286 TELOS

Fortunately, my paper leaves a long trail of unexamined assertions,

intriguing enough for further efforts. It doesn't make the obscure key concepts
of transcendental phenomenology most obvious and thus unappealing.

A REINTERPRETATION OF BEING
IN HEGEL'S SCIENCE OF LOGIC
by
Ben Mijuskovic
Hegel begins his Science of Logic (1812-1816) by proclaiming that "Being
indeterminate immediacy, is Nothing" and yet, that "Nothing is (or does exist)".
From which he immediately concludes: "Pure Being and pure Nothing are, then,
the Same" (5c. Log., pp. 94-95x). As William Wallace remarks, in his article on
Hegel in the Encyclopedia Britannica, the proposition that being and not being
are thus declared to be identical proved to be "to most people a stumbling-block
at the very door of "the" [Hegelian] system".
It has been traditional to interpret Hegel's meaning in these passages as
suggesting the following: Being is a word; as a mere concept, devoid of
determinacy and empty of meaning, it is just an empty word. In this sense Being
is nothing — but a word. On the other hand, Nothing is also a word, and as such
it is something, a word — just as Being is a concept. In a sense then Being and
Nothing are again the same; and since they are the same they are
interchangeable. Furthermore, the fact of their interchangeability testifies to a
"movement" of thought wherein Becoming is generated (p. 95) and the result is
that Something determinate is posited over and against Nothing (p. 95).
This is the way in which Hegel is generally interpreted to begin his work.
As a beginning it has been criticized by subsequent philosophers as an attempt to
generate existence from pure thought, to create a world of objects from a world
of ideas. It is this view of Hegel which has caricatured him as the "arm-chair"
philosopher par excellence, as the thinker enclosed in his study, who "deduces"
the external world of science and culture through the sheer process of his
thought. Existentialism, since Kierkegaard, has been especially intolerant of this
method of constructing reality, and later philosophers, such as Heidegger, to
take but one example, have seen fit to take every available opportunity in
attacking the Hegelian conception of an ontological and metaphysical logic.
Thus, for instance, one needs only to read such a work as Heidegger's An
Introduction to Metaphysics in order to discover a basic and general
dissatisfaction with the Hegelian program. "Of course, we can, seemingly with
great astuteness and perspicacity, revive the old familiar argument to the effect
that 'being' is the most universal of concepts, that it covers anything and
everything, even the nothing which also, in the sense that it is thought or
spoken, 'is' something. Beyond the domain of this most universal concept
'being', there is, in the strictest sense of the word, nothing more, on the basis of
References are to Hegel's Science of Logic, trans. Johnson and Struthers (Allen and Unwin,
1951).
 Notes 287
which being itself could be more closely determined. The concept of being is an
ultimate. Moreover, there is a law of logic that says: the more comprehensive a
concept is — and what could be more comprehensive than the concept of
'being'? — the more indeterminate and empty is its content". 2
This tendency to interpret Hegel's Logic as starting with a mere triad of
words, of empty concepts, of abstract language, is symtomatic of the reaction to
"Hegelian". Thus, even generally competent writers on Existentialism begin by
stressing the complete opposition of Hegelianism to Existentialism; or, to put it
in the more fashionable language of an opposition of principles, I suppose these
authors would say that whereas in Hegel essence precedes existence in
Existentialism existence precedes essence. "The 'logic' of Hegel 'moves' in its
ponderous way from being and essence to actuality and existence — or, rather,
from being and essence, through existence, to the higher synthesis of both in
Mind (Geist) or Concept (Begriff). But . . . the whole notion of starting with
'pure being' and of moving from it to existence is absurd. Out of pure logic, pure
thought, can come no movement of any sort, for movement implies change,
time, nonbeing. Least of all can pure thought produce the movement of
emergence into actuality, into the hard, resistant, senseless fact of what is
forever distinct from the conveniently definable nature of what might be. The
Hegelian play with essence is a pompous, professorial game, great in pretensions
but despicably trivial in its basic reality".3
William Barret, in his book, Irrational Man, seems to share the same
prejudice. "Hegel's peculiar offence [against philosophy] lay not in following
the tradition by leaving existence out of his system, but rather in the way in
which he tried to bring it in, having begun by excluding it. At law, I suppose,
this would come under the heading of a compound felony. All his philosophical
predecessors, or nearly all of them, had committed the theft, but poor Hegel was
caught in the act of trying to restore the misappropriated article. The means he
chose were most unfortunate; he tried to bring back existence through logic.
