Chapter I: The History of Logic and the History of Philosophy

[Sidenote: _Reality, Thought and Logic._]

The three terms, _Reality, Thought_ and _Logic_, and their relations, could be represented by a system of three circles, the one included in the other, and by marking at will as the first term that which includes all, or that which is included in all: R T L or L T R. Limiting ourselves to the first method, the first circle would be Reality, which Thought (the second circle) would think, in the same way that it would in its turn be thought in the third circle, formed by Logic, the Thought of thought, or the Philosophy of philosophy. This graphic symbol is probably destined to some fortune; but the reader must not seek it in our pages, because knowing how much inadequacy, clumsiness and danger it contains, we share the repugnance, almost instinctively felt at such materializations, which seem to be and are of slight value.

[Sidenote: _Relation of these three terms._]

The vice of that spatial figuration is that it divides into three circles what is three, but three in one, and should consequently be expressed as a triple circle which should also be a single circle, in which all the three coincide; which is geometrically unrepresentable. The relation of Reality, Thought of Reality and Thought of Thought, divided into three circles, legitimately gives rise to the question: Why should there not be a fourth, a fifth, a sixth circle (and so on to infinity) which should include respectively the third, the fourth, the fifth (and so on to infinity)? Why should not a Logic of Logic, or a thought of the thought of thought, and so on, follow the thought of thought, which is Logic? For us, this question raises no objection that need bring us to a halt for a single instant, just because we have never divided the one reality into two or more different realities (matter and spirit, nature and idea, and so on), nor into a series of different realities, the one following the other; but we have conceived it as a system of relations and of correlations, constituting a unity, indeed the only unity concretely thinkable. There is no progress to infinity, when the terms are coincident and correlative; hence to think the thought of thought would not be a new act, but equivalent to thinking thought. The mental act will be new (and any mental act is new) for the individual who accomplishes it in conditions that are always new; but its spiritual form will always be that of Logic, which thinks thought and contains within itself, on its side, the process of reality. Further, the indifference exhibited by the symbol of the triple circle as to the determination of the first as last and the last as first, confirms for us the non-existence of a first that is only first and of a last that is only last; confirms, that is to say, the coincidence of unity in relation that is first and last. Reality is not only thought by thought, but is also thought; and thought is not only thought by Logic, but is also Logic. Those who wish to expound philosophy and history, proceeding from the centre of the logos or Logic, and those who wish to expound them, proceeding from the periphery of facts, are both right and wrong, because the centre is periphery and the periphery centre.

[Sidenote: _Non-existence of a general philosophy outside the particular philosophic sciences:_]

By adopting this view, which affirms the most complete immanence, it has never happened that in any part of the Real we have discovered a division between idea and fact, between general and particular, between primary and secondary reality and the like, but we have found, in every part, relation and correlation, unity and distinction in unity. There is no general philosophy opposed to, or consequent on, or alongside particular philosophies; particular philosophy is general, and the general is the particular; nor is there a general history, which is not also particular history, and _vice versa._ History is always the history of man as artist, thinker, economic producer, and moral agent, and in distinguishing these various aspects, it gives their unity, which does not transcend these various aspects, but _is_ these various aspects themselves.

[Sidenote: _and consequently of a History of general philosophy outside the histories of particular philosophic sciences._]

In like manner, the History of thought, or the History of Philosophy, which is one of these determinate aspects, is distinguished in the histories of particular philosophic concepts, as the history of Æsthetic, of Logic, of Economics and of Ethics; but it is also unified in them and _consists in nothing but them,_ completely resolving itself into them. There is no _general History of Philosophy,_ in the sense of a history of _general Philosophy,_ or of _Metaphysics,_ or whatever else it may be called, outside particular histories (which are unity in particularity).

One of the errors which in our opinion vitiates the writing of the history of philosophy, appears to be just the prejudice in favour of a treatment of the general part of this history, in which, for instance, speculations concerning practice enter only incidentally, a great part of logical doctrine is excluded as not belonging to it, and the doctrines of Æsthetic are hardly referred to at all. The prejudice is derived, in the last analysis, from the old idea of an Ontology or Metaphysic, as the science of an ideal world, of which nature and man are the more or less imperfect actualizations; hence the relegation of a great part of true and proper philosophy to what is called the human and natural world, and the looking upon this as a special philosophy, distinguished from general philosophy and consequently lying outside the true and proper history of philosophy. That prejudice, amounting almost to a survival, persists even in those who have more or less surpassed such a conception, and determines the curious configuration of a general history of philosophy, outside the special histories. Such a scheme, when closely examined, shows itself to be a complex of historical elucidations of some problems of Logic, and of some of the philosophy of the practical (individuality, liberty, the supreme good, etc.), and of some arising from their relations (knowing and being, spirit and nature, infinite and finite, etc.). These are all without doubt arguments of philosophical history; but they must be united with the others, from which they have been wrenched, and without which they prove but little intelligible. Philosophy is present in the Poetics and the Rhetoric of Aristotle as much as in the Metaphysics; not less in the _Critique of Pure Judgment_ of Kant, than in the _Critique of Pure Reason._ It is never outside those treatises concerning what are called the special parts of philosophy. The present-day historians of philosophy who have overcome so many forms of transcendence and re-established immanence, must also overcome the residue of transcendence, which, so to speak, they still retain in their own house.

