思想对待客观性的第一种态度:形而上学

by XHJ

32 min read

🏷️ 小逻辑 思想对待客观性的第一种态度 形而上学

First Attitude of Thought to Objectivity

§26

The first of these attitudes of thought is seen in the method which
has no doubts and no sense of the contradiction in thought,
没有觉察到也不怀疑思维中的矛盾
or of the hostility of thought against itself.思维的对立对抗自身
It entertains an unquestioning belief that reflection is the means of ascertaining the truth, and of bringing the objects before the mind as they really are. And in this belief it advances straight upon its objects, takes the materials furnished by sense and perception, and reproduces them from itself as facts of thought; and then, believing this result to be the truth, the method is content.
Philosophy in its earliest stages, all the sciences, and even the daily action and movement of consciousness, live in this faith.

思想的这第一种态度体现为一种毫无疑虑、全然未察觉思维中矛盾的方法，或者说，它未曾意识到思维与自身的敌对性。这种方法怀抱一种不容置疑的信念：**反思（reflection）是揭示真理的手段，能将对象如其所是地呈现在心灵面前。在这种信念下，它径直扑向对象，摄取感官与知觉（sense and perception）**提供的材料，并将这些材料从自身内部再生产为思想的事实；随后，它便满足于相信这一结果即真理。 最早的哲学、一切科学，乃至意识日常的行动与运动，皆生存于这一信念之中。

“毫无疑虑的思维态度” 指传统哲学（尤其知性形而上学）对反思能力的非批判性信任，认为通过逻辑分析即可直接把握真理，却无视思维自身的矛盾性（如康德“二律背反”揭示的理性困境）。 例证：亚里士多德逻辑学预设“同一律”（A=A）为自明真理，未追问其何以可能。 “反思的独断性” **反思（Reflection）在此指知性（Verstand）**的抽象分析能力，其将感性材料（如颜色、形状）加工为概念（如“红”“圆”），却误以为这些概念即事物本质。 黑格尔批判：反思仅能把握孤立范畴（如“存在”“实体”），无法触及真理的具体普遍性（如“存在”必须通过“非存在”过渡到“变易”）。 “感官与知觉的霸权” 早期哲学（如经验论）与日常意识直接接受感官材料（如“这朵花是红的”），未意识到知觉的中介性（如“红”是光波、眼球、神经活动的综合产物）。 辩证视角：感官确定性（如“此时此地有一棵树”）在《精神现象学》首章被揭示为最抽象、最贫乏的真理形式。

§ 27

This method of thought has never become aware of the antithesis of subjective and objective: and to that extent there is nothing to prevent its statements from possessing a genuinely philosophical and speculative character, though it is just as possible that they may never get beyond finite categories, or the stage where the antithesis is still unresolved. In the present introduction the main question for us is to observe this attitude of thought in its extreme form; and we shall accordingly first of all examine its second and inferior aspect as a philosophic system. One of the clearest instances of it, and one lying nearest to ourselves, may be found in the Metaphysic of the Past as it subsisted among us previous to the philosophy of Kant. It is however only in reference to the history of philosophy that this Metaphysic can be said to belong to the past: the thing is always and at all places to be found, as the view which the abstract understanding takes of the objects of reason. And it is in this point that the real and immediate good lies in a closer examination of its main scope and its modis operandi.

这种思维方式从未意识到主观与客观的对立，因此，其论断仍可能具备某种真正的哲学与思辨特征——尽管同样可能的是，它们或许永远无法超越有限范畴，或始终停留在对立尚未被扬弃的阶段。 在当前导论中，我们的核心任务是以其极端形态来考察这种思维态度；因此，我们首先将审视其作为哲学体系的次要且低劣的方面。对此最清晰的例证之一（且离我们最近的），可见于过往的形而上学体系（Metaphysic of the Past）——即康德哲学之前盛行于我们的那种形而上学。然而，仅就哲学史而言，这种形而上学可被称为“过去的”；实际上，它作为抽象知性对理性对象所持的观点，始终存在于一切时空。而真正直接的价值，正在于对**其主要范围与运作方式（modis operandi）**的细致考察之中。

§ 28

This metaphysical system took the
laws and forms of thought 思维的规定，法则和形式
to be the
fundamental laws and forms of things. 事物的基本法则和形式
It assumed that to think a thing was the means of finding
its very self and nature: and to that extent it occupied higher ground than the Critical Philosophy which succeeded it.
But in the first instance (1) these terms of thought
were cut off from
their connection,
their solidarity;

范畴的原子化——每个范畴（如实体、因果）被当作独立真理，割裂了概念间的辩证关联（如本质必然通过现象显现） 判断的静力学——判断形式固化主谓关系，无法表达概念的自我运动（如"自由是必然的真理"这类命题的反身性） each was believed valid by itself and capable of serving as a predicate of the truth. It was the general assumption of this metaphysic that a knowledge of the Absolute was gained by assigning predicates苹果是红色的中的“是红色的” 是谓词（predicate） to it. It neither inquired what the terms of the understanding specially meant or what they were worth, nor did it test the method which characterises the Absolute by the assignment of predicates.

