(‘das Einzelne ’)
17
makes it a universal; rather , he is commenting that there
are judgements where we predicate attributes not just of the individual as
such, but of the individual as a member of a class, and thus as falling
under a universal. Hegel makes this clear when he comments in the
Addition (Zusatz) to this paragraph: ‘When it is determined in the
singular judgment as a universal, the subject therefore goes beyond itself
as this merely single instance. To say ‘‘This plant is curative’’, implies
that it is not merely this single plant that is curative, but that some or
many plants are . . .’
18
I therefore do not think that this can count as a
place where Hegel adopted the view with which the British Idealists were
later identified.
Another place where textual support for this claim is said to be found,
however, is in Hegel’s discussion of sense-certainty (which, along with
Book III of the Logic, and the Philosophy of Right, is one of the three parts
of Hegel’s work that had the strongest influence on the British Idealists).
In the course of that discussion, Hegel considers the claim of sense-
certainty that it can pick out the ‘now’ and the ‘here’ as individuals by
pointing at an individual moment or an individual place; and he counters
it by arguing that every such moment or place is further divisible, where he
writes that
The pointing-out of the Now is thus itself the movement which expresses what
the Now is in truth, viz. a result, or a plurality of Nows all taken together; and
the pointing-out is the experience of learning that the Now is a universal,
19
and similarly he says of ‘Here’:
The Here that is meant would be the point; but it is not: on the contrary, when
it is pointed out as something that is, the pointing-out shows itself to be not an
immediate knowing [of the point], but a movement from the Here that is meant
17
In their translation, Geraets, Suchting and Harris use ‘singular’ rather than ‘individual’ to
translate ‘Einzelne’, for reasons they give in the translators’ introduction, xix–xx. While
appreciating some of the points they make in favour of this practice, and while I will retain its
use when quoting from their translation, in the text I will continue to talk of ‘individual’ rather
than ‘singular’, in part because this is the terminology used by the British Idealists I am also
discussing.
18
Hegel, Encyclopaedia Logic, x175 Addition, p. 252:
Das Subjekt, indem es im singula
¨
ren Urteil als Allgemeines bestimmt ist, schreitet
damit u
¨
ber sich, als dieses bloß Einzelne, hinaus. Wenn wir sagen: »diese Pflanze ist
heilsam«, so liegt darin, daß nicht bloß diese einzelne Pflanze heilsam ist, sondern
mehrere oder einige.
(Werke, Vol. VIII, p. 327)
19
G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller (Oxford, 1977) 64:
Das Aufzeigen ist also selbst die Bewegung, welche es ausspricht, was das Jetzt im
Wahrheit ist, na
¨
mlich ein Resultat oder eine Vielheit von Jetzt zusammengefaßt; und
das Aufzeigen ist das Erfahren, daß Jetzt Allgemeines ist.
(Werke, Vol. III, p. 89)
120 ROBERT STERN
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