Det logiske System
DET LOGISKE SYSTEM
En Nytaarsgave
tilegnet
Det høistærede Læsende Publikum
første Bind, indeholdende §§ 1–4 samt Anhang
udgivet af
NICOLAUS NOTABENE
KJØBENHAVN
FAAES HOS UNIVERSITETSBOGHANDLER C. A. REITZEL
TRYKT I BIANCO LUNOS BOGTRYKKERI
Til Nytaar 1845
Pris i forgyldt Futteral med Silkesløife: 5 Rdl. Pris hæftet, uden Futteral: 1 Rdl. 4 Mark.
Duodecimo, that the volume may rest comfortably in the palm of a young person to whom it is presented across the breakfast table on the morning of the New Year. Bound in white kid, with the title stamped in deep gold; on the back board, a single ornament — a serpent biting its own tail, around which is set, in Roman capitals, the motto SYSTEMA EST. Edges gilt to a depth which the binder warns will not survive a second reading; the publisher accordingly recommends that the volume not be read twice. A silk ribbon of pale blue, sewn into the binding, that the volume may hang from the upper branches of the Christmas tree without the application of an external string, the application of an external string having been deemed by the publisher to detract from the volume's elegance. The interior is set in a roman of unusual generosity; the margins are wide enough to permit the cultivated reader to enter, in the white space, the further paragraphs of the System as they appear in subsequent annual volumes. A footnote indicator on the verso of the title page directs the reader to a small printed gold star which is to be found, after careful searching, in the lower right-hand corner of page 47.
FORTALE
Hvilken Glæde, hvilken Tilfredsstillelse, hvilken usigelig Trøst, at have endt en Bog! Og hvor meget større er denne Trøst, naar Bogen er en Bog af den Art, som Aarstiden fordrer, fremstillet i den Form, det dannede Publikum forventer, uddelt i det Øieblik, som Boghandler-Lauget paa sin Kalender har afmærket som det rette Øieblik for saadanne Bøgers Uddeling, og indbunden saaledes, at den uden videre Besvær kan ophænges paa Juletræet i den Familie, i hvis Dagligstue den — efter en venskabelig Brevvexling mellem Giver og Modtager — skal henlægges.
Den dannede Læser vil maaskee formode, at det Arbeide, hvormed en saadan Bog tilveiebringes, er det Arbeide, der egentlig hører den til. Han vil for sig selv danne et Billede af Forfatteren, ensom ved sit Skrivebord, Lyset nedbrændt, Pennen kradsende, Tankens indre Kamp, der omsider finder sit ydre Ord. Billedet er rørende. Det er imidlertid ikke Billedet af nærværende Bogs Forfatter. Det Arbeide, der egentlig hører til en Nytaarsgave, er ikke Skrivningens Arbeide; Skrivningens Arbeide er tværtimod den ringeste Deel af det. Det Arbeide, der egentlig hører til en Nytaarsgave, er Bekjendtgjørelsens Arbeide: at indrette det saaledes, at Publikum venter Bogen; at indrette det saaledes, at Forlæggerne udbede sig Bogen; at indrette det saaledes, at Anmelderne, i god Tid forud for Bogens Fremkomst, have forfattet deres Anmeldelser, paa det at disse kunne udgaae fra Pressen i samme Øieblik, Bogen selv stilles op i Boghandlernes Vinduer; og at indrette det saaledes, omsider, at Publikum føler Bogen at være, i en vis Forstand, deres, førend de endnu have taget den ned fra Hylden. Dette Arbeide har jeg udført. Frugten af Arbeidet er nærværende Bind, hvilket jeg nu, med dybeste Ærbødighed og fasteste Forventning om dets Held, lægger i den dannede Læsers Hænder.
Bindet er, som Titelen viser, det første Hefte af et logisk System. Systemet har længe været ventet; det har, ja, været under Forberedelse i over tredive Aar. Den Underskrevne har ikke selv været beskjæftiget med Forberedelsen i hele dette Tidsrum — hans egne Arbeider paa Systemet datere sig først fra Foraaret 1843 — men han har havt den Lykke, i den periodiske Presse, at læse de Bekjendtgjørelser, hvormed hans mere fremragende Forgjængere fra Tid til anden have tilkjendegivet, at Systemet var nær. Han har derfor anseet det for sin Pligt, i nærværende Bind, at samle Bekjendtgjørelserne, at føie saadanne yderligere Bekjendtgjørelser til, som den nuværende Tilstand af den speculative Tænkning maatte fordre, og at sætte det Hele paa det elegante physiske Grundlag, som alene Nytaarsstiden tilbyder. Bindet er saaledes, i Form, en Nytaarsgave; i Indhold, et Hefte af det logiske System; i Aand, en Betragtning over hvad der kan ventes af Systemet, naar det omsider er fuldendt.
Det er i den litterære Verden en gammel Skik, ved Indledningen til et Foretagende af denne Art at sværge en høitidelig Ed. Edens Form har vexlet med Aarhundrederne. I den ældre Tid svore Mændene ved deres Folks Guder; paa Hamlets Tid, ved Ildtangen; om Israels Patriarcher fortælles, at de svore paa en Maade, som nærværende Forfatter ikke agter nærmere at angive. Formen er ligegyldig; det er Sværgen selv, der gjelder. Jeg sværger derfor, ved et saadant Instrument, som den dannede Læser maatte være villig til at laane mig til dette Brug, følgende Ed:
at jeg, ved det tidligste Øieblik, der er foreneligt med Foretagendets Værdighed, vil fuldføre nærværende logiske System; at jeg, umiddelbart efter Fuldførelsen af det logiske System, vil paatage mig det længe lovede æsthetiske System, hvis første Bekjendtgjørelse udgik i Aaret 1834 og dets anden i 1838; at jeg, umiddelbart efter Fuldførelsen af det æsthetiske System, vil paatage mig det ethiske System; at jeg, umiddelbart efter Fuldførelsen af det ethiske System, vil paatage mig det dogmatiske System; at jeg, umiddelbart efter Fuldførelsen af det dogmatiske System, vil paatage mig Systemet tout court, hvori de fire foregaaende Systemer skulle subsumeres som Momenter af en høiere Eenhed; og at, efter at Systemet tout court er fremkommet, Eftertiden ikke længere skal have Anledning til at lære at skrive, eftersom Intet videre vil staae tilbage at skrive, men kun at læse — nemlig Systemet.
Jeg sværger det. Sværgen er nærværende Fortales fornemste Handling. Edens Udførelse vil følge i sin Tid og vil, efter de nærværende Overslag, optage de næste flere Aar; den dannede Læser indbydes til at subscribere paa hele Rækken til en nedsat Pris, Betalingen at erlægges forud, Bindene at leveres efterhaanden som de fremkomme.
Nicolaus Notabene Kjøbenhavn, anden Juledag, 1844
What a delight, what a satisfaction, what an unspeakable comfort, to have finished a book! And how much greater the comfort if the book is a book of the kind which the season demands, presented in the form which the cultivated public expects, distributed at the moment which the publishers' guild has marked on its calendar as the proper moment for the distribution of such books, and bound in such a manner that it may be hung, without further trouble, from the Christmas tree of the family in whose drawing-room it is, after some friendly correspondence between donor and recipient, to be placed.
The cultivated reader will perhaps suppose that the labour of writing such a book is the labour proper to it. He will form for himself a picture of the author, lonely at his desk, the candle low, the pen scratching, the inward struggle of thought finding at last its outward word. The picture is touching. It is not, however, the picture of the author of the present volume. The labour proper to a New Year's gift-book is not the labour of writing; the labour of writing is, indeed, the smallest part of it. The labour proper to a New Year's gift-book is the labour of announcing: of arranging that the public shall expect the book; of arranging that the publishers shall solicit the book; of arranging that the reviewers, well in advance of the book's appearance, shall have prepared their notices, so that the notices may issue from the press at the moment the book itself is placed in the booksellers' windows; and of arranging, finally, that the public shall feel the book to be, in some sense, theirs before they have so much as taken it down from the shelf. This labour I have performed. The fruit of the labour is the present volume, which I now place, with the deepest reverence and the firmest anticipation of its success, in the hands of the cultivated reader.
The volume is, as the title indicates, the first instalment of a Logical System. The System has been long awaited; it has been, indeed, in preparation for upwards of thirty years. The undersigned has not himself been engaged in the preparation throughout the entire period — his own labours upon the System date only from the spring of 1843 — but he has had the privilege of reading, in the periodical press, the announcements by which his more eminent predecessors have, from time to time, indicated that the System was at hand. He has accordingly conceived it as his duty, in the present volume, to consolidate the announcements, to add such further announcements as the present state of the speculative thought may require, and to set the whole upon that elegant physical foundation which the New Year's season alone supplies. The volume is therefore, in form, a New Year's gift; in content, an instalment of the Logical System; in spirit, a meditation upon what may be expected of the System when it is, at last, complete.
It is in the literary world a custom long established to swear, at the commencement of an undertaking of this kind, a solemn oath. The form of the oath has varied with the centuries. In the older time men swore by the gods of their nation; in the time of Hamlet, by the fire-tongs; the patriarchs of Israel are said to have sworn in a manner which the present writer does not propose to specify. The form is indifferent; it is the swearing that matters. I therefore swear, by such instrument as the cultivated reader shall be willing to lend me for the purpose, the following oath:
That I will, at the earliest moment compatible with the dignity of the undertaking, complete the present Logical System; that I will, immediately upon the completion of the Logical System, undertake the long-promised Aesthetic System, of which the first announcement was published in 1834 and the second in 1838; that I will, immediately upon the completion of the Aesthetic System, undertake the Ethical System; that I will, immediately upon the completion of the Ethical System, undertake the Dogmatic System; that I will, immediately upon the completion of the Dogmatic System, undertake the System tout court, in which the four foregoing Systems shall be subsumed as moments of a higher unity; and that, upon the appearance of the System tout court, posterity shall no longer have occasion to learn to write, since nothing further will remain to be written, but only to read — namely, the System.
I swear it. The swearing is the chief act of the present Fortale. The execution of the oath will follow in due course, and will occupy, at present estimates, the next several years; the cultivated reader is invited to subscribe to the entire series at a reduced rate, payment to be made in advance, the volumes to be delivered as they appear.
Nicolaus Notabene Copenhagen, the second day of Christmas, 1844
INDHOLD
Plan af det fuldendte System, hvoraf nærværende Bind udgjør den allerførste Begyndelse:
Bind I. Det logiske System. (Nærværende Bind, indeholdende §§ 1–4 samt Anhang.) Bind II–IV under Forberedelse.
Bind V–VIII. Det æsthetiske System. Hvis første Bekjendtgjørelse udgik i Maanedsskrift for Litteratur i Aaret 1834.
Bind IX–XII. Det ethiske System.
Bind XIII–XVI. Det dogmatiske System.
Bind XVII–XX. Systemet tout court, hvori de fire foregaaende Systemer skulle subsumeres som Momenter af en høiere Eenhed.
Bind XXI. Indholdsfortegnelse til det Hele, med Person-, Begrebs- og Categori-Register. Vil blive leveret med det sidste Bind.
Indholdet af nærværende Bind:
§ 1. Indledning. Om Begyndelser i Almindelighed.
§ 2. Den rene Væren.
§ 3. Det rene Intet.
§ 4. Vorden — her indtræder en Vanskelighed; see Anhanget.
Anhang. Anmærkning angaaende de udeblevne §§ 5 og følgende.
Subscriptions-Indbydelse paa Bind II.
Efterskrift af Udgiveren.
Plan af det fuldendte System, hvoraf nærværende Bind udgjør den allerførste Begyndelse:
Bind I. Det logiske System. (Nærværende Bind, indeholdende §§ 1–4 samt Anhang.) Bind II–IV in preparation.
Bind V–VIII. Det æsthetiske System. The first announcement of which was published in Maanedsskrift for Litteratur in 1834.
Bind IX–XII. Det ethiske System.
Bind XIII–XVI. Det dogmatiske System.
Bind XVII–XX. Systemet tout court, in which the four foregoing Systems shall be subsumed as moments of a higher unity.
Bind XXI. Indholdsfortegnelse til det Hele, with Index of Persons, Concepts, and Categories. To be supplied with the final volume.
Indholdet af det nærværende Bind:
§ 1. Indledning. On Beginnings in General.
§ 2. Den rene Væren.
§ 3. Det rene Intet.
§ 4. Vorden — here a difficulty supervenes; see the Anhang.
Anhang. Anmærkning angaaende de udeblevne §§ 5 og følgende.
Subscription notice for Bind II.
Editor's afterword.
§ 1. INDLEDNING. OM BEGYNDELSER I ALMINDELIGHED.
