Systemic Presuppositions in Hegel’s Science of Logic

A long-standing criticism of Hegel’s Science of Logic is whether the beginning is as presuppositionless as Hegel claims it is. Notably, Schelling understands Hegel to covertly have a “real being” in mind when he makes his start with pure being, which is what, according to him, actually propels the logic forward since thought is discontent with a mere abstraction.

…it is impossible for it to stop at this most abstract and most empty thing of all, which Hegel himself declares is pure being. The compulsion to move on from this only has its basis in the fact that thought is already used to a more concrete being, a being more full of content, and thus cannot be satisfied with that meagre diet of pure being, in which only content in the abstract, but no determinate content, is thought; in the last analysis, then, what does not allow him to remain with that empty abstraction is only the fact that there really is a more rich being which is more full of content, and the fact that the thinking spirit itself is already such a being, thus the fact that it is not a necessity which lies in the concept itself, but rather a necessity which lies in the philosopher and which is imposed upon him by his memory (Schelling 1994, 138).

According to Schelling then, it is not the immanent logic of pure being that advances the logic but the mind of the philosopher who is unable to determine anything concrete in this utmost abstraction. Moreover, there is already a determinacy—a presupposition—at work in thought’s compulsion to move towards more concrete being. Lack of immanence and presupposed determination together undermine the force of presuppositionless thinking.

Schelling not only misunderstands Hegel’s argument but arguably distorts it (see Houlgate 2022, 77-78, 139-142, 154-155, 235). Unfortunately, this distortion has not only influenced thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Theodor W. Adorno, and Martin Heidegger—both directly and indirectly—but has also had significant repercussions for the broader reception and interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy.

That said, there are presuppositions in Hegel’s method of presuppositionless thinking—though these require a more nuanced articulation (see Houlgate 2022, 101-107). The central question is whether such nuanced accounts ultimately undermine the claim to presuppositionlessness or, paradoxically, reinforce it.

Four Layers of Presuppositions

What follows outlines four layers of presuppositions upon which the opening of Hegel’s Science of Logic arguably depends: (1) extra-philosophical preconditions, (2) historico-philosophical preconditions, (3) linguistic and intra-logical conditions, and (4) systemic presuppositions. These form a rough spectrum, ranging from the most innocuous to those that directly shape the development of the logic itself. The central claim of this inquiry is that, while most of these presuppositions are relatively benign, one layer remains operative in determining the logical content. A further question then arises: if this thesis holds, does it undermine the coherence of Hegel’s Logic?

Enabling Conditions: Extra-philosophical Preconditions

In the broadest sense, Hegel’s Logic does not emerge in a vacuum: it depends on social, cultural and institutional developments that make possible the understanding, motivation, and capacity to engage in speculative philosophy such as Hegel’s Logic. Importantly, however, such conditions do not predetermine how the logic unfolds or what may be discovered in the course of its development. Rather, they constitute the background that makes such an undertaking possible—what Richard Dien Winfield calls “enabling conditions” (Winfield 1989, 63, 87-88).

To illustrate, consider how the invention of the printing press was an “enabling condition” for the spread of scientific ideas during the Renaissance. The press did not determine the content of scientific discoveries, but it created the necessary social and technological environment for scientists to share, debate, and build upon their work. In a similar manner, the emergence of German Idealism itself depended on a host of extra-philosophical developments: the rise of the modern university system, the cultural authority of philosophy in post-Kantian Germany, and broader Enlightenment ideals of rational autonomy. These factors did not determine what Hegel would argue in the Logic, but they created the historical milieu in which such a speculative project could be meaningfully undertaken.

Intellectual Context: Historico-philosophical Preconditions

While the historico-philosophical layer might be considered a subset of enabling conditions, it merits distinct treatment given its close connection to the ongoing practice of speculative philosophy. This layer is indispensable for the formation of the philosopher’s skills and serves as a conduit between generations. The philosophical texts and traditions inherited by each generation constitute a progressive articulation of self-consciousness. These intellectual legacies not only elevate the present thinker by linking them to a broader historical discourse but are themselves sustained and renewed through ongoing philosophical engagement.

However, logically‐if not temporally—prior to the history of philosophy is the general activity of thought: its capacity to take interest in things, and its power to challenge established norms and institutions. Hegel explicitly acknowledges that critical thinking “is sparked by the interests of religion, of the State, of law, and of ethical life” (Hegel 1991, 48/§19A3). Thought’s first response is to immediate and practical matters. However, this then spurs on the critical engagement:

Thinking deprived what was positive of its power. Political constitutions fell victim to thought; religion was attacked by thought; firm religious notions that counted as totally genuine revelations were undermined, and in many minds the old faith was overthrown (Hegel 1991, 48/§19A3).

