calls

"pure thinking."150
Frege later wrote an essay "Der Gedanke" (in which he argues
that the sense of a proposition is a "thought" subsisting
independently of subjective or idiosyncratic "ideas" and mental .
processes); he never explicitly discussed the nature of "pure |
thinking." Instead, his Begriffsschrift is to be understood as a
display of its activity. In particular, "pure thinking" is ostensibly
shown to achieve deductive results that otherwise might have '
seemed to require appeal to sensory perception. But, it is at ju st i
this point that the central philosophical ambiguity or dilemma of 1
the Leibniz-Frege program comes unmistakably to light. It is one, If ['
not the essential, aim of the Fregean formalization of discours e to j
rid putative proofs of any dependence on sensory intuition
(Anschauung); yet, the format in which pure thinking is exhibited [
is, ineluctably, or so it appears, the two-dimensional, perceptible ,
manifold of the Begriffsschrift itself (or of its future extensions).151 !
This observation clearly requires further discussion and support.
The deliverances of pure thinking-and, in light of Frege's later,
relentless critique of psychologism, pure thinking cannot b e
identified with any subjective or individual mental process-are
brought to sight, brought "out into the open," only by b eing
transcribed or inscribed in a heterogeneous medium, the w ritten
and thus perceptually accessible characters of the Concept-Script. (
Consequently, while the analyticity of inferred propositions i s I
secured by the rejection of any appeal to sensibility, whether a
priori or empirical, the web of inferences which constitutes th e !
substance of any logically grounded science must itself be m ade [
sensible, that is, it must be exhibited by means of spatially '
extended "signs" which hold their meanings fixed over time. I t is (
from these signs alone that we can "read off" the forms and laws of 1
thought.152
Frege was at least partially sensitive to this ambivalence in the
status of Anschauung. On the one hand, the "full light o f ,
consciousness," so he asserts, can be thrown on all the ste ps of 1
proof only when those steps are portrayed in "an intuitive/percep- I

tible exhibition of the forms of thought (eine anschauliche i
Darstellung der Denkformen)."153 On the other hand, this intuitive
concept-script "will fail to reproduce thoughts in a pure form, as is 1
inevitably the case when an external mode of exhibition is used."151 i

In his fullest statement of this dilemma-namely, that p ure '
I
194 I
- /
1
/
Is 1 thinking is simultaneously to be purged of the perceptible and to be
exhibited in a perceptible medium—Frege suggests that we can
s | "use the sensible itself in order to free ourselves from its
g I constraint." And he continues, in the spirit of Anaxagoras' dictum
5 ! "the things that appear afford a sight of the unmanifest," "since
f ! the concept is in itself unintuitable, it requires an intuitable
i representative in order to be able to make an appearance. In this
way the sensible discloses to us the world of the non-sensible."155
Is this sy mbolic negotiation between pure thinking and percep-
: tion successful? If, as Frege also argues in the same passage, we
' have access to a concept only by way of d esignating it, assigning it
l a univocal symbol, then how can we ever be in a position to verify
i that the chosen symbol answers to the corresponding concept? It
would appear that we must have independent, non-symbolic access
j to the conceptual and logical originals in order to determine
I whether our symbolic images and signs fulfill their task. Otherwise,
there is no way of ascertaining that what the arbitrarily chosen
symbols communicate are the structures of pure thinking. As Frege
writes in his Basic Laws of Arithmetic, "the utility of the sign
consists in its representative capacity."156 However, rules for the
| use of sig ns (and for securing their representative relation to the
forms o r laws of pure thinking) cannot be incorporated into the
' symbolic l anguage itself, since they are its pre-symbolic, formally
| ineffable basis.157 In other words, knowledge of how the signs of the
I Begriffsschrift a re to be manipulated presupposes direct acquain
tance with pure thinking, although the latter is made manifest only
by virtue of the system of signs in which it is exhibited. It seems,
i therefore, th at neither pure thinking nor the signs that deputize for
it can "speak for themselves."
( At all events, Frege's endorsement of Leibniz's demand, that a
lingua characterica "paint not words, but thoughts,"158 points us
back to the source of the dilemma embodied in his own
Concept-Script.
Leibniz looked to his ars characteristica to "disburden" or
"alleviate" the imagination;159 reasoning should substitute charac-
| ters for th e things about which one reasons, thereby leaving, as it
were, visible traces on the sheet of paper, which can be examined at
' leisure."160 At the same time, the ars characteristica is meant to be
a "logic of the imagination," a "science of imaginable things. 161
, How can one and the same symbolic art relieve the imagination of
its burdens and furnish its logic?
195
The mode of imagination which is subject to fatigue and thus

needs to be alleviated might be called the "reproductive" or
"associative" imagination; Leibniz seems to have thought of it as an
uncertain, shifting formation of private mental images in response
to the presentations of external sensation (e.g., a given geometrical
diagram). The mode of imagination for which the ars characterise
tea is the logic is, in contrast, productive or projective; it actively
appropriates elements of the sensible domain in order to fashion
them into "characters" mirroring the composition and order o f
thoughts. This second mode of imagination is, as it were, the hinge
between pure intellect and corporeal sensation; imaginative
characters permit us to "touch incorporeals as though with th e
hand."162 Because thinking and reasoning can be made palpable or
visible in this symbolic medium, which is the autonomous product
of the imagination, they can be expected to take on the nature of a
calculus, a mechanical manipulation of signs from which all
ambiguity and opacity have been eliminated. In brief, the mind is
assumed to make contact with itself in the domain of signs,
"spiritual machines," as Leibniz once called them.163
However, despite the claim made in the passage just cited, it is
not, on Leibniz's own argument, symbolic, but rather intuitive
cognition that alone is capable of grasping those simples. Leibniz
also draws attention to this distinction between intuitive and
symbolic cognition by calling the latter "blind". The blindness of
symbolic cognition is due to the absence or obscurity of the
illumination cast by Leibniz's third class of notions, the pure
"intelligibles which are beyond the imagination."165 Consequently,
although he argues that "when an idea is absent in us, some
sensible image, or definition, or aggregate of characters takes its
place; these need not be similar to the idea. Some phantasma, the
whole of which can be perceived simultaneously, always takes the
place of the idea";166 his own account of the difference between
intuitive and symbolic cognition exposes him and his fundamental
program to a twin-dilemma.
On the one hand, if the simple ideas whose combinations the
symbolic language is intended to "express" are themselves "avail
able" only to intuitive cognition, then the "fit" between sign and
designatum cannot be measured from the side of the symbolism
alone. Even though Leibniz strives to circumvent the Cartesian
appeal to the pre-deductive and non-symbolic intuition of ideas (or,
simple natures), his own demand that "the expression of a thing be
196
I LACHTERMAN/FORMALIZATION OF HEGEL'S LOGIC
"I
s composed of the characters of those things out of the ideas of which
r ' the ide a of the thing to be expressed is itself composed" remains
j i unfulfilled so long as the constituent ideas elude purely symbolic
» cognition.167 The representative or expressive correspondence
I | between ideas and their signs, that is, the pivot on which the
notion of an ars characteristica turns, cannot be established by
r j inspecting the symbolism itself.
1 On the other hand, Leibniz became increasingly dubious over the
1 prospect of th e finite human mind's ever completing an analysis of
composite n otions into intuitive simples. Not only is our human
| knowledge inevitably discursive and approximative, unlike God's
simultaneous k nowledge of a whole; in addition, the very notion of
simplicity is threatened with indeterminacy, as Leibniz admits in a
letter to V agetius: "In what way then are these [primitive] notions
simple? W hichever way we turn, we encounter difficulties."168 If,
then, the resolution of a composite is, for us, an infinite process
I and if the identification of a simple as a simple is never
unimpeachable, then the dual program of analytic reduction (ars
iudicandi) and synthetic deduction (ars inveniendij is critically
compromised, if n ot systematically frustrated.
These c ompromises with his deepest intentions are the fruit of
Leibniz's allegiance to two key aspects of Descartes' philosophy, an
allegiance that continues despite his turn to formalism and his
| trenchant c riticisms of the limits of Descartes' program.169 First,
I the latte r's distinction between intuition and deduction, that is,
' between the instantaneous grasp of simple natures and the
| sequential pursuit of proportions among these simples which, at its
I best, only m imics intuition, remains alive in Leibniz's discrimina-
' tion betw een intuitive knowledge of simples and symbolic knowl
edge of com posites, where the latter moves always per partes, from
| one element to the next. Second, and even more significantly,
Leibniz shares with Descartes the conviction that "pure thinking
| or "pure mind" must display itself in a sensibly accessible medium,
if the outcome of its operations or internal motions is to hold true of
the ext ra-mental world. The ambivalence of the imagination in
Leibniz mirrors the duplicity of the imagination in Descartes, a
I duplicity particularly evident both in the relation between pure
mind and the body and in the epistemological design of analytical
| geometry, which, if not the whole, is the representative heart of the
Cartesian m athesis universalis.170
' In the Regulae Descartes asserts that the imagination is "a true
197
part of the body";171 at the same time, this corporeal imagination is

uniquely responsible for transfiguring the looks or forms of th e
world in a manner suited to the activity of what he names 'pure
mind'. Cartesian imagination in the Regulae is, accordingly, both
the "solution" and symbol of what later comes to be known as
mind-body dualism.
Similarly, the algebraic equations fashioned in Descartes'
Geometry, in conformity to the theory of continuous proportions '
advanced in the Regulae, do not stand by themselves, but, instead, |
are consummated in the actual geometrical constructions of th e
curves which are their roots.172 Only the success of these visible
constructions can disarm what Descartes once referred to as the |
"objection of objections" to his system, viz., the claim that <
mathematical bodies are real physical bodies. And only this '
identification can afford pure mind purchase on an extra-mental |
"reality" imaginatively reshaped according to its dictates.
Leibniz's commitment to symbolic constructions preserves th e
traces of this dual Cartesian legacy even when he sets about
enriching it, for example, by extending the domain of mathesis
universalis beyond spatial quantity to embrace "whatever falls
under the imagination ... not only quantity, but the disposition of
things."173 Frege is equally heir to this Cartesian legacy as modified
by Leibniz; his project of presenting "pure thinking" in a
perceptible, symbolic medium embodies, implicitly, if not expressly, |
the same conviction that the productive imagination can tailor the
materials of sensation to fit the mind's designs. The two-
dimensional array of signs in the Begriffsschrift is thus the
analogue of the space of geometrical constructions in Descartes,
with this fundamental difference: while the Cartesian ego cogitans
stands invisibly, so to speak, at the intersection of the axes in t he
plane, selecting its units of reference a discretion; the pure
thinking incorporated in the Begriffsschrift is without a subject.
This absence of subjectivity becomes even more manifest in Frege's
later critique of "psychologism" and in his dismissal of the Kantian i
synthetic unity of apperception as the necessary pre-condition for I
the formation of concepts and cognitive judgments.174 1
The joint result of Frege's adoption of the Cartesian-Leibnizian

program, on the one hand, and his elimination of the Cartesian
subject, on the other, is a historical paradox pervading his and his
successors' understanding of logic: the home-ground of m odern j
mathematics and symbolic logic alike is the duality of min d and
198
I body, but mind as such no longer resides in any formal system

' crafted along the lines of the Begriffsschrift. Perhaps this is the
| deepest reason why the fit between formal signs and their
designata, the acts of pure thinking, proves so fragile. Wittgenstein,
with something like Frege's system in mind, and without intending
| to speak pro phetically, commented in his Notebooks: "If sig n and
I designatum were not identical in their full logical content, then
there w ould have to be something even more fundamental than
| logic."175
DIB: Hilbert's Metamathematics

i
, Be tha t a s it may, the paradox just mentioned belongs more to
the sedimented history of modern formalism than to the active
j self-understanding of it s proponents, for whom Frege's project (and
its technical shortcomings) furnished a major portion of t he initial
agenda. D avid Hil bert can be counted as the principal figure in the
I second generation of mathematical logic. Several factors in addition
to Frege's con ception of a concept-script flow together to give his
' creation of metamathematics its characteristic shape: (1) the
elaboration of non-Euclidian geometries and the consequent
question of the mutual independence of geometrical axioms; (2) the
discovery of th e Cantor-Russell paradox in naive set-theory (which
I shook the edifice of Frege's own Grundgesetze) and (3) the
intuitionistic critique of classical analysis mounted by Brouwer and
I the mem bers of his school. Hilbert's version of metamathematics
can be regarded as an attempt to "save the phenomena" of classical
| mathematics (including Cantor's theory of the transfinite); this
salvation was to result from showing that the formally systematiz-
able l anguage of classical mathematics meets the criteria of
consistency and completeness; furthermore, Hilbert and his
I followers presuppose that the conceptual or expressive power of
| pre-formalized m athematics is preserved in its formalized equiva-
I lent. Finally, t he cardinal notion in Hilbert's theory is that the focus
I of p roofs sh ould be shifted from the sphere of content to that of
symbolic thinking, where the latter is interpreted as the direct and
exhaustive contemplation of concrete, visible signs. In Hilbert s
phrasing:" 'In t he beginning' . . . was the sign."176
Hilbert's substantive and technical disagreements with Frege and
I other "logicists" are, in the end, secondary to his underlying loyalty
! to the spirit of the Leibnizian notion of a symbolic characteristic
199
GRADUATE FACULTY P HILOSOPHY JOURNAL
and to its embodiment in a formal, axiomatic system of a Fregean

sort. This can be made clear from the following considerations
concerning the nature of "signs" in metamathematical proof-
theoiy. Although Hilbert repeatedly emphasized that "something
must be given to us in sensory representation (Vorstellung), certain
extra-logical, discrete objects which are intuitively present as [the
content of an] immediate experience prior to all thinking"177 and
that it is precisely this concrete, perceptible character of "sig ns"
(i.e. the physical inscriptions on a page) that makes our reasoning
about them immune to doubt and paradox, it is evident from
certain of his remarks that "signs" must also be invested with
mathematical meaning if they are to play their assigned role. They
are not what they are often taken to be, viz. meaningless marks. For
example, we need to know that some features of the concrete
inscription (e.g., its color, size, etc.) are irrelevant to its "signifying"
capacity. Furthermore, the construal of a sequence of stroke-
symbols as a particular numeral presupposes a prior grasp of th e
notion of ordinal sequence which is central to the (modem) concept
of number; hence, the array of strokes (e.g. Illll) is made to stand in
a representative relation to the ordinal number 5 which is
apparently not merely a sequence of strokes in its turn.178 The
representative or symbolic status of Hilbertian signs is brought out
quite vividly in his 1904 paper "On the Foundations of Lo gic and
Arithmetic" in which he writes "Let an object of our thinking be
called a thought-object (Gedankending) ... and let it be denoted
by a sign."179
It is also worth mentioning that Hilbert's program re-enacts the
Cartesian-Leibnizian project and its ambiguities in still another
way: the complete surveyability of perceptible signs, their differ
ences and their connections not only makes the detection o f
contradictions immediate and indubitable (e.g., the occurrence of
the symbols 'O / O' in a proof), but also goes some way to wards
closing the gap between intuition (here, sensory intuition) and
deduction. What the mind has made-the sequence of designate
symbols-ought to be instantaneously and thoroughly transparent
to the mind (as well as to the eye). The "logicism" of Frege ( and
Russell) and the "formalism" of Hilbert meet and coincide in this
postulate.
200
I DC: The Fundamental Results of Modern Metamathematics and

