I. How should philosophy begin?

As the quotation from Descartes above suggests, the concern over how philosophy should begin pursuing truth is closely related to the issue of what ‘first philosophy’ is and how it can be pursued. Aristotle influentially treated first or ‘primary’ philosophy as synonymous with metaphysics or ontology, i.e., ‘the science of being qua being’. Opening Metaphysics Epsilon, Aristotle says that the starting-point of metaphysics is ‘being unconditionally or qua being’ (Aristotle Reference Aristotle and Reeve2016: 98/1025b). For Aristotle, all sciences have ‘starting-points’, but that of metaphysics is unconditioned, such that ‘no science [. . .] supervises it’ (Aristotle Reference Aristotle and Reeve2016: 100/1026b). However, for Aristotle, and many others after him, to study metaphysics, one ‘should come with prior scientific knowledge of analytics’, or, logic (Aristotle Reference Aristotle and Reeve2016: 52/1005a).Footnote ¹² Accordingly, while logic has ordinal, even ‘pedagogical’ priority over metaphysics in thinking's pursuit of truth, such that the latter in some sense begins with logic, truth itself, for Aristotle, ultimately rests on being qua being (Lu-Adler Reference Lu-Adler2018: 45).Footnote ¹³ As such, metaphysics is metaphilosophically primary to all sciences, or the most fundamental science in thinking's pursuit of truth, though logic is ordinally prior to metaphysics in this pursuit.

Modern scepticism generally scrutinizes philosophy's beginning by beginning with an examination of thinking. Accordingly, for modern scepticism, some science of thinking ordinally precedes any metaphysics. If and in so far as logic is a science of thinking (cf. SL: 21.28), this accords with Aristotle and much of philosophical history. However, modern scepticism begins with an examination of thinking not to ensure that thinking abides by logical rules, but as Descartes says (see above), to arrive at certain and evident truth, or truth for thinking. Modern scepticism insists that the truth thinking pursues must be understood as truth for the thinking that pursues it, and to know what truth for thinking is, one must know not simply what constitutes truth per se, but, more importantly for modern scepticism, what thinking's knowing of truth consists in. Especially in light of the aims of overcoming dogmatism and avoiding unchecked error, any claim about what constitutes truth per se must accord with what can be thought or known, and to determine the latter, one must examine thinking. As such, contra Aristotle, modern scepticism holds that metaphysics should be ‘supervised’—say, regulated, recast, forbidden, or deemed impossible—according to an examination of thinking. Because philosophy involves or paradigmatically is thinking pursuing truth, modern scepticism treats philosophy's beginning as a problem of and for philosophy, which Hegel remarks upon in terms of ‘a new awareness of the difficulty of finding a beginning in philosophy, and the reason for this difficulty, and so also the possibility of resolving it’ (SL: 21.53).

This sense of the problematic undergirding modern scepticism's concern about how philosophy begins helps us examine three distinctions concerning philosophy's beginning in the opening paragraphs of the Logic's ‘With What Must the Beginning of Science Be Made?’ section. Although abbreviated, Hegel's discussion of these distinctions indicates engagement with the modern sceptical concerns noted here. Moreover, while some of these distinctions do not immediately exhibit connections to modern scepticism, they enable us to discern engagements with modern scepticism in the text. Given these interpretive challenges, some charitable reconstruction is needed.

On the first distinction, philosophy's beginning ‘must be either something mediated or something immediate’, however, ‘it can be neither the one nor the other; so either way of beginning runs into contradiction’ (SL: 21.53).Footnote ¹⁴ In charging each with contradiction, Hegel suggests that mediate and immediate beginnings both are and are not beginnings. To understand this, we might note two basic features of a beginning: a beginning must be (1) first and (2) the beginning of something. Mediate and immediate beginnings, at least when formulated one-sidedly, each fail to exhibit one of these features. A mediate beginning, as mediate, is determinate, meaning that it marks a point from which something can begin; on the other hand, as mediated, it presupposes something mediating it, such that it is not a ‘beginning proper’, i.e., not ‘truly first’ (SL: 21.54). An immediate beginning, as immediate, involves no presupposition and is thereby truly first, but it is also—as immediate—indeterminate, and so nothing from which something can begin (cf. SL: 21.69).

While neither are proper beginnings, mediated beginnings are particularly concerning for first philosophy. As the metaphilosophically primary science, first philosophy does not admit of examination by another science. Accordingly, if first philosophy's beginning is mediated, it relies upon some presupposition(s) that, according to the form of science, cannot be examined; as such, philosophy would not only begin with an ‘improper’ beginning—which is unproblematically true of all of thinking's pursuits of truth except first philosophy—but would also raise worries about dogmatism and unchecked falsehood, which animate modern scepticism's concern over how philosophy begins. But although these worries animate modern scepticism thusly, Hegel consistently criticizes modern scepticism for involving mediated beginnings reliant upon the presupposition that thinking is fixedly opposed to being (cf. SL: 21.29 and 21.121), which prompts his 1802 charge of dogmatism against modern scepticism.Footnote ¹⁵ Further, Hegel thinks that this presupposition marks an unchecked falsehood ‘that has become the universal opinion of modern times’, suggesting that modern scepticism is a diffuse rather than tightly circumscribed modern phenomenon, which supports reading his abovementioned reference to modern philosophy's ‘loftier spirit’ as related to modern scepticism (SL: 12.201).Footnote ¹⁶ As such, for Hegel, modern scepticism is guilty of precisely what it worries about. As we will see later in this section, the Logic raises this line of criticism against both sceptical and metaphysical forms of beginning philosophy, and because it reiterates Hegel's 1802 critique of modern scepticism and essentially repeats modern scepticism's concern about unexamined philosophical starting points, its appearance in the Logic's discussion of how philosophy begins indicates that the text engages with modern scepticism's concern about this issue.