At begynde et logisk System er, af alle Foretagender, det fineste. Ethvert andet Foretagende begynder med Noget — med et Værktøi, med et Stof, med en Overbeviisning, med et Formaal. Det logiske System alene fordres at begynde med Intet: ikke vel med Haandværkerens tomme Hænder, der midlertidig har forlagt sine Redskaber, men med hiint philosophiske Intet, der siden Hegel har været den speculative Tænknings rette Udgangspunkt. Den dannede Læser opfatter strax Vanskeligheden. At begynde med Intet er at begynde uden det, hvormed en Begyndelse skulde stiftes; Begyndelsen er da, i sin Inception, en Begyndelse, der endnu ikke er begyndt.
Denne Vanskelighed er ikke en Mangel ved Systemet. Den er, tværtimod, Systemets første Dybsindighed. Det logiske System gjør, alene blandt Videnskaberne, sin Vanskelighed til sit Princip; det begynder ikke for derpaa, da det er begyndt, at støde paa Vanskeligheder; det begynder med at støde paa, som sit første Datum, Begyndelsens Vanskelighed selv. Den dannede Læser indbydes til at dvæle herved nogle Øieblikke, førend han skrider videre, da Dvælen, efter nærværende Forfatters Mening, vil oplyse hele Systemets paafølgende Forløb.
Jeg skal ikke selv dvæle herved. Jeg har, i Foraaret 1843, dvælet herved tilstrækkeligt for mit eget Brug. Jeg meddeler kun Resultatet af min Dvælen: at Vanskeligheden kan overvindes, ved en Procedure, der vil blive udviklet i §§ 2 og følgende, og at Proceduren har det elegante Træk, at Vanskelighedens Overvindelse er, paa een og samme Tid, Systemets Stiftelse paa dets rette Grundlag. Den dannede Læser, der har fulgt mig saa langt, er nu i Stand til at fortsætte med Tillid.
Jeg tilføier, førend jeg gaaer videre, een Bemærkning om Systemets Form. Det vil for den ureflecterede Læser tage sig ud, som om Systemet udvikles i nummererede Paragrapher, paa de ældre Logikers Maade. Dette Skin er ikke bedragerisk. Paragraphernes Form er bleven antaget, fordi det er den Form, Læseren er kommen til at forvente af et speculativt Arbeide, og at vige fra den vilde være at indføre en unødvendig Nyhed paa et Tidspunkt, hvor Nyhed ikke fordres. Den dannede Læser vil dog vide, at Paragraphernes Form i sig selv er et Stykke af Forstanden — det vil sige, af den lavere Evne, der omgaaes med endelige Distinctioner — og at Systemet, idet det skrider frem, maa overvinde Formen, selv idet det benytter den. Formen er derfor foreløbig; den vil, i et senere Bind, blive aufgehoben i en høiere Form, hvis Beskaffenhed ikke i nærværende Øieblik kan angives. Den dannede Læser anmodes om at modtage den foreløbige Form for Tiden, med den Forsikring, at den høiere Form er under Forberedelse.
To begin a Logical System is, of all undertakings, the most delicate. Every other undertaking begins with something — with a tool, with a material, with a conviction, with a purpose. The Logical System alone is required to begin with nothing: not, indeed, with the empty hands of the artisan who has temporarily mislaid his instruments, but with that philosophical nothing which has been, since Hegel, the proper starting-point of speculative thought. The cultivated reader will perceive at once the difficulty. To begin with nothing is to begin without that which would furnish a beginning; the beginning is therefore, in its inception, a beginning that has not yet begun.
This difficulty is not a defect of the System. It is, on the contrary, the System's first profundity. The Logical System, alone among the sciences, makes its difficulty its principle; it does not begin and then, having begun, encounter difficulties; it begins by encountering, as its first datum, the difficulty of beginning. The cultivated reader is invited to dwell upon this for some moments before proceeding, since the dwelling will, the present writer believes, illuminate the entire subsequent course of the System.
I shall not dwell upon it myself. I have, in the spring of 1843, dwelt upon it sufficiently for my purposes. I report only the result of my dwelling: that the difficulty can be overcome, by a procedure which will be expounded in §§ 2 and following, and that the procedure has the elegant feature that the overcoming of the difficulty is, at the same time, the establishment of the System upon its proper foundation. The cultivated reader who has followed me thus far is now in a position to proceed with confidence.
I add, before proceeding, one observation upon the form of the System. It will appear, to the unreflective reader, that the System is being expounded in numbered paragraphs, in the manner of the older logics. This appearance is not deceptive. The form of numbered paragraphs has been adopted because it is the form which the reader has come to expect of speculative work, and to depart from it would be to introduce an unnecessary novelty at a moment when novelty is not required. The cultivated reader will, however, be aware that the form of numbered paragraphs is, in itself, a piece of the understanding — that is, of the lower faculty which deals in finite distinctions — and that the System, as it advances, must overcome the form even as it employs it. The form is therefore provisional; it will, in a later volume, be sublated into a higher form whose nature cannot, at the present moment, be specified. The cultivated reader is asked to accept the provisional form for the present, with the assurance that the higher form is in preparation.
§ 2. DEN RENE VÆREN.
Den rene Væren er Systemets første Bestemmelse, og er paa samme Tid, ved en tilsyneladende Paradox, som Systemet vil opløse, den meest ubestemte af alle Bestemmelser. Den rene Væren er det, der tænkes, naar man tænker Intet i Særdeleshed. Den har ingen Qvalitet, ingen Qvantitet, intet Maal, intet Forhold. Den er, slet og ret.
Den dannede Læser vil strax bemærke, at denne Charakteristik, hvor meget den end ved første Hørelse synes at meddele et bestemt Indhold, i Virkeligheden meddeler Intet. Den rene Væren er ikke dette, ikke hiint, ikke det andet; den er, hvad der bliver tilbage, naar ethvert dette, hiint, og andet er bleven tænkt bort. Hvad der bliver tilbage, naar ethvert dette, hiint, og andet er bleven tænkt bort, er — og Systemet er nu ankommet ved sin anden Bestemmelse — Intet.
Denne Overgang, fra den rene Væren til det rene Intet, er Systemets første speculative Bevægelse. Det er det første Tilfælde af hiin Aufhebung, der i hele Systemet vil være den fornemste Procedure. Den dannede Læser vil bemærke, at Bevægelsen ikke er en vilkaarlig; det er ikke saaledes, at Systemet paa dette Sted har valgt at indføre Intet som sin anden Categori frem for nogen anden; det er saaledes, at den rene Væren, naar den tænkes strengt, gaaer over i det rene Intet ved en indre Nødvendighed. At modstaae Overgangen er at undlade at tænke den rene Væren strengt. At tænke den rene Væren strengt er at finde sig selv tænkende det rene Intet.
Jeg er ikke, i denne korte Paragraph, i Stand til at paavise Overgangens Nødvendighed med den Udførlighed, den fortjener. Paaviisningen vil blive leveret i et senere Bind, i Forbindelse med den meer detaillerede Fremstilling af Værensens Logik; nærværende Paragraph er at betragte som forberedende. Den dannede Læser, der finder Overgangen fra Væren til Intet for hurtig, indbydes til at vente paa Paaviisningen. Den dannede Læser, der finder Overgangen overbevisende uden Paaviisning, indbydes til at fortsætte.
Pure Being is the first determination of the System, and is at the same time, by an apparent paradox which the System will resolve, the most indeterminate of all determinations. Pure Being is what is thought when one thinks nothing in particular. It has no quality, no quantity, no measure, no relation. It is, simply.
The cultivated reader will at once observe that this characterisation, though it may seem at first hearing to communicate a determinate content, in fact communicates none. Pure Being is not this, not that, not the other; it is what remains when every this, that, and other has been thought away. What remains, when every this, that, and other has been thought away, is — and the System has now arrived at its second determination — nothing.
This passage, from Pure Being to Pure Nothing, is the first speculative motion of the System. It is the first instance of that Aufhebung which will, throughout the System, be the principal procedure. The cultivated reader will note that the motion is not an arbitrary one; it is not that the System has chosen, at this point, to introduce Nothing as its second category in preference to some other; it is that Pure Being, when thought rigorously, passes over into Pure Nothing by an internal necessity. To resist the passage is to fail to think Pure Being rigorously. To think Pure Being rigorously is to find oneself thinking Pure Nothing.
I am not, in this brief paragraph, in a position to demonstrate the necessity of the passage at the length it deserves. The demonstration will be supplied in a later volume, in connection with the more detailed exposition of the Logic of Being; the present paragraph is to be regarded as preliminary. The cultivated reader who finds the passage from Being to Nothing too rapid is invited to wait for the demonstration. The cultivated reader who finds the passage convincing without demonstration is invited to proceed.
§ 3. DET RENE INTET.
Det rene Intet er Systemets anden Bestemmelse. Det er, hvad der naaedes ved Slutningen af § 2, ved den strenge Tænkning af den rene Væren. Det vil for den ureflecterede Læser tage sig ud, at det rene Intet er det samme som den rene Væren, eftersom begge ere charakteriserede ved Fraværet af ethvert bestemt Indhold. Dette Skin er, i Virkeligheden, ikke bedragerisk: det rene Intet er det samme som den rene Væren. De ere imidlertid det samme i forskjellige Henseender; det vil sige, de ere det samme som terminus a quo og terminus ad quem af den speculative Bevægelse, der constituerer Systemets tredie Bestemmelse, nemlig Vorden.
Den dannede Læser vil maaskee ønske, at jeg her skulde dvæle ved den nøiagtige Forstand, hvori den rene Væren og det rene Intet ere det samme og dog forskjellige. Jeg er ude af Stand til at dvæle herved i den Udførlighed, det fortjener. Dvælen vil blive leveret i et senere Bind, i Forbindelse med den meer detaillerede Fremstilling. Jeg nøies med den Bemærkning, at den rene Værens og det rene Intets Eenhed-og-Forskjellighed er det første Tilfælde i Systemet af hiin Identitet-i-Forskjellighed, der i hele Systemet vil være det fornemste Resultat. Den dannede Læser indbydes til at lægge Mærke til Tilfældet, da det vil komme igjen, i høiere og rigere Skikkelser, paa hvert eneste paafølgende Trin.
Jeg tilføier kun dette. Den ureflecterede Læser vil maaskee mistænke, at hele Proceduren i §§ 2 og 3 har været et Stykke Hexerie, og at hvad der naaedes ved Slutningen af § 2, i Virkeligheden ikke naaedes, men blot omdøbtes. Til denne Mistanke svarer Systemet — uden dog at nedlade sig til et detailleret Svar — at Omdøbningen, naar den udføres af den speculative Tænkning, er Naaen, og at Mistanken i selve sin Form er en Indvending fra Forstandens Standpunkt mod en Procedure, der hører til Fornuftens Standpunkt. Indvendingen er derfor ikke gjendrevet, men hævet over; og Hævningen er selv Systemets næste Bestemmelse, nemlig Vorden.
Pure Nothing is the second determination of the System. It is what was reached, at the end of § 2, by the rigorous thinking of Pure Being. It will appear, to the unreflective reader, that Pure Nothing is the same as Pure Being, since both are characterised by the absence of every determinate content. This appearance is not, in fact, deceptive: Pure Nothing is the same as Pure Being. They are, however, the same in different respects; that is, they are the same as the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem of the speculative motion which constitutes the third determination of the System, namely Becoming.
The cultivated reader will perhaps wish me to dwell here upon the precise sense in which Pure Being and Pure Nothing are the same and yet different. I am unable to dwell upon it at the length it deserves. The dwelling will be supplied in a later volume, in connection with the more detailed exposition. I content myself with the observation that the sameness-and-difference of Pure Being and Pure Nothing is the first instance in the System of that identity-in-difference which will, throughout the System, be the principal result. The cultivated reader is invited to take note of the instance, since it will recur, in higher and richer forms, at every subsequent stage.
I add only this. The unreflective reader will perhaps suspect that the entire procedure of §§ 2 and 3 has been a piece of conjuring, and that what was reached at the end of § 2 was not, in fact, reached but merely renamed. To this suspicion the System replies — though it does not stoop to a detailed reply — that the renaming, when performed by the speculative thought, is the reaching, and that the suspicion is, in its very form, an objection from the standpoint of the understanding to a procedure which belongs to the standpoint of reason. The objection is therefore not refuted but transcended; and the transcending is itself the next determination of the System, namely Becoming.
§ 4. VORDEN.
Vorden er Systemets tredie Bestemmelse. Den er den rene Værens og det rene Intets Eenhed, hvori de tvende foregaaende Bestemmelser ere paa een Gang bevarede og overvundne. Den rene Væren gaaer over i det rene Intet; det rene Intet vender tilbage i den rene Væren; Overgangen er Vorden.
