1. In both Benedetto Croce's and Hegel's own terminology, dialectics can be understood as dottrina degli opposti (the doctrine of the opposites – Lehre der Gegensätze).1 In the dialectical process,...

This book is a consideration of Hegel’s view on logic and basic logical concepts such as truth, form, validity, and contradiction, and aims to assess this view’s relevance for contemporary philosophical logic. The literature on Hegel’s logic is fairly rich. The attention to contemporary philosophical logic places the present research closer to those works interested in the link between Hegel’s thought and analytical philosophy, Koch 2014, Brandom 2014, 1-15, Pippin 2016, Moyar 2017, Quante & Mooren 2018 among others). In this (...) context, one particularity of this book consists in focusing on something that has been generally underrated in the literature: the idea that, for Hegel as well as for Aristotle and many other authors, logic is the study of the forms of truth, i.e. the forms that our thought can assume in searching for truth. In this light, Hegel’s thinking about logic is a fundamental reference point for anyone interested in a philosophical foundation of logic. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to lay bare the roots of dialetheism in discussions about dialectics and dialectical logic at the time of the first development of paraconsistent logics. In other words, th...

In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel develops a subtle analysis of Megarian paradoxes: the Liar, the Veiled Man and the Sorites. In this paper, we focus on Hegel's interpretation of...

In this article, I consider the possibility of interpreting Hegel’s dialectic as dialetheism. After a first basic recapitulation about the meaning of the words ‘dialetheism’ and ‘dialectic’ and a consideration of Priest’s own account of the relation between dialectical and dialetheic logic in 1989, I discuss some controversial issues, not directly considered by Priest. As a matter of fact, the reflection on paraconsistent logics and dialetheism has enormously grown in recent years. In addition, the reception of Hegel’s logic and metaphysics (...) has also impressively improved. So I suggest that the discussion about the binomial dialectic/dialetheism should be reopened, on these new bases. (shrink)

The idea at the basis of this special issue is that reopening the old debate about the logical status of Hegel’s dialectics is extremely interesting, for various reasons.1 The first reason is that...

In this paper I argue that Hegel’s treatment of dialectical inferences, in particular of Plato’s dialectics in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, belongs to the history of the logical rule that, from Gerolamo Cardano to Bertrand Russell, is known as consequentia mirabilis. In 1906 Russell formalises it as follows: and its correspondent positive form as My paper has two parts. First, I show that dialectical inferences, for Hegel, involve sentences of the form and. Hegel, following Plato, stresses that (...) these inferences are das Wunderbare, the marvellous element of dialectical reasoning. In this sense Hegel’s view belongs to the history of CM from a perspective that is both terminological and logical. Second, I stress the peculiarity of Hegel’s CM. In a classical setting, the conditional is admissible and from we can, by CM, derive, and from, by CM, infer. However, in Hegel’s analysis it is evident that we can neither infer from, nor from. Rather, in dialectical inferences what we can vali... (shrink)

Suppose a person blushes iff what she says is false and she says: ‘I am blushing’. If she blushes, she doesn’t, and if she doesn’t, she does. This Blushing Liar is a new paradox, similar in some respects to the Pinocchio Paradox : Pinocchio’s nose grows iff he says some falsity, and he says: ‘my nose is growing’. Both paradoxes involve physical properties, and both, supposedly, confirm the existence of metaphysical dialetheias. In the paper, we note first that while PP (...) relies on the rather implausible scenario of a wooden puppet whose nose grows iff he is lying, so it is debunked by the objection of fictionality, BL is more plausible. Many people in our world blush, and it is not difficult to imagine someone whose saying is causally related to blushing in a similar way. A second question is whether blushing can be directly connected to falsity, without deliberate conscience, on the part of the speaker, of saying a false statement. So we explore the consequences of intending ‘I am blushing’ as a ‘lie’, in the strict meaning of the term, and we claim there is no substantial difference, but for the fact that the paradoxical effect is even more plausible. Third, we check whether BL and PP do really release metaphysical dialetheias, and we argue they do not: they lack the fundamental requisite of Liar-like contradictions, i.e. the stratification of properties. (shrink)

The papers in this volume present some of the most recent results of the work about contradictions in philosophical logic and metaphysics; examine the history of contradiction in crucial phases of philosophical thought; consider the relevance of contradictions for political and philosophical actuality. From this consideration a common question emerges: the question of the irreducibility, reality and productive force of (some) contradictions.