Hegel's second and third distinctions here are drawn between a ‘first principle’ and a ‘beginning as such’, and between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ first principles, respectively:

Hegel's terminology here is somewhat confusing, as first principles are distinguished both from ‘the beginning as such’ and from one another in terms of ‘objectivity’ and ‘subjectivity’. According to the second distinction, a first principle is objective in that it essentially determines its corresponding exposition, while a beginning as such is subjective in the sense of not doing so, or of being ‘accidental’. Especially in light of terminological overlap with the third distinction, a more helpful way to articulate the second distinction is as between ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ beginnings, where first principles correspond to the former and ‘beginnings as such’ to the latter.Footnote ¹⁷

The third distinction differentiates between two different kinds of first principles, objective and subjective. Objective first principles are simply content determinations, and as objective, they are metaphysical claims and thusly candidates for first-order metaphysical knowledge. As first principles, they determine the nature of all things, and are immediate in this respect. On the other hand, objective first principles are ‘somehow determinate [irgendwie bestimmter]’ (SL: 21.27). With this qualification, Hegel indicates these principles’ mediacy in a way that nods to modern scepticism's worry that without supervision from an examination of thinking, e.g., in traditional metaphysics, philosophy begins with unexamined presuppositions, here, first principles that are merely somehow rather than in some particular way determinate.

By contrast, a subjective first principle ‘designates [bezieht] the nature of cognition’ to the exposition it begins (SL: 21.53). ‘Bezieht’ marks a striking asymmetry between subjective and objective first principles beyond differences between their respective, putative objects: thinking and being. According to this passage, unlike an objective first principle, which Hegel also calls an ‘objective determination’, a subjective first principle does not characteristically determine its object. In addition to ‘designates’ or ‘relates’, ‘bezieht’ can also mean ‘receives’, and Hegel seems to mean the term in both general senses: a subjective first principle somehow receives an account of thinking and then designates or relates it to the principle's corresponding exposition via criteria that, presumably, are responsive to the received (or, given) account. In characterizing subjective first principles in terms of beziehen rather than bestimmen, Hegel indicates that they present the same problem of unexamined-ness as objective first principles, which, again, animates the modern sceptic's concern with how philosophy should begin. In this way, the Logic engages with if not adopts this concern.

Moreover, in so far as the Logic's notion of subjective first principles denotes modern sceptical first philosophy, this criticism of subjective first principles reaffirms Hegel's 1802 criticism of modern scepticism. Indeed, if the Logic's objective–subjective first principles distinction successfully distinguishes between two distinct forms of philosophy, to wit, it registers the opposition of modern scepticism to metaphysics. Hegel's examples of subjective first principles are readily identifiable of modern rationalism (‘thinking’) and empiricism (‘sensation’), while those of objective first principles span ancient and modern philosophy from the Presocratics (‘water’) to modern rationalists like Leibniz (‘monads’) and Spinoza (‘substance’). Accordingly, the distinction is between neither rationalism and empiricism nor ancient and modern philosophy simpliciter. The modern philosophers represented on the objective side are commonly understood as ‘dogmatists’ on account of engaging in metaphysics, and Presocratics like Thales are likewise metaphysicians. Subjective first principles denote philosophy that begins with thinking, and because the examples given seem to best represent instances of modern philosophy that contrast with ancient and modern metaphysics, we have reason to regard subjective first principles as denoting modern scepticism, which, as noted, regards the possibility of metaphysics as a problem requiring an investigation into thinking. As such, upon analysing Hegel's examples of objective and subjective first principles in the passage above, the objective–subjective first principles distinction is itself most legible as pertaining to the opposition of modern scepticism to metaphysics with respect to how philosophy begins.

Finally, the section's titular question, ‘With what should the beginning of science be made?’, articulates this modern sceptical concern in basic terms. To raise and entertain this question, the Logic cannot take for granted the classic Aristotelian views that metaphysics is first philosophy and that logic ordinally precedes and is thus really distinct from metaphysics. So regardless of Hegel's ultimate views on these issues, the Logic accepts the problematization of metaphysics as first philosophy and, a fortiori, of first philosophy as such. In so far as modern scepticism is responsible for these problematizations (cf. SL: 21.53), the Logic aligns with modern scepticism, and in as much as they reflect modern scepticism's concern with philosophy's beginning, the Logic takes this concern seriously.