Reason become omnipotent, would generate existence out of itself! Even here,
Hegel was not really flying in the face of tradition, as it might seem; he was only
giving a more audacious expression to the overinflation of reason and its powers
that had been the peculiar professional deformation of almost all earlier
philosophers. This conjuring up of existence, like a rabbit out of a hat, Hegel
accomplished by means of his famous dialectic . . . We begin, says Hegel, with
the concept of Being, a pure empty concept without existence; this begets its
opposite, Nothing, and out of the pair comes the mediating and reconciling
concept that is the synthesis of both. This process goes on until at the proper
stage of the dialectic we reach the level of Reality, which is to say Existence.
2
M. Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics (Yale 1959); p. 40. Cf. also: p. 75, 76,
78-79,93, 122, 178-180, 187 ff.
Heidegger, of course, believes the very opposite to be true. Being, according to
Heidegger, is the fullest and most determinate concept wherein truth resides; and aletheia or
truth,
3
is the unconcealment of being.
M. Grene, Introduction to Existentialism (Chicago, 1958); p. 3. But that Hegel was well
aware of this possible line of criticism is evident from his discussion of the objections against
Proclus {Hist, of Phil., II, p. 437). References are to Hegel's Lectures on the History of
Philosophy, trans. Haldane and Simson (Macmillan, 1955).
288 TELOS
The details of the derivation we need not go into here; what concerns us is the
general structure of Hegel's argument, through which thought begets
existence".4
The thesis that 1 want to argue in this paper is that Hegel does not initiate
the Logic with Being as a mere empty word or concept but rather that the term
represents for him a conception of God which can be discovered in various
incipient and undeveloped forms in such views as the Eleatic's Being (Hist, of
Phil.,1, p. 239-240, 243-25 3; 5c. Log., I, p. 101); Socrates'Good (Hist, of Phil. I,
pp. 385-386,; II, 139); the Stoic's Something; Plotinus' One (Hist, of Phil., II,
407, 410-411, 413); Philo's God ( Hist, of Phil., II, p. 413); Anselm's
Ontological Proof (Hist, of Phil., Ill, pp. 62-65; Sc. Log., I, p. 98-102); and
Spinoza's Substance (Hist, of Phil.Ill, 156 ff; Sc. Log., I, p. 96). 5 Thus, unless
such an interpretation as the one I am suggesting is accepted I think it is difficult
to understand why Hegel no sooner discusses Being, Nothing, and Becoming, in
three short paragraphs (Sc. Log., pp. 94-95), than he next launches into a long
explanatory note (pp. 95-102), in which he points out that the "simple idea of
pure Being was first enunciated by the Eleatics, as the Absolute and as the sole
truth; especially by Parmendies" (p. 95). On the very next page, still continuing
Observation I, Hegel compares the "abstract pantheism of the Eleatics", in its
"essentials" to the Pantheism of Spinoza (see also: Sc. Log., I, 174; cf. Hist. of
Phil., Ill, 157-158). All this, as I say, would be quite puzzling, if we were to
interpret Being as signifying merely an empty word. But even more mysterious
would be Hegel's long discussion of the ontological proof, and his criticism of
the Kantian objection that existence is not a predicate. Thus, according to
Hegel's representation of Kant, for Kant: "the concept of God is distinct from
his existence, and I can no more 'extract' the existence of God from his concept
than I can get the actual existence of one hundred Thalers from their potential
existence; now the ontological proof is supposed to consist in this extraction of
the existence of God from his concept. But if it is correct that concept is not the
same as being, it is truer still that God is not the same as one hundred Thalers or
other finite things. [But, argues Hegel] it is the definition of finite things that
with them concept and being, concept and reality, soul and body, are different
and separable . . . while it is just the abstract definition of God that with him
concept and being are unseparated and inseparable. The true [i.e., Hegelian]