Yet this initial orientation gives rise to a deeper level of critical reflection. By what right does thought question established norms and institutions? How is it that thought becomes intensely invested in certain matters while overlooking others—perhaps those that should not have been forgotten? The examination into thought and its methods becomes, Hegel surmised, the defining concern of modern philosophy. This is exemplified in Descartes’ demand that philosophy must begin by doubting everything—and thus presupposing nothing—in order to establish a starting point free from the authority of the Church, tradition, or even common sense.

Descartes’ rejection of authority turns out, however, to be incomplete and provisional since he is more motivated, in Hegelian eyes, “to reach a starting point that is firm, rather than free” (Houlgate 2022, 102-3). Nonetheless, the drive for freedom is implicit in Descartes’ demand that philosophy begins with no presuppositions (see Houlgate 2022, 103).

With Kant, however, freedom of thought is advocated explicitly—reason is “set free from all authority” (Hegel 1991, 107/§60R). According to Hegel, this establishes a further point of departure for philosophy: modern metaphysics cannot take the freedom of thinking for granted and modern philosophy presupposes it.

From now on the principle of the independence of reason, of its absolute inward autonomy (Selbständigkeit), has to be regarded as the universal principle of philosophy, and as one of the assumptions (Vorurteile) of our times (Hegel 1991, 107/§60R).

However, Kant only establishes the principle of free thought, but he does not fully enact it. In fact, Hegel states he “leaves the categories and the usual method of cognition totally uncontested” (Hegel 1991, 106/§60R). To live up to the demand set by Kant, Hegel thinks, one must effectively apply the principle of independent, non-question begging thought to the method of philosophy, namely, to logic. Hegel’s own presuppositionless logic is therefore, following Houlgate, “made necessary by, and so presupposes, the historical development of philosophy from the Greeks, through Descartes, to Kant and the post-Kantians” (Houlgate 2022, 103).

The fact that Hegel’s speculative thinking has historical presuppositions does not, however, determine the development of the argument. The historical conditions—or presuppositions—make the speculative undertaking of logic necessary, but they do not set in advance what will emerge in the course of that logic. The historical presuppositions, as Houlgate puts it, “cannot govern the latter, since they require that whatever does emerge be determined by pure being alone” (Houlgate 2022, 104). Indeed, if there is a presupposition here that does set in advance the course of the logic, it is only that nothing sets the course of logic in advance; that whatever develops (if anything), freely follows from pure being alone.

But does this historical presupposition not make the contents of Hegel’s Logic contingent? And if it is contingent, could it have developed otherwise, if history had taken a different turn? Houlgate argues that while the Logic has a contingent historical ground, it does not make the logic itself contingent. “For Hegel, there is a rational necessity at work in history leading humanity from its primitive beginnings to full self-consciousness, so in that sense modern freedom, which makes speculative logic necessary, is not just a contingency” (Houlgate 2022, 104). Following Houlgate’s view, then, it is primarily a question whether or not the modern age is interested in freedom and self-criticism—at which point speculative logic simply arises or it does not.

If the modern age had not been interested in freedom and self-criticism, but had preferred the authority of tradition or of assumption, then speculative logic would still not have taken a different course; it would simply not have arisen at all. On the other hand, if the modern age had taken a slightly different form, with perhaps different states in the ascendancy, but had still been interested in freedom and self-criticism, there would still only be one way in which speculative logic could proceed: the way that is determined by the thought of pure being (Houlgate 2022, 104).

Now, the development of speculative logic may be understood more or less well, as Hegel’s revisions of both the Science of Logic and the Encyclopaedia Logic show, but Houlgate thinks that these do not show fundamentally different routes through speculative logic but rather demonstrate the difficulty, time and effort to properly understand the immanent development of being (see Houlgate 2022, 104).

In addition to the history of philosophy itself, Hegel notes that philosophy owes a debt to the empirical sciences—particularly the ones that rest on experience. Hegel understands empirical science to already go beyond what is contingently given in sensuous impressions in order to discover the necessary rationality at work in them through universal determinations, genus and species, laws and forms. As Hegel writes:

the experiential sciences carry with them the stimulus to vanquish the form in which the wealth of their content is offered only as something that is merely immediate and simply found, as a manifold of juxtaposition, and hence as something altogether contingent. They are stimulated to elevate this content to [the level of] necessity (Hegel 1991, 36/§12).

Empirical science does not halt at appearances or individual instances of perception but gather and elevate these under a schema or model. This in turn provokes investigation into the nature of these universal determinations, laws, forms, schemas and models themselves, thus going beyond these as merely given. As Hegel continues:

this stimulus pulls thinking out of its abstract universality, and out of the satisfaction that is only warranted implicitly; and it drives thinking on to develop itself by its own means (Hegel 1991, 36/§12).

The laws and models developed by empirical science upon the sensuous givens renders these mediated by universal determination and elevates their content by grasping the inherent rational necessity at work in them. But the same principle is applied to the laws themselves, whereby these too cannot be merely taken as given but must themselves undergo the same critical inquiry. Once this step is taken, in Hegel’s eyes, thinking has already stepped into speculation about its own laws and forms. What remains then is to make explicit this inquiry and to let it develop itself, no longer by sensuous or perceptual means, but purely by its own conceptual ones.