To recap, analysing three distinctions from the opening of ‘Beginning of Science’ has yielded at least three indications that the Logic engages with modern scepticism's concern about how philosophy should begin. First, from where we left off, if and in so far as modern scepticism is responsible for problematizing the traditional view in which metaphysics is first philosophy and logic ordinally precedes it, then because the Logic accepts such problematization, the Logic accepts modern scepticism's problematization on the basis of this concern. Second, the text's construal of objective and subjective first principles as merely somehow determinate registers the worry that philosophy should not begin with unexamined presuppositions, which animates modern scepticism's concern about how philosophy should begin. Third, relatedly, the Logic's construal of each side of the objective–subjective first principles distinction as involving merely ‘somehow determinate’ beginnings reiterates the modern sceptical criticism of ‘dogmatic’ metaphysics and Hegel's 1802 critique of modern scepticism as ‘dogmatic scepticism’.

II. Second-order knowledge

Appreciating the Logic's engagement with the modern sceptical concern about second-order knowledge corresponding to first-order knowledge requires further consideration of subjective first principles. Given Hegel's distinction between first principles and ‘the beginning as such’, it is unclear why he counts subjective first principles as first principles. First principles determine their corresponding expositions, but subjective first principles are said to designate, in contrast to determine. Nevertheless, Hegel claims subjective first principles are first principles, and with them ‘the interest still lies in the content determination’ (SL: 21.53).

This confusion is dissipated by understanding subjective first principles as sceptical, which is explicitly supported in the ‘Beginning of Science’:

Hegel characterizes subjective first principles as criteria ‘sceptically’ set against ‘dogmatic philosophizing’, i.e., philosophy that makes metaphysical determinations. Accordingly, in so far as subjective first principles are criteria ‘against’ which such determinations are tested, they must at least exhibit negative interest in content determination, say, in regulating, deflating, or denying it. In this way, subjective first principles can pertain to content determinations without making or being them, and are thusly representative of modern scepticism's manner of ‘supervising’ any metaphysics.

There is a further way in which to discern Hegel's mentioning of the ‘sceptical’ use of subjective first principles as referencing modern scepticism in particular. Content determinations essentially take the form of first-order knowledge claims, while subjective first principles, as criteria, challenge these determinations in a particular way. As criteria rather than content determinations, subjective first principles do not challenge content determinations laterally, say, as alternative, incompossible but equally well-supported content determinations, à la ancient sceptical equipollence. As such, the ‘sceptical’ use of subjective first principles is not characteristically ancient. Rather, as criteria reliant upon accounts of thinking or ‘the cognitive process’, subjective first principles ‘sceptically’ challenge objective content determinations by subjecting them to criteria. If and in so far as this ‘criterial’ treatment of thinking is paradigmatic of modern scepticism—classic examples include Descartes's methodological use of ‘indubitability’ as a criterion for certain truth and Kant's treatment of the categories of the understanding in the ‘Transcendental Analytic’ (see Kant Reference Kant, Guyer and Wood1998: 217/B113–14)Footnote ¹⁸—we have good reason to think the Logic construes these principles as used in a characteristically modern sceptical way.

In so far as Hegel's account of criteria here is of modern scepticism, the Logic registers that it matters for modern scepticism that content determinations be consistent with subjective criteria and thereby thinking. At minimum, this indicates that modern sceptical challenges to knowledge claims are made from another order than those claims themselves, namely, from thinking rather than objects of thought. That the Logic's articulation of this modern sceptical challenge via subjective criteria marks an engagement with the concern about second-order knowledge becomes clear when considering the context of this discussion: the dispute registered through the distinctions we have examined is about how philosophy, ‘science [Wissenschaft]’, or simply thinking pursuing truth should begin. So the idea that objective content determinations must be tested against subjective criteria should be understood as an idea about how thinking should pursue truth, which of course implicates a concern about knowledge.

Accordingly, for modern scepticism, content determinations must be consistent with subjective criteria to be objects of knowledge. By themselves, then, content determinations do not exhibit sufficient conditions for being objects of knowledge; they must be consistent with subjective criteria, and knowing whether they are requires knowing about thinking and its criteria (more in section III). Specifically, because the criteria for knowing whether any content determination is an object of knowledge belong to thinking or knowing, knowing any content determination's (in)consistency with such criteria is knowing the knowing, or not, of that content determination: second-order knowledge of that content determination. Second-order knowledge, then, is required for first-order knowledge: knowing p is contingent upon criteria pertaining to thinking, such that knowing p requires knowing how thinking stands with respect to p, in addition to knowing p. If this is an apt reading of Hegel's discussion of subjective first principles ‘sceptically’ used as criteria against content determinations, then clearly this discussion engages with modern scepticism's concern about second-order knowledge corresponding to first-order knowledge.