Their Hegelian Character
I
The third and decisive stage in the genesis of modern logic arises
| from Hilbert's turn to the study of the syntactical properties of
I formal systems in themselves, together with the postulate of
' cognitive transparency that animates the entire tradition stemming
| from Descartes and Leibniz.
Hilbert's pr ogram poses for the first time in explicitly technical
terms the question of the adequacy of any formal system to the
pre-formal or so-called "intuitive" body of discourse which it is
; meant to represent. I am using 'adequacy' here in a sense broad
' enough to cover a ll those demands that can be reasonably made on
[ a formalization. Let me begin by setting out the four chief demands
in the form of a table, pairing each with the relevant metamathemati-
cal res ult or results.
PROJECT RESULT
1. To constr uct a formal axiomatic sys 1'. The Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem.

tem w hich characterizes univocally Non-categoricity of axiomatic set-
or categoric ally the concepts (or ob theory.
jects and domains) it is intended to
formalize;
2. To de monstrate the coincidence of 2'. Godel's First Incompleteness Theo
the class of theorems derivable in a rem. Non-coincidence of truth and
formal system with the class of "true" provability.
statements formaiizable in it;
3. To represent in a formal system all of 3'. Godel's Second Incompleteness The
its systematically relevant properties, orem. Unprovability of the consis
e.g., consistency; tency of a system in that system.
4. To discover an effective decision- 4'. Church's Theorem. Unsolvability of
procedure for a forma] system, so as the Decision-Problem for First-Order
to determine when a formula is or is Predicate Logic.
not derivable in that system.
This table makes clear that the crucial demands embedded in the
governing intentions of formalization per se are thwarted or
compromised by results established in each case by thoroughly
jormalistic methods. Something of the particular character of each
of th ese four limitative results can now be brought onto the stage
against this methodological backdrop; that is, no techniques or
concepts alien to the formalistic repertory are introduced into the
demonstrations of these limitations. (This methodological point
201
will prove i ts importance below, when 1 discuss a possible Hegelian

"reading" of th ese formal results.)
1. Although not working strictly within the confines of H ilbert's
program (i.e. syntactic study of proofs), Skolem was nonetheless
especially concerned with foundational questions, in particular,
with the role of formalized set-theory vis-a-vis "intuitive" ( or
primitive-recursive) arithmetic.180 Instead of accepting Cantor's !
theory of transfinite, non-denumerable cardinal numbers as a '
paradise (as Hilbert did), Skolem came to reject it as something I
akin to a mirage. This is his interpretation of the outcome of a
theorem first advanced by Lowenheim in 1915 and then perfected
and generalized in Skolem's papers of 1920 and 1922. |
Lowenheim had shown (in an incomplete "proof") that if a
formula in a consistent system is valid at all, it is satisfiable in a '
denumerable domain; that is, there exists a countable model i n i
which the formula holds true. Skolem proved that if a denumerably J
infinite set of formulae in a consistent system is valid, it is always '
satisfiable in a denumerable model. Now, in an axiomatized set-
theory we can demonstrate that uncountable cardinals "exist," for
instance by using Cantor's famous diagonal-argument. However, by i
Skolem's proof, this axiomatized set-theory is satisfiable in a

countable model (as well, of course, as in an endless sequence of
uncountable ones). This inconcinnity is at the root of what is often
called 'Skolem's paradox', namely that we can find a denumerable 1
model for the indenumerable if the system of formulae in which the

latter is expressed is consistent.181
In fact, Skolem constructed two importantly different p roofs of
his theorem. In o ne, the weaker proof, he maps the statements of
Zermelo's set-theory onto the domain of the natural numbers, with
number-theoretic functions taking over the role of the membership-
relation ('e') i n the set-theory. In the other, stronger, proof, Skolem
uses the axiom of choice to construct a denumerable submodel of
the original (possibly non-denumerable) domain, in which t he
formulae of set-theory are satisfied and in which the membership-
relation is preserved intact. It i s this second (although chronologi
cally earlier) proof that brings the "paradox" into sharpest relief,
since the first proof transforms set-theoretic membership in to
something different.182
(It should also be noted that while Lowenheim and Skolem both
employ model-theoretic or semantic considerations, their result can
also be obtained by working in the spirit of Hilbertian proof-theoiy.
202
This was first done by Herbrand in his 1930 thesis "Investigations

in Proof Theory".)183
The fundamental implication is, of course, that models (or
domains) for a formal system (e.g., of s et-theory) can be shown to
exist tha t seem to be incorrigibly at odds with the sense originally
invested in that system itself (e.g., to allow the precise formal
representation of C antorian transfinite numbers).
The system is thus said to lack "categoricity", since its models are
not all isomorphic to one another; that is, in the case of set-theory,
they have different cardinalities. Skolem achieved analogous results
in the case of t he natural numbers themselves, showing that there
exist models s atisfying Peano's axioms but including some objects
which, roughly speaking, are not "ordinary" natural numbers.
Hence, the re are "non-standard" models for arithmetic as well as for
quantification theory, both first-order and higher-order.184 This
non-categoricity of axiomatic systems led Skolem and others to
emphasize the relativity of basic set-theoretic and arithmetical
notions. Fo r example, what is a non-denumerable domain in one
model is denumerable in another model that equally satisfies the
same axioms. Skolem, it is worth mentioning, carried this line of
thought even further in his later paper "On the Scope of the
Lowenheim-Skolem Th eorem", to conclude that even the notion of
"finite" is re lativistic in an axiomatic setting.185
A host of questions has been provoked by the Skolem results.186
Some are ontological, e.g., Are there really any non-denumerable
sets? Others are epistemological and concern the availability or
unavailability of knowledge of the relevant structures (e.g., set,
natural number) prior to, and independently of, any axiomatiza-
tion. For example, do we know enough about sets (and their
cardinalities) in advance of s ome classical axiomatic formalization
(Zermelo-Fraenkel, e.g.) to be able to discriminate securely between
standard and unintended, "pathological" models of th e formalism?
(The ont ological and epistemological issues are evidently linked,
since an affirmative answer to the question just posed assumes the
existence of se ts with determinate cardinality "outside any formal
language about sets.)
Some commentators have been at pains to disarm the paradox
and its relativistic implications; others have striven to heighten its
force. S kolem's own reading of his results is perhaps the most
trenchant and provocative: not only did he conclude that absolute
(i.e. extra-systematic) non-denumerability is unintelligible; he also
203
GRADUATE F ACULTY PHILOSOPHY JOURNAL
drew the moral that the procedure of axiomatization is itself

irreparably flawed and thus useless for foundational purposes of
the sort Frege and Hilbert had in mind.
What does all this signify for the broader philosophical questions
of modern logic I have been pursuing here? Two interrelated
aspects of the formalistic program are brought to light and called
into question by Skolem's results: the ineluctable reciprocity of
formal and pre- or informal discourse and the unqualifiedly
extensionalistic view of formally designated concepts.
(a) However one "reads" Skolem's theorem, whether skeptically or
"Platonistically", it is plain that two "texts" must be kept
continually and reciprocally in play: the formal text of an axiomatic
theory (of sets or numbers) and an informal text in which one's
intuitions into, or intentions regarding, a certain concept or
structure are registered. Issues such as the "naturalness" or
"unnaturalness" of the various non-isomorphic models the first text
yields are in no way settled by, or even expressible in, that text on
its own. Instead, one must make one's way from that text to th e
pre-formal understanding of, e.g., natural number, if, in fact, any
such understanding can be said to exist. But, this need to traffic
between the formal and the pre-formal in order to give the former its
preferred or natural interpretation is a severe blow to a rigidly
formalistic expectation that all we need to know about a given
concept is codified, univocally and with precision, in the formal
signs through which it is axiomatized. Skolem's proof shows that
once "inside" the formalism, so to speak, one can no longer "see" its
intended models and meanings with unambiguous clarity.
(b) This situation seems to be in part a consequence of th e
strategy of symbolization itself, through which "concepts" are not
only given the status of formal objects but are also invested with the
character of a number or a quantity: they are, that is, construed as
"classes". In brief, preformal concepts are reified and extensional-
ized by their symbolic renditions.187 Cantor was already attentive to
these twin features of concept-formation via abstraction: in
devising a concept one first poses a "thing (ein Ding) deprived of
properties which at the start is nothing but a name or a sign A, and
one bestows upon this in an orderly way different intelligible
predicates, perhaps an infinite number of these."188 A set (Menge)
consists of " given, we ll-distinguished el ements E , E ', E" . . .
which can be concrete things or abstract concepts (but the latter,
like the former, are thought of as objects standing over against us).
204
I
i
! . . . "Finally, "each a n d every [cardinal a s well a s ordinal number]

is a true unity (fxovds) be cause in it a multitude and multiplicity of
| units (Einsen) are bound together unitarily."189 These monads can
then su stain relations of quantitative comparison (equality and
inequality).
j This model of a concept as the number-like unification of t he
I elements it comprehends was the source of considerable anxiety on
' Frege's part, especially when the unbounded axiom of co mprehen-
| slon (or, extension) proved to be at the root of the paradox by which
his final system was paralyzed. In comments made in a 1910 letter
to Jou rdain, Frege argued that "the class ... is something
I derived, whereas in the concept—as I understand the word—we
, have something primitive. . . . it is not suitable to found logic on
the laws of c lasses."190 Thus, Frege indicts himself for giving into
i the temptation to introduce the objectual "course-of-values"
, corresponding to a concept which is, by ontological definition, not
an object. Generalizations about the latter do not (or should not be
j taken to) ent ail conclusions about the former (Frege's "way out" of
' Russell's par adox.)191
However, this maneuver is to no avail insofar as the symbolic
representation of concepts is concerned, since (1) the predicative
inscriptions of a formal language (the 'F's and '(|>'s) d o not dictate
any distinction between objectual (i.e. extensional) and conceptual
I interpretations and (2) the models of any such language are
domains of those "individuals" which simultaneously satisfy the
values of its predicative functions (i.e. domains and relations upon
them suc h that the formulae of that language come out as valid).
One could also express this dilemma by pointing back to still
another of Ca ntor's notions, that of an ordinal or cardinal number
as the "i ntellectual image" or "likeness" (intellektuales Abbild) of
the sets whose number it is. The difficulty, then, lies in retrieving
this formal original, in which "the units are united into an
organism," from the material dispersal of its ingredient ele
ments.192 In other words, we have to be able to see this monadic
intellectual form within the purely extensional manifold that
deputizes for it in a symbolic language. Skolem s theorem shows us
that in distinguished cases (e.g., natural and non-denumerable
numbers) this retrieval cannot succeed, that is, our vision in
passing from formal signs to their intended designata inevitably
becomes b lurred. The signs that replace in a formal system their
"intellectual likeness" remain, in these cases, referentially opaque.
205
f GRADUATE FACULTY PHILOSOPHY JOURNAL
The foregoing remarks, although they might have appeared i

digressive, in fact bring home how far from technical parochialism
Skolem's findings in set-theory really are. Set-theory is the most (
natural or authentic medium for modern logic (in the sense o f '
quantification theory) precisely because it forces the number-like
character of "concepts" into the open.193 Efforts to demarcate logic |
at the boundary between first-order quantification theory an d i
set-theory overlook the deep complicity and methodological inti- '
macy between them: set-theory, to be formalized, needs to b e I
exhibited in the terms and notations of the classical predicatelogic; ,
conversely, the guiding notions of proof in classical predicate-logic
(e.g. validity, satisfiability, etc.) are through and through semantic |
in nature and, hence, set-theoretical (i.e. the sets of items satisfying ,
formulae of the predicate calculus).194 This is made amply clear in 1
Godel's proof of the completeness of that logic, a proof which |

licenses the replacement of the semantic (set-theoretic) notion of ,
"being true in all possible models" with the syntactic notion of
"being formally derivable", only as a result of its own pervasively |
semantic structure and terminology. So each of these two bodies of
formal discourse, set-theory and quantification-theory is, in turn,
the backdrop for the mise-en-scene of the other.
Set-theory, then, as the apt medium for the exposition of formal
logic (at least in its semantic aspects) reproduces the view o f
concepts which Hegel, as we saw, had already brought under review
and, ultimately, censure. A concept, set-theoretically construed,
embodies the principles of extensionality (i.e. the merely quantita- I
tive unity of a set) and externality (i.e. the mutual indifference j
among members of a set) that jointly define the "Pythagoreanism" ,
underlying the transmutation of logic into a calculus, The I
Lowenheim-Skolem theorem makes this Pythagoreanism especially 1
visible, both in the narrower sense that all valid formulae o f a

