Review

Reviewed Work(s): On Hegel's Logic: Fragments of a Commentary by John Burbidge

Review by: H. S. Harris
Source: The Philosophical Review , Jan., 1984, Vol. 93, No. 1 (Jan., 1984), pp. 138-140
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2184428

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 BOOK REVIEWS

The Philosophical Review, XCIII, No. 1 (January 1984)

ON HEGEL'S LOGIC: FRAGMENTS OF A COMMENTARY. By JOHN BUR-

BIDGE. Atlantic Highlands, N.J., Humanities Press, 1982. Pp. xii, 280.

The significance of this book can hardly be overstated. It is a very good

book; but more than that it is a portent. Hegel's Logic has been more
frequently and more thoroughly studied by Anglophone authors than any
other part of his system; and there is a firmly established tradition of
interpretation stretching from William Wallace in the 1870s to Charles
Taylor in the 1970s, according to which it is to be read as an ontological
theory ("the thought of God before the Creation" according to a disas-
trously famous phrase of Hegel's-disastrous because hardly anyone who
quotes it has studied Hegel's analysis of the concept of "creation"). Every-
one who studied the Logic seriously on this assumption was dissatisfied in
principle. Most of them, however sympathetic, blamed Hegel; only Mure,
the most careful of them by far, was candid enough to be dissatisfied with
himself, and to confess in the end that he was "not quite certain what it
[Hegel's Logic] is" (Idealist Epilogue, 1978, p. 147). The first sign of a new
approach was perhaps Crawford Elder's little monograph (Appropriating
Hegel, 1981). But a 75-page bird's eye view must deserve the comment that
one swallow does not make a summer. With the arrival of the Burbidge
commentary (fragmentary though it admittedly is) we can say with some
confidence that the spring is here.
Burbidge takes as his clue to the labyrinth, a different claim of Hegel's:
that the Logic is the science of "pure thought." Accordingly he begins
from Hegel's account of what thinking is (in the Philosophy of Spirit) and of
how it can "purify" itself into a simple reflection upon its own operations.
On this view, the logic is a transcendental theory, an account of how the
mind works, (and only by implication a theory of how the world is).
Having thus established what "pure thought" is, Burbidge proceeds to
analyse the argument of the basic phases of each of the three parts of the
Logic: Being, Essence and the Concept. In the logic of Being he traces the
evolution of the "true infinite"; in that of Essence, the movement from
Seeming through Essence to Existence; and in the subjective logic, the
progression from Concept, through Judgment to Inference. This last pro-
gression is the logical foundation of the theory of subjective thinking; so
his fragmentary commentary moves in a proper Hegelian circle. But what
the non-Hegelian reader will find most helpful here is the continual dis-
cussion of the argument that we are following by appeal to modern syl-
logistic and quantification theory. What Hegel is offering in his "Subjective
Logic" is a philosophy of our logical operations-not something that can

138

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 BOOK REVIEWS

itself be readily or usefully formalized, but something that can use and be
illumined by symbolic equipment and techniques.
At all stages, Burbidge manages to give a plain and straightforward
account. But the commentary is very spare, at times almost severe. The
aim is to enucleate the argument, and I believe that this aim is successfully
achieved. But the book is designed to be used with Hegel's text. Only when
one is struggling with Hegel's own discourse, can one appreciate Burbidge
to the full; and it will take some time-more time than I have yet managed
to give it-to evaluate his commentary properly in detail. I look forward to
working with it for years; and I expect to change my mind on some points
more than once. It is one of Burbidge's major virtues that he has chosen to
comment on the Wissenschaft der Logik, rather than concentrating (like the
majority of his predecessors) on the first part of the Encyclopedza; thus one
of the greatest works of our philosophical tradition is here restored to
honor.
The complaint that is to be expected is that Burbidge has reduced
Hegel's logic to rational psychology (indeed, I know that this cry has al-
ready been raised). Burbidge faces this objection himself at the beginning
of his inquiry and his provisional answer is that logical reflection is prop-
erly concerned with the objective fabric of language, not with the workings
of the individual mind. It is clear enough from the architectonic that Hegel
imposed on his logic, that his "pure thought," is in some sense, "objective."
We can all testify-unless our minds have been seriously corrupted by our
philosophic education-that subjective reflection does not typically begin
with the "problem of being"; and if naive reflection does chance upon this
problem, it can move on to "determinate being" very rapidly. As J. L.
Austin remarked, Moses ought to have responded to the voice from the
burning bush, "You are what?" Burbidge simply ignores this typical path-
way of "finite reflection." But the approach that he adopts, obliges him to
leave the difficult problem of where "logical science must properly begin"
(and why) unexplicated to begin with. At the end of his book, however, he
does explicate it. Here he discusses the Phenomenology, which was Hegel's
own approach to the Logic. In the Phenomenology Hegel shows how the
sensory subjective consciousness of the human animal becomes the objec-
tive consciousness of the human community (imaged as "the history of
God"); and how this objective consciousness is what finally becomes self-
conscious in our logic, natural science and philosophical history.
I believe that Burbidge himself properly understands the significance of
this claim that the logical thinker actually thinks for his world, that the
philosopher occupies the standpoint ascribed in Christian theology to God,
and that what he is articulating is therefore not the structure of his own
mind, but the structure of the world occupied, maintained, and in an

139

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 BOOK REVIEWS

important sense "created," by the whole human community (meaning

every 'thinking' consciousness or every consciousness with which we com-
municate). But I have to concede that his last chapter is so condensed that
it leaves me wondering at times whether I have understood him or not. I
have no difficulty in accepting what I take him to be saying. But I may not
be reading him correctly; for (upon my understanding of where the argu-
ment has arrived) the question raised in Burbidge's conclusion "concern-
ing the scientific necessity of Hegel's philosophy" ("Does its necessity en-
compass us as well?") is a pseudo-question. On the one hand, what would a
supposed theory of the logical structure of the world be worth if it did not
apply to our present world? And on the other hand, since Burbidge rightly
underlines Hegel's assertion that only the method of the Logic has absolute
validity, how can the "constraint" of this logic harm any human interest or
impede any kind of rational initiative? For instance, the interpretive as-
sumptions of "faith" can still be applied to the Hegelian system itself (they
still are being applied to it); and all the modes of philosophical reflection
that are content to map our thought-world only partially or piecemeal
continue in full vigor. It may be that eventually some new Samson of
"systems theory" will arise on this side, who will be able to show how right
Hegel was when he said that "the method which I follow ... or rather
which this system of logic itself follows . .. is capable of greater complete-
ness, of much elaboration in detail." Nothing except illusion is threatened
by this. Those whose illusions are precious to them may find a "devilish
implication" (p. 230) in the success of Hegel's undertaking. But I fear that
they will never be absolutely driven to admit that the undertaking is indeed
successful. One thing that history demonstrates is that illusion is well able
to take care of itself. That-rather than any conceivable logical clarity-is
what is truly threatening.

H. S. HARRIS
Glendon College, York University (Toronto)

The Philosophical Review, XCIII, No. 1 (January 1984)

PERSPECTIVES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF WITTGENSTEIN. Edited by

IRVING BLOCK. Cambridge, Mass., The M.I.T. Press, 1981. Pp. xi, 244.

It is difficult to represent in print the best features of a good philosophi-

cal conference. The lively anticipation in hearing promising ideas spoken
out by their authors for (in some cases) the first time; the satisfying click of

140

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