Book Two: The Doctrine of Essence
Volume One: The Objective Logic
The truth of being is essence.
Being is the immediate. Since knowing has for its goal knowledge of the true, knowledge of what being is in and for itself, it does not stop at the immediate and its determinations, but penetrates it on the supposition that at the back of this being there is something else, something other than being itself, that this background constitutes the truth of being. This knowledge is a mediated knowing for it is not found immediately with and in essence, but starts from an other, from being, and has a preliminary path to tread, that of going beyond being or rather of penetrating into it. Not until knowing inwardises, recollects itself out of immediate being, does it through this mediation find essence. The German language has preserved essence in the past participle [gewesen] of the verb to be; for essence is past — but timelessly past — being.
When this movement is pictured as the path of knowing, then this beginning with being, and the development that sublates it, reaching essence as a mediated result, appears to be an activity of knowing external to being, and irrelevant to being's own nature.
But this path is the movement of being itself. It was seen that being inwardises itself through its on nature, and through this movement into itself becomes essence.
If, therefore, the absolute was at first defined as being, now it is defined as essence. Cognition certainly cannot stop short at manifold determinate being, nor yet at being, pure being; the reflection that immediately forces itself on one is that this pure being, the negation of everything finite, presupposes an internalisation, a recollection [Erinnerung] and movement which has purified immediate, determinate being to pure being. Being is accordingly determined as essence, as a being in which everything determinate and finite is negated. It is thus the indeterminate, simple unity from which what is determinate has been eliminated in an external manner; the determinate element itself was external to this unity and, after this elimination, still remains confronting it; for it has not been sublated in itself but only relatively, only in relation to this unity. We have already mentioned that if essence is defined as the sum total of all realities, then these realities likewise are subordinate to the nature of the determinateness and to the abstractive reflection and this sum total reduces to empty oneness. Essence is in this way only a product, an artefact.
External negation — and this is what abstraction is — only shifts the determinatenesses of being away from what is left over as Essence; it only puts them, so to speak, elsewhere, leaving them the affirmative character they possessed before. But in this way, essence is neither in itself nor for itself; what it is, it is through an other, the external, abstract reflection; and it is for an other, namely abstraction and, in general, for the simply affirmative being that remains confronting it. Its character, therefore, is to lack all determinate character, to be inherently lifeless and empty.
But essence as it has here come to be, is what it is, through a negativity which is not alien to it but is its very own, the infinite movement of being. It is being that is in itself and for itself; it is absolute being-in-itself in that it is indifferent to every determinateness of being, and otherness and relation-to-other have been completely sublated. But it is not only this being-in-itself; as mere being-in-itself it would be only the abstraction of pure essence; but it is equally essentially being-for-self; it is itself this negativity, the self-sublating of otherness and determinateness.
Essence as the completed return of being into itself is thus at first indeterminate essence. The determinateness of being are sublated in it; they are contained in essence in principle but are not posited in it. Absolute essence in this simple equality with itself has no determinate being; but it must develop determinate being, for it is both in itself and for itself, i.e. differentiates the determinations which are implicit in it. Because it is self-repelling or indifferent to itself, negative self-relation, it sets itself over against itself and is infinite being-for-self only in so far is as it is at one with itself in this its own difference from itself. The determining then is of a different nature from the determining in the sphere of being, and the determinations of essence have a different character from the determinatenesses of being. Essence is absolute unity of being-in-itself and being-for-itself; consequently its determining remains within this unity and is neither a becoming nor a transition, nor are the determinations themselves an other as other, or relations to other; they are self-subsistent, but at the same time only in their association with each other in this unity. Since essence is at first simple negativity, it now has to posit in its own sphere the determinateness that is only implicit in it, in order to give itself determinate being and then being-for-self.
In the whole of logic, essence occupies the same place as quantity does in the sphere of being; absolute indifference to limit. But quantity is this indifference in an immediate determination, and the limit is present in it as an immediately external determinateness, quantity passes over into quantum; the external limit is necessary to quantity and is affirmatively present in it [ist an ihr seiend]. In essence, — on the other hand, the determinateness is not a simple immediacy but is present only as posited by essence itself; it is not free, but is present only as connected with its unity. The negativity of essence is reflection; and the determinations are reflected, posited by essence itself and remaining in essence as sublated.
Essence stands between being and Notion; it constitutes their mean, and its movement is the transition from being into the Notion. Essence is being-in-and-for-itself, but in the determination of being-in-itself; for the general determination of essence is to have proceeded from being, or to be the first negation of being. Its movement consists in positing within itself the negation or determination, thereby giving itself determinate being and becoming as infinite being-for-self what it is in itself. It thus gives itself its determinate being that is equal to its being-in-itself and becomes Notion. For the Notion is the absolute that in its determinate being is absolute, or is in and for itself. But the determinate being which essence gives itself is not vet determinate being as in and for itself, but as given by essence to itself, or as posited, and is consequently still distinct from the determinate being of the Notion.
At first, essence shines or shows within itself, or is reflection; secondly, it appears; thirdly, it manifests itself. In its movement, essence posits itself in the following determinations:
I. As simple essence, essence in itself, which in its determinations remains within itself.
II. As emerging into determinate being, or in accordance with its Existence and Appearance.
III. As essence that is one with its Appearance, as actuality.
Section One: Essence as Reflection Within Itself
Essence issues from being; hence it is not immediately in and for itself but is a result of that movement. Or if essence is taken at first as an immediacy, then it is a specific determinate being confronted by another such; it is only essential, as opposed to unessential, determinate being. But essence is being that has been sublated in and for itself; what confronts it is only illusory being [Schein]. The illusory being, however, is essence's own positing.
Essence is first reflection. Reflection determines itself and its determinations are a positedness which is at the same time reflection-into-self.
Secondly, we have to consider these determinations of reflection or essentialities.
Thirdly, essence as the reflection-into-self of its determining converts itself into ground and passes over into Existence and Appearance.
Chapter 1 Illusory Being
Essence that issues from being seems to confront it as an opposite; this immediate being is, in the first instance, the unessential.
But secondly, it is more than merely unessential being, it is essenceless being, it is illusory being.
Thirdly, this illusory being is not something external to or other than essence; on the contrary, it is essence's own illusory being. The showing of this illusory being within essence itself is reflection.
A.THE ESSENTIAL AND THE UNESSENTIAL
Essence is sublated being. It is simple equality with itself, but only in so far as it is the negation of the sphere of being in general.
Essence thus has immediacy confronting it as an immediacy from which it has become and which in this sublating has preserved and maintained itself. In this determination, essence itself is simply affirmative [seiendes], immediate essence, and being is only a negative in relation to essence, not in and for itself; therefore essence is a determinate negation. In this way, being and essence are again related to each other as others; for each has a being, an immediacy, and these are indifferent to each other, and with respect to this being, being and essence are equal in value.
But at the same time, being, as contrasted with essence, is the unessential; in relation to essence, it has the determination of sublated being. Yet in so far as it is only related to essence simply as an other, essence is not strictly essence but only a differently determined being, the essential.
The distinction of essential and unessential has caused essence to relapse into the sphere of determinate being, since essence in its initial phase is determined as immediate, simply affirmative [seiendes] essence and hence only as other over against being. The sphere of determinate being is thereby made the base, and the fact that the being in this determinate being is being-in-and-for-itself, is a further determination external to determinate being itself; and conversely, while essence is indeed being-in-and-for-itself, it is so only in relation to an other, in a specific reference. Accordingly, in so far as the distinction is made of an essential and an unessential side in something [Dasein], this distinction is externally posited, a separation of one part of it from another that does not affect the something itself, a division which has its origin in a third. Such a division does not settle what is essential and what is unessential. It originates in some external standpoint and consideration and the same content can therefore be regarded now as essential and again as unessential.
Closer consideration shows that when essence is characterised as essential only relatively to what is unessential, it is because it is taken only as sublated being or determinate being. In this way, essence is only the first negation, or the negation which is a determinateness through which being becomes only determinate being, or the latter becomes only an other. But essence is the absolute negativity of being; it is being itself, but not determined only as an other, but being that has sublated itself both as immediate being and also as immediate negation, as negation that is infected with otherness. Thus being, or determinate being, has not preserved itself as an other — for we are in the sphere of essence — and the immediate that is still distinguished from essence is not merely an unessential determinate being but the immediate that is in and for itself a nullity; it is only a non-essence, illusory being.
B.ILLUSORY BEING
1. Being is illusory being. The being of illusory being consists solely in the sublatedness of being, in its nothingness; this nothingness it has in essence and apart from its nothingness, apart from essence, illusory being is not. It is the negative posited as negative.
Illusory being is all that still remains from the sphere of being. But it seems still to have an immediate side that is independent of essence and to be simply an other of essence. The other contains in general the two moments of determinate being and negated determinate being. Since the unessential no longer has a being, all that remains to it of otherness is the pure moment of negated determinate being; illusory being is this immediate, negated determinate being in the determinateness of being, in such wise that it has determinate being only in relation to an other, only in its negated determinate being; the non-self-subsistent which is only in its negation. All that is left to it, therefore, is the pure determinateness of immediacy; it is reflected immediacy, that is, immediacy which is only by means of its negation and which, when contrasted with its mediation, is nothing but the empty determination of the immediacy of negated determinate being.
Thus illusory being is the phenomenon of scepticism, and the Appearance of idealism, too, is such an immediacy which is not a something or a thing, in general, not an indifferent being that would still be, apart from its determinateness and connection with the subject. Scepticism did not permit itself to say 'It is'; modern idealism did not permit itself to regard knowledge as a knowing of the thing-in-itself; the illusory being of scepticism was supposed to lack any foundation of being, and in idealism the thing-in-itself was not supposed to enter into knowledge. But at the same time scepticism admitted a multitude of determinations of its illusory being, or rather its illusory being had for content the entire manifold wealth of the world. In idealism, too, Appearance embraces within itself the range of these manifold determinatenesses.
This illusory being and this Appearance are immediately thus manifoldly determined. This content, therefore, may well have no being, no thing-in-itself at its base; it remains on its own account as it is; the content has only been transferred from being into an illusory being, so that the latter has within itself those manifold determinatenesses, which are immediate, simply affirmative, and mutually related as others. Illusory being is, therefore, itself immediately determinate. It can have this or that content; whatever content it has, illusory being does not posit this itself but has it immediately. The various forms of idealism, Leibnizian, Kantian, Fichtean, and others, have not advanced beyond being as determinateness, have not advanced beyond this immediacy, any more than scepticism did. Scepticism permits the content of its illusory being to be given to it; whatever content it is supposed to have, for scepticism it is immediate. The monad of Leibnitz evolves its ideas and representations out of itself; but it is not the power that generates and binds them together, rather do they arise in the monad like bubbles; they are indifferent and immediate over against one another and the same in relation to the monad itself. Similarly, the Kantian Appearance is a given content of perception; it presupposes affections, determinations of the subject, which are immediate relatively to themselves and to the subject. It may well be that the infinite obstacle of Fichte's idealism has no underlying thing-in-itself, so that it becomes purely a determinateness in the ego; but for the ego, this determinateness which it appropriates and whose externality it sublates is at the same time immediate, a limitation of the ego, which it can transcend but which has in it an element of indifference, so that although the limitation is on the ego, it contains an immediate non-being of the ego.
