Chapter 71 Chapter 22 Hegel

Hegel (1770-1831) was the apex of the movement in German philosophy started by Kant; although he was often critical of Kant, his system would never have arisen had it not existed.Although Hegel's influence is gradually fading now, it has always been great in the past, and it was not limited to Germany, nor was it mainly in Germany.In the late nineteenth century, in the United States and Great Britain, most of the leading academic philosophers were Hegelians.Outside the scope of pure philosophy, many Protestant theologians also adopted his doctrine, and his philosophy of history had a profound impact on political theory.Everyone knows that Marx was a follower of Hegel in his youth, and he retained some important Hegelian features in his completed theoretical system.Even if (in my own opinion) Hegel is almost entirely wrong, yet because he is the best exponent of a philosophy which is less consistent and all-encompassing elsewhere, he still maintain an important position not only in the historical sense.

There were not many major events in his life.In his youth he was very much indulging in mysticism, and his later insights may be regarded more or less as an intellectualization of what he at first thought to be mystical insights.He was first a Privatdozent (unpaid lecturer) at the University of Jena—he mentions that he wrote the Phenomenology of Mind in Jena the day before the Battle of Jena—then as a Privatdozent at the University of Nuremberg, and later at the He was a professor at the University of Heidelberg (1816-1818), and finally at the University of Berlin from 1818 until his death, and taught philosophy at each of the above universities.In his later years he was a Prussian patriot, a loyal servant of the state, enjoying a recognized philosophical reputation; but in his youth he despised Prussia and admired Napoleon, and even rejoiced at the French victory at Jena.

Hegel's philosophy is very difficult, and I think he is the most difficult to understand among all the great philosophers.Before turning to the details, it may be helpful to give a general sketch of his philosophy. From his early interest in mysticism, he retained a belief that discreteness is unreal; that the world, in his view, is not a collection of completely self-contained solid units, whether atoms or souls .The apparent self-sufficiency of finite things seemed to him an illusion; nothing, he maintained, was fundamentally and completely real except the whole.But he differs from Parmenides and Spinoza in that he imagines the whole not as a mere substance, but as a composite system of the kind we should call an organism.Those apparently separate things which seem to make up the world are not mere illusions; they each have a more or less degree of reality, since each is an aspect of the whole, and its Reality also lies in this aspect.Following this view, of course, one does not believe in the reality of time and space itself, because if time and space are considered to be completely real, they must have separation and multiplicity.All this must have been a mystical "insight" in his mind at first; the intellectual refinements presented in his books must have come later.

Hegel asserts that what is realistic is rational, and what is reasonable is actual.But when he says this, his word "realistic" does not mean what the empiricists mean.He admits, and even emphasizes, that what the empiricists regard as facts is irrational, and must be irrational; only when a fact is seen as a whole, and thus its appearance and character are changed, can it be justified. See that it is reasonable.Even so, the identification of the actual with the rational inevitably creates some complacency inseparable from the belief that everything that exists is right. The complex whole, Hegel called "absolute". The Absolute is spiritual; Spinoza's notion that the whole has not only the property of thought but of extension is rejected.

Hegel differs from others throughout history who have held somewhat similar metaphysical views in two respects.One point is the emphasis on logic: Hegel believes that the nature of "reality" can be deduced from the sole consideration that it must not contradict itself.Another (closely related to the first) distinguishing feature is the triadic movement called "dialectics".His most important works are the two Logics, which are indispensable for a proper understanding of the basis of his views on other subjects. According to Hegel's understanding of logic, he clearly stated that it is the same thing as metaphysics;

That's a completely different kind of logic from what is commonly said.His view is: any ordinary predicate, if it is considered to limit the whole of "reality", it will be self-contradictory.Let us take, as a crude example, Parmenides' doctrine that the only real One is spherical.Nothing is spherical if it doesn't have a boundary, and it can't have a boundary unless there's something outside it (at least void space).Therefore, it is self-contradictory to assume that the entire universe is spherical. (If non-Euclidean geometry is brought up, there may be objections to this argument, but this argument can be considered as an illustrative example.)