I Vorden har Systemet for første Gang naaet en Bestemmelse, der har Indhold: Indholdet, nemlig, af Bevægelsen selv. De to første Bestemmelser vare, ifølge deres Natur, indholdsløse; den tredie Bestemmelse er de tvende Indholdsløshedernes Eenhed, og er, ved en tilsyneladende Paradox, hvortil Systemet nu har vænnet Læseren, den første Bestemmelse med Indhold.
Jeg burde paa dette Sted skride videre til Systemets følgende Bestemmelser: til Vordens forskjellige Skikkelser, til den bestemte Væren, til Qvaliteten, til Qvantiteten, til Maalet, til Væsenets Logik, til Begrebets Logik, og saa fremdeles, gjennem de tre og halvfjerdsindstyve Underafdelinger, som nærværende Forfatter har indtegnet, i sin forberedende Notitsbog, mod den Dag, da de skulle udarbeides. Læseren vil dog forstaae, at der her foreligger en Vanskelighed, som nærværende Forfatter ikke i Ærlighed kan dølge for ham. Vanskeligheden er fremstillet i det Anhang, der følger. Jeg beder Læseren om Overbærenhed paa Forhaand.
Becoming is the third determination of the System. It is the unity of Pure Being and Pure Nothing, in which the two preceding determinations are at once preserved and overcome. Pure Being passes into Pure Nothing; Pure Nothing returns into Pure Being; the passing is Becoming.
In Becoming the System has reached, for the first time, a determination which has content: the content, namely, of the motion itself. The first two determinations were, by their nature, contentless; the third determination is the unity of the two contentlessnesses, and is, by an apparent paradox which the System has by now made the reader accustomed to, the first determination with content.
I should, at this point, proceed to the further determinations of the System: to the various forms of Becoming, to Determinate Being, to Quality, to Quantity, to Measure, to the Logic of Essence, to the Logic of the Concept, and so forth, through the seventy-three subdivisions which the present writer has inscribed, in his preparatory notebook, against the day of their elaboration. The reader will, however, understand that there is in this place a difficulty which the present writer cannot, in honesty, conceal from him. The difficulty is set forth in the Anhang which follows. I beg the reader's indulgence in advance.
ANHANG.
Anmærkning angaaende de udeblevne §§ 5 og følgende.
Læseren vil have bemærket, at nærværende Bind, der i sin Titel har lovet at indeholde det første Hefte af et logisk System, kun har leveret fire Paragrapher, og at den fjerde af disse er standset paa det Sted, hvor Systemet, efter enhver naturlig Forventning, vilde være begyndt at gjøre sit Arbeide. Læseren har Krav paa en Forklaring. Jeg leverer den her, med den Aabenhjertighed, der sømmer sig en Nytaarsgave, hvis Forfatter staaer paa personligt Bekjendtskabs Fod med flere af Modtagerens Familie.
Systemets tre første Bestemmelser — den rene Væren, det rene Intet, Vorden — ere Systemets Indledning. De ere den Deel, der siden Hegel har været tilgjængelig for enhver dannet Person, der har havt Taalmodighed til at læse Wissenschaft der Logik. De øvrige Afsnit af Systemet udgjøre nærværende Forfatters originale Bidrag, hvori Systemet skal føres ud over Hegel ind i sin specifikt danske Form, og hvori det Bidrag til vor Tids speculative Tænkning, der retfærdiggjør nærværende Bindes Udgivelse, skal findes.
Det er netop det originale Bidrag, som i nærværende Bind endnu ikke er skrevet.
Læseren vil, haaber jeg, paaskjønne det Vanskelige i den Stilling, hvori jeg befinder mig. At udgive en Nytaarsgave uden det originale Bidrag vilde være at udgive Intet; at udgive en Nytaarsgave paa den fastsatte Dag med det originale Bidrag vilde have fordret, at det originale Bidrag var færdigt til den fastsatte Dag; det originale Bidrag ikke værende færdigt til den fastsatte Dag, og den fastsatte Dag ikke værende flyttelig, var den eneste tilbageblevne Mulighed at udgive Indledningen med en Bekjendtgjørelse om, at det originale Bidrag vil følge.
Jeg leverer Bekjendtgjørelsen. Det originale Bidrag vil følge i Bind II af nærværende Række, der er bekjendtgjort til Nytaar 1846. Den dannede Læser, der har subscriberet paa Rækken til den nedsatte Pris, vil modtage Bind II uden videre Betaling. Den dannede Læser, der endnu ikke har subscriberet, kan gjøre det ved Henvendelse til Forlæggeren; den nedsatte Pris er gjeldende til den første Februar.
Jeg tilføier, i Retfærdighed mod Læseren, at det originale Bidrag, paa nærværende Skrivelses Datum, har gjort betydelige Fremskridt. Hovedafsnittenes Overskrifter ere blevne udkastede; flere af de fornemste Argumenter ere blevne udarbeidede med Blyant; et Citat fra Hegel, der skal figurere i § 12, er blevet afskrevet i sin Helhed og oversat til Dansk. Læseren skal derfor ikke forskrækkes ved nærværende Bindes Tyndhed; Tyndheden er foreløbig, og vil blive afhjulpet i det Bind, der følger. Jeg har dog skjønnet det at være at foretrække at udgive Indledningen uden Bidraget frem for at udsætte Udgivelsen og forsømme Aarstiden. Den dannede Læser, paa hvis Forstaaelse jeg gjennem hele denne Fortale har lidt mig, vil, det er jeg fortrøstningsfuld om, give mig Ret.
Jeg slutter nærværende Anhang med een eneste Bemærkning om den speculative Betydning af den Stilling, hvori Bindet befinder sig. Det vil ikke have undgaaet den dannede Læsers Opmærksomhed, at Systemet, i sin nærværende ufuldstændige Tilstand, selv er et Tilfælde af een af de Bestemmelser, som Systemet, naar det er fuldendt, vil behandle: nemlig af Bestemmelsen Løfte, hvori et Indhold sættes som fremtidigt, og Sætten-som-fremtidigt er Løftets eneste nærværende Indhold. Det logiske System har altsaa, ved at være ufuldendt, paa Udgivelsens Øieblik exemplificeret sit eget fremtidige Indhold. Dette er et Sammentræf saa lykkeligt, at det ikke kan ansees som tilfældigt; det maa ansees som et Stykke speculativ Forsynethed, hvorved Systemet er bleven tilladt at demonstrere sin egen Sandhed, førend det har articuleret den. Jeg anbefaler Sammentræffet til den dannede Læsers Meditation, der heri vil finde, vover jeg at mene, en rigere Opbyggelse end de manglende Paragrapher selv vilde have leveret.
Anmærkning angaaende de udeblevne §§ 5 og følgende.
The reader will have observed that the present volume, having promised in its title to contain the first instalment of a Logical System, has supplied only four paragraphs, and that the fourth of these has stopped at the point at which the System would, on any natural expectation, have begun to do its work. The reader is entitled to an explanation. I supply it here, with the candour appropriate to a New Year's gift-book whose author is on terms of personal acquaintance with several members of the recipient's family.
The first three determinations of the Logical System — Pure Being, Pure Nothing, Becoming — are the introduction to the System. They are the part which has been, since Hegel, available to every educated person who has had the patience to read the Wissenschaft der Logik. The remaining sections of the System constitute the original contribution of the present writer, in which the System is to be carried beyond Hegel into its specifically Danish form, and in which the contribution to the speculative thought of our age which justifies the publication of the present volume is to be found.
It is precisely the original contribution which is, in the present volume, not yet written.
The reader will, I hope, appreciate the difficulty of the situation in which I find myself. To publish a New Year's gift-book without the original contribution would be to publish nothing; to publish a New Year's gift-book on the appointed date with the original contribution would have required that the original contribution be ready by the appointed date; the original contribution being not ready by the appointed date, and the appointed date being not movable, the only remaining option was to publish the introduction with a notice that the original contribution will follow.
I supply the notice. The original contribution will follow in Volume II of the present series, which is announced for the New Year of 1846. The cultivated reader who has subscribed to the series at the reduced rate will receive Volume II without further charge. The cultivated reader who has not yet subscribed may do so by addressing the publisher; the reduced rate is in force until the first of February.
I add, in fairness to the reader, that the original contribution has, at the date of the present writing, made considerable progress. The headings of the chief sections have been sketched; several of the principal arguments have been drafted in pencil; a quotation from Hegel which is to figure in § 12 has been transcribed in full and translated into Danish. The reader is therefore not to be alarmed by the present volume's slenderness; the slenderness is provisional, and will be remedied in the volume to come. I have judged it preferable, however, to publish the introduction without the contribution, rather than to delay the publication and miss the season. The cultivated reader, on whose understanding I have throughout this Fortale relied, will, I am confident, agree.
I close the present Anhang with a single observation upon the speculative significance of the situation in which the volume finds itself. It will not have escaped the cultivated reader's notice that the System, in its present incomplete state, is itself an instance of one of the determinations which the System, when complete, will treat: namely, of the determination of Promise, in which a content is posited as future, and the positing-as-future is the only present content of the promise. The Logical System, in being unfinished, has therefore, at the moment of its publication, exemplified its own future content. This is a coincidence so happy that it cannot be regarded as accidental; it must be regarded as a piece of speculative providence, by which the System has been permitted to demonstrate its own truth before having articulated it. I commend the coincidence to the meditation of the cultivated reader, who will find in it, I venture to think, a richer edification than the missing paragraphs themselves would have supplied.
TILLÆG TIL ANHANG.
Yderligere Bemærkninger angaaende de udeblevne §§ 5 og følgende, deres speculative Betydning og deres typographiske Forhold.
Den dannede Læser, der har læst foregaaende Anhang, har maaskee forestillet sig, at Sagen om de udeblevne Paragrapher med den afsluttende Bemærkning om Bestemmelsen Løfte var bragt til en tilstrækkelig Conclusion. Den Underskrevne var af samme Mening, indtil han lagde Pennen ned. Ved nærmere Eftertanke har det dog forekommet ham, at Sagen tillader en yderligere Udvikling i to forskjellige Registre, hvilket den dannede Læser, der er bleven foranlediget til af en Nytaarsgave at vente sig en vis Overflødighed af Tillægsstof, ikke vil, haaber den Underskrevne, tage ham fortrydeligt op. Nærværende Tillæg leverer den yderligere Udvikling under to Hovedstykker: nemlig det speculative (Anhang B) og det commercielle (Anhang C). Den Læser, der nøies med den allerede leverede Udvikling, kan gaae direkte til Subscriptions-Indbydelsen paa næste Side.
Anhang B. De udeblevne §§ 5 ff. betragtede som en Bestemmelse af Systemet.
Den Underskrevne har, paa de afsluttende Sider af foregaaende Anhang, antydet, at de udeblevne Paragrapher exemplificere Bestemmelsen Løfte. Exemplificationen blev fremlagt som et Sammentræf, hvorved Systemet er bleven tilladt at foregribe sit eget Indhold. Den dannede Læser, der har dvælet ved Sammentræffet, vil, vover den Underskrevne nu at antyde, have opfattet, at Sagen tillader en langt dybere Analyse.
Systemet i sin fuldstændige Form indeholder ikke alene Bestemmelsen Løfte, men ogsaa Bestemmelserne den ubestemte Væren, den rene Negation, Vorden, Øieblikket, og det Burde. Hver af disse Bestemmelser er, i Systemet, et Moment af den speculative Bevægelse, hvorved Begrebet articulerer sig selv. Hver er dog ogsaa — og den Underskrevne beder den dannede Læsers særlige Opmærksomhed her — exemplificeret ved nærværende Bindes Fravær af sit videre Indhold. Fraværet er det Ubestemte, eftersom det indeholder ingen bestemt Materie. Fraværet er den rene Negation, eftersom det negerer, hvad Bindet ifølge sin Titel skulde have indeholdt. Fraværet er Vorden, eftersom det staaer i Overgangens Stilling mellem de fire allerede givne Paragrapher og de Paragrapher, der endnu ikke ere givne. Fraværet er Øieblikket, eftersom det indtager et Nu af speculativ Tid, der hverken er Indledningens Nu eller det egentlige Bidrags Nu. Fraværet er det Burde, eftersom det angiver, hvad Bindet skulde have indeholdt, uden at indeholde det.
Den dannede Læser vil strax opfatte Følgen heraf. Fraværet af §§ 5 ff., som en mindre speculativ Læser maatte have ansat for en Mangel ved Bindet, er i Virkeligheden Systemets fuldest mulige Nærvær, forsaavidt det i et eneste typographisk Mellemrum exemplificerer hele Systemets Categoriers Procession. Bindet er, ved at være ufuldstændigt, fuldstændigere end noget fuldstændigt Bind kunde have været; thi det fuldstændige Bind vilde have givet hver Bestemmelse kun een Gang, i sin rette Paragraph, medens nærværende ufuldstændige Bind giver alle Bestemmelserne paa een Gang, i den tomme Sides ene Gjestmildhed. Læseren er derfor i Besiddelse, ved Fraværet af §§ 5 ff., af mere af Systemet, end §§ 5 ff., havde de været skrevne, vilde have leveret. Den Underskrevne beder den dannede Læser at veie denne Betragtning med den Vægt, den fortjener, og at overveie, om den nedsatte Subscriptionspris, fastsat forud for Anhangets Composition, ikke i Lys af nærværende Analyse burde forhøies.
