Observing Reason

C. (AA) Reason
V. The Certainty and Truth of Reason
A. Observing Reason (§231-308)

In this long section Hegel shows how our reason observes and interacts with the inorganic and the organic. When observing the inorganic we naturally try to find physical laws that explain what we experience. In general these can be found, but at this point reason fails to fully distinguish what is in nature and what is in our observation of nature, and fails to see nature as emanating from a single essence.

When regarding the organic, Hegel identifies only a few "laws" that govern the living: instincts to sensibility, irritability, and reproduction. These relatively fewer limitations, and their more tenuous hold on living beings, are meant to leave room for genuine freedom:

...as regards law and necessity, when observation connects the organic with the merely given differences of the inorganic, the elements, zones, and climates, it does not get beyond the idea of a 'great influence.'

In my opinion this is the first real uphill battle Hegel has yet had to fight (the objections that we see him consider here are much more formidable than elsewhere).

Hegel proceeds to claim that the fuzziness of the connection between the outer world and the individual means that there are no laws connecting them in regards to the cognition of the individual. I myself am pretty fuzzy on how he gets to this claim. Does he need this to have freedom of thought? And thus will? What are the "Laws of Thought?"