2. Illusory being, therefore, contains an immediate presupposition, a side that is independent of essence. But it does not have to be shown that illusory being, in so far as it is distinct from essence, sublates itself and withdraws into essence; for being in its totality has withdrawn into essence; illusory being is in itself a nullity; all that has to be shown is that the determinations which distinguish it from essence are determinations of essence itself, and further, that this determinateness of essence which illusory being is, is sublated in essence itself.
It is the immediacy of non-being that constitutes illusory being; but this non-being is nothing else but the negativity of essence present within it. In essence, being is non-being. Its intrinsic nothingness is the negative nature of essence itself. But the immediacy or indifference which this non-being contains is essence's own absolute being-in-itself. The negativity of essence is its equality with itself or its simple immediacy and indifference. Being has preserved itself in essence in so far as the latter in its infinite negativity has this equality with itself; it is through this that essence itself is being. The immediacy of the determinateness in illusory being over against essence is consequently nothing other than essence's own immediacy; but the immediacy is not simply affirmative [seiend], but is the purely mediated or reflected immediacy that is illusory being-being, not as being, but only as the determinateness of being as opposed to mediation; being as a moment.
These two moments, namely the nothingness which yet is and the being which is only a moment, or the implicit negativity and the reflected immediacy that constitute the moments of illusory being, are thus the moments of essence itself. What we have here is not an illusory show of being in essence, or an illusory show of essence in being; the illusory being in essence is not the illusory being of an other, but is illusory being per se, the illusory being of essence itself.
What we have here is not an illusory show of being in essence, or an illusory show of essence in being; the illusory being in essence is not the illusory being of an other, but is illusory being per se, the illusory being of essence itself.
Illusory being is essence itself in the determinateness of being. Essence has an illusory being because it is determinate within itself and thereby distinguished from its absolute unity. But equally this determinateness is absolutely sublated in its own self. For essence is the self-subsistent, which is as self-mediated through its negation, which negation essence itself is; it is therefore the identical unity of absolute negativity and immediacy. The negativity is negativity per se; it is its relation to itself and is thus in itself immediacy; but it is negative self-relation, a negating that is a repelling of itself, and the intrinsic immediacy is thus negative or determinate in regard to it. But this determinateness is itself absolute negativity, and this determining which is, as determining, immediately the sublating of itself, is a return-into-self.
Illusory being is the negative that has a being, but in an other, in its negation; it is a non-self-subsistent being which is in its own self-sublated and null. As such, it is the negative returned into itself, non-self-subsistent being as in its own self not self-subsistent. This self-relation of the negative or of non-self-subsistent being is its immediacy; it is an other than the negative itself; it is its determinateness over against itself; or it is the negation directed against the negative. But negation directed against the negative is purely self-related negativity, the absolute sublating of the determinateness itself.
The determinateness, therefore, which illusory being is in essence is infinite determinateness; it is the purely self-coincident negative; it is thus the determinateness which as such is self-subsistent and indeterminate. Conversely, the self-subsistent, as self-related immediacy, is equally sheer determinateness and moment and is only as self-related negativity. This negativity that is identical with immediacy and immediacy that is thus identical with negativity, is essence. Illusory being, therefore, is essence itself, but essence in a determinateness, in such a manner, however, that this is only a moment of essence and essence is the reflection of itself within itself.
In the sphere of being, there arises over against being as an immediacy, non-being, which is likewise an immediacy, and their truth is becoming. In the sphere of essence, we have first essence opposed to the unessential, then essence opposed to illusory being, that is, to the unessential and to illusory being as the remainder of being. But both essence and illusory being, and also the difference of essence from them, derive solely from the fact that essence is at first taken as an immediate, not as it is in itself, namely, not as an immediacy that is as pure mediation or absolute negativity. The first immediacy is thus only the determinateness of immediacy. The sublating of this determinateness of essence, therefore, consists simply and solely in showing that the unessential is only illusory being and that the truth is rather that essence contains the illusory being within itself as the infinite immanent movement that determines its immediacy as negativity and its negativity as immediacy, and is thus the reflection of itself within itself. Essence in this its self-movement is reflection
C. REFLECTION
Illusory being is the same thing as reflection; but it is reflection as immediate. For illusory being that has withdrawn into itself and so is estranged from its immediacy, we have the foreign word reflection.
Essence is reflection, the movement of becoming and transition that remains internal to it, in which the differentiated moment is determined simply as that which in itself is only negative, as illusory being. At the base of becoming in the sphere of being, there lies the determinateness of being, and this is relation to other. The movement of reflection, on the other hand, is the other as the negation in itself, which has a being only as self-related negation. Or, since the self-relation is precisely this negating of negation, the negation as negation is present in such wise that it has its being in its negatedness, as illusory being. Here, therefore, the other is not being with a negation, or limit, but negation with the negation. But the first, over against this other, the immediate or being, is only this very equality of the negation with itself, the negated negation, absolute negativity. This equality with itself, or immediacy, is consequently not a first from which the beginning was made and which passed over into its negation; nor is it an affirmatively present substrate that moves through reflection; on the contrary, immediacy is only this movement itself.
Consequently, becoming is essence, its reflective movement, is the movement of nothing to nothing, and so back to itself. The transition, or Becoming, sublates itself in its transition: that Other which arises in the course of this transition is not the Not-being of a Being, but the nothingness of a Nothing, and this, to be the negation of a nothing, constitutes Being — Being only is as the movement of Nothing to Nothing, and as such it is Essence; and Essence does not have this movement within it but is this movement, as a being that is itself absolutely illusory, pure negativity, which has nothing without it that could negate it, but negates only its own negativity, which is only in this negation, which latter is only in this negating.
©
This pure absolute reflection that is the movement from nothing to nothing determines itself further.
It is first, positing reflection.
Secondly, it forms the starting point of the presupposed immediate and is thus external reflection.
But thirdly, it sublates this presupposition; and since reflection in sublating the presupposition at the same time presupposes it, it is determining reflection.
(a) Positing Reflection
Illusory being is nothingness or the essenceless; but this nothingness or the essenceless does not have its being in an other in which its illusory being is reflected: on the contrary, its being is its own equality with itself. This interchange of the negative with itself has determined itself as the absolute reflection of essence.
This self-related negativity of essence is therefore the negating of its own self. Hence it is just as much sublated negativity as it is negativity; or it is itself both the negative, and simple equality with itself or immediacy. It consists, therefore, in being itself and not itself and that, too, in a single unity.
In the first place, reflection is the movement of nothing to nothing and is the negation that coincides with itself. This coincidence with itself is, in general, simple equality-with-self, immediacy. But this coincidence is not a transition of the negation into equality-with-self as into its otherness: on the contrary, reflection is transition as sublating of the transition; for reflection is immediate coincidence of the negative with itself. This coincidence is thus first, equality-with-self or immediacy; but secondly, this immediacy is the equality of the negative with itself, hence self-negating equality, the immediacy that is in itself the negative, the negative of itself, that consists in being that which it is not.
The self-relation of the negative is, therefore, its return into itself; it is immediacy as the sublating of the negative; but immediacy simply and solely as this relation or as return from a negative, and hence a self-sublating immediacy. This is posited being or positedness, immediacy purely and simply as determinateness or as self-reflecting. This immediacy which is only as return of the negative into itself, is that immediacy which constitutes the determinateness of illusory being and which previously seemed to be the starting point of the reflective moment. But this immediacy, instead of being able to form the starting point is, on the contrary, immediacy only as the return or as reflection itself. Reflection therefore is the movement that starts or returns only in so far as the negative has already returned into itself.
It is a positing in so far as it is immediacy as a returning movement; for there is no other on hand, either an other from which or into which immediacy returns; it is, therefore, only as a returning movement, or as the negative of itself. Furthermore, this immediacy is the sublated negation and the sublated return-into-self. Reflection, as sublating the negative, is a sublating of its other, of immediacy. Since, therefore, it is immediacy as a returning movement, as a coincidence of the negative with itself, it is equally a negative of the negative as negative. Thus it is a presupposing. Or immediacy, as a returning movement, is only the negative of itself, only this, to be not immediacy; but reflection is the sublating of the negative of itself, it is a coincidence with itself; it therefore sublates its positing, and since in its positing it sublates its positing, it is a presupposing. Reflection, in its presupposing, determines the return-into-self as the negative of itself, as that, the sublating of which is essence. The presupposing is the manner in which it relates itself to itself, but to itself as the negative of itself; only thus is it the self-relating negativity that remains internal to itself. Immediacy presents itself simply and solely as a return and is that negative which is the illusory being of the beginning, the illusory being which is negated by the return. Accordingly, the return of essence is its self-repulsion. In other words, reflection-into-self is essentially the presupposing of that from which it is the return.
It is only when essence has sublated its equality-with-self that it is equality-with-self. It presupposes itself and the sublating of this presupposition is essence itself; conversely, this sublating of its presupposition is the presupposition itself. Reflection therefore finds before it an immediate which it transcends and from which it is the return. But this return is only the presupposing of what reflection finds before it. What is thus found only comes to be through being left behind; its immediacy is sublated immediacy. Conversely, the sublated immediacy is the return-into-self, the coming-to-itself of essence, simple, self-equal being. Hence this coming-to-itself is the sublating of itself and is the self-repelling, presupposing reflection, and its self-repelling is the coming-to-itself of reflection.
It follows, therefore, from the foregoing considerations that the reflective movement is to be taken as an absolute recoil upon itself. For the presupposition of the return-into-self-that from which essence comes, and is only as this return-is only in the return itself. The transcending of the immediate from which reflection starts is rather the outcome of this transcending; and the transcending of the immediate is the arrival at it. The movement, as an advance, immediately turns round upon itself and only so is self-movement — a movement which comes from itself in so far as positing reflection is presupposing, but, as presupposing reflection, is simply positing reflection.
Thus reflection is itself and its non-being, and is only itself, in that it is the negative of itself, for only thus is the sublating of the negative at the same time a coincidence with itself.
The immediacy that reflection, as a process of sublating, presupposes for itself is purely and simply a positedness, an immediacy that is in itself sublated, that is not distinct from the return-into-self and is itself only this movement of return. But at the same time it is determined as negative, as immediately opposed to something, therefore to an other. Thus reflection is determinate; and since, in accordance with this determinateness, it has a presupposition and starts from the immediate as its other, it is external reflection.
(b) External Reflection
Reflection, as absolute reflection, is essence that reflects its illusory being within itself and presupposes for itself only an illusory being, only positedness; as presupposing reflection, it is immediately only positing reflection. But external or real reflection presupposes itself as sublated, as the negative of itself In this determination it is doubled: it is what is presupposed, or reflection-into-self, which is the immediate; and also it is reflection that is negatively self-related; it is related to itself as to its non-being.