这种科学把思维规定看作事物的基本规定；它假定我们在思考存在者的时候就认识到其自在的样子，就此而言，这门科学立于一个比后来的批判哲学更高的立场。但是，1.那些抽象的规定被看作本身就是有效的，并且能够成为真相的谓词。总的说来，旧的形而上学假定，只要把某些谓词添附到绝对者身上，就能够认识到绝对者，因此它既不去追究知性规定的独特内容和独特价值，也不去追究这种通过添附谓词来规定绝对者的做法。

As an example of such predicates may be taken: Existence, in the proposition, ‘God has existence’; Finitude or Infinity, as in the question, ‘Is the world finite or infinite?’; Simple and Complex, in the proposition, ‘The Soul is simple’ or again, ‘The thing is a unity, a whole’, etc.
Nobody asked whether such predicates had

  1. any intrinsic and independent truth,内在的、独立的真理性
  2. or if the propositional form could be a form of truth.

[说明]比如，在"上帝具有定在”、"世界究竟是有限的抑或是无限的"、"灵魂是单纯的"等问题里，乃至于在"物是某一，是一个整体"之类命题或问题里，"定在"、"有限性"和"无限性”、"单纯"和“复合”、"某一"和“整体”等等都是这样的谓词。——旧的形而上学既不探讨这类谓词是否自在且自为地就是某种真实的东西，也不探讨判断的形式是否能够成为真理的形式。

形式逻辑的范畴体系
形式逻辑是以符号系统研究推理形式结构的学科，其核心特征是抽象掉具体内容，仅关注命题形式的有效性。它包含两大层级：

  • 命题逻辑（Propositional Logic）
    处理简单命题间的逻辑联结（如"如果P则Q"），不分析命题内部结构

  • 谓词逻辑（Predicate Logic，一阶逻辑）
    引入个体变元、谓词、量词（如"∀x(Px→Qx)"），能分析命题内部的主谓关系与量化结构

The Metaphysic of the past assumed, as unsophisticated 不复杂的belief always does, that thought apprehends the very self of things, and that things, to become what they truly are, require to be thought.
For Nature and the human soul are a very Proteus in their perpetual transformations.
自然与人类灵魂是永恒变化的普罗透斯
and it soon occurs to the observer that the first crude impression of things is not their essential being. This is a point of view the very reverse of the result arrived at by the Critical Philosophy; a result, of which it may be said, that it bade man go and feed on mere husks and chaff.

哲学史坐标中的普罗透斯

  1. 前黑格尔谱系

  • 赫拉克利特"人不能两次踏入同一条河"的流动本体论

  • 谢林自然哲学中"世界灵魂"的创生力量

  • 歌德形态学中"原始现象"（Urphänomen）的变形记

  1. 后现代回响

  • 德勒兹的"差异与重复"理论将普罗透斯解读为游牧式存在

  • 巴迪欧用数学集合论重构"变易"概念，提出"真理程序"的动态性

哲学注记： 普罗透斯隐喻：暗指黑格尔对辩证流动性的强调——正如海神普罗透斯（Proteus）通过无限变形隐藏/显现真理，自然与精神的本性需在概念的中介运动中被把握（《自然哲学》§247）。 谷壳与糠秕：影射康德哲学止步于现象界的知性规定，未能抵达"真理的谷物"（即绝对知识的全体性），此比喻呼应《精神现象学》序言对"形式主义"的批判。

We must look more closely into the procedure of that old metaphysic.
In the first place it never went beyond the province of the analytic understanding.
Without preliminary inquiry it adopted the abstract categories of thought
and let them rank as predicates of truth.
But in using the term thought we must not forget the difference
between finite or discursive thinking and the thinking which is infinite and rational.
The categories, as they meet us prima facie and in isolation, are finite forms.
But truth is always infinite, and cannot be expressed or presented to consciousness in finite terms.
The phrase infinite thought may excite surprise, if we adhere to the modern conception that thought is always limited.
But it is, speaking rightly, the very essence of thought to be infinite.
The nominal explanation of calling a thing finite is that it has an end, that it exists up to a certain point only, where it comes into contact with, and is limited by, its other. The finite therefore subsists in reference to its other, which is its negation and presents itself as its limit.
Now thought is always in its own sphere its relations are with itself, and it is its own object. In having a thought for object, I am at home with myself. The thinking power, the ‘I’, is therefore infinite, because, when it thinks, it is in relation to an object which is itself.
Generally speaking, an object means a something else, a negative confronting me.
But in the case where thought thinks itself, it has an object which is at the same time no object: in other words, its objectivity is suppressed Aufhebung，扬弃 and transformed into an idea. Thought, as thought, therefore in its unmixed nature involves no limits; it is finite only when it keeps to limited categories, which it believes to be ultimate. Infinite or speculative thought思辨思维,
on the contrary,
while it no less defines, does in the very act of limiting and defining make that defect vanish. And so infinity is not, as most frequently happens, to be conceived as an abstract away and away for ever and ever, but in the simple manner previously indicated.

