Commentary on the Logic, Chapter 13
The Transition: Why the Concept Must Judge
Why can the concept not remain in its interiority? The reason lies in the third of its moments. As long as one thinks universal, particular, and individual merely side by side, they are not yet differences — it is the same determinateness considered three times over. Only individuality posits them as differences: it is “the free distinguishing” of the concept, and thereby its determinateness is posited, but as particularity — namely “so that, first, the distinguished terms have only the determinateness of the moments of the concept over against each other, and second, their identity — that the one is the other — is likewise posited.” And then Hegel’s conclusion, which supplies the name: “this posited particularity of the concept is the judgment” (Encyclopedia, vol. 1, §165).
The concept does not judge, then, because it must, but because, as soon as its moments are actually distinguished, it has already judged. The judgment is not its next step but the shape it assumes once its differences are posited. Hegel’s etymology: Ur-Teil — the original division of the concept into subject and predicate. Philologically this derivation is disputed; for Hegel’s argument that does not matter. Johann Eduard Erdmann, one of the most prolific of Hegel’s students, explained the difference on his own account: his appeals to language “seldom went back to etymology” but were “rather directed at usage” — for etymology shows at most “how the mind arrived at a thought,” whereas usage shows “what treasure of thoughts the people whose language it is possesses.”[1]
Usage matters here too: whoever judges actually divides — he takes something apart in order to put it back together. Whether the word arose in this way changes nothing about this. In the judgment, he divides himself into subject (S — the individual), predicate (P — the universal), and copula (is — the particular as mediation). Not every sentence is a judgment — Hegel’s doctrine of judgment concerns itself only with sentences that articulate the concept of a thing.
This restriction hits the mark but still falls short, and Hegel himself says why. One usually takes the judgment “in a subjective sense […], as an operation and form that occurs merely in self-conscious thinking.” This distinction, he says, is not yet present at the logical level: “the judgment is to be taken quite generally: all things are a judgment — that is, they are individuals which are in themselves a universality or inner nature, or a universal that is individualized” (Encyclopedia, vol. 1, §167).
This shifts the question. It is not a matter of which sentences are judgments, but of the fact that the form of judgment is the structure of the thing itself: every thing is an individual with a universal nature, and it is precisely this relation that we express when we judge. “The rose is red” is therefore not a report about a connection in my head — Hegel calls this the “rather objective expression of the judgment.”
A word on the examples. When “This rose is red” is examined here, the point is not botany. The rose and the red are interchangeable — “This ball is red,” “This traffic light is red” would be the same. The question is how an individual relates to a universal.
Why then use examples at all, and not simply “I is U”? Because logic is formal but not formalistic: it abstracts from contents but does not operate with empty variables. Two misunderstandings suggest themselves and both are to be avoided. One reads “This rose is red” and objects that there are also yellow roses — an objection that misses the level at issue. The other reckons only with symbols and loses touch with the thinking that is being carried out in the process. [KF]
The copula, too, is to be read from this vantage point. Whoever, in thinking of the judgment, thinks first “of the independence of the extremes” — of a subject here and a universal determination “say, in my head” — must then bring them together afterward. But insofar as the is “predicates the predicate of the subject, that external, subjective subsuming is thereby sublated again” (§166). The little word does not assert a connection — it shows one.
The Four Classes of Judgment — Stages in Disclosing the World
Overview table: The twelve forms of judgment form a sequence of stages of increasing adequacy — from the immediate singular judgment to the necessary judgment of value:
The names of the four classes have been Germanized here; Hegel writes judgment of determinate being [Urteil des Daseins], judgment of reflection, judgment of necessity, and judgment of the concept (Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, §§ 172–179). Anyone consulting that source will find the forms under these designations.
