46 SOCIAL SCIENTIST 44 Max Weber, The Methodology of Social Sciences, 1949. A Note on the Use of He gel9 s Logic. In a general form, the point I wish to make can be done even without the help of Hegel's Logic. But the reference to the Logic is not merely decorative. After all' the main problem here is to judge which among several plausible constructions of a particular set of texts has the greater chances of squaring with the author's meaning-intention. In this. the explicit remarks of the author himself about his choice of the form of handling his material are surely of crucial importance. The letter to Engels and probable dates of Composition of some of Marx's critical texts make the detour through the Logic unavoidable. I have kept the discussion in the article free of Hegelian ballast. For those with a different taste, the references are given below. Two kinds of illustrations can be provided from Hegel's work. The abstract form of this kind of analysis is set out clearly in Science of Logic, chapter 2, which discusses "determinate being". Particularly relevant for my purpose is the analysis of the notion of "something" through the sections (c), and the whole exposition of 'finitude' in its three sections: (a) Something and Other, (b) Determination, constitution and limit, (c) finitude. In terms of clarity and nearness the ordinary English philosophical idiom, the earlier translation of the Logic by Johnstone and Struthers (London, 1929) is perhaps preferable to the somewhat heavier rendering in Miller's translation. I have however used Miller's translation of terms as they are more appropriate to my argument. For instance, what Johnstone and Strutherg render as'barrier'Miller reads as 'limit'. Illustration of a second kind can be found in the v/ay Hegel uses this form of presentation in his own analysis. One example could be the discussion at the beginning of the Phenomenology about 'this' and 'now'. (Sections 32 and 96, pp 59-61). Phenomenology of Spirit, trans A V Miller, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1977. Some of the relevant passages are: "Through its quality something is determined as opposed to an oilier, as alterable and finite; and as negatively determined not only against an other, but also in its own self." (p 109). "Reality itself contains negation, is determinate being, not indeterminate, abstract being. Similarly, negation is determinate being, not the supposedly abstract nothing but posited here as it is in itself, as affirmative present, belonging to the sphere of determinate being."(p 115). "Something is the first negation of negation, as simple self-relation in the form of being."(p 115). "Something and other are, in the first place, both determinate beings or somethings. Secondly, each is equally an other. It is immaterial which is first named and solely for that reason called something... Of two things we call one A and the other B, then in the first instance B is determined as the other. But A is just as must the other of B."(p 117). "Something, therefore, is immediate, self-related determinate being, and has a limit, in the first place, relatively to an other; the limit is the non-being of the other, not of the something itself: in the limit something limits its other. But the other is Uself a something is general, therefore the limit which something has relatively to the other is also the limit of the other as a something, its limit whereby it keeps the first something as its other apart from it, or is a non-being of that some_ thing', it is thus not only the non-being of the other, but non-being equally of the ong and of the other something, consequently of the something as such." (p 126). "Through the limit something is what it is, and in the limit it has quality." (p 126). Hegel's Science of Logic (trans. A V Miller), George Alien and Unwin, 1969.