我们必须更深入地审视旧形而上学的运作方式。 首先，它从未超越分析性知性（analytic understanding）的领域。 未经任何先行考察，它便直接采用抽象的思维范畴（categories of thought），并任其作为真理的谓词而存在。 但在使用“思维”一词时，我们切不可忘记有限的、推论的思维（finite or discursive thinking）与无限的、理性的思维（infinite and rational thinking）之间的差异。 那些以孤立形态直接呈现于我们面前的范畴，皆是有限的形式（finite forms）。然而，真理始终是无限的，无法通过有限术语被表达或呈现给意识。 若固守现代观念（即认为思维总是受限的），那么“无限思维”这一表述或许令人惊异。但严格来说，无限性正是思维的本质。

The thinking of the old metaphysical system was finite.
Its whole mode of action was regulated by categories, the limits of which it believed to be permanently fixed and not subject to any further negation.

  1. Thus, one of its questions was: Has God existence? The question supposes that existence is an altogether positive term, a sort of ne plus ultra终极顶点. We shall see however at a later point that existence is by no means a merely positive term, but one which is too low for the Absolute Idea, and unworthy of God.

  2. A second question in these metaphysical systems was: Is the world finite or infinite ?
    The very terms of the question assume that the finite is a permanent contradictory to the infinite: and one can easily see that, when they are so opposed, the infinite, which of course ought to be the whole, only appears as a single aspect and suffers restriction from the finite. But a restricted infinity is itself only a finite.

  3. In the same way it was asked whether the soul was simple or composite. Simpleness was, in other words, taken to be an ultimate characteristic, giving expression to a whole truth. Far from being so, simpleness is the expression of a half-truth, as one-sided and abstract as existence — a term of thought, which, as we shall hereafter see, is itself untrue and hence unable to hold truth. If the soul be viewed as merely and abstractly simple, it is characterised in an inadequate and finite way.

旧形而上学体系的思维因其固守有限范畴而陷入根本性局限，其问题意识典型体现于三个经典追问：

“上帝是否存在？”——此问将“存在”预设为终极肯定的术语，实则“存在”仅是逻辑学起点的最低级范畴，无法承载绝对理念的丰富性，上帝作为无限者若被“存在”这一有限规定束缚，无异于将其降格为有限物；

“世界有限或无限？”——问题本身已预设有限与无限的僵硬对立，当二者被外在地并置时，所谓“无限”仅沦为受限的单一方面（如数学的无限序列实为有限否定），而真无限应是通过**扬弃（Aufhebung）**有限性、将其包含于自身之内的动态整体（如生命借个体有限性实现类的无限延续）；

“灵魂单纯或复合？”——将“单纯性”视为终极真理实为半真理（half-truth）的独断，灵魂作为精神（Geist）的本质恰在于其自我分化与回归的统一性，若仅以知性范畴切割（如笛卡尔“我思”的不可分实体），便遮蔽了精神在历史与伦理中的辩证展开。

旧形而上学的根本缺陷在于范畴的偶像化与辩证法的缺席：它把有限思维产物（存在、有限、单纯性）当作终极答案，却拒绝承认真理必须通过矛盾运动在具体普遍性（concrete universal）中自我实现。黑格尔的思辨哲学颠覆了这种非此即彼的框架，将问题本身转化为概念自我否定的中介环节——正如“变易”扬弃“存在”与“无”的对立，真理从不栖居于独断命题，而在主客统一的绝对精神之舞中生生不息。

It was therefore the main question of the pre-Kantian metaphysic to discover whether predicates of the kind mentioned were to be ascribed to its objects. Now these predicates are after all only limited formulae of the understanding which, instead of expressing the truth, merely impose a limit. More than this, it should be noted that the chief feature of the method lay in ‘assigning’ or ‘attributing’ predicates to the object that was to be cognised, for example, to God. But attribution is no more than an external reflection about the object: the predicates by which the object is to be determined are supplied from the resources of picture-thought, and are applied in a mechanical way. Whereas, if we are to have genuine cognition, the object must characterise its own self and not derive its predicates from without. Even supposing we follow the method of predicating, the mind cannot help feeling that predicates of this sort fail to exhaust the object. From the same point of view the Orientals are quite correct in calling God the many-named or the myriad-named One. One after another of these finite categories leaves the soul unsatisfied, and the Oriental sage is compelled unceasingly to seek for more and more of such predicates. In finite things it is no doubt the case that they have to be characterised through finite predicates: and with these things the understanding finds proper scope for its special action. Itself finite, it knows only the nature of the finite. Thus, when I call some action a theft, I have characterised the action in its essential facts; and such a knowledge is sufficient for the judge. Similarly, finite things stand to each other as cause and effect, force and exercise, and when they are apprehended in these categories, they are known in their finitude. But the objects of reason cannot be defined by these finite predicates. To try to do so was the defect of the old metaphysic.