Or, let's take another, shallower example—too shallow for Hegel to use.You can say that Mr. A is an uncle, and there is no obvious contradiction; but if you want to say that the universe is an uncle, you will get into a difficult situation.The so-called uncle is a person who has a nephew, and the nephew is a person who is separate from the uncle; therefore, the uncle cannot be a "real" whole. This example may also be used to illustrate dialectics, which is composed of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.First of all, we said: "It is really uncle".This is "the topic".But the existence of an uncle implies the existence of a nephew.Since nothing really exists but the Absolute, and we are now guaranteed the existence of a nephew, we are compelled to assert that the Absolute is a nephew.This is the "antithesis".But this has the same flaw as the view that the Absolute is the uncle; we are then forced to adopt the view that the Absolute is the totality of uncle and nephew.This is a "synthesis".But the synthesis is still not complete, because a man must have a sister who is the mother of his nephew before he can be an uncle.Therefore, we are forced to expand our universe to include sisters and even brothers-in-law or brother-in-law.In this way, it is argued, mere logical force can drive us incessantly from any predicate raised about the Absolute to the final conclusion of the dialectic, which is called the Idea of ​​the Absolute.Throughout this process, there is an underlying assumption that nothing can be actually true unless it is about the "reality" of the whole.

This underlying assumption has a basis in traditional logic, which assumes that every proposition has a subject and a predicate.On this view, every fact is that something has a quality.So it can be seen that "relation" cannot be real, because the relationship involves not one but two things. "Uncle" is a relationship, a person can be an uncle without knowing it.In this case, from an empirical point of view, the person has not been affected in any way by being an uncle; This kind of thing, then this person has no quality that he did not have before.The only way in which subject-predicate logic can avoid this difficulty is to say that this fact is not just a property of the uncle, nor of the nephew alone, but of the whole of the uncle and nephew.Since everything except the "whole" has various relations with external things, it follows that nothing completely true can be said about individual things, and in fact only the "whole" is real.This point can be deduced relatively directly from the following fact: "A and B are two" is not a subject-predicate proposition, so based on traditional logic, there will be no such proposition.Therefore, there are no two things in the world, so only the "all" regarded as a unity is real.

The above argument Hegel did not explicitly describe, but was implicit in his system, as well as in the systems of many other metaphysicians. A few examples of Hegel's dialectical method may make this method easier to understand.He prefaces his logical argument by assuming that the Absolute is pure; we assume it to be, without adding any quality to it.But pure being without any quality is nothing; then we arrive at the antithesis: "The Absolute is nothing".Turn from this thesis and antithesis to the synthesis: the unity of "existence" and "non-existence" is "changing", so it is said that "absolutely is changing".Of course, this is not okay, because something needs to change to change.Thus our conception of "reality" develops by continually correcting previous errors, all of which arose from this inappropriate abstraction of something finite or bounded as if it could be the whole. "The limits of the finite do not come from without alone; its own nature is the cause of its sublation, and by its own action it is transformed into its opposite."

According to Hegel, the process is essential to the understanding of the result.Each subsequent stage of the dialectic contains all the preceding stages as if in solution; none of these stages is completely replaced, but is given its proper place as a factor in the whole.Therefore it is impossible to reach truth without going through all the stages of dialectics. Consciousness, viewed as a whole, has a ternary movement.Knowledge begins with sensory perception, in which there is only awareness of the object.Then, through the skeptical critique of sensation, knowing becomes purely subjective.Finally, it reaches the stage of self-knowledge where there is no longer any distinction between subject and object.So self-consciousness is the highest form of knowledge.This must, of course, be so in the Hegelian system, since the highest kind of knowledge must be that of the Absolute, since the Absolute is the Whole, and therefore has nothing outside of itself for it to know. up.

