Causality as Concept and Theory in Hegel’s Science of Logic

Ansgar Lyssy, Munich

Forthcoming in: Hegel-Jahrbuch

Preprint-version, please do not quote

1. Introduction

The concept of causality contains within it an entire set of philosophical problems uniquely its
own. As a categorical concept, it primarily allows us to form propositions with a specific
structure such that they are causal explanations. These explanations are dependent on the
wider context of a systematic interpretation of nature without which we tend to understand
things in a merely mythological or symbolical way. This is one of the reasons why the rise of
modern science is intimately connected with a heated debate about causality and the
principles of scientific inquiry.
Yet not all causal propositions will equally serve as a proper explanation of phenomena. To
achieve the latter we need a proposition to conform to a certain universal qualifier, which
derives from certain demands of our rationality in general and from our systematic
understanding of nature in particular.
I will argue that we find not only a deduction and analysis of the category of causality in
Hegel’s writings, but also a theory of causation that determines what is considered causally
effective, how we conceive causal powers, and where we look for evidence that a given
relation is sufficiently understood as a causal relation.1 It entails the use of the aforementioned
qualifiers to evaluate causal explanations. In fact, we find several versions of such a theory
spread throughout a variety of Hegelian texts ranging from the lectures on the Philosophy of
Nature, the Encyclopedia, and the Science of Logic. Here, I will limit myself to a discussion
of the latter work.
As a general methodological starting point I agree with George di Giovanni’s assumption that
the SL is not only a deduction of categories, but also of the discourses that are associated with
these categories.2 In this sense, the discourse associated with the category of causality deals
with metaphysical topics inasmuch as it is connected with the concept of substance; but we
need to transfer this discourse into the ‘sphere’ of objectivity to establish a discourse about
the philosophy of nature. This is where we discover the abovementioned principles or

                                                        
1 John BURBIDGE: Hegel’s Systematic Contingency, Basingstoke 2007, p. 184.
2 “Introduction”, in: G. W. HEGEL: The Science of Logic, trans. and ed. by George di Giovanni, Cambridge 2010.
All quotations follow this edition.

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qualifiers. I will give a brief argument as to why understanding causality as a moment of the
absolute relation is unsatisfactory and then proceed to show how Hegel responds to this.

2. Causality as Absolute Relation

Hegel discusses his concept of causality after he has emphasized that the actual should not be
understood as mere being in itself, but rather must be viewed as that which constitutes itself –
which in an Aristotelian tradition is that which is called a substance. Causality is therefore the
processuality of a substance becoming actual. Hegel goes on to describe the concept of
causality in three ‘stages’, which logically follow one another: Formal causality, determined
causality, and lastly reciprocity.3
Substance determines itself by realizing specific instances of accidental change. As the
accidents themselves have “no power” over each other (SL 491), we need to postulate an
identical moment of substance that acts as a causal power, at least on a formal level (SL 492).
Formal causality is nothing more than what Hegel conceives as the formal relation between
cause and effect: within the identity of a self-determining substance, a difference is posited,
namely, the difference between cause and effect. A cause is a cause insofar as it posits an
effect, but it thereby immediately ceases to be a cause as soon as the effect is produced.
Similarly, once the effect is fully realized, it immediately ceases to be an effect, becoming
instead a fleeting moment of accidentality.
Within this realization, the effect is therefore seen to be determined and thus a determined
relation between cause and effect is established. Rather than there being a mere formal
difference between them, there is in fact a relation that exists between them. The effect
‘points’ to the cause that posited it and vice versa. As both adhere in the same substance, there
can be nothing ‘in’ the effect that was not ‘in’ the cause. Hegel thus introduces the principle
of equivalence between cause and effect (SL 494). This already presents us with the first
qualifier insofar as it helps us to discard some causal explanations in favor of others – for
example, the “common witticism in history” that “great effects arise from small causes” (SL
496) and other related explanations prove to have no logical basis.
So far, this outline of causality serves two purposes: it accounts for the formal structure of our
causal judgments and it relates this structure to our implicit understanding of substance de
facto presupposed by the former. Change is always conceived as a change of accidents. But
these accidents must belong to a substance, which is at first understood as the place or
medium of change. The formal notion of causality leads us to distinguish between cause and
effect in two separate entities that we have to conceive as interacting. We select certain
accidents and thus posit a thing as a cause or event and thereby determine it. But this account
is unsatisfying. As Stephen Houlgate puts it:
“Such concepts as substance and causality […] are to be recognized as
underdeterminations of what they refer to; or, to put it another way, they are to be
understood as capturing mere abstract moments of what is actually going on.”5
This brings us back to the initial question: In which sense is the categorical concept of
causality ‘underdetermined’ and what do we need to determine it in an appropriate way?
Hegel emphasizes that, in order to designate a certain set of attributes as a cause, we have to
                                                        
3 A more detailled analysis of the development of causality as absolute relation can be found in Miklos VETÖ: “Les
métamorphoses de la causalité dans la logique de Hegel“, in: Revue Philosophique De Louvain 98.3 (2000), 519–548.
5 Stephen HOULGATE: “Substance, Causality, and the Question of Method in Hegel's Science of Logic”, in: The
Reception of Kant’s Critical Philosophy, ed. by S. Sedgwick, Cambridge 2000, 245.