因此，前康德形而上学的核心任务，在于判定这类有限谓词是否适用于其对象（例如上帝）。然而，这些谓词不过是知性的有限公式，非但未能表达真理，反而为对象套上了枷锁。更关键的是，这种方法的本质特征在于机械地为认知对象（如上帝）"指派"或"附加"谓词。但这种"附加"仅仅是关于对象的外在反思——谓词来自表象思维（picture-thought）的武库，并以机械方式强加于对象。而真正的认知应当要求对象自我规定其本质，而非从外部借用谓词。即便我们遵循这种谓词叠加法，心灵仍会感到此类谓词永远无法穷尽对象。正因如此，东方智者将上帝称为"具千名者"或"万名之一"的做法深具洞见。这些有限范畴接续登场，却始终无法满足灵魂的渴求，迫使东方哲人永无止境地追寻更多谓词。 对于有限事物（如将某行为判定为"偷窃"），用有限谓词加以规定是合理且充分的——知性在此确有用武之地。知性自身即是有限的，故仅能把握有限之物的本性。法官通过"偷窃"这一谓词便可把握行为的本质事实；同样，有限事物间以因果、力与作用等范畴相互关联时，其有限性确能被知性认知。但理性对象（如上帝、自由、无限）绝不可被此类有限谓词定义。 旧形而上学的根本缺陷，正在于对此界限的无知僭越。

§ 29

Predicates of this kind, taken individually, have but a limited range of meaning, and no one can fail to perceive how inadequate they are, and how far they fall below the fullness of detail which our imaginative thought gives, in the case, for example, of God, Mind, or Nature. Besides, though the fact of their being all predicates of one subject supplies them with a certain connection, their several meanings keep them apart: and consequently each is brought in as a stranger卑鄙的异乡人 in relation to the others.

这类谓词本身既然是一种受限制的内容，就已经表明自己和那些充盈的表象(比如上帝、自然界、精神等等的表象)是不符合的，绝不可能穷尽其意义。再者，它们作为同一个主词的谓词虽然彼此结合在一起，但在[97] 内容上却是各不相同的，因此它们对彼此而言都是从外面接纳下来的。

The first of these defects the Orientals sought to remedy, when, for example, they defined God by attributing to Him many names; but still they felt that the number of names would have had to be infinite. 神的9999个名字

§ 30

(2) In the second place, the metaphysical systems adopted a wrong criterion. Their objects were no doubt totalities which in their own proper selves belong to reason that is, to the organised and systematically developed universe of thought.
But these totalities — God, the Soul, the World — were taken by the metaphysician as subjects made and ready, to form the basis for an application of the categories of the understanding. They were assumed from popular conception. Accordingly popular conception was the only canon for settling whether or not the predicates were suitable and sufficient.

虽然形而上学的对象是一些总体性的东西(即灵魂、世界、上帝),而且这些东西自在且自为地看来属于理性，属于内在具体的、普遍的思维，但它是从表象那里拿来这些对象，然后把它们当作现成已有的、给定的载体，继而把各种知性规定应用在它们身上。形而上学仅仅把那个表象当作尺度，以衡量各种谓词究竟是不是合适的和充分的。

§ 31

The common conceptions of God, the Soul, the World, may be supposed to afford thought a firm and fast footing. They do not really do so. Besides having a particular and subjective character clinging to them, and thus leaving room for great variety of interpretation, they themselves first of all require a firm and fast definition by thought. This may be seen in any of these propositions where the predicate, or in philosophy the category, is needed to indicate what the subject, or the conception we start with, is.

灵魂、世界和上帝的表象起初似乎给思维提供了一个坚实的支撑点。这些表象被看作特殊的主体，因此能够具有一个极为不同的意义，但除此之外，它们更需要通过思维而获得一个固定的规定。每一个命题都表达出了这一点，因为在命题里，只有通过谓词(也就是说，在哲学里，只有通过思维规定)才能够指出主词亦即最初的那个表象是什么东西。

In such a sentence as ‘God is eternal’, we begin with the conception of God, not knowing as yet what he is: to tell us that, is the business of the predicate. In the principles of logic, accordingly, where the terms formulating the subject-matter are those of thought only, it is not merely superfluous to make these categories predicates to propositions in which God, or, still vaguer, the Absolute, is the subject, but it would also have the disadvantage of suggesting another canon than the nature of thought. Besides, the propositional form (and for proposition, it would be more correct to substitute judgment) is not suited to express the concrete — and the true is always concrete — or the speculative. Every judgment is by its form one-sided and, to that extent, false.

在“上帝是永恒的”这样的句子中，我们从上帝的概念出发，却尚未知道上帝是什么：谓词的任务正是向我们揭示这一点。在逻辑学原理中，当主题仅由思维术语构成时，将范畴（如“永恒”）作为命题的谓词附加于以“上帝”或更模糊的“绝对者”为主词的命题，不仅是多余的，还会引入与思维本性相悖的规则。此外，命题形式（更准确地说应称为“判断”）无法表达具体之物——而真理始终是具体的——或思辨性内容。每一种判断在形式上都是片面的，因而在此意义上皆为虚假的。

This metaphysic was not free or objective thinking. Instead of letting the object freely and spontaneously expound its own characteristics, metaphysic presupposed it ready-made. If anyone wishes to know what free thought means, he must go to Greek philosophy: for Scholasticism, like these metaphysical systems, accepted its facts, and accepted them as a dogma from the authority of the Church. We moderns, too, by our whole upbringing, have been initiated into ideas which it is extremely difficult to overstep, on account of their far-reaching significance. But the ancient philosophers were in a different position. They were men who lived wholly in the perceptions of the senses, and who, after their rejection of mythology and its fancies, presupposed nothing but the heaven above and the earth around. In these material, non-metaphysical surroundings, thought is free and enjoys its own privacy — cleared of everything material and thoroughly at home. This feeling that we are all our own is characteristic of free thought — of that voyage into the open, where nothing is below us or above us, and we stand in solitude with ourselves alone.

