the contrary, we should prepare ourselves to retrieve the genuine tradition from out of the ruins of the sham, to really appropriate the productive and living elements that lie under the rubble of scholastic logic. But we will engage in direct confrontation with that earlier philosophizing logic only if we ourselves do logic in a philosophizing manner. The result will be to see that Aristotle’s logic, for example—or more precisely, his work on that area of research—is quite different from the scholastic logic that likes to appeal to him.
In his lecture course Logic, Kant says:
Contemporary logic is a descendant of Aristotle’s Analytic. This philosopher can be regarded as the father of logic. [14] He expounded it as an organon and divided it into analytic and dialectic. His manner of teaching is very scholastic and has to do with the development of the most universal concepts, which lie at the basis of logic, but no one has any use for it because almost everything amounts to mere subtleties, except that one [has] drawn from this the names for various acts of the understanding. From Aristotle’s time on, logic has not gained much in content, by the way, nor can it by its nature do so.
Compare the Preface to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason:
We can see that from the earliest times logic has traveled this secure course from the fact that since the time of Aristotle it has not had to go a single step backwards unless we count the abolishing of a few unnecessary sub-tleties or the more distinct determination of its presentations. These im-provements pertain more to the elegance of that science than to its secu-rity. (B viii)
When Kant wrote or spoke those lines from the Logic, he knew nothing of Hegel and of the logic that he was already composing, which would eventually make Hegel what he became and will ever remain: the only-begotten and co-equal son of the Father of Logic. In philosophical terms this means that the philosophical logic founded by Aristotle and completed by Hegel will not be advanced by any further son-ship and uncle-hood. In order to advance philosophically, it needs a new lineage. When that will come about, no one knows. We of today are certainly not it. But the positive contribution to be made by those few who now understand what is at stake will consist in a work of transition: bringing to life again the productivity of the past and taking it into a future that we dimly see but are not yet up to. That’s why it’s all the more urgent that we carry through with questioning, and free ourselves from the chains of rigidity.
But is it in fact true that the cultivation of traditional scholastic logic really promotes only a cult of tradition and a dependence on custom?