External reflection therefore presupposes a being, first, not in the sense that its immediacy is only positedness or a moment, but, on the contrary, that this immediacy is self-relation and the determinateness is only a moment. Its relationship to its presupposition is such that the latter is the negative of reflection, but so that this negative as negative is sublated. Reflection in its positing, immediately sublates its positing and thus has an immediate presupposition. It therefore finds this before it as something from which it starts, and from which it is first the return-into-self, the negating of this its negative. But the fact that what is thus presupposed is a negative or is posited does not concern it; this determinateness belongs only to the positing reflection, but in the presupposing the positedness is present only as sublated. The determinations posited by the external reflection in the immediate are to that extent external to the latter. This external reflection in the sphere of being was the infinite; the finite ranked as the first, as the real; as the foundation, the abiding foundation, it forms the starting point and the infinite is the reflection-into-self over against it.
This external reflection is the syllogism in which are the two extremes, the immediate and reflection-into-self; the middle term of the syllogism is the connection of the two, the determinate immediate, so that one part of the middle term, immediacy, belongs only to one of the extremes, the other, determinateness or negation, belongs only to the other extreme.
But a closer consideration of the action of external reflection shows it to be secondly, a positing of the immediate, which consequently becomes the negative or the determinate; but external reflection is immediately also the sublating of this its positing; for it presupposes the immediate; in negating, it is the negating of this its negating. But in doing so it is immediately equally a positing, a sublating of the immediate negatively related to it, and this immediate from which it seemed to start as from something alien, is only in this its beginning. In this way, the immediate is not only in itself — that means, for us, or in external reflection — identical with reflection, but this identicalness is posited. For the immediate is determined by reflection as its negative or its other, but it is reflection itself that negates this determining. Hence the externality of reflection over against the immediate is sublated; its positing in which it negates itself, is the union of itself with its negative, with the immediate, and this union is the immediacy of essence itself. The fact is, therefore, that external reflection is not external, but is no less the immanent reflection of immediacy itself; in other words, the outcome of positing reflection is essence in and for itself. Reflection is thus determining reflection.
Remark
Reflection is usually taken in a subjective sense as the movement of the faculty of judgement that goes beyond a given immediate conception and seeks universal determinations for it or compares such determinations with it. Kant opposes reflective judgement to determining judgement. He defines the faculty of judgement in general as the ability to think the particular as subsumed under the universal.
If the universal is given (the rule, principle, law), then the faculty of judgement that subsumes the particular under it is determinative. But if only the particular is given for which the universal is to be found, then judgement is merely reflective. Here, then, to reflect is likewise to go beyond an immediate to the universal. On the one hand, it is only through this reference of the immediate to its universal that it is determined as a particular; by itself, it is only an individual or an immediate, simply affirmative being [unmittelbares Seiendes]. On the other hand, that to which it is referred is its universal, its rule, principle, law, in general, that which is reflected into itself, is self-related, essence or the essential.
But what is under discussion here is neither reflection at the level of consciousness, nor the more specific reflection of the understanding, which has the particular and the universal for its determinations, but of reflection generally. That reflection to which Kant ascribes the search of the universal of a given particular is clearly also only external reflection, which is related to the immediate as to something given. But in external reflection there is also implicit the notion of absolute reflection; for the universal, the principle or rule and law to which it advances in its determining, counts as the essence of that immediate which forms the starting point; and this immediate therefore counts as a nullity, and it is only the return from it, its determining by reflection, that is the positing of the immediate in accordance with its true being. Therefore, what reflection does to the immediate, and the determinations which issue from reflection, are not anything external to the immediate but are its own proper being.
It was external reflection, too, that recent philosophy had in mind when, as was the fashion for a while, it ascribed everything bad to reflection generally, regarding it and all its works as the polar opposite and hereditary foe of the absolute method of philosophising. And intellectual reflection, in so far as it operates as external reflection, does in fact start from something immediately given which is alien to it, regarding itself as a merely formal activity which receives its content and material from outside and which, by itself, is only the movement conditioned by that content and material. Further, as will become more evident as soon as we come to consider determining reflection, the reflected determinations are of a different kind from the merely immediate determinations of being. The latter are more readily granted to be transient, merely relative and standing in relation to other; but the reflected determinations have the form of being-in-and-for-self. This makes them count as essential, and instead of passing over into their opposites they appear rather as absolute, free, and indifferent towards each other. Consequently, they are stubbornly opposed to their movement, their being is their self-identity in their determinateness, in accordance with which, even though they presuppose each other, they maintain themselves completely separate in this relation. ©
(c) Determining Reflection
Determining reflection is in general the unity of positing and external reflection. This is to be considered in more detail.
1. External reflection starts from immediate being, positing reflection from nothing. External reflection, when it determines, posits an other-but this is essence-in the place of the sublated being; but the determination thus posited is not put in the place of an other; the positing has no presupposition. But that is why it is not the completed, determining reflection; the determination that it posits is consequently only something posited; it is an immediate, but not as equal to itself but as negating itself; it has an absolute relation to the return-into-self; it is only in reflection-into-self, but it is not this reflection itself.
What is posited is consequently an other, but in such a manner that the equality of reflection with itself is completely preserved; for what is posited is only as sublated, as a relation to the return-into-self. In the sphere of being, determinate being was the being in which negation was present, and being was the immediate base and element of this negation, which consequently was itself immediate. In the sphere of essence, positedness corresponds to determinate being. It is likewise a determinate being but its base is being as essence or as pure negativity; it is a determinateness or negation, not as affirmatively present [seiend] but immediately as sublated. Determinate being is merely posited being or positedness; this is the proposition of essence about determinate being. Positedness stands opposed, on the one hand, to determinate being, and on the other, to essence, and is to be considered as the middle term which unites determinate being with essence, and conversely, essence with determinate being. Accordingly, when it is said that a determination is only a positedness, this can have a twofold meaning; it is a positedness as opposed to determinate being or as opposed to essence. In the former meaning, determinate being is taken to be superior to positedness and the latter is ascribed to external reflection, to the subjective side. But in fact positedness is the superior; for as positedness, determinate being is that which it is in itself, a negative, something that is simply and solely related to the return-into-self. It is for this reason that positedness is only a positedness with respect to essence, as the negation of the accomplished return-into-self.
2. Positedness is not yet a determination of reflection; it is only determinateness as negation in general. But the positing is now in unity with external reflection; the latter is, in this unity, an absolute presupposing, that is, the repelling of reflection from itself, or the positing of the determinateness as determinateness of itself. Consequently, positedness is, as such, negation; but, as presupposed, it is also reflected into itself. Positedness is thus a determination of reflection.
The determination of reflection is distinct from the determinateness of being, from quality. The latter is immediate relation to other in general; positedness, too, is a relation to other, but to reflectedness-into-self. Negation as quality, is negation simply as affirmative [seiend]; being constitutes its ground and element. The determination of reflection, on the other hand, has for this ground reflectedness-into-self. Positedness fixes itself into a determination precisely because reflection is equality-with-self in its negatedness; its negatedness is consequently itself a reflection-into-self. Here the determination persists not through being but through its equality with itself. Because being, which supports quality, is not equal to the negation, quality is unequal within itself and hence a transitory moment vanishing in the other. The determination of reflection, on the other hand, is positedness as negation, negation which has negatedness as its ground; it is therefore not unequal within itself, and hence is essential, not transitory determinateness. It is the equality of reflection with itself that possesses the negative only as negative, as sublated or posited being, that enables the negative to persist.
By virtue of this reflection-into-self the determinations of reflection appear as free essentialities floating in the void without attracting or repelling one another. In them the determinateness has established and infinitely fixed itself through the relation-to-self. It is the determinate that has brought into subjection its transitoriness and its mere positedness, or has bent back its reflection-into-other into reflection-into-self. These determinations hereby constitute determinate illusory being as it is in essence, essential illusory being. Because of this, determining reflection is reflection that has come forth from itself; the equality of essence with itself has perished in the negation, which is the dominant factor.
In the determination of reflection, therefore, there are two sides which at first are distinguished from one another. First, the determination is positedness, negation as such; secondly, it is reflection-into-self. As positedness, it is negation as negation; this accordingly is already its unity with itself. But at first, it is this only in itself or in principle [an sich], or, it is the immediate as sublating itself in its own self, as the other of itself. To this extent, reflection is an immanent determining. In the process, essence does not go outside itself; the differences are simply posited, taken back into essence. But according to the other side, they are not posited but reflected into themselves; the negation as negation is in an equality with itself, is not reflected into its other, into its non-being.
3. Now since the determination of reflection is as much a reflected relation within itself as it is positedness, this fact immediately throws more light on its nature. For as positedness, it is negation as such, a non-being over against an other, namely, over against absolute reflection-into-self, or over against essence. But as self-relation it is reflected into itself. This its reflection and the above positedness are distinct; its positedness is rather its sublatedness; but its reflectedness-into-self is its subsistence. In so far, therefore, as it is the positedness that is at the same time reflection-into-self, the determinateness of reflection is the relation to its otherness within itself. It is not an affirmative [seiende], quiescent determinateness, which would be related to an other in such a way that the related term and its relation are distinct from each other, the former a being-within-self, a something that excludes its other and its relation to this other from itself; on the contrary, the determination of reflection is in its own self the determinate side and the relation of this determinate side as determinate, that is, to its negation. Quality, through its relation, passes over into an other; in its relation its alteration begins. The determination of reflection, on the other hand, has taken its otherness back into itself. It is positedness, negation, which however bends back into itself the relation to other, and negation which is equal to itself, the unity of itself and its other, and only through this is an essentiality. It is, therefore, positedness, negation; but as reflection-into-self it is at the same time the sublatedness of this positedness, infinite self-relation.
Chapter 2 The Essentialities or Determinations of Reflection
Reflection is determinate reflection; hence essence is determinate essence, or it is an essentiality.
Reflection is the showing of the illusory being of essence within essence itself. Essence, as infinite return-into-self, is not immediate but negative simplicity; it is a movement through distinct moments, absolute self-mediation. But it reflects itself into these its moments which consequently are themselves determinations reflected into themselves.
Essence is at first, simple self-relation, pure identity. This is its determination, but as such it is rather the absence of any determination.
Secondly, the proper determination is difference, a difference that is, on the one hand, external or indifferent, diversity in general, and on the other hand, is opposed diversity or opposition.
Thirdly, as contradiction, the opposition is reflected into itself and withdrawn into its ground.
Remark: A = A
The categories of reflection used to be taken up in the form of propositions, in which they were asserted to be valid for everything. These propositions ranked as the universal laws of thought that lie at the base of all thinking, that are absolute in themselves and incapable of proof, but are immediately and incontestably recognised and accepted as true by all thinking that grasps their meaning.
Thus the essential category of identity is enunciated in the proposition: everything is identical with itself, A = A. Or negatively: A cannot at the same time be A and not A.
In the first place, there is no apparent reason why only these simple determinations of reflection should be grasped in this particular form, and not also the other categories, such as all the determinatenesses of the sphere of being. We should then have the propositions, for example: everything is, everything has a determinate being, and so on, or: everything has a quality, quantity, etc. For being, determinate being, and so forth, are, simply as logical categories, predicates of everything. According to its etymology and Aristotle's definition, category is what is predicated or asserted of the existent. But a determinateness of being is essentially a transition into its opposite; the negative of any determinateness is as necessary as the latter itself; as immediate determinatenesses, each is directly confronted by the other. Consequently, if these categories are put in the form of such propositions, then the opposite propositions equally appear; both present themselves with equal necessity and, as immediate assertions, are at least equally correct. The one, therefore, would demand proof as against the other, and consequently these assertions could no longer be credited with the character of immediately true and incontestable propositions of thought.