这种形而上学并非自由或客观的思维。它没有让对象自由而自发地阐明其自身特性，反而将对象预设为现成的既定物。若有人欲理解何谓自由思想，他必须回溯至希腊哲学：因为经院哲学（Scholasticism）与此类形而上学体系一样，全盘接受既定事实，并将其作为教条从教会权威中承袭而来。我们现代人亦因整体教育而被植入某些观念——这些观念因其深远意义而极难被超越。但古代哲人处境迥异。他们是完全活在感性知觉中的人，在摒弃神话及其幻想后，仅以头顶之天与脚下之地为预设。在这物质性的、非形而上学的环境中，思想是自由的，且享有自足性——它涤除一切物质羁绊，全然安住于自身之内。这种“我们全然属于自己”的感受，正是自由思想的特质——那是一场向敞开的航行，既无物凌驾于我们之上，亦无物匍匐于我们之下，唯有我们独自立于与自我的对话中。

§ 32

(3) In the third place, this system of metaphysic turned into Dogmatism独断论. When our thought never ranges beyond narrow and rigid terms, we areforced to assume that of two opposite assertions, such as were the above propositions, the one must be true and the other false.

（3）第三，这种形而上学体系堕入了独断论。当我们的思维被禁锢于狭隘且僵化的术语时，便被迫假定：对于两个对立命题（如上述“上帝存在”与“上帝不存在”），必有一方为真，另一方为假。将真理简化为排中律支配的抽象判断

Dogmatism may be most simply described as the contrary of Scepticism怀疑论. The ancient Sceptics gave the name of Dogmatism to every philosophy whatever holding a system of definite doctrine. In this large sense Scepticism may apply the name even to philosophy which is properly Speculative. But in the narrower sense, Dogmatism consists in the tenacity which draws a hard and fast line between certain terms and others opposite to them. We may see this clearly in the strict ‘either — or’: for instance, The world is either finite or infinite; but one of these two it must be. The contrary of this rigidity is the characteristic of all Speculative truth. There no such inadequate formulae are allowed, nor can they possibly exhaust it. These formulae Speculative truth holds in union as a totality, whereas Dogmatism invests them in their isolation with a title to fixity and truth.

独断论（Dogmatism）可被最简练地描述为怀疑论（Scepticism）的对立面。古希腊怀疑论者将所有持有明确教义体系的哲学（无论其内容如何）皆冠以“独断论”之名。在此广义上，怀疑论甚至可将这一标签加诸本属思辨哲学（Speculative Philosophy）的体系。但就狭义而言，独断论的特质在于其固执性——它严格划界，将某些术语与它们的对立面截然割裂。这种僵化性在“非此即彼”（either—or）的逻辑中尤为明显。例如，“世界要么有限，要么无限；二者必居其一”。而一切思辨真理的特性正与此僵化性相反：它既不接受此类贫乏的公式，也不认为它们能穷尽真理。思辨真理将这些对立公式作为整体中的统一体来把握，而独断论则赋予孤立范畴以“固定性”与“真理性”之名。

It often happens in philosophy that the half-truth takes its place beside the whole truth and assumes on its own account the position of something permanent. But the fact is that the half-truth, instead of being a fixed or self-subsistent principle, is a mere element absolved and included in the whole. The metaphysic of understanding is dogmatic, because it maintains half-truths in their isolation: whereas the idealism of speculative philosophy carries out the principle of totality and shows that it can reach beyond the inadequate formularies of abstract thought. Thus idealism would say: The soul is neither finite only, nor infinite only; it is really the one just as much as the other, and in that way neither the one nor the other. In other words, such formularies in their isolation are inadmissible, and only come into account as formative elements in a larger notion. Such idealism we see even in the ordinary phases of consciousness. Thus we say of sensible things, that they are changeable: that is, they are, but it is equally true that they are not. We show more obstinacy in dealing with the categories of the understanding. These are terms which we believe to be somewhat firmer — or even absolutely firm and fast. We look upon them as separated from each other by an infinite chasm, so that opposite categories can never get at each other. The battle of reason is the struggle to break up the rigidity to which the understanding has reduced everything.

在哲学中，半真理（half-truth）片面真理 常与全体真理（whole truth）并列，并自诩为某种永恒之物。但事实是，半真理并非固定或自存的原则，而是被扬弃并包含于全体中的一个环节。知性形而上学（metaphysic of understanding）之所以是独断的，因其将半真理孤立化；而思辨哲学的理想主义（idealism of speculative philosophy）则贯彻全体性原则，表明自身能超越抽象思维的贫乏公式。例如，理想主义会断言：灵魂既非仅是有限的，亦非仅是无限的；它实则是二者的统一，并因此既非此亦非彼。换言之，此类孤立公式本身不可接受，唯有作为更高概念的构成环节时才具意义。这种理想主义甚至可见于日常意识中——譬如，我们说感性事物是易逝的，即它们存在，但同样真实的是它们不存在。然而，在对待知性范畴时，我们却更为顽固。这些范畴被我们视为某种坚实（甚至绝对稳固）之物，彼此间被无限鸿沟隔断，致使对立范畴永不相通。理性的斗争，正是打破知性加诸万物的僵化的努力。

