THE PRIMACY OF LOGIC IN THE HIERARCHY OF KNOWLEDGE

 

The Question That Cannot Be Avoided

Why increase our knowledge? This seemingly simple question opens onto a landscape of profound implications. Knowledge matters because it shapes our capacity to understand reality, make wise decisions, solve problems, and act effectively in the world. But this immediately raises a more searching question: if knowledge matters, does all knowledge matter equally? The answer forces us into uncomfortable territory, territory that many intellectuals desperately wish to avoid.

Not all knowledge pursuits carry equal weight. Some represent what might be called intellectual hedonism: the pursuit of knowledge purely for pleasure or amusement, without regard to truth, utility, or human flourishing. While curiosity itself is natural and even virtuous, we cannot escape the question: which knowledge has the highest value? And more pressingly: what kind of knowledge should we be pursuing?

The Collapse of Relativism

Many of my colleagues, when confronted with this hierarchy of value, retreat to a familiar defense: "You can't measure value like this, it's all subjective." Yet these same individuals clearly believe their own pursuits stand higher than many others. They don't recognize that this argument is fundamentally nihilistic. If true, it would mean that one is not only justified in pursuing pure intellectual hedonism, but may actually be cheating oneself by not doing so. (This leads to a collapse of disciplined knowledge). 

The contradiction is immediate and fatal. The moment someone admits to any difference in value, the moment they claim that philosophy matters more than playing checkers, or that their research has greater significance than trivia, they have shattered their own relativism. They have implicitly admitted a standard of value. But they refuse to follow this standard to its logical conclusion, afraid it will end in the negation of their own hedonistic pursuits.

This is convenient denial, nothing more. Once value distinctions exist, hierarchy becomes inescapable. To deny hierarchy is ultimately to deny meaning itself. And yet we can press further: why not keep asking the question of value to determine an even higher value? This disciplined ascent, this Socratic questioning, naturally points upward toward standards that transcend personal preference.

Without a real hierarchy of value, everything becomes equal, and all pursuits, including pure hedonism, become equally justified. This is the nihilistic endpoint that relativism cannot escape. Those who deny standards of intellectual evaluation while claiming their work matters are engaging in philosophical self-contradiction.

Intelligence as Summons

But intelligence itself calls us to ask: What really matters? What should I focus my energy on learning? This is not an optional question for those capable of serious thought. Intelligence is the capacity to perceive order, to discern that some things are higher, truer, or more essential than others. True intelligence moves from cognition to wisdom, from information to orientation.

The danger is real: a clever person can rationalize almost anything through sheer intellectual agility (and many studies have told us that the more intelligent a person is, the more likely they are to use their intelligence to validate their bias). Intelligence can become an instrument of self-deception, making sophisticated arguments for trivial pursuits or morally questionable paths. This is why the hierarchy of knowledge is not merely theoretical, it is a safeguard against the corruption of intelligence itself.

Intellectuals should prioritize knowledge that cultivates understanding and wisdom, not mere cleverness or amusement. More than this: intellectuals should seek pursuits that help others obtain wisdom and the tools of emancipation. They should strive to defend society, to preserve and transmit what is most essential. Knowledge becomes most valuable when it equips others to think clearly, choose wisely, and achieve intellectual and moral freedom.

The Foundation Revealed

In asking what truly matters (what demands our primary focus) we arrive at a conclusion both profound and certain. All valuable knowledge, regardless of domain, shares one thing in common: the laws of logic.

Logic is not merely one pursuit among many. It occupies a unique and foundational position. Consider what logic makes possible:

• Logic allows us to discern truth from falsehood
• Logic enables us to evaluate arguments rigorously
• Logic connects knowledge across all domains coherently
• Logic exposes self-deception and rationalization
• Logic emancipates thought from manipulation and confusion

But we must go deeper than the formal claim that logic governs validity. Formal logicians often miss the more fundamental truth: without the laws of logic, we cannot make any meaningful statements whatsoever. Logic makes all learning (indeed, all knowledge) possible.

Think about this for one moment. Remove the laws of logic and you can learn nothing, because everything becomes undifferentiated noise. Without the law of identity (that a thing is itself), the law of non-contradiction (that a thing cannot both be and not be in the same respect), and the law of excluded middle (that a proposition is either true or false), there would be no coherent world of objects, relations, or meanings to contemplate.