The determinations of reflection, on the contrary, are not of a qualitative kind. They are self-related, and so are at the same time determinations removed from determinateness against an other. Further, in that they are determinatenesses which are in themselves relations, to that extent they already contain within themselves the prepositional form. For the difference between proposition and judgement is mainly that in the former the content constitutes the relation itself or is a specific relation. The judgement, on the contrary, transfers the content to the predicate as a universal determinateness which is for itself and is distinct from its relation, the simple copula. When a proposition is to be converted into a judgement, then the specific content — if, for example it is a verb — is changed into a participle, in order to separate in this way the determination itself and its relation to a subject. For the determinations of reflection, on the contrary, as positedness reflected into itself, the prepositional form itself lies immediately at hand. Only, since they are enunciated as universal laws of thought, they still require a subject of their relation, and this subject is: everything, or an A, which equally means each and every existent.
On the one hand, this prepositional form is a superfluity; the determinations of reflection are to be considered in and for themselves. Further, these propositions are defective in that they have for subject, being, everything. In this way, they resuscitate being and enunciate the categories of reflection-identity, and so on-of the something as a quality which something has in it, not in the speculative sense, but meaning that something as subject persists in such a quality as simply affirmative [als seiendes], not that it has passed over into identity, and so on, as into its truth and its essence.
But lastly, although the determinations of reflection have the form of equality-with-self and therefore of being unrelated to an other and without opposition, yet they are determinate against one another, as we shall find on closer examination of them, or as is immediately evident from the categories of identity, difference, and opposition; their form of reflection, therefore, does not exempt them from transition and contradiction. The several propositions which are set up as absolute laws of thought, are, therefore, more closely considered, opposed to one another, they contradict one another and mutually sublate themselves.
If everything is identical with itself, then it is not different, not opposed, has no ground. Or, if it is assumed that no two things are the same, that is, everything is different from everything else, then A is not equal to A, nor is A opposed to A, and so on. The assumption of any of these propositions rules out the assumption of the others. The thoughtless consideration of them enumerates them one after the other, so that there does not appear to be any relation between them; it has in mind merely their reflectedness-into-self, ignoring their other moment, positedness or their determinateness as such which sweeps them on into transition and into their negation.
A. IDENTITY
1. Essence is simple immediacy as sublated immediacy. Its negativity is its being; it is self-equal in its absolute negativity, through which otherness and relation-to-other has vanished in its own self into pure equality-with-self. Essence is therefore simple identity with self.
2. This identity-with-self is the immediacy of reflection. It is not that equality-with-self that being or even nothing is, but the equality-with-self that has brought itself to unity, not a restoration of itself from an other, but this pure origination from and within itself, essential identity. Consequently, it is not abstract identity or has not arisen through a relative negating which had taken place outside it, merely separating off the distinguished moment but otherwise leaving it afterwards as simply affirmative [seiend] as it was before. On the contrary, being and every determinateness of being has sublated itself not relatively, but in its own self: and this simple negativity of being in its own self is identity itself. So far, then, identity is still in general the same as essence.
Remark 1: Abstract Identity
Thinking that keeps to external reflection and knows of no other thinking but external reflection, fails to attain to a grasp of identity in the form just expounded, or of essence, which is the same thing. Such thinking always has before it only abstract identity, and apart from and alongside it, difference. In its opinion, reason is nothing more than a loom on which it externally combines and interweaves the warp, of say, identity, and then the woof of difference; or, also, again proceeding analytically, it now extracts especially identity and then also again obtains difference alongside it, is now a positing of likeness and then also again a positing of unlikeness — likeness when abstraction is made from difference, and unlikeness when abstraction is made from the positing of likeness. These assertions and opinions about what reason does must be completely set aside, since they are in a certain measure merely historical; the truth is rather that a consideration of everything that is, shows that in its own self everything is in its self-sameness different from itself and self-contradictory, and that in its difference, in its contradiction, it is self-identical, and is in its own self this movement of transition of one of these categories into the other, and for this reason, that each is in its own self the opposite of itself. The Notion of identity, that it is simple self-related negativity, is not a product of external reflection but has come from being itself. Whereas, on the contrary, that identity that is aloof from difference, and difference that is aloof from identity, are products of external reflection and abstraction, which arbitrarily clings to this point of indifferent difference.
2. This identity is, in the first instance, essence itself, not yet a determination of it, reflection in its entirety, not a distinct moment of it. As absolute negation it is the negation that immediately negates itself, a non-being and difference that vanishes in its arising, or a distinguishing by which nothing is distinguished, but which immediately collapses within itself. The distinguishing is the positing of non-being as non-being of the other. But the non-being of the other is sublation of the other and therewith of the distinguishing itself. Here, then, distinguishing is present as self-related negativity, as a non-being which is the non-being of itself, a non-being which has its non-being not in another but in its own self. What is present, therefore, is self-related, reflected difference, or pure, absolute difference.
In other words, identity is the reflection-into-self that is identity only as internal repulsion, and is this repulsion as reflection-into-self, repulsion which immediately takes itself back into itself. Thus it is identity as difference that is identical with itself. But difference is only identical with itself in so far as it is not identity but absolute non-identity. But non-identity is absolute in so far as it contains nothing of its other but only itself, that is, in so far as it is absolute identity with itself.
Identity, therefore, is in its own self absolute non-identity. But it is also the determination of identity as against non-identity. For as reflection-into-self it posits itself as its own non-being; it is the whole, but, as reflection, it posits itself as its own moment, as positedness, from which it is the return into itself. It is only as such moment of itself that it is identity as such, as determination of simple equality with itself in contrast to absolute difference.
Remark 2: First Original Law of Thought
In this remark, I will consider in more detail identity as the law of identity which is usually adduced as the first law of thought.
This proposition in its positive expression A = A is, in the first instance, nothing more than the expression of an empty tautology. It has therefore been rightly remarked that this law of thought has no content and leads no further. It is thus the empty identity that is rigidly adhered to by those who take it, as such, to be something true and are given to saying that identity is not difference, but that identity and difference are different. They do not see that in this very assertion they are themselves saying that identity is different; for they are saying that identity is different from difference; since this must at the same time be admitted to be the nature of identity, their assertion implies that identity, not externally, but in its own self, in its very nature, is this, to be different.
But further, they do not see that, by clinging to this unmoved identity which has its opposite in difference, they thereby convert it into a one-sided determinateness which, as such, has no truth. It is admitted that the law of identity expresses only a one-sided determinatedness, that it contains only formal truth, a truth which is abstract, incomplete. In this correct judgement, however, it is immediately implied that truth is complete only in the unity of identity with difference, and hence consists only in this unity. When asserting that this identity is imperfect, the perfection one has vaguely in mind is this totality, measured against which the identity is imperfect; but since, on the other hand, identity is rigidly held to be absolutely separate from difference and in this separation is taken to be something essential, valid, true, then the only thing to be seen in these conflicting assertions is the failure to bring together these thoughts, namely, that identity as abstract identity is essential, and that as such it is equally imperfect: the lack of awareness of the negative movement which, in these assertions, identity itself is represented to be. Or, when it is said that identity is essential identity as separation from difference, or in the separation from difference, then this is directly the expressed truth about it, namely, that identity consists in being separation as such, or in being essential in separation, that is, it is nothing for itself but is a moment of separation.
Now as regards other confirmation of the absolute truth of the law of identity, this is based on experience in so far as appeal is made to the experience of every consciousness; for anyone to whom this proposition A = A, a tree is a tree, is made, immediately admits it and is satisfied that the proposition as immediately self-evident requires no further confirmation or proof.
On the one hand, this appeal to experience, that the proposition is universally admitted by everyone, is a mere manner of speaking. For it is not pretended that the experiment with the abstract proposition A = A has been made on every consciousness. The appeal, then, to actually carried-out experiment is not to be taken seriously; it is only the assurance that if the experiment were made, the proposition would be universally admitted. But if what were meant were not the abstract proposition as such, but its concrete application from which the former were supposed first to be developed, then the assertion of its universality and immediacy would consist in the fact that every consciousness would treat it as fundamental, even in every utterance it made, or that it lies implicitly in every utterance. But the concrete and the application are, in fact, precisely the connection of the simple identical with a manifold that is different from it. Expressed as a proposition, the concrete would at first be a synthetic proposition. From the concrete itself or its synthetic proposition, abstraction could indeed extract by analysis the proposition of identity; but then, in fact, it would not have left experience as it is, but altered it; for the fact is that experience contains identity in unity with difference and is the immediate refutation of the assertion that abstract identity as such is something true, for the exact opposite, namely, identity only in union with difference, occurs in every experience.
On the other hand, the experiment with the pure law of identity is made only too often, and it is shown clearly enough in this experiment what is thought of the truth it contains. If, for example, to the question "What is a plant?" the answer is given "A plant is a plant", the truth of such a statement is at once admitted by the entire company on whom it is tested, and at the same time it is equally unanimously declared that the statement says nothing. If anyone opens his mouth and promises to state what God is, namely God is — God, expectation is cheated, for what was expected was a different determination; and if this statement is absolute truth, such absolute verbiage is very lightly esteemed; nothing will be held to be more boring and tedious than conversation which merely reiterates the same thing, or than such talk which yet is supposed to be truth.
Looking more closely at this tedious effect produced by such truth, we see that the beginning, 'The plant is—,' sets out to say something, to bring forward a further determination. But since only the same thing is repeated, the opposite has happened, nothing has emerged. Such identical talk therefore contradicts itself. Identity, instead of being in its own self truth and absolute truth, is consequently the very opposite; instead of being the unmoved simple, it is the passage beyond itself into the dissolution of itself.
In the form of the proposition, therefore, in which identity is expressed, there lies more than simple, abstract identity; in it, there lies this pure movement of reflection in which the other appears only as illusory being, as an immediate vanishing; A is is a beginning that hints at something different to which an advance is to be made; but this different something does not materialise; A is—A; the difference is only a vanishing; the movement returns into itself. The prepositional form can be regarded as the hidden necessity of adding to abstract identity the more of that movement. And so an A, or a plant, or some other kind of substrate, too, is added which, as a useless content, is of no significance; but it constitutes the difference which seems to be accidentally associated with it. If instead of A or any other substrate, identity itself is taken — identity is identity — then equally it is admitted that also in its place any other substrate could be taken. Consequently, if the appeal is to be made to what experience shows, then it shows that this identity is nothing, that it is negativity, the absolute difference from itself.
The other expression of the law of identity: A cannot at the same time be A and not-A, has a negative form; it is called the law of contradiction. Usually no justification is given of how the form of negation by which this law is distinguished from its predecessor, comes to identity. But this form is implied in the fact that identity, as the pure movement of reflection, is simple negativity which contains in more developed form the second expression of the law just quoted. A is enunciated, and a not-A, the pure other of A; but it only shows itself in order to vanish. In this proposition, therefore, identity is expressed-as negation of the negation. A and not-A are distinguished, and these distinct terms are related to one and the same A. Identity, therefore, is here represented as this distinguishedness in one relation or as simple difference in the terms themselves.