（1）《精神现象学》序言 “真理是全体（the whole），但全体只是通过自身发展而达于完满的本质。” **“片面真理”对应“发展中被扬弃的环节”（如感性确定性），而“全体真理”**是精神自我实现的历程。 （2）《逻辑学》中的“存在论” “存在（Being）与无（Nothing）是同一的，二者的真理即变易（Becoming）。” 将“存在”或“无”单独视为真理，即为片面真理；唯有在二者的辩证运动中，才能抵达全体真理（变易）。 （2）中文哲学译名的惯例 “Abstract”（抽象）、“Concrete”（具体）、“One-sided”（片面）等黑格尔术语已有固定译法，“片面真理”符合这一体系。 贺麟、王玖兴等权威译者亦使用“片面性”翻译黑格尔著作中的“one-sidedness”（参见《小逻辑》§82）。 片面真理,全体真理 孤立、静止（如“存在是A”）动态、中介（如“存在通过非存在成为变易”） 依赖形式逻辑（排中律）依赖辩证逻辑（矛盾统一） 例：康德的“二律背反”例：黑格尔的“具体普遍性”

§ 33

The first part of this metaphysic in its systematic form is
Ontology,
or the doctrine of the abstract characteristics of Being.
The multitude of these characteristics, and the limits set to their applicability, are not founded upon any principle. They have in consequence to be enumerated as experience and circumstances direct, and the import ascribed to them is founded only upon common sensualised conceptions, upon assertions that particular words are used in a particular sense, and even perhaps upon etymology. If experience pronounces the list to be complete, and if the usage of language, by its agreement, shows the analysis to be correct, the metaphysician is satisfied; and the intrinsic and independent truth and necessity of such characteristics is never made a matter of :investigation at all.

这种知性形而上学（metaphysic of understanding）的系统化形态的第一部分，是本体论（Ontology）——即关于存在（Being）之抽象规定性的学说。这些规定性的繁多性及其适用范围的界限，并未以任何原则为基础。因此，它们只能依据经验与情境的指引被枚举，而赋予这些规定的意义仅基于感性化的常识观念、关于特定语词须在特定意义上使用的断言，甚至可能诉诸词源学（etymology）。若经验宣称此列表是完备的，且语言用法的一致性印证了分析的“正确性”，形而上学家便心满意足；至于此类规定性的内在独立的真理性与必然性，则全然未被追问。

To ask if being, existence, finitude, simplicity, complexity, etc. are notions intrinsically and independently true, must surprise those who believe that a question about truth can only concern propositions (as to whether a notion is or is not with truth to be attributed, as the phrase is, to a subject), and that falsehood lies in the contradiction existing between the subject in our ideas, and the notion to be predicated of it. Now as the notion is concrete, it and every character of it in general is essentially a self-contained unity of distinct characteristics. If truth then were nothing more than the absence of contradiction, it would be first of all necessary in the case of every notion to examine whether it, taken individually, did not contain this sort of intrinsic contradiction.

若追问“存在”“实存”“有限性”“单纯性”“复杂性”等概念是否具有内在且独立的真理性，必令那些坚信真理仅关乎命题（即判断某一概念是否可“真实地归属于”某主词）的人感到惊异——在他们看来，虚假性仅源于主词（subject）与被述谓的概念（predicate）在观念中的矛盾。然而，由于概念（notion）本身是具体的，其每一特性本质上皆是差异特性的自足统一体。若真理仅被定义为“无矛盾”，那么首先必须针对每一概念单独检验其是否包含此类内在矛盾。

例证：存在（Being）的辩证分析 命题式检验： “存在是纯粹的肯定”——若依传统逻辑，此命题无矛盾，似乎为“真”。 辩证解构： 存在因其无规定性，实质等同“无（Nothing）”。 存在与无的“矛盾”催生变易（Becoming），真理在运动中显现。 结论：若仅以“无矛盾”判定真理，则变易（含内在矛盾）将被误判为“假”，而空洞的“存在”反成“真”——此即旧形而上学的根本谬误。

§ 34

The second branch of the metaphysical system was Rational Psychology or Pneumatology. It dealt with the metaphysical nature of the soul — that is, of the Mind regarded as a thing. It expected to find immortality in a sphere dominated by the laws of composition, time, qualitative change, and quantitative increase or decrease.

The name ‘rational’, given to this species of psychology, served to contrast it with empirical modes of observing the phenomena of the soul Rational psychology viewed the soul in its metaphysical nature, and through the categories supplied by abstract thought. The rationalists endeavoured to ascertain the inner nature of the soul as it is in itself and as it is for thought. In philosophy at present we hear little of the soul: the favourite term is now mind (spirit). The two are distinct, soul being as it were the middle term between body and spirit, or the bond between the two. The mind, as soul, is immersed in corporeity, and the soul is the animating principle of the body.

