‘Hegel’s Vorbegriff to the Encyclopedia Logic and Its Context’

This paper offers an account of the ‘Vorbegriff’ or ‘preliminary conception’ in Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, which covers §18 to §83 in the final edition. The paper thus covers Hegel’s account of what he means by ‘thought’; his account of the three main ways in which previous philosophers have conceived how thought may be taken to relate to things; and his brief but important distinction between the ‘moments’ of thought which he calls the understanding, the negatively rational, and the positively rational. The paper concludes with a consideration of what problems the text may seem to raise for Hegel and his overall project, focusing in particular in its apparent rationalism; its claim to presuppositionlessness; and its apparent suggestion that the ‘positively rational’ violates certain fundamental logical principles.