It is seen how the history of ideas and empirical science jointly cultivate the environment for the speculative thinking needed to undertake presuppositionless philosophy. In addition to these, however, there is the philosopher herself, as an individual, who must be educated and mentally equipped for the task at hand, “as it requires a trained ability at withdrawing into pure thought, holding onto it and moving within it” (Hegel 1991, 45/§19R). Hegel notes the importance of these in the ability to acquaint oneself with the universal principles at stake in one’s time, to give reasons for and against a position, to be able to give an “orderly” account of the matter at hand and give it a “serious” judgment (Hegel 2018, 5/§4). Above all, however, Hegel writes that education should facilitate a space of the serious examination and pursuit of a fulfilled life whereby it becomes possible not merely to reflect on the matter (die Sache) but also experience it:

the commencement of cultural education will first of all also have to carve out some space for the seriousness of a fulfilled life, which in turn leads one to the experience of the crux of the matter (die Erfahrung der Sache selbst), so that even when the seriousness of the concept does go into the depths of the crux of the matter (Hegel 2018, 5/$4).

Hegel also notes a certain acceleration in learning that increases with the development of human minded activity. What was once advanced theory that occupied adult minds become mere exercises, if not games, for future younger pupils. The individual increasingly reflects the entire human minded development within themselves—not literally, but as the contours of the total mental progression. “In this pedagogical progression, we recognize the history of the cultural formation of the world sketched in silhouette. This past existence has already become an acquired possession of the universal spirit; it constitutes the substance of the individual, or, his inorganic nature” (Hegel 2018, 18/§28). Much of this learning is cemented—or, internalized—within the individual as implicit or as habit, which is what allows for the further advancement of knowledge. For example, one must be skilled in language prior to appreciating the linguistic twists and turns—at times to their breaking point—latent in dialectical thinking.

More specifically, what matters most for the task of speculative logic is the ability to think abstractly. If one is unable to detach oneself from concrete reality and figurative imagery, then the abstract categories of speculative logic will prove to be impenetrable if not utterly meaningless. Hegel notes one of the chief difficulties when approaching philosophy is its abstractness:

The difficulty lies partly in the inability (which in-itself is just a lack of practice) to think abstractly, i. e., to hold on to pure thoughts and to move about in them. In our ordinary consciousness thoughts are affected by and united with the sensible and spiritual material with which we are familiar; and in thinking about something, in reflecting and arguing about it, we mix feelings, intuitions, and representations with thoughts (Hegel 1991, 27/§3R).

What makes philosophy, in large part, is precisely the ability to distill concepts from the otherwise concrete fusion that make the objects of ordinary experience. To use Hegel’s example, to state “The leaf is green” involves categories like being and singularity. The contents of pure thought, then, emerge as the result of being able to sift through real concrete objects and abstract away all sensuous and figurative elements.

Hegel notes a valuable aid in formal logic to train one’s ability to think abstractly. Through it, he writes, “we sharpen our wits; we learn to collect our thoughts, and to abstract. …in abstraction … the mind concentrates on one point, and we acquire in that way the habit of occupying ourselves with what is inward” (Hegel 1991, 52/§20A). Being able to assign an abstract proposition “A” to any content and perform work with that proposition in conjunction with others in order to derive meaningful conclusions through purely logical rules is an essential step in developing one’s mind for speculative thought. This activity of the mind to distinguish matters into discrete objects is given the name understanding (Verstand) by Hegel: “The activity of separating is the force and labor of the understanding, the most astonishing and the greatest of all the powers, or rather, which is the absolute power” (Hegel 2018, 20/§32).

However, fully self-critical speculative thought requires that the laws and rules of formal logic—indeed, its formality, which implies a fundamental difference between form and content—must be dispensed with. The “fixity” that characterizes thinking in formal logic—the static rules of inference and operators, the prevalence of the category of identity in propositions and simplistic, atomistic non-contradictory thought processes, etc.—turn out to be unquestioned assumptions where fully self-critical thinking is involved. In other words, speculative thought proper requires one to go beyond the activity of the understanding.

Now, there is an important nuance to the understanding and its role in the speculative logic. Hegel readily acknowledges the understanding plays an indispensable role in determining the categories of speculative logic, which means that the understanding cannot be entirely dispensed with or disregarded. But the understanding alone would reduce speculative thought to mere formality. Rather, then, the understanding is needed to make distinctions—to categorize; however, these distinctions cannot be held fast to in virtue of simply being established; these distinctions must be able to be dropped, as it were, should there be any logical development. This causes a tension of the understanding with itself. Houlgate explains this tension thus:

Before the start of speculative logic, understanding is thus in a complex and somewhat contradictory position. It is required by its own commitments to suspend its distinctions and to begin with pure being: for what makes such a suspension necessary is its own stress on freedom (as opposed to mere authority) and on proof and necessity (as opposed to contingent assumption). Understanding is thus led into speculative philosophy by holding to its commitments, and so being itself, as consistently as possible. Yet understanding is required, by holding consistently to its commitments, precisely to give up itself and its “fixity”. … By being consistently itself, therefore, understanding is required to cease being itself. Yet understanding gives up being itself precisely by being itself and doing what is characteristic of it, namely abstracting (in this case, from itself)(Houlgate 2022, 106).

