Volume I of The History of Philosophy. History of Greek Philosophy

“Anaximander (610-547 B. C.) supposes man to develop from a fish.” (213)

...“Hence the determinations are dry, destitute of process, undialectical, and sta- tionary....” (244)

This refers to the general ideas of the Pythagoreans;—“number” and its sig- nificance, etc. Ergo: it is said in regard to the primitive ideas of the Pythago- reans, their primitive philosophy; their “determinations” of substance, things, the world, are “dry, destitute of process (movement), undialectical.”

Tracing predominantly the dialectical in the history of philosophy, Hegel cites the

views of the Pythagoreans: ...“one, added to even, makes odd (2+1 = 3);—added to odd, it makes even (3+1 = 4);—it” (Eins) “has the property of making ge- rade (= even), and consequently it must itself be even. Thus unity contains in it- self different determinations.” (246)

Musical harmony and the philosophy of Pythagoras:

“The subjective, and, in the case of hear- ing, simple feeling, which, however, exists inherently in relation, Pythagoras has at- tributed to the understanding, and he at- tained his object by means of fixed deter- minations.” (282)

Pp. 265--266: the movement of the heav-

enly bodies—their harmony—the har- mony of the singing heavenly spheres inaudible to us (in the Pythago- reans): Aristotle, De coelo, II, 13 (and 9):

...“Fire was placed by the Pythagoreans in the middle, but the Earth was made a star that moved around this central body in a circle....” But for them this fire was not the sun.... “They thus rely, not on sensuous appearance, but on grounds.... These ten spheres”

ten spheres or orbits or movements of the ten planets: Mer- cury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, the Milky Way and the Gegenerde (—antipode?) invented “for an even number,” for 10

“like all that is in motion, make a sound; but each makes a different tone, according to the difference in its size and velocity. This is determined by the different distances, which bear a harmonious relationship to one another, in accordance with musical intervals; by this means a harmonious sound (music) arises in the moving spheres (world)....”

Concerning the soul, the Pythagoreans thought “die Seele set: die Sonnenstäub- chen” (p. 268) (= dust particle, atom) (Aristotle, De anima, I, 2).”

An allusion to the struc- ture of matter!

In the soul—seven circles (elements) as in the heavens. Aristotle, De ani- ma, I, 3—p. 269.

And here immediately are recounted the fables that Pythagoras (who had taken from the Egyptians the doctrine of the im- mortality of the soul and the transmi- gration of souls) related about himself, that his soul had dwelt 207 years in other people, etc., etc. (271)

NB: the linking of the germs of scien- tific thought with fantasy à la religion, mythology. And nowadays! Likewise, the same linking but the proportions of science and mythology are different.

More on the theory of numbers of Pytha- goras. “Numbers, where are they? Dispersed through space, dwelling in independence in the heaven of ideas? They are not things immediately in themselves, for a thing, a substance, is something quite other than a number—a body bears no resemblance to it.” 254 Quotation |from Aristotle?—Met- aphysik, I, 9, is it not? From Sextus Empiricus? Unclear|.

Pp. 279-280—the Pythagoreans accept the

ether (...“A ray penetrates from the sun through the dense and cold ether,” etc.)

Thus the conjecture about the ether has existed for thousands of years, re- maining until now a conjecture. But at the present time there are already a thousand times more subsurface chan- nels leading to a solution of the prob- lem, to a scientific determination of the ether.

In speaking of the Eleatic school, Hegel says about dialectics:

...“We here” (in der eleatischen Schule) “find the beginning of dialectics, i.e., simply the pure movement of thought in Notions; likewise we see the opposition of thought to outward appearance or sen- suous Being, or of that which is implicit to the being-for-another of this implicit- ness, and in the objective existence we see the contradiction which it has in itself, or dialectics proper....” (280) See the next page.

Here are essentially two determinations (two characteristics, two typical features; Bestimmungen, keine Definitionen) of dialectics:

α) “the pure movement of thought in Notions”; β) “in the (very) essence of objects (to elucidate) (to reveal) the con- tradiction which it (this essence) has in itself (dialectics proper).”

In other words, this “fragment” of He- gel’s should be reproduced as follows: Dialectics in general is “the pure move- ment of thought in Notions“ (i.e., putting it without the mysticism of idealism: human concepts are not fixed but are eternally in movement, they pass into one another, they flow into one another, otherwise they do not reflect living life. The analysis of concepts, the study of them, the “art of operating with them” (Engels) always demands study of the movement of concepts, of their inter- connection, of their mutual transitions).