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ignore all other attributes. Unless we have proper and universal criteria to evaluate which
properties are relevant in a specific causal relation, we end up in pre-scientific and arbitrary
discourses and ultimately with explanations that fail to explain anything. This can be
illustrated by looking at the examples Hegel gives in this chapter. These are supposed to show
that since “determinations of form are an external reflection, it is up to the essentially
tautological consideration of a subjective understanding to determine an appearance as effect
and to rise from it to its cause in order to comprehend and explain it” (SL 495.) They are
significant inasmuch as they are indeed causal propositions, but are importantly deficient as
proper explanations:
• “Rain is the cause of wetness which is its effect” (SL 495) is an “analytical proposition”
(ibid.), that is, the explanans “rain” already contains the explanandum “wetness.” In a
tradition stemming from Aristotle, wetness has once been conceived as one of the four
elementary qualities. The modern atomists dismissed it as a secondary, derivative quality that
has its reality only relative to the perceiver. Within the modern framework of science, wetness
itself is neither worthy nor in need of a causal explanation.
• “The cause of this color is a coloring agent“ (SL 495) is not only analytical, but was
disproven by modern theories of light, especially Newton’s: colors are caused by a certain
refraction of light with regard to the components of a material object. Hegel, of course, is well
aware of this.6
• Again, in a similar vein: “If the movement of a body is considered as effect, the cause of
this effect is then a propulsive force; but it is the same quantum of movement which is present
before and after the propulsion.” (SL 495) The idea that a quantum of movement is conserved
in both cause and effect was a Cartesian idea, but was disproved by Leibniz and Newton, who
proposed a conservation of forces.
Hegel intentionally chooses examples that nobody in his time would have considered as
proper causal explanations. He thus shows that the mere concept of causality can be
simultaneously used for valid and invalid explanations alike. In this manner, Hegel has also
proved that valid causal explanations – and the fact that we can recognize proper and
improper explanations – require a theory of causation.

3. Mechanism

When we finally understand that causal events do not refer to identities in themselves, we
realize that, qua entities within a relation, they are posited by the concept. Hegel thus
proceeds to conceptual logic, which includes objectivity and more specifically the concepts
and discourses of mechanism, chemism, and teleology. At this conjuncture, Hegel has
finished his discussion of the categories of being and essence and begins to analyze the
categories that organize the act of thinking itself. To quote John Burbidge on the transition
from causality to the Subjective Logic:
“Only when we found a category describing objects that matched the ways our
own thinking functioned, did we begin to look at the thinking process itself […].
[In the subjective logic we need] to comprehend the way we think, so that we can
then see how thinking grasps objectivity as such. We conceptually organize the
whole realm of objects in mechanical, chemical or teleological ways. That is not
simply a function of the particular objects being considered, but of the way we
                                                        
6 See Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, § 221.

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think about objects. In other words, we are now explicitly including the activity of
thinking in the process of describing objectivity.”7
Thinking is not just concerned with the act of forming propositions, but doing so in a rational
and systematic manner. Objectivity adds principles and structures to the world. But this
means that mechanism, chemism, and teleology are not only to be taken as categories
structuring our propositions, but they also structure the discourses for which they are the
prerequisites. After a thematization of concept, judgment, and syllogism, we should have a
strong enough picture of rationality to be able to do more than assert; we should be able to
argue. As such, these forms of objectivity transcend the realm of physical beings and are
valid for mental and social processes as well.8
As Hegel himself identifies mechanism with mechanical causality (e.g. SL 656) and with the
“truth of the relation of causality” (SL 635), we can read the mechanism chapter as containing
an extension and elaboration of the concept of causality. Mechanism is conceived as a system
of entities determined by external references or connections between terms, which echoes the
rejection of immanent and final causes by the mechanistic philosophers. Mechanism consists
in a system of transitive causes in contrast to, for example, self-governing and self-realizing
spirit. It is a system insofar as mechanical objects are thought of as independent parts
comprising a greater whole; they are indifferent to each other and determined by externalities
such as space, time, positioning, force, etc.9
Within this context, Hegel postulates some of the modern principles of science that we use to
form and evaluate causal explanations, but formulated in a way that they are appropriate for
entities within as well as outside of the sphere of physical bodies:
• Historically, modern mechanism was proposed alongside the rejection of Aristotelian
substance, which possesses its properties by virtue of its own essence. The contrasting
approach of mechanical philosophers is to understand things as constituted within a part-
whole relationship of entities (SL 631 f.) This had the advantage of allowing us to conceive
the emergence of properties from the composition of parts and consequently the reduction of
secondary properties like wetness or heat to a smaller set of primary properties.
• The formal equality of cause and effect attributed to a system of interacting things
conceived as active and passive leads Hegel to postulate: “Reaction is equal to action” (637),
which is Hegel’s version of Newton’s third law of motion. Action and reaction need to
contain an identical moment that Hegel explains as the “reciprocal repulsion of the impulse”
(SL 637), effectively correcting the earlier comments on force being understood as quantum
of movement. This opens up a framework to determine what exactly is transferred from cause
to effect.
• Motion and rest are induced externally: “Rest can also be viewed, therefore, as brought
about by an external cause.” (SL 638) This repeats the negation of immanent and concurrent
causality and seems to be Hegel’s generalized take on Newton’s first law of motion: “It is for
this reason an empty abstraction to assume in mechanics that a body set in motion would go
on moving in a straight line to infinity if it did not lose movement because of external
resistance.” (SL 641)
• Hegel explains that entities only interact in terms of power insofar as they have power of
the same ‘kind’: “The weaker can be seized and invaded by the stronger only in so far as it