The precise question of whether it is understanding that must let go, or whether some other mental activity intervenes, lies beyond the current scope of discussion. Suffice it to say, however, that such considerations are far from trivial in speculative thought, and that engaging with them properly requires a trained ability, informed by millennia of philosophical development, to abstract carefully—not only the contents of thought, but also their form.

Words and Meaning: Linguistic and Intra-logical Conditions

The linguistic and intra-logical layer further refines the scope introduced by the preceding layer of historical-philosophical preconditions by examining more closely the use of language in speculative thought—particularly in Hegel’s Logic—and the logical constraints involved. Language—particularly in the form of writing—is absolutely essential not only for the communication of philosophy but also for its creation, a point Hegel is acutely aware of.

In the first instance, Hegel notes that language generally enables logic. Logic, or the spiritual element, permeates entirely the natural human being in her behavior, ways of sensing, intuiting, desiring, needs and impulses, ways of representing, imagining and thinking. Logic—the nature of the human being— is expressed through language.

The forms of thought are first set out and stored in human language, and one can hardly be reminded often enough nowadays that thought is what differentiates the human being from the beast. In everything that the human being has interiorized, in everything that in some way or other has become for him a representation, in whatever he has made his own, there has language penetrated, and everything that he transforms into language and expresses in it contains a category, whether concealed, mixed, or well defined (Hegel 2010, 12/21.10).

Hegel further notes that language contains a set of logical expressions. Expressions specific for pure thought determinations, such as, for example, concept, essence and form, equality, identity and so on. However, he also thinks that certain forms of language have expressions better suited for philosophical inquiry. He notes that “categories should be expressed as substantives and verbs, and thus be stamped into objective form”, such that they can have the “further peculiarity of carrying, not just different meanings, but opposite ones, and in this one cannot fail to recognize the language’s speculative spirit” (Hegel 2010, 12/21.10). Words that are able to carry opposite meanings excel at revealing a feature of logic that is otherwise difficult to express, namely, dialectical development through conflict and contradiction. For example, the word “custom” can mean something special and unique, or something common and traditional; two meanings that are at odds. Or, to take another, the word “apology” can be a statement of regret or a defense and justification, as in the case of Plato’s Apology of Socrates.

Philosophical concepts need no special terminology, Hegel claims, and the introduction of foreign words are only made meaningful through habit. However, philosophy is enriched indirectly through the advance of culture and the sciences. In Hegel’s own time, the category force was dominant in physics but was already being developed with a more speculative edge through defining “a difference in which the different terms are inseparably bound together” (Hegel 2010, 13/21.11). However, being the study of nature, the relative stable reality of objects (which is perhaps not so stable in modern physics) could not give room to consider their terms in utmost generality, as is the case in the humanities.

While philosophy needs no special terminology, Hegel does recognize this comes with an overhead elsewhere, namely, in the distinguishing of terms from their ordinary to their philosophical use in order to gain new knowledge in what is essentially familiar. If all the terms of philosophy broadly exist, then philosophy must construct a special context that renders all its words in a way unfamiliar. This in turn requires a transition that indicates “the general features of the course that cognition goes through as it leaves familiar acquaintance behind, the essential moments in the relationship of scientific thought to this natural thought [that is, natural thought is unconscious or automatic thinking]” (Hegel 2010, 13/21.12, added insertion). Indeed, Hegel even acknowledges this as a “general idea” that is necessitated by the science of speculative thinking prior to the science itself (Hegel 2010, 13/21.12).

Hegel goes on to elaborate what distinguishes philosophical use of terms from their everyday use by describing the core of philosophy.

The indispensable foundation, the concept, the universal which is thought itself (provided that with the word “thought” one can abstract from figurative representation), cannot be regarded as just an indifferent form that attaches to a content. But these thoughts of all things natural and spiritual, even the substantial content, still contain a variety of determinacies and are still affected by the distinction of soul and body, of concept and reality relative to it; the profounder foundation is the soul standing on its own, the pure concept which is the innermost moment of the objects, their simple life pulse, just as it is of the subjective thinking of them. To bring to consciousness this logical nature that animates the spirit, that moves and works within it, this is the task (Hegel 2010, 17/21.15).