In the best thinking, according to Hegel, thought becomes unimpeded and seamless.True and false are not sharply distinct opposites, as is commonly thought; nothing is entirely false, and nothing we can know is entirely true. "We can know somewhat wrongly"; this happens when we attribute absolute truth to some isolated piece of knowledge.Questions like "Where was Caesar born?" have a straightforward answer that is true in a sense, but not in a philosophical sense.According to philosophy, "the truth is the whole", and no part of anything is quite true. Hegel says: "Reason is this conscious conviction of the whole of reality." This does not mean that a separate man is the whole of reality; he is not quite real in his separateness, but his reality consists in his Participate in the "reality" of the whole.As we become more rational, this participation increases accordingly. The "Absolute Idea" mentioned at the end of "Logic" is something like Aristotle's "God".The Absolute Idea is the thought that thinks itself.It is obvious that the Absolute can think nothing but thinking itself, since there is no longer anything other than our parochial and false way of understanding "reality."According to him, "spirit" is the only reality whose thoughts are reflected in itself by means of consciousness.The actual words that define the Absolute Idea are very obscure.The unification of the Idea, as Wallace translates it, is the concept of the Idea, which takes the Idea itself as its object, and from which the objective world is an Idea—a world in which all determinations are unified. ) The original German text is more difficult to understand. However, the essence of the problem is not as complicated as Hegel said.The Absolute Idea is the pure thought thinking the pure thought.This is what the gods have done throughout the ages—truly a god in the eyes of a professor.He went on to say: "This unity is therefore the absolute and total truth, thinking one's own ideas." Now comes a curious feature of Hegel's philosophy, which distinguishes it from that of Plato or Plotinus or Spinoza.Although ultimate reality is timeless, and time is nothing more than an illusion created by our inability to see the "whole," the process of time is closely related to the dialectical process of pure logic.In fact, world history has always progressed through the categories from China's "pure existence" (about which Hegel knew nothing except that it existed) to the "absolute idea", which seems to be in the The Prussian state was nearly, if not fully, realized.In terms of Hegel's own metaphysics, I cannot see any reason for the notion that world history repeats dialectical transitions, yet this is the thesis he develops in his Philosophy of History.This is an interesting argument, which lends unity and meaning to changes in human affairs.This argument, like other historical theories, requires some distortion of the facts and is quite ignorant if it is to be plausible.Hegel, like Marx and Spengler after him, possessed both qualifications.It is strange that a process which is said to be cosmic should all take place on our planet, and mostly around the Mediterranean Sea. And if "reality" is timeless, there is no reason for saying that later parts of the process embody higher categories than earlier parts—unless one really wants to adopt the blasphemous assumption that the universe gradually Studying Hegel's philosophy. According to Hegel, the course of time runs from less perfect to more perfect, both in an ethical and logical sense.Indeed, the two meanings do not seem to him to be really distinguishable, for the perfection of logic consists in being a compact whole, without uneven edges, without independent parts, but, like a human body, Or more like a rational spirit, forming an organism whose parts are interdependent and all tending together towards a single end; this also constitutes ethical perfection.A few passages from the original text can illustrate Hegel's theory: "The Idea, like God Mojuri, the guide of the soul, is truly the leader of the nations and of the world; but the Spirit, the rational and necessary will of this guide, is, and always has been, the