Thinking and Thought
'to think' in German is denken. 'Thinking' or '(the activity of)
thought' is conveyed by the nominal infinitive, das Denken.
Gedanke is usually not 'thought' as an activity, but '(a) thought' as
the product or content of thinking. A Gedanke may be either a
psychological entity ('His thoughts are confused', 'The thought of his arrival
excited me') or an ideal, logical entity ('It is a comforting thought that the
actual is rational'). The past participle of denken is gedacht.
Hence Hegel associates it with the cognate Gedächtnis (memory,
especially of words). Denken enters several compounds: especially
important for Hegel is nachdenken (literally 'to after-think', hence
'to reflect') and das Nachdenken ('after-thinking, reflection'). But it
is distinct from reflektieren and Reflexion (reflection), in that
it has the favourable connotation of 'thinking over, about' what one has first
encountered by, e.g., perception or feeling, and of producing thoughts about it
(Enc. I (section)2).
In philosophy, as in everyday speech, 'thinking' can cover a wide range of mental activity. Leibniz and his followers regarded all psychical activity as thinking, differing only in its degree of clarity and distinctness. But Parmenides, Plato, etc., sharply distinguished thinking (to noein or noesis) from other faculties or activities, especially opinion (doxa) and perception. Against the Leibnizians, Kant distinguished thought sharply from intuition (Anschauung), and argued that cognition requires both thinking and intuition of an object. Thus while we can think about things in themselves, we cannot know about them since they supply no intuitions for our concepts. Kant (like Krug) held that one can think whatever one likes, as long as one does not contradict oneself. The law of contradiction thus has a special status among the Denkgesetze ('laws of thought'): a contradictory thought is no thought at all. Hegel rejects this doctrine, and the laws of thought in general, since he holds that thought, like reason, can neither accept from without, nor assign to itself, limits to its activity which it cannot surmount or think beyond. The discovery and overcoming of contradictions in our thinking plays an essential part in the advance of our thought.
When concepts or categories are not filled out with intuitions, they are, on Kant's view, merely Gedankenformen ('forms of thought(s)'). But a more common expression among his successors (e.g. Schleiermacher, Reinhold) is Denkform ('thought-form, form of thinking'), in contrast to Denkstoff ('material of thought, thinking'). Thought-forms are often equated with the forms of formal logic: e.g. the thought-form 'All S is P' becomes, by the addition of appropriate thought-material, the thought 'All men are mortal'. Hegel equates them with the subject-matter of logic, which includes both Kant's categories and the forms of formal logic: e.g. the thought-form of causality is involved in the concrete thought of a stone's breaking glass. Often he uses the word Denkbestimmung ( thought-determination ), and occasionally Gedankenbestimmung, as a near-synonym, but with the additional suggestions of the word Bestimmung. He often equates a thought-form or -determination with a thought, since (1) a thought-form is not, on his view, simply the form of a thought, but can also be the content of a thought, and (2) a concrete thought, of a horse or of a stone's breaking glass, is a conception ( Vorstellung), not strictly a thought.
Hegel sometimes equates a thought or thought-form with a concept. More often he distinguishes them, since the concept properly belongs only to the last phase of the Logic. But, like 'concept', 'thought' and 'thinking' are involved in a set of contrasts which Hegel attempts to sublate. They contrast with (1) the I* that thinks or 'has' thoughts; (2) other psychical activities of the I such as perceiving, imagining, etc.; and (3) with the object which I think about:
1. From Plato and Aristotle down to Kant, philosophers have associated the I and its identity with thought, rather than with, e.g., perception, desire or action, Hegel too insists that the I does not 'have' thoughts or thought-forms, but is identical with, or constituted by, them (Enc. I (section)20, 24A.I). Apart from the considerations under (2) below, he has two arguments for this. (a) To be an I is to be aware of oneself as an I, and awareness of oneself as an I involves thought, since the I is accessible only by way of pure thinking: the I as such provides no sensory material for perception or conception. (b) I cannot coherently distance myself from my thought(form)s, supposing that they are a tool that I uses (like a hammer) or that I might have lacked them (like a desire), since my thinking in these ways of my thoughts and of my relation to them involves the very thoughts from which I attempt to distance myself.
