Commentary on the Logic, Chapter 26
Review of the Entire Logic
What has logic gone through?
The logic of being developed the forms of immediate determinateness — quality, quantity, measure — and showed that none of them stands on its own. The form of movement was transition: a category flips into its other.
The logic of essence developed the structures of mediation — reflection, appearance, actuality — and showed that the apparently underlying is itself posited. The form of movement was shining: two determinations mutually constitute one another.
The logic of the concept developed self-determination — concept, judgment, syllogism; then mechanism, chemism, teleology; finally life, cognition and willing, absolute Idea. The form of movement was self-development: a determination unfolds what was laid out within it.
And the three forms of movement themselves stand in the same order: transition is the most external, shining the mediated, self-development the developed form of the same process. Logic has thus applied to itself what it developed.
What follows from this is more modest than Hegel’s claim, and more than a mere ordering of thought: the categories cannot be arbitrarily arranged otherwise, because each presupposes the previous one. Whether this series is complete cannot be proven — the demonstration consists in the fact that no gap has been found, not in the fact that none could be possible.