| Class | Subform | Example | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Judgment of determinate being | Positive | “This rose is red” | Incomplete — it could just as well be yellow |
| Negative | “This rose is not red” | Unbounded alternatives | |
| Infinite | “The rose is not an elephant” | Completely empty of content | |
| Judgment of reflection | Singular | “This substance is conductive” | Contingent — does not hold for others |
| Particular | “Some metals rust” | Open — which ones exactly? | |
| Universal | “All living beings are mortal” | Empirical — how do we know “all”? | |
| Judgment of necessity | Categorical | “Gold is a metal” | Static — why? |
| Hypothetical | “If heating, then expansion” | External — why does the condition hold? | |
| Disjunctive | “A triangle is acute-, right-, or obtuse-angled” | Only within closed systems | |
| Judgment of the concept | Assertoric | “This house is well built” | Subjective — by what standard? |
| Problematic | “Good or bad, depending on use” | Relative — conditions external | |
| Apodictic | “A house built this way is necessarily stable” | Demands the inference! |
The development shows a clear direction: the predicate becomes ever weightier — from a fleeting property to a deep essential core. What is decisive is the inner movement that drives each stage toward the next:
1. Judgments of determinate being (quality): Immediate attribution. “The rose is red.” What it accomplishes: it names a property. Its limit: arbitrariness — “The rose is also thorny” is just as true. What is missing is reflection on the scope of validity. Follow the transition: the judgment of determinate being drives itself into nonsense. “The rose is not red” leaves open that it has some other color — which would make it a positive judgment again. Proceeding further to “The rose is not an elephant,” all that remains is the “complete inadequacy” of subject and predicate to one another (Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, § 173). The judgment falls apart.
What follows from this is, at first, not a question of scope but a change in the subject: it now stands “no longer as immediately qualitative, but in relation and connection with an other, with an external world” (§ 174). This is why the predicates of the next stage are of a different kind — Hegel’s examples are useful, dangerous, weight, acidity, impulse: determinations that a thing has only in relation to something else. Only once the subject is grasped in this way does the question of scope become meaningful at all (§ 175). Quantity, then, is the consequence of relativity, not its occasion.
2. Judgments of reflection (quantity): Determination of scope. “Some metals conduct,” “All roses are plants.” What it accomplishes: it determines how many fall under the predicate. Its limit: totality (all counted instances) ≠ universality (the essence of the thing). Even if all swans observed so far have been white, it does not follow that “All swans are white.” The transition: mere enumeration (“all those observed so far…”) never yields genuine universality. We want to know whether the connection is essential or contingent. Hegel says this progression is found “already in our ordinary consciousness, when we say: what belongs to all belongs to the kind” (§ 176, addition). The step is thus no invention of logic — it is one we constantly take. Is gold a metal because it happens to conduct — or because it is a metal by its very essence? The question of the necessity of the attribution drives us on to the judgment of necessity.
3. Judgments of necessity (relation): Insight into the kind. “Gold is a metal.” What it accomplishes: insight into the nature of the relation — gold is essentially (not contingently) a metal. Its limit: it shows the necessary membership, but it does not evaluate. The transition: the judgment of necessity says what something is, but not whether it is a good instance of its kind. But we want to know: is this house a good house or a bad one? Does this action live up to its own claim? The question of correspondence with its own concept drives us on to the judgment of the concept.
4. Judgments of the concept (modality): The concept as standard. “This house is good.” What it accomplishes: it evaluates something against its own concept — a good house is one that corresponds to what a house is supposed to be. On this view, the good is not subjective feeling but correspondence with one’s own essence. On the ordinary use of the word, Hegel notes: “Only such judging — whether an object, an action, and so on, is good or bad, true, beautiful, and so forth — is what is also called judging in ordinary life” (§ 178). What logic finally arrives at is what is usually the very first thing called a judgment at all — the three earlier stages count, in everyday usage, merely as statements of fact. The transition to the syllogism: the judgment of the concept says “This house is good” — but why? The demand for grounding drives us beyond judgment altogether, to the syllogism.
| Stage | Form | Example | Disclosure of the world |
|---|---|---|---|
| Determinate being | Immediate | “The rose is red” | Perception |
| Reflection | Quantifying | “All metals conduct” | Induction |
| Necessity | Kind | “Gold is a metal” | Science |
| Concept | Normative | “This house is good” | Ethics, aesthetics |
Following Stekeler: These stages correspond to our practice of learning:[2] first we learn simple predications (children: “Dog!”), then concepts of quantity (all dogs), then if-then statements (laws), then normative judgments (a good dog). Hegel’s logic is a logic of formation [Bildung].
Johann Eduard Erdmann, Grundriss der Logik und Metaphysik, 3rd ed., Halle 1848, preface to the first edition. Erdmann adds that to demonstrate the agreement between a developed concept and linguistic usage means “remaining ever conscious of one’s unity with the collective consciousness of one’s people.” ↩︎
The mapping of the four judgment forms onto stages of learning practice is my own summary; Stekeler develops the language-practice reading of judgment without presenting this four-stage scheme as such. On the underlying matter, see ibid., p. 596 (the child who says “sheep” and “baa” to a toy figure is not pretending that the piece of wood is a sheep) and p. 246. [KF] ↩︎