III. Two needs for beginning philosophy

Examining the two needs of beginning philosophy that Hegel mentions in the paragraphs quoted above clarifies how the engagements with modern sceptical concerns just reviewed inform the Logic's conception of logic vis-à-vis metaphysics.Footnote ¹⁹ As we will see in section IV, the Logic construes logic such that it can properly satisfy these needs. Accordingly, at least in so far as these needs or their proper satisfactions issue from or are shaped by the engagements with modern sceptical concerns discussed above, the Logic's conception of logic is informed by the latter.

The first need is ‘for the principle in which alone the interest of the fact seems to lie, the interest as to what is the truth, the absolute ground of everything’, or in other words, for philosophy to begin with a principle pertaining to fundamental truth (SL: 21.53). Hegel mentions this need when distinguishing between first principles and the beginning as such; the former recognizes this need, the latter does not.

Drawing on Hegel's distinction between mediated and immediate beginnings, given that this need implicates fundamental truth, satisfying it requires an immediate first principle. Metaphysical first philosophy, then, in beginning with a determination of all things, satisfies this need. However, it only does so to some extent, given Hegel's nod that objective first principles are somehow determinate and thus mediate. As noted, Hegel raises this concern for both objective and subjective first principles; neither properly pertains to fundamental truth. Accordingly, what it means to begin with an immediate first principle in a way that properly satisfies this first need is unclear, and will require some ingenuity. In section IV, we will get a sense of Hegel's ingenuity in this respect.

Bracketing the immediacy issue, we should consider whether and if so to what extent modern scepticism recognizes this need, even if it tends not to satisfy it. At minimum, because failures or refusals to satisfy needs are not thereby failures at recognizing them, modern scepticism can recognize this need. And indeed, multiple ‘varieties’ of modern scepticism recognize but do not satisfy this need. In attempting to establish an indubitable foundation from which to infer from thinking to being, Cartesian scepticism registers this need; however, as Conant puts it (Reference Conant, Abel and Conant2012: 30), the Cartesian sceptic concludes that this is ‘something we cannot do’, such that she fails to satisfy a need she recognizes and attempts to satisfy. Further, Kantian scepticism (surely the more important ‘variety’ for Hegel) presents an instance of recognizing but refusing to satisfy this need in, among other places, Kant's remark in the first Critique that while knowledge of fundamental truth is unattainable, thinking nevertheless ‘necessarily and with every right demands’ it (Kant Reference Kant, Guyer and Wood1998: 112/Bxx). For the Kantian sceptic, then, this need is necessarily and rightly recognized, but is nevertheless unsatisfiable, such that the Kantian sceptic refuses to attempt at its satisfaction. In Conant's words, here there is ‘nothing to do’ except determine and accept the limits of thinking (Conant Reference Conant, Abel and Conant2012: 30).

It seems, then, that traditional metaphysics recognizes this need but fails to satisfy it in so far as the principle of traditional metaphysics is not immediate, but somehow determinate. And even when modern scepticism knowingly fails or refuses to satisfy this need on account of its prejudices about the facts of consciousness, it nevertheless recognizes the need.

Hegel also notes ‘a further need’: ‘to unite the method with the content, the form with the principle’ (SL: 21.54). In other words, the further need is for thinking's way of proceeding to knowledge to be unified with what it seeks to know. Hegel is quite explicit about this need's uptake. It is unrecognized by metaphysicians, at least in virtue of their dogmatic invocation of first principles, and by modern sceptics, at least in virtue of their use of subjective first principles as criteria. It is also denied by philosophy that, following Hegel's examples of inner revelation, faith, and intellectual intuition, straightaway begins in virtue of the idea that some form of thinking—in a fideistic or generally rationally inscrutable way—is united with being; if thinking and its object are already united, there is no need to unite them, hence the denial of this need. There is not room here to consider this latter philosophical beginning at length, but, there is a corresponding, noteworthy puzzle in anticipation of section IV: If logic, for Hegel, begins with absolute knowing, it seems that it also simply assumes the unity of thinking and its object, such that it too would deny this need, which, from this passage, appears problematic for Hegel, at least in so far as the assumed unity is rationally inscrutable or fideistic rather than ‘scientific’, as his examples indicate. In section IV we will see that understanding logic as a science of absolute knowing helps address this issue.

Discussing how this ‘further need’ comes to be recognized, Hegel mentions that ‘early abstract thought’ was simply interested in first principles as content, i.e., as metaphysical determinations. Here, too, the unity of thinking and being appears implicit or assumed, as metaphysical determinations are advanced without interest in thinking. Hegel, effectively, is underscoring that traditional metaphysics recognizes and (imperfectly) satisfies the first need to the exclusion of recognizing this further need. The latter, Hegel says, only begins to become recognized once ‘philosophical culture’ shifts from beginning with determinations of being to attending ‘to the conduct of the cognitive process’ (SL: 21.54).Footnote ²⁰ This certainly sounds characteristic of modern scepticism. However, in its character of applying subjective criteria to content determinations, modern scepticism fails to recognize this need, as the two relate merely externally. Because Hegel at once credits characteristically modern sceptical developments with enabling the recognition of the further need while also construing modern scepticism as in some sense failing to recognize the need, we should ask: is there a particular variety of modern scepticism that (1) does not merely treat thinking as the basis for developing criteria for testing content determinations independent of thinking, (2) regards thinking as essential to its object, and (3) appears in Hegel's Logic?