In particular, dialectics is the study of the opposition of the Thing-in-itself (an sich), of the essence, substratum, sub- stance—from the appearance, from “Be- ing-for-Others.” (Here, too, we see a tran- sition, a flow from the one to the other: the essence appears. The appearance is essen- tial.) Human thought goes endlessly deeper from appearance to essence, from essence of the first order, as it were, to essence of the second order, and so on without end.

Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects: not only are appearances tran- sitory, mobile, fluid, demarcated only by conventional boundaries, but the es- sence of things is so as well.

Sextus Empiricus presents the point of view of the Sceptics as follows:

...“Let us imagine that in a house in which there are many valuables, there were those who sought for gold by night; each would then think that he had found the gold, but would not know for certain whether he had actually found it. Thus philosophers come into this world as into a great house to seek the truth, but were they to reach it, they could not tell whether they had really attained it....” (288-289)

Xenophanes (the Eleatic) said:

“Did beasts and lions only have hands, Works of art thereby to bring forth, as do men, They would, in creating divine forms, give to them What in image and size belongs to them-

selves....” (289-290)

“What especially characterises Zeno is dialectics, which ... begins with him....” (302)

“We find in Zeno likewise true objective dialectics.” (309)

(310: on the refutation of philosophic systems: “Falsity must not be demonstrat- ed as untrue because the opposite is true, but in itself....”)

“Dialectics is in general α) external dia- lectics, in which this movement is differ- ent from the comprehension of this move-

ment; β) not a movement of our intelli- gence only, but what proceeds from the nature of the thing itself, i. e., from the pure Notion of the content. The former is a manner of regarding objects in such a way that reasons are revealed and aspects of them shown, by means of which all that was supposed to be firmly fixed, is made to totter. There may be reasons which are altogether external too, and we shall speak further of this dialectics when deal- ing with the Sophists. The other dialectics,

however, is the immanent contemplation of the object: it is taken for itself, without previous hypothesis, idea or obligation, not under any external conditions, laws, grounds. We have to put ourselves right into the thing, to consider the object in itself and to take it in the determina- tions which it has. In regarding it thus, it” (er) (sic!) “shows from itself that it con- tains opposed determinations, and thus transcends itself; this dialectics we more especially find in the ancients. Subjec-

tive dialectics, which reasons from exter- nal grounds, does justice when it is granted that: ‘in the correct there is what is not correct, and in the false the true as well.’ True dialectics leaves nothing whatever to its object, as if the latter were defi- cient on one side only; but it disintegrates in the entirety of its nature....” (p. 311)

With the “principle of development” in the twentieth century (indeed, at the end of the nineteenth century also) “all are agreed.” Yes, but this superficial, not thought out, accidental, philistine “agree- ment” is an agreement of such a kind as stifles and vulgarises the truth.—If every- thing develops, then everything passes from one into another, for development as is well known is not a simple, universal and eternal growth, enlargement (respective dim- inution), etc.—If that is so, then, in the first place, evolution has to be under- stood more exactly, as the arising and passing away of everything, as mutual transitions.—And, in the second place, if everything develops, does not that apply also to the most general concepts and categories of thought? If not, it means that thinking is not connected with being. If it does, it means that there is a dialec- tics of concepts and a dialectics of cogni- tion which has objective significance. +

“Zeno’s treatment of motion was above all objectively dialectical....” (p. 313)

...“Movement itself is the dialectic of all that is....” It did not occur to Zeno to deny movement as “sensuous certainty,” it was merely a question “nach ihrer (move- ment’s) Wahrheit” (of the truth of move- ment). (313) And on the next page, where he relates the anecdote how Diogenes the Cynic, of Sinope, refuted movement by walking, Hegel writes:

...“But the anecdote continues that, when a pupil was satisfied with this refutation, Diogenes beat him, on the ground that, since the teacher had disputed with reasons, the only valid refutation is one derived from reasons. Men have not merely to sat- isfy themselves by sensuous certainty, but also to understand....” (314)

Zeno has four ways of refuting motion: 1. That which is moving to an end must

first cover half of the path. And of this half, again first its half, and so on ad infinitum.

Aristotle replied: space and time are infinitely divisible (δννάμει) (p. 316), but not infinitely divided (ένεργεία), Bayle (Dictionnaire, Vol. IV, article Zeno) calls this reply of Aristotle’s pitoyable and says:

...“if one drew an infinite number of lines on a particle of matter, one would not thereby introduce a division that would reduce to an actual infin- ity that which according to him was only a potential infinity....”

And Hegel writes (317): “Dies si ist gut!”

i.e., if one carried out the infinite division to the end!!