director of the events of world history. According to Spirit It is the purpose of our present work to understand the spirit through this guiding function of the mind." "The only idea that philosophy brings to the contemplation of history is the simple concept of 'reason'; that reason is the master of the world; that world history thus shows a rational course. This belief and insight lie within the sphere of history itself. Inner is a hypothesis. In the field of philosophy, it is not a hypothesis. In philosophy, it is proved by speculative cognition: Reason—the relationship between the universe and God is not considered here, just this term is enough—since infinite Force is also Substance; it is itself the Infinity Matter and Infinity Form of all natural and spiritual life—that is, that which impels that content. Reason is the Cosmic entity." "This 'idea' or 'reason' is the true, the eternal, the absolutely powerful being; it is manifest in the world, and in this world it and its glory Besides, nothing else appears—this is the thesis already proved in philosophy, as said before, and here regarded as confirmed.” "The world in which understanding and conscious will operate is not consigned to chance, but must appear in the form of a self-knowledgeable idea." This is "a result that happens to be known to me, because I have examined the whole field in detail." All the above quotations are taken from the Introduction to the Philosophy of History. The mind and the process of spiritual development are the real object of the philosophy of history.The nature of spirit can be understood by comparing it with its opposite, matter.The essence of matter is weight; the essence of spirit is freedom.Matter is outside itself, while spirit has a center within itself. "Spirit is a self-sufficient existence." If this statement is not clear, the following definition may be more illustrative: "But what is the Spirit? It is the One, the Infinity that is uniform in itself, the pure identity that secondarily separates itself from itself, as something else of itself, as the opposite of the common. 'To own' and 'inside'." In the historical development of the spirit there have been three main stages: the Orientals, the Greeks and Romans, and the Germans. "The history of the world is the training of the unfettered natural will, subjecting it to general principles, and endowing it with subjective freedom. The East knew, and still knows, the freedom of the one; the Greek and Roman world knew the freedom of some; the Germanic world knew the freedom of all. "Everyone always thinks that democracy may be the proper form of government in a place where the owners are free, but it is not. Democracy and aristocracy both belong to the stage of freedom of the few, and autocracy belongs to the stage of freedom of the only one. Democracy belongs to the stage of the owner's freedom. This is inseparable from the extremely strange meaning of the word "freedom" used by Hegel. In his view, there is no freedom without law (so far, We may agree); but he is always prone to turn it around, arguing that as long as there are laws there is liberty, so that, for him, "liberty" means, so to speak, nothing more than the right to obey the laws. It is conceivable that he assigns the highest role to the Germans in the development of the "spirit" on earth. "The Germanic spirit is the spirit of the new world. The aim of the new world is the realization of absolute truth, infinite self-determination as freedom—that freedom which has its own absolute form itself as its purport." This is a supreme freedom.This kind of freedom does not mean that you can not go to concentration camps.This freedom does not mean democracy, nor freedom of the press, or any of the usual liberal slogans, which Hegel despises.When the spirit imposes laws upon itself, it is free to do so.From our worldly point of view, it seems that the "spirit" of the laws imposed on man is embodied by the prince, and the "spirit" of the imposed laws is embodied by his subjects.But from the "absolute" point of view, the distinction between prince and subject, like all other distinctions, is an illusion, and even when the