He then adds that an instinctive- and freely intelligent act is distinguished by whether or not it is performed consciously: “when the content that motivates a subject to action is drawn out of its immediate unity with the subject and is made to stand before it as an object” (Hegel 2010, 17/21.15). The categories normally do their work instinctively and in this regard are, when made aware of, variable and mutually confusing, affording the human minded activity only an only fragmentary and uncertain reality. It is the task of philosophy, Hegel claims, to purify the categories—to consider them in the purity of thought.

That a category can be purified must mean that it is of pure thought. While all concepts are in some respect nominally pure in virtue of being concepts, not all concepts are categories or thought-determinations. The concept of horse is not a category because, (1) it is not of pure thought but also, (2) it cannot contain all other concepts. The concept of being, on the other hand, is of pure thought and does contain all other concepts (albeit via dialectical development). There is no sense, then, in attempting to “purify” the concept of horse. But this presupposes one already has a fairly clear cut distinction of what counts as categories and what does not?

Hegel offers further clues: “what in ordinary reflection is, as content, at first separated from the form cannot in fact be in itself formless, devoid of determination; that it rather possesses form in it; indeed that it receives soul and substance from the form alone and that it is this form itself which is transformed into only the semblance of a content, hence also into the semblance of something external to this semblance” (Hegel 2010, 18-19/21.17). A category, then, must also instantiate its form as content. It this we could say that a category is being its form rather than just declaring it or being a mere signpost to it. The concept of a horse, then, (3) is not a category because its concept is only the externalization of horse, not its being or presence. The category of being at once instantiates its being; indeed, this is what it means to be being—to immediately be. In thinking being, there is its presence.

This conjunction of form and content, or what one could call the externalization and the presence, Hegel calls the fact [die Sache] – the concept of all things.

Now, there are of course many concepts just as there is a multitude of facts. But to this Hegel responds that any concept is also the concept. The concept is the “substantial foundation” of each concept, and what marks a concept off from the concept is the matter of what determinateness appears (and remains obscured) in the particular concept (which is to say that the difference between concept and concept is not a question of mere determinacy, since the latter is, strictly speaking, no less determinate).

The concept plays the pivotal role in furnishing meaning to the three points outlined above: (1) pure thought, (2) containment within all concepts and, (3) inseparability of externalization and presence, or form and content. But how is this form or structure itself established? Hegel strategy is to seriously consider all categories—and in effect, “candidates” for the concept—and understand that “the result can only be the demonstration of their finitude and of the untruth of their supposed being-for-itself, and that the concept is their truth” (Hegel 2010, 19/21.17).

As categories primarily appear to function instinctively and unconsciously in the human being, this fact must be attended to in the course of the examination:

inasmuch as the science of logic deals with the thought determinations that instinctively and unconsciously pervade our spirit everywhere – and remain non-objectified and unnoticed even when they enter language – it will also be a reconstruction of those determinations which reflection has already abstracted and fixed as subjective forms external to a material content (Hegel 2010, 19/21.17-18).

Hegel’s overall claim then is that categories are implicit in the human minded activity, many of which—if not all—are expressed and used in everyday, non-philosophical language and activity. The task of philosophy is to pick out these categories and view them, not in respect to each other or to sensuous reality and worldly perceptions—as they are usually regarded—but purely in their own light.

But all this still leaves one with a difficult conundrum. How does one sufficiently distinguish the philosophical use of a category from its non-philosophical? When does one know that a concept such as “difference” is used in its technical sense, or, conversely, when does one know for sure that the use of “opposition” does not evoke the technical category in a manner that inadvertently determines the content?

This question is not a question of language per say, that is, it is not an issue as to the meaning or meanings of a category, but with recognizing which meaning is being actualized in the logical development.

Consider some examples:

Pure being and pure nothing are therefore the same (Hegel 2010, 59/21.69).

Does “same” here presuppose or evoke the category identity (developed much later in the Doctrine of Essence)? Is identity here determining the categories being and nothing?

But the truth is just as much that they are not without distinction; it is rather that they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct… (Hegel 2010, 60/21.69).

Does “distinction” or “absolutely distinct” here refer to the category difference (also developed in Essence)? Is difference here involved determining the two categories at hand?

Hence being-in-itself is, first, negative reference to non-existence; it has otherness outside it and is opposed to it (Hegel 2010, 93/21.108).

Likewise, is “opposing” here dependent on the category opposition? Is it playing a role in determining something's being-in-itself?

Existence proceeds from becoming. It is the simple oneness of being and nothing (Hegel 2010, 83/21.97).

Does “oneness” here refer to the category of the one, developed later in the Doctrine of Being? Is it engaged here in any way?

There are many more such instances throughout the Logic where one could pose similar questions. The main points, however, are the same: Are the terms here connected to their categories? If so, are they involved in determining the actual category at hand? Or are they merely expressing what, in the movement of thought, has already taken place? But how can there be any inseparability between language and concepts here in the logical development if the latter only comes to be through the former? Moreover, explicitness is a crucial cornerstone in Hegel’s logic, such that it would be disingenuous to the programme of presuppositionless thinking to rely on implied notions to carry the logic forward.