From this it is evident that the law of identity itself, and still more the law of contradiction, is not merely of analytic but of synthetic nature. For the latter contains in its expression not merely empty, simple equality-with-self, and not merely the other of this in general, but, what is more, absolute inequality, contradiction per se. But as has been shown, the law of identity itself contains the movement of reflection, identity as a vanishing of otherness.
What emerges from this consideration is, therefore, first, that the law of identity or of contradiction which purports to express merely abstract identity in contrast to difference as a truth, is not a law of thought, but rather the opposite of it; secondly, that these laws contain more than is meant by them, to wit, this opposite, absolute difference itself.
B. DIFFERENCE
(a) Absolute Difference
Difference is the negativity which reflection has within it, the nothing which is said in enunciating identity, the essential moment of identity itself which, as negativity of itself, determines itself and is distinguished from difference.
1. This difference is difference in and for itself, absolute difference, the difference of essence. It is difference in and for itself, not difference resulting from anything external, but self-related, therefore simple difference. It is essential to grasp absolute difference as simple. In the absolute difference of A and not-A from each other, it is the simple not which, as such, constitutes it. Difference itself is the simple Notion. Two things are different, it is said, in that they, etc. 'In that' is, in one and the same respect, in the same ground of determination. It is the difference of reflection, not the otherness of determinate being. One determinate being and another determinate being are posited as falling apart, each of them, as determined against the other, has an immediate being for itself. The other of essence, on the contrary, is the other in and for itself, not the other as other of an other, existing outside it but simple determinateness in itself. In the sphere of determinate being, too, otherness 'and determinateness proved to be of this nature, to be simple determinateness, identical opposition; but this identity revealed itself only as the transition of one determinateness into the other. Here, in the sphere of reflection, difference appears as reflected difference, which is thus posited as it is in itself.
2. Difference in itself is self-related difference; as such, it is the negativity of itself, the difference not of an other, but of itself from itself; it is not itself but its other. But that which is different from difference is identity. Difference is therefore itself and identity. Both together constitute difference; it is the whole, and its moment. It can equally be said that difference, as simple, is no difference; it is this only when it is in relation with identity; but the truth is rather that, as difference, it contains equally identity and this relation itself. Difference is the whole and its own moment, just as identity equally is its whole and its moment. This is to be considered as the essential nature of reflection and as the specific, original ground of all activity and self-movement. Difference and also identity, make themselves into a moment or a positedness because, as reflection, they are negative relation-to-self.
Difference as thus unity of itself and identity, is in its own self determinate difference. It is not transition into an other, not relation to an other outside it: it has its other, identity, within itself, just as identity, having entered into the determination of difference, has not lost itself in it as its other, but preserves itself in it, is its reflection-into-self and its moment.
3. Difference possesses both moments, identity and difference; both are thus a positedness, a determinateness. But in this positedness each is self-relation. One of them, identity, is itself immediately the moment of reflection-into-self; but equally, the other is difference, difference in itself, reflected difference. Difference, in that it has two moments that are themselves reflections-into-self, is diversity.
(b) Diversity
1. Identity falls apart within itself into diversity because, as absolute difference, it posits itself as its own negative within itself, and these its moments, namely, itself and the negative of itself, are reflections-into-self, are self-identical; or, in other words, precisely because identity itself immediately sublates its negating and in its determination is reflected into itself. The distinguished terms subsist as indifferently different towards one another because each is self-identical, because identity constitutes its ground and element; in other words, the difference is what it is, only in its very opposite, in identity.
Diversity constitutes the otherness as such of reflection. The other of determinate being has for its ground immediate being in which the negative subsists. But in reflection it is self-identity, reflected immediacy, that constitutes the subsistence of the negative and its indifference.
The moments of difference are identity and difference itself. They are [merely] diverse when they are reflected into themselves, that is, when they are self-related; as such, they are in the determination of identity, they are only relation-to-self; the identity is not related to the difference, nor is the difference related to the identity; as each moment is thus only self-related, they are not determined against one another. Now because in this manner they are not different in themselves, the difference is external to them. The diverse moments are, therefore, mutually related, not as identity and difference, but merely as simply diverse moments, that are indifferent to one another and to their determinateness.
2. In diversity, as the indifference of difference, reflection has become, in general, external to itself; difference is merely a posited or sublated being, but it is itself the total reflection. When considered more closely, both identity and difference, as has just been demonstrated, are reflections, each of which is unity of itself and its other; each is the whole. Consequently, the determinateness in which they are only identity or only difference, is sublated. Therefore they are not qualities, because through the reflection-into-self, their determinateness is at the same time only a negation. What is present, therefore, is this duality, reflection-into-self as such, and determinateness as negation or positedness. Positedness is the reflection that is external to itself; it is the negation as negation-and so therefore in itself or simplicity, the self-related negation and reflection-into-self, but only implicitly; it is relation to the negation as something external to it.
Thus the reflection that is implicit, and external reflection, are the two determinations into which the moments of difference, namely, identity and difference, posited themselves. They are these moments themselves in so far as they have now determined themselves. Reflection in itself is identity, but determined as being indifferent to difference, not as simply not possessing difference, but as being self-identical in its relationship with it; it is diversity. It is identity that has so reflected itself into itself that it is really the one reflection of the two. moments into themselves; both are reflections-into-self. Identity is this one reflection of both, which contains difference only as an indifferent difference and is simply diversity. External reflection, on the other hand, is their determinate difference, not as an absolute reflection-into-self, but as a determination to which the [merely] implicit reflection is indifferent; difference's two moments, identity and difference itself, are thus externally posited determinations, not determinations in and for themselves.
Now this external identity is likeness, and external difference, unlikeness. Likeness, it is true, is identity, but only as a positedness, an identity that is not in and for itself. Similarly, unlikeness is difference, but as an external difference that is not in and for itself the difference of the unlike itself. Whether or not something is like something else does not concern either the one or the other; each of them is only self-referred, is in and for itself what it is; identity or non-identity, as likeness or unlikeness, is the verdict of a third party distinct from the two things.
3. External reflection relates what is diverse to likeness and unlikeness. This relation, which is a comparing, passes to and fro between likeness and unlikeness. But this relating to likeness and unlikeness, back and forth, is external to these determinations themselves; also, they are related not to one another but each, by itself, to a third. In this alternation, each stands forth immediately on its own. External reflection is, as such, external to itself; the determinate difference is the negated absolute difference. Therefore it is not simple, not reflection-into-self; on the contrary, it has this outside it. Its moments, therefore, fall asunder and are related also as mutually external to the reflection-into-self confronting them.
In the self-alienated reflection, therefore, likeness and unlikeness appear as mutually unrelated, and in relating them to one and the same thing, it separates them by the introduction of 'in so far', of sides and respects. The diverse, which are one and the same, to which both likeness and unlikeness are related, are therefore, from one side like one another, but from another side are unlike, and in so far as they are like, they are not unlike. Likeness is related only to itself, and similarly unlikeness is only unlikeness.
But by this separation of one from the other they merely sublate themselves. The very thing that was supposed to hold off contradiction and dissolution from them, namely, that something is like something else in one respect, but is unlike it in another - this holding apart of likeness and unlikeness is their destruction. For both are determinations of difference; they are relations to one another, the one being what the other is not; like is not unlike and unlike is not like; and both essentially have this relation and have no meaning apart from it; as determinations of difference, each is what it is as distinct from its other. But through this mutual indifference, likeness is only self-referred, and unlikeness similarly is self-referred and a reflective determination on its own; each, therefore, is like itself; the difference has vanished, since they cannot have any determinateness over against one another; in other words, each therefore is only likeness.
This indifferent point of view or external difference thus sublates itself and is in its own self the negativity of itself. It is the negativity that belongs to the comparer in the act of comparing. The comparer goes from likeness to unlikeness and from this back to likeness, and therefore lets the one vanish in the other and is, in fact, the negative unity of both. This unity, in the first instance, lies beyond the compared and also beyond the moments of the comparison as a subjective act falling outside them. But, as we have seen, this negative unity is, in fact, the very nature of likeness and unlikeness. The independent self-reference which each of them is, is in fact the self-reference that sublates their distinctiveness and so, too, themselves.
From this side, likeness and unlikeness, as moments of external reflection and as external to themselves, vanish together in their likeness. But further, this their negative unity is also posited in them; they have, namely the [merely] implicit reflection outside them, or are the likeness and unlikeness of a third party, of an other than they. And so likeness is not like itself; and unlikeness, as unlike not itself but something else unlike it, is itself likeness. The like and the unlike are therefore unlike themselves. Consequently each is this reflection: likeness, that it is itself and unlikeness, and unlikeness, that it is itself and likeness.
Likeness and unlikeness formed the side of positedness as against the compared or the diverse which had determined itself as the [merely] implicit reflection contrasted with them. But this positedness as thus determined has equally lost its determinateness as against them. But likeness and unlikeness, the determinations of external reflection, are just this merely implicit reflection which the diverse as such is supposed to be, the merely indeterminate difference of the diverse. The implicit reflection is self-relation without the negation, abstract self-identity, and so simply positedness itself. The merely diverse, therefore, passes over through positedness into negative reflection. The diverse is the merely posited difference, therefore the difference that is no difference, and therefore in its own self the negativity on of itself. Thus likeness and unlikeness themselves, that is, positedness, returns through indifference or the implicit reflection back into the negative unity with itself, into the reflection which the difference of likeness and unlikeness in its own self is. Diversity, whose indifferent sides are just as much simply and solely moments of one negative unity, is opposition.
Remark: The Law of Diversity
Diversity, like identity, is expressed in its own law. And both these laws are held apart as indifferently different, so that each is valid on its own without respect to the other.
All things are different, or: there are no two things like each other. This proposition is, in fact, opposed to the law of identity, for it declares: A is distinctive, therefore A is also not A; or: A is unlike something else, so that it is not simply A but rather a specific A. A's place in the law of identity can be taken by any other substrate, but A as distinctive [als Ungleiches] can no longer be exchanged with any other. True, it is supposed to be distinctive, not from itself, but only from another; but this distinctiveness is its own determination. As self-identical A, it is indeterminate; but as determinate it is the opposite of this; it no longer has only self-identity, but also a negation and therefore a difference of itself from itself within it.
That everything is different from everything else is a very superfluous proposition, for things in the plural immediately involve manyness and wholly indeterminate diversity. But the proposition that no two things are completely like each other, expresses more, namely, determinate difference. Two things are not merely two — numerical manyness is only one-and-the-sameness — but they are different through a determination. Ordinary thinking is struck by the proposition that no two things are like each other — as in the story of how Leibniz propounded it at court and caused the ladies to look at the leaves of trees to see whether they could find two alike. Happy times for metaphysics when it was the occupation of courtiers and the testing of its propositions called for no more exertion than to compare leaves! The reason why this proposition is striking lies in what has been said, that two, or numerical manyness, does not contain any determinate difference and that diversity as such, in its abstraction, is at first indifferent to likeness and unlikeness. Ordinary thinking, even when it goes on to a determination of diversity, takes these moments themselves to be mutually indifferent, so that one without the other, the mere likeness of things without unlikeness, suffices to determine whether the things are different even when they are only a numerical many, not unlike, but simply different without further qualification. The law of diversity, on the other hand, asserts that things are different from one another through unlikeness, that the determination of unlikeness belongs to them just as much as that of likeness, for determinate difference is constituted only by both together.