prince throws free-thinking subjects into prison, it is still the freedom of the mind to determine itself.Hegel praised Rousseau for distinguishing the general will from the will of all men.It is presumed that the sovereign embodies the general will, while the parliamentary majority embodies only the will of all men. What a useful theory. Hegel divides the history of Germany into three periods: the first, till Charlemagne; the second, when Charles was subjected to the Reformation; and the third, after the Reformation. These three periods are called the Kingdom of the Father, the Kingdom of the Son, and the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit.It may seem strange that the kingdom of the Holy Spirit should begin with the heinous and bloody atrocities committed in the war against the peasants; Li Dafa gave a compliment. Hegel's interpretation of history since the fall of the Roman Empire was partly the result and partly the cause of the teaching of world history in German schools.In Italy and France, although a few people like Tacitus and Machiavelli once had a romantic admiration for the Germans, the Germans have generally been regarded as the culprits of the "barbarian" invasion He became an enemy of the Church: first under the great emperors and later as the leader of the Reformation.Until the nineteenth century the Latin peoples regarded the Germans as their civilized inferiors.German Protestants naturally took another view.They saw the late Romans as exhausted and saw the Germanic conquest of the Western Roman Empire as an important step toward recovery.Regarding the disputes between the Holy Roman Empire and the Pope in the Middle Ages, they adopted the view of the Emperor's party; to this day, German schoolchildren are taught to worship Charlemagne and Barbarossa infinitely.In the post-Reformation era, the political weakness and disunity of Germany was lamented, and the gradual rise of Prussia was welcomed as making Germany strong under Protestant leadership instead of Austria's somewhat fragile Protestant leadership .In philosophizing about history, Hegel had in mind the likes of Theodoric, Charlemagne, Barbarossa, Luther, and Friedrich the Great.To explain Hegel, we must focus on the meritorious service of these people, and we must focus on the fact that Germany had just been bullied by Napoleon at that time. Germany is so highly celebrated that one might expect it to be the last expression of the Absolute Idea beyond which no further development is possible.But Hegel's view is not like this.He said instead that America was the land of the future, "where, in the age to come, the themes of world history will be expressed—perhaps [he adds typically] in the struggle between North and South America." He As if to think that everything important takes the form of war.Nor would he have been interested in being reminded that America's contribution to world history might have been the development of a society free from extreme poverty.On the contrary, he said that there is no real country in America as yet, because a real country needs to be divided into two classes, rich and poor. In Hegel, nations rely on the role played by Marx's class.He said that the origin of historical development is the national spirit.In every age a certain people has been entrusted with the task of leading the world through the dialectic stage it has reached. Of course, in modern times this nation is Germany.But in addition to nations, we must also consider world-historical individuals; that is, people whose goals embody the dialectical transformation that should take place in the contemporary age.Such a person is a hero, and he may violate the ordinary moral law, but not too much.Hegel cites Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon as examples.I doubt very much whether, in Hegel's view, a conqueror can be a "hero" without being a war conqueror. Hegel's emphasis on the nation, together with his distinctive concept of "freedom," illustrates his celebration of the state—a vital aspect of his political philosophy to which we must now turn our attention.His state philosophy is developed in both Philosophy of History