consistent axiomatic system can be mapped onto the natural I
numbers and in the wider sense that the signs figuring in that I
system do not and cannot speak for themselves, that is, se cure i
transparency of extensional reference. |
2. Godel's two incompleteness theorems of 1931 (Theorems VI I
and IX in his original paper) have been the topic of so much and ,
such varied exposition and comment as to inspire more trepidation '
than confidence.195 [
At all events, Godel's basic strategy is now familiar. He introduces i
three distinct languages: (1) the language of ordinary, informal |
1
206 ;
arithmetic a nd number-theory (languagei), (2) the language of a

given formal system: in this case, Russell and Whitehead's
Principta M athematica [ = PM] (language2), and (3) the language of
the meta-theoiy of this formal system (language3) in which
statements about the symbols, formulae, etc., of the latter can be
expressed. T he crucial technical device on which the whole proof
rests is the correlation of expressions in the first and the third of
these languages by means of a mapping (i.e. the Godel-numbering),
thanks to which the statements (in language3) about formal
properties of th e base-system (Principia) show up as statements of
ordinary arithmetic. (Put a bit more accurately, the correlated
sentences ar e extensionally equivalent, i.e., the members of each
pair have the same truth-value.) It is this mapping that permits
Godel to show that not every theorem of el ementary number-theory
can be give n a formal proof in any axiomatized system of t he same
expressive strength as Principia. In fact, he exhibits one such
theorem, the meta-theoretical correlate of which is the assertion
(true-in-language3) that "there is no proof derivable in the formal
system of t hat very theorem." In any such system (with language2)
there will be a n infinite number of w ell-formed formulae correlated
in each in stance with a "true" pre-formal sentence in its intended
or p rincipal model (i.e. elementary arithmetic as expressed in
language J and a "true" metamathematical sentence asserting that
the formula is unprovable in the given system. Consequently the
formal system is irreparably incomplete, since it lacks the means for
showing that every true sentence (i.e. "true" in the informal body of
discourse) is a theorem (i.e. formally provable). If a formal system of
the Principia-type is consistent, it is necessarily incomplete.
3. Furthermore, Godel's reasoning leads to a second result which
also undermines the foundations of a putatively self-sufficient
formalism: if the chosen formal system is consistent, then the
sentence asserting that the system is consistent is not provable in
that system. Once again Godel achieves this result by mirroring the
meta-theoretical assertion corresponding to the statement of
consistency (expressed in language3) in a statement of ordinary
number-theory. The arithmetical sentence correlated with the
consistency-assertion implies the previously-constructed undecid-
able sentence (more precisely, its correlate in the principal model),
hence, if that sentence were provable (in language^ so, too, would
the undecidable sentence be, in contradiction to the first Godel
theorem.
207
The distinction drawn above among three distinct languages !

given voice in Godel's proof is not merely a technical arabesque. On '
the contrary, that distinction allows us to judge the accuracy of I
interpretations of Godel's result that make self-reference central
(e.g., "The Godel-formula says of itself that it is unprovable"). '
Godel, to be sure, alludes in his summary introduction to the Liar i
and the Richard paradoxes and this allusion no doubt occasioned
the popular reading of his own first incompleteness theorem as an I
instance of self-vitiating self-reference (e.g., "The Godel-sentence |
says of itself that it is untrue if and only if it is true").196 '
The preceding exposition should make it clear that, in th e '
strictest sense, no one of the formulae involved in Godel's proof (in |
languagesi-3) is self-assertive. For example, the sentence in
language3 is "about" a string of symbols in language2: the sentence I
in languagei is a proposition of elementary arithmetic and i s not I
"about" proofs, but about number-theoretic functions. It i s only in
consequence of the Godel mapping that this latter sentence can be '
deciphered as the extensionally-equivalent mate of a sentence in I
language3 which asserts the absence of a proof of the formula in '
Principia Mathematica. I
Nonetheless, an analogue of self-reference does insinuate i tself
into the incompleteness proof, for two reasons. First, the G odel-
mapping itself is intended to be "read" in such a way that the pairof
extensionally-equivalent sentences (in language! and language3) j
have the "sound" of intensional-equivalence as well. Otherwise, the
arithmetization of the syntax of Principia Mathematica would lose I
its epistemological force. (That is, we "know" for certain th at t he \
sentence in language! is true and that it is the counterpart of this j
sentence which is undecidable in the formalism.) I
Secondly, self-reference, or, better, self-reflexivity is, accordingto |
Godel himself, an ineliminable, not to say, enlightening feature of (
highly significant logico-mathematical notions such as "proof", 1
"concept", and "proposition".197 What Godel had particularly i n |
mind was the inclusion of a notion in its own referential domain, j
such that it contains itself as a constituent of its own content or I
meaning (e.g., a proposition which contains the assertion of i ts !
own demonstrability).198 However, Godel's procedure in the Incom- ,
pleteness proof gives self-reflection a wider sense; the number- 1
theoretic formulae of languages i&3 would remain, so to speak, Inert |
objects unless we could grasp the significance of their p air-wise i
correspondence. In other words, it is the mind that must verify 1
208
f •
! their relat ionship from "outside" the system of formal objects, in
order to b ring home its bearing on the latter's status; it is the
reflective interplay between provability outside the system and
provability (or, unprovability) within it that, when appropriately
grasped, thw arts Hilbert's dream of finding purely intra-systematic
proofs of co nsistency and completeness. Godel calls attention to
this aspect of his procedure by naming an expression in his
arithmetical language the "isomorphic image" of its counterpart in
Principia Mathematical99 to understand this image as an image is
to negotiate b etween it and its formalistic "original". And it is in
this sense that Godel's allusions to the Epimenides-paradox have
more than simply heuristic value.
4. Th e f ourth and final result bearing centrally on the modern
project of fo rmalization initiated by Frege and Hilbert is Church's
negative solution to the so-called "Entscheidungs-problem" for the
first-order predicate calculus. The problem is to discover whether or
not there is an algorithm or fully-mechanical procedure for
determining whether any formula, expressed in accord with the
formation-rules of that calculus, is or is not a "theorem" formally
derivable fro m its axioms and by its rules. If there were such a
procedure, then given any such formula one could determine after a
finite number of steps whether a proof of it or of its negation can be
constructed from the calculus. (The equivalent in computation
theory is the so-called "Halting Problem", first formulated by Turing
in 1 936.) In that circumstance the Leibnizian dream of a purely
mechanical a pparatus both for generating all possible proofs (the
ars inve niendi) and for assessing whether there is an (analytical)
proof for any well-formed formula of t he lingua characteristica (the
ars iudicandi) would be fulfilled.
Church's negative solution of t he decision-problem, the technical
detail of which is not germane here, is thus one further constriction
on t he aspirations that inspired the original formalistic program,
viz., the global aspirations of a mathesis universalis.
Several additional comments are appropriate here.
Since Godel had earlier proved (in 1930) that first-order predicate
logic is complete, unlike "richer" or more complex systems such as
that of Prin cipia Mathematica, but like the prepositional calculus
(i.e., every sentence recognized to be valid is also deducible from its
axioms and inference-rules), this logic displays a curious asymme
try: it is complete, but undecidable. This means that we can check
mechanically to determine whether a string of formulae is or is not
209
a formal derivation of an expression in the language of the

predicate-calculus, but cannot determine whether there is a proof
(or disproof) of any given expression. This is stated more
technically by saying that the set of provable formulae is recursively
enumerable, without being recursive; we can, in principle, generate
one after one, by purely mechanical or combinatorial means, the
members of the set of provable formulae, but we cannot effectively
settle the question whether any arbitrary formula is a member of
that set.200
Church's theorem has led to a number of important results
concerning those sub-classes of the formulae expressible in
first-order logic which are decidable. The technique of reduction-
classes, by which one can ascertain whether formulae with a
certain structure are derivable was devised for this purpose.201 It is
of some interest in the general context of this essay to note that the
decision-problem is not solvable for expressions of quantification in
which non-monadic predicate letters appear (i.e., the logic o f
relations). Accordingly, the force of the critique addressed by I
Russell to pre-modern, and, a fortiori, to Hegelian logic, that th e
subject-predicate format cannot do justice to relations, is at least '
mitigated by the undecidability of a formally-expressed logic o f
relational predicates. It is perhaps only a further irony that while
first-order predication theory (with identity) is undecidable, as
Church showed, the addition of the somewhat bizarre axiom '(x)(y) [
[x = y]' to the normal axiom-schemata does yield a decidable
theory.202 '
Thirdly, and philosophically most importantly, Church's result |
rebounds upon the hope originally entertained by Wittgenstein and i
others that the visible structure of any well-formed formula would '
be a sufficient indication of its derivability. This hope, in turn, was !
connected with the elusive notions of logical form and logical ,
constants.
The following passages from the Tractatus illustrate a cardinal I
aspect of a once widely-shared position: i
"Our basic principle is that every question which can be decided '
by logic at all, must be decidable straightaway (ohne weiteres)." 1
"Proof in logic is merely a mechanical aid for facilitating th e i

recognition of tautologies where they are complicated."203
Wittgenstein's confident announcements hang together with the I
notion that each and every well-formed formula of logic has a |
unique and fully perspicuous logical form which itself is a function 1
210
of the so-called logical constants appearing in it. Church's theorem

makes it plain that the presence or absence of a proof (in the formal
system) of any such formula cannot be automatically detected from
its outwa rd form. Furthermore, all the members of the class of
those logical constants whose presence in a formula give i t its
logically-relevant form cannot be picked out by any effective
procedure. Fo rmal derivability depends upon the roles played and
the places occupied by "purely logical symbols"; however, Tarski in
his 1936 paper "On the Concept of Logical Consequence"
emphasized th e arbitrariness of the "division of terms into logical
and extra-logical."204 Subsequent attempts to reduce this arbitrari
ness (e.g., Quine's definition of a logical truth as one in which only
logical constants occur essentially)205 have done nothing to mitigate
Tarski's pessimism. Consequently, the line of demarcation between
logical and extra-logical or "contentual" symbols is blurred; in turn,
the Leibnizian dream of establishing all truths ex vi formae,
together with the concomitant notions of analyticity, tautological
formulae and truth by virtue of meaning, has come unravelled.
"Truth by virt ue of purely logical constants" has not turned out to
be an effective or mechanically testable notion.
These f our basic results, all established with the resources of
formalization alone, are themselves linked in multiple ways, so
much so as to suggest an inevitable unity among them and a
uniform i mplication for the destiny of formalism itself (i.e., the
project of a sym bolic mathesis universalis).206
For ins tance, both Skolem's theorem and Godel's demonstration
of an undecidable sentence entail the existence of non-standard
models of intuitive arithmetic in which "weird" items stand
alongside the "natural" numbers. Moreover, from Skolem's theorem
itself one c an derive an incompleteness result close to Godel's, as
Georg Kreisel showed in a 1950 proof.207
Similarly, Church's unsolvability theorem is in fact a conse
quence of T heorems IX and X in Godel's original incompleteness
proof, while the latter can in turn be derived from Church s
theorem t ogether with the so-called "diagonal lemma ,208 Further
more, Church's theorem can be readily demonstrated by supposing
that t he arbitrarily chosen formula in question is the one that
states the consistency of arithmetic, since we already know from
Godel's proof t hat this statement is undecidable.
Finally a formal theory'S', if consistent, has a model in which the
true f ormulae of S are satisfied (and, by the Lowenheim-Skolem
211
theorem, if S has a model at all, it has a model in the natural

numbers); but, if the theory 'S' is what is called a consistent
extension of some normal axiomatic system of the natural
numbers, then by (a variant of) Church's theorem, S is undecid-
able.209
There are, to be sure, various other consequences of, and issues
within, the program of formalization that might also have be en
selected both for their intrinsic interest and for their bearing on the
debate between Hegel and his logical critics. The following examples
come swiftly to mind. (1) Impredicative definitions in which
reference is unavoidably made to some totality of which the
definiendum is a member.210 Their structure reminds one of
Hegel's dictum that "the true is the whole" and, more specifically, of
his practice of introducing phenomenological moments or shapes
by appeal to the totality of which they are constituents. Thus, near
the beginning of Section VI of the Phenomenology he writes that
"All previous shapes of consciousness are abstractions of/from
'Geist'; they are so in the sense that Geist analyzes itself into parts,
holds its factors apart from one another and lingers in each one in
turn. This process of isolating moments of this sort presupposes
the subsistence of Geist itself. . . ."211 (2) Tarski's important result
from 1931 concerning the unrepresentatibility or indefinability of
the truth-predicate of an object-language L in that language itself,
except on pain of paradox. The truth-predicate for sentences of L
can only be adequately and unparadoxically represented in th e
metalanguage of L. Tarski's argument, similar in interesting ways
to Godel's incompleteness theorem, evokes echoes of Hegel's u se of
'truth' in the Phenomenology at points of transition from an
antecedent, more impoverished shape of consciousness to its richer
successor-shape. Perception, for instance, is the "truth" of
sense-certainty, in much the sense that Aristotle is alleged to be the
"truth" of Plato in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy. When
an antecedent shape or discursive system undertakes to ve rify
itself, Its own claims give way to a successor in which the truth of
the former is subsumed and displayed.212 (3) Many of the dilemmas
at the heart of set-theory turn on the dual character of a set as both
a "one" and a "many" (or, in technical idiom, the relationship
between sets and proper classes). According to Russell, a set ( or
class) as "one . . . is an object of the same type as its terms", while
"the class as many is of a different type from the terms of th e
class."213 The distinction, although rooted in Cantor's ontologlcal
212
1 I description of what it is to be a set iiberhaupt, later takes on

