It's not that 'Little Logic' is so simple and easy to read, it's not like that. Just like when I first started middle school, I read 'The French Civil War'. When I read 'The French Civil War', I couldn't understand it at all and didn't know what I was talking about. All I knew was that it was a book by Marx. When I came in, I found out that it wasn't a war book, but a book that described and explained war.
This' Little Logic 'is not a work of logic, it is a philosophical work, but it describes the development history of logic itself in clear language and strict regulations. Of course, this type of logic mainly refers to the developmental laws of thinking itself.
So, reading 'Little Logic' does not require you to have a considerable background in Western culture. If you get this' Little Logic 'and read it directly, you will fully understand what Hegel is really talking about. So, you don't have to guess the pairs, you have to think about what's behind them, but when reading Phenomenology of Mind, you need to break down the pairs, you need to think about why he said that, what's the basis behind it, and you don't need to do that when reading "Little Logic".
So, when we read any sentence from "Little Logic," we can generally say, "Philosophy replaces appearances with ideas, categories, or more precisely, concepts
In philosophy, we don't talk about appearances, we talk about categories and concepts very clearly. You don't need to have any background such as philosophical culture behind it, or replace appearances with concepts. So, various appearances can generally be seen as metaphors for ideas and concepts.
This is what is said in 'Little Logic'. Very clear, it is not easy to misunderstand. You wouldn't ask, you know what metaphor is and what metaphor means. We use concepts as metaphors to express ourselves, and we know two points. Firstly, we can talk about appearances in the way we talk about concepts. We don't directly talk about appearances, we talk about concepts. This is the work of philosophy. Don't forget the second one, it's just a metaphor, it's not a concept, it's not the thing itself, it's just a visual representation of something.
So, concepts are concepts, appearances are appearances, and concepts are just metaphors. It is not the appearance itself, it clearly tells us what philosophy is.
So, philosophy is the study of concepts, but this concept is used to represent appearances. This is the idea expressed in logic. So why did Deng Xiaomang say that we require everyone to read "Little Logic" from the beginning? For me, I also entered "Little Logic" from the beginning of my exposure to philosophy. That is to say, after reading "Little Logic", you will realize that the work of philosophers is a completely different science from that of other scientists or humanities scholars.
Why study philosophy in a philosophy department?
Why do you say I don't understand philosophy? I said it's okay, come to the philosophy department for class. Come here to listen to the lecture, and you will understand after listening. So, after coming out of our philosophy department, if you have more scientific knowledge and understanding in this area than others, you will know what philosophical research methods are. Or it can be called a philosophical way of thinking.
So why study philosophy for four years instead of just one year? Some studies only take one year, such as business management. I think half a year is enough. For those subjects, half a year and one year are enough. You still need to learn so much about business management. You don't need too many teaching plans, just enough case analysis, and you can take advantage of it.
But if you want to study philosophy, it's not something that takes you a year or a half. Four years is short, and you may have to study for a lifetime before you can figure it out. As I said, the discipline of philosophy has been in China for a full 100 years until October this year. In October, the Philosophy Department of Peking University will hold a centennial celebration of Chinese philosophy. Actually, this celebration should be changed to a festival.
Because over the past 100 years, our Chinese philosophical thinking has not improved, because the influx of western philosophy means the death of Chinese philosophy. Because the traditional philosophical thinking methods in China cannot exist in the space of Westernism.
So, when we read Chinese philosophy now, you will find the shadow of Western philosophy everywhere, such as ontology, epistemology, ethics, none of which are unique to Chinese philosophy, they are all from the West.
Then we bring big frameworks to apply Chinese philosophy, one by one. This is called cutting feet to fit shoes, which has already reduced our Chinese philosophy to nothing. You don't know what we're talking about anymore. You are wearing the hat of Western philosophy to talk about Chinese philosophy.
So, understanding Hegelian logic can actually greatly help us understand Hegelian philosophy as a whole. Once you know Hegelian logic, you will understand how the natural philosophy and spiritual philosophy discussed later developed?
