Why are There Four Hegelian Judgments?

• Author: David Gray Carlson
• Position: Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
• Pages: 143-154

Page 143

Hegel is the philosopher of threes. In the Encyclopedia system, there is logic-nature-spirit. Within logic, there is being-essence-notion. Within notion, there is subject-object-idea. Within subjectivity, there is notion-judgment-syllogism. Yet, as everyone notices, when it comes to judgment, the structure is tetrachotomous. Here we find existence-reflection-necessity-notion. Why should there be four judgments when there are only three of everything else? Why must Shemp intrude upon the sublime perfection of Moe, Larry, and Curly? What need we d'Artagnan when Porthos, Athos, and Aramis seem the perfect threesome? Three's company. Four's a crowd!

In the Science of Logic,¹ Hegel does not allude very directly to the change, but in the Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel explains:

[T]he different species of judgement derive their features from the universal forms of the logical idea itself. If we follow this clue, it will supply us with three chief kinds of judgement parallel to the stages of Being, Essence, and Notion. The second of these kinds, as required by the character of Essence, which is the stage of differentiation, must be doubled . . . [W]hen the Notion, which is the unity of Being and Essence in a comprehensive thought, unfolds ... it must reproduce these two stages in a transformation proper to the notion.²

In this passage, Hegel suggests that it is the function of judgment to replay the objective logic, which had sublated itself at the end of essence. In the course of this dumb show for the sake of subjective notion, essence is the twice-told tale. Essence is the realm of mediation, so that judgment must be immediate, twice mediated, and notional (i.e., triune).Page 144

Hegel returns to tetrachotomy of his method in his last chapter, where he writes that the negative moment is a correlative and an immediate negation, both of which must be counted:

If one insists on counting, this second immediate [i.e., the negation of the negation] is, in the course of the method as a whole, the third term to the first immediate and the mediated. It is also, however, the third term to the first or formal negative and to absolute negativity or the second negative; now as the first negative is already the second term, the term reckoned as third can also be reckoned as fourth, and instead of a triplicity, the abstract form may be taken as a quadruplicity, in this way, the negative or the difference is counted as a duality.³

Hegel does not limit the above remark to judgment. Perhaps he is saying that throughout the subjective logic, where the notion reestablishes its own reality, there is always quadruplicity, since mediation (i.e., negativity) is always both a mediation and an immediacy. If so, the question arises why only the judgment chapter and, we should add, the first third of syllogism, are overtly tetradic in form.

No doubt there is cause to suspect that the intrusion of tetrachotomy is a non-event unworthy of our attention. In the introduction to the Science of Logic, Hegel suggests that the only valid exposition of philosophy is one that conforms to the "simple rhythm"⁴ of method, which is arguably triune. The divisions, headings, sections, and chapters serve only

to facilitate a preliminary survey and strictly are only of historical value. They do not belong to the content and body of the science but are compilations of an external reflection which has already run through the whole of the exposition and consequently knows and indicates in advance the sequence of its moments before these are brought forward by the subject matter itself.⁵

In other words, Hegel, having worked through the system, inserts the headings solely for expositional convenience. The headings have nothing to do with the logic. This leads one to believe that perhaps wePage 145 should make nothing at all out of the quadripartite headings in Judgment.

Shall we say that tetrachotomy is simply an error by Hegel? There is some reason to think so. In Measure, Hegel denounces Kant's table of categories precisely because they are tetrachotomous.⁶ No triplicity inheres between Kant's quantity, quality, relation, and modality, Hegel complains. For this very reason, Hegel writes, Kant "was unable to hit on the third to quality and quantity."⁷ Hegel implies that modality was Kant's true third-a term Hegel equates with Measure. Relation-the nominal third-is dismissed as merely an "insertion."⁸

In spite of his measured "quadrophobia," Hegel's judgments correspond to Kant's table of the logical functions of judgment from the Critique of Pure Reason. Yet, Kant says, the logical forms of judgment are directly connected to the very table of categories that Hegel has criticized.⁹ According to the table of the logical functions in judgment:Page 146

Kant's Table of Logical Functions in Judgment¹⁰

I

Quantity of Judgments

Universal.

Particular.

Singular.

II

Quality

Affirmative.

Negative.

Infinite.

III

Relation.

Categorical.

Hypothetical

Disjunctive.

IV

Modality

Problematical.

Assertorical.

Apodictical.

All of Hegel's judgments can be found here. Of course, Hegel reverses Kant's priority and analyzes qualitative judgments first, consistent with the general priority of quality over quantity. He also renames the major headings. Instead of quantity-quality-relation-modality, Hegel gives us existence-reflection-necessity-notion.

It is certainly odd that Hegel should criticize the quadripartite Table of Categories while following the related Table of the Logical Functions of Judgment. This led Marcuse to remark:

Although Hegel convincingly demonstrates that what is meant and treated as judgment by ordinary linguistic usage aims at the same ontological content as discovered by him, the treatment of judgment in the formal logic is not fitted into this framework. Insofar as Hegel attempts to do so and insists on the traditional "table of judgments," he confuses and obscures the great aspects of his own doctrine.¹¹

Yet, in spite of the above, Slavoj Zizek, a brilliant reader of the Science of Logic, defends Hegel:Page 147

Let us immediately show our cards: the three judgments actually acquire a fourth because 'Substance is Subject'; in other words, the 'lack of identity' between subject and predicate is posited as such in the fourth judgement (that of the Notion).¹²

I want to join Zizek in defending Hegel's tetrachotomous judgment but I will do so on somewhat different terms. I will argue that it is not the last but the first judgment-the judgment of existence or inherence-that stands for the diversity of subject and predicate. The last judgment in fact vindicates a unity between identity and difference. The diverse subjectivity on display in the first of the judgments (which reappears in the last of the judgments) is an acknowledgement of an external reflection that haunts all parts of the Science of Logic,

Why are there four judgments? Let me now show my cards, like the dummy in a bridge game.

I Tour de Judgement

The notion is an individual. More precisely, it is universal, particular, and individual. We can put this colloquially: The notion is itself, its other, and the unity of itself and other. This can be expressed as A = {A, B, C}, so that we have the following matrix:

A = Universality = Itself

B = Particularity = Other

C = Individuality = Unity of Self and Other

In the expression, A = {A, B, C}, A stands on both sides of the equation as the individual in its abstract and concrete forms.

Let us now count the four judgments.

(1) Judgment of Existence, In the judgment of existence, some property of the subject is singled out arbitrarily: Hegel's example is "the rose is fragrant"¹³ It has the form A = {A, B, C}, but this is misleading. The rose is still a rose even if not fragrant. In this first judgment, A is abstract and self-sufficient. It has no need of the predicate. Specula-tively, A is the lack of identity between itself and the notion. Therefore,Page 148

A = {A, B, C}, but also A unequal {A, B, C}.¹⁴ At first, A (the subject of notion's self-judgment) is everything; the predicate {A, B, C} is nothing. Individuality rests...