                                                        
7 BURBIDGE: Hegel’s Systematic Contingency, 95 f.
8 See, for example, Hegel’s Encyclopedia § 429, where Hegel uses chemism as a formal basis for explaining the
structure of love and friendship.
9 See Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, §§197 ff.

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accepts the stronger and constitutes one sphere with it.” (SL 638) This, again, rules out some
causal explanations in favor of others.
• He also reiterates the Leibnizian idea that interacting entities are only determined by two
factors, “impenetrability” and resistance to acceleration or “mass” (SL 638). Both are not
intrinsic, but rather relational properties that show up only in the context of causal interaction.
This supplements his earlier understanding of matter as constituted by the forces of attraction
and repulsion (e.g. SL 145).
• Hegel emphasizes that the “determinateness” of things is nothing but a “rational fate,” a
universality called “law” (SL 640). Natural processes are governed by rationally intelligible
natural laws and the sequence of causes within the natural world is structured and thus
replicable – except the sphere of animated beings, which does not succumb to the same kind
of “fate” (SL 639), but transfers its own causal powers into the sphere of deeds (SL 640) and
actions. This will be of importance when Hegel outlines his theory of action, as opposed to
natural efficient causality. But this falls outside of the scope of the current discussion.10
There are more of these qualifiers that are more or less developed throughout Hegel’s
analysis. For instance, when Hegel conceives of objects as being “gathered” into “the simple
self-determining middle point” that is their “absolute universality” (SL 641), he alludes to
Newton’s methodological stance of conceiving bodies as a system of mass-points. 11
Ultimately, however, mechanism is far from being a comprehensive or universal form of
understanding things. The mereological principle at the core of mechanism may explain how
causal relations are subject to external determinations, but this leaves us with an
understanding of mechanical objects as standing over against each other in an “objectified
opposition” (SL 644), which implies a connection between things as an “objective totality”
(SL 645). This, however, cannot be understood within the part-whole scheme. This in turn
leads us to chemism, for which the self-determination of “non-self-subsistent” objects (SL
646) in relation to each other is the key concept.
The mereological principle of mechanism is thereby transformed into a ‘principle of
composition’ of non-independent parts12 that have no proper actuality on their own. Properties
of objects are now seen as not (only) resulting from the external combination of independent
things, but rather from “elemental natures” that involve a “particularization” (SL 646). This is
also a principle of science, as Hegel is inspired by the modern elemental theory proposed by
contemporary chemists.

4. Chemism

Chemism responds to mechanism as the breakdown of objects into their parts is dependent on
the object’s own substantial nature, even though these objects can be divided according to
external principles and may stand externally to one another. The mechanical part-whole
relation, in which the parts maintain their identity, is thereby transformed into a chemical
composition, in which the independent identity of these parts is dissolved to give rise into
something else, namely, the chemical compound. The difference between objects thus is not
an external determinateness, but rather a qualitative difference, which is only established

                                                        
10 For Hegel’s theory of human action see Christopher YEOMANS: Freedom and Reflection: Hegel and the Logic
of Agency, Oxford 2012.
11 See Hegel’s Encycl. 3, §§ 269 ff.
12 I. e. Husserl’s unselbständige Teile.