The pre-Kantian metaphysic, we say, viewed the soul as a thing. ‘Thing’ is a very ambiguous word. By a thing, we mean, firstly, an immediate existence, something we represent in sensuous form: and in this meaning the term has been applied to the soul. Hence the question regarding the seat of the soul. Of course, if the soul have a seat, it is in space and sensuously envisaged. So, too, if the soul be viewed as a thing we can ask whether the soul is simple or composite. The question is important as bearing on the immortality of the soul, which is supposed to depend on the absence of composition. But the fact is, that in abstract simplicity we have a category, which as little corresponds to the nature of the soul, as that of compositeness.

One word on the relation of rational to empirical psychology. The former, because it sets itself to apply thought to cognise mind and even to demonstrate the result of such thinking, is the higher; whereas empirical psychology starts from perception, and only recounts and describes what perception supplies. But if we propose to think the mind, we must not be quite so shy of its special phenomena. Mind is essentially active in the same sense as the Schoolmen [Scholastics] said that God is ‘absolute actuosity’. But if the mind is active it must as it were utter itself. It is wrong therefore to take the mind for a processless ens, as did the old metaphysic which divided the processless inward life of the mind from its outward life. The mind, of all things, must be looked at in its concrete actuality, in its energy; and in such a way that its manifestations are seen to be determined by its inward force.

§ 35

The third branch of metaphysics was Cosmology. The topics it embraced were the world, its contingency, necessity, eternity, limitation in time and space: the laws (only formal) of its changes: the freedom of man and the origin of evil.

To these topics it applied what were believed to be thoroughgoing contrasts: such as contingency and necessity; eternal and internal necessity; efficient and final cause, or causality in general and design; essence or substance and phenomenon; form and matter; freedom and necessity; happiness and pain; good and evil.

The object of Cosmology comprised not merely Nature, but Mind too, in its external complicating in its phenomenon — in fact, existence in general, or the sum of finite things. This object however it viewed not as a concrete whole, but only under certain abstract points of view. Thus the questions Cosmology attempted to solve were such as these: Is accident or necessity dominant in the world? Is the world eternal or created? It was therefore a chief concern of this study to lay down what were called general cosmological laws: for instance, that Nature does not act by fits and starts. And by fits and starts (saltus) they meant a qualitative difference or qualitative alteration showing itself without any antecedent determining mean: whereas, on the contrary, a gradual change (of quantity) is obviously not without intermediation.

In regard to Mind as it makes itself felt in the world, the questions which Cosmology chiefly discussed turned upon the freedom of man and the origin of evil. Nobody can deny that these are questions of the highest importance. But to give them a satisfactory answer, it is above all things necessary not to claim finality for the abstract formulae of understanding, or to suppose that each of the two terms in an antithesis has an independent subsistence or can be treated in its isolation as a complete and self-centred truth. This however is the general position taken by the metaphysicians before Kant, and appears in their cosmological discussions, which for that reason were incapable of compassing their purpose, to understand the phenomena of the world. Observe how they proceed with the distinction between freedom and necessity, in their application of these categories to Nature and Mind. Nature they regard as subject in its workings to necessity; Mind they hold to be free. No doubt there is a real foundation for this distinction in the very core of the Mind itself: but freedom and necessity, when thus abstractly opposed, are terms applicable only in the finite world to which, as such, they belong. A freedom involving no necessity, and mere necessity without freedom, are abstract and in this way untrue formulae of thought. Freedom is no blank indeterminateness: essentially concrete, and unvaryingly self-determinate, it is so far at the same time necessary. Necessity, again, in the ordinary acceptation of the term in popular philosophy, means determination from without only — as in finite mechanics, where a body moves only when it is struck by another body, and moves in the direction communicated to it by the impact. This however is a merely external necessity, not the real inward necessity which is identical with freedom.

The case is similar with the contrast of Good and Evil — the favourite contrast of the introspective modern world. If we regard Evil as possessing a fixity of its own, apart and distinct from Good, we are to a certain extent right: there is an opposition between them; nor do those who maintain the apparent and relative character of the opposition mean that Evil and Good in the Absolute are one, or, in accordance with the modern phrase, that a thing first becomes evil from our way of looking at it. The error arises when we take Evil as a permanent positive, instead of — what it really is — a negative which, though it would fain assert itself, has no real persistence, and is, in fact, only the absolute sham-existence of negativity in itself.

§ 36

The fourth branch of metaphysics is Natural or Rational Theology. The notion of God, or God as a possible being, the proofs, of his existence, and his properties, formed the study of this branch.

(a) When understanding thus discusses the Deity, its main purpose is to find what predicates correspond or not to the fact we have in our imagination as God. And in doing it assumes the contrast between positive and negative to be absolute; and hence, in the long run, nothing is left for the notion as understanding takes it, but the empty abstraction of indeterminate Being, of mere reality or positivity, the lifeless product of modern ‘Deism’.

(b) The method of demonstration employed in finite knowledge must always lead to an inversion of the true order. For it requires the statement of some objective ground for God’s being, which thus acquires the appearance of being derived from something else. This mode of proof, guided as it is by the canon of mere analytical identity, is embarrassed by the difficulty of passing from the finite to the infinite. Either the finitude of the existing world, which is left as much a fact as it was before, clings to the notion of Deity, and God has to be defined as the immediate substance of that world — which is Pantheism: or he remains an object set over against the subject, and in this way, finite — which is Dualism.

