"An Exposition of the First Triad of Categories of the Hegelian
Logic--Being, Non-Being, Becoming"
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/papers/vol2/530522-An_Exposition_of_the_First_Triad_of_Categories.htm

Ralph Dumain shared the URL for Martin Luther King's
essay on Hegel, entitled, AN EXPOSITION OF THE FIRST
TRIAD OF CATEGORIES OF THE HEGELIAN LOGIC (1953).
I recommend it, too. Here are some excerpts that are relevant
to the on-going discussion comparing Kant with Hegel.

Dr. King gets right to the core of the issue immediately.
Kant's treatment of the categories and Hegel's treatment
of the categories are radically different. Dr. King says:

"...The categories began their history, so far
as modern philosophy is concerned, in the
system of Kant. The categories were for Kant,
like space and time, pure forms without content
or matter, prior to all experience, and not given
from any external source but contributed to
cognition by the mind itself. These categories
were also universal and necessary. But with
all their importance, Kant insisted that the
categories were limited to phenomena. They
did not apply to the thing-in-itself (Ding an
sich). The thing-in-itself was not a cause, or
a substance; it was neither quality nor quantity.
These concepts applied only to phenomena,
not to noumena. So for Kant the categories
were mere subjective forms of thought, not
objective ontological entities. It was at this
point that Hegel went beyond Kant."
(Dr. Martin Luther King, AN EXPOSITION
OF THE FIRST TRIAD OF CATEGORIES
OF THE HEGELIAN LOGIC, 1953)

That is entirely correct in form and content. It highlights
the key difference between these two great philosophers.
Dr. King continues:

"The categories for Hegel were more than
epistemological principles of knowing; they
were ontological principles of being. They
were not merely the necessary and universal
conditions of the world as it appears to us,
but they were the necessary and universal
conditions of the world, as it is in itself.
Reason, the system of categories, is
self-explained and self-determined,
dependent only upon itself. This means
that it is real. Therefore, "the rational is
the real and the real is the rational."
(Dr. Martin Luther King, ibid. 1953)

This also gets right to the main point -- Reason is for
Hegel the Ultimate Reality. Furthermore, Reason is not
a mystical ghost, but a Thinking, Rational Spirit. The
full encyclopedia of categories is illuminated within the
Hegelian Concept. Dr. King continues:

"The task which Hegel undertakes in the
Logic is, therefore, this: to give an account
of the first reason of the world; to show
that every single category necessarily
and logically involves every other single
category; and finally to show that all the
categories, regarded as a single whole,
constitute a self-explained, self-determined,
unity, such that it is capable of constituting
the absolutely first principle of the world.
Kant had named twelve categories. But he
made no effectual attempt to deduce them
from one another...because the categories
were for him only epistemological forms of the
mind, not objective ontological entities...When
we come to Hegel, however, the picture is
different. Just as in formal logic the conclusion
flows necessarily from the premises, so in
Hegelian logic the categories are logically
deduced from each other." (Dr. Martin
Luther King, ibid. 1953)

This point by Dr. King is never given enough attention.
Hegel is not simply announcing his science of logic.
There is nothing authoritarian about it. It is not a mystic
belief-system. Rather, Hegel carefully and scientifically
*deduces* each category of his Dialectical Encyclopedia
from the other categories. This is a mammoth scientific
challenge, and Hegel was the first (and so far the last)
philosopher to attempt this world-historical activity in
such dialectical detail.

The key difference between Kant and Hegel was thus
succinctly and concisely expressed by Dr. Martin Luther
King in 1953.

Best regards,
--Paul Trejo, M.A.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralph Dumain" <rdumain@...>
To: <hegel@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 10:48 PM
Subject: [hegel] Martin Luther King on Hegel


> "An Exposition of the First Triad of Categories of the Hegelian
> Logic--Being, Non-Being, Becoming"
>
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/papers/vol2/530522-An_Exposi
tion_of_the_First_Triad_of_Categories.htm