Given that Hegel recognizes all categories as embedded in human language and unconsciously at work within it, the terms in question must be bound to their respective categories. The issue, then, is whether they also participate in the determination of the present development. If they do not, we would have to assume a separation between language and concepts—such that one could advance without the other. But this seems untenable: not because it would be in tension with presuppositionless thinking, but because presuppositionless thinking already undermines the very possibility of such a separation; positing it would itself amount to the introduction of an unaccounted-for logical structure.

It appears that the categories evoked in the course of the present logical development must themselves play a role in determining the matter. One might formulate this more innocuously by saying that the matter determines itself through what is immediately implied in these notions. Yet the difficulty arises from the fact that some categories actively participate in the present development, and the question remains: How can one know whether these terms define the matter in a way that does not presuppose their later logical development? How does one know to grasp enough of these terms without externally determining the matter at hand? For otherwise, the logic would risk becoming viciously circular or contain invalid presuppositions.

What undermines this apparently linguistic concern is the fact that Hegel already stated that the categories are implicit in the human minded activity, such that the question becomes not a linguistic but a logical one: How is it possible for a range of categories, in their implicit use, to explicate one particular category? Indeed, as was seen with the examples above, a community of categories are involved in the explication of one particular one.

But this community, as it were, is alone not sufficient, since it is not a just that the present category is determined by its supportive categories in a one-way direction – were that the case then the present category would just be a mere product of a process external to it, tantamount to a Kantian analytic judgment. The present category must also reflect back at its supportive categories, validate their employment and refine them if necessary. This means that it is fruitless to trace the causal arrow from one to the other since the matter occurs in both directions at once.

To this end, there seems to be an intelligibility at work in cognizing the present category as that category, navigating and amending the nexus of supportive, descriptive categories that serve to define it—but this intelligibility itself unfolds within a set of constraints imposed by certain special systemic presuppositions operative in the activity itself.

Creative Constraints: Systemic Presuppositions

While the beginning of Hegel’s Science of Logic is immediate and simple, this simplicity is far from obvious and demands, in addition to noted sociocultural, historical, philosophical and linguistic conditions, a set of presupposed constraints that validate the activity of thought. Without these, the development (should there be any) would not be a science of logic so much as an idiosyncratic bricolage. Robb Dunphy outlines this concern well:

Hegel’s claim is that the results of his science of logic have been proved to be the true fundamental determinations of thought (and indeed, of being), but if it should turn out that there is no good reason to agree with him that such a proof should begin from the concept of pure being, if the beginning is merely arbitrary, then it would seem that this claim to have provided a proof is undermined since it would be equally legitimate to begin with some other concept and derive an alternative system of logic from there with perhaps just as good a claim to capturing the true structure of thought. Such concerns appear to threaten not only the beginning of Hegel’s logic but also the entire systematic, demonstrative science since it is derived from this concept (Dunphy 2023, 10).

Dunphy’s work focuses on the arguments in the introductory segments of the Logic and their relation to the skeptical Agrippan modes that establish the beginning of the logical development—pure being. In these introductory essays Hegel notes a series of problems with earlier metaphysical projects and employs a series of skeptical tactics to undermine them and, by the same token, strengthen his own position by showing how his project is not only immune to the skeptical attacks but undermines the skeptical approach itself. As Dunphy writes, “The final limitation that Hegel perceived in Pyrrhonian Scepticism was that its criticisms did not gain purchase on speculative philosophical thought but target only all of the dogmatic presuppositions of ordinary thought. This final issue, I take it, is obviously no problem here, since Hegel’s idea of a completed scepticism is precisely of a scepticism which would target all of the presuppositions of ordinary thought in order to necessitate the beginning of a project of speculative logic which, Hegel continues to think, will prove immune to Sceptical criticism” (Dunphy 2023, 193).

The problems with ancient Pyrrhonian skepticism, as Hegel saw it, was that it, first, necessitated continual external import (it did not derive the judgments it criticized, but found them elsewhere), and, second, that its resolution of “suspending judgment” amounted to a dogmatic position. As Dunphy puts it, “The alternatives of the dilemma characteristic of Agrippan problems are both rejected here as gaining no purchase on a philosophical thinking that grasps the nature of reality as encompassing and uniting the determinations which the Sceptic would oppose to one another in order to argue that the cases for them are equally arbitrary” (Dunphy 2023, 62). Hegel’s own method of speculative thought recognized that the one-sided, or finite, conceptions—the ones that fuel skeptical critique—can be dialectically resolved and sublated in order to develop a positive insight without being dogmatic.

Speculative thinking therefore could be seen as a further development of skepticism in that it does develop its own content whilst also being more self-critical than skepticism; indeed, it is because speculative thought explicitly develops its own content that it avoids falling prey to dogma. Not being outside the subject matter it critiques, speculative thought is not danger of being an ossified formality that would be open to a skeptical rebuttal.