Some authors have claimed that Hegel's ‘determinate negation’ should be distinguished from ‘logical’ or ‘formal’ negation, that is, from a view of negation as a contradictory forming operator. In contrast, I argue that dialectical determinate negation involves a view of negation as a contradictory forming operator, and can therefore count as formal negation in every respect. However, as it is clear in contemporary glutty semantics of negation, one may distinguish between different accounts of the relationship between negation, contradiction and content. (...) I suggest that, differently from classical negation, and as glutty negation, dialectical negation has partial content. (shrink)

The paper is about the connection between logic and discrimination, with special focus on Plumwood’s ideas in her groundbreaking article ‘The Politics of Reason. Towards a Feminist Logic’ (1993). Although Plumwood’s paper is not focused on the notion of discrimination, what she writes is useful for illuminating some basic mechanisms of thought that are at the basis of discriminatory practices. After an introductory section about the concepts of logic and discrimination and their possible interconnections, I present Plumwood’s ideas in 1993 (...) with a special focus on their relevance for understanding the nature of discrimination. More specifically, I use examples of discriminatory practices that make the connection between logical operations and oppression envisaged by Plumwood clear. I focus especially on two questions: Can logic produce discrimination? Can logic contribute to the fight against discrimination? If so, how? (shrink)

The book is an analysis of Kant’s uses and definitions of the three concepts ‘transcendental philosophy’, ‘ontology’ and ‘logic’. It first focuses on Kant’s definitions of ‘transcendental’ in the Critique of Pure Reason, where the term is used for the very first time with a programmatic meaning, as the qualification of Kant’s specific philosophical standpoint. Secondly, it reconstructs Kant’s position towards metaphysics and ontology in his pre-critical and critical writings, as well as its premises in the Leibnizian and Wolffian metaphysics. (...) It last examines the meaning of the concept of logic in Kant's philosophy. All this shows that a new conception of metaphysics emerges from Kant’s critique and within the critical period. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Hegel’s and Priest’s answers to three questions: “What is logic?” “Can logic be revised?” “If so, how is this done?” Considering that the two views are separated by more than 150 years in which logic has experienced its perhaps most radical revolution, the two accounts are surprisingly close. Both authors admit different meanings of “logic”. In both accounts what could be called a metaphysical concept of logic plays an important role. Moreover, both authors hold that (...) logic as theory can be revised. Yet the two conceptions also differ in some relevant respect. (shrink)

In 2023, Beall and Ficara present what they call Hegelian conjunctions. A Hegelian conjunction is a true conjunction of contradictory opposites in which the conjuncts, separately taken, are untrue and for which simplification fails. The analysis in Beall & Ficara History and Philosophy of Logic 44 (2) 119-131, 2023 is important for various reasons. First, for overcoming the deleterious state of estrangement between two ways of conceiving and practicing logic, the “dialectical” or “continental” and the “analytical” one. Second, for strengthening (...) a new, promising way of conceiving conjunction in paraconsistency (d’Agostini Synthese 199, 6845 6874, 2021). Yet it needs an enlargement, mainly in two dimensions, a hermeneutical and a logical one. The former concerns the textual basis used by Beall and Ficara for motivating their account (the focus of their analysis is a small part of the early Hegelian fragment on Vereinigung – unification/conjunction). The latter is the semantics proposed by Beall and Ficara. In this paper, I focus on the first dimension, in the conviction that the condition for making the chief formal characteristics of dialectics (the logical dimension) clearer is a grasp of the Hegelian fragment in its entirety and complexity. The fragment is crucial for thinking about the logic, metaphysics and epistemology of true contradictions. Yet it counts as obscure. My aim is to make its content more accessible, and to present its relevance for conjunctive paraconsistency. (shrink)

The article analyses Hegel's use of the expression >das Logische die Logik das Logische das Logische das Dialektische<. This shows in my point of view that the Jena logic is already conceived as metaphysics, and that dialectics is the very core of the identity of logic and metaphysics.

