Page:Journal of Speculative Philosophy Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/261

253 Paul Janet and Hegel. 253 has modified this order (that of Wolff) and rendered it more systematic." If one asks " How more systematic ?" he will not find the answer. '•' The scholastic form is retained, but not the thought" we are told. That such statements are put for- ward, even in a book designed for mere surface-readers may well surprise us. That the mathematical method of AVolff or Spinoza — a method which proceeds by definitions and external comparison, hold- ing meanwhile to the principle of contra- diction — that such a method should be confounded with that of Hegel which pro- ceeds dialectically, i. e. through the inter- nal movement of the categories to their contradiction or limit, shows the stu- dent of philosophy at once that we are dealing with a litterateur, and not with a philosopher. So far from retaining the form of Wolff it is the great object of He- gel (see his long prefaces to the " Logik" and the "Phiinonienologie des Geistes ") to supplant that form by what he con- siders the true method — that of the ob- jective itself. The objective method is to be distinguished from the arbitrary method of external reflection which selects its point of view somewhere outside of the object considered, and proceeds to draw relations and comparisons which, however edifying, do not give us any exhaustive knowledge. It is also to be distinguished from the method of mere empirical obser- vation which collects without discrimina- tion a mass of characteristics, acci- dental and necessary, and never arrives at a vivifying soul that unites and subordi- nates the multiplicity. The objective method seizes somewhat in its definition and traces it through all the phases which necessarily unfold when the object is placed in the form of relation to itself. An object which cannot survive the pro- cess of self-relation, perishes, i. e. it leads to a more concrete object which is better able to endure. This method, as we shall presently see, is attributed to Plato by M. Janet. The only resemblance that remains to be noted between the scholastics and Hegel is this: they both treat of subtle distinctions in thought, while our modern tl common sense" system goes only so far as to dis- tinguish very general and obvious differ- ences. This is a questionable merit, and the loss ado made about it by such as take pride in it, the better for them. Our author continues : " The principal difficulty of the system of Kant is our ignorance of the ancient systems of logic. The Critique of Pure Reason is modelled on the scholastic system." Could we have a more conclusive refutation of this than the fact that the great professors of the ancient systems grossly misunderstand Kant, and even our essayist himself mis- takes the whole purport of the same ! Hear him contrast Kant with Hegel : "Kant sees in Being only the form of Thought, while Hegel sees in Thought only the form of Being." This he says is the great dif- ference between the Germans and French, interpreting it to mean : " that the former pursues the route of deduction, and the latter that of experience"! He wishes to consider Hegel under three heads: 1st, The Beginning; 2d, the dia- lectical deduction of the Becoming, and 3d, the term Dialectic. II. The Beginning. — According to M. Janet, Hegel must have used this syllogism in order to find the proper category with which to commence the Logic. (a) The Beginning should presuppose nothing ; (b) Pure Being presupposes nothing; (c) Hence Pure Being is the Beginning. This syllogism he shows to be inconclu- sive : for there are two beginnings, (a) in the order of knowledge, (b) in the order of existence. Are they the same ? He an- swers : " No, the thinking being— because it thinks — knows itself before it knows the being which it thinks." Subject and ob- ject b^ing identical in that act, M. Janet in effect says, "it thinks itself before it thinks itself' 5 — an argument that the scho- lastics would hardly have been guilty of! The beginning is really made, he says, with internal or external experience. He quotes (page 316) from Hegel a passage asserting that mediation is essential to knowing. This he construes to mean that " the de- termined or concrete (the world of experi- ence) is the essential condition of know-