Hegel's Science of Logic: Lectures by Stephen Houlgate (4 of 18)

In these lectures, Professor Stephen Houlgate offers elucidating and helpful guidance into the notoriously difficult philosophical text The Science of Logic (Wissenschaft der Logik), written by the 19th Century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. The Science of Logic (also known as the Greater Logic) seeks to provide a systematic examination to the question of what it means to be. To be anything at all and what it means to be something specifically. What is it to be something at all? What is existence? What is a quality? What is it to be finite? Does the thought of limitations not suggest that thinking is somehow already beyond those? What is infinity? These are only a sample of the questions that Professor Houlgate investigates in Hegel’s formidable treatise in the course of these lectures.
These lectures will focus primarily from the beginning of the book up to the section called “The One and the Many” in the Doctrine of Being.
There are two widely used English translations of The Science of Logic. One by A.V. Miller and one by George di Giovanni. The latter is more recent and is perhaps becoming more frequent. Both, however, work well for this course.
The Hegel book -
(trans. Di Giovanni) www.amazon.co.uk/dp/110749963...
(trans. Miller)
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/157392280...
Stephen Houlgate is a professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. He has published numerous books and articles on Hegel, Kant, Danto, Derrida, Rawls, Brandom, McDowell, and others. Notable publications include ‘The Opening of Hegel's Logic. From Being to Infinity’ (Purdue University Press, 2006), ‘An Introduction to Hegel: Freedom, Truth and History, 2nd edition’ (Blackwell, 2005) and ‘Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. A Reader's Guide’ (Bloomsbury, 2013). He has edited several essay collections, such as ‘A Companion to Hegel’ (with M.Baur, Blackwell, 2011), ‘Hegel and the Philosophy of Nature’ (SUNY, 1998) and ‘Hegel and the Arts’ (Northwestern University Press, 2007).
These lectures were delivered during Autumn 2017 at the University of Warwick.
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[@PhilosophyPortal]

What a masterful description of pure being as indeterminate (thus turning into nothing), and pure nothing as immediate (and thus turning into being); as well as the explanation of the paradox that being and nothing are different yet identical.

[@Philiopantheon82]

Great lecture

[@dylanqdrujcf7850]

It's almost as though being and nothing are Max Black's spheres, distinct and yet indistinguishable - though I'm sure this analogy only goes so far

[@2tehnik]

I have to say I’m kind of skeptical that the connection between being and nothing is a two way street. The N->B transition makes enough sense. There is a determinacy to being indeterminate. Even totally indeterminate (though, to be honest, I don’t think I saw the connection to immediacy Houlgate talked about). But why does indeterminate being involve total indeterminacy? Especially since this pure thought/being is just a diet cogito. Isn’t it supposed to be a kindly of aimless thought thinking nothing but its own simple being? In other words, how is this simple, unspecific being, actually the thought of total unspecificity? Unless we basically define being “to be” nothing, I don’t see how the link is made. And that’s mostly a problem because then being would be merely equivocal to what has been described as the beginning for the Logic. Personally, as a self-conscious Eleatic, I'm not very surprised by this. Nothing cannot be thought, so obviously any "thought" of it will just be being-like. But Being has precisely that "auto-genetic," independent, stable character. Now, to be honest, the idea of having to posit and hold a real distinction between being and nothing, and affirm it as a pure dogma, may be something of a challenge and stumbling block for this kind of thinking. But that's where I'd say 'nothing' really is purely nominal, it's literally meaningless, because it says so on the cover: "not anything," not anything that could have a meaning (or, again, insofar as meaninglessness is a kind of meaning, it only throws us back into the light of being). Nothing and being are neither distinct nor identical, because nothing is not even there in order to be able to be contrasted or compared to being in any way. "Dualism" of this kind isn't possible. If any Hegelian reads this, I would be all ears to their reply. With that said, I think Houlgate is right about Parmenides assuming too much at certain points. Especially with regards to Being's character as finite and extended/massive. Additionally, how can we talk about the difference/distinction and identity between these two categories? Where did we get these categories from? How are they derived? The fact that distinction and identity of these two categories are essential to recognizing them as moments of becoming means we can't just delay this question either I think.