...“The essence of space and time is mo- tion, for it is universal; to understand it means to express its essence in the form

of the Notion. As unity of negativity and continuity, motion is expressed as the No- tion, as thought; but neither continuity nor discontinuity is to be posited as the essence....” (pp. 318--319)

“To understand means to express in the form of notions.” Motion is the essence of space and time. Two fundamental con- cepts express this essence: (infinite) con- tinuity (Kontinuitä) and “punctuality” (= denial of continuity, discontinu- ity). Motion is the unity of continuity (of time and space) and discontinuity (of time and space). Motion is a contra- diction, a unity of contradictions.

Überweg-Heinze, 10th edition, p. 63 (§ 20), is wrong when he says that Hegel “defends Aristotle against Bayle.” Hegel refutes both the sceptic (Bayle) and the anti-dialectician (Aristotle). Cf. Gomperz, Les penseurs de la Grèce, p ..., the forced recognition, under the lash, of the unity of contradictions, without recognising dialectics (owing to cowardice of thought)....

2. Achilles will not overtake the tortoise.

“First the half” and so on endlessly. Aristotle answers: he will overtake it if he be permitted “to overstep the limits.” (320) And Hegel: “This answer is cor- rect and contains all that can be said” (p. 321)—for actually the half here (at a certain stage) becomes the “limit”....

...“If we speak of motion in general, we say that the body is in one place and then it goes to another; because it moves it is no longer in the first, but yet not in the

second; were it in either it would be at rest. If we say that it is between both, this is to say nothing at all, for were it between both, it would be in a place, and

this presents the same difficulty. But move- ment means to be in this place and not to be in it; this is the continuity of space and time—and it is this which first makes motion possible.” (Pp. 321--322)

Movement is the presence of a body in a definite place at a given moment and in another place at another, subsequent moment—such is the objection which Cher- nov repeats (see his Philosophical Studies) in the wake of all the “metaphysical” opponents of Hegel. This objection is incorrect: (1) it de- scribes the result of motion, but not mo- tion itself; (2) it does not show, it does not contain in itself the possibility of mo- tion; (3) it depicts motion as a sum, as a concatenation of states of rest, that is to say, the (dialectical) contradiction is not removed by it, but only concealed, shifted, screened, covered over.

“What makes the difficulty is always thought alone, since it keeps apart the mo- ments of an object which in their separa- tion are really united.” (322)

We cannot imagine, express, measure, depict movement, without interrupting con- tinuity, without simplifying, coarsening, dismembering, strangling that which is liv-

ing. The representation of movement by means of thought always makes coarse, kills,—and not only by means of thought, but also by sense-perception, and not only of movement, but every concept. And in that lies the essence of dialectics. And precisely this essence is ex- pressed by the formula: the unity, identity of opposites.

3. “The flying arrow rests.”

And Aristotle's answer: the error arises from the assumption that “time consists of the individual Nows” (έχ τών νϋν) p. 324.

4. Half is equal to the double: motion

measured in comparison with an un- moving body and in comparison with a body moving in the opposite direction.

At the end of the § on Zeno, Hegel com- pares him to Kant (whose antinomies, he says, “do no more than Zeno did here”).

The general conclusion of the dialectic of the Eleatics: “the truth is the one, all else is untrue”—“just as the Kantian phi- losophy resulted in “We know appearances only.” On the whole the principle is the same.” (p. 326)

But there is also a difference.

“In Kant it is the spiritual that de- stroys the world; according to Zeno, the world of appearance in itself and for itself has no truth. According to Kant, it is our thought, our spiritual activity that is bad;— it shows excessive humility of mind to be- lieve that knowledge has no value....” (327)

The continuation of the Eleatics in Leu- cippus and among the Sophists...

After Zeno (? he lived after Heracli- tus?) Hegel passes on to Heraclitus and says: “It” (Zeno’s dialectics) “may, to that extent, also be called subjective dialec- tics, insofar as it rests in the contemplative subject, and the one, without this dialec- tics, without this movement, is one ab- stract identity....” (328)

but it was previously said, see the passage quoted from p. 309, and others, that Zeno’s dialectics is ob- jective dialectics. Here is some kind of superfine “distinguo.” Cf. the following:

“Dialectics: (α) external dialectics, a reasoning which goes hither and thither, without reaching the soul of the

thing itself; (β) the immanent dialectics of the object, but (NB) following within the contemplation of the subject; (γ) the objectivity of Heraclitus, i.e., dialectics itself taken as principle.” (328)

(In Heraclitus): “Here we see land; there is

no proposition of Heraclitus which I would not have adopted in my Log- ic....” (328)

“Heraclitus says: Everything is be- coming; this becoming is the principle. This is contained in the expression: Being no more is than not-Being....” (p. 333)