critique of the Categories and of Reason consists precisely in explaining this
difference to cognition, and in preventing it from applying to God the
determinations and relations of the finite".6
4
W. Barret, Irrational Man (Anchor, 1962) pp. 159-160.
5
Nietzsche does not make the interpretational error I am criticizing. Indeed he complains
that that "which is last, thinnest, and emptiest is put fiist", as the concept of God is,
through "the brain afflictions of sick web-spinners" (from the Twilight of the Idols in the
Portable Nietzsche, trans., by Walter Kaufman [Viking, 1954], pp. 481-482). I think it is
clear that Nietzsche has Hegel in mind in this passage.
^Science of Logic, I, 102. Cf., Hist, of Phil., III, 65-66, where Hegel again defends Anselm's
proof against Kant, and again in relation to the concept of the infinite. The fact that Hegel
devotes seven pages to Anselm (while Thomas is dismissed in one), more space than to any
other Medieval thinker, is similarly a reliable clue of the respect in which Hegel holds
Anselm.
 Notes 289
In other words, Hegel is here contending that in God, and in God alone,
existence and essence are identical; and Hegel emphasizes the ontological
uniqueness of God by stressing that God alone is infinite.7
Thus, I would argue that when Hegel speaks of Being, in his beginning
passages of the Logic (p. 94), he has something in mind rather similar to
Anselm's conception of God as that "being than which none greater can be
conceived".
Similarly, Hegel stresses the immediacy of Being as its essential
characteristic and it is a classic feature of the ontological argument that in God
existence is immediately apprehended (rather than discursively comprehended).8
Thus, for example, in Plato's Republic, the Good is said to be grasped by an
immediate act of intellectual intuition and its apprehension is compared to a
direct act of vision, as in seeing the sun, for instance ( Rep., VI, 502 c ff). In like
fashion, Cicero holds that knowledge of God is innate and other Stoics, who
insist on a consensus gentium, also rest their argument, in its ultimate analysis,
on the assumption that God is an object of immediate knowledge.9 Plotinus'
One is also just as obviously an object of direct contact, said to be knowable
only by a mystical fusion of knower and known, subject and object, and
described by Plotinus by the term ecstasy (Hist, of Phil., II, 408, 412).
But then, of course, one wants to know in what sense Hegel intends that
Being and Nothing are identical if indeed by Being Hegel means God. Again,
however, the answer is to be found in the history of ideas. The Good, according
to Plato, is non-Being in the sense that it is beyond Being and Truth (Republic,
VI, 509, b; cf., Hist, of Phil., II, 422; III 63-64). By characterizing it in this
manner, Plato clearly intends that the Good cannot be described in human
terms, not discursively — and in this sense nothing can be said of it. 10
By the same token, the Stoics held that the most general term is something
and that in some sense it is beyond existence. "The genus that which exists is
general, and has no term superior to it . . . Certain of the Stoics regard the
primary genus as even beyond that which exists . . . and call it the
something..." 1 1 "The term something is a more general one than that of
reality, for reality can be used only of incorporeal entities, while the genus
something includes incorporeals . . ," 1 2
With Philo of Judea, the term something takes on a technical significance
and comes to imply the unknowability and unnamability of God. Drawing upon
the Stoic distinction of something, Philo declares that "Manna means something,
and that this is the most generic of all terms" (Philo, SVF II, 334). But what
7
In a similar fashion, both Anselm and Descartes learned to amend their first versions of
their ontological proofs by insisting that to God alone necessary existence pertains. Cf., C.