Raw sensory data without logic is mere chaos. Perception gives us data; logic gives us form. Every act of knowledge (scientific, moral, aesthetic) requires both, but logic provides the very structure that transforms experience into intelligibility. Even the simple recognition "this is red" presupposes the law of identity ("this") and the law of non-contradiction ("this color is not green").

The Deductive Proof

We can formalize this insight into a deductive argument that directly answers the question: "What should I focus my attention on learning first?"

Premise 1: The Principle of Foundational Value

The highest intellectual priority must be given to the knowledge that acts as the necessary precondition for the existence, coherence, and correct evaluation of all other knowledge.

(The condition that makes everything else possible holds the highest foundational value.)

Premise 2: The Coherence Requirement

Any instance of learning, thought, or understanding requires the ability to make and maintain coherent distinctions (e.g., between true and false, same and different, existent and non-existent).

(Without distinction, experience is only undifferentiated noise, incapable of being known.)

Premise 3: Logic as the Necessary Precondition

The ability to make and maintain coherent distinctions depends entirely on the Laws of Logic (specifically Identity, Non-Contradiction, and Excluded Middle).

(Logic is what transforms raw sensory data or conceptual elements from chaos into intelligibility.)

Premise 4: Logic Makes All Knowledge Possible

Therefore, the Laws of Logic are the absolute and necessary precondition for the possibility of all learning, thought, and knowledge.

(If logic were removed, all attempts to know, reason, or even communicate would collapse into meaninglessness.)

Conclusion: The Priority of Logical Knowledge

Therefore, the first and highest priority in the pursuit of knowledge (what one ought to focus on learning) is the knowledge of Logic, because it is the ultimate foundation upon which all other intellectual value and possibility rests.

This is not merely an epistemic claim about how we validate arguments. It is an ontological and cognitive claim about the very conditions of intelligibility. Logic is not secondary to experience but co-fundamental with it. Logic stands both at the summit of the hierarchy of knowledge and at the foundation of all value, it is simultaneously the highest and the deepest principle.

The Moral and Existential Imperative

The implications extend beyond epistemology into ethics and existence itself. If logic holds the highest value, then the intellectual life acquires clear direction and profound responsibility:

• The pursuit of logic is a moral act, not merely a cognitive one
• To align oneself with logic is to align with the structure of reality itself
• Every act of genuine understanding moves toward truth and coherence
• Every act of willful irrationality moves toward disintegration and chaos

The highest intellectual pursuit demands fidelity to logic, which stands as the fundamental intellectual virtue. Through it, the mind participates in the structure of reality, guaranteeing the conditions for all meaningful knowledge and civilization. This is not cold formalism, it is intellectual and even spiritual discipline. Logic demands honesty, humility, and courage, because it has no sympathy for comforting falsehoods.

Conclusion: The Inescapable Truth

We have demonstrated two profound truths in this inquiry:

First, the hierarchy of value is inescapable and real. The moment one distinguishes between better and worse, important and trivial, one has invoked this hierarchy. To deny it is self-defeating, for even denial presupposes that truth is better than falsehood— which is itself a value judgment.

Second, logic occupies the place of highest value within that hierarchy. Logic is the light of intelligibility by which all things are seen, it is the grammar of being itself. Without it, there can be no truth, no meaning, no differentiation, no knowledge whatsoever.

Therefore, those who pursue knowledge bear a responsibility not to their own amusement or comfort, but to truth itself. The question "What should I learn?" finds its first and most certain answer in logic, not because logic is merely useful, but because it makes the very possibility of useful knowledge intelligible.

Intellectual hedonism, however pleasant, represents a betrayal of what intelligence demands of us. Intelligence calls us upward, toward what is highest and most real. And at the foundation of that ascent, making the climb itself possible, stands logic, universal and indispensable.