Because these two processes are nothing more than the externalization of absolute ideas discussed in logic, so it's as simple as that. There's nothing complicated about it. Everything is simple, just like when I talk to my son about mathematical problems. No matter how difficult the problem is, it's just a small deal for him. He can't understand such a simple problem. Since you can't understand it, just like we can't understand such a simple Hegelian philosophy, since you can't understand it.
So, we need to turn Hegelian philosophy into a way that we can understand and express, which is actually the characteristic of Hegelian philosophy. As I mentioned earlier, Hegel's greatest ability is to express the most rigorous, seemingly profound, yet obscure ideas in the simplest way possible, so that everyone can understand them after listening. This is Hegel's skill.
So, Hegel's works do not need simplified versions, nor do they need popular editions. He does not need them because they are also very simple and can be understood by ordinary people.
After understanding the system of Hegelian philosophy, let's look at several important characteristics that Hegelian philosophy embodies, or in other words, according to the development of Hegelian philosophical thought, we can summarize it into several main contents.
The system belongs to the system, it is his philosophical system itself. When we talk about Hegelian philosophy, we usually summarize it into several aspects.
According to traditional methods, there are only a few aspects involved. The first one is about Hegel's knowledge of "existence", which is his idea of "ontology". Because ontology is actually one of the most important components in the history of philosophical development from Kant to Hegel, and can also be said to be a starting point for its philosophical development.
However, every philosopher has a different understanding of existence. For example, in Kant's theory of existence, that is, his ontology, is actually based on an understanding of the thing in itself. Therefore, he regards phenomena as appearances, as externalized forms of the thing in itself.
Therefore, the existence of things in themselves is used to define the objectivity of appearances, and to define the objectivity of appearances. So, this is Hegel, this is Kantian ontology or ontology in the sense of Kant. In Hegelian philosophy, his ontology is a definition of concepts, so its existence is essentially conscious of concepts. All the definitions of ontology given in logic are actually conceptual ontologies.
And this conceptual ontology is expressed through our daily language, that is, the words we say, the expressed ontology eventually rises to a concept, and then forms the so-called "spirit" that we want to pursue.
So, Hegel's philosophy, which fully embodies his ability to use the natural language of German well, to express deeper ideas beyond German. If in the Wolf era, when philosophy was first proposed to speak German, it was still just an ideal. By Hegel's time, making philosophy speak German had become a living reality, and people were even ashamed to speak philosophy without understanding German.
Among true modern Western philosophers, if you don't even understand German, what kind of philosophy are you talking about? You're joking, you know French. French is not a language of philosophy, it's a language of literature; You understand English, it's not a philosophical language, it's an experiential language. I understand Greek, it's not a philosophical language, it's a classical language. If you understand Chinese, then Chinese is not a philosophical language at all. Chinese is a completely incomprehensible language in the East.
So, they believe that only German is the true language of philosophy. Why is German a philosophical language?
Philosophy is mainly learned on the basis of language. If you don't understand this language, you can't understand philosophy. You said that in the future, I might as well not study Western philosophy and instead study Chinese philosophy. I don't have any language problems, but it's even more troublesome for you. Choosing Chinese philosophy is even more troublesome, and the language you want to learn is not the same. You need to learn at least two or more languages, such as ancient Chinese, and then add foreign languages, and at least two or more foreign languages may be required, and there may be even more requirements for foreign languages.
Because you have to understand the research on Chinese literature in various countries. Don't you read French research on China, German research on China, British research on China, and your articles. You can't be arrogant behind closed doors, saying that all foreign research is nonsense, and only our Chinese research is the greatest.
If you say that, you will definitely be criticized by others for not understanding academia at all. Why is German considered the most suitable language for expressing philosophy?
There are two reasons for this. The grammar of the first German language is very strict, although it is based on spoken language, spoken language itself is also very strict, that is, its "predicate" and "case" are relatively strict among all the Western languages we currently understand.