Now this proposition that unlikeness must be predicated of all things, surely stands in need of proof; it cannot be set up as an immediate proposition, for even in the ordinary mode of cognition a proof is demanded of the combination of different determinations in a synthetic proposition, or else the indication of a third term in which they are mediated. This proof would have to exhibit the passage of identity into difference, and then the passage of this into determinate difference, into unlikeness. But as a rule this is not done. We have found that diversity or external difference is, in truth, reflected into itself, is difference in its own self, that the indifferent subsistence of the diverse is a mere positedness and therefore not an external, indifferent difference, but a single relation of the two moments.
This involves the dissolution and nullity of the law of diversity. Two things are not perfectly alike; so they are at once alike and unlike; alike, simply because they are things, or just two, without further qualification — for each is a thing and a one, no less than the other — but they are unlike ex hypothesi. We are therefore presented with this determination, that both moments, likeness and unlikeness, are different in one and the same thing, or that the difference, while falling asunder, is at the same time one and the same relation. This has therefore passed over into opposition.
The togetherness of both predicates is held asunder by the 'in so far', namely, when it is said that two things are alike in so far as they are not unlike, or on the one side or in one respect are alike, but on another side or in another respect are unalike. The effect of this is to remove the unity of likeness and unlikeness from the thing, and to adhere to what would be the thing's own reflection and the merely implicit reflection of likeness and unlikeness, as a reflection external to the thing. But it is this reflection that, in one and the same activity, distinguishes the two sides of likeness and unlikeness, hence contains both in one activity, lets the one show, be reflected, in the other. But the usual tenderness for things, whose only care is that they do not contradict themselves, forgets here as elsewhere that in this way the contradiction is not resolved but merely shifted elsewhere, into subjective or external reflection generally, and this reflection in fact contains in one unity as sublated and mutually referred, the two moments which are enunciated by this removal and displacement as a mere positedness.
(c) Opposition
In opposition, the determinate rejection, difference, finds its completion. It is the unity of identity and difference; its moments are different in one identity and thus are opposites.
Identity and difference are the moments of difference held within itself; they are reflected moments of its unity. But likeness and unlikeness are the self-alienated reflection; their self-identity is not merely the indifference of each towards the other distinguished from it, but towards being-in-and-for-self as such, an identity-with-self over against the identity that is reflected into itself; it is therefore the immediacy that is not reflected into itself. The positedness of the sides of the external reflection is accordingly a being, just as their non-positedness is a non-being.
Closer consideration shows the moments of opposition to be positedness reflected into itself or determination in general. Positedness is likeness and unlikeness; these two reflected into themselves constitute the determinations of opposition. Their reflection-into-self consists in this, that each is in its own self the unity of likeness and unlikeness. Likeness is only in the reflection that compares on the basis of unlikeness, and therefore is mediated by its other, indifferent moment; similarly, unlikeness is only in the same reflective relationship in which likeness is. Therefore each of these moments is, in its determinateness, the whole. It is the whole in so far as it also contains its other moment; but this its other is an indifferent, simple affirmative moment; thus each contains reference to its non-being, and is only reflection-into-self or the whole, as essentially connected with its non-being.
This self-likeness reflected into itself that contains within itself the reference to unlikeness, is the positive; and the unlikeness that contains within itself the reference to its non-being, to likeness, is the negative. Or, both are a positedness; now in so far as the differentiated determinateness is taken as a differentiated determinate self-reference of positedness, the opposition is, on the one hand, positedness reflected into its likeness to itself and on the other hand, positedness reflected into its unlikeness to itself — the positive and the negative. The positive is positedness as reflected into self-likeness; but what is reflected is positedness, that is, the negation as negation, and so this reflection-into-self has reference-to-other for its determination. The negative is positedness as reflected into unlikeness; but the positedness is unlikeness itself, and this reflection is therefore the identity of unlikeness with itself and absolute self-reference. Each is the whole; the positedness reflected into likeness-to-self contains unlikeness, and the positedness reflected into unlikeness-to-self also contains likeness.
The positive and the negative are thus the sides of the opposition that have become self-subsistent. They are self-subsistent in that they are the reflection of the whole into themselves, and they belong to the opposition in so far as this is the determinateness which, as a whole, is reflected into itself. On account of their self-subsistence, they constitute the implicitly determined opposition. Each is itself and its other; consequently, each has its determinateness not in an other, but in its own self. Each is self-referred, and the reference to its other is only a self-reference. This has a twofold aspect: each is a reference to its non-being as a sublating of this otherness within it; thus its non-being is only a moment in it. But on the other hand positedness here has become a being, an indifferent subsistence; consequently, the other of itself which each contains is also the non-being of that in which it is supposed to be contained only as a moment. Each therefore is, only in so far as its non-being is, and is in an identical relationship with it.
The determinations which constitute the positive and negative consist, therefore, in the fact that the positive and negative are, in the first place, absolute moments of the opposition; their subsistence is inseparably one reflection; it is a single mediation in which each is through the non-being of its other, and so is through its other or its own non-being. Thus they are simply opposites; in other words, each is only the opposite of the other, the one is not as yet positive, and the other is not as yet negative, but both are negative to one another. In the first place, then, each is, only in so far as the other is; it is what it is, through the other, through its own non-being; it is only a positedness; secondly, it is, in so far as the other is not; it is what it is, through the non-being of the other; it is reflection-into-self. But these two are the one mediation of the opposition as such, in which they are simply only posited moments
Further, however, this mere positedness is simply reflected into itself; in accordance with this moment of external reflection the positive and negative are indifferent to that first identity in which they are only moments; in other words, since that first reflection is the positive's and negative's own reflection into themselves, each is in its own self its positedness, so each is indifferent to this its reflection into its non-being, to its own positedness. The two sides are thus merely different, and in so far as their being determined as positive and negative constitutes their positedness in relation to one another, each is not in its own self so determined but is only determinateness in general. Therefore, although one of the determinatenesses of positive and negative belongs to each side, they can be changed round, and each side is of such a kind that it can be taken equally well as positive as negative.
But thirdly, the positive and negative are not only something posited, not merely an indifferent something, but their positedness, or the reference-to-other in a unity which they are not themselves, is taken back into each. Each is in its own self positive and negative; the positive and negative are the determination of reflection in and for itself; it is only in this reflection of opposites into themselves that they are positive and negative. The positive has within itself the reference-to-other in which the determinateness of the positive is; similarly, the negative is not a negative as contrasted with an other, but likewise possesses within itself the determinateness whereby it is negative.
Thus each [the positive as well as the negative] is a self-subsistent, independent unity-with-self. The positive is, indeed, a positedness, but in such wise that for it the positedness is only positedness as sublated. It is the not-opposite, the sublated opposition, but as a side of the opposition itself. As positive, something is, of course, determined with reference to an otherness, but in such a manner that its nature is to be not something posited; it is the reflection-into-self that negates the otherness. But the other of itself, the negative, is itself no longer a positedness or moment, but a self-subsistent being; thus the negating reflection of the positive is immanently determined as excluding from itself this its non-being.
The negative, as such absolute reflection, is not the immediate negative but the negative as a sublated positedness, the negative in and for itself, which is based positively on itself. As reflection-into-self it negates its relationship to other; its other is the positive, a self-subsistent being; consequently, its negative relation to it is to exclude it. The negative is the independently existing opposite contrasted with the positive, which is the determination of the sublated opposition-the self-based whole opposition opposed to the self-identical positedness.
The positive and negative are therefore not merely implicitly [an sich] positive and negative, but explicitly and actually so [an und für sich]. They are implicitly positive and negative in so far as one makes abstraction from their exclusive relation to other and only takes them in accordance with their determination. Something is in itself positive or negative when it is supposed to be so determined not merely relatively to an other. But when the positive and negative are taken, not as positedness, and therefore not as opposites, then each is the immediate, being and non-being. But the positive and negative are moments of opposition; their in-itself constitutes merely the form of their reflectedness-intoself. Something is in itself positive, apart from the relation to the negative; and something is in itselfnegative, apart from the relation to the positive;' in this determination, one clings merely to the abstract moment of this reflectedness. But the positive or negative in itself essentially implies that to be an opposite is not merely a moment, does not stem from comparison, but is a determination belonging to the sides of the opposition themselves. They are therefore not positive or negative in themselves apart from the relation to other; on the contrary, this relation-an exclusive relation-constitutes their determination or in-itself; in it, therefore, they are at the same time explicitly and actually [an und für sich] positive or negative.
Remark: Opposite Magnitudes of Arithmetic
Here is where we must take a look at the notion of the positive and negative as it is employed in arithmetic. There it is assumed as known; but because it is not grasped in its determinate difference, it does not avoid insoluble difficulties and complications. We have just found the two real determinations of the positive and negative — apart from the simple notion of their opposition — namely, first, that the base is a merely different, immediate existence whose simple reflection-into-self is distinguished from its positedness, from the opposition itself. This opposition, therefore, is not regarded as having any truth in and for itself, and though it does belong to the different sides, so that each is simply an opposite, yet, on the other hand, each side exists indifferently on its own, and it does not matter which of the two opposites is regarded as positive or negative. But secondly, the positive is the positive in and for itself, the negative in and for itself the negative, so that the different sides are not mutually indifferent but this their determination is true in and for itself. These two forms of the positive and negative occur in the very first applications of them in arithmetic.
In the first instance, +a and -a are simply opposite magnitudes; a is the implicit [ansichseiende] unity forming their common base; it is indifferent to the opposition itself and serves here, without any further notion, as a dead base. True, -a is defined as the negative, and +a as the positive, but the one is just as much an opposite as the other.
Further, a is not merely the simple unity forming the base but, as +a and -a, it is the reflection of these opposites into themselves; there are present two different a's, and it is a matter of indifference which of them one chooses to define as the positive or negative; both have a separate existence and are positive.
According to the first aspect, +y - y = 0; or in -8 + 3, the 3 positive units are negative in the 8. The opposites are cancelled in their combination. An hour's journey to the east and the same distance travelled back to the west, cancels the first journey; an amount of liabilities reduces the assets by a similar amount, and an amount of assets reduces the liabilities by the same amount. At the same time, the hour's journey to the east is not in itself the positive direction, nor is the journey west the negative direction; on the contrary, these directions are indifferent to this determinateness of the opposition; it is a third point of view outside them that makes one positive and the other negative. Thus the liabilities, too, are not in and for themselves the negative; they are the negative only in relation to the debtor; for the creditor, they are his positive asset; they are an amount of money or something of a certain value, and this is a liability or an asset according to an external point of view.
The opposites certainly cancel one another in their relation, so that the result is zero; but there is also present in them their identical relation, which is indifferent to the opposition itself; in this manner they constitute a one. Just as we have pointed out that the sum of money is only one sum, that the a in +a and -a is only one a, and that the distance covered is only one distance, not two, one going east and the other going west. Similarly, an ordinate y is the same on which ever side of the axis it is taken; so far, +y - y = y; it is only the one ordinate and it has only one determination and law.