Skepticism, however, continues to be an operative moment throughout the development of the argument, particularly in disinfecting, as it were, the concepts and categories, that is, ensuring that not only is the beginning free from skeptical rebuttals but that the further developments are as well. This skepticism as a negative moment of the overall speculative development fuse together into a set of developmental presuppositions. These presuppositions are that the content is self-developed, that the form does not differ from the content (or the method from its subject matter), and that any ideas and notions extraneous to the matter at hand is suspended.

These presuppositions do not determine the content as much as they actively ensure that the content is left to determine itself; to let it develop itself, giving up, as Houlgate writes, “one’s own fixed position as the active subject who thinks and makes judgments about things, and letting one’s thought be guided by the movement of being itself. … giving up the idea that in logic there is a given, settled or ‘fixed’ subject-matter to think about, and letting that subject-matter emerge from an indeterminate starting point” (Houlgate 2022, 69). Nevertheless, this does not elucidate the questions of implied intelligibility and to which extent a category in its implicit, unjustified use is employed without determining the content at hand.

Perhaps it is the very fact that there are implied categories which are needed to make explicit—and through which it may determine itself—the category at hand, which constitutes the systematic presupposition. A category cannot merely develop through itself discursively; a network of supporting, if unwarranted, categories are necessary for this category’s conceptual development.

If it is granted that a community of terms are required, there is equally required a criterion to distinguish the supporting cast from the main act; the solidified and immediately granted sense that the members of the conceptual community provides and the creation that systematizes a working thread. What is this criterion?

Houlgate speaks of a double perspective that one must hold in going through Hegel’s speculative logic: “Logic thus requires us to adopt a double perspective on the categories: we are not to eliminate our familiar conceptions of them altogether, but to preserve these conceptions while keeping them at bay and not allowing them to determine the course of logic. In this sense, the ‘familiar forms of thought’ must be regarded as ‘a necessary condition’ and ‘a presupposition to be gratefully acknowledged’ in free, presuppositionless logic” (Houlgate 2022, 102).

Anton Friedrich Koch provides a different account of this double perspective in terms of “foreground-” and “background logic”, pure thinking and external logical reflexion, introduced in order to save the conception of pure being from the contradiction that it is both mediated and immediate, and indeterminate and determined. Following his account, pure being is indeterminate and immediate in pure thought, the foreground-logical sense; however, it is determined and mediated for Hegel and us, the background-logical sense. But now that the difference is established, how is it bridged? Koch asks the important question: “How, then, is being conceived, not by us, but by pure thought? It is supposed to be the content of the first theorem, or, more cautiously speaking, the quasi-theorem of foreground logic, but in its indeterminacy and emptiness it is completely unarticulated, thus possessing no propositional or predicative form, and thus remains below the minimum structure that Wittgenstein nevertheless still attributes to the general propositional form (‘It is such and such’)” (Koch 2018, 49, trans. by F.N.). Is it that the explicit presupposes the implicit? What is made into propositional form is essentially some non-propositional element that has been remade? But the matter at hand is nothing more than pure thought, so how can pure thinking be of anything non-propositional?

Houlgate does not agree with Koch’s account, stating that, rather than two distinct logics, speculative logic requires there to be one thinking—our own. But that this single thinking has two perspectives on the categories, which becomes itself pure and presuppositionless by “(a) employing familiar words and concepts to bring to mind pure categories, including pure being, and (b) at the same time keeping those pure categories themselves free of all familiar, presupposed connotations” (Houlgate 2022, 338-9).

Whether it is Houlgate’s double perspective or Koch’s front-and-back logics, do they not demand a principle through which to distinguish what belongs merely to the rough conceptions and what belongs purely to the explicit development; what belongs to our grip of the matter and the matter’s own release? It echoes the Kantian debate on whether the thing in itself exists in an entirely separate world or whether it is an inaccessible aspect of the world.

Jacques Derrida pushes to extreme the fact that a concept is not coherent through itself but only through a network of conceptual differences. Meaning is intentionally deferred into the next term. Next becomes hereby the possibility of thought. He writes:

The first consequence to be drawn from this is that the signified concept is never present in and of itself, in a sufficient presence that would refer only to itself. Essentially and lawfully, every concept is inscribed in a chain or in a system within which it refers to the other, to other concepts, by means of the systematic play of differences. Such a play, différance, is thus no longer simply a concept, but rather the possibility of conceptuality. of a conceptual process and system in general (Derrida 1982, 11).

He is careful to qualify that this movement into the next does not presuppose that the next is there a priori, before the stepping thought or a prior cause whose effect would be this conceptualizing. As Derrida confirms, “This does not mean that the différance that produces differences is somehow before them, in a simple and unmodified—in-different—present. Différance is the non-full, non-simple, structured and differentiating origin of differences. Thus, the name ‘origin’ no longer suits it” (Derrida 1982, 11).