I importance as a way of circumventing those paradoxes arising from
I | the inclusion of certain sets as members of larger sets. Von
l Neumann, for e xample, restricts sets in a rigorous sense to those
collections of " individuals" sharing a definite property which a re
| "not too big" while " 'classes' are all totalities (Gesamtheiten)
I irrespective of their 'size'."214 Its seemingly ad hoc character
notwithstanding, this discrimination becomes philosophically
| significant once we consider the relationship between an axioma-
j tized set theory and its informal, non-axiomatizable presupposi
tion, which is nothing less than the "universe of all sets", a class,
| not a set.
I The axiomatized theory (e.g., the Zermelo-Fraenkel theory) must
restrict the notion of set in such a way as to bar "undesirable"
| collections from its midst (e.g., the collection of all those collections
I which are not members of themselves). On the other hand, the
underlying "logic" of this theory allows quantification over all
| possible collections so long as they can be extensionally defined. So,
the universe or proper class of all sets, although not itself an
officially countenanced "set", always lurks in the background of the
axiomatic theory and emerges into the foreground when the
question of the intended or standard realization of that theory is
( raised (e.g., when it is a matter of formulae valid in all possible
"structures", that is, the informal universe of set-theory).215
| If the fickle duality of "set" as both a one and a many reminds us
of H egel's d escription of the object of perception, what has been
called the "dialectic" of the relation between an official set-theory
| and its unofficial presupposition should evoke a memory of the
i "Straggle B etween Enlightenment and Faith," since there, too, a
shadowy, indeterminate Jenseits is the inexorable protagonist from
i which every determinate clarity is hard-won.
| However, th e four results previously considered are best suited to
analysis in Hegelian style, not only because of their fundamental
I relevance to formalization as such, but also because they display,
I both singly and jointly, a strikingly "phenomenological character.
i In othe r words, the project of modern "logic in its symbolic,
' formalized a nd mathematical articulation, turns out to have, in a
Hegelian perspective, the status of a shape of pre-scientific, i.e.,
I pre-logical co nsciousness. If t his claim can be sustained, then the
tables will hav e been turned on the formalistic reproach voiced by
I
213
Popper, with which I began, viz., that Hegel's Science of Lo gic is

"typical of pre-scientific and, indeed, pre-logical thinking."
In what way or ways, then, is the enterprise of modern logic, at
bottom, phenomenological?
1. First, and quite generally, that enterprise, as delineated by
Frege and then by Hilbert, collapses under the pressure of the need
for self-vindication or self-validation. The self-imposed conditions of
adequacy that seem to follow naturally from the intended
universality of logic as mathesis universalis cannot be met by t he
formal systems themselves; moreover, as I have already empha
sized, this failure is established on the strength of purely formal
arguments. These latter, especially as they figure in Godel's tw o
theorems, demonstrate that the originative and governing ambi
tions of formalization cannot be fulfilled. The destiny of tho se
ambitions is thus structurally comparable to that of the shapes of |
natural consciousness which Hegel surveys in the Phenomenology: ,
each such shape is animated by an epistemic claim (or, network of
claims) which additionally specify the kind of evidence which |
should corroborate that claim. However, when a particular "shape"
applies its own standard of relevant, confirmatory evidence to itself,
it experiences its own disintegration inasmuch as this application
yields results deeply at odds with the original epistemic claim. For
example, the claim of "sense-certainty", that the immediate
presence of a "this" here-and-now assures incontestable knowledge, '
is undermined by the experience that it is in principle impossible to ,
single out an individual fitting the relevant description, that, in '
fact, what is "singled out" in speech is a universal. Similarly, the !
"master's" claim to have secured his autonomy through victory over i
another in a life-and-death struggle subverts itself in his realization '
that the now-subordinated "slave" is no longer an apt source of the 1
recognition on which the truth of self-consciousness was meant to

depend. The attempt to verify autonomy in this manner ends in its
suppression. I
The limitative results of metamathematics display an analogous, i
although not identical structure; efforts to demonstrate in th e
terms of a given formal system that that system satisfies its own 1
criteria of adequacy (see above, p. 201) subvert its claim to j
conceptual and logical self-sufficiency. For instance, the proposi

tion that a system S is provably consistent, when formulated in the
language of S, proves to be undecidable; the intention to justify the j
absoluteness of Cantor's non-denumerable cardinals in an axiom-
214 I
i
I~ ~
' atic sy stem yields the Skolem-result that any such system, if
I consistent, is non-categorical and, therefore, that non-
| denumerability is relative. The first Godel incompleteness theorem
' reveals that the intended autonomy of the formalization of
' number-theory passes over into an ambiguous heteronomy:
informal or intuitive arithmetic, not its formal transcription,
1 establishes the "truth" of the undecidable Godel-sentence. In all
' these instances the shape generated by the basic claims of
formalism becomes misshapen in this process of abortive self-
verification and no further technical moves (e.g., Gentzen's proof of
I the consistency of number-theory using transfinite induction to the
| limit-ordinal e 0) can restore its originally-intended contours.
2. In th e second place, these limitative results are "phenomeno-
I logical" in a more specific sense; each, in its own way, exemplifies
certain of the key contrasts Hegel deploys when he rehearses the
history of the interlinked experiential shapes natural conscious-
' ness gives itself. Consequently, not only does the project of
i formalization founder on formalistic grounds, but, in addition,
those grounds lend themselves to diagnosis in Hegelian terms
which cann ot, in turn, be absorbed into the technical language of
modern formal logic. This asymmetiy would give Hegelian discourse
some measure of e xplanatory primacy over formalistic discourse.
Let me try to spell out what I have in mind. The Lowenheim-
' Skolem results reproduce the interplay between meinen and sagen,
between inte nded and expressed meaning, which Hegel introduced
I most em phatically in the opening chapter of the Phenomenology,
(but also invoked elsewhere in that and other texts). There,
apparently p re-linguistic intentions are subverted when we try to
articulate them in speech. Analogously, the pre-formal intentions or
intuited meanings associated with non-denumerability and, even
more st rikingly, with natural number, are subverted, or at least
compromised, when we try to render them expressly in the
language of a formalized set-theoiy. It seems to be no accident that
the ensuing discussion of the Lowenheim-Skolem results is, as I
have mentioned, pervaded by locutions such as 'intended model' or
'standard model', for the dilemma is exactly that the Jormalism
(whichever one is chosen) lacks the power on its own to
discriminate between the domains in which all of its formulae are
satisfied. A discrimination into intended and unintended, or
standard and non-standard, domains has to be drawn outside the
formalism. And yet, the original point of an axiomatic formalization
215
was to ground our pre-formal intuitions (of uncountable sets and of

natural number) while purging them of anything that might lead to
paradox. The inevitability of non-standard models for any consis- I
tent syntactic system (and the resultant non-categoricity of s uch
systems) indicates that we cannot succeed in saying, univocally, '
what we meant or thought we meant.216
The interplay between a formalization and its intended models is
also reminiscent of a second pair of central analytic terms in pl ay '
throughout the Phenomenology, certainty and truth. i
Their ambiguous complicity within modern formalism comes
most vividly to light in the case of Godel's incompleteness proofs.
Derivability from formal axioms and rules of inference was meant to I
secure pre-formal number-theoretic proofs from any skeptical
doubts since, for Frege and the Hilbert-school at least, the visible I
patterns of formal derivation were to elevate "intuitive" certainty to I
incorrigible truth in virtue of their very "objectivity". Godel's first
theorem reverses this relation and thereby undercuts the expecta- 1
tions associated with a purely formal proof-theory, since it is now a I

formula of intuitive arithmetic whose "truth" cannot be exhibited '
as the outcome of a corresponding formal derivation. In other I
words, the "certainty" we intuitively or informally ascribe to th e
statements of arithmetic is now the ground on which the "truth"of
the corresponding metamathematical statements (i.e., for ea ch
possible Godel-sentence) is established. While Godel's arithmetiza- '
tion of the metamathematical syntax of the base-system (Pilf)
might, at first glance, seem to blur or eliminate the distinction I
between the intuitive and its formalized version, his result shows j
how vital this distinction remains, since it is only by appeal to the
incontestable truth of an intuitive arithmetical formula that we can |
adequately interpret the proof-theoretic significance of the accom- |
panying arithmetized statement (viz., that the former cannot be
demonstrated in the system or, more generally, that the system I
itself is necessarily incomplete). Hence, the search for an indepen- |
dent "object" (Gegenstand) in which the "subject's" claim to b e
certain (e.g., of the results of elementary number-theory) could be |
verified has here come up against an insuperable obstacle; the same j
outcome emerges, of course, when the "object" chosen is a formal
statement representing the assertion that the system is consistent, I
Finally, Church's undecidability theorem, and the associated |
issue of logical form, are also quite naturally open to interpretation
in a variety of Hegelian, phenomenological terms. For instance, we |
216
can say that the logical (here, syntactic) form of an arbitrarily

selected form ula is not sufficient to render evident or transparent
its logically relevant content (here, theoremhood in the base-
system). Alternatively, we could point to the disparity between
theoremhood an sich (an intrinsic property of every valid formula in
virtue of Godel' s completeness theorem) and theoremhood/iir uns
(the unsolvability of the decision-problem in general). Finally, and
perhaps most significantly, we can construe Church's result in
terms of the gap it reveals between the intention steering the
construction of the predicate calculus—namely, that it have the
mechanical character of which Leibniz dreamed—and its actualiza
tion [V erwirklichung). The actualized version of formal logic falls
short of the thoroughly effective, algorithmic status it was expected
to enj oy; the idea of a fully-mechanized version of mathesis
universalis turns out to be, for the most rigorously technical
reasons, condemned to frustration.
In sum, the four cardinal results of contemporary metamathemat-
ics display in various ways features that also belong in the repertory
of description Hegel put into play in his Phenomenology. Two pairs
of such features are especially noteworthy, viz., intended vs.
expressed m eaning and certainty vs. truth, since, as we have seen,
both Skolem's and Godel's results initiate a "regressive" movement
back from the anticipated rigors of a formal system to the intuitive
intentions and certainties which that system was designed both to
perfect and to purge. Indeed, in both instances the pre-formal gains
the up per-hand over the formalized, inasmuch as the "truth" of
metamathematics is made to depend on the "certainty" of
arithmetic (i.e., in Godel's idiom, the "truth" of number-theoretic
formulae), while the significance of formal signs is controlled by
their standard or intended models. Far from being an escape from
the insecurities occasioned by pre-formal mathematical logic (e.g.,
the set-theoretic antinomies or the appeal to non-finitistic proof-
techniques), formal metamathematics remains wedded to informal
discursive practices. This is brought out with ironically theological
emphasis in Kreisel's conclusion: "A formalization is the outward
and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, namely, of ones
understanding, of knowing what one is talking about. 217 His
words might well remind us of Hegel's own lapidaiy clause:
"Knowing what one says is much rarer than one thinks. 218
Thus far I h ave been arguing and suggesting that the fundamen
tal metamathematical results achieved by Lowenheim-Skolem,
217
Godel a nd Church (together with their extensions and generaliza

tions by others) are all phenomenological in character, and this in
the wide sense that they show formalization itself to be a shape of
consciousness which cannot sustain itself when its own criteria of
adequacy are applied to it and then in the more detailed sense that
these results can be illuminatingly understood by means of s ome
key terms and contrasts set to work in the Phenomenology.
Nonetheless, an element of artifice might appear to infect these
claims, or, alternatively, it might well seem that formalism is o nly
contingently phenomenological. After all, formal logic in the
modern sense is not officially a shape of consciousness within
Hegel's text (although the quest for non-contingent laws of thought
is a phase in the experience of "Observing Reason"); moreover, the
Hegelian terms chosen to illumine modern formalism were q uite
variable, especially in the case of Church's theorem, and could quite
probably be replaced by terms from Hegel's logic, as we in fa ct saw
in Section II, where his own critique of a Leibnizian calculus was
under scrutiny. The question that now arises is whether, at a
deeper level of analysis, modern formalism can be shown to be
systematically and necessarily phenomenological in nature, even
though 'phenomenological' might have to be given a justifiably
extended sense?
What qualifies an attitude or epistemic stance as essentially
"phenomenological" is the presence in it of what Hegel ca lls t he
"opposition or antithesis of consciousness (Gegensatz des Beiousst-
seins)," that is, the separation of knowing and its prospectively
known object.219 It is in virtue of this separation and this contrast
that, by turns, the knowing subject and its object, but not th eir
self-informing relationship, are identified as the locus of confirma
tory truth. However, even when the knowing subject is so identified
it still seeks validation in an objective equivalent; in otherwords.it
always needs to body forth its self-certainties. However, its success
in doing so is almost always fragile and precarious, since it m ust
also identify its own traces in the object meant to embody it. The
lineaments of the knowing subject are almost always in danger of
being obscured by the very "objectivity" of its intended realization,
just as the slave can only fleetingly retrieve his autonomy from the
shapes and contours he gives to the product of his work.
Accordingly, to establish the intrinsically phenomenological charac
ter of formal logic would amount to showing the constitutive
presence within it of the Gegensatz des Bewusstseins, in however
218
: complex a mode. A p ositive result should not be surprising since

the inaugural setting of modern logic was, as we have already seen,
| the mind-body problem in its most subtle version (viz., Descartes'
theory of the symb ol-producing imagination).
In what fashion , then, is the opposition between consciousness
and i ts putative o bjects embedded in the modern project of logic ?
, The genealogy of this project, from its initiation in the Cartesian
dream of a mathesis universalis, through its Leibnizian and
Fregean inflections into a characteristica universalis articulated in
the proper idiom of "pure thinking", to its climax in the
' Hilbert-program and the ensuing metamathematical results, has
| exhibited the c onstant interplay and collaboration of three motifs,
namely, the mec hanization of reasoning, the symbolization and the
I reification of concepts. Together they determine the "formal"
| attitude of mind or thinking in the decisive sense that the mind is
believed to find access to the forms of its own workings, of its
' cognitive deeds, only when these can be displayed to it in objective
orobjectual representations from which its own activity has been at
least temporarily erased. Thus, reasoning should be mechanized so
that only the "e ye", no t the mind, needs to be activated and alerted
to th e ties among statements; a symbolic language "paints
thoughts" onto a visible medium where they can supposedly take on
a transparency lacking to them in the "invisible" dianoetic domain.
Finally, a concept reified and extensionalized, given the outward
look of a number or class (e.g., {x | (xeS s dbx)}), is allegedly lent a
fixity and constancy of meaning it would otherwise lose.220
The linking of these motifs is palpable in Frege's critique of
psychologism and in later formulations of Frege's achievement
which stress his overcoming of idealism.221 It i s also evident in his
demand that "pure thinking" be exhibited as a system, not as a
history, sin ce "in history we have development; in system, rigidity
(Starrheit)."222 It comes to sight in still another way in Wittgen
stein's Tractarian fantasy of an ideal language capable of
portraying the world through its unmistakable symbolic forms, a
language inten ded to embody a "transcendental logic at the same
time that it bans a transcendental subject from its speech. "There is
no such thing as the subject which thinks or has representa
tions."223
The immanent history of these and related aspirations is a story
of perplexities emerging to confront their partisans in a poignantly
enigmatic way; a purely formal, mathematical and symbolic logic,
instead of rendering the active intellect visible to itself, obscures
219
and occludes the traces inscribed by the intellect's formative

activity upon the objects in which it issues. Those objects as formal
signs stand at a distance from their designata, rather than making
the latter immediately and indubitably present.224 Put slightly
differently, the suppression of subjectivity in favor of objective
symbols leads to the undecipherability, in key cases, of th ose
symbols themselves. "Reading" them as they were meant to be read,
manipulating them in accordance with the unformalized rules for
their use, demands recourse to the very subjectivity they w ere
expected either to eliminate or to objectify. But, meeting th is |
demand is no longer a straightforward matter, since the external I
expressions of pure thinking have acquired a degree of opaqueness 1
which complicates, if it does not wholly frustrate, the effort t o

re-enact the motions and designs of pure thinking under th eir
guidance. (The Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem is perhaps the clearest
instance of this frustration, although Godel's and Church's results l
similarly testify to the same kind of opaqueness. Provability in a I
formalism, for example, ought to be, but turns out not to be, t he |
unblemished mirror of pre-formally established "truths".)
Formalistic thinking is accordingly in a position structurally
close to that of the Understanding (Verstand) at the end of Hegel's
chapter on "Force and Understanding" where it discovers that its
antecedent attempts to find compelling truth in the objective laws
of nature have, all along, been exercises in the explanation of i ts
own procedures of explanation. The Understanding comes to the
recognition that its dialogue with external nature has been, In
truth, a "Selbstgesprach", a conversation with itself.225 In the case
of formalism, however, this Selbstgesprach, even at its most
articulate moments, has been such that the mind cannot hear its
own voice, or can hear it only with a difficulty not alleviated by the 1
symbolic systems it has produced.

