Preface to the Second Edition Part 4

²⁹ Thought is the only subject matter that can be expounded with immanent plasticity. ®

In this respect, the Science of Logic must surpass even mathematics. This is because thoughts are free and independent themselves.

Such an exposition demands that any thought in any stage should enter from the previous stage.

This requirement is satisfied in the process of mathematical reasoning.

However, such an abstract perfection of exposition must be dispensed with.

The science of logic must begin with what is absolutely simple.

• This restricts the exposition solely to the same simple expressions of the simple.
• It does not add anything further to a single word.

All that it could do is to admit negative considerations intended to ward off any heterogeneous elements which might be introduced by pictorial thought or unregulated thinking.

But such intrusive elements are themselves contingent. The effort to ward them off is itself tainted with this contingency.

It is futile to try to deal with all of them.*

But the restlessness and distraction of our modern consciousness compel us to take some account of the more readily suggested reflections and opinions.

A plastic discourse demands, too, a plastic receptivity and understanding by the listener.

My opponents could not think that their opinions and objections contain categories which are presuppositions.

Their presuppositions need to be criticised first before they are employed.

The uneducated behaviour is to take a category under consideration for something other than the category itself.

This ignorance is the less justifiable because this ‘something other’ consists of determinate thoughts and concepts.

In a system of logic, these other categories must likewise have been assigned their own place and must themselves have been subjected to critical examination within the system.

This ignorance is most obvious in most of the objections on the first Notions of logic:

• being and nothing
• becoming

Becoming is itself a simple determination. It contains being and nothing as moments.

The beginning is the foundation on which everything is built. The beginning should be examined before anything else.

³⁰ This thoroughness reduces the labour of thinking to a minimum.

The beginning has the entire development enclosed in this germ.

It reckons that it has settled the whole business when it has disposed of the beginning which is the easiest part of the business, for it is the simplest, the simple itself.

It is the trifling effort of thought required to do this which really recommends this ’thoroughness’ which is so satisfied with itself.

This restriction to what is simple gives scope for the free play of caprice which does not want to remain simple but brings in its own reflections on the subject matter.

Having good right to occupy itself at first only with the principle and in doing so not to concern itself with what lies beyond it, this thoroughness actually proceeds to do the opposite of this, for it does bring in what lies beyond, that is, categories other than those which constitute the principle itself, other presuppositions and prejudices.

Such presuppositions as that infinite is different from finitude, that content is other than form, that the inner is other than the outer, also that mediation is no immediacy (as if anyone did not know such things), are brought forward by way of information and narrated and asserted rather than proved.

This didactic behaviour is stupid.

• It is unjustifiable simply to presuppose and straightway assume such propositions.

Logical thinking requires that we enquire into this:

• is such a finite without infinity something true?
• are the following true or actual:
  • an abstract infinity?
  • a content without form and a form without content?
  • an inner by itself which has no outer expression?
  • an externality without an inwardness?

³¹ Anyone who labours at presenting anew an independent structure of philosophical science may, when referring to the Platonic exposition, be reminded of the story that Plato revised his Republic 7 times over.

The remembrance of this, the comparison, so far as such may seem to be implied in it, should only urge one all the more to wish that for a work which, as belonging to the modern world, is confronted by a profounder principle, a more difficult subject matter and a material richer in compass, leisure had been afforded to revise it 77 times.

³² However, the author, in face of the magnitude of the task, has had to content himself with what it was possible to achieve in circumstances of external necessity, of the inevitable distractions caused by the magnitude and many-sidedness of contemporary affairs, even under the doubt whether the noisy clamour of current affairs and the deafening chatter of a conceit which prides itself on confining itself to such matters leave any room for participation in the passionless calm of a knowledge which is in the element of pure thought alone.

Berlin, November 7, 1831