Hartshorne and W. Reese, Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago, 1953); pp. 96-98, 134.
8
Hist. of Phil,\, p. 240. cf. H.A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (Meridian, 1958), I, p.
154 ff.
9
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I, 17, Sect. 44-45; II, 4, Sect. 12. Cf. Hist, of Phil., I, p. 386;
III, p. 242.
10
Cf. A.E. Taylor, Plato: The Man and His Work (Meridian, 1960); p. 231.
11
J . von Arnim, Stoicorum verterum fragmenta (Leipzig, 1905-24) Seneca, II, 332.
12
Ibid., Alexander Aphrodisias, II, 329.
290 TELOS
Philo means is that Manna, i.e., God, being the highest genus, has within Him no
distinction of genus and species, for only that which is between the highest
genus and the ultimate species has within it the distinction of genus and species,
being the genus of that which is below it and the species of that which is above
it. But since God is the highest genus He has no distinction of genus and species,
that is, He belongs to no class and hence we do not know what He is but only
that He is. Philo is thus drawing on the Stoic teaching that the term something is
the most generic term of all and he concludes that since God has no genus or
species, we cannot know his essence, i.e., He is unknowable and unnamable.13
This conception of God was a landmark in the history of ideas in virtue of the
explicitness of its formulation. No previous philosopher had achieved such
precision in expressing the incomprehensibility and ineffability of God. Hegel,
who was, of course, well versed in this historic tradition, makes it quite clear
that for him Philo exemplifies the culmination of his predecessors. And he
begins his discussion of Philo by emphasizing the point we have just made above,
namely that God's existence can be known, but not what he is. "God cannot be
discerned by the eye of the soul; the soul can only know that He is, and not
what He is . . . But the all is likewise, as with Parmenides, the abstract, because it
is only substance, which remains empty beside that which fills it . . . God himself
in contrast to this, as the One, as such, is Pure Being (to on) only — an
expression which Plato also used . . . For as this Being God is only abstract
existence, or only His own Notion; and it is quite true that the soul cannot
perceive what this Being is, since it is really only an empty abstraction. What can
be perceived is that pure existence is only an abstraction, and consequently a
nothing, and not the true God. Of God as the One it may therefore be said that
the only thing perceived is that He does exist". 14
For Hegel, this is, of course, the mere beginning of philosophy. It is not
knowledge of the "true God", the Absolute, for Philo's conception of God
remains an empty abstraction. But as such, it is not merely an empty word,
either, for it has deep religious significance. Thus, for example, Hegel argues that
Socrates' contribution to thought, through his conception of the Good, was to
teach others the subjective feeling of morality and freedom. Intellectually
although the idea of the Good may have been an abstraction it nevertheless had
a great emotional significance (Hist, of Phil., p. 384 ff). Similarly, although Philo
insists that we cannot know the essence of God, it would never thereby follow
for him that the term God has no significance. Quite the contrary; although it
may be conceptually an abstract term it is yet subjectively the most
determinately significant expression. The Good of Plato and the Unmoved
Mover of Aristotle are objects of desire, whether they are knowable in their
natures or not. And so is the God of Philo.
This brings me to a second related interpretation regarding the significance
of the concept Nothing in Hegel's Logic and this exegesis views it within the
context of the "creation" of the world by God. Beginning with Philo, we find
13
H.A. Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and
Islam (Harvard, 1962); pp. 109 ff. Cf. Hegel, Hist, of Phil., p. 394; ". . . the First is the
abstract, the unknown, the nameless".
14
Hist. of Phil., II, p p . 3 9 0 - 3 9 1 .
