The Logic of Hegel: Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences

Small Logic is the common Chinese title for the first part, "Logic," of Hegel's Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, published in 1817, used to distinguish it from the Science of Logic (the "Greater Logic"), which Hegel published in three volumes between 1812 and 1816. The book outlines the contours and key points of Hegel's logical system in a concise, compact style, leaving the detailed elaboration of each category's content to his classroom lectures. The currently standard edition consists of two parts: the main text written by Hegel himself and revised and supplemented in 1827 and 1830, and the "Additions" compiled by his students after his death from lecture notes and appended to the main text. Apart from the Introduction, the book is divided into three parts: the Doctrine of Being examines such categories of immediacy as quality, quantity, and measure; the Doctrine of Essence discusses such reflective categories as identity and difference, ground and existence, appearance and actuality; and the Doctrine of the Concept unfolds the dialectical movement of the subjective concept, the object, and the Idea, ultimately pointing to the "Absolute Idea." In this derivation Hegel seeks to show that the determinations of thought are not subjective forms external to things but the rational structure of things themselves, thereby presenting the unity of thought and being and the idea of truth as a process of unfolding. He Lin translated the work from the Glockner and Lasson editions, also consulting Wallace's English translation; the translation is meticulous and accompanied by translator's notes, and it has long been regarded as the basic Chinese-language text for studying Hegel's logic.