2. Hegel accepts Aristotle's doctrine that what distinguishes man from all other creatures is the ability to think, and infers (invalidly) that 'everything human is human because, and only because, it is produced by thinking' (Enc. I (section)2). Thus thinking is not simply one activity alongside others that we engage in. First, my other activities involve thought. My perceiving a horse as a horse, my conception of a horse, my feeling of the presence of God, etc., involve the thought(-form)s of, e.g., a thing, life, or the absolute. No animal, Hegel argues, has a morality or a religion, and this is because, even if morality or religion appear in the form of; e.g., feeling, they essentially involve thought. My feelings, etc., are not imbued with thought from birth, but my development into a full human being and my ability to claim my feelings, etc. (and my body) as my own requires their infusion with thought. This, Hegel believes, is at odds with Kant's doctrine that morality essentially involves a conflict between reason and our inclinations.
Second, my other activities, my perceiving, desiring, etc., are objects of my thinking in a way in which my thinking is not, conversely, an object of them. I can think that I am perceiving, that perception has individuals for its objects, etc., while I cannot perceive that I am thinking or that thinking is of universals. This exemplifies a general principle: Thinking is of, or 'overreaches' (übergreift), what is other than thought. Thinking of this type, especially the extraction of the pure thoughts implicit in feelings, etc. constitutes philosophical thinking, in contrast to the thinking involved in everyday activities.
3. Thinking does not simply contrast with its objects. First, the principle that thought overreaches what is other than thought applies here too. If a thing is individual (in contrast to the universality of thoughts) or even wholly alien to thought or unthinkable, it is nevertheless by thinking that I know this, and 'individual', 'alien to thought', and 'unthinkable' express thoughts, not, e.g., perceptions.
Second, the essence of things is discerned by thinking, not by perceiving, and constituted by thoughts, not by their external perceptible features that we first encounter. This is so both at the level of the natural sciences (e.g. electricity, discovered by Nachdenken, is the essence of lightning) and at the level of philosophy (e.g. the concept is the essence of the I). Thus thoughts are as much objective as subjective.
So far Hegel's view of the relation of thought to its objects is similar to Kant's. For Kant too, the thoughts that we apply to intuitions constitute the essence of the resulting things. But Hegel differs from Kant in that he rejects the view that thoughts are imposed by us on intrinsically thought-free intuitions. Thoughts are embedded in things independently of our thinking about them. It is only our thought about the Great Bear that makes it a unity, but, e.g., a horse is a self-determining unity; it is not unified solely by our thought about it. (This seemingly innocuous doctrine plays a part in Hegel's idealism and his belief that the absolute is spirit.)
Hegel also differs from Kant in stressing that we can think not only about what is other than thought, but about thought itself. In particular we can (in logic) think about thought(-form)s in terms of thought(-form)s. Such pure thinking needs no external intuitions, and yet is, on Hegel's view, non-arbitrary and constitutes cognition. He associates such thinking with the noesis noeseos ('thinking of/about thinking') that Aristotle ascribes to God, and Plotinus to the 'true intellect (nous)'.
When Hegel says that thought or thinking is infinite, he means several things: (1) Thought(-form)s are not sharply distinct from, and bounded by, each other; they are knit together by reason and dialectic. (2) Thought(s) overreach what is other than thought. (3) Thought can think about itself. (4) Thought as a whole has no limits. Finite thoughts, by contrast, are segments of thought that are (a) treated as distinct from other thoughts; (b) treated as distinct from things; (c) incapable of, or not regarded as, applying to themselves; and/or (d) applicable to, or thoughts of, finite entities.
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