The answer, to all appearances, is Kantian scepticism.Footnote ²¹ In a discussion clearly anticipating the passage we have been examining, Hegel notes ‘something deeper lying at the foundation of this turn which knowledge takes, and appears as a loss and a retrograde step, [but which is] something on which the elevation of reason to the loftier spirit of modern philosophy in fact rests’: Kant's ‘insight into the necessary conflict of the determinations of the understanding with themselves’ (SL: 21.30). For Kant, the categories of the understanding are in some sense ‘criteria for thinking’, but philosophy often mistakes these criteria for ‘properties of things in themselves’ or of being (Kant Reference Kant, Guyer and Wood1998: 217/B114). The ground on which this is mistaken, for Kant, is the necessary conflict itself; because the categories of thinking result in contradiction, they cannot, for Kant, be true of—and hence cannot be unified with—being, which Hegel likes to remark upon in terms of Kant's ‘excessive tenderness toward the world to keep contradiction away from it’ (SL: 21.232; cf. SL: 11.272). Excessive tenderness notwithstanding, Kant is importantly recognizing, among other things, that the further need for first philosophy is not satisfied by subjective first principles as criteria, which helps clarify why criterial treatments of first philosophy tend to conclude sceptically.Footnote ²² Accordingly, for Kant, because fundamental truth is separate from criteria, there can be no ‘general and certain criterion of the truth of any cognition’ (Kant Reference Kant, Guyer and Wood1998: 197/A58/B82–83; cf. SL: 12.26–27).Footnote ²³

However, there is a further, complicating moment in the Kantian sceptical account. The disunity of criteria and being and the subsequent inability of criteria to serve as ‘general and certain’ indications of truth imply that modern scepticism's characteristic, criterial approach to first philosophy cannot enable metaphysics, let alone certain and evident metaphysics. As such, ‘there is nothing to do’ for the Kantian sceptic. On the other hand, the Kantian sceptic's subjective first principle is united with its content; specifically, the original unity of apperception, in Kantian idealism, structures all of thinking's possible objects (cf. Kant Reference Kant, Guyer and Wood1998: 305/B234). So although metaphysics, as a science of being qua being, is, strictly speaking, unavailable to the Kantian sceptic, she introduces a sceptical solution: in so far as thinking determines its objects, a science of thinking can effectively replace metaphysics. More specifically, for Kant, transcendental logic takes the place of metaphysics. So while a science of being qua being is impossible because of thinking's disunity with the in-itself, metaphysics, now as transcendental logic, is possible as a science of the general form of all possible objects (of thought) (cf. Kant Reference Kant, Guyer and Wood1998: 358–59/A247/B303).Footnote ²⁴ In this respect, Kant recognizes and satisfies the further need by appeal to the original unity of apperception and transcendental logic.Footnote ²⁵

For Hegel, this ‘satisfaction’ is unsatisfactorily one-sided. On the Kantian account, determinations of thinking are not true of being qua being, but of being qua the form of all possible objects of thought. For Hegel, this ‘is like attributing right insight to someone, with the stipulation, however, that he is not fit to see what is true but only what is false’, which counts against both Kant's sceptical solution as a satisfaction of the further need and the truth of his account of thinking (SL: 21.30).Footnote ²⁶ Indeed, this dissatisfaction is corroborated by Kant's own expression, whereby the science of being qua being gives way to the ‘modest’, ‘mere analytic of the pure understanding’ (Kant Reference Kant, Guyer and Wood1998: 359/A247/B303). Thus, while Kant's insight prompts recognition that thinking and its object must be unified in some sense, which also leads Kant to recognize how a science of thinking can serve as first philosophy neither in the dogmatic manner of subjective idealism nor in the sceptical manner of using criteria separate from thinking's object, Kant does not, for Hegel, properly satisfy the further need (cf. SL: 12.23–25).

For Hegel, to properly satisfy this need, what is metaphilosophically primary and what is ordinally prior in thinking's pursuit of truth must coincide:

This remark is highly suggestive along lines segueing into the issue of logic's relation to metaphysics. As noted, metaphysics—the science of being qua being—has historically been synonymous with first philosophy, and yet logic, traditionally, is ordinally prior to it. Modern sceptics, whatever—if anything—they ultimately regard as first philosophy, likewise regard logic as ordinally prior to and thus distinct from first philosophy, including those otherwise critical of Aristotle.Footnote ²⁷ In light of this, Hegel is clearly proposing something like a unification of logic and metaphysics to satisfy the further need without resorting to a Kantian sceptical solution. Kantian transcendental logic marks something like a unification of logic and metaphysics (though it is more like a deflation of metaphysics into logic) and thereby marks a clear precedent for Hegel's proposal, but Hegel's conception of logic as unified with metaphysics is to overcome the deficiencies Hegel sees in Kant's attempt to satisfy these needs with transcendental logic as first philosophy. Accordingly, in so far as the two needs discussed here owe to modern sceptical concerns, and in as much as the Logic's conception of logic is developed to satisfy these needs in contradistinction to modern scepticism, the Logic's conception of logic is informed by modern scepticism in being responsive to the latter's concerns.