My aim is to reconstruct the basic steps and the fundamental idea of Kant’s transcendental deduction of categories as well as Hegel’s interpretation and reframing of Kant’s idea. Hegel’s reading is crucial for two reasons: first, for fixing the basic form of the Kant­ian argument and secondly, for understanding its metaphilosophical relevance. For Hegel, philosophical proof has a specific nature, which distinguishes it from scientific proof and brings it closer to a juridical one. In this perspective the transcendental deduction, which (...) is universally considered one of the most difficult chapters in the history of philosophy, reveals itself as the genuine clarification of specifically philosophical proof. I first present the idea of Kant’s transcendental deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason as well as its Hegelian reading in the Science of Logic and reformulation as the very method of philosophy in the Philo­sophy of Right. I show what in the Kantian argumentation constituted the basis for Hegel’s own interpretation and transformation. In so doing, I highlight a ‘red thread’ between the two ideas of the transcendental deduction. I conclude by proposing a formal account of Kant’s and Hegel’s ideas and by summing up the main metaphilosophical insights we can gain from Kant’s idea and its Hegelian interpretation. (shrink)

The article is about the meaning of the word ‘transcendental’ in Kant and Fichte. Its aim is not merely exegetical. It is a common hermeneutical insight (now revitalised by research on conceptual engineering and conceptual genealogy for analytic philosophy) that analysing the use and definitions of concepts in history, and their shifts in the development of the history of philosophy, is a crucial tool we have to understand those concepts and to assess their viability for philosophy today. In this paper, (...) I focus on Kant’s use and definitions of the word ‘transcendental’ and suggest that they are symptomatic of a fundamental question that is not completely answered in Kant’s philosophy. If transcendental philosophy deals not with objects but rather the conditions of possibility of objective knowledge, then important questions emerge: What are these possibility conditions? Do they exist? Are they special objects? What is their nature? I show that the shift in Fichte’s use and understanding of the concept of ‘transcendental’ leads to a possible solution of the problem Kant was struggling with. (shrink)

This essay analyses Hegel’s use of the metaphor of «the cross and the rose», not only in the Preface to the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, which all major interpretations refer to, but also in two other texts: Wer denkt abstrakt? of 1807 and the 1829 review of Schubart's and Garganico’s Über Philosophie überhaupt... In Wer denkt abstrakt? Hegel criticizes a sentimental, as equivalent to a «non concrete», interpretation of the figure; in the Preface he claims that «reason is the (...) rose in the cross of the present», assimilating the image to a platonic idea of State; in the review of 1829 he criticizes a naïve interpretation of the figure. In the light of these observations, it is possible to conclude that Hegel sees the figure as the specific image of the relation of the platonic and the critical element, typical of dialectical rationality. The Hegelian use of the figure thus results, in this perspective, by far more subtle than the one envisaged by its “political” interpretations. (shrink)

In this paper I consider Benedetto Croce’s interpretation and critique of Hegel’s dialectic in Ciò che è vivo e ciò che è morto della filosofia di Hegel (1906)and I compare it with a very similar critique elaborated by Gilles Deleuze around sixty years later (in Différence et répetition, 1968, Nietzsche et la philosophie,1962 and Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? 1991). Even if they are two very different authors, belonging to very different traditions and contexts, both Croce andDeleuze criticise Hegel with a (...) very similar argument, namely by saying that Hegel did not adequately take into account the concept of difference, and subordinated it to opposition (or negation). In addition, albeit by taking different roads, both Croce and Deleuze thought that philosophy has its own specific logic, and this logic is a logic of concept. (shrink)