For Hegel, the "objects" of natural consciousness in each o f its
successive shapes are more truly "histories" for the phenomenolog-
ical observer. They are the former precisely because of the
Gegensatz des Bewusstseins, the "mapping of the mind's deeds .
onto an objective referent; they are the latter once the activity which
yields them as the sources of its validation is brought into focus jn
its own right. The genesis and destiny of formalism have jointly
shown how this focus is inevitably blurred when the 'objective*
mode is made to suppress the "historical", when, in other words,
thought as self-movement is brought to a standstill in that rigid,
220
e , symbolic externality which was originally counted on to secure

1 self-transparency to the mind itself. The ambivalence of the destiny
I to which f ormalism exposes itself is unintentionally, but propheti-
i S cally, cap tured in Wittgenstein's remark in his early (1913) "Notes
on Logic": "Symbols are not what they seem to be."226
IHD: Lessons for the Understanding of Hegel's Science of Logic
What I have been trying to indicate up to this point is the

i intrinsically phenomenological status of modern logic, a status due
to the "opposition" between consciousness and its formal, symbolic
1 objects which is incarnate in it.
It is now time, at last, to tally the results of the confrontation
between Hegel an d formalized logic with which this essay has been
preoccupied th roughout.
1 Contemporary formal logic, understood by its initiators as the
' fulfillment of the Cartesian-Leibnizian dream of a symbolic
! mathesis universalis, presented itself as the unique touchstone for
the claims of earlier or rival "logics" and discursive systems
generally. Some of Hegel's sympathetic commentators were seduced
into mimicking this self-presentation; as one of them put it,
"Nothing is to be accepted from Hegel which cannot be logically
formalized."227 It is clear that this mimicry stands or falls with the
[ credentials of its original. What I have tried to show in this third
section is that the intentions from which contemporary formal logic
took its sh ape were not, in the end, matched by its achievements,
and this, for strictly formalistic and, hence, immanent reasons. The
failure of philosophically interesting formal systems fully to satisfy
self-imposed c riteria of adequacy put them and the general project
' from whi ch they emerged in much the same condition Trendel
enburg, the first formalist critic of Hegel, ascribed to dialectical
logic: "D ialectic is a magnificent error and the magnitude of its
intention silently tries to mask the error of its actual accomplish
ments."228 While the counterpart of this harsh judgment would
surely need to be mitigated in view of the impressive technical
' achievements of contemporary logic, especially those made in the
aftermath of t he limitative theorems of Skolem, Godel and Church,
the fact that it applies at all, even in suitably mitigated form, shows
us tha t the Trojan-horse policy, as I called it earlier, is bound to
come unsaddled. What it mimics, in an effort to salvage Hegel's
logic, ha s demonstrably fallen short of its inaugural ambitions.
221
Furthermore, Hegel's resistance to formalization turned out, in

the second section, to be deeply grounded in his own presentation
and his own understanding of the Science of Logic. Not only did the
principal elements of that discourse evade representation in an y
technically respectable fashion (e.g., individual variables, predicate- I
constants, rules of inference, etc.); Hegel's own critique of the I
then-inchoate versions of formalization also argues against the
interpretive "faithfulness" of a formalistic rendition of his logic, no I
matter how much more technically sophisticated such a rendition !
might be.
Moreover, Hegel's critical opposition to formalism proves to have '
been anticipatory, not to say, prophetic. The reasons why a formal |
system cannot satisfy its own criteria of adequacy and self-
sufficiency turned out to be, in the main, the reasons Hegel 1
advanced, en passant, against the Leibnizian program and its later j
avatars. Then, at a deeper level, the genealogical history of modern ,
formalism revealed the latter's essentially phenomenological charac- '
ter. Its collapse as an autarchic shape of consciousness was
brought about by its own efforts at self-confirmation; in addition,
its very constitution as such a shape was a function of the
"opposition of consciousness and its [symbolic] objects". Thus,
Hegel, taken ad mentem, if not narrowly ad litteram, provides
resources for understanding the fate of formalism which are n ot
supplied by formalism itself. In particular, Hegelian thought allows |
us to bring the question of the foundational role played by th e ,
thinking subject in the construction of a symbolic logic more I
pointedly into focus than formalism does, since the latter's |
antipathy to psychologism also leads it to expunge subjectivity as
such from the compass of its "objective" expressions.229
So, on balance, the formalistic repudiation of Hegelian lo gic is |
met with at least equal interpretive force by a Hegelian critique of ,
formalism. Their equality is, however, only momentary just to the
extent that the Hegelian response first "frees" its antagonist t o |
undergo an immanent, formalistic critique before furnishing an |
analysis of its shortcomings along phenomenological lines. B y
parity of critical strategy, the formalist would have to allow Hegel's j
logic to undergo an immanent, dialectical critique before diagnos
ing its "failures" along formalistic lines. Since the formalist
tradition has not yet followed this strategy, the Hegelian position
perhaps weighs more heavily in the balance at present.230 I
This advantage should not be taken simply to absolve H egel's
222
I LACHTERMAN/FORMALIZATION OF HEGEL'S LOGIC
I logic of all responsibility to the standards and demands of the

I analytical U nderstanding from which a formal logic issues. Hegel's
| rational holism, if that is the right phrase, cannot be purchased
wholesale, "on the cheap". In his outline of an early (1802)
• university c ourse on logic and metaphysics Hegel made his own
| speculative aims in this regard clear: the logical forms elaborated by
i the finitizing Understanding must be shown to nullify their own
finitude and, hence, their analytical discreteness. "The Aufhebung
of. . . f inite knowing through Reason must be demonstrated."231
One can only advance to the rational and thus comprehensive whole
by re-ena cting the dianoetic motions through which it first, and
finally, ex posed itself.
Considered in its full extent and depth, the debate between Hegel
and the formalists should provoke once again that reflection on the
meaning of \oyos which Heidegger found missing from modern
logistic and which Hegel himself demanded in his far-sighted
warning:. . it is the logos which least of all ought to be left out of
logical s cience."232 It would certainly be premature to predict the
outcome of that debate and of the reflection on logos it calls into
life: nonetheless, one might try to anticipate the "point" of this
reflective e ncounter by considering at least one of Hegel's guiding
intentions: if the Phenomenology might be said to give us lessons
in becoming experientially sane and sound, the Science of Logic
tries to tea ch us what it is to be theoretically wholesome. As he put
it i n a n ote to one of his later courses on logic: "At all events, not a
new logic—but, deeper consciousness of t he nature of thinking."233
NOTES
1. Karl Popper, "What is Dialectic?" in: Conjectures and Refutations (New York:
Basic Books, 1968), p. 335. Popper's criticisms belong to a strand of
anti-Hegelianism initiated by A. Trendelenburg in his Die logische Frage in
Hegels System (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1843): cp. J. Schmidt, Hegels
Wissenschaft der Logik und ihrer Kritik durch Adolf Trendelenburg (Munich:
Berchmann. 1977).
2. W. Krohn, D ieformale Logik in Hegel's "Wissenschaft der Logik . Untersuchun-
gen zur Schlusslehre (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1972), p. 12. a work of
considerable value for understanding Hegel's treatment of presymbolic formal
logic (syllogistic).
3. Enzyklopadle der philosophischen Wissenschaften [-Enz-]. Theorie-
Werkausgabe (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1970), Bd. 8, Par. 2 4, Zusatz 2^
4. Wissenschaft der Logik 1 = W.L.), ed. G. Lasson (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1963).
II. p. 231.
223
5. Ibid., II, p. 506.

6. Ibid., I, p . 7. Hegel's conception of a philosophical demonstration would have
to be explored more fully in conjunction with his remark in the Wesensloglk
(ibid., II, p. 157) that the exhibition of the Absolute is "its own explicative
display (Auslegung) and simply a showing (Zeigen) of what it is." Cp. ibid., II,
p. 272 on the identity of Demonstration and Monstration.
7. Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), p. 163. (Heidegger's criticisms
of formal logic have been analyzed in A. Borgmann, "Heidegger and Symbolic
Logic." in: M. Murray, ed., Heidegger and Modern Philosophy (New H aven:
Yale University Press, 1978), pp. 3-22 and in Thomas A. F ay, Heidegger: The
Critique of Logic (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), esp. pp. 70-92.)
8. "Die Zeit des Weltbildes," in: Holzwege (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann,
1950), p. 84.
9. Wegmarken (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1967), p.104.
10. Vortrage undAufsatze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954), p. 234.
11. See "Neuere Forschungen uber Logik," Literarische Rundschau fir das
katholische Deutschland 38 (1912), pp. 467-468 and pp. 569-570.
12. E.g., Die Frage nach dem Ding (Tubingen: Max Nlemeyer, 1962), p. 122 .
13. See "Neuere Forschungen. . .," cit. supra, p. 570. ,
14. This is not meant to overlook the relevance of Heidegger's challenge to t he '
"presumption of symbolic logic to constitute the scientific logic of all sciences."
(Passage cited in n.12 supra.)
15. Cp. Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Alg ebra
(Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. 1968), pp. 197-211; and 294-309.
16. Op. cit., p. 82.
17. Ibid. (Heidegger's distinction between diavTaoic* a nd imaginatio on p. 98 o f
this same essay is a tantalizing start towards discriminating the Ancient from (
the Modern conceptions of Imagination and its role in the sciences. So farasl i
know, Heidegger never returned to this theme.) I
18. The best account of this transformation known to me is J. Klein's lecture "The I
World of Physics and the 'Natural'World" [Marburg, 1932], trans. byD.R. Lach- I
terman In Jacob Klein, Lectures and Essays, ed. Robert B. Williamson and |
Elliott Zuckerman (Annapolis, Md.: St. John's College Press, 1986), pp. 1- 34.
19. Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann,
1951), p. 19. i
20. Ibid. '
21. Ibid., p. 20. (For a careful study of further aspects of the Kantian position,cp. i
F. Kaulbach. "Schema, Bild and Modell nach den Voraussetzungen de s I
Kantischen Denkens," Studium Generale 18 (1965), pp. 464-479). |
22. See, for example, KdrV A718/B746. I
23. Cp. J.-L. Marion, Sur i'ontologie grise de Descartes (Paris: J. Vrin, 197 51, PP i
113-131. ,
24. Compare Die Frage nach dem Ding, p. 122 with W. L „ I, p. 19. I
25. Der Satz vom Grund, op. cit., p. 65. 1
26. Nietzsche (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961), II. p . 471.
27. Ibid., II, p. 299. !
28. Herakltt ( = Gesamtausgabe, II. Abtellung: Vorlesungen [Frankfurt a.M - '
Vittorio Klostermann, 1979]), Bd. 55, p. 231. I
29. Ibid., p. 232. |
224
30. Ibid... pp. 113-114. (Heidegger's further explorations of the origins and
significance of "logic" may be found in his lecture-series Loglk: DieFmge nach
der Wahrhelt fed. cit., Bd. 21), esp. pp. 1-29 and Metaphysische Anfangs-
griinde der Loglk im Ausgang uon Leibniz (Bd. 26), esp. pp. 1-32.
31. See Zur Sache des Denkens (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1969), p. 53 and Vier
Semlnare (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1977), pp. 56-63. For the
final ph ase of his confrontation with Hegel, cp. Ricardo Dottori, "Kritisches
Nachwort zu "Hegels Dialektik" von H.-G. Gadamer and zum Verhaltnis
Hegel-Heidegger-Gadamer," Bijdragen 38 (1977), pp. 176-192 and J. Haber-
mas & H.-G. G adamer, Das Erbe Hegels (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1980).
32. "Grundsatze des Denkens," Jahrbuch Jiir Psychologte and Psychotherapie 6
(1958), pp. 33-41. esp. pp. 36-37.
33. Contemporaiy attempts to formalize Hegel's logic are both extensive in
quantity and discrepant in quality. The most impressive among them, to my
mind, is by Dominique Dubarle, in D. Dubarle and A. Doz, Logique et
dialectique (Paris: Larousse, 1972), pp. 121-200. Its mathematical format
apart, Dubarle's effort rests both on a critique of Hegel's repudiation of
formalization and on the substantive claim that "the logical emergence of
formalism. . .is, in the last analysis, imposed by the very nature of things," i.e.,
by th e "effective reality of Hegel's philosophical discourse" (p. 4). Dubarle
continues this line of argument in his book Logos etJormalisation du langage
(Paris: Klincksieck, 1977), esp. pp. 227-301. In both studies he contends that
thinking, if it is to articulate itself, "ought to be expressible in a language"
which is ineluctably brought "to display the features of a mathematical entity"
(Dubarle & Doz . p. 59).
Among the many other attempts at formalization the following ought to be
mentioned: C. Butler, "On the Reducibility of Dialectical to Standard Logic,"
The Personalist 56 (1975), pp. 414-431; idem, "Hegel's Dialectic of the Organic
Whole as a Particular Application of Formal Logic," in: W. S teinkraus & K.
Schmitz, eds.. Art and Logic in Hegel's Philosophy (N.Y.: H umanities Press,
1980), pp. 219-232; Y. Gauthier, "Logique Hegeltenne et formalisation,"
Dialogue 6 (1967), pp. 151-165; G. Giinther, Idee und Grundriss einer
nicht-aristotlelischen Logik, I. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1959); M. Kosok, 'T he
Formalization of Hegel's Dialectical Logic," in: A. Maclntyre, ed., Hegel. A
Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972), pp.
237-287; idem, "The Dialectical Matrix, or Hegel's Absolute Idea as Pure
Method," Hegel-Studien. Betheft 18 (1979) [cp. my critical review, ibid., pp.
139-1411; T. Seebohm, 'The Grammar of Hegel's Dialectic," Hegel-Studien 11
(1976), pp. 149-180 and J. Velarde, "Logica y dialectica," (Teorema 4 (1972),
pp. 17 7-197.
34. 'Model' as used here involves an equivocation, since an object-language is not,
in the technical sense, a model of its metalanguage. However, the virtue of
"faithfulness" is a desideratum in the former case, as much as it is when
semantic models of some set of p urely syntactic marks are in question.
35. Two r ecent interpretations of Hegel's Science of Logic which give this issue
poignancy are H. Fink-Eitel, Dialektik und Sozialethik (Meisenheim a.G.:
Anton Hain, 1978) and M. Theunissen, Sein und Schetn (Frankfurt a.M.:
Suhrkamp, 1980). Cp. H.F. Fulda, R.-P. Horstmann & M. Theunissen,
225
r GRADUATE FACULTY PHI LOSOPHY JOURNAL
Kritische Darstellung der Meta.ph.ysik. Eine Diskussion iiber Hegels L ogik

(Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1980). |
36. These maneuvers can be found in the works of Kosok, Dubarle, Giinther and
Gauthier, respectively, cited in n. 33 supra.
37. H. Schmitz, "Review of G. Giinther, lib. cit.." Philosophische Rundschaui i
(1963), pp. 283-304, at p. 297. For further critical responses, see Joh n I
Findlay's comments on C. Butler's paper in W. Steinkraus & K. Schmitz, e ds., I
op. cit., pp. 233-237; P. Lorenzen, "Das Problem einer Formallslerung der
Hegelschen Logik," Hegel-Studien, Beihejt 1 (1964), pp. 115-130 & A . |
Sarlemijn, "Formalisierte Logik und Dialektik, Hegel-Jahrbuch 1975 (1976), ,
pp. 390-409. I
38. W.L., I, p. 54. In a curious way, therefore, Hegel's most theoretical work begins
"practically", I.e., by an act of w ill. Cp. Enz.. Par. 78 ad Jin. On the beginning '
of t he Logic, see also Dieter Henrich, "Anfang und Methode der Logik," In his I
Hegel im Kontext (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1971), pp. 73-94 and W . '
Wieland, "Bemerkungen zum Anfang von Hegels Logik." In: Wirklichkeituad
Reflexion. Festschrift fur Walter Schultz (Pfullingen: Neske, 1973), pp. 1
365-383. I
39. W.L., I, p. 23. Cp. Enz.. Par. 19. On Hegel's treatment of the formal logical
"laws of thought" cp. V. P. Asmus, "Hegel's View of the Rights and Limits of I
Formal Thinking," Soviet Studies in Philosophy 9 (1970), pp. 336-373 andB, |
C. Birchall, "On Hegel's Critique of Formal Logic," Clio 9 (1980), pp. 283-296, j
40. See note 109 infra. j
41. Enz., Par. 24, Zusatz #2.

42. W.L., I, p. 19.
43. Ibid.. I, p . 93.
44. These are the strategies adopted R. Routley & R . K. Me yer, "Dialectical Logic,
Classical Logic and the Consistency of the World," Soviet Studies In i
Philosophy 16 (1976), pp. 1-25; H. Boehme, "Die Hegelsche Logik d es I
Widerspruchs," Philosophia Naturalis 17 (1978), pp. 105-119 and G. Patzig. i
"Hegels Dialektik und Lukasiewiczs dreiwertige Logik," In: Das Vetgangene I
und die Geschichte (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), PP- |
443-460, respectively. (For illuminating treatments of Hegel's understandingo(
contradiction, see R. Pippin, "Hegel's Metaphysics and the Problem o f
Contradiction," Journal of the History of Philosophy 16 (1978), pp. 301-312
and T. Seebohm, "Das Widerspruchsprinzip in der Kantischen Logik und d« I
Hegelschen Dialektik," in: Akten des 4. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses,Tell i
II.2 (Berlin: Walter deGruyter, 1974), pp. 862-874.
45. See the remarks in T. Seebohm, "The Grammar of Hegel's Dialectic,"
supra. I
46. W.L., II, p . 106. I
47. Ibid., II, p. 169. ,
48. Ibid., I, p. 106. '
49. Ibid., II, pp. 113-114. |
50. See the very interesting account by Paul Guyer, "Hegel, Leibniz and U i'
Contradiction in the Finite," Philosophy and Phenomenologtcal Reseat''®
(1979), pp. 75-98 and cp. R. Aquila, "Prediction and Hegel's Metap hysics.
Kant-Studien 64 (1973), pp. 231-245. I
51. On the intended and, perhaps, inexorable multlvocity of key categ orial ten® |
226
in the Logic, see H. F. Fulda, "Unzulangliche Bemerkungen zur Dialektik," and

"Hegels Dialektik als Begriffsbewegung und Darstellungsweisse," both in: R.-P.
Horstmann, ed., Seminar: Dialektik in der Philosophie Hegels (Frankfurt a.M.:
Suhrkamp, 1978), pp. 33-69: 124-174.
52. D. Henrich, "Hegels Logik der Reflexion," Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 18 (1978),
pp. 203-324.
53. in his comments cited in n. 37 supra., p. 237.
54. On the ut ility of a mbiguity in "natural" language, see W.L., II, pp. 356-358.
55. Self-predicativity i n Hegei has recently been the focus of lively discussion. See
W. Becker, "Das Problem der Selbstanwendung im Kategorienverstandnis der
dialektischen Logik," and R. Wiehl, "Selbstbeziehung and Selbstanwendung
dialektlscher Kategorien," both in: Hegel-Studien, Beihejt 18 (1978), pp.
75-82; 83-113.
56. W.L., II, pp. 28; 33.
57. For this entire topic one can profitably consult the analytical commentaries of
D. Henrich fcit. supra, n. 52) and A. Rapaczynski, Reflection and the Structure
of Hegel's S ystem (Ph.D. Diss., Columbia, 1974), esp. pp. 94-225.
58. W.L., I, p. 76; II. p . 495 & E nz. Par. 31 Anm.
59. It sh ould be noted that Hegel on several occasions draws rather different
distinctions between propositions (Satze) and judgments (Urteile)-, cf. W.L., II,
pp. 24-25; 276; 495; Enz. Par. 167 (Anm.) & Propadeutik-Logik, Hegel
Studienausgabe (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1968), III, ed. K. Lowith & M.
Riedel, p. 137 (Par. 12). The sense of t hese distinctions remains to be worked
out.
60. For a rece nt criticism of the Russellian distinction between the 'is' of identity
and the 'is' of predication, see J. Hintikka, " 'Is', Semantical Games, and
Semantic Relativity," Journal of Philosophical Logic 8 (1979), pp. 433-468.
61. Cf. M etaphysics Z 17, 1041b 1-3.
62. W.L., II, p . 267.
63. Enz., Par. 85.
64. Ibid., Par. 31, Zusatz.
65. Cf. Phanomenologie des Geistes|= Phan.\, ed. J. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Felfx
Meiner, 1 952), p. 51. Among the most helpful discussions of t his enigmatic
doctrine are R. Heede, Die gottliche Idee und ihre Erscheinung in der Religion
(Diss.. Munster, 1972), pp. 205-254; J. P. Surber, "Hegel's Speculative
Sentence," Hegel-Studien 10 (1975), pp. 211-230 and G. Wohlfahrt, Der
spekulative Satz. Bemerkungen zum Begriff der Spekulation bei Hegel
(Berlin: Wa lter de Gruyter, 1980). At b ottom, the deciphering of this enigma
will have to take its clues from Hegel's fundamental views of language; compare
his description in W.L., II, p . 259: "Da der Mensch die Sprache hat als das der
Vernunft eigenthumliche Bezeichnungsmittell. . ." with his statement in Enz.,
459 (Anm.): "Das Formelle der Sprache 1st d as Werk des Verstandes. . ." (my
underscorings).
66. Phan., p. 51.
67. See H. F. F ulda, "Unzulangliche Bemerkungen . . .", clt. supra, p. 54.
68. T ractatus 6.54.
69. Briefe von und an Hegel, ed. J. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1961), I,
p. 405.
70. I. Copi, Symbolic Logic (N.Y.: Macmillan. 1954), p. 45.
227
71. W. V. Quine, Philosophy of Logic (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970),

p. 48ff.
72. W.L., I. p. 34.
73. That inference patterns become impregnable once they are embodied within a
given formal system does not mean that they cease to be open for discussion
from outside that system. The debates between intuitlonists and classical
logicians, as well as the controversies over modal and quantum logics, bring
this home quite forcefully. (Cf. H. Putnam, "Is Logic Empirical?" in: M .
Wartofsky & R. Cohen, eds., Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 5
(1969), pp. 216-241.)
74. W.L., I, p. 19.
75. W. V. Quine. "Truth by Convention" in his Ways of Paradox (N.Y.: Ran dom
House, 1966), p. 97.
76. Enz., Par. 232.
77. Propadeutik, ed. cit., p. 151; "eine erfundene Vorrichtung."
78. W.L., II. p. 471.
79. Ibid., II, p. 491.
80. Ibid., II, p. 475; cp. Enz. Par. 231.
81. W.L., II, p. 88ff.
82. Enz., Par. 161.
83. Ibid.
84. Cp. Fulda, op. cit.. p. 46 on attempts to give mechanical rules for the
transitions in Hegel's logic.
85. W.L., I, p. 132; cp. I. 147.
86. Ibid.. II, p. 80: cp. I, pp. 119-121.
87. Ibid., II. p. 90.
88. Ibid.. I. p. 96; pp. 102-103.
89. On the distinctions and tensions between Hegel's mode of presentation and
the "subject-matter" of the Logic itself, see the important studies of M. Wetzel, I
"Zum Verhaltnis von Darstellung und Dialektik in Hegels Wissenschaft de r i
Logik," Hegel-Studien, Beihefl 18. pp. 143-169; R. Bubner, "Strukturprob- I
leme dialektischer Logik," in: Der Idealismus und seine Gegenwart, ed. U. I
Guzzoni et al. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1976), pp. 36-52; idem, "Die 'Sache
selbst' in Hegels System," in: R.-P. Horstmann, ed., Seminar, cit. supra, pp.
101-123. .
90. To cite only a few conspicuous examples: Anticipations, W.L., I, 105, 11 1, I
129; Recollections, W.L.. II, 3, 72, 356. One should also recall Hegel's |
description of philosophical progress (Vortwartsgehen) as a return to th e I
ground (Rilckgang in den Grund) [W.L., 1, 55), and his emphasis on th e |
identity of "das riickwartsgehende Begriinden des Anfangs, und das vonvSrts- ,
gehende Weiterbestimmen desselben" [ibid., II, 503). I
91. On the complex question of the relations between the Phenomenology and the ,
Logic, see, in addition to H. F. Fulda's well-known book Das Problem elner '
Einlettung in Hegels Wissenschaft der Logik (Frankfurt: Vittorio Kloster- I
mann, 1975, 2nd ed.), D. Guerrifcre, "With What Does Hegelian Science
Begin?" Review of Metaphysics 30 (1977), pp. 462-485 and M. Mil ler, "The I
Attainment of the Absolute Standpoint in Hegel's Phenomenology," Graduate ,
Faculty Philosophy Journal 7 (1978), pp. 195-219. '
228
92. Schelling, Samtliche Werke, ed. M. Schroter (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1927ff.), V,
p. 24.
93. For "natural logic" see W.L., I, p. 9ff. On the manifold relations among these
different log ics, cp. W. Brocker, Formale, transzendentale und spekulative
Logik (F rankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1962) & M. Zahn, "Die Idee der
formalen und transzendentalen Logik bei Kant, Fichte und Hegel," in:
Schelling-Studien. M. Schroter zurn 85. Geburtstag (Munich: Oldenbourg,
1965), pp. 153-191.
94. W.L.. U. p. 221.
95. Ibid.. II, p. 222.
96. Ibid.. II, p. 430.
97. Ibid., II, p. 220.
98. Cp. Peter Rohs, Transzendentale Logik (Meisenheim a.G.: Anton Hain, 1976).
99. Ed. cit., p. 111.
100. W.L., II, p . 3.
101. Ibid., I, p. 35.
102. Ibid., II, p. 486.
103. See W.L. , I, pp. 42. 45-46, 53 & 1 9, respectively.
104. Cp. Klaus Diising, Das Problem der Subjektivitat in Hegels Logik (Hegel-
Studien, Beiheft 15, 1976), esp. pp. 305-313. (Diising's book as a whole is the
most co nvincing presentation known to me of the claim that the "subject" of
the Logic is subjectivity.)
105. Ed. cit., p. 111.
106. Reprinted in R. Rorty, ed.. The Linguistic Turn (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1 967), p. 357.
107. Brieje, ed. cit., I, p. 409. (In a letter to this Nuremberg mathematician which is
now lost Hegel "gave the first proposition (sc. of the Logic] a mathematical
form, to satisfy a mathematician who is used to such things, for which he
must thank you," ibid., p. 406.)
108. A note from 1801, cited in the preface to Fichte, Erste Wissenschajtslehre von
1804. . ., ed. J. Widmann (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1969), p. xxxii. Cp.
Sonnenklarer Bericht, Samtliche Werke (Berlin: Veit & C ompagnie, 1845), II,
p. 384. (An ir replaceable introduction to the "state of the question" in the early
phase of the Kantian era is provided by Salomon Maimon, In the appendix to
his Versuch ilber die Transzendentalphllosophle (Berlin, 1790, repr.
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963), entitled "Uber symbo-
lische Erkenntnis und philosophische Sprache," pp. 265-332. On p. 282 he
writes: "I believe, however, that there are certain criteria by which one can
distinguish between a genuine philosopher and a mere philosophical
calculator, or, more precisely, a philosophical machine.")
109. G esammelte Werke, IV, ed. H. Buchner & O. Poggeler (Hamburg: Felix Meiner,
1968), p. 91. Hegel had particularly in mind C.G. Bardili's "logical realism"
which had been embraced enthusiastically by Reinhold. Cf. M. Zahn, Fichtes,
Schellings und Hegels Auseinandersetzung mit dem 'logischen Realismus'
Chrlstoph Gottfried Bardllis," Zeitschrift fur philosophische Forschung 19
(1965), p p. 201-223; 453-479.
110. See, among numerous examples, the use of'Formalismus in the Phdn., pp.
41, 42 , 43, & 47 (bis) and in W.L., I, p. 210; II, pp. 233, 351. 356, 498.
111. W .L., II, p. 498.
229
GRADUATE FACULTY PHILO SOPHY JOURNAL
112. Ibid., II, 3 32. 1
113. Ibid.., II. p. 257. |