 Notes 291
that: "As God is Being, so the essence of matter is non-being; it is not nothing,
as when we say that God created the world out of nothing, for non-being, the
opposite of Being, is itself a positive, and as good as Being. It exists, insofar as
there is placed within it resemblance to implicit truth. Philo had the true
perception that the opposite of Being is just as positive as Being. If this seems
absurd to anyone, he need only be reminded that really when we posit Being,
the negative of Being is thinking — which is something very positive. But the
next step, the notion of this opposition, and the passing of Being into non-being
is not to be found in Philo". 15
For Hegel, Philo is on the right track; but he is far from expressing the
essential truth. Hence Philo's non-being only has "within it a resemblance to
implicit truth". But Philo's chief failure is to neglect the "opposition", "the
passing of Being into non-being". What is at stake here, I believe, and this is
made clearer in the Logic, is the "creation" of the world through God. Being and
Nothing are not only logically implicative but ontologically as well. Their
identity necessarily, essentially, generates a movement which results in the
creation of the world — in Becoming. "Pure Being and pure Nothing are, then,
the same; the truth is, not either Being or Nothing, but that Being — not passes
- but has passed over into Nothing, and Nothing into a Being."16
Being and Nothing immediately pass into each other, into their opposites
(ibid.). In this sense, creation is not creation in time. Popular opinions, says
Hegel, conceive Being and Nothing as held apart in time (the world as created in
time); and in this their falsity lies. Only if Being and Nothing are conceived in
their abstraction can their truth be grasped and their Becoming be truly posited.
"[In the popular mind] Being and Nothing are held apart in Time; they are
presented as alternating in time, and they are not thought in their abstraction,
and therefore not thought in such a manner as makes them in and for themselves
the same." 17
The latter phrase represents true "creation". Being, as indeterminate
immediacy (i.e., God) is essentially opposed to determinate Being, i.e., to
existent Quality, which is immediate determinancy. Being in general, however, in
passing over into Determinate Being "transcends itself as finite Being and passes
over into the infinite relation of Being to itself", namely Being for Self, or
infinite, free, independent Being, the Absolute, the concrete Universal, God both
constituting and knowing the world (p. 93). In this sense then the world is
"created" ex nihilo (p. 96). This, in Hegelian logico-metaphysical language, is the
essential truth which Christianity has captured in its spiritual significance. "In
rejecting the proposition that nothing comes out of nothing, later (chiefly
Christian) metaphysics asserted the transition of Nothing into Being; however
synthetically or merely imaginatively this proposition was taken, even the least
complete union contains a point where Being and Nothing coincide and their
distinction vanishes."18
What makes Hegel's utterances so difficult to interpret is that he uses
15
fbid.,p. 393.
16
Sc. Logic, I, p. 95.
17
Ibid., I, p. 96.
18
Ibid.
292 TELOS
"Being" in two entirely different senses; in one sense he clearly intends it to
mean the traditional conception of God, immediate, indeterminate, simple19 —
of this conception of Being he says it is an "empty thought" (Sc. Log. I, 94). In
this sense, Being is God, which passes into Nothing and in movement becomes
Something; it is a conception of Being which he relates to his discussion of
creation and the ontological argument and defends against Kant's criticism. For
Hegel, it is a sense in which Being reflects the conception of God from
Parmenides until the time of Spinoza. For only on this interpretation can we
understand Hegel's statement that: ". . . we must consider the Eleatic's One and
Being as the first step in the knowledge of Thought; [Thale's] water and similar
material principles are indeed intended for the Universal, but are material and
therefore not pure thought." 20
According to Hegel, the importance and value of these early moves in
philosophy were that they tended in the direction of true philosophy, namely
Idealism. In so far as the Eleatics, Plato, Aristotle, Philo, Plotinus, Proclus, etc.,
posited thought as the essential constituent of reality they furthered the
movement of thought toward its self-realization. By proclaiming that Being, or
God, is thought they initiated the first step toward the discovery that when God
becomes self-conscious the finite returns into the infinite. "The proposition that
the finite is of ideal nature constitutes Idealism. In philosophy idealism consists
of nothing else than the recognition that the finite has no veritable being.