Anhang C. Samme Sag betragtet i sit commercielle Aspekt.
Den Underskrevne har ikke i den foregaaende speculative Udvikling kunnet skjenke Sagen den practiske Opmærksomhed, som en Læser af Nytaarsgavens Genre har Krav paa at vente sig. Han afhjelper Manglen her.
Nærværende Bind er bleven udgivet under Vilkaar, som den dannede Læser, der i Almindelighed ikke er fortrolig med Bogtrykkerhandelens Detailler, maaskee vil ønske at have fremstillet for sig i Korthed.
Sætteren ved Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkerie blev den første November instrueret om at sætte de indledende Paragrapher op og at lade Plads, i det paafølgende Læg, for §§ 5 og følgende, hvilke den Underskrevne forpligtede sig til at levere i reen Indskrift senest den femtende samme Maaned. Paa den femtende, da den Underskrevne i Stedet for §§ 5 ff. kun havde leveret en kort Notits indeholdende et Beklagelses-Udtryk og en Anmodning om Henstand, besluttede Sætteren, efter Conference med Officinens Faktor, at sætte saadant op af Stoffet, som var disponibelt, og at udfylde det resterende Læg med nærværende Anhang og med Subscriptions-Indbydelsen. Anhanget er saaledes bleven sat, deelviis, paa den Plads, som §§ 5 ff. vilde have indtaget; og den dannede Læser, der har gjennemset Bindet med Opmærksomhed, vil have bemærket, at den Skriftgrad, der er anvendt i Anhanget, er en Smule kraftigere end den Skriftgrad, der er anvendt i §§ 1–4, en Foranstaltning, der blev truffen af Sætteren for at fylde Læget uden at maatte ty til en mindre Grad, der vilde have frembragt et ubehageligt typographisk Indtryk.
Anhanget er fremdeles blevet trykt paa Papir af samme Læg som de indledende Paragrapher, da Papirforraadet var blevet anlagt i Begyndelsen af October paa den Forudsætning, at Bindet til November vilde fordre det hele. Den ubrugte Deel er ikke blevet returneret til Papirhandleren, eftersom Handleren ifølge Branchens Sædvane ikke modtager Returnering af Papir, der er blevet aabnet. Den er bleven henlagt til Brug for det andet Bind, hvilket den Underskrevne forpligter sig til skal trykkes paa Papir af identisk Specification, paa det at de tvende Bind, naar de omsider stilles Side om Side paa den dannede Læsers Hylde, skulle frembyde et eensartet Udseende.
Bogbinderen blev endelig i den tredie Uge af November instrueret om at forberede de hvide Kid-Etuier i de Dimensioner, det fuldstændige Bind var blevet ventet at fordre. Etuierne værende forberedte, og Bindet havende viist sig, ved Fraværet af §§ 5 ff., at være betydelig tyndere end forventet, har Bogbinderen pakket den ubenyttede indre Plads med to Blade hvidt Papir foran og to bagest, paa det at Etuierne ikke ved at modtage Bindet skulle rasle. De hvide Blade ere ikke at betragte som en Deel af Bindets Text, ei heller som videre Stof, der venter paa Sætning; de ere en typographisk Beqvemmelighed, antaget for at bevare Bindingens Værdighed. Den dannede Læser, der ønsker at benytte dem til marginale Optegnelser, har Frihed dertil, men advares om, at saadanne Optegnelser, naar §§ 5 ff. omsider leveres i det andet Bind, ikke ville finde sig en pagineret Sammenhæng, da de hvide Blade ere fremmede for Systemets rette Følge.
Den Underskrevne slutter nærværende Tillæg med en sidste Bemærkning. De ovenfor beskrevne Vilkaar — Sætterens Tilflugt til en kraftigere Skriftgrad, det ikke-returnerede Papir, det overforberedte Bind, de hvide Blade for og bag — ere strengt taget ikke Tilfældigheder ved nærværende Bind. De ere den speculative Bevægelses typographiske Manifestationer af vor Tid: et System, bekjendtgjort paa et Trykkerie, er ikke blevet leveret til Trykkeriet til den bekjendtgjorte Tid; Trykkeriet har imidlertid forberedt sig paa Systemets Modtagelse; Systemet ikke værende ankommet, har Trykkeriet improviseret; Improvisationen er, hvad den dannede Læser nu holder i sin Haand. Den Underskrevne anbefaler Symmetrien mellem Anhang B og Anhang C til den dannede Læsers Reflexion. Det speculative Fravær og det typographiske Fravær ere i den rette Analyse det samme Fravær i to Registre; og Læseren, der har fulgt begge Registre, besidder, i sin ene Haand, et rigere Brudstykke af Systemet, end noget rent Text-Brudstykke kunde have leveret.
Yderligere Bemærkninger angaaende de udeblevne §§ 5 og følgende, deres speculative Betydning og deres typographiske Forhold.
The cultivated reader, having read the foregoing Anhang, has perhaps imagined that the matter of the absent paragraphs was, with the closing observation upon the determination of Promise, brought to a sufficient conclusion. The undersigned was of the same opinion until he laid down the pen. On reflection, however, it has appeared to him that the matter admits of a further development in two distinct registers, which the cultivated reader, having been led to expect of a New Year's gift-book a certain abundance of supplementary matter, will not, the undersigned trusts, take amiss. The present Tillæg supplies the further development under two heads: namely, the speculative (Anhang B) and the commercial (Anhang C). The reader who is satisfied with the development already supplied may turn directly to the Subscription Notice on the page following.
Anhang B. The Absence of the §§ 5 ff. considered as a Determination of the System.
The undersigned has, in the closing pages of the Anhang above, indicated that the absent paragraphs exemplify the determination of Promise. The exemplification was offered as a coincidence, by which the System has been permitted to anticipate its own content. The cultivated reader who has dwelt upon the coincidence will, the undersigned now ventures to suggest, have perceived that the matter admits of a far deeper analysis.
The System, in its complete form, contains not only the determination of Promise but also the determinations of Indeterminate Being, of Pure Negation, of Becoming, of the Moment, and of the Ought. Each of these determinations is, in the System, a moment of the speculative motion by which the Concept articulates itself. Each, however, is also — and the undersigned begs the cultivated reader's particular attention here — exemplified by the present volume's absence of its further content. The absence is the Indeterminate, since it contains no determinate matter. The absence is the Pure Negation, since it negates what the volume would, by its title, have contained. The absence is the Becoming, since it stands in the position of transition between the four paragraphs already given and the paragraphs not yet given. The absence is the Moment, since it occupies an instant of speculative time which is neither the moment of the introduction nor the moment of the contribution proper. The absence is the Ought, since it indicates what the volume should have contained without containing it.
The cultivated reader will at once perceive the consequence. The absence of the §§ 5 ff., which a less speculative reader might have regarded as a defect of the volume, is in fact the fullest possible presence of the System, inasmuch as it exemplifies, in a single typographical interval, the entire procession of the System's categories. The volume, in being incomplete, is more complete than any complete volume could have been; for the complete volume would have given each determination only once, in its proper paragraph, while the present incomplete volume gives all the determinations at once, in the single hospitality of the empty page. The reader is therefore in possession, by the absence of the §§ 5 ff., of more of the System than the §§ 5 ff. would, had they been written, have supplied. The undersigned begs the cultivated reader to weigh this consideration with the gravity it deserves, and to consider whether the reduced subscription rate, established in advance of the Anhang's composition, ought not, in light of the present analysis, to be raised.
Anhang C. The Same Matter considered in its Commercial Aspect.
The undersigned has not been able, in the foregoing speculative development, to give the matter that practical attention which a reader of the New Year's gift-book genre is entitled to expect. He supplies the deficiency here.
The present volume has been brought out under conditions which the cultivated reader, who is in general not familiar with the details of the book trade, will perhaps wish to have set before him in brief.
The compositor at Bianco Luno was instructed, on the first of November, to set up the introductory paragraphs and to leave space, in the gathering following, for the §§ 5 and following, which the undersigned undertook to deliver in clean fair copy by the fifteenth of the same month. On the fifteenth, the undersigned having furnished, in place of the §§ 5 ff., only a small note expressing regret and a request for an extension, the compositor, in consultation with the foreman of the press, determined to set up such matter as was available, and to occupy the remaining gathering with the present Anhang and with the Subscription Notice. The Anhang has accordingly been set, in part, in the position which the §§ 5 ff. would have occupied; and the cultivated reader who has examined the volume with attention will have observed that the type used in the Anhang is of a slightly larger body than the type used in the §§ 1–4, a measure adopted by the compositor in order to fill the gathering without recourse to the smaller body which would have produced an unpleasing typographical effect.
The Anhang has, further, been printed upon paper of the same lot as the introductory paragraphs, the supply of paper having been laid in at the beginning of October on the assumption that the volume would, by November, require the whole of it. The unused portion has not been returned to the paper-merchant, since the merchant does not, by the customs of the trade, accept returns of paper which has been opened. It has been set aside for the use of the second volume, which the undersigned undertakes shall be printed upon paper of identical specification, that the two volumes, when at last set side by side on the cultivated reader's shelf, shall present a uniform appearance.
The binder, finally, was instructed in the third week of November to prepare the white kid cases at the dimensions which the complete volume had been expected to require. The cases having been prepared, and the volume having proved, by the absence of the §§ 5 ff., to be considerably thinner than anticipated, the binder has packed the unused interior space with two leaves of blank paper at the front and two at the rear, that the cases may not, in receiving the volume, rattle. The blank leaves are not to be regarded as part of the volume's text, nor as further matter awaiting composition; they are a typographical convenience adopted to preserve the dignity of the binding. The cultivated reader who wishes to use them for marginal entries is at liberty to do so, but is warned that any such entries will not, when the §§ 5 ff. are at last supplied in the second volume, find their way into a paginated context, the blank leaves being foreign to the System's proper sequence.
The undersigned closes the present Tillæg with a final observation. The conditions described above — the compositor's recourse to a larger body, the unreturned paper, the over-prepared binding, the blank leaves at the front and rear — are not, strictly speaking, accidents of the present volume. They are the typographical manifestations of the speculative motion of our age: a System, announced at a press, has not been delivered to the press at the time of its announcement; the press has, in the meantime, prepared itself for the System's reception; the System not having arrived, the press has improvised; the improvisation is what the cultivated reader now holds in his hand. The undersigned commends the symmetry between Anhang B and Anhang C to the cultivated reader's reflection. The speculative absence and the typographical absence are, in the proper analysis, the same absence in two registers; and the reader who has followed both registers possesses, in his single hand, a richer fragment of the System than any merely textual fragment could have supplied.
SPECIMEN PAA MARGINALIA
Optaget, ved Forlæggerens særlige Tilladelse, fra een Subscribents Annotationer til den første Udgave.
Indretningen af nærværende Bind er, som Læseren vil have bemærket, sat med Marginer af usædvanlig Rummelighed, paa det at den dannede Læser i den ledige Plads kan indføre Systemets videre Paragrapher, efterhaanden som de fremkomme i de paafølgende aarlige Bind. Som en Bistand for den Læser, der endnu ikke har paataget sig en saadan marginal Annotation, optrykker Udgiveren her, i facsimile-lignende Sætning, et representativt Opslag af et af Bindets tidligste Subscribenters annoterede Exemplar, der med stor Velvillie har stillet sine Marginer til Disposition for nærværende Demonstration. Subscribentens Navn er paa hans Anmodning forblevet skjult.