But again, the opposites are not only a single indifferent term, but two such. For as opposites, they are also reflected into themselves and thus exist as distinct terms.
Thus in -8 + 3 there are altogether eleven units present; +y and -y are ordinates on opposite sides of the axis, where each is an existence indifferent to this limit and to their opposition; thus +y - y = 2y. — Also the distance travelled cast and west is the sum of a twofold effort or the sum of two periods of time. Similarly, in economics, a quantum of money or of wealth is not only this one quantum as a means of subsistence but is double: it is a means of subsistence both for the creditor and for the debtor. The wealth of the state is computed not merely as the total of ready money plus the value of property movable and immovable, present in the state; still less is it reckoned as the sum remaining after deduction of liabilities from assets. For capital, even if its respective determinations of assets and liabilities nullified each other, remains first, positive capital, as +a - a = a; and secondly, since it is a liability in a great number of ways, being lent and re-lent, this makes it a very much multiplied capital.
But not only are opposite magnitudes, on the one hand, merely opposite as such, and on the other hand, real or indifferent: for although quantum itself is being with an indifferent limit, yet the intrinsically positive and the intrinsically negative also occur in it. For example, a, when it bears no sign, is meant to be taken as positive if it has to be defined. If it were intended to become merely an opposite as such, it could equally well be taken as -a . But the positive sign is given to it immediately, because the positive on its own has the peculiar meaning of the immediate, as self-identical, in contrast to opposition.
Further, when positive and negative magnitudes are added and subtracted, they are counted as positive or negative on their own account and not as becoming positive or negative in an external manner merely through the relation of addition and subtraction.
In 8 - (-3) the first minus means opposite to 8, but the second minus (-3), counts as opposite in itself, apart from this relation.
This becomes more evident in multiplication and division. Here the positive must essentially be taken as the not-opposite, and the negative, on the other hand, as the opposite, not both determinations equally as only opposites in general. The textbooks stop short at the notion of opposite magnitudes as such in the proofs of the behaviour of the signs in these two species of calculation; these proofs are therefore incomplete and entangled in contradiction. But in multiplication and division plus and minus receive the more determinate meaning of the positive and negative in themselves, because the relation of the factors-they are related to one another as unit and amount-is not a mere relation of increasing and decreasing as in the case of addition and subtraction, but is a qualitative relation, with the result that plus and minus, too, are endowed with the qualitative meaning of the positive and negative. Without this determination and merely from the notion of opposite magnitudes, the false conclusion can easily be drawn that if -a times +a = -a2, conversely +a times -a = +a2. Since one factor is amount and the other unity, and the one which comes first usually means that it takes precedence, the difference between the two expressions -a times +a and +a times -a is that in the former +a is the unit and -a the amount, and in the latter the reverse is the case. Now in the first case it is usually said that if I am to take +a -a times, then I take +a not merely a times but also in the opposite manner, +a times -a; therefore since it is plus, I have to take it negatively, and the product is -a2. But if, in the second case, -a is to be taken +a times, then -a likewise is not to be taken -a times but in the opposite determination, namely +a times. Therefore it follows from the reasoning in the first case, that the product must be +a2. And similarly in the case of division.
This is a necessary conclusion in so far as plus and minus are taken only as simply opposite magnitudes: in the first case the minus is credited with the power of altering the plus; but in the second case the plus was not supposed to have the same power over the minus, notwithstanding that it is no less an opposite determination of magnitude than the latter. In point of fact, the plus does not possess this power, for it is to be taken here as qualitatively determined against the minus, the factors having a qualitative relationship to one another. Consequently, the negative here is the intrinsically opposite as such, but the positive is an indeterminate, indifferent sign in general; it is, of course, also the negative, but the negative of the other, not in its own self the negative. A determination as negation, therefore, is introduced solely by the negative, not by the positive.
And so -a times -a is also +a2, because the negative a is to be taken not merely in the opposite manner (in that case it would have to be taken as multiplied by -a), but because it is to be taken negatively. But the negation of negation is the positive.
C. CONTRADICTION
1. Difference as such contains its two sides as moments; in diversity they fall indifferently apart; in opposition as such, they are sides of the difference, one being determined only by the other, and therefore only moments; but they are no less determined within themselves, mutually indifferent and mutually exclusive: the self-subsistent determinations of reflection.
One is the positive, the other the negative, but the former as the intrinsically positive, the latter as the intrinsically negative. Each has an indifferent self-subsistence of its own through the fact that it has within itself the relation to its other moment; it is thus the whole, self-contained opposition. As this whole, each is mediated with itself by its other and contains it. But further, it is mediated with itself by the non-being of its other; thus it is a unity existing on its own and it excludes the other from itself.
The self-subsistent determination of reflection that contains the opposite determination, and is self-subsistent in virtue of this inclusion, at the same time also excludes it; in its self-subsistence, therefore, it excludes from itself its own self-subsistence. For this consists in containing within itself its opposite determination — through which alone it is not a relation to something external — but no less immediately in the fact that it is itself, and also excludes from itself the determination that is negative to it. It is thus contradiction.
Difference as such is already implicitly contradiction; for it is the unity of sides which are, only in so far as they are not one-and it is the separation of sides which are, only as separated in the same relation. But the positive and negative are the posited contradiction because, as negative unities, they are themselves the positing of themselves, and in this positing each is the sublating of itself and the positing of its opposite. They constitute the determining reflection as exclusive; and because the excluding of the sides is a single act of distinguishing and each of the distinguished sides in excluding the other is itself the whole act of exclusion, each side in its own self excludes itself.
If we consider the two determinations of reflection on their own, then the positive is positedness as reflected into likeness to itself, positedness that is not a relation to an other, a subsistence, therefore, in so far as positedness is sublated and excluded. But with this, the positive makes itself into the relation of a non-being — into a positedness. It is thus the contradiction that, in positing identity with itself by excluding the negative, it makes itself into the negative of what it excludes from itself, that is, makes itself into its opposite. This, as excluded, is posited as free from that which excludes it, and therefore as reflected into itself and as itself exclusive. The exclusive reflection is thus a positing of the positive as excluding its opposite, so that this positing is immediately the positing of its opposite which it excludes.
This is the absolute contradiction of the positive, but it is immediately the absolute contradiction of the negative; the positing of each is a single reflection. The negative, considered on its own over against the positive, is positedness as reflected into unlikeness to itself, the negative as negative. But the negative is itself the unlike, the non-being of an opposite; therefore its reflection into its unlikeness is rather its relation to itself. Negation in general is the negative as quality, or immediate determinateness; but the negative as negative, is related to the negative of itself, to its opposite. If this negative is only taken as identical with the first, then it, too, like the first, is merely immediate; and so they are not taken as mutual opposites and therefore not as negatives; the negative is not an immediate at all. But now, since it is also just as much a fact that each is the same as its opposite, this relation of the unlike is just as much their identical relation.
This is therefore the same contradiction that the positive is, namely, positedness or negation as self-relation. But the positive is only implicitly this contradiction, whereas the negative is the contradiction posited; for the latter, in virtue of its reflection-into-self which makes it a negative in and for itself or a negative that is identical with itself, is accordingly determined as a non-identical, as excluding identity. The negative is this, to be identical with itself in opposition to identity, and consequently, through its excluding reflection to exclude itself from itself.
The negative is, therefore, the whole opposition based, as opposition, on itself, absolute difference that is not related to an other; as opposition, it excludes identity from itself — but in doing so excludes itself; for as self-relation it is determined as the very identity that it excludes.
2. Contradiction resolves itself. In the self-excluding reflection we have just considered, positive and negative, each in its self-subsistence, sublates itself; each is simply the transition or rather the self-transposition of itself into its opposite. This ceaseless vanishing of the opposites into themselves is the first unity resulting from contradiction; it is the null.
But contradiction contains not merely the negative, but also the positive; or, the self-excluding reflection is at the same time positing reflection; the result of contradiction is not merely a nullity. The positive and negative constitute the positedness of the self-subsistence. Their own negation of themselves sublates the positedness of the self-subsistence. It is this which in truth perishes in contradiction.
The reflection-into-self. whereby the sides of opposition are converted into self-subsistent self-relations is, in the first instance, their self-subsistence as distinct moments; as such they are only implicitly this self-subsistence, for they are still opposites, and the fact that they are implicitly self-subsistent constitutes their positedness. But their excluding reflection sublates this positedness, converts them into explicitly self-subsistent sides, into sides which are self-subsistent not merely implicitly or in themselves but through their negative relation to their opposite; in this way, their self-subsistence is also posited. But further, through this their positing, they make themselves into a positedness. They destroy themselves in that they determine themselves as self-identical, yet in this determination are rather the negative, an identity-with-self that is a relation-to-other.
However, this excluding reflection, looked at more closely, is not merely this formal determination. It is an implicit self-subsistence and is the sublating of this positedness, and it is only through this sublating that it becomes explicitly and in fact a self-subsistent unity. True, through the sublating of otherness or positedness, we are again presented with positedness, the negative of an other. But in point of fact, this negation is not merely the first, immediate relation-to-other again, not positedness as a sublated immediacy, but as a sublated positedness. The excluding reflection of self-subsistence, being exclusive, converts itself into a positedness, but is just as much a sublating of its positedness. It is a sublating self-relation; in this, it first sublates the negative, and secondly, posits itself as a negative, and it is only this negative that it sublates; in sublating the negative, it posits and sublates itself at the same time. In this way, the exclusive determination itself is that other of itself whose negation it is; consequently, the sublating of this positedness is not again a positedness as the negative of an other, but is a uniting with itself, the positive unity with itself. Self-subsistence is thus through its own negation a unity returned into itself, since it returns into itself through the negation of its own positedness. It is the unity of essence, being identical with itself through the negation, not of an other, but of itself.
3. According to this positive side, in which the self-subsistence in opposition, as the excluding reflection, converts itself into a positedness which it no less sublates, opposition is not only destroyed [zugrunde gegangen] but has withdrawn into its ground. The excluding reflection of the self-subsistent opposition converts this into a negative, into something posited; it thereby reduces its primarily self-subsistent determinations, the positive and negative, to the status of mere determinations; and the positedness, being thus made into a positedness, has simply returned into its unity with itself; it is simple essence, but essence as ground. Through the sublating of its inherently self-contradictory determinations, essence has been restored, but with this determination, that it is the excluding unity of reflection-a simple unity that determines itself as a negative, but in this positedness is immediately like itself and united with itself.
In the first place, therefore, the self-subsistent opposition through its contradiction withdraws into ground; this opposition is the prius, the immediate, that forms the starting point, and the sublated opposition or the sublated positedness is itself a positedness. Thus essence as ground is a positedness, something that has become. But conversely, what has been posited is only this, that opposition or positedness is a sublated positedness, only is as positedness. Therefore essence as ground is the excluding reflection in such wise that it makes its own self into a positedness, that the opposition from which we started and which was the immediate, is the merely posited, determinate self-subsistence of essence, and that opposition is merely that which sublates itself within itself, whereas essence is that which, in its determinateness, is reflected into itself. Essence as ground excludes itself from itself, it posits itself; its positedness — which is what is excluded — is only as positedness, as identity, of the negative with itself. This self-subsistent is the negative posited as negative; it is self-contradictory and therefore remains immediately in essence as in its ground.