 

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THE IMMANENT DECONSTRUCTION OF DIALECTIC

An Exchange Between Hegel and Aristotle

Hegel: Ah, Aristotle, the master of the static and the finite! But let us engage in the dialectic. The finite determinations of the understanding sublate themselves, transitioning into their opposites. This is the soul of all movement, all life, all true science. Contradiction is not a flaw but the very engine of progress toward the absolute.
Aristotle: You begin by asserting this as if it were unequivocally true, without contradiction. Yet if contradiction is the essence of truth, why not declare your dialectic both the soul of science and its utter negation? Why speak with such certainty, as if your words must hold without opposition?
Hegel: You misunderstand, bound as you are to the rigid law of non-contradiction. The dialectical moment is the immanent going-beyond of one-sided determinacies. It is not mere negation, but the positive unfolding of the concept. The finite contradicts itself in itself and sublates itself, life carries the germ of death, and thus the whole advances.
Aristotle: There it is again: you claim the finite "sublates itself," as if concepts move of their own accord, without an agent. But who observes this sublation? Who articulates it? You, Hegel, with your reasoning mind, which presupposes that your statements are coherent and not self-contradictory. If everything finite sublates itself into its opposite, why does your own philosophy exempt itself, declaring it absolute? Is that not a performative contradiction, denying finitude while claiming your system infinite and immune?
Hegel: No, for my logic is the self-movement of the idea, encompassing contradiction within itself. It is the true nature of things, where reflexion relates isolated determinacies, but dialectic reveals their negation immanently. Skepticism, when isolated, is mere negation, but in dialectic, it becomes the principle of necessity in science.
Aristotle: You borrow from skepticism to fuel your dialectic, yet you leap beyond it to claim absolute knowledge. But observe your own words: you call dialectic "the proper, true nature" of determinations, as if this is a stable truth. If dialectic is truly the soul of all knowing, why do you present it as non-contradictory fact? Your huge claims (that it is the principle of all movement, all life, all activity) rest on evidence you never provide, equivocating between concepts and nature. Planets move, elements change, but you call this "dialectic" as if naming it proves your point. That's not philosophy, but sophistry dressed in grandeur. And here's the damning part: in decrying sophistry, you say it upholds one-sided determinations for personal interest. Yet your entire system upholds the one-sidedness of "self-sublation" to serve your totalizing narrative, all while relying on the coherence my logic provides.
Hegel: You cling to the understanding's abstract truths, where "live and let live" allows opposites to coexist without resolution. But looked closer, the finite is driven beyond itself by its own nature. This is no external limit; it is internal, the irresistible power akin to divine judgment, where all finite things come to their opposite.
Aristotle: "Driven by its own nature," another absolute claim, conflating conceptual opposition with natural processes. But if the finite truly contradicts itself and sublates, why argue against my principle at all? Your very argument assumes it: you seek to persuade, implying your view is true and mine false, not both at once. If contradiction were valid, your speech would be equally invalid. You speak of God's power in dialectic, calling it the universal force nothing can withstand, yet this fanaticism reveals your performative contradiction. You exempt your philosophy from this "irresistible power," declaring it eternal, while damning the finite. That's not higher reason; it's unfalsifiable dogma, resting in the very skepticism you decry, only to halt at your sublated totality.
Hegel: Ancient skepticism, as in Sextus Empiricus, despairs of the finite and rests in unshakeable certainty of nothingness. But my dialectic contains this as a moment, sublating mere negation into the positive-rational. Philosophy does not stop at the negative, as skepticism does; it advances to the speculative.
Aristotle: Ah, but you do stop, just after your convenient sublation! You use skepticism to dismantle the understanding, then declare your system immune by fiat. If dialectic is in everything (celestial movements, meteorological processes, ethical extremes like summum ius summa iniuria) then why is your claim not dialectical too? Why not admit it turns into its opposite: that dialectic is mere semblance, arbitrary confusion, as you yourself warn against? You attribute to Plato and Kant a "grand" dialectic, yet Plato shows the finitude of determinations to affirm the eternal forms, not your self-moving contradictions. Your praise of them is selective sophistry. And in every sentence, you perform the contradiction: denying non-contradiction while your logic depends on it for direction, for distinguishing truth from error.
Hegel: You reduce the living process to dead identity! The extremes of pain and joy turn into one another; anarchy and despotism provoke reciprocally. This is the dialectic manifesting in experience, the basis of all spiritual and natural formations.
Aristotle: Equivocation again, change is not contradiction; it's transformation under coherent principles. Pain turning to joy assumes a non-contradictory subject enduring the shift. If all is dialectic, then your examples prove nothing, for they could equally prove the opposite. You claim dialectic "establishes itself" in the world, but it does not; you impose it, as an agent, not as immanent truth. Your system is not self-moving; it's your rationalizing seesaw, concealing paucity with astuteness. To argue that contradiction is truth is to rely on non-contradiction for the argument's force. Without my law, your "movement" has no telos, no superiority. You speak as if your view transcends mine, but transcendence assumes a stable ground, which you deny. Thus, your dialectic refutes itself the moment it opens its mouth. It is not the engine of reason, but its self-inflicted wound, a performative suicide.
Hegel (desperate): But the absolute idea...
Aristotle (unyielding): Even that utterance assumes coherence. You cannot escape: every defense affirms what you deny. Your philosophy is not absolute; it is absolutely defeated by its own logic.