114. Ibid.., II, p. 259.
115. Ibid.. I, p . 210.
116. Cp. D. Dubarle, in Dubarle & Doz, op. cit.. pp. 10-35. Other nineteenth century
logicians followed Hegel in criticizing the use of g eometrical figures as logical I
symbols. Cp. E. Coumet, "Sur l'histoire des diagrammes logiques, 'Figures I
geomdtriques'," Mathematiques et sciences humaines 15 (1977), pp. 31-62, at '
pp. 44-49. |
117. Enz., Par. 104, Zusatz.
118. W.L., I, p. 208. For additional accounts of Hegel's view of number, quantity
and mathematics generally, cp. D. Dubarle, op. cit.: J. O'Sullivan, "Vergleich
der Methoden Kants und Hegels auf Grund ihrer Behandlung der Kategorie der i
Quantitat," Kant-Studien. Erg.-Heft. 8 (1908), pp. 88-122: W. Krohn, op. c it. ,

pp. 62-78; J. Szigetti. "Hegel und G. Cantor," Hegel-Jahrbuch 1971 (1972), j
pp. 283-293. For the most polemical account of Hegel's position, see Jean
Desanti, La ph.ilosoph.ie silencieuse (Paris: Le Seuil, 1975), pp. 22-69.
119. See G. Cantor, Abhartdlungen mathematischen und philosophischen Inhalts [
(Berlin, 1932; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1966), p. 282.
120. W.L.. I. p. 208. |
121. Ibid., II, p . 259.
122. On the mathematical syllogism, cp. W. Krohn, op. cit.. pp. 62-78. I
123. W.L., II, p. 326.
124. Ibid., I, p . 397; II, p p. 35-36.
125. For fuller discussions of the self-motion of the Concept, see P. Rohs, " Der
Grund der Bewegung des Begriffs," Hegels-Studien, Beihejt 18, pp. 43-62; J.
Simon, "Die Bewegung des Begriffs in Hegels Logik," ibid., pp. 63-73 & H.
Rottges, Der Begriff der Methode in der Philosophie Hegels (Meisenheim a.G.:
Anton Hain, 1976), pp. 184-232. I
126. W.L., II, p. 258. ,
127. Ibid.. I, p . 34. '
128. On the Hegelian doctrine of signs, cp. J. Derrida, "Le p uits et la pyramide,"ln |
his Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1972), pp. 79-127
and I. Fetscher, Hegels Lehre uom Menschen (Stuttgart: Friedrich Fromraann, j
1970), pp. 159-176.

129. Enz., Pars. 456-457. I
130. Ibid., Par. 458. ,
131. Ibid., Par. 457, Zusatz.
132. Ibid., Par. 259, Anm. |
133. Notebooks 1914-1916, ed. G.E.M. Anscombe et al. (Oxford: Basil B lackwell.
1961), p. 105. I
134. Enz., Par. 457 Anm. I
135. W.L., II, p . 257.
136. Ibid., II, p . 258. ,
137. Phan., p. 74. ,
138. Our Knowledge of the External World (London: Allen and Unwin, 1914), p. 39.
139. For the immediate historical matrix of Frege's work, see Hans Sluga, Gofllot
Frege (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980).
230 J
140. Fre ge, Nac hgelassene Schriften, ed. H. Hermes et al. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner,
| 1969), |= N.S.], p. 200 (the note dates from 1906),
141. M L. p. 221.
142. See , for example, "Booles rechnende Logik und die Begriffsschrift," ibid., pp.
9-10 and editorial note #2. On some of the implications of this distinction, cp.
' J. van Heije noort, "Logic as Calculus and Logic as Language," Synthese 17
| (1967), pp. 324 -330; on its terminology, see E.-H, W. K luge, "Frege, Leibniz et
alii,"Studia Leibnitiana 9 (1977), pp. 266-274. (On Boole's own motivations
j and intentions, see L. M. L aita, "The Influence of Boole's Search for a Universal
Method in Analysis o n the Creation of his Logic," Annals of Science 34 (1977),
pp. 153-176.
143. "fibe r die wissenschafttiche Berechtigung einer Begriffsschrift," in: Begriffs
schrift und a ndere Aufsatze, ed, I. Angelelli (Hildesheim: Olms, 1977), p. 113;
' henceforth refer red to as Begriffsschrift.
144. N.S ., p. 221. This is not meant to ascribe to Frege the Hilbertian notion of
"implicit definitions" which he so vehemently attacked. On the other hand, the
logically simple elements which cannot be defined, but "only pointed to"
(Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (Jena: Herman Pohle, 1903), II, p . 148), seem to
be accessible only within the "network of inferences" woven from them. On
Frege's critique of Hilbert see M. D. Resnik, "The Frege-Hilbert Controversy,"
Philosophy a nd Phenomenological Research 34 (1974), pp. 386-403: John
Vlckers, "Definability and Logical Structure in Frege." Journal of the History of
Philosophy 17 (1979), pp. 291-308, esp. pp. 302-307 and E.-H. W. Kluge,
Introduction to G. Frege, On the Foundations of Geometry and Formal
Theories of A rithmetic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), pp. xi-xlii.
For Frege's notion of the "logically simple", see idem. "Freges Begriff des
Logischeinfachen," in: ed. M. Schirn, Studien zu Frege. II (Stuttgart: Friedrlch
Frommann, 1 976), pp. 51-66.
145. See Begriff sschrift, p. xii.
146. N.S., p. 10.
147. Ibid., p. 221.
148. W issenschaftlicher Briefwechsel (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1976), p. 101.
149. The historical descent of "symbolic" logic from Cartesian algebra has
frequently been misjudged or ignored. E. W. Beth, for example, (The
Foundations of Mathematics (N.Y.: Harper & R ow, 1964), p. 55) writes that
'. . . algebraic research took a direction which, though leading to the
discovery of the infinitesimal calculus, proved decidedly unfavourable to the
development of symbolic logic." On the contrary, the rise of the discipline of the
"calculus of operations", from which the English algebraists of the nineteenth
century fa shioned symbolic logic, stems directly from Leibniz s expansion of
Cartesian analysis. (Cp. E. Koppelman, "The Calculus of O perations and the
Rise of Abst ract Algebra," Archive for the History of Exact Sciences 8 (1971),
pp. 155-242. For the coeval influence of geometry on the evolution of symbolic
logic, see E. Nagel, 'The Formation of Modern Conceptions of Formal Logic in
the Development of Geometry," Osiris 7 (1939), pp. 142-224.)
„0 For a dis cussion of Frege's understanding of this notion, see Wolfgang Mara.
"Zur B estimmung des Begriffes 'relnes Denken'." Zeitschrift Jilr philosophl-
sche fForschung
SCllv (Jl 11*' ly 28 (1974), pp. 94-105. , e. . , n( a
Cp. the account of the geometry of the Begriffsschrift In Claude Imbert, Le
151-
231
GRADUATE FACULTY PHIL OSOPHY JOURNAL
Projet Iddographique de Frege," Revue Internationale de philosophie #130

(1979). pp. 621-665.
152. "Wissenschaftliche Berechtigung. . ed. cit., pp. 110-113.
153. Ibid., p. 113.
154. Begriffsschrift, p. xili.
155. "Wissenschaftliche Berechtigung. . ed. cit. pp. 107-108.
156. Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. II. op . cit.. p. 98.
157. Begriffsschrift, p. 25.
158. Philosophische Schriften, ed. Gerhardt [ = GP] (Hildesheim: Olms, 1978), VII,
p. 21; cited by Frege in N.S., p. 14. For more detailed discussions of Leibniz's
doctrines of signs and of the ars characteristica see F. Kaulbach, "Der Begriif
des Charakters in der Philosophie von Leibniz," Kant-Studien 57 (1966), pp.
126-141; M. Mugnai. "Idee, espressioni delle idee e caratteri in Leibniz,"
Rtvista di filosojia 64 (1973), pp. 219-231 and M. Dascal, La semiology de
Leibniz (Paris: Aubier Montaigne. 1978), pp. 173-231.
159. L. Couturat, Opuscules et fragments in^dits de Leibniz (Paris; Felix A lcan,
1903), pp. 98-99.
160. Ibid.
161. Ibid., p. 348; p. 556.
162. Mathematische Schriften. ed. Gerhardt I = G M1 (Hildesheim: Olms. 1971), VII,
p. 60.
163. Samtliche Schriften und Briefe. ed. Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften
(Darmstadt: O. Reichl, 1923 ff.), Reihe II, v ol. 1, p. 229.
164. GM, IV, p . 461.
165. GP, VI. p. 502.
166. Leibnitiana. Elementa philosophiae arcanae de summa return, ed. I.
Jagodinsky (Kasan: Tipolitografija Imperatoskago Universiteta, 1913), p. 6.
167. GM. V, p . 141.
168. Samtliche Schriften. . . . Reihe II, vol. I, p. 497.
169. See Leibniz's own account in, e.g., "De ortu, progressu et natura algebrae"
( =GM, VII, pp . 203-216). and compare Y. Be laval's illuminating study Leibniz, |
critique de Descartes (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), esp. pp. 199-368. I
170. I have attempted to develop this and related points in "Objectum Purae
Matheseos: Mathematical Construction and the Passage from Essence to
Existence," ed. A. O. Rorty, Essays on Descartes' Meditations (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1986), pp. 435-458.
171. Regulae XIII = A.T., X, p. 414, 89-90]. Cp. J. Klein, lib. cit.. pp. 296-298.
172. On Descartes' constructivism see T. Lenoir, "Descartes and the Geometrizatlon
of Thought: The Methodological Background of Descartes' Gdomdlrie,"
Historia Mathematica 6 (1979), pp. 355-379. I
173. GM, VII, p. 205. |
174. See Grundlagen der Arithmetik, p. 48, where Frege claims that "the collecting
power of the concept surpasses by far the unifying power of synthetic
apperception." On the general issues raised by Frege's anti-psychologlsm see
G. Prauss, "Freges Beitrag zur Erkenntnistheorie," Allgemeine Zettschrtftp
Philosophie 1 (1976), pp. 34-61; P. Kltcher, "Frege's Epistemology,"Philosoph
ical Review 88 (1979), pp. 235-262 and S. Rosen, The Limits of An alysis
(N.Y.: Basic Books, 1980). pp. 18-26.
175. Notebooks 1914-1916, op. cit., p. 4.
I
232 ,
, 176. D. Hllb ert, "Neubegrundung der Mathematik, " (1922), cited by E. Cassirer,
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, trans. R. Mannheim (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1957), III, p. 380. Cp. Cassirer's general discussion of Hilbert,
ibid., pp. 378-405 and, for important correctives to his view, P. Kitcher,
"Hilbert's Epistemology," Philosophy oj Science 43 (1976), pp. 99-115.
177. Cf. "On the Infinite," in: From Frege to Godel. A Source Book in Mathematical
Logic, 1879-1931. ed. Jean van Heijenoort (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University P ress. 1967), p. 376.
178. Cp. P. Kitcher, op. cit., esp. pp. 110-114.
179. From Freg e to Godel. . ., op. cit., p. 131.
180. See the brief account of these differences in J. van Heijenoort, art. cit.
181. Cp. Jean Ladriere, "Le theoreme de Lowenheim-Skolem," Cahiers pour
I'analyse 10(1969). pp. 108-130.
182. See From Frege to Godel. . op. cit.. pp. 253-254 (editorial note). (The
distinction between the two versions is often overlooked in philosophical
Interpretations of the theorem.)
183. Ja cques Herbrand, Logical Writings, ed. W. Goldfarb (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 178-179.
184. The existence of non-standard models for higher-order theories was demon
strated by Leon Henkin, "Completeness in the Theory of Types" [ 1950],
reprinted in J. Hintikka, ed.. The Philosophy of Mathematics (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1969), pp. 51-63. Cp. also E. W. Beth, op. cit., pp. 515-516.
165. "Su r la port£e du theoreme de Lowenheim-Skolem" (1938), in: Thoralf Skolem,
Selected Works in Logic (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1970).
186. For som e current discussion see J. Myhill, "On the Ontological Significance of
the Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem," [19511, repr. in: I. M. Copi & J. A. Gould,
eds., Contemporary Readings in Logical Theory (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1967), pp.
40-51: M. D . Resnik, "On Skolem's Paradox," Journal of Philosophy 63 (1966),
pp. 425-438: W. J . Thomas, "Platonism and the Skolem Paradox," Analysis 28
(1968), pp. 193-196: V. Klenk, "Intended Models and the Lowenheim-Skolem
Theorem," Journal of Philosophical Logic 5 (1976), pp. 475-489 and C.
Mcintosh, "Skolem's Criticisms of Set Theory," Nous 13 (1979), pp. 313-334.
187. On the extensionalization and reification of concepts, see E. Cassirer, op. cit.,
pp. 281-314 and the study by his pupil Wilhelm Burkamp, Begriff und
Beziehung. Studien zur Grundlegung der Logik (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1927).
(For Fre ge's own hesitations, see pp. 79 & 220 infra.)
jg8. G. Cantor, Abhandlungen mathematlschen und phtlosophischen Inhalts, op.
cit., p. 420.
189. Ibid., p. 380.
190. Frege, Kleine Schriften. ed. I. Angelelli (Hildesheim: Olms, 1967), p. 339.
191. Ibid. Cp. Frege's 1902 letter to Russell in: ed. Van Heijenoort, op. cit., p. 127.
192. C antor, Abhandlungen. . op. cit., p. 380 & 422.
193. For a discussion of the assimilation of concepts or ideas to (number-like) sets,
see R. Carls, Idee und Menge (Munich: Berchmann, 1974).
iq4 J. Mayberry, in his paper "On the Consistency Problem for Set Theory: An
' Essay on the Cantorlan Foundations of Classical Mathematics." Bdttsh