Essentially every philosophy is an idealism, or at least has idealism for its
principle, and the question then is only how far it is actually carried through.
This is as true of philosophy as of religion; for religion equally with philosophy
refuses to recognize in finitude a veritable being, or something ultimate and
absolute, or non-posited, uncreated, and eternal." 21
But there is another and quite opposed meaning of Being in Hegel, for
Being also means Existence. Obviously the precedent here is Aristotle's twin
conception of Being as set forth in the Metaphysics. For in the Metaphysics
Aristotle discusses both a) Being qua Being and b) Being as the object of
knowledge in theology. In relation to a) Aristotle maintains that primary
substance is individual, or to use Hegel's words, it is both "finite", and
"sensuous perceptible substance" (Hist, of Phil., II, p. 141; cf., p. 216). The
"what", or essence, of this primary substance is "simple determinate Being" (p.
142). 22
In the context of Aristotle's theology b) Hegel describes the subject-matter
of the inquiry as "absolute Being" (p. 143, 145), as "God" (p. 143), as "the
Absolute" (p. 144). I think it would be difficult to understand Hegel's Science
of Logic without reading his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, but I believe
it would be particularly unfortunate not to read his passages on Aristotle's
Metaphysics, which he initiates by defining the Metaphysics as "ontology or, as
we call it, logic" (p. 138). 23
19
Ibid., pp. 95, 104. Again, traditionally, God was said to be simple in his essential nature.
Cf.
20
Plato, Republic, II, 380 d; Aristotle, Metaphysics, XII, Ch. 9.
21
/bid.,p. 101.
Ibid.,p. 168.
22
Hegel's references are to Metaphysics, XII, 2 and 3.
23
Cf. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (Beacon, 1969); pp. 166-167.
 Notes 293
It is in this sense that Aristotle has approached true philosophy, for the
"objects of philosophy — are upon the whole the same as those of religion. In
both the object is Truth, in that supreme sense in which God and God only is
Truth". 24 To put the matter in Hegelian language: in Aristotle Being has taken a
vital step toward the Notion, toward Substance as Self-Conscious Subject.25
However, when Hegel performs this shift between the two meanings of
Being (a and b), as in his first note in the Logic, he takes care to warn us of the
change. Thus, for example, on page 99, he warns us that "Existence or Being"
will be here "taken as equivalent".26 In juxtaposing and alternating between
these two seemingly opposed meanings, the sympathetic reader will no doubt see
but another instance of the Hegelian dialectic at work. Just as in the ontological
proof, Hegel tells us, concept and being are justifiably identified, so the
categories of Being and Existence are shown to play into each other in the Logic.
I am aware that the interpretation that I have just offered, of the beginning
of the Logic, differs markedly from the standard interpretations of that work.
Thus, for example, neither Stace 27 , Findlay 28 , Kaufman29, nor McTaggart30
adopt the line of thought which I have presented above. And yet, if one does not
invoke such a position I think it is difficult to absolve Hegel of the charges
brought forward by practicing and sympathizing "Existentialists".
Consequently, I have argued that Hegel's Being cannot be understood apart from
its implications with his conception of the history of philosophy — apart from
the context of an evolution of ideas, with which Hegel was quite familiar.
Furthermore, it is in this frame of reference that I would maintain that Hegel's
Being accomplishes his dual purposes of achieving 1) a presuppositionless
beginning and 2) in transforming the Aristotelian logic into an ontology and a
metaphysic of Idealism. Hegel's Logic is presuppositionless in the sense that he
begins with the traditional conception of Being as God, found already in
Parmenides, and ends with the Notion of God as the Absolute. Hence, the
beginning and the end coincide. In Being, the truth is merely implicit, but in the
Absolute it has evolved to self-conscious completion.31 However, unless the
truth were there to begin with, in its primitive aspect, it could never attain its
mature form. "Logic is consequently to be understood as the System of Pure
Reason, as the Realm of Pure Thought. This realm is the Truth as it is, without
husk in and for itself. One may therefore express it thus: that this content shows
forth God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of Nature and of a
Finite Spirit.."32
24
Hegel, The Logic of Hegel, from The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, trans.,
W. Wallace (Oxford, 1959); p. 3. Cf., E. Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension in Hegel's
Thought (Indiana, 1967); pp. 167-168.