and Philosophy of Law. In the main, it is consistent with his general metaphysics, but is not a necessary consequence of this metaphysics; but at some points—for example, with regard to the relations between states—his admiration of the nation-state reaches the same level as his The degree of general mental incompatibility of emphasizing the whole and despising the parts. In modern times, the glorification of the state began with the Reformation.In the Roman Empire, the emperor was deified, and the state acquired a sacred character; but the philosophers of the Middle Ages were all priests except for a few, so they put the church above the state. Luther, with the support of his Protestant lords, began to do the opposite.The Lutheran Church generally believed in Erastus.Hobbes was a Protestant in politics, and promoted the supremacy of the state, and Spinoza agreed with him.As mentioned earlier, Rousseau believed that the state should not tolerate other political organizations.Hegel was a fierce Protestant belonging to the Lutheran sect; the Prussian state was an absolutist monarchy of the Erastus type.For all these reasons one would have expected the State to be held in high regard by Hegel; but even so he went to astonishing extremes. "Philosophy of History" says that "the state is a realized moral life that exists in reality", and all the spiritual reality that people have is possessed through the state. "For therein lies the spiritual reality of man: man's own essence—reason— It is objectively presented to him, and it has an objective and direct existence for man.For the 'true thing' is the unity of the general will and the subjective will, and the 'universal' is to be found in the state, in its law, in its general and rational institutions.The state is the idea of ​​a god existing on earth. "And: "The state is the embodiment of rational freedom, which realizes and recognizes itself in an objective form. …the idea of ​​the state as the spirit in the outward expression of the will of man and of his freedom. " The Philosophy of Law expounds this doctrine a little more completely in the section on the state. “The state is the reality of the moral idea—that is, the moral spirit as a substantive will manifesting itself visible and self-aware; this moral spirit thinks of itself and knows itself, and accomplishes what it knows within the limits of what it knows.” The state is A rational person who is comfortable and self-oriented.If the state exists (as the Liberals maintain) only for the benefit of individuals, then individuals may or may not be members of the state.The state and the individual, however, have a quite different relationship.Since the state is an objective "spirit," and the individual has objectivity, authenticity, and ethics only insofar as he is a member of the state, the true meaning and purpose of the state lies in this combination.It is admitted that there may be bad states, but such states merely exist and have no real reality, while the rational state itself is infinite. It can be seen that the position required by Hegel for the state is roughly the same as that required by St. Augustine and his successors for the Church.However, from two points of view, the requirements of the old religion are more reasonable than those of Hegel.First, the Church is not a local community created by chance, but a community united by a common creed that its members believe to be of incomparable importance; the Church is therefore essentially the product of what Hegel called "ideas". reflect.Second, there is only one Catholic Church but many nations.Although each country is made to be as autocratic as Hegel said in its relationship with its citizens, it is always difficult to find any philosophical principles to regulate the relationship between different countries.In fact, at this point Hegel abandoned his philosophical chatter and backed it up with the state of nature and Hobbes's war of all against all. As long as the "world-state" does not exist, the habit of speaking of the "state" as if there were only one is misleading.In Hegel's view, the so-called obligation is entirely a relationship of the individual