Journal for the Philosophy of Science 28 (1977). pp. 1-34. esp. pp. 5-12.
233
GRADUATE FACULTY PHILOS OPHY JOURNAL
brings home in an especially clear way the complicity between any

model-theoretic notion of p roof and the underlying set-theory.
195. I h ave been particularly aided by the analysis in H. Lacey & G. Jo seph, "What
the Godel Formula Says." Mind 77 (1968), pp. 77-83 and R. L. Goodstein, 'The
Significance of Incompleteness Theorems," British Journal for the Philosophy
of Science 14 (1963), pp. 208-220.
196. For two instances of this approach see J. Findlay, "Goedelian Sentences: A j
Non-numerical Approach," in: J. N. Findlay, Language Mind and Value

(London: Allen & U nwin, 1963), pp. 57-65 and J. Glockl, "Formalisierung und |
Formalismus," in: Subjektivitat und Metaphysik. Festschrift fur Wolfgang
Cramer (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1966), pp. 144-162.
197. See H. W ang, From Mathematics to Philosophy (London: Routledge & K egan
Paul, 1974), p. 328, n. 14 (citing Godel).
198. K. G odel, "Russell's Mathematical Logic," in: ed. P. Benaceraf & H. Putna m,
Philosophy of Mathematics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), p .
222.
199. Godel used this expression in footnote #9 of his 1931-paper, translated In e d,
van Heijenoort, op. cit.. p. 597.
200. Cp. J. Myhill, "Some Philosophical Implications of Mathematical Logic,"
Review of Metaphysics 6 (1952), pp. 165-198, esp. pp. 165-181.
201. See H. W ang, op.cit.. pp. 178-179.
202. See E. W. Be th, op. cit.. p. 598. I
203. Tractatus, 5.551 and 6.1262.
204. A. Tarski, Logic. Semantics and Metamathematics (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1956), p. 420.
205. W. V. Q uine. Philosophy of Logic, cit. supra, pp. 47-60. Cp. Susan Haack,
Philosophy of Logics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp .
22-27.
206. For further reflections on the demise of this program, cp. Jules Vuillemln, La
philosophic de I'algebre (Paris: P.U.F., 1962), pp. 465-518 and F. 0. Sauer.
Physikalische Begriffsbildung und mathematisches Denken (Amsterdam: I
Rodopi, 1977), pp. 47-140. I
207. "Note on Arithmetic Models for Consistent Formulae of the Predicate Calculus,
I," Fundamenta Mathematicae 37 (1950).
208. J. R. Shoenfield, Mathematical Logic (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1967),
p. 131.
209. Ibid., p. 209.
210. For valuable reflections on the philosophical implications of impredicativlty, [
see J. Glockl, Wahrheit und Beweisbarkeit (Bonn: Bouvier, 1976), pp. 17-31. ,
Cp. also W. M arx, "Erkenntnistheoretische Reflexionen zum Problem Imprad- I
ikativer Begriffsbildungen," Ratio 17 (1975), pp. 32-44, where the issue is |
linked to Hegelian logic.
211. Phan.. p. 314. I
212. This analogy does not hold for the successor-languages produced by adding an
undecidable sentence to the axioms of the original sentence.
213. The Principles of Mathematics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1903), pp. 104-105. (Cp. H. Wang, op. cit., pp. 103-106).
214. J- von Neumann, "An Axiomatization of Set Theory," [1925] in: ed. va n
Heijenoort, op. cit., p. 403.
234
215. Cp. J. Mayberry, art. cit.

i 216. The m einen/sagen split would also be applicable to Godel's undecidability
I result. Cp. M. D ummett, "The Philosophical Significance of Godel's Theorem,"
Ratio 4 (1962), pp. 140-155.
i 217. G. Kreisel, "A Su rvey of Proof Theory, I," Journal of Symbolic Logic 33 (1968),
I p. 322.
j 218. Werke, J ubilaumsausgabe, ed. H. Glockner (Stuttgart: Frommann, 1928 ff.),
XVI, p. 4 81 (Review of Solger).
| 219. See W.L., I, pp. 29-30.
220. It Is wort h noting that Frege, in the 1906 note cited above (n. 140), remarked
". . .der Begriffsumfang oder Classe ist mir nicht das Erste." Most of th ose
inspired by h im, however, have not heeded this lesson.
221. See M . Dummett, Frege. Philosophy of Language (London: Duckworth, 1973),
pp. 683-684.
222. N.S.. p. 261.
223. Tr actatus, 5.631. On the exclusion of the subject cp. Alain Hazan, "Kurt Gddel,
ou le pur formalisme comme odyssee de l'institution mathdmatique et du sujet
de la connaissance," Revue de metaphysique et de morale 82 (1977), pp.
88-107.
224. Emil Post, in his diary-notes from the 1920's, gave exemplary expression to
this awkward union between the spatial nature of logical symbols and the
self-reflectiveness required for deciphering the intentions materialized in
them. See "Appendix," in: ed. M. Davis, The Undecidable (Hewlett, N.Y.:
Raven Pre ss. 1965), pp. 419-433.
225. Phan., p. 127.
226. Notebooks 1914-1916. op. cit.. p. 99.
227. G. G unther, lib. cit.. p. 380.
228. F. A. Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen (Berlin, 18703; repr. Hllde-
sheim: Olms, 1964), I, p. 105.
229. One might usefully compare the efforts of contemporary intuitionists to
represent Brouwer's "creative subject" by a formal sign. See, e.g., B. Van
Rootselaar, "On Subjective Mathematical Assertions," in: eds. A. Kino et al.,
Intuitionism and Proof Theory (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1970), PP-
187-196.
230. Wolfgang Marx has attempted to give an immanent critique of Hegel in his
book Hegels Theorie logischer Vermittlung (Stuttgart/Bad Canstatt: Frommann-
Holzboog, 1972). Cp. the critical review by F. Hogemann in Hegel-Studien 10
(1975), pp. 332-340.
231. Cited in K. R osenkranz, G.W.F. Hegels Leben (Berlin, 1844; repr. Darmsta
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), p. 191.
932 W.L., I, p. 19. -
233. " Blatter zu Hegels Berliner Logikvorlesungen" (1828/29), Hegel-Studien
(1972), p. 75.
235
POSTSCRIPT-1986
This paper was originally prepared at the invitation of the Hegel
Society of America and served as the basis for a much-shortened oral
presentation at the Trent Conference: Hegel Today, held at York Uni
versity in 1980. A v ersion of that presentation, comprising most of
Section II, will be published in the forthcoming proceedings of th e
Trent Conference. I am grateful to the editorial committee of the Hegel
Society and to Mr. Pierre Adler for agreeing to this arrangement.
I am especially indebted to Prof. Joshua Cohen for his provocative
response to the original presentation, to Prof. George Kline for his
extremely painstaking and helpful editorial remarks and to Prof. Ste
phen Simpson, Department of Mathematics, The Pennsylvania State
University, for reading and discussing with me in detail Section III,
I h ave not made any major revisions to the text written in 1980.
Were I to undertake such a task now I w ould want to do more justice
to the positive achievements made possible by the project of formal
ization as well as by the discovery of its inherent limitations. The
work of Prof. Simpson and Prof. Harvey Friedman towards a (partial) '
rejuvenation of Hilbert's program throws new light on several of the
issues treated in Section III, without, I t hink, affecting the outcome
as far as the interpretation of Hegelian logic is concerned.
The following additions to the footnotes may prove useful.
Note 33: [See also: Uwe Petersen, Die logische Grundlegung der
Dialektik. Ein Beitrag zur exakten Begriindung der spekulativen
Philosophie (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1980), esp. chs. V-VI; P. Thagard,
"Hegel, Science, and Set Theory," Erkenntnis 18 (1982), pp. 397-410
and the papers in the section "Dialectics and Logic" in Hegel and the
Sciences, ed. R. Cohen and M. Wartofsky (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1984
= Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 64), pp. 303-364.]
Note 37: [See also B. C. Birchall, "On Hegel's Critique of Fo rmal
Logic," Clio 9(1980), pp. 283-296. For Hegel's response to "mathemati-
cism" in abroader sense, compare V. Verra, "Hegel critico della filosofia
moderna: matematica e filosofia," De Homine, nos. 38-40 (1971), pp. I
105-130. On the fascinating history of "formal" usage in law, theology
and elsewhere, see Henry Dreu, "Formalisierungen," FreiburgerZeit-
schriftfur Philosophie und Theologie 29 (1982), pp. 46-69.]
Note 118: [See also T. Pinkard, "Hegel's Philosophy of Math emat
ics," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 41 (1981), pp .,
452-464 and Antonio Moretto, Hegel e la "matematica dell' infinito"
(Trento: Verifiche, 1984).]
236

David Rapport Lachterman Hegel and The Formalization of Logic

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Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal

j Volume 12. Number 1 & 2

i HEGEL AND THE FORMALIZATION

' David R. L achterman

Introduction: The Status of Hegel's Logic in Contemporary

I: Heidegger's critique of Symbolic Logic and its

II: The formalization of Hegel's Logic

Ill: The Genealogy of Modern Formalism—A Hegelian

Introduction: The Status of Hegel's Logic in

i Hegel is never mo re severely reproached than when the standing of

ways of thinking."1 For Popper and many like-minded critics the 1

line dividing "pre-logieal" from genuinely logical "ways of thinking" | 1

can be drawn with considerable precision: the advent and i

t I Bloch: "Logistic is the act of incest of thinking with itself"—

henceforth means for it to come to stand in relation to t he

Isaconstant reminder that modern logic emerges (e.g., in Leibniz)

horizon "sensible" by forming (bilden) a schema and, therewith, t

that epoch of metaphysics dominated by Vorstellung, i.e. the

Hegel's will to absolute, systematic knowing, itself the culmination

epochal history of being and of the place of symbolic logic within

II: The Formalization of Hegel's Logic

A second, quite divergent, path is taken by those who appear to

' the system. 33 No o ne, however, has yet succeeded in producing a

f us. Although the partisans of formalization waver among th ese

HA: Hegel's Logic as a Formalism An Sich?

Face-to-face with the existing sketches for a formalization of

science and thus to the conditions for its possible formal, or

sentences or assertions but "concepts", pure determinations of

the Logic of Essence, Hegel argues that distinct things (Dinge)

either into the legitimacy of what here appears to be self-predication

indifferent and external to one another, "two words externally

tions, nor is it simply the negation of a given non-speculative

symbolism, or to invent a new form for Hegel's necessarily formless

feature of this syntactic version of derivation is that a derived

For this reason logical science, in dealing with the de termina­

(To retort that the rules of inference are fixed by "convention" is

analytic and synthetic. Spinoza's own capacity for speculative

of the "same" constant)! This obligation would reduce a formalism

Briefly, whi le in the logic of being, a prior thought-determination

thought or intended in each and every determination within these

the latter's self-movement),99 is a shuttling-motion between

metalanguage must still be held to depend on its capacity to b e

This is not the place to weigh more carefully the legitimacy or I

be taken initially to mark our self-consciousness sensu stricto, that

constrained by the opposition between consciousness and a

IIB: Hegel's logic as a formalism fiir sich?

Hegel's own thoughts might have alerted latter-day partisans to

Or, Euler and others have in mind to "elevate modes of lo gical

the Pythagorean legacy and to recapitulate both of i ts fundamental ,

state of affairs; both, in any case, have their roots in the

aggregative, but in integrative, structures; structures, in other

living creature furnishes the most natural instance of this dual

manner, a co mpromise between heteronomous determination and

i is intended to s ignify."135 A spatial array of mathematical signs, in

111. The Genealogy of Modern Formalism—A Hegelian Diagnosis

' The importance of his reflections notwithstanding, Hegel's

we eventually discern the adequacy or inadeqacy, in principle, of

MA: Frege's Begriffsschrift and the Project of a Mathesis

A significant convention dates the advent of t ruly "modem" logic

work?" wit h the comment: "Almost everything is connected with

Leibniz, calls a calculus ratiocinator. a ratiocinative calculus which

concept ' equinumerous with the concept F' is not an exercise in

something Frege, in an apparently unintended echo of Hegel, calls

For this reason logical science, in dealing with the de termina

1. To constr uct a formal axiomatic sys 1'. The Lowenheim-Skolem Theorem.

conceptual and logical self-sufficiency. For instance, the proposi

Godel a nd Church (together with their extensions and generaliza