If the criterion is différance, then intelligibility is deferred into the next concept. This means that, while they produce empty pockets, the terms are not empty handed; more precisely, concepts are immediately intelligible in virtue of their given implicit determinateness—but it is their explicit determination that could be said to point the matter forward (or backward). But here an ambiguity rises: for it could equally be determined that it is the implicit determinateness that actively motions forward while the explicit is merely the resulting and passive sign (following Koch, foreground-logic and background-logic, respectively).

Leaving this ambiguous matter aside, there remains a question with différance as a possible way forward: how is validation possible with différance? Reasoning about a matter requires taking stock of the development, and that means the terms hitherto developed must be seen in a backwards light. Thought may already be connecting in the system yielded through différance; but why would this occur? One could evoke the Doctrine of Essence where difference resolves into identity in virtue of two differing elements that are the same, namely, their difference, or that one difference is no more or less difference than an another—qua difference they are identical. But this would be too limiting to the role différance is meant to play. What Derrida appears to have in mind is negativity, not mere negation. The unity of differences in différance do not merely collapse but must short-circuit the context they have generated. The foreground- and background logics cannot stay apart; the rough and the pristine perspectives bleed into one another; form and content, context and entities, cannot in pure thinking stay apart anymore than presuppositionless thinking can start from determinacy. This unity must be a singularity in order to negate all difference and fashions an intelligibility that is its own. In this regard, différance approximates moments of particularity and singularity of the concept.

Does this shed light on the difficulties or does it obscure them? Is the criterion simply that which develops through an infinite play, but how then can it ward the sceptics’ accusations of arbitrariness? Perhaps a hint is left in the negativity of différance, namely, that thought did not begin at the beginning but at the juncture of incompatibility of the universal and the singular.

Conclusion: Presuppositionlessness as a Discipline

If Schelling’s worry is that a hidden “real being” smuggles content into Hegel’s start, the foregoing analysis suggests a different picture. The Logic does not begin without conditions; it begins by converting its unavoidable conditions into norms that discipline thinking. The extra-philosophical and historico-philosophical layers enable the project without steering it. The linguistic and intra-logical layer supplies the very medium in which categories can be brought to mind. And the “systemic” layer articulates the rules by which that medium is policed: the content must develop itself; method may not float free of its subject-matter; and what is merely familiar must be kept in view yet kept at bay.

On this view, “presuppositionless” names not an absence of conditions but the presence of creative constraints that guard against arbitrariness without predetermining results. The beginning with pure being is thus neither a leap from nowhere nor a covert appeal to a thicker ontology; it is a practiced abstention from extraneous import that lets the first category test the sufficiency of our habits of understanding. The “double perspective” captures this: we inevitably employ ordinary words and tacit conceptual associations to make pure categories thinkable, even as we forbid those associations from dictating the order or content of the development.

This also clarifies how the implicit “community” of supporting terms functions. Their role is heuristic, not legislative. They assist recognition and articulation, but the validity of any step is conferred only by the immanent pressure of the category presently at issue&mdah;by what it proves itself to be when thought is not allowed to help itself to background theses. In this sense, retroactive necessity—the way later moments illuminate and justify earlier ones—does not undermine the start; it is how a self-grounding science shows, after the fact, that no external ground was smuggled in.

Koch’s foreground/background split and Derrida’s différance sharpen the difficulty, but they also help name the work the reader must do. Hegel’s beginning is not a datum but a task: to let the minimal say more than we assume it can, and to accept that intelligibility in logic arrives both prospectively (as the next category becomes thinkable) and retrospectively (as the path discloses its necessity). The criterion is not a prior metric imported from outside; it is the unfolding identity of content and method—exhibited in the category’s capacity to negate its one-sidedness and carry us forward without external prompting. The ultimate nature of this criterion can only be shown in the fullness of its development, but as argued above, its contours already appear in the structure of the concept.

Thus the systemic presuppositions, far from refuting presuppositionlessness, are its very choreography. They ward off arbitrariness (Schelling’s charge) by refusing extra-logical stage directions and by demanding that each determination justify itself in the very steps it sets in motion. If a weakness remains, it is not that the beginning is surreptitiously thick, but that the discipline it requires can lapse: the familiar can sneak back in as silent premise. That risk is real—and intrinsic to a logic written in living language—but the remedy is the same discipline the project prescribes. Under that discipline, thought proves itself to be self-correcting reason.

In short: Hegel’s claim is coherent when read as a methodological vow rather than a metaphysical boast. The Logic begins without presupposed content because it binds itself, from the first step, to constraints that allow only immanent reason to freely decide what comes next. Whether one takes this as vindication or invitation, the consequence is the same: the seriousness of the beginning is measured by our willingness to practice its rigor.

Bibliography

Authors
Filip Niklas (2025)