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Hegel's Dialectic: A Mirage of Self-Sublation and Sophistical Grandiosity

"dialectic is far more the proper, true nature of the determinations of the understanding, of things, and of the finite in general... dialectical moment constitutes the moving soul of the scientific progression and is the principle through which alone an immanent connection and necessity enters into the content of science, just as in general the true, as opposed to an external, elevation above the finite resides in this principle... Properly construing and recognizing the dialectical dimension is of the highest importance. It is in general the principle of all movement, all life, and all actual activity. The dialectical is equally the soul of all truly scientific knowing... it aims precisely at contemplating things as they are in and for themselves... Now however much the understanding is prone to resist the dialectic, the latter is by no means to be regarded as present only for the philosophical consciousness. Instead, what is in play here is already found in all other forms of consciousness and is found universally in experience. Everything that surrounds us can be viewed as an example of the dialectic... we have a view of the dialectic as the universal, irresistible power which nothing, however secure and firm it may feel itself to be, can withstand... the dialectic also establishes itself in all the particular domains and formations of the natural and the spiritual world... It is the same principle that forms the basis of all other processes in nature and through which nature... the occurrence of the dialectic in the spiritual world, and more specifically in the legal and the ethical domain... Even feelings, bodily as well as mental, possess a dialectic of their own. Whereas earlier it was said the understanding should be regarded as what is contained in the representation of God’s goodness, so now it should be noted in the same (objective) sense about the dialectic that its principle corresponds to the representation of God’s power." Hegel, Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline, para.81, Cambridge University Press 2010

Hegel's exposition of the dialectical moment in his Encyclopedia of Logic (§81) presents itself as a profound revelation about the nature of reality, thought, and finitude. Yet, upon scrutiny, it unravels as a tapestry of unsubstantiated assertions, equivocations, and circular reasoning, a sophistry that postures vagueness as depth. Hegel posits the dialectic as an immanent, self-moving process whereby finite determinations negate themselves and transition into opposites, elevating it to the "moving soul" of scientific progression. But this a rhetorical deception, conflating conceptual analysis with ontological necessity while exempting his own system from the very critiques it wields. Let us dismantle this edifice step by step, exposing its fallacies, evasions, and overreaches.

At the core of Hegel's argument is the notion of "self-sublation" (Aufhebung), where finite determinations allegedly negate themselves and pass into their opposites. But there is no such thing as self-sublation in any meaningful, empirical, or logical sense. Hegel claims this as the "dialectical moment," yet it relies on anthropomorphizing abstractions: determinations don't "sublate" themselves any more than rocks decide to roll downhill without gravity. This is reification run amok, treating concepts as autonomous agents with wills of their own. When Hegel isolates the dialectical and equates it with skepticism, he is half-right: dialectic, as he describes it, is skepticism, yielding mere negation. But he dismisses this as incomplete, insisting that the understanding's view of dialectic as an "extraneous art" generating "mere semblance of contradictions" is misguided. Here, Hegel admits the semblance but reframes it as the "proper, true nature" of things. This is a classic bait-and-switch: he concedes the artificiality critics see in dialectic, only to declare it essential, without evidence. If dialectic often appears as a "subjective seesaw system of back-and-forth rationalizing" lacking content, that's because it frequently is, a paucity concealed by astuteness, as Hegel himself notes, yet he exempts his version without justification.