to the state, so it leaves no principle by which the relationship of states can be moralized.Hegel admitted this.He said that in terms of foreign relations, a country is an individual, and each country is independent of other countries. "Because in this independence, the spirit of reality exists, so independence is the most basic freedom and the highest glory of a nation." He then argued that it would limit the independence of each country League of Nations of any kind.The duties of the citizen (as far as his country's foreign relations are concerned) are entirely limited to maintaining the essential individuality of his country, namely its independence and sovereignty.From this it follows that war is not entirely a crime, something we should endeavor to abolish.The fact that the purpose of the state is not merely to preserve the life and property of its citizens constitutes the moral justification for war, and therefore war should not be regarded as an absolute evil or an accident, nor should it be considered to be caused by some thing. Hegel did not merely say that under certain circumstances a people cannot properly avoid war.He meant much more than that.He opposed the creation of institutions that would prevent this from happening - such as a world government - because he believed that wars from time to time were a good thing.War, he said, is a state in which we seriously understand the futility of worldly possessions. (This insight should be contrasted with the opposite theory, that all wars have economic causes.) Wars have an actual moral value: "Wars also have a higher meaning, through which the ethical health of peoples depends on their The indifference to the rigidity of the limited stipulations is preserved." Peace is rigidity; both the Holy League and Kant's Peaceful League are wrong, for a family of nations necessarily creates an enemy.Disputes between nations can only be settled by war; for nations are in a state of nature with one another, and their relations are neither legal nor moral.The rights of nations have reality in their individual wills, and the interest of each nation is its own supreme law.Morality is not to be compared with politics, since the state is not bound by ordinary moral laws. This is Hegel's theory of the state—a doctrine which, if admitted, justifies every conceivable domestic tyranny and every foreign aggression.The strength of Hegel's deception is revealed in this: his theory of the state is in great contradiction with his own metaphysics, and these contradictions are all of the kind that tend to justify cruelty and international plunder.A man may be excused if he is compelled by logic to deduce regrettably to conclusions he laments; but it is not excusable to violate logic in order to wantonly advocate crime.Hegel's logic convinced him that there was more reality or superiority (the two were synonymous for him) in the whole than in the parts, and that the more organized the whole, the greater its reality and superiority. Then increase.This justifies his preference for states over anarchic clusters of individuals, but it should also make him prefer world states over anarchic clusters of states.Within the State, his general philosophy should also lead him to a higher respect for the individual, for the whole of his Logic is not like Parmenides' One, or even like Spinoza. God, because his totality is a totality in which the individual does not disappear, but acquires a fuller reality through his harmonious relationship with the larger organism.The state in which the individual is neglected is not the prototype of Hegel's "absolute". Nor is there any valid reason in Hegel's metaphysics to emphasize the state alone over other social organizations.I can only see Protestant prejudice in the fact that he does not place more emphasis on the Church than on the State.Moreover, if it is good for society to be as organized as possible, as Hegel believed, there must be many, many social organizations besides the state and the church.Deduced from Hegel's principles, it must be said that every enterprise which is not harmful to society and which can be revitalized by cooperation should have