Laws of Logic

Laws of logical thinking. People correctly apply the laws of concepts, judgments, reasoning and other forms of thinking in the process of logical thinking. There are mainly two different logical laws: (1) Laws of common logic (formal logic), such as the law of identity, the law of contradiction, the law of excluded middle, the law of sufficient reason and other specific thought forms, structures and laws; (2) Laws of dialectical logic, such as the law of the unity and struggle of opposites, the law of mutual transformation of quantity and quality, the law of affirmation and negation, and various specific dialectical thinking laws. The two kinds of logical laws are the reflection of the most general relations and laws of objective things on the basis of human social practice and are the summarization of human thinking laws. The law of formal logic reflects objective things from a relatively static, stable and identical perspective, without involving specific objects or departing from the formal structure of thinking. The law of dialectical logic reflects things from the perspective of movement, development and internal contradictions. It studies the form and law of human thought in connection with the specific content of thinking. However, these two logical law categories do not conflict in the same thinking process. Dialectical thinking must abide by the law of formal logic and include the law of formal logic in itself in a higher form. The two complement each other in thinking.

Lenin made an in-depth study and comparison of Hegel’s and Marx’s propositions of logic laws, and scientifically defined and elucidated logic laws.

(1) Logical laws are the reflections of the objective world. Lenin pointed out that Hegel actually proved that logical forms and laws are not an empty shell, but the reflection of the objective world. More correctly, he did not prove, but made a brilliant guess. Hegel made a genius guess that logical laws reflect the objective world and expounded the connections and transitions between inductions. Due to this, Lenin emphasized that, “It is impossible to completely understand Marx’s Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel’s Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!” To understand Marx’s Capital, one must first understand the logical laws elaborated by Hegel.

(2) Logical laws are the theory about the development law of matter, nature and spirit, and the unification of the development law of things and thinking law, history and logic, abstraction and concreteness. Lenin pointed out that “Logic is the science not of external forms of thought, but of the laws of development ‘of all material, natural and spiritual things’, i.e., of the development of the entire concrete content of the world and of its cognition, i.e., the sum-total, the conclusion of the history of knowledge of the world.” The laws of logic emphasized by Lenin are laws of development, not of external forms of thought or a part of things, but about the entire concrete content of the world, not one-sided, isolated or static research of a certain field, but the sum-total and conclusion of the history of knowledge of the world.

(3) Logic is epistemology, and the laws of logic are laws of cognition. Lenin pointed out that logic is a theory about cognition. It is the epistemology. Cognition is the reflection of nature by man. But it is not a simple, not a direct, complete reflection, but a process of series of abstractions, of the formation, of the construction of concepts, laws, etc.; and these concepts, laws, etc. also comprehend conditionally, approximately the universal pattern of an eternally moving and developing nature. The reflection of nature by human is to apply the laws of logic and to comprehend conditionally and approximately the universal pattern of nature. Lenin’s creative exposition of the laws of logic criticized the metaphysical logical law theory regarding logic as “a science of external forms of thought”, criticized Hegel’s objective idealist theory of logical law that deified logic concepts and laws generally. Lenin raised the laws of logic to the level of materialist dialectics and epistemology, and argued that logic, dialectics and epistemology are “the same thing”. He found the essence of logical laws from the philosophical level and defined the object and method of dialectics research, which provided methodological guidance for human beings to scientifically understand and know objective things and the logical laws of human thinking and had great theoretical significance for scientifically understanding and transforming the subjective and the objective world.