Giorgi Lebanidze's book is a welcome contribution to the literature on Hegel's logic and metaphysics. It provides a well-grounded account of the ontologico-metaphysical relevance of Hegel's thought, and locates it within a lucid reconstruction of recent debates. As the author argues in the introduction, two lines have dominated the English-speaking literature on Hegel in the last thirty years: an epistemological reading that brings Hegel close to Kant, and a metaphysical reading that decouples Hegel from Kant. Paradigmatic for the two readings (...) are for Lebanidze Robert Pippin's groundbreaking Hegel's Idealism on the one side, and Robert Stern's Hegelian Metaphysics and Brady Bowman's Hegel and the... (shrink)

In this paper I consider Hegel’s idea of logic in different passages of his work (in the Introduction to the Science of Logic, in the Vorbegriff of the Encyclopaedia Logic, in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy), and I compare it with some contemporary conceptions of logic. In my view, such a comparison is relevant in at least two senses. First, it makes possible to address the controversial question: «what kind of logic is Hegel’s logic?». Second, it allows to (...) locate Hegel’s view within contemporary debates, assessing its actuality. In this perspective, Hegel’s reflections reveal to be crucial in order to deal with some questions at the very core of contemporary debates in the philosophy of logic. (shrink)

This essay analyses Hegel’s use of the metaphor of «the cross and the rose», not only in the Preface to the Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, which all major interpretations refer to, but also in two other texts: Wer denkt abstrakt? of 1807 and the 1829 review of Schubart's and Garganico’s Über Philosophie überhaupt... In Wer denkt abstrakt? Hegel criticizes a sentimental, as equivalent to a «non concrete», interpretation of the figure; in the Preface he claims that «reason is the (...) rose in the cross of the present», assimilating the image to a platonic idea of State; in the review of 1829 he criticizes a naïve interpretation of the figure. In the light of these observations, it is possible to conclude that Hegel sees the figure as the specific image of the relation of the platonic and the critical element, typical of dialectical rationality. The Hegelian use of the figure thus results, in this perspective, by far more subtle than the one envisaged by its “political” interpretations. (shrink)

Content: Elena Ficara: Einleitung Marco Ivaldo: Skeptizismus bei Fichte mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Rolle des Zweifels in der »Bestimmung des Menschen« Angelica Nuzzo: A Question of Method: Transcendental Philosophy, Dialectic, and the Problem of Determination Rainer Schäfer: Kombinationen von Fundamentalismus, Kohärentismus und Skepsis bei Kant, Fichte und Hegel als Antworten auf Probleme gegenwärtiger Epistemologie Elena Ficara: Skeptizismus und die Begründung der Philosophie bei Kant und Hegel Lidia Gasperoni: Maimon und der Skeptizismus Jürgen Stahl: Skeptizismus und Kritik – zur Wandlung der (...) Kritikauffassung im transzendentalen Idealismus Fichtes Klaus Vieweg: Moralität, Ironie, Skeptizismus Rezensionen. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

The article analyses Kant’s and Fichte’s uses of the word ‘transcendental’. As a matter of fact, in both philosophers the use of the word is strongly connected with the problem of definition and foundation of philosophy. According to some commentators (first of all Norbert Hinske), Kant’s use of the word shows an oscillation (Doppeltendenz) between an old (metaphysical) and a new (epistemological-critical) meaning. This semantic oscillation means that Kant’s philosophical foundation fluctuates between the attempt to overcome traditional metaphysics and the (...) difficulty of getting rid of metaphysics. Unfortunately, Hinske does not explain which is the systematic reason why the word transcendental does not only have a new, programmatic meaning, but also maintains the old one. In my view, the Doppeltendenz of the Kantian transcendental is due to the problem of the ontological implications of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. On the one hand, the new definition of transcendental philosophy (as inquiry about a priori structures of knowledge) seems to imply a kind of Platonism, since it postulates the existence and objectivity of a priori structures. On the other hand, this Platonism seems to be contradicted by Kant’s epistemological dualism, according to which a priori concepts are void without intuitions, and therefore ontologically dependent from intuitions. In my view, Fichte’s interpretation of the transcendental is a possible solution to this problem. (shrink)

Medieval logic has become an object of increased interest in the last 20 years, for many reasons. One of them is, possibly, the fact that Medievals dealt with logical questions considering their in...