“The recognition of the fact that Being and not-Being are only abstractions de- void of truth, that the first truth is to be found only in Becoming, forms a great ad- vance. The understanding comprehends both as having truth and validity in isolation; reason on the other hand recognises the one in the other, and sees that in the one its other” (NB “its other”) “is contained— that is why the All, the Absolute is to be determined as Becoming.” (334)

“Aristotle says (De mundo, Chapter 5)

that Heraclitus ‘joined together the complete whole and the incomplete’ (part)” ... “what coincides and what conflicts, what is harmonious and what discordant; and from out of them all (the opposite) comes one, and from one, all.” (335)

Plato, in his Symposium, puts forward the views of Heraclitus (inter alia in their application to music: harmony consists of opposites), and the statement: “The art of the musician unites the different.”

Hegel writes: this is no objection against Heraclitus (336), for difference is the es- sence of harmony:

“This harmony is precisely absolute Be- coming, change,—not becoming other, now this and then an other. The essential thing is that each different thing, each particular, is different from another, not abstractly so from any other, but from its other. Each particular only is, insofar as its other is implicitly contained in its Notion....”

“So also in the case of tones; they must be different, but so that they can also be united....” (336) P. 337: incidentally Sextus Empiricus (and Aristotle) are reckon- ed among the ... “best witnesses”....

Heraclitus said: “die Zeit ist das erste körperliche Wesen” (Sextus Empiricus)— p. (338)

körperliche—an “unfortunate” expres- sion (perhaps, Hegel says (NB), it was chosen by a sceptic (NB),—but time, he says, is “das erste sinnliche Wesen”....

...“Time is pure Becoming, as per- ceived....” (338)

In regard to the fact that Heraclitus considered fire as a process, Hegel says: “Fire is physical time, it is this absolute unrest” (340)—and further, in regard to the natural philosophy of Heraclitus:

...“It” (Natur) “is process in itself....” (344) “Nature is the never-resting, and the All is the transition out of the one into the other, from division into unity, and from unity into division....” (341) “To understand Nature means to rep- resent it as process....” (339)

Here is what is said to be the narrow-

ness of natural scientists:

...“we listen to their account“ (Natur- forscher), “they only observe and say what they see; but this is not true, for un- consciously they transform what is im- mediately seen by means of the Notion.

And the strife is not due to the opposi-

tion between observation and the absolute Notion, but between the limited rigid notion and the Absolute Notion. They show that changes are non-existent....” (344-345)

...“Water in its decomposition re- veals hydrogen and oxygen: these have not arisen for they were already there as such, as the parts of which the water consists” (thus Hegel mimics the na- tural scientists)....

“As we find in all expression of per- ception and experience; as soon as men speak, there is a Notion present, it cannot be withheld, for in conscious- ness there is always a touch of univer- sality and truth.”

Quite right and important—it is pre- cisely this that Engels repeated in more popular form, when he wrote that natu- ral scientists ought to know that the re- sults of natural science are concepts, and that the art of operating with concepts is not inborn, but is the result of 2,000 years of the development of natural science and philosophy. The concept of transformation is taken narrowly by natural scientists and they lack understanding of dialectics.

...“He” (Heraclitus) “is the one who first expressed the nature of the infinite, and who first understood nature as infinite in itself, i.e., its essence as process....” (346)

On the “concept of necessity”—cf. p. 347. Heraclitus could not see truth in “sensuous certainty” (348), but in “necessity” (είμαρμένη)—((λόγοζ)).

NB || “Absolute mediation” (348)

“The rational, the true, that which I know, is indeed a withdrawal from the objective as from what is sensuous, individ- ual, definite and existent; but what rea- son knows within itself is just as much necessity or the universal of being; it is the essence of thought as it is the essence of the world.” (352)

368: “The development of philosophy in

history must correspond to the de- velopment of logical philosophy; but there will still be passages in the lat- ter which are absent in historical de- velopment.”

Here there is a very profound and cor- rect, essentially materialist thought (ac- tual history is the basis, the foundation, the Being, which is followed by conscious- ness).

Leucippus says that atoms are invisible “because of the smallness of their body” (369)—Hegel, however, replies that this is “Ausrede” (ibid.), that “Eins” cannot be seen, that “das Princip des Eins” “ganz ideell” (370), and that Leucippus is no “empiricist”, but an idealist.

([Straining to make Leucippus conform to his Logic, Hegel expatiates on the impor- tance, the “greatness” of the principle (368) Fürsichsein, descrying it in Leucippus. It savours in part of stretching a point.]