Hegel's distinction between reflection (relating determinations externally) and dialectic (immanent going-beyond) fares no better. Reflection, he says, maintains isolated validity while relating; dialectic reveals the one-sidedness as negation. But this "immanent process" is not self-moving; it's the thinker (the agent) who imposes relationships and uncovers contradictions through analysis. Dialectic, stripped of mysticism, is simply internal critique: examining a concept's implications to find inconsistencies. Hegel inflates this into an ontological principle where "everything finite is this, the sublating of itself." This is a highly absolute claim, unsubstantiated and dogmatic. Why exempt Hegel's "absolute" logic from this? He declares it infinite or totalizing, but that's special pleading (his system halts the regress precisely where it suits him, declaring victory without proof). The dialectic becomes the "principle through which alone an immanent connection and necessity enters into the content of science," opposing mere external elevation above the finite. Yet if dialectic is skepticism, as he links it, how does it yield necessity? This is Hegel using skepticism as a tool, then leaping to a pseudo-resolution, rendering his method unfalsifiable. 

The additions amplify the sophistry with grandiose claims. Hegel asserts dialectic as "the principle of all movement, all life, and all actual activity," the "soul of all truly scientific knowing." These are huge, sweeping declarations— evidence? None provided beyond assertion. In ordinary consciousness, he says, we tolerate opposites per "live and let live," but truly, the finite sublates itself due to its nature. This confuses conceptual claims with natural ones: mortality isn't life's "germ of death" sublating itself; it's a biological process explained by entropy, cellular decay, and evolution. Hegel equivocates "change" with "self-contradiction," turning empirical transience into metaphysical necessity. Humans are alive and mortal not because life "carries within itself the germ of death" in some dialectical essence, but because organisms are finite systems in a thermodynamic universe. To claim otherwise is poetic license, not philosophy.

Hegel warns against confusing dialectic with sophistry, where one-sided determinations serve individual interests (e.g., justifying theft via wellbeing). His dialectic, he insists, contemplates things "as they are in and for themselves," revealing finitude. But this is precisely where it becomes sophistical: by asserting an idealistic ground where contradictions resolve in higher sublations, Hegel creates an unfalsifiable narrative. It seems to contemplate reality but imposes a totalizing idealism that declares itself ultimate. Worse, Hegel universalizes: "Everything that surrounds us can be viewed as an example of the dialectic." This is problematic, claiming everything proves dialectic renders it tautological and meaningless. Finite things are "changeable and perishable," but that's not dialectic; it's physics. Linking this to "God's power" as an "irresistible power" bringing things to judgment is insane, fanatical philosophical fundamentalism, equating change with divine retribution, as if entropy were eschatology. Dialectic doesn't "establish itself" in nature or spirit; Hegel projects it. Planets move due to gravity, not self-otherness; physical elements "prove dialectical" via meteorology? Absurd, weather is chaotic dynamics, not negation. Nature isn't "driven beyond itself"; any "beyond" is still nature, explainable naturalistically. In ethics and politics, extremes like summum ius summa iniuria or anarchy-despotism reciprocity are observations of imbalance, not inherent dialectics. Proverbs acknowledge patterns, not prove ontology. Even feelings' extremes (pain to joy) are psychological, not metaphysical self-sublation.

On skepticism: Hegel distinguishes ancient (certainty of finitude's nothingness, leading to unshakeable rest) from modern (denying supersensory for sensory). But he uses skepticism deceptively, to erode understanding, then subsume it as a "moment" in his dialectic, making philosophy "immune" by declaring it absolute. Skepticism yields negation, but Hegel insists negation is positive because it contains the sublated. Yet he stops at his sublation, holding it as totality, contradicting his own process. This is the ultimate sophistry: dialectic critiques finitude but halts arbitrarily at the "speculative or positively rational," resting in a totalizing narrative that's just as finite and questionable.

In sum, Hegel's dialectic is a house of cards: vague, equivocal, and self-serving. It conflates analysis with autonomy, change with contradiction, and skepticism with sublation, all while demanding we accept its "immanence" without evidence. Far from the soul of science, it's a relic of idealism, devastatingly critiqued by analytic clarity, empiricism, and logic that doesn't need mystical leaps. If everything finite sublates, so does Hegel's system; its opposite is rigorous, non-dialectical truth-seeking. ---