[Sidenote: _Histories of particular philosophies and literary value of such division._]

Certainly, the reality of the distinctions between the various aspects of the real and between the various particular philosophies renders possible literary divisions, through which there are composed special treatises upon Ethics and so upon the history of Ethic; upon Logic and so upon the history of Logic; upon Æsthetic and so upon the history of Æsthetic; but it is not possible by a like method of division to construct a treatise upon general Philosophy and a corresponding History of general philosophy. It is not possible, because this literary division presupposes a distinction of concepts; and a general philosophy is not conceptually distinguishable. When the attempt to distinguish it is made, we have, as we saw, a mass of historical fragments taken from the various philosophic sciences; that is to say, not the coherent historical treatment of problems relating to a definite aspect of the real, but a more or less arbitrary aggregate.

[Sidenote: _History of Logic in a particular sense._]

With these considerations, we have answered the question concerning the relation between the History of Logic and the History of Philosophy. This relation is the same as that between Logic and Philosophy,--terms which are capable neither of distinction nor of opposition. The history of Logic is not outside the history of Philosophy, but is an integral part of this history itself. To make it the object of special treatment always means to compose a complete history of philosophy, in which, from the literary point of view, prominence and priority are given to the problems of Logic, the others being thrown, not outside the picture, but into the background. The same may be said of the History of Æsthetic or of Ethic or of any other particular discipline, which is never held to be distinguishable.

[Sidenote: _Works relating to the history of Logic._]

Logic being more or less profoundly renovated (as we have sought to do in this book), it is natural that the histories of Logic hitherto available can no longer be completely satisfactory. For they are written from points of view that have been surpassed, such as Aristotelian formalism or Hegelian panlogism, and therefore either do not interpret facts with exactitude, or they give prominence and exaggerated importance to certain orders of facts, neglecting others far more worthy of mention and of examination.

Of the special books bearing the title of the History of Logic, there is really only one--that of Charles Prantl--which, based upon wide researches, is truly remarkable for its doctrine and for lucid and animated exposition. Unfortunately this does not go further than the fifteenth century and omits the whole movement of modern philosophy.[1] But even the period exhaustively treated by him (Antiquity and the Middle Ages) is looked at from the narrow angle of an Aristotelian and formal temperament. Other works bearing the same title are not worthy of attention.[2] On the other hand, the better histories of Logic must not be sought under this title, but especially in the better Histories of Philosophy, beginning with that of Hegel, which, for the most part, is precisely a history of Logic.

In inaugurating a new treatment, governed by the principles which we have defended, we shall confine ourselves, in the following pages, to a sketch of the history of some of the principal parts of logical doctrine, without any claim to even approximate completeness, and with a view to giving simple illustrations of the things that were said in the theoretical part. In this theoretical part, in virtue of the identity of philosophy and history which we have explained, history may be said to be already contained and projected, even though names and dates are mostly omitted and left to be understood.

[Footnote 1: _Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande,_ Leipzig, 1855-1870, 4 vols. Scattered memoirs of certain writers belonging to later times are being published by Prantl in academic journals, and it would be opportune to collect these in a volume.]

[Footnote 2: A rapid sketch, compiled in part from the work of Prantl, with a polemical addition directed against the adversaries of the Hegelian Logic, precedes the _Logic_² of Kuno Fischer. The historical part of the _System der Logik_ of Ueberweg (fifth edition, 1882, edited by J. B. Meyer) has an almost exclusively bibliographical character with excerpts, and that contained in L. Rabus, _Logik ii. System der Wissenschaften,_ Erlangen-Leipzig, 1895, is yet more arid. The _Gesch. d. Logik_ of F. Harms (Berlin, 1881) is meagre in facts, verbose and vague. In recent monographs on special points, one feels the effect of what is called Logistic or new formalism, which makes the authors pursue ineptitudes and curiosities of slight value.]