IV. The Logic on logic in relation to metaphysics

As the appeal to transcendental logic indicates, Hegel is not the first to offer a conception of logic as in some sense unified with metaphysics. One could thus productively read both Kantian transcendental logic and Hegelian logic in light of ‘the age-old question about the relation between logic and metaphysics’ (Lu-Adler Reference Lu-Adler2018: 67). However, such a study cannot be undertaken here. Accordingly, rather than offer a general picture of the Logic's conception of logic, here I sketch out the Logic's conception of logic in relation to metaphysics according to this conception's pertinence to and emergence from the engagements with modern scepticism identified above, emphasizing this conception's satisfaction of the two needs discussed in section III. The first need is for philosophy to begin with a principle pertaining to fundamental truth, which entails that philosophy must in some respect begin with an immediate first principle, i.e., with something ‘truly first’. The second is for thinking to be united with its object, which, in this context, Hegel thinks is properly satisfied by some unification of logic and metaphysics.

As noted, given Hegel's indications that both objective and subjective first principles fail to be adequately immediate, what it means for philosophy to begin with a principle that really pertains to fundamental truth requires ingenuity. Hegel attempts at this by beginning logic with what he calls a ‘mediated immediacy’.Footnote ²⁸ Following his discussion of first principles and his proposal to unify metaphilosophically primary science (metaphysics) with ordinally first science (logic), Hegel introduces the idea of a ‘logical beginning’ as distinct from objective and subjective first principles (SL: 21.54). He says that logic's beginning can be made ‘either by way of mediation as result [viz. of the Phenomenology], or immediately as beginning proper’ (SL: 21.54). The latter, immediate beginning, in Hegel's words, is simply ‘the resolve [. . .] of considering thinking as such’, or the resolve to maximally abstract from all contents of thought (SL: 21.56). This, of course, makes it unclear how the Logic actually begins or takes logic to begin, but on the other hand, that logic can begin immediately from mental abstraction or mediately from the result of the phenomenology of consciousness—i.e., absolute knowing, which Hegel also calls ‘pure knowledge’—raises logic above the opposition of immediate and mediate beginnings and thereby above what scholars have called ‘the problem of beginning’ in the Logic (SL: 21.54).Footnote ²⁹ A consequence of this claim is that each beginning of logic, in so far as the other is equally possible, can be taken as a mere ‘beginning as such’, which raises the question of whether there is a more essential mediated immediacy at the beginning of logic, for the Logic.

After voicing this indifference regarding logic's beginning, Hegel provides a deeper sense in which logic begins with mediated immediacy that clarifies logic's satisfaction of the first need. After characterizing the Phenomenology's result as ‘pure knowledge’, Hegel writes: ‘Logic is the pure science, that is, pure knowledge in the full compass of its development’ (SL: 21.55). In this sense, logic's beginning, for the Logic, is mediated, as logic develops the Phenomenology's result of absolute knowing. However, Hegel says that we must ‘ensure that the beginning [of logic] will remain immanent to the science of this knowledge’, i.e., to logic—the science of absolute knowing or ‘pure knowledge’—rather than to the science of consciousness (SL: 21.55).Footnote ³⁰ So while Hegel thinks that logic begins with ‘this determination of pure knowledge’ from the Phenomenology, i.e., absolute knowing, he thinks that logic must also begin purely from or in absolute knowing, because—as we will further appreciate below—doing so is also beginning with ‘simple immediacy’, which can satisfy the first need without introducing unexamined determinateness (SL 21.55).

Regarding the further need, there is another important sense in which logic's beginning, for the Logic, is a mediated immediacy. In a sense, we have seen, logic begins with absolute knowing, but it also begins with ‘pure being’ (SL: 21.56). ‘Being, pure being—without further determination’ is ‘indeterminate immediacy’ and thusly ‘truly first’ (SL: 21.68). This may seem to be an objective first principle, which would support a more metaphysical reading of the Logic than what is offered here, where, say, logic just is metaphysics. However, pure being here is a thought-determination, such that, as indeterminate immediacy, ‘it is equally only this empty thinking’, and thus the thought of pure being lapses into that of nothing (SL: 21.69). As such, the manner in which logic begins with both absolute knowing and pure being is that it neither simply begins with pure being (which helps distinguish it from traditional metaphysics) nor with an explicit determination of thinking itself (which helps distinguish it from modern scepticism), but with pure being in thought, specifically, in absolute knowing; as Hegel says, a logical beginning is ‘made in the element of a free, self-contained thought, in pure knowledge’ (SL: 21.54).Footnote ³¹ In this way, mediated immediacy describes both the form and content of logic's beginning, in that pure, immediate being in thought is likewise pure, immediate thinking of being. This aspect of logic's beginning in the Logic as a mediated immediacy thereby marks some kind of satisfaction of the further need to unite the form and principle of first philosophy.

