The Owl of Minerva

Volume 34, Issue 1, Fall/Winter 2002

Objectivity in Logic and Nature

Although logic’s thinking of thinking overcomes the difference between subject and object of knowing, subjectivity and objectivity have distinct logical determinations presupposed by objectivity in nature and subjectivity in rational agency. An analysis of Hegel’s account of subjectivity and objectivity in his Logic of the Concept shows how both can be differentiated without relying upon any contents of nature and spirit. This logical distinction of subjectivity and objectivity is then employed to clarify how objectivity in nature can be irreducible to objectivity in logic, independently of any empirical material, an insight bearing upon the whole relation between logic and reality and its formulation by Burbidge, Maker, and Halper.