(c) The attributes of God which ought to be various and precise had, properly speaking, sunk and disappeared in the abstract notion of pure reality, of indeterminate Being. Yet in our material thought, the finite world continues, meanwhile, to have a real being, with God as a sort of antithesis: and thus arises the further picture of different relations of God to the world. These, formulated as properties, must, on the one hand, as relations to finite circumstances, themselves possess a finite character (giving us such properties as just, gracious, mighty, wise, etc.); on the other hand they must be infinite. Now on this level of thought the only means, and a hazy one, of reconciling these opposing requirements was quantitative exaltation of the properties, forming them into indeterminateness — into the sensus eminentior. But it was an expedient which really destroyed the property and left a mere name.

The object of the old metaphysical theology was to see how far unassisted reason could go in the knowledge of God. Certainly a reason derived knowledge of God is the highest problem of philosophy. The earliest teachings of religion are figurate conceptions of God. These conceptions, as the Creed arranges them, are imparted to us in youth. They are the doctrines of our religion, and in so far as the individual rests his faith on these doctrines and feels them to be the truth, he has all he needs as a Christian. Such is faith: and the science of this faith is Theology. But until Theology is something more than a bare enumeration and compilation of these doctrines ab extra, it has no right to the title of science. Even the method so much in vogue at present — the purely historical mode of treatment — which for example reports what has been said by this or the other Father of the Church — does not invest theology with a scientific character. To get that, we must go on to comprehend the facts by thought — which is the business of philosophy. Genuine theology is thus at the same time a real philosophy of religion, as it was, we may add, in the Middle Ages.

And now let us examine this rational theology more narrowly. It was a science which approached God not by reason but by understanding, and, in its mode of thought, employed the terms without any sense of their mutual limitations and connections. The notion of God formed the subject of discussion; and yet the criterion of our knowledge was derived from such an extraneous source as the materialised conception of God. Now thought must be free in its movements. It is no doubt to be remembered that the result of independent thought harmonises with the import of the Christian religion: for the Christian religion is a revelation of reason. But such a harmony surpassed the efforts of rational theology. It proposed to define the figurate conception of God in terms of thought; but it resulted in a notion of God which was what we may call the abstract of positivity or reality, to the exclusion of all negation. God was accordingly defined to be the most real of all beings. Anyone can see however that this most real of beings, in which negation forms no part, is the very opposite of what it ought to be and of what understanding supposes it to be. Instead of being rich and full above all measure, it is so narrowly conceived that it is, on the contrary, extremely poor and altogether empty. It is with reason that the heart craves a concrete body of truth; but without definite feature, that is, without negation, contained in the notion, there can only be an abstraction. When the notion of God is apprehended only as that of the abstract or most real being, God is, as it were, relegated to another world beyond: and to speak of a knowledge of him would be meaningless. Where there is no definite quality, knowledge is impossible. Mere light is mere darkness.

The second problem of rational theology was to prove the existence of God. Now, in this matter, the main point to be noted is that demonstration, as the understanding employs it, means the dependence of one truth on another. In such proofs we have a presupposition-something firm and fast, from which something else follows; we exhibit the dependence of some truth from an assumed starting-point. Hence, if this mode of demonstration is applied to the existence of God, it can only mean that the being of God is to depend on other terms, which will then constitute the ground of his being. It is at once evident that this will lead to some mistake: for God must be simply and solely the ground of everything, and in so far not dependent upon anything else. And a perception of this danger has in modern times led some to say that God’s existence is not capable of proof, but must be immediately or intuitively apprehended. Reason, however, and even sound common sense give demonstration a meaning quite different from that of the understanding. The demonstration of reason no doubt starts from something which is not God. But, as it advances, it does not leave the starting-point a mere unexplained fact, which is what it was. On the contrary it exhibits that point as derivative and called into being, and then God is seen to be primary, truly immediate, and self-subsisting, with the means of derivation wrapped up and absorbed in himself. Those who say: ‘Consider Nature, and Nature will lead you to God; you will find an absolute final cause’ do not mean that God is something derivative: they mean that it is we who proceed to God himself from another; and in this way God, though the consequence, is also the absolute ground of the initial step. The relation of the two things is reversed; and what came as a consequence being shown to be an antecedent, the original antecedent is reduced to a consequence. This is always the way, moreover, whenever reason demonstrates.

If in the light of the present discussion we cast one glance more on the metaphysical method as a whole, we find its main characteristic was to make abstract identity its principle and to try to apprehend the objects of reason by the abstract and finite categories of the understanding. But this infinite of the understanding, this pure essence, is still finite: it has excluded all the variety of particular things, which thus limit and deny it. Instead of winning a concrete, this metaphysic stuck fast on an abstract, identity. Its good point was the perception that thought alone constitutes the essence of all that is. It derived its materials from earlier philosophers, particularly the Schoolmen. In speculative philosophy the understanding undoubtedly forms a stage, but not a stage at which we should keep for ever standing. Plato is no metaphysician of this imperfect type, still less Aristotle, although the contrary is generally believed.