u/Jamaphy7

That is, passage 24 of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia Logic: With these explanations and qualifications, thoughts may be termed Objective Thoughts, among which we shall include the forms ordinarily discussed in the common logic, where they are believed to be forms of conscious thought only. Logic in our sense coincides with Metaphysics, the science of things in a setting of thoughts ; which thoughts, it is allowed, express the essence of things.

An exposition of the relation, in which such forms as notion, judgment, and syllogism stand to others, such as causality, is a matter for the science itself. But this much is evident beforehand. If thought has to make a notion of things, this notion, as well as its proximate phases, the judgment and syllogism, cannot be composed of articles and relations which are alien and irrelevant to the things. Reflection, as was said above, conducts to the universal of things : which universal is itself one of the elementary factors of a notion. To say that Reason or Understanding is in the world, is equivalent in its import to the phrase ' Objective Thought.' The latter phrase however is awkward and ambiguous. Thought is generally con fined to express what belongs to the mind or consciousness only, while objective is a term applied, at least primarily, to the opposite of mind. *** ***My main issue here, beyond Hegel’s peculiar (and controversial) relationship to Metaphysics in the Logik, is that of “Reason or Understanding in the world” or “objective thought” (Dass Verstand, Vernunft in der Welt ist, sagt dasselbe was der Ausdruck: objektiver Gedanke, enthält.) and relating it to Hegel’s unique Idealist position. Thank you!

Precisely passage 24 of the ‘preliminary conception’ of the Encyclopedia Logic. I’ve read the entire introduction and the later ‘positions of thought towards objectivity’, but this passage remains utterly bizarre to me (made more frustrating by that even by a superficial glance I can recognise the significance of its content). More specifically, I suppose my main issue is the expression “objective thought”. For example: “In accordance with these determinations, thoughts may be called objective thoughts” (**Die Gedanken können nach diesem Bestimmungen objective Gedanken genannt werden). Now here, as “in accordance” indicates, this seems to be a conclusion to the argument of the previous two (or three?) passages; but I completely fail to see their link… Another example in the same passage is: “the fact that there is rhyme and reason to the world conveys exactly what is contained in the expression ‘*****objective thoughts’. (***Das Verstand, Vernunft in der Welt ist, sagt dasselbe was der Ausdruck: objectiver Gedanke, enthält.) Ok, so what is “reason” here? What in god’s name (as the Zusatz **explains; which admittedly is even more confusing) is the “reason that exists in the world” (**Nous) **and why is Hegel harnessing this as a direct expression of the “meaning of thinking and its determiniations”? The only meaning I can derive here is that the categories are immanent to the world, so to speak; and that Hegel is attempting to distinguish his manner of Metaphysical Logic from that of the Kantian Transcendental logic and formal logic. Though even then he explicitly states that the forms of “ordinary logic” will be reckoned among the ‘**objective thoughts’…