At this point it should not be too controversial to say that, for the Logic, logic is the science of absolute knowing; we have encountered remarks that indicate this, and the claim is corroborated by Hegel's characterizations of logic as a science throughout the Logic, in which logic is variously called ‘pure science’ (SL: 21.33), ‘the system of pure reason’ (SL: 21.34), ‘the science that has pure knowledge for its principle’ (SL: 21.45), and ‘the science of the absolute form which is implicit totality and contains the pure idea of truth itself’ (SL: 12.25–26). Likewise, Hegel writes that ‘the science of logic finds the highest concept of itself, the pure concept conceptually comprehending itself’ (SL: 12.253). Moreover, we have seen that logic's ‘standpoint’ is absolute knowing, such that at minimum, logic is a science of absolute knowing in the sense that absolute knowing is the thinking to which the science of logic belongs. However, traditional metaphysics shares this status, such that we still need to determine how the Logic's understanding of the science of logic differentiates logic from traditional metaphysics.

Discussing the relation between metaphysics and ‘objective logic’ in particular, Hegel differentiates logic from metaphysics by writing that while ‘objective logic comprises within itself also the rest of metaphysics’, in logic, ‘the determinations of thought’—not the ‘substrata’ (e.g., ‘the soul, the world, and God’) that metaphysics uses such determinations to comprehend—are the ‘essential factor’; logic considers these metaphysical thought-determinations as ‘forms free of those substrata’ (SL: 21.49). Hegel continues in a way that credits the modern sceptical concern with first philosophy, or metaphysics, discussed in sections I and II, further distinguishing logic from metaphysics:

Here, logic is the ‘true critique’ of thought-determinations through which metaphysics makes claims about being qua being. This makes logic sound like modern scepticism and particularly Kantianism, in so far as the latter critique metaphysics (cf. EL: §41). Prima facie, this favours reading the Logic as advancing an anti-metaphysical conception of logic, where logic is a science of thinking that challenges metaphysics and is to that extent sceptical. On the other hand, Hegel says that at least with objective logic, metaphysics is ‘comprised’, which counts against the idea that logic, for the Logic, is anti-metaphysical, and prima facie in favour of logic as metaphysics.

This apparent issue is overcome by examining Hegel's contrast between his conception of logic and the more commonplace, merely formal conception. As a science of absolute knowing, logic is a science of a particular kind of thinking, one that is neither finite nor estranged from being. ‘Whenever logic is taken as the science of thinking in general’, by contrast,

Merely formal logic, for Hegel, shares with modern scepticism a presupposed gap between thinking and being, meaning it is also dogmatic in Hegel's sense. Even if logic is necessary for achieving ‘genuine knowledge’ by providing the latter's formal conditions, it is estranged from knowledge and thus not a science, but instead, say, a canon for correct thinking (Kant). Accordingly, while formal logic might play an indispensable role in thinking pursuing truth, attaining truth is not its task per se (cf. SL: 21.10). However, for the Logic, ‘the attainment of truth [. . .] is the object and purpose of logic’ (SL: 21.16). If the attainment of truth is logic's object and purpose, then logic must not only attain truth, which would mark its purpose, but also come to know the attainment of truth, which marks logic's object. If metaphysics is generally tasked with knowing fundamental truth, then in some respect, logic, according to the Logic, shares a purpose with metaphysics. Moreover, in as much as it is reasonable to say that truth is the object of metaphysics, we can draw a further contrast between logic and metaphysics while appreciating their unity for Hegel. According to the Logic, logic's object is the attainment of truth, meaning that logic is not simply tasked with attaining truth, as is metaphysics, but with attaining the attainment of truth. And if metaphysics is what attains truth, then in being tasked with attaining the attainment of truth, logic is tasked with knowing metaphysical thinking, or absolute knowing. Absolute knowing is thus ‘elevated’ to modern philosophy's ‘loftier spirit’ in that it is itself to be known by logic, in addition to being the form of thinking in which being is known.

For Hegel, metaphysics, the science of being qua being, is not traditionally tasked with attaining knowledge of its own thinking, or of itself as a science (cf. SL: 21.49, quoted above). This, together with Hegel's manner of differentiating logic from metaphysics while linking the former with the latter, clarifies how logic for the Logic is informed by the modern sceptical concern about second-order knowledge. The second-order standing of logic vis-à-vis metaphysics is legible in both logic's object and logic itself: logic's object is the attainment of truth rather than simply truth, and logic itself is the critique of metaphysical categories rather than the attempt to think substrata through those categories. Further, the second-order standing of logic's object indicates that logic is not an anti-metaphysics or sceptical solution—that logic does not outright deny the attainability of truth. Positively stated, it indicates that logic shares a purpose with metaphysics but differs from metaphysics in striving after this purpose on a second-order, namely by examining the attainment of truth, or metaphysical thinking.