a proper organization, and every such organization should have a limited independence. It may be objected that the final power must always rest somewhere, and that it cannot rest anywhere but the state.But even so, it is well, if not irresistible, that this last power is not irresistible in attempting to be too harsh beyond a certain point. This brings us to a fundamental problem in judging Hegel's entire philosophy.Does the whole have more reality than the parts?Is there more value?Hegel answers both questions in the affirmative.Questions of reality are questions of metaphysics, questions of value are questions of ethics.Generally, these two issues seem to be indistinguishable, but I think it is very important to separate the two.Let's start with a metaphysical question. The opinion of Hegel, as well as of many other philosophers, is that the nature of any part of the universe is so deeply influenced by its relation to the other parts and to the whole that, therefore, nothing but the assignment of its place in the whole to any part It is impossible to make any true statements.Since the position of the part in the whole depends on the position of all other parts, a true statement about its position in the whole at the same time specifies the position of every other part in the whole.Hence only one true statement is possible; there is no truth but the whole truth.In the same way nothing is wholly real but the whole, for any part, when isolated, changes its nature by isolation, and ceases to appear quite real.On the other hand, if the part is regarded, as it should be, in relation to the whole, it is not self-supporting, and cannot exist except as a part of the whole which is the only real reality.This is a metaphysical doctrine. If this metaphysics is right, then the ethical doctrine which asserts that value resides not in the parts but in the whole must be right; but if the metaphysics is wrong, it is not necessarily wrong.Also, it may be true for some populations and incorrect for others.In a certain sense, this ethical theory is obviously correct for living beings.眼睛一跟身体分离开便不中用；一堆disjectamembra（断裂的肢体）即使在完整时，也没有原属于未取下这些肢体的那个肉体的价值。黑格尔把公民对国家的伦理关系看成类似眼睛对身体的关系：公民在其位，是有价值的全体的一部分，但是孤离开就和孤离的眼睛一样无用。不过这个类比却有问题；某种全体在伦理上是重要的，并不见得一切全体在伦理上都重要。 以上关于伦理问题的讲法，在一个重要方面是有缺陷的，即没有考虑目的与手段的区别。活体上的眼睛·有·用，也就是说，有当作手段的价值；但是它并不比和身体分开时有更多的·内·在价值。一件东西如果不当作其它某东西的手段，为了它本身而受到珍视，它就有内在价值。我们是把眼睛作为看东西的手段来评价它。看东西可以是手段，也可以是目的；让我们看到食物或敌人，这时是手段，让我们看到我们觉得美的东西，这时就是目的。国家作为手段来说显然是有价值的： 它保护我们不受盗贼和杀人犯的侵害，它修筑道路、设立学校，等等。不必说，它作为手段也可以是坏的，例如进行一场非正义的战争。关于黑格尔我们要问的真正问题并不是这个，而是问国家作为目的来说是不是本身即是好的：公民为国家而存在呢？还是国家为公民而存在呢？黑格尔抱前一种看法；来源于洛克的自由主义哲学抱后一种看法。很明白，只有认为国家具有属于自己的生命，在某种意义上是一个人格，我们才会把内在价值归于国家。在这点上，黑格尔的形而上学和价值问题有了关联。一个人是具有单一生命的复合全体； 会不会有像身体由各器官构成那样，由众人格构成的一个超人格，具有不等于组成它的众人格的生命总和的单一生命？如果像黑格尔的想法，能够有这种超人格，那么国家便可能是一个这样的东西，而国家就可以像整个身体对眼睛的关系一样，高居我们本身之上。但是假若我们认为这种超人格不过是形而上学的怪物，我们就要说社会的内在价值是由各成员的内在价值来的，而且国家是手段，不是目的。这样，又从伦理问题转回到形而上学问题。由下文可知，形而上学问题本身其实是逻辑的问题。 这里争论中的问题远远比黑格尔哲学的是非问题要广；这是划分哲学分析的敌和友的问题。Give an example.假定我说：“约翰是詹姆士的父亲。”黑格尔以及所有信仰斯墨茨元帅所谓的“全体论”的人要讲：“你必须先知道约翰和詹姆士是谁，然后才能够理解这个陈述。可是所谓知道约翰是谁，就是要知道他的全部特性，因为撇开这些特性不谈，他和其他任何人便无法区别了。但是他的全部特性都牵连着旁的人或事物。他的特征是由他对父母、妻子和儿女的关系，他是良善的或不良的公民，以及他隶属的国家来定的。你必须先知道所有这些事，才谈得上你知道'约翰'二字指的是谁。在你努力要说明你讲的'约翰'二字何所指时，一步一步使你去考虑整个宇宙，而你原来的陈述也会显出说的并不是关于约翰和詹姆士这两个各别人的什么事情，而是关于宇宙的什么事情。” 这话讲起来倒满好，但是一开始就难免遇上一个反对意见。假若以上的议论当真正确，认识又是怎么会开始有的呢？ 我知道许许多多“甲是乙的父亲”这种形式的命题，但是我并不知道全宇宙。假使一切知识都是关于整体宇宙的知识，那么就不会有任何知识了。这一点足以使我们怀疑上述议论在什么地方有错误。 事实是，为正确合理地使用“约翰”二字，我用不着知道有关约翰的·一·切·事·情，只须知道足以让我认识他的事情就行了。当然他和宇宙间的一切事物都有或远或近的关系，但是除那种是所讲的事情的直接主题的关系而外，这些关系全不考虑，也能如实来谈他。他或许不仅是詹姆士的父亲，也是吉美玛的父亲，但是为知道他是詹姆士的父亲，我并不需要知道这一点。假使黑格尔的意见正确，我们不提吉美玛就不能把“约翰是詹姆士的父亲”所指的意思说完全，我们应该说：“吉美玛的父亲约翰是詹姆士的父亲。”这样恐怕还是不够；我们总得接着提到他的父母和祖父母，以至于整个一套家谱。但是这就使我们陷入荒唐可笑的境地。黑格尔派的意见不妨叙述如下：“'约翰'这词的意思指对约翰来说为真的一切事情。”但是作为一个定义而论，这话是循环的，因为“约翰”这词出现在限定短语里。实际上，假使黑格尔的意见正确，任何词都无法开始具有意义，因为根据他的理论，一个词的意义即它所指的事物的一切性质，而为叙述这一切性质，我们便需要已经知道一切其它的词的意义。 问题抽象地讲来是：我们必须把不同类的性质区别开。一件事物可以具有一个不牵涉其它任何事物的性质；这种性质叫作·质。也可以具有一个牵涉一件其他事物的性质；“已婚”就是这样的性质。也可以具有一个牵涉两件其他事物的性质，例如“是妹夫”。如果某事物有某一组质，而任何旁的事物都不恰恰具有这一组质，那么该事物就能够定义成“具有如此这般的质的事物”。根据它具有这些质，凭纯逻辑推不出来有关其关系性质的任何事情。黑格尔以为，如果对于一件事物有了充分知识，足以把它跟其他一切事物区分开，那么它的一切性质都能够借逻辑推知。这是一个错误，由这个错误产生了他的整个巍峨堂皇的大体系。这说明一条重要真理，即你的逻辑越糟糕，由它得出的结论越有趣。