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within the context of a contingent and context-dependent process (SL 645). Once again, we
encounter several qualifiers of causal relationships:
• Hegel evokes the galvanic process in which objects are broken down into their chemical
components. Chemicals do not need an external stimulus for action, but are in point of fact
subject to an internal drive that is dependent on their substantial nature: objects are no more
indifferent to each other, but react to the presence of the other by themselves. The cause of an
effect does not have to be external to the object, but can be found in its non-independent parts.
The processuality of chemism is governed by an “immanent law” (SL 630), in contrast to the
external laws of mechanism.
• Hegel acknowledges that objects contain a “striving” towards combination and dissolution
and the pseudo-persistence of everyday objects is achieved by means of a “reciprocal
complementation the striving attains its tranquil neutrality.” (SL 647) This seems to be
Hegel’s formulation of Berthollet’s principle of chemical equilibrium as the equality of
forward and backward directed reaction.
• Objects contain their elemental substances as “real possibilities”, e.g. water can be broken
into its components hydrogen and oxygen, which are its “extremes” (ibid.). We do not find
these elements as real objects, but always as non-independent parts within our analysis of
things and within the context of causal explanations. There is no such thing as oxygen taken
in isolation, but since these elements are posited as identities within a certain argumentative
structure,13 we still can give a causal explanation like: this fire went out because it lacked
oxygen.
The causal determinacy of formal causality has thus become a systematically mediated
moment of external and internal determinations and that of the unity of universal and singular
parts (elements and objects). The concept, which is striven for in chemical combination, is
hereby clearly distinguished from its presuppositions (SL 650), i.e. the actual chemical
components that go into the resulting chemical compound. The concept has proven itself to be
a purpose inasmuch as this is shown to be de facto at play in chemical explanation all along:
Mechanism and chemism find their “truth” (SL 652) in teleology.14

5. Teleology

Insofar as the object is now considered a totality, that is, as a “sum total of forces, a whole of
reciprocal causes,” its “essential moment” is shown to lie in “something external” (SL 652),
namely the object’s purpose. Mechanistic and chemical explanations are incomplete insofar as
they do not understand the object within its specific horizon of possible purposes. A proper
understanding of objects would transcend mechanical and chemical reasoning and lead to an
explanation of things by inherent or external purpose.
Hegel defines purpose as “the concrete universal containing within itself the moment of parti-
cularity and of externality” (SL 656): it is, as concept, an abstract moment that determines the
aforementioned moments of mechanism and chemism. On a subjective level, this means that a
purpose is a positing that is neither a force nor a substance or cause: a wing, for example, has
its purpose in flying. As a concept, flying is a universal, but within the teleological
                                                        
13 I. e. the syllogism of the subjective logic, which mediates between the singularity of objects and the universality
of their elements within the chemical process.
14 On the relation between mechanism and teleology see also James KREINES: “Hegel’s Critique of Pure
Mechanism and the Philosophical Appeal of the Logic Project“, in: European Journal of Philosophy 12.1 (2004), 38–
74.

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relationship it is transferred into the sphere of objectivity. This opens up another realm of
explanations. It allows us to understand these concepts – we can safely call them reasons – as
causes: “what maintains itself [in the teleological process] is the concept that as such already
concretely exists as cause.” (SL 664) This is a qualifier that enables us to understand reasons
as causes and significantly extends the realm of possible causal explanations. Now we can
show how mechanical processes can be involved in the realization of the concept of flying as
their purpose.15 In this sense, mechanism is fully realized only within its purpose. If we
understand objectivity not only as a part of natural philosophy, but also as a specific form of
discourse, we can assume that mechanical explanations are properly understood when we
reflect on the fact that we purposefully use them as tools for a specific epistemic interest.
The external subjective purpose – that is, the purpose we give to an object by using it as a
means – only “remains an external, subjective determination” (SL 666). Yet, it turns out that
such a
“determinateness, which is none other than the externality itself, is posited as
something only external and unessential – is posited in purpose itself, therefore, as
the latter’s own moment, not as anything that stands on its own over against it. As
a result, the determination of the object as a means is altogether immediate.” (SL
667)
This is why teleology is the “truth” of mechanism and chemism: Both are based on a
‘reduction’ of things to their mechanical and chemical ‘features’ by purposefully positing the
relevant externalities as determinations within a certain explanatory context. In this manner,
Hegel subtly turns the structure of the objectivity around: We should understand mechanical
externalities as purposeful explanations themselves, so in a certain sense they are determined
by an underlying logic of teleology. The opposition between teleological and mechanical
explanations is not a real opposition; mechanical explanations are rather fully realized within
the context of teleological objectivity.

                                                        
15 Hegel points out that if we were to apply an external purpose to things, like when we build artifacts and use things
as tools, we realize them as purposes only in a relative and “violent” way: “The restricted content renders these
purposes inadequate to the infinity of the concept, relegating them to untruth.” (SL 666) Human purposiveness will
never be fully realized inasmuch as the limited objects will always pose a certain resistance to the infinite concept. In
this regard, the wing of a bird with its inner purposiveness is a better realization of flying than the artificial wing.

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