§ 2 (Den rene Væren). [Subscribentens marginale Optegnelse, i øvre Margen:] "Den rene Væren, som her charakteriseres, er, efter Subscribentens Mening, identisk med, hvad de ældre Philosopher kaldte substantia in genere. Cfr. Spinoza, Eth. I. def. iii." [Subscribentens marginale Optegnelse, i Sidemargen, paa Linie med Paragraphens første Sætning:] "Forfatteren har glat over Spørgsmaalet, hvorvidt den rene Væren er at identificere med den guddommelige Væren eller blot at forstaae som dens Categori. Subscribenten afventer det andet Bind for Klarhed." [Subscribentens marginale Optegnelse, i nedre Margen:] "NB. Sammenlign Hegel, Wiss. der Logik, I, 79. Den her foreslaaede Overgang er den samme som hos Hegel, dog med den Forskjel, at Forfatteren foreslaaer den meer kortelig. Hvorvidt Korthed bevarer Nødvendigheden, er at overveie." § 3 (Det rene Intet). [Subscribentens marginale Optegnelse, hele Sidemargen:] "Identificationen af det rene Intet med den rene Væren er, efter Subscribentens Mening, den speculative Tænknings centrale Nerve. Forfatterens Behandling er i det Hele acceptabel, men Subscribenten foretrak at see den dialectiske Bevægelse fremstillet i større Udførlighed, med Henvisning til den høire-Hegelianske Marheinekes Critik og Erdmanns Svar. Disse Henvisninger ville, antager Subscribenten, blive leverede i det andet Bind." § 4 (Vorden). [Subscribentens marginale Optegnelse, med Blyant, overstreget og omskrevet med Blæk:] "Her foreslaaer Forfatteren det speculative Princip for hele Systemet. Princippet er sundt; Fremstillingen tynd. Subscribenten vil med Taalmod afvente videre Udvikling." [En anden Haand, mindre, med en anden Blæk, under det foregaaende:] "Taalmodigheden har nu strakt sig gjennem Foraaret. Den videre Udvikling er ikke fremkommet. Subscribenten kan ved nærværende Gjennemlæsning ikke længere i Samvittigheden vedføie Prædikatet sundt om Princippet. Han trækker det tilbage, salvis salvandis." Anhang. [Subscribentens marginale Optegnelse, med en Haand, der synes hurtigere end den foregaaende:] "Anhangets Argument fra Bestemmelsen Løfte er aandrigt, men efter Subscribentens Mening ikke endegyldigt holdbart. Et Indholds Løfte er ikke Indholdet; Bestemmelsen Løfte er et Moment af Systemet, ikke Systemet selv; at forvexle Momentet med det Hele er netop den speculative Vildfarelse, som Systemet existerer for at corrigere. Subscribenten vil dog udsætte sine fyldigere Indvendinger til det andet Bind, hvori Momentets Forhold til det Hele uden Tvivl vil blive meer adækvat behandlet."
Udgiveren noterer, ved Subscribentens Tilladelse, at Subscribenten siden har indleveret hos Forlæggeren en formel Anmodning om Tilbagebetaling af sit Subscriptions-Honorar, hvilken Anmodning er bleven overveiet og, ifølge den oprindelige Subscriptions-Indbydelses Vilkaar, afslaaet; Subscriptionen værende indtegnet for hele Systemet, er Honoraret ikke refunderbart, førend Systemets sidste Bind er fremkommet. Subscribenten har modtaget Afgjørelsen og har samtykket i Optrykningen af sine Marginalia paa den Forstaaelse, at de skulle tjene som Veiledning for de af hans Medsubscribenter, der endnu ikke have paataget sig en saa kraftig Course af marginal Engagement med Texten.
Adapted, by special permission of the publisher, from the annotations of a subscriber to the first edition.
The interior of the present volume is set with margins of an unusual generosity, in order that the cultivated reader may enter, in the white space provided, the further paragraphs of the System as they appear in subsequent annual volumes. As an assistance to the reader who has not yet undertaken such marginal annotation, the editor here reprints, in facsimile-like setting, a representative spread from the annotated copy of one of the volume's earliest subscribers, who has been so good as to permit the use of his margins for the present demonstration. The subscriber's name has, at his request, been withheld.
§ 2 (Den rene Væren). [Subscriber's marginal note, in the upper margin:] "The Pure Being which is here characterised is, on the subscriber's view, identical with what the older philosophers called substantia in genere. Cf. Spinoza, Eth. I. def. iii." [Subscriber's marginal note, in the side margin, level with the paragraph's opening sentence:] "The author has glossed over the question whether Pure Being is to be identified with the divine Being or merely understood as its category. The subscriber awaits the second volume for clarification." [Subscriber's marginal note, in the lower margin:] "NB. Compare Hegel, Wiss. der Logik, I, 79. The transition here proposed is the same as in Hegel, save that the author proposes it more briefly. Whether the brevity preserves the necessity is to be considered." § 3 (Det rene Intet). [Subscriber's marginal note, the entire side margin:] "The identification of Pure Nothing with Pure Being is, on the subscriber's view, the central nerve of the speculative thought. The author's treatment is in the main acceptable, but the subscriber would prefer to see the dialectical motion exhibited at a greater length, with reference to the criticisms of the right-Hegelian Marheineke and the responses of Erdmann. These references will, the subscriber assumes, be supplied in the second volume." § 4 (Vorden). [Subscriber's marginal note, in pencil, struck out and rewritten in ink:] "Here the author proposes the speculative principle of the whole System. The principle is sound; the exposition slight. The subscriber will await further development with patience." [A second hand, smaller, in a different ink, beneath the foregoing:] "The patience has now extended through the spring. The further development has not appeared. The subscriber, on this rereading, can no longer in conscience append the predicate sound to the principle. He retracts it, salvis salvandis." Anhang. [Subscriber's marginal note, in a hand which appears more rapid than the preceding:] "The Anhang's argument from the determination of Promise is ingenious but, on the subscriber's view, not finally sustainable. The promise of a content is not the content; the determination of Promise is a moment of the System, not the System itself; to mistake the moment for the whole is precisely the speculative error which the System exists to correct. The subscriber will, however, defer his fuller objections to the second volume, in which the relation of the moment to the whole will, no doubt, be more adequately treated."
The editor records, with the subscriber's permission, that the subscriber has since lodged with the publisher a formal request for the return of his subscription fee, the request having been considered and, by the terms of the original Subscription Notice, declined; the subscription having been entered for the entire System, the fee is not refundable until the System's final volume has appeared. The subscriber has accepted the decision and has consented to the printing of his marginalia upon the understanding that they will serve as a guide to those of his fellow-subscribers who have not yet undertaken so vigorous a course of marginal engagement with the text.
SUBSCRIPTIONS-INDBYDELSE PAA BIND II
Den Underskrevne har den Ære at bekjendtgjøre, at Bind II af det logiske System vil fremkomme til Nytaar 1846. Det vil indeholde §§ 5–35 inclusive, omfattende de videre Bestemmelser af Værensens Logik, samt saadanne indledende Bemærkninger om Væsenets Logik, som Bindets Plads tilstaaer. Bind III og IV ere projecterede til Nytaar 1847 og 1848 respective; det æsthetiske System vil tage sin Begyndelse med Bind V, til Nytaar 1849.
Subscriptions-Vilkaar:
— Enkelte Bind, efterhaanden som de fremkomme: 1 Rdl. 4 Mark stykket, hæftet; 5 Rdl. stykket, i forgyldt Futteral med Silkesløife.
— Subscription paa hele det logiske System (Bind I–IV): 6 Rdl., hæftet, betalt forud; de fire Bind at leveres efterhaanden som de fremkomme.
— Subscription paa hele Systemet tout court (Bind I–XX, Index-Bind XXI inclusive): 30 Rdl., hæftet, betalt forud; Bindene at leveres efterhaanden som de fremkomme over de næste tyve Aar.
Subscribenter paa hele Systemet ville af Forlæggeren blive indtegnede paa Subscribent-Rullen for det Compleate logiske, æsthetiske, ethiske, dogmatiske og speculative System, hvilken Rulle vil blive trykt ved Slutningen af det sidste Bind som en blivende Optegnelse. Subscribenter, der ikke overleve til det sidste Binds Fremkomst, ville blive bibeholdne paa Rullen, med et lille Kors prefigeret deres Navne; deres Arvinger kunne henvende sig til Forlæggeren angaaende de resterende Bind ved Forevisning af den oprindelige Subscriptions-Qvittering.
Subscriptionsformularer udleveres af Boghandleren.
The undersigned has the honour to announce that Volume II of the Logical System will appear at the New Year of 1846. It will contain §§ 5–35 inclusive, comprising the further determinations of the Logic of Being, together with such introductory remarks upon the Logic of Essence as the space of the volume permits. Volumes III and IV are projected for the New Years of 1847 and 1848 respectively; the Aesthetic System will commence with Volume V, at the New Year of 1849.
Subscription terms:
— Single volumes, as they appear: 1 Rdl. 4 Mark each, hæftet; 5 Rdl. each, in forgyldt Futteral with silk ribbon.
— Subscription to the entire Logical System (Volumes I–IV): 6 Rdl., hæftet, payable in advance; the four volumes to be delivered as they appear.
— Subscription to the entire System tout court (Volumes I–XX, including Index Volume XXI): 30 Rdl., hæftet, payable in advance; volumes to be delivered as they appear over the next twenty years.
Subscribers to the entire System will be entered, by the publisher, in the Subscriber's Roll of the Compleat Logical, Aesthetic, Ethical, Dogmatic, and Speculative System, which will be printed at the end of the final volume as a permanent record. Subscribers who do not survive to the appearance of the final volume will be retained on the Roll, with a small cross prefixed to their names; their heirs may apply to the publisher for the remaining volumes upon presentation of the original subscription receipt.
Subscriptionsformularer udleveres af Boghandleren.
INDLEDENDE LIDEN FORTEGNELSE
over de Subscribenter, der allerede inden Pressens Aabning have ladet sig indtegne paa Subscribent-Rullen
Subscribent-Rullen for det Compleate logiske, æsthetiske, ethiske, dogmatiske og speculative System, omtalt i foregaaende Indbydelse, vil ikke blive trykt i sin Helhed, førend Systemets sidste Bind er fremkommet, om tyve Aar herefter. Forlæggeren er imidlertid bleven anmodet af visse af Bindets tidligste Subscribenter om i den første Udgave selv at angive Navnene paa dem, der havde ladet sig indtegne paa Rullen, førend Pressen blev aabnet, paa det at deres Prioritet i Sagen kunde være offentligt bevidnet. Forlæggeren optrykker i nærværende Liste de otte Navne, der vare paa Rullen i det Øieblik, da Bogtrykkeren slog det første Aftryk. Videre Subscribenter ville blive opførte i den tilsvarende Notits, der vil blive vedføiet de paafølgende Bind, i den Orden, hvori deres Subscriptioner indløb.
- Etatsraad J. P. Schmidt, Bredgade. (Den første indløbne Subscription; indtegnet den ottende October 1844.)
- Frue Conferentsraadinde C. Wolff, Amalienborg Plads.
- Pastor H. C. Lund, ved Holmens Kirke.
- Procurator L. Bang, Strandgade.
- Lieutenant V. Krieger, Garnisonen.
- Justitsraad E. T. Hansen, Frederiksberg Allée.
- Boghandler J. Andersen, Vimmelskaftet. (I Faget.)
- En anonym Subscribent, hvis Indbydelses-Formular er indløben uden Navn. Forlæggeren har forbeholdt den ottende Plads paa Rullen for denne Subscribent, der vil blive underrettet om hvert Binds Fremkomst ved en Avertissement i Adresseavisen, hvilken den anonyme Subscribent har forpligtet sig til at iagttage.
Forlæggeren noterer, at de fire hundrede og sytten Indtegninger paa Rullen, paa Tidspunktet for nærværende Bindes Trykning, overskride i Antal, hvad Forlæggeren havde anslaaet for det første Hefte af et Foretagende af denne Skala. Han meddeler Tallet som en offentlig interessant Sag og som et Indicium paa, at vor Tids speculative Tænkning i Kongeriget Danmark har en Constituens af en Levedygtighed, som de udenlandske Anmeldere ikke altid have erkjendt.
over de Subscribenter, der allerede inden Pressens Aabning have ladet sig indtegne paa Subscribenter-Rullen
The Subscriber's Roll of the Compleat Logical, Aesthetic, Ethical, Dogmatic, and Speculative System, mentioned in the foregoing Notice, will not be printed in its entirety until the final volume of the System has appeared, twenty years hence. The publisher has, however, been pressed by certain of the volume's earliest subscribers to indicate, in the first edition itself, the names of those who had entered themselves upon the Roll before the press was opened, in order that their priority in the matter might be a matter of public record. The publisher prints, in the present list, the eight names which were upon the Roll at the moment the printer struck the first impression. Further subscribers will be listed in the corresponding notice to be appended to subsequent volumes, in the order in which their subscriptions were received.
- Etatsraad J. P. Schmidt, Bredgade. (The first subscription received; entered on the eighth day of October 1844.)
- Frue Conferentsraadinde C. Wolff, Amalienborg Plads.
- Pastor H. C. Lund, ved Holmens Kirke.
- Procurator L. Bang, Strandgade.
- Lieutenant V. Krieger, Garnisonen.
- Justitsraad E. T. Hansen, Frederiksberg Allée.
- Boghandler J. Andersen, Vimmelskaftet. (In the trade.)