However, for logic to attain the attainment of truth, it must also attain truth, and in this respect it must also comprise metaphysics. Accordingly, it is important that Hegel insists that logic is not separate from truth but rather, with absolute knowing as its standpoint, already has truth in its grasp and is thus already in possession of first-order metaphysical thinking. This is a crucial sense in which logic begins with pure being in thought, or the thought of pure being. The latter is metaphysical thinking, such that logic, for the Logic, includes metaphysics, but by examining pure being in thought or the thinking of pure being rather than simply being, logic is irreducible to metaphysics as a science of being qua being. And of course, in including metaphysics, logic is not anti-metaphysical.

Finally, we should address an issue regarding logic's standing as a science of absolute knowing, anticipated in section III. If absolute knowing, as Hegel says, is ‘the truth of all the modes of consciousness’, the form of thinking in which truth is properly attained, then because logic begins with absolute knowing, it seems that logic attains truth at the outset if not prior (SL: 21.33). How, then, can logic satisfy the further need? How can the attainment of truth be something to achieve as logic's purpose? Here it is worth considering the second of two moments that Hegel identifies in logic:

Hegel moves from the concept of logic, which is here essentially equated with that of absolute knowing, to the science of logic, the science of pure thought. In calling the unity of thought and being in the science of logic ‘living and concrete’ rather than abstract, Hegel seems to mean, following Ng, that ‘thinking and its self-generated system of thought-determinations’ are ‘in constant development, driven by inner division and contradiction’ (Ng Reference Ng2020: 120). That thinking and its thought-determinations are constantly developing through divisions and contradictions means that thinking is not settled in total unity with being in the Logic, but is in a dynamic unity with being. Accordingly, while absolute knowing is surely at the beginning of logic for Hegel in some respect, it need not be complete at the beginning, and indeed cannot be so if and in so far as logic is a science of absolute knowing in which knowledge of absolute knowing is to be pursued. Hegel is surely mindful of this because, for him, philosophy must begin with logic as a science of absolute knowing to satisfy the further need discussed in section III, and because a science of absolute knowing must proceed—in light of Hegel's ‘swimming rejoinder’—by way of knowing, philosophy cannot begin with a certain truth or indubitable foundation, but ‘can begin only with something which is hypothetically and problematically true’ in the sense that it is neither fully known nor fully intelligible (SL: 21.57). At the conclusion of the Phenomenology, we may come to know that absolute knowing is the truth of all modes of consciousness, such that logic's beginning is in some sense true. However, we have yet to know the truth of absolute knowing itself, and of course, a science of absolute knowing—logic—is to arrive at proper, scientific knowledge of absolute knowing. As such, while the reading of logic as a science of absolute knowing offered here might appear to render Hegel subject to his own swimming rejoinder in as much as the latter applies to broadly, epistemological forms of first philosophy, this is not actually the case, because logic begins with a problematic rather than full version of what it seeks to ultimately attain (as the swimmer, on the analogy, cannot begin with the full-blown capacity to swim, but, to wit, must begin with some incomplete, hypothetical, or problematic capacity to swim—say, with the capacity to co-ordinately move her limbs).Footnote ³² Moreover, the demand for a certain foundation undergirding the swimming rejoinder proceeds from the modern sceptical prejudice about thinking's disunity with being, and because logic for the Logic does not share this prejudice, logic is not positioned to make such a demand in the first place. And so, regarding logic's satisfaction of the further need, in as much as absolute knowing—the thinking unified with being that has itself, metaphysical thinking, as its object in the science of logic—is not itself known, neither is its object, such that logic, for the Logic, can recognize and satisfy the further need even if it in some sense begins with the unity of thinking and its object, which appears to suggest that the Logic would deny the further need.

In this section, I have looked to show that Hegel offers a conception of logic as first philosophy that is supposed to be somehow unified with metaphysics. Like Kantian transcendental logic, Hegelian logic involves a critique of metaphysical thought-determinations, and the concern prompting it as such a critique is modern scepticism's concern that philosophy begin in a way that does not involve unexamined presuppositions. I then noted that logic, for the Logic, comprises metaphysics. This appears as an impasse: is logic an anti-metaphysical critique of metaphysics, or does it comprise metaphysics? Hegel does not want to follow Kant in offering a sceptical solution, where, strictly, there can be no science of being qua being, because being is merely in-itself and hence unthinkable and unknowable. Instead, Hegel's conception of logic is unified with metaphysics in that it shares a purpose with metaphysics—attaining truth—but differs in its object. Logic examines metaphysical categories themselves, over and above the substrata to which these categories are supposed to apply; or, as Hegel also says, logic has the attainment of truth as its object, such that logic, according to the Logic, studies something more like the purpose than the object of metaphysics, metaphysical thinking rather than the substrata metaphysics thinks. But for logic to have the attainment of truth as its object, it is tasked with attaining the attainment of truth, and to do this, it must also have (attained) truth. Accordingly, in ‘comprising’ metaphysics, logic includes but is irreducible to metaphysics. As a science of absolute knowing, logic is the science of metaphysical thinking, and true metaphysical thinking, which logic must in some sense have at hand, includes first-order metaphysics, indeed, is the thinking of first-order metaphysics.