Part 26

"Ploucquet gives as a consequence of his invention posse etiant rudes mechanice tot am logicam doceri, uti pueri arithmeticam docentur. ita quidem, ut nulla formidine in ratiociniis suis errandi lorqueri, vel fallaciis circumveniri possint, si in calculo non errant. This eulogy of the calculus, to the effect that by its means it is possible to supply uneducated people with the whole of Logic, is certainly the worst that can be said of an invention which concerns logical Science'" (Wiss. d. Logik, iii. pp. 142-43).]

CONCERNING THIS LOGIC

The Logic which we have expounded in this treatise is also in a certain sense traditional Logic. But it should be connected, not with the tradition of formalism, but rather with that of the Hegelian Logic, of Kantian transcendental Logic, and so of the loftiest Hellenic speculative thought. In other words, its affinity should be sought in the logical sections of the Critique of Pure Reason of Kant, or in the Metaphysic of Aristotle, and not in the Lessons in Logic or in the Analytics of the same authors. This traditional character endows it with confidence, because man has always thought the true, and it is to be doubted if he who fails to discover the truth in the past, possesses the truth of the present and of the future, of which in his proud isolation he thinks himself secure.

But to be truly attached to tradition means to carry it on and to collaborate with it. Contact with thought is always dynamic and propulsive and urges us to go forward, since it is impossible to stop or to turn back. For this reason, this Logic presents some novelties, of which the fundamental and principal can be thus enumerated:

I. Accepting the doctrine, which culminates in the last great modern philosophy of the pure Concept, as the only doctrine of logical truth, this Logic excludes empirical and abstract concepts, declaring them to be irreducible to the pure concept.

II. Accepting for these last the economic theory of the empirical and abstract sciences and considering them as having a practical character and therefore as non-concepts (pseudoconcepts), this Logic denies that they exhaust logical thought, indeed it altogether denies that they belong to it and demonstrates that their very existence presupposes the reality of the pure concept. Hence, it connects the two doctrines with one another and asserts the autonomy of philosophy, at the same time respecting the relative autonomy of the empirical and mathematical sciences thus rendered atheoretical.

III. In the doctrine concerning the organism of the pure concept, it accepts the dialectic view or the unity of opposites, but denies its immediate validity for the distinctions of the concept; the unity of which is organized as a unity of distinctions in the theory of degrees of reality. In this way, the autonomy of the forms of reality or of the spirit is also respected and the practical nature of error established.

IV. The richness of reality, of facts, of experience, which seemed to be withdrawn from the pure concept and so from philosophy by the separation of it from the empirical sciences, is on the contrary restored to and recognized in philosophy, not in the diminished and improper form which is that of empirical science, but in a total and integral manner. This is effected by means of the connection, which is a unity, between Philosophy and History--a unity obtained by making clear and profoundly studying the nature of the concept and the logical a priori synthesis.

V. Finally, the doctrines and the presuppositions of formalist Logic are refuted in a precise manner. The autonomy of the logical form is asserted and consequently the effort to contain its determinations in words or expressive forms is declared to be vain. These are certainly necessary, but obey, not the law of logic, but that of the æsthetic spirit.

Such, summarily indicated, is the progress upon previous thought, which this Logic would wish to represent. To gain this end, it has availed itself, not only of the help afforded by ancient and modern Logic, concentrated in the Hegelian Logic, but also of those others that have come into being since Hegel, and especially of æsthetic, of the theory of historical writing and of the gnoseology of the sciences. It has striven to avail itself of all scattered truths, but of none in an eclectic manner, that is to say, by making arbitrary collections or merely aggregations, for it has been conscious that scattered truths become truly truths when they are no longer scattered but fused, not many, but one.

THE END