The Inherent Law of Essence

Abstract

Hegel in the Phenomenology of Mind views the pure law as a genuine scientific law and regards it as a preparation for a higher level of scientific knowledge, where attempts at formulations of a more developed law are made. Hegel labels it “the organic law” and discriminates between its three forms: a scientific law expressing the relation among the organic and the non-organic (the elements); a scientific law expressing the relation of the inward and outward (form) of the organic; and, finally, a scientific law expressing the internal characteristics of the organic (irritability, sensibility, reproduction). Gradually, however, he jettisons all these three varieties of an organic scientific law and arrives at the conclusion that “the representation of a law is lost altogether in the case of the organic” (1928, 207; 1967, 310). Marx, however, is of the opposite opinion on this point. Already in an 1853 article he mentions the “inherent organic laws of political economy now at work in every civilized town” (1984, 252; Marx and Engels 1975ff., Vol. 12, 222).