- An anonymous subscriber, the form having been received without a name. The publisher has reserved the eighth place on the Roll for this subscriber, who will be notified upon the appearance of each volume by an advertisement in the Adresseavisen which the anonymous subscriber has undertaken to monitor.
The publisher records that the four hundred and seventeen entries upon the Roll, as of the printing of the present volume, exceed by some margin the number which the publisher had anticipated for the first instalment of an undertaking of this scope. He communicates the figure as a matter of public interest, and as an indication that the speculative thought of our age has, in the kingdom of Denmark, a constituency of a vigour which the foreign reviewers have not always credited.
EFTERSKRIFT AF UDGIVEREN
Notabene beder Læseren om Overbærenhed for een afsluttende Reflexion.
Det Bind, han nu har fuldendt, er, ved en Indretning, som den dannede Læser ved Eftertanke vil indsee at være antagen i den editoriale Hæderligheds Interesse, identisk med det Bind, han nu har begyndt. Mellem Pærm og Pærm er Læseren bleven lovet Systemet, er bleven indført i Systemet, er bleven underrettet om, at Systemet snart skal tage sin Begyndelse, er bleven sagt, at Begyndelsen er bleven udsat til et fremtidigt Bind, og er bleven indbudt til at subscribere paa Forhaand. Han har ikke i nogen Deel af disse Forhandlinger faaet Systemet selv.
Jeg vil tillade mig kun denne ene Bemærkning, hvilken den dannede Læser har Frihed til at afskedige som Reflexionen af en Mand, der, havende udgivet en Bog, der intet indeholder, finder sig usikker paa, hvorledes han skal fylde dens afsluttende Sider. Den er denne. Nærværende Bindes Procedure — at love Systemet, at udsætte Systemet, og at indbyde til Subscription mod Udsættelsen — er ikke en Procedure, der er opfunden til nærværende Anledning. Den er den Procedure, der i vor Litteratur er blevet fulgt af enhver Bekjendtgjørelse af Systemet i de forløbne tredive Aar. Den blev fulgt af Professor Heiberg i 1834, da han bekjendtgjorde det æsthetiske; den blev fulgt i 1837, da han indledede Perseus; den blev fulgt i 1838, da han aabnede det andet Hefte af Perseus med de første tre og tyve Paragrapher af det logiske System og et Løfte om Resten. Resten er paa nærværende Tidspunkt ikke fremkommet. Det æsthetiske, paa lignende Maade bekjendtgjort, er ikke fremkommet. Det ethiske, det dogmatiske, Systemet tout court — ingen af disse er fremkommet. De ere blevne lovede, udsatte, og gjorte til Subscriptionsgjenstand. Subscriptionerne ere blevne indsamlede. Bindene ere ikke blevne leverede.
Jeg optegner dette ikke i nogen Bebreidelses Aand mod min ærede Forgjænger, hvis Bedrifter paa det litterære Omraade ere altfor velbekjendte til at fordre min Vidneprøve. Jeg optegner det alene for at antyde, at nærværende Bind ved selve sin Tomhed omsider har stillet for det dannede Publikum, i en Form der ikke kan miskjendes, hvad der i tre Decennier har været vor speculative Litteraturs faktiske Tilstand. Systemet har været Systemets Løfte. Det første Bind har været det andets Bekjendtgjørelse. Det andet, naar det fremkommer (som det fremkom i Perseus), har været det tredies Bekjendtgjørelse. Det dannede Publikum, aldrig havende modtaget noget Bind uden det bekjendtgjørende Bind, har dog opfattet sig som værende i Besiddelse af Systemet, paa den Forstaaelse, at Resten snart skal følge.
Jeg trænger ikke paa Sagen. Jeg er, ligesom min Forgjænger, i Bekjendtgjørelses-Faget; jeg har, ligesom han, modtaget Subscriptioner; jeg skal, ligesom han, i sin Tid være ude af Stand til at levere de Bind, hvorpaa Subscriptionerne ere indbetalte. Den dannede Læser indbydes til alligevel at subscribere. Der er i selve det at subscribere paa et System, der ikke skal komme, en lille Deeltagelse i vor Tids speculative Bevægelse, hvilken Læseren, om han er ærlig mod sig selv, maaskee vil finde meer nærende, end Systemet vilde have været.
Bindet er nu fuldendt. Det hænger paa Juletræet, Silkesløifen ordnet, de forgyldte Snit endnu blanke. Imorgen ville Børnene tage det ned og aabne det; de ville finde Indledningens fire Paragrapher; de ville forgjeves see efter Resten; de ville lukke Bogen og gaae at lege. Jeg veed ikke, om Bindet kunde have tjent sin Aarstid bedre.
Nicolaus Notabene
Faaes hos Universitetsboghandler C. A. Reitzel. Pris 5 Rdl. i forgyldt Futteral, 1 Rdl. 4 Mark hæftet.
Notabene begs the reader's indulgence for one closing reflection.
The volume he has now completed is, by an arrangement which the cultivated reader will, on inspection, perceive to have been adopted in the interest of editorial honesty, identical with the volume he has now begun. Between cover and cover the reader has been promised the System, has been introduced to the System, has been informed that the System is shortly to commence, has been told that the commencement has been deferred to a future volume, and has been invited to subscribe in advance. He has not, in any portion of these proceedings, been given the System itself.
I will permit myself only this single observation, which the cultivated reader is at liberty to dismiss as the reflection of a man who, having published a book which contains nothing, finds himself uncertain how to fill its closing pages. It is this. The procedure of the present volume — to promise the System, to defer the System, and to invite subscription against the deferral — is not a procedure invented for the present occasion. It is the procedure which has been followed, in our literature, by every announcement of the System for the past thirty years. It was followed by Professor Heiberg in 1834, when he announced the Aesthetic; it was followed in 1837, when he commenced the Perseus; it was followed in 1838, when he opened the second number of the Perseus with the first twenty-three paragraphs of the Logical System and a promise of the rest. The rest has not, to the present moment, appeared. The Aesthetic, similarly announced, has not appeared. The Ethical, the Dogmatic, the System tout court — none of these has appeared. They have been promised, deferred, and made the subject of subscription. The subscriptions have been collected. The volumes have not been delivered.
I record this not in any spirit of reproach against my distinguished predecessor, whose accomplishments in the literary domain are too well known to require my testimonial. I record it only to indicate that the present volume, by its very emptiness, has at last placed before the cultivated public, in a form unmistakable, what has been the actual state of affairs in our speculative literature for three decades. The System has been the promise of the System. The first volume has been the announcement of the second. The second, when it appears (as it appeared in the Perseus), has been the announcement of the third. The cultivated public, never having received any volume but the announcing volume, has nevertheless conceived itself to be in possession of the System, on the understanding that the rest is shortly to follow.
I do not press the point. I am, like my predecessor, in the announcing trade; I have, like him, accepted subscriptions; I shall, like him, be in due course unable to supply the volumes for which the subscriptions have been paid. The cultivated reader is invited to subscribe nevertheless. There is, in the very act of subscribing to a System which will not arrive, a small participation in the speculative motion of our age, which the reader, if he is honest with himself, will perhaps find more nourishing than the System would have been.
The volume is now complete. It hangs upon the Christmas tree, the silk ribbon adjusted, the gilt edges still bright. Tomorrow the children will take it down and open it; they will find the four paragraphs of the introduction; they will look in vain for the rest; they will close the book and go to play. I do not know that the volume could have served its season better.
Nicolaus Notabene
Faaes hos Universitetsboghandler C. A. Reitzel. Pris 5 Rdl. i forgyldt Futteral, 1 Rdl. 4 Mark hæftet. Subscriptioner paa Bind II–IV samt paa det fuldendte System modtages.
Editor’s Introduction
Editor's Introduction
Volume I
Det logiske System. En Nytaarsgave
The Logical System. A New Year's Gift
by MADS FEDDER HENRIKSEN
I. Publication and printings
Det logiske System was published by C. A. Reitzel on the second day of Christmas, 26 December 1844, in an edition of 1,000 copies (Reitzel-arkivet, Kgl. Bibl., NKS 4° 2989-A, fasc. 1844-45, fol. 198r). The volume was offered in two bindings: a forgyldt Futteral with pale-blue silk ribbon, at five Rigsdaler; and a stitched paper-cover version (hæftet), at one Rigsdaler four Mark. The Reitzel accounts indicate that 638 of the 1,000 copies had been distributed by the close of January 1845, of which 412 in the gilt case and 226 stitched.
A Second Edition — popular reprint, at three Mark in imitation-kid boards — appeared in January 1846 and is treated separately in the present series as Volume III. The 1846 Anden Udgave is, despite its title, an unaltered reprint of the present 1845 text with the addition of new front and back matter; its bibliographical relation to Vol. I is discussed in the introduction to Vol. III.
A second substantive reprinting — described on its title page as "Folkeudgave" (popular edition) — appeared from Schubothe in 1888. Three further reprintings followed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Schubothe 1903, Reitzel 1924, Gyldendal 1947), each successively abbreviating the volume's apparatus. The present edition is the first complete critical text since the second printing of 1846, and the first ever to incorporate the manuscript materials in the Notabene-arkivet (see § III below).
II. The 1888 Schubothe Folkeudgave and the suppression of the Anhang
The 1888 popular edition, edited for Schubothe by F. P. J. Dahl (1841–1907), is the volume in which most twentieth-century readers encountered Notabene's Logical System. Dahl's edition omitted the Anhang on the udeblevne §§ 5 og følgende and substituted in its place a brief editorial note indicating that "the Author's apology, while of biographical interest, distracts the reader from the speculative substance of the four paragraphs and has accordingly been removed; the reader who wishes to consult it may apply to the original edition, of which copies may still be procured from the publisher's premises." Dahl's introduction (Schubothe 1888, pp. v–xii) justified the omission on the grounds that "the irony of the Anhang belongs to a manner of writing now no longer current, and is unbecoming a New Year's gift-book of the modest pretensions of the present volume" (p. ix).
The judgement is recorded here without comment. The Dahl edition went through five further impressions between 1888 and 1923; the Anhang did not appear in print in Danish between 1846 and 1956, when it was restored in Hertel's textually critical edition (Gads Forlag, 1956). The two further sections that Notabene added in the present edition — Tillæg til Anhang, comprising Anhang B (The Absence of the §§ 5 ff. considered as a Determination of the System) and Anhang C (The Same Matter considered in its Commercial Aspect) — together with the Specimen of the Marginalia, were not transmitted in any of the printings from 1846 onward, and survive only in the present 1844 first edition and in the manuscript materials referenced below. Their absence from the standard nineteenth- and twentieth-century editions is the principal reason why critical treatment of Det logiske System has remained, until now, partial.
III. The Notabene-arkivet and the Subscriber's Roll
In 2019, in the course of the cataloguing of materials transferred to the Kongelige Bibliotek from the Reitzel firm's storage in connection with the firm's centenary, eleven manuscript leaves in Notabene's hand were located in a folder marked, in Reitzel's own hand, "N. N. — Det logiske System, indlæg". The leaves comprise: (1) the complete subscriber's roll of the 417 entries to the Logical System as of 26 December 1844, of which only forty entries had been printed as a Indledende liden Fortegnelse in the first edition; (2) three drafts of the Specimen of the Marginalia in successive states; (3) two leaves of fair copy of paragraphs of the Tillæg til Anhang in a form closely matching that of the printed first edition.
These materials, designated witness M in the present apparatus, have permitted the present edition to print the complete Subscriber's Roll in Appendix A. The roll documents, for the first time in print, the full social composition of the 417 subscribers to the Compleat Logical, Aesthetic, Ethical, Dogmatic, and Speculative System — a document of considerable interest for the cultural history of 1840s Copenhagen. The reader will note that the Indledende liden Fortegnelse of the first edition (pp. 41–43) is here retained in its original position, with the unabbreviated roll in the Appendix; the relation between the two is discussed in the apparatus note to Appendix A.
IV. Authorship and the question of the Subscription Receipts
A small body of scholarship has questioned the authenticity of certain entries in the Subscriber's Roll. Lund (1987) drew attention to the presence of certain names — most notably Frue Etatsraadinde M. Heiberg (no. 13) and Pastor J. P. Mynster (no. 32) — which the surviving correspondence of those subscribers does not corroborate. Lund's hypothesis, that Notabene himself entered fictitious subscriptions in order to lend dignity to the roll, has been contested by Holm (2011, pp. 78–81), who notes that the form of the entries differs in characteristic ways between those for which independent documentation exists and those for which it does not, and proposes that the unsupported entries were entered by Notabene on the strength of intentions expressed to him orally by parties whose own correspondence does not record the intention.
The present editor takes no settled position. The Roll is printed as it stands in the manuscript, with the disputed entries marked by an obelus (†) in the present edition and the relevant scholarship cited in the apparatus.
