Abstract

In this chapter, I turn to Hegel’s 1802–3 System of Valuation, which antecedes the 1804–5 System-Project. I identify the core of the System of Valuation in a novel logical solution to the problem of universal and particular that will be cultivated in the Logic from the System-Project. That this solution should be proposed in the context of a work we would nowadays identify as philosophy of social science or political philosophy is less surprising once one sees the nature of the novel solution proposed, for it is a form of logical socialism, making the most fundamental problems in the philosophy of logic a function of the metaphysical status of the social. The general nature of Hegel’s innovation in the System of Valuation is to insist that the universal is neither something in which the particulars participate (Plato) nor something which the particulars hold identically in common (Aristotle), but rather something which is socially distributed through the collection of particulars, and so makes them cohere socially. The nature of this logical reorientation is the fundamental challenge of the Jena Moment.