25
According to Hegel, Spinoza comes closest, in modern thought to capturing this truth.
Confer his long section on Spinoza in Vol. Ill of Lectures on the History of Philosophy.
26
The same warning is issued on page 105, Sc. Logic.
27
W.T. Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel (Dover, 1955).
28
J.N. Findlay, The Philosophy of Hegel (Collier, 1966).
29
W. Kaufman, Hegel: A Reinterpretation (Anchor, 1966).
30
J.M.E. McTaggart, A Commentary on Hegel's Logic (Russell, 1964).
31
Hegel, Phenomenology of the Mind, trans, by J.B. Bailie (Harper, 1967), p. 759. Cf. J.N.
Findlay, op. cit., pp. 139-141; H. Marcuse, op. cit., p. 165.
32
5c. Logic, I, p. 74.
294 TELOS
The Objective Logic (which discusses Being and Essence) deals just as much
with God as does the Subjective Logic, but with this difference; in the Objective
Logic, the Absolute has not attained self-consciousness. "Objective Logic . . .
comprises . . . metaphysics, in so far as [metaphysics] attempts to comprehend
with the pure forms of thought certain substrata primarily taken from sensuous
representation, such as Soul, World, God; and the determinations of thought
constituted what was essential in the method of contemplation. [Objective]
Logic, however, considers these forms detached from such substrata, which are
the subjects of sensuous representation; it considers their nature and value in
themselves. The old metaphysic neglected this, and thus earned the just reproach
of having used these forms uncritically, without a preliminary investigation as to
whether and how far they were capable of being determinations of the
thing-in-itself, to use the Kantian expression, or, to put it better, determinations
of the Rational." 33
In other words, traditional metaphysics merely conceived Being and the
World, as mere abstractions, externally related, whereas their truth consists in
their dynamic, and organic, internal relationship. Put differently and more
concretely, through a contrast: For Hegel, as for Aristotle, God's knowledge is
reflexive — but Aristotle's Being only knows himself and not the world; whereas
Hegel's God, in knowing himself, knows the world.

THE FIRST TELOS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE:

"THE NEW MARXISM"
Waterloo, Ontario, October 8-11, 1970
A Telos Conference is, at first sight, a contradiction in terms. Telos is
essentially a radical anti-establishment journal devoted to — among other things
— demolishing most of the present-day nonsense that goes under the name of
philosophy while at the same time rediscovering things such as what has been
called the "hidden dimension" of the continental philosophical tradition:
European Marxism. Conferences, on the other hand, are bourgeois institutions
for professional academicians who must periodically escape their boring routine
(preferably with their mistresses) to far-away and exotic places where these
meetings are usually held. Consequently, a "Telos Conference", if not a put-on,
would indicate the embourgeoisification of the journal and the senilification of
its staff. Neither is the case (or so we hope). In order to really understand what
happened, it is necessary to recapitulate briefly the history and present status of
Telos.
Once upon a time (around Spring 1967) a group of graduate students in
philosophy found themselves in a nouveaux riche university which, as a result of
the political ambition of the state's governor (Rockefeller), had been
"nationalized" from a provincial private institution into a major educational
showpiece — a worthy feather for the cap of any would-be president. Since
universities, unlike oil fields, cannot be drilled into the ground in a couple of
days, the great "State University of New York" project turned out to be an
institutional dinosaur with academic credentials as large as a flea's brain. Thus,