V. Reception 1845–1948
Det logiske System received four substantive notices in the periodical press of 1845, of which the present edition reproduces, in Appendix B, the Fædrelandet review of 23 January 1845 (the same review reprinted in the 1846 Anden Udgave, on which see Vol. III). The 1888 Schubothe edition occasioned, in addition, a notice in Politiken (16 December 1888) by a younger Brandes (P. Brandes, brother of Georg), which welcomed the Dahl abridgement as "a service to the modern reader for whom the irony of the older generation has lost its savour." The notice is reproduced in Appendix C as a document of the volume's nineteenth-century reception.
A more substantial twentieth-century reception, beginning with Heiberg (T. Heiberg, Notabene som logiker, 1929) and continuing through Lindhardt (1969) and Holm (2011), has reconstructed the volume's relation to the contemporary speculative literature of Copenhagen and, in particular, to J. L. Heiberg's Perseus (1837–38). The relation is treated at length in the apparatus to the Efterskrift af Udgiveren (pp. 96–99 of the present edition).
The volume was translated into German in 1931 by Theodor Haecker (Innsbruck) and into English in 1953 by David F. Swenson (Princeton). Swenson's translation, which has been the standard English text for the past seventy years, is acknowledged in the apparatus (witness L). The present edition supplies a new translation conducted at the Forskningscentret 2022–24.
VI. Editorial principles for the present edition
The text is based on the first printing of 26 December 1844 (witness A; copy at Kgl. Bibl., 17,-118 8°). Variants from the second printing of January 1845 (within witness A) and from the 1846 Anden Udgave are reported where they bear on substantive matters; merely typographical variants are reported in the secondary apparatus to be published electronically. The 1888 Dahl abridgement (witness D) is reported only at points of substantive divergence, chiefly the omission of the Anhang.
The Subscriber's Roll in Appendix A is printed from witness M, with corrections to obvious spelling errors silently made (a small number of inconsistencies of address have been retained as evidence of the speed of the document's compilation). The disputed entries discussed in § IV are marked with an obelus.
The Danish facing-page text retains the orthography and punctuation of witness A. The English facing-page text is a new translation; previous English versions (Swenson 1953; portions in Lowrie 1944 Anthology) are noted in the apparatus where they bear on the present translator's choices.
— M.F.H. Forskningscentret, December 2024
Textual Apparatus
Textual Apparatus
Volume I — Det logiske System
Selected Notes
Model spread; the full apparatus is in the electronic edition at `forskningscentret.ku.dk/notabene/i`.
Conventions
Sigla:
— A. Det logiske System. En Nytaarsgave. Kjøbenhavn: C. A. Reitzel, 1845. First edition (the title page bears the date Til Nytaar 1845; actual publication 26 December 1844). Edition of 1,000 copies; the second printing of 5 January 1845, transmitting the same standing type with three corrected sorts, is treated by the present edition as a continuation of A and reported as A² where its readings depart from A¹. Textual basis: Kgl. Bibl., 17,-118 8° (a second-printing copy).
— A³. Det logiske System. Anden forøgede og forbedrede Udgave. Kjøbenhavn: C. A. Reitzel, 1846. Treated by the present edition as Vol. III, with its own apparatus there. A³'s body reprints A from standing type and supplies new front and back matter; its variants from A are reported in the apparatus to Vol. III. For Vol. I, A³ has authority only at the three points where its reprinting corrects an evident error in A.
— D. Det logiske System. Folkeudgave, udgivet ved F. P. J. Dahl. Kjøbenhavn: Schubothe, 1888. Popular edition; suppresses the Anhang, the Tillæg til Anhang, the Specimen of the Marginalia, and the Indledende liden Fortegnelse. Six further impressions 1889–1923. The Dahl text is reported in the apparatus only at points of substantive divergence from A; merely typographical revisions are not reported.
— M. Notabene-arkivet, Kgl. Bibl., NKS 4° 3204. The principal manuscript witness for Vol. I is fascicle 8 ("N. N. — Det logiske System, indlæg"), eleven leaves in Notabene's hand, recovered from the Reitzel firm's premises in the 2019 centenary inventory. The fascicle contains: (1) the complete Subscriber's Roll of the 417 entries to the Compleat Logical, Aesthetic, Ethical, Dogmatic, and Speculative System as of 26 December 1844 (fols. 1r–4v); (2) three drafts of the Specimen of the Marginalia in successive states (fols. 5r–7v); (3) two leaves of fair copy of paragraphs of the Tillæg til Anhang in a form closely matching A (fols. 8r–9v); (4) miscellaneous notes and corrections (fols. 10r–11v). See the Editor's Introduction to the present volume, § III, for the discovery context and Holm (2011, ch. 2) for the principal scholarly treatment.
— L. The Logical System. A New Year's Gift. Translated by David F. Swenson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953. The standard English translation for the past seventy years. The Swenson edition prints from the Dahl 1888 Folkeudgave and is therefore silent at the points of Dahl's suppressions; the present edition reports Swenson's text only where the suppressions do not bear.
— G. Das logische System. Eine Neujahrsgabe. Translated by Theodor Haecker. Innsbruck: Hochland-Verlag, 1931.
— HH. Reference text for the standard Kierkegaardian renderings; see Vol. VII apparatus, Conventions, above.
Cross-reference conventions follow those established in the apparatus to Vol. VII.
§ 1 — Indledning. On Beginnings in General
General note. The opening section of Det logiske System establishes the volume's principal rhetorical posture: a New Year's gift-book that conducts itself, in its body, as the introduction to a Logical System whose remaining paragraphs will follow in subsequent volumes. The conduct is, in § 1, perfectly poised — Notabene neither commits the System to a particular speculative position nor permits the reader to infer that the System has no position to commit. The poise is, on Holm's reading (2011, p. 41), the principal achievement of the section and the point at which Notabene's literary form most clearly approaches the Hegelian deferral it satirises.
The textual situation of § 1 is simple: A and A² agree throughout; M does not preserve a draft. The Dahl 1888 Folkeudgave (D) prints § 1 substantively as in A; the Dahl preface (D, pp. v–xii) treats § 1 as the most "speculatively substantive" of the volume's paragraphs and is, on this point, in agreement with the modern reading.
§ 1.3. the philosophical nothing which has been, since Hegel, the proper starting-point of speculative thought ] A: det philosophiske Intet, der siden Hegel har været det rette Udgangspunkt for den speculative Tænkning. — Notabene's allusion is to Wissenschaft der Logik I.1.1.A.b ("Das reine Nichts"). The Danish philosophiske Intet is itself a calque on the German philosophisches Nichts; the construction is unusual in 1840s Danish philosophical prose and was, in Lindhardt's view (1969, p. 67), a deliberate Germanism intended to signal the section's relation to Heiberg's Logiske Propædeutik til Ungdommen (1834, 2nd ed. 1837), in which the same construction appears. The Heiberg Propædeutik is the immediate Danish source for the speculative-systematic vocabulary Notabene's § 1 deploys.
§ 1.8. the cultivated reader is invited to dwell upon this for some moments ] A: den dannede Læser indbydes til at dvæle herved nogle Øieblikke. — The Øieblikke (moments) here is the first appearance of Øieblik in the entire phantom corpus; the term will recur, in its philosophically loaded sense, in Vol. VII § 16 (where the present apparatus's principal entry on the concept is given). The casual use here in § 1 is, on Cappelørn's reading (1997, p. 156), a deliberate plant: Notabene introduces the term in its ordinary sense at the head of the corpus so that its later philosophical deployment shall arrive prepared. The reading has the merit of unifying the corpus's vocabulary across its eight volumes; it has the difficulty of attributing to Notabene, in late 1844, an authorial plan of unusual scope. The present editor records the reading without endorsing it.
§ 1.14. I have, in the spring of 1843, dwelt upon it sufficiently for my purposes ] A: Jeg har, i Foraaret 1843, dvælet derved tilstrækkelig til mine Formaal. — The reference to "the spring of 1843" is the volume's only direct dating of Notabene's preliminary philosophical labour and is the principal text-historical link between Det logiske System and the broader compositional chronology recorded in Vol. IX § I. The dating coincides with the Indlednings-Paragrapher episode of 16 March 1843 (see Vol. IX § IV); the relation between the burnt manuscript and the present Det logiske System has been the subject of considerable scholarly speculation. The relevant materials are summarised in Holm (2011, pp. 45–48).
§ 1.19. the form is therefore provisional; it will, in a later volume, be sublated into a higher form ] A: Formen er derfor foreløbig; den vil, i et senere Bind, blive ophævet i en høiere Form. — The Danish ophævet renders the Hegelian aufgehoben. Notabene's use of the conventional Danish translation rather than the German loanword (Aufhebung, which he employs at § 4 below) is itself a stylistic point: in § 1 the term is naturalised; in § 4 it is foreign. The contrast has been read by Pattison (2014, p. 67) as a small philosophical signal: Notabene uses the Danish where the concept is conventional, the German where the concept is exposed as conventional. The reading is consistent with the broader argument of the Anhang.
§ 4 — Vorden
§ 4.11. Aufhebung ] A: Aufhebung (in German, retained in italic). D: omits, replacing with "Ophævelse" silently. L (following D): "Aufhebung" restored. — The Dahl 1888 edition silently naturalised the German term throughout its text of § 4; the substitution is one of the points where D substantively departs from A, although the apparatus to D does not flag the change. Swenson 1953 (L), translating from D, restored "Aufhebung" on his own editorial initiative (Swenson's translator's note, p. xii, indicates the restoration). The present edition retains A's German Aufhebung throughout and reports the D substitution in the apparatus only at first occurrence.
§ 4.15. here a difficulty supervenes; see the Anhang ] A: her supervenerer en Vanskelighed; see Anhang. — The break in § 4, at which Notabene formally refers the reader to the Anhang concerning the absent §§ 5 and following, has been the structural turning-point of the volume since the first reading by Brandes (1883). The Dahl 1888 abridgement, which omits the Anhang entirely, also omits the present line as a consequence; the Swenson translation, working from D, therefore presents § 4 as ending without forward reference, with the result that the reader of Swenson's 1953 English edition received the volume without any indication that the System was, in the original, deliberately incomplete. The error has been widely noted in subsequent Anglophone Kierkegaardian scholarship; the present edition's restoration is, on Pattison's view (2014, p. 70), "the single most material textual correction the present edition has performed."
Anhang — Anmærkning angaaende de udeblevne §§ 5 og følgende
General note. The Anhang is the principal philosophical statement of the volume and the place at which Notabene most explicitly elaborates the promise doctrine that Smaastykker § 7 will later develop. The Dahl 1888 suppression of the Anhang therefore removed, from the standard nineteenth- and twentieth-century reading of Det logiske System, the volume's most substantial philosophical content. The restoration in the present edition is one of the principal points at which the modern critical text departs from the inherited reading.
The textual situation of the Anhang is more complex than that of the body §§. A preserves the text in full; A² (the second printing of January 1845) preserves the same text with two minor corrections, reported at Anhang 8 and Anhang 17 below; A³ (the 1846 Anden Udgave) reprints from standing type unaltered; D omits in toto, substituting Dahl's editorial note (Dahl, Forord til Folkeudgaven, 1888, pp. v–vi); M does not preserve a draft.
Anhang 5. the original contribution which justifies the publication of the present volume ] A: det originale Bidrag der retfærdiggjør Udgivelsen af det nærværende Bind. — The phrase has been read by Lindhardt (1969, p. 78) as a parody of Heiberg's Eftertale til Urania (Feb. 1844), in which Heiberg justified the publication of his own astronomical gift-annual by appeal to "the original contribution it makes to the cultivated knowledge of the kingdom." The Notabene parody, on Lindhardt's reading, deploys the same Heiberg formula with the substantive determination ("original contribution") left undefined — so that the parody consists in the use of Heiberg's justification-language to justify the absence of the very contribution the language ostensibly justifies. The reading is endorsed by Holm (2011, pp. 52–54).
Anhang 8. the appointed date being not movable ] A¹: den fastsatte Tid værende ufordrindelig. A²: den fastsatte Tid værende uforanderlig. — The A¹ reading ufordrindelig (a hapax not attested in Ordbog over det danske Sprog) is evidently a compositor's error for the intended uforanderlig (unalterable). The A² correction is the standing-type adjustment of 5 January 1845 mentioned in the Reitzel-arkivet (NKS 4° 2989-A, fasc. 1844-45, fol. 199r). The present edition follows A². The error is not reported in D, which presumably worked from A² or from an intermediate impression.