But there is also a grain of truth in it; the nuance (the “moment”) of separateness; the interruption of gradualness; the mo- ment of the smoothing out of contradic- tions; the interruption of continuity—the atom, the one. (Cf. 371 i.f.):—“The one and continuity are opposites....”

Hegel’s logic cannot be applied in its given form, it cannot be taken as given. One must separate out from it the logical (epistemological) nuances, after purifying them from Ideenmystik: that is still a big job.)

“The Atomists are, therefore, generally speaking, opposed to the idea of the crea- tion and maintenance of the world by means of a foreign principle. It is in the theory of atoms that natural science first feels released from the need for demonstrat- ing a foundation for the world. For if nature is represented as created and held together by another, then it is conceived of as not existent in itself, and thus as having its Notion outside itself, i.e., its basis is foreign to it, it has no basis as such, it is only conceivable from the will of another— as it is, it is contingent, devoid of ne- cessity and Notion in itself. In the idea of the atomists, however, we have the con- ception of the inherency of nature, that is to say, thought finds itself in it....” (372-373)

In the presentation—according to Dio- genes Laertius, IX, § 31-33—of the atomism of Leucippus, the “vortex” (Wirbel— δίνην) of atoms, Hegel finds nothing of interest (“no interest,” ...“empty representation,” “dim, confused ideas”—p. 377 i.f.).

Hegel’s blindness, the one-sidedness of the Idealist!!

Democritus is behandelt by Hegel in a very stiefmütterlich fashion, in all pp. 378-380! The spirit of materialism is intolerable to the idealist!! The words of Democritus are quoted (p. 379):

“Warmth exists according to opin- ion (νόμφ) and so do cold and colour, sweet and bitter; only the indivisible and the void are in accordance with truth (έτεή)” (Sextus Empiricus, Ad- versus Mathematicos, VII, § 135).

And the conclusion is drawn:

...“We see this much, that Demo- critus expressed the difference between the moments of Being-in-itself and Being-for-other more distinctly....” (380)

By this “the way is at once opened up” to “the bad idealism,” that ... “meine Emp- findung, mein....”

...“A sensuously notionless manifold of feeling is established, in which there is no reason, and with which this idealism has no further concern.”

Anaxagoras. Noΰς “the cause of the world and of all order,” and Hegel elucidates this:

...“Objective thought ... reason in the world, also in nature—or as we speak of genera in nature, they are the universal. A dog is an animal, this is its genus, its substantial; the dog itself is this. This law, this understanding, this reason is itself immanent in nature, it is the essence of nature; the latter is not formed from without as men make a chair.” (381-382)

“Noΰς is the same as soul (Aristotle on Anaxagoras)—p. 394

and ... the elucidation of this 1eap from the general in nature to the soul; from objective to subjec- tive, from materialism to idealism. C’est ici que ces extrêmes se touchent (et se transforment!)

On the homoeomeriae of Anaxagoras (particles of the same kind as the whole body) Hegel writes: “Transformation is to be taken in a

double sense, according to existence and according to the Notion....” (403-404) Thus, for instance, it is said that water can be removed—the stones remain; blue colour can be removed, red, etc., will remain.

“This is only according to existence; according to the Notion, they only inter- penetrate, it is inner necessity.” Just as one cannot remove the heart by itself from the living body without the lungs perish- ing, etc.

“Nature likewise exists only in unity, just as the brain exists only in unity with the other organs” (404)

whereby some conceive transformation in the sense of the presence of small qualitatively determined particles and their growth (respective diminution) [combination and separation]. The other conception (Heraclitus)—the transformation of the one into an other. (403)

Existence and Notion—are to be dis- tinguished in Hegel approximately as follows: fact (Being) taken separately, torn from its connection, and connection (the Notion), mutual relation, concat- enation, law, necessity.

415: ...“The Notion is that which things are in and for themselves....”

Hegel speaks of grass being the end for animals, and the latter for men, etc., etc., and concludes: “It is a circle which is complete in itself, but whose completion is likewise a passing into another circle; a vortex whose mid- point, that into which it returns, is found directly in the periphery of a higher circle which swallows it up....” (414)

So far the ancients are said to have fur- nished little: “Universal is a meagre deter- mination; everyone knows of the univer- sal, but not of it as essence.” (416)

“But here we have the beginning of a more distinct development of the relation- ship of consciousness to Being, the de- velopment of the nature of knowledge as a knowledge of the true.” (417) “The mind has gone forth to express essence as thought.“ (418)

“We see this development of the univer- sal, in which essence goes right over to the side of consciousness, in the so much de- cried worldly wisdom of the Sophists.”(418)

((End of the first volume)) [The second volume begins with the Sophists.]