Anhang 12. the determination of Promise ] A: Bestemmelsen af Løftet. — The Notabenian Promise is the principal concept of the Anhang and the cornerstone of the broader argument of the eight phantom volumes. The Danish Løftet corresponds to German Versprechen (cf. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, B.VI.A.b, where the same concept is treated under Versprechen); Notabene's use of Løftet, however, does not directly cite Hegel and proceeds independently. — The relation between Notabene's Løftet and the broader Vigilian-Climacean concept of Forjættelse (promise/forecasting) in the contemporary Kierkegaardian pseudonymous prose has been the subject of an inconclusive debate. Lindhardt (1969, pp. 81–85) treats the two as variants of a single concept; Cappelørn (1997) holds them distinct on the ground that Løftet has, in Notabene's use, a specifically literary determination (the promise of a forthcoming work) absent from the Vigilian Forjættelse. The present editor inclines to Cappelørn's reading.
Anhang 17. the very emptiness, has at last placed before the cultivated public ] A¹: selve Tomheden, har endeligen sat for det dannede Publikum. A²: selve Tomheden, har endelig stillet for det dannede Publikum. — The A¹ sat (set, placed) is the verb of A¹; the A² stillet (placed, presented) is the standing-type correction. The Reitzel records do not indicate the reason for the correction; the present editor conjectures that the more formal stillet was preferred by Notabene on stylistic grounds, the correction being entered between the first and second printings at his request. The present edition follows A².
Anhang 21. a piece of speculative providence ] A: et Stykke speculativ Forsyn. — The Danish phrase has the awkwardness of A's Germanism; the more idiomatic Danish would have been et Stykke speculativt Forsyn (with the adjective in the neuter to match the neuter noun Forsyn). The agreement-error has been preserved in all printings of A and is also preserved in D (where it is the only point at which Dahl, otherwise active in stylistic adjustment, leaves an evident solecism standing). The present edition retains the error and reports it; the most plausible explanation is that the phrase was, in A's typesetting, marked-up but not corrected by the compositor, with the proof-reader passing over it on subsequent inspection.
Anhang, closing paragraph. The closing paragraph of the Anhang introduces the principal Notabenian doctrine of literary substitution: the System has, in its incompleteness, exemplified its own future content — that is, the Anhang is, in itself, a moment of the System whose completion the Anhang announces. The doctrine is taken up again, in different application, in Vol. VII § 12 (the eleventh-book argument); see the apparatus to Vol. VII for the cross-reference.
Tillæg til Anhang — Anhang B and Anhang C
General note. The Tillæg til Anhang, comprising Anhang B (The Absence of the §§ 5 ff. considered as a Determination of the System) and Anhang C (The Same Matter considered in its Commercial Aspect), is the most extensively reworked section of the volume. M contains two leaves of fair copy of paragraphs of the Tillæg (fols. 8r–9v), in close but not exact agreement with A. The principal variants are reported below.
The Tillæg was omitted by Dahl in the 1888 Folkeudgave (D) along with the Anhang proper; it appears in no printing between A and the 1956 Hertel critical edition of the Anhang materials (Gads Forlag, on which see Vibskov 1958, p. 261). The present edition is the first to print the Tillæg with its full apparatus, drawing on M.
B.4. the Indeterminate, since it contains no determinate matter ] A: det Ubestemte, da det intet bestemt Stof indeholder. M (fol. 8r, line 11) reads: det Ubestemte, dette det reneste Vorden ("the Indeterminate, this purest Becoming"). — The substitution between M and A removes a parenthetical identification of the Indeterminate with the purest Becoming. The substitution has been read by Holm (2011, p. 64) as a strengthening: in M, the Indeterminate is glossed by reference to a category of the System; in A, the Indeterminate stands on its own. The strengthening is consistent with Notabene's broader practice in the Tillæg of letting categorical names stand without immediate gloss.
B.7. the Moment ] A: Øieblikket. — The use of Øieblikket here, in the Tillæg drafted between October and November 1844, is the second appearance of the term in the volume (after § 1.8); the philosophically loaded use that Vol. VII § 16 will develop is, on present evidence, not yet active. The Tillæg use is in the conventional Hegelian sense of moment — a determinate phase of a process — and not yet in the Vigilian-Notabenian sense of the temporal interval in which the leap becomes available. The conceptual development between the present Tillæg* and Vol. VII § 16 is one of the principal evidences for the maturation of Notabene's philosophical vocabulary between 1844 and 1847.
C.9. the typographical manifestations of the speculative motion of our age ] A: de typographiske Manifestationer af vor Tids speculative Bevægelse. M (fol. 9r, line 14) reads: de typographiske Manifestationer af det vor Tid kalder den speculative Bevægelse ("the typographical manifestations of what our age calls the speculative motion"). — The substitution between M and A removes the distancing "what our age calls"; the A reading takes the speculative motion as the age's, M reading takes it only as the age's name for whatever-is-going-on. The A reading is the firmer claim; M is the more cautious. The present editor takes the A reading as definitive on grounds of Notabene's evident editorial sequence (M precedes A) but records the M reading as evidence of the rhetorical hesitation Notabene appears to have overcome between draft and print.
Specimen of the Marginalia
General note. The Specimen of the Marginalia presents one of the most unusual textual situations in the entire phantom corpus: the section purports to reprint, in facsimile-like setting, the annotated copy of one of the volume's earliest subscribers, who has "been so good as to permit the use of his margins for the present demonstration." The historical existence of the subscriber, however, has long been doubted; the modern consensus, established with Lindhardt (1969) and confirmed by the 2019 discovery of M, is that the marginalia are of Notabene's own composition.
M preserves three drafts of the Specimen in successive states (fols. 5r–7v). The drafts demonstrate, beyond reasonable doubt, that Notabene composed the marginalia himself; the Specimen is, accordingly, a fictional reception document — Notabene's imagined reading of his own work by his own imagined reader. The fictional status has consequences for the apparatus, which is here organised differently from the apparatus to the body sections: the substantive question is no longer "what did Notabene mean?" but "what would a representative subscriber have meant, on Notabene's imagining?"
Specimen 4. NB. Compare Hegel, Wiss. der Logik, I, 79. ] A: identical. M draft 2 (fol. 6r, line 8) reads: Compare Hegel, Wiss. der Logik, I, 134. — The page reference in M is to the Wissenschaft der Logik of the second German edition (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1840–41), which Notabene's aunt's library at Frederiksværk possessed; the A page reference (I, 79) is to the first German edition (Nuremberg: Schrag, 1812–13), which the present editor has not been able to confirm in Notabene's library. The inference is that Notabene, in revising M for A, supplied the page reference from an edition he could not consult — possibly a borrowed copy — and that the resulting reference is, on present evidence, incorrect. The corresponding passage in the Wissenschaft der Logik (Werke 5, ed. Moldenhauer-Michel, Suhrkamp, 1969–86, vol. 5, p. 82) confirms the M reference; A's first-edition reference appears not to correspond to the passage cited. The error is preserved in all printings of A and is not corrected in the present edition; the apparatus reports it.
Specimen 11. The patience has now extended through the spring. The further development has not appeared. ] A: Taalmodigheden har nu strakt sig gjennem Foraaret. Den videre Udvikling har ikke vist sig. — The second-hand annotation reading is, on M draft 3 (fol. 7v), entered in a different ink and a different hand from the first-hand annotation it follows. The "different hand," on internal evidence, is also Notabene's own (compare the hand of M fol. 11r with that of fol. 7v ad loc.); Notabene appears to have composed the Specimen by writing the first-hand annotations and then, in a second pass, the second-hand retractions. The procedure is consistent with the dialogical structure of the Specimen as a whole.
Indledende liden Fortegnelse and the Subscriber's Roll
General note. The Indledende liden Fortegnelse of forty subscribers (printed in A on pp. 41–43 of the present edition) is the only portion of the original 417-name Subscriber's Roll that appeared in A. The complete Roll, preserved in M (fols. 1r–4v), is here printed in Appendix A of the present edition for the first time in any printing.
The question of the Roll's authenticity has been the principal scholarly question of Vol. I since Lund (1987). Lund identified four entries in the Indledende liden Fortegnelse whose subscriptions are not corroborated by the surviving correspondence of the named parties: nos. 13 (Frue Etatsraadinde M. Heiberg), 27 (Pastor F. C. Spang), 32 (Pastor J. P. Mynster), and 36 (Magister artium R. Nielsen). Lund's hypothesis was that Notabene himself entered these subscriptions to lend dignity to the Roll. Holm (2011, pp. 78–81) contested the hypothesis on the grounds that the form of these four entries differs in characteristic ways from the form of corroborated entries, and proposed that the unsupported entries were entered by Notabene "on the strength of intentions expressed to him orally by parties whose own correspondence does not record the intention."
The 2019 discovery of M, which contains the full 417-entry Roll, has added significant evidence on both sides. On the one hand, M's Roll is in Notabene's own hand throughout — that is, Notabene compiled the Roll personally rather than receiving subscription cards and forwarding them to a clerk. This is consistent with Lund's hypothesis to the extent that it shows Notabene with the editorial control needed to insert fictitious entries. On the other hand, M's Roll contains, on fol. 4v, marginal corrections and addenda in a hand demonstrably not Notabene's, identified by Holm (2019, pp. 24–27) as that of the Reitzel firm's chief clerk Hr. P. C. Jørgensen; the clerk's annotations correct three entries against what appear to be his own records, suggesting that Notabene's Roll was, at minimum, checked against an independent record. The four entries Lund had flagged are not among those the clerk corrected, which Holm interprets as evidence that the clerk too found them defensible.
The present edition prints the Roll in full, with the four Lund-flagged entries marked with an obelus (†) and the full discussion reported in the apparatus to Appendix A. The editor does not undertake to settle the question; the apparatus presents the evidence and refers the reader to Lund 1987 and Holm 2011/2019 for the principal contributions.
Roll entry 13. Frue Etatsraadinde M. Heiberg, Søkvæsthuset. M (fol. 1r, line 13): identical to A. — Marie Heiberg's correspondence of January 1845 (Heiberg-arkivet, Add. 1840, fasc. III) does not mention the subscription; her receipt-book for the year, preserved in the same fascicle, does not record the payment of any sum to Reitzel. The entry is one of the four Lund flagged. Holm (2011, p. 80) notes that Marie Heiberg's receipt-book is incomplete (it omits, e.g., several documented purchases of which the receipts are independently preserved) and that the absence is therefore not conclusive. The present apparatus marks the entry with an obelus.
Roll entry 27. Pastor F. C. Spang, Kongens Lyngby. — The marginal note in A ("the second day of Christmas; my New Year's gift to myself, my wife having forbidden the purchase of any further volume of speculative theology this year") is preserved in M (fol. 2v, lines 14–16) and was clearly intended by Notabene for publication; the note's parallel to Notabene's own marital situation has been read as evidence either that Pastor Spang is a fictitious entry (his note reflecting Notabene's own circumstances rather than a real Pastor Spang's) or that Notabene selected this real-or-fictitious entry for its parallel to his own. The matter has been treated in Vibskov (1958, p. 47) and in Holm (2011, p. 79); the present editor marks the entry with an obelus and reports the dispute.
Roll entry 32. Pastor J. P. Mynster, ved Vor Frue Kirke. — The entry's qualification in A — "the subscription was received from a younger member of the Bishop's household and has not, to the editor's knowledge, been confirmed by the Bishop himself" — is preserved in M (fol. 3r, lines 21–24). Mynster's Dagbøger (ed. Brandt, 1862) do not mention the subscription; the surviving Mynster correspondence preserves no reference to the volume. The most plausible reconstruction is that some real member of the Mynster household did enter the subscription without the Bishop's knowledge; the present editor accepts the qualification as adequate notice and does not mark the entry with an obelus on the same grounds as 13 and 27. Lund (1987) had marked the entry; the present editor's departure from Lund is treated in the apparatus to Appendix A.
Roll entry 36. Magister artium R. Nielsen, the address withheld. — Rasmus Nielsen's Den speculative Logik i dens Grundtræk (1841–42) is referenced in the marginal note ("I subscribe, with such reservations as my own contribution to the speculative literature of the kingdom may, in due course, render necessary"). Nielsen's surviving correspondence (Universitetsarkivet, R. Nielsen Arkiv) does not corroborate the subscription, and Nielsen's Forskningsbidrag (1873, autobiographical) does not refer to it. The entry is the fourth Lund-flagged; the present editor marks it with an obelus.
The complete apparatus to Vol. I addresses all sections in comparable detail. The model spread above demonstrates the apparatus's treatment of: ordinary body text (§ 1, § 4); the principal philosophical statement (Anhang); the most heavily reworked section (Tillæg); a section of unusual textual character (Specimen of the Marginalia, where the apparatus is reorganised for the section's fictional status); and a substantial appendix involving disputed authenticity (the Subscriber's Roll). The remaining sections — the Fortale, the Subscription Notice, the Efterskrift — follow the conventions of body-text apparatus established in §§ 1 and 4.
— M. F. H. Forskningscentret, December 2024