The resolved contradiction is therefore ground, essence as unity of the positive and negative. In opposition, the determination has attained to self-subsistence; but ground is this completed self-subsistence; in it, the negative is self-subsistent essence, but as a negative; as self-identical in this negativity, ground is just as much the positive. Opposition and its contradiction is, therefore, in ground as much abolished as preserved. Ground is essence as positive identity-with-self, which, however, at the same time relates itself to itself as negativity, and therefore determines itself and converts itself into an excluded positedness; but this positedness is the whole self-subsistent essence, and essence is ground, as self-identical and positive in this its negation. The self-contradictory, self-subsistent opposition was therefore already itself ground; all that was added to it was the determination of unity-with-self, which results from the fact that each of the self-subsistent opposites sublates itself and makes itself into its opposite, thus falling to the ground [zugrunde geht]; but in this process it at the same time only unites with itself; therefore, it is only in falling to the ground [in seinem Untergange], that is, in its positedness or negation, that the opposite is really the essence that is reflected into and identical with itself.
Remark 1: Unity of Positive and Negative
The positive and negative are the same. This expression stems from external reflection in so far as this draws a comparison between these two determinations. But it is not an external comparison that should be drawn between them any more than between any other categories; rather must they be considered in themselves, that is, we have to consider what their own reflection is. But we have found that each is essentially the mere show or illusory being of itself in the other and is itself the positing of itself as the other.
But the superficial thinking that does not consider the positive and negative as they are in and for themselves, can, of course, be referred to comparison in order to bring to its notice the untenability of these distinguished sides which it assumes to be fixed in their opposition to one another.
Even a slight experience in reflective thinking will make it apparent that if something has been defined as positive and one moves forward from this basis, then straightway the positive has secretly turned into a negative, and conversely, the negatively determined into a positive, and that reflective thinking gets confused and contradicts itself in these determinations. Unfamiliarity with their nature imagines this confusion to be an error that ought not to happen, and ascribes it to a subjective mistake. This transition also, in fact, remains a mere confusion when there is no awareness of the necessity of the transformation.
But even for external reflection, it is a simple first place, the positive is not an immediately identical, but on the one hand is an opposite to a negative, having meaning only in this relation, so that the negative itself is contained in its notion; on the other hand, that it is in its own self the self-related negation of mere positedness or the negative, is therefore itself absolute negation within itself. Similarly, the negative which stands over against the positive, has meaning only in this relation to its other; it therefore contains this in its notion. But the negative also has a subsistence of its own apart from this relation to the positive; it is self-identical; but as such it is itself that which the positive was supposed to be.
The opposition between the positive and negative is taken chiefly in the sense that the former (although etymologically it expresses positedness) is supposed to be an objective, and the latter a subjective that stems only from an external reflection and is no concern of the objective, which exists in and for itself and for which the subjective does not exist at all. Indeed, if the negative expresses nothing else but the abstraction of a subjective caprice or a determination of an external comparison, then of course it does not exist for the objective positive, that is, this is not related in its own self to such empty abstraction; that case the determination that it is a positive is likewise merely external to it. Thus, to take an example of the fixed opposition of these reflective determinations, light as such is reckoned as the pure positive and darkness as the pure negative. But light essentially possesses in its infinite expansion and in its power to promote growth and to animate, the nature of absolute negativity. Darkness, on the other hand, as a non-manifold or as the non-self-differentiating womb of generation, is the simply self-identical, the positive. It is taken as the pure negative in the sense that, as the mere absence of light, it simply does not exist for it, so that light, in its relation with darkness, is supposed to be in relation, not with an other but purely with itself, darkness therefore simply vanishing before it. But it is a familiar fact that light is dimmed to grey by darkness; and besides this merely quantitative alteration it suffers also the qualitative change of being determined to colour by its relation to darkness. Thus, for example virtue too is not without conflict; rather is it the supreme, finished conflict; as such it is not merely the positive, but is absolute negativity; also it is virtue not only in comparison with vice, but is in its own self opposition and conflict. Or again, vice is not merely the lack of virtue-innocence, too, is this lack-nor is it distinct from virtue only for an external reflection; on the contrary, it is in its own self opposed to it, it is evil. Evil consists in being self-poised in opposition to the good; it is a positive negativity. But innocence, being neither good nor evil, is indifferent to both determinations, is neither positive nor negative. But at the same time this lack must also be taken as a determinateness: on the one hand, it is to be considered as the positive nature of something; on the other, it is related to an opposite, and every nature emerging from its innocency, from its indifferent self-identity, spontaneously relates itself to its other and thereby falls to the ground or, in the positive sense, withdraws into its ground.
Truth also is the positive as the knowing that agrees with the object; but it is only this likeness to itself in so far as the knower had put himself into a negative relation with the other, has penetrated the object and sublated the negation which it is. Error is a positive, as an opinion asserting what is not in and for itself, an opinion that is aware of itself and asserts itself. But ignorance is either indifferent to truth and error, and therefore neither positively not negatively determined, its determination stemming from external reflection; or else as objective, as a nature's own determination, it is the impulse that is directed against itself, a negative that contains a positive direction within it. It is of the greatest importance to perceive and to bear in mind this nature of the reflective determinations we have just here considered, namely, that their truth consists only in their relation to one another, that therefore each in its very Notion contains the other; without this knowledge, not a single step can really be taken in philosophy. ©
Remark 2: The Law of the Excluded Middle
The determination of opposition has also been made into a law, the so-called law of the excluded middle: something is either A or not-A; there is no third.
This law implies first, that everything is an opposite, is determined as either positive or negative. An important proposition, which has its necessity in the fact that identity passes over into difference, and this into opposition. Only it is usually not understood in this sense, but usually means nothing more than that, of all predicates, either this particular predicate or its non-being belongs to a thing.
The opposite means here merely the lack lot a predicate or rather indeterminateness; and the proposition is so trivial that it is not worth the trouble of saying it. When the determinations sweet, green, square are taken-and all predicates are meant to be taken-and then it is said that spirit is either sweet or not sweet, green or not green, and so on, this is a triviality leading nowhere. The determinateness, the predicate, is referred to something; the proposition asserts that the something is determined; now it ought essentially to imply this: that the determinateness further determine itself, become an intrinsic determinateness, become opposition. Instead of this, however, it merely passes over, in the trivial sense just mentioned, from the determinateness into its non-being in general, back to indeterminateness.
The law of the excluded middle is also distinguished from the laws of identity and contradiction considered above; the latter of these asserted that there is nothing that is at once A and not-A. It implies that there is nothing that is neither A nor not-A, that there is not a third that is indifferent to the opposition. But in fact the third that is indifferent to the opposition is given in the law itself, namely, A itself is present in it. This A is neither +A nor -A, and is equally well +A as -A. The something that was supposed to be either -A or not A is therefore related to both +A and not-A; and again, in being related to A, it is supposed not to be related to not-A, nor to A, if it is related to not-A. The something itself, therefore, is the third which was supposed to be excluded. Since the opposite determinations in the something are just as much posited as sublated in this positing, the third which has here the form of a dead something, when taken more profoundly, is the unity of reflection into which the opposition withdraws as into ground.
Remark 3: The Law of Contradiction
If, now, the first determinations of reflection, namely, identity, difference and opposition, have been put in the form of a law, still more should the determination into which they pass as their truth, namely, contradiction, be grasped and enunciated as a law: everything is inherently contradictory, and in the sense that this law in contrast to the others expresses rather the truth and the essential nature of things. The contradiction which makes its appearance in opposition, is only the developed nothing that is contained in identity and that appears in the expression that the law of identity says nothing. This negation further determines itself into difference and opposition, which now is the posited contradiction.
But it is one of the fundamental prejudices of logic as hitherto understood and of ordinary thinking that contradiction is not so characteristically essential and immanent a determination as identity; but in fact, if it were a question of grading the two determinations and they had to be kept separate, then contradiction would have to be taken as the profounder determination and more characteristic of essence. For as against contradiction, identity is merely the determination of the simple immediate, of dead being; but contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity.
In the first place, contradiction is usually kept aloof from things, from the sphere of being and of truth generally; it is asserted that there is nothing that is contradictory. Secondly, it is shifted into subjective reflection by which it is first posited in the process of relating and comparing. But even in this reflection, it does not really exist, for it is said that the contradictory cannot be imagined or thought. Whether it occurs in actual things or in reflective thinking, it ranks in general as a contingency, a kind of abnormality and a passing paroxysm or sickness.
Now as regards the assertion that there is no contradiction, that it does not exist, this statement need not cause us any concern; an absolute determination of essence must be present in every experience, in everything actual, as in every notion. We made the same remark above in connection with the infinite, which is the contradiction as displayed in the sphere of being. But common experience itself enunciates it when it says that at least there is a host of contradictory things, contradictory arrangements, whose contradiction exists not merely in an external reflection but in themselves. Further, it is not to be taken merely as an abnormality which occurs only here and there, but is rather the negative as determined in the sphere of essence, the principle of all self-movement, which consists solely in an exhibition of it. External, sensuous movement itself is contradiction's immediate existence. Something moves, not because at one moment it is here and at another there, but because at one and the same moment it is here and not here, because in this 'here', it at once is and is not. The ancient dialecticians must be granted the contradictions that they pointed out in motion; but it does not follow that therefore there is no motion, but on the contrary, that motion is existent contradiction itself.
Similarly, internal self-movement proper, instinctive urge in general, (the appetite or nisus of the monad, the entelechy of absolutely simple essence), is nothing else but the fact that something is, in one and the same respect, self-contained and deficient, the negative of itself. Abstract self-identity has no vitality, but the positive, being in its own self a negativity, goes outside itself and undergoes alteration. Something is therefore alive only in so far as it contains contradiction within it, and moreover is this power to hold and endure the contradiction within it. But if an existent in its positive determination is at the same time incapable of reaching beyond its negative determination and holding the one firmly in the other, is incapable of containing contradiction within it, then it is not the living unity itself, not ground, but in the contradiction falls to the ground. Speculative thinking consists solely in the fact that thought holds fast contradiction, and in it, its own self, but does not allow itself to be dominated by it as in ordinary thinking, where its determinations are resolved by contradiction only into other determinations or into nothing. ©
If the contradiction in motion, instinctive urge, and the like, is masked for ordinary thinking, in the simplicity of these determinations, contradiction is, on the other hand, immediately represented in the determinations of relationship. The most trivial examples of above and below, right and left, father and son, and so on ad infinitum, all contain opposition in each term. That is above, which is not below; 'above' is specifically just this, not to be 'below', and only is, in so far as there is a 'below'; and conversely, each determination implies its opposite. Father is the other of son, and the son the other of father, and each only is as this other of the other; and at the same time, the one determination only is, in relation to the other; their being is a single subsistence. The father also has an existence of his own apart from the son-relationship; but then he is not father but simply man; just as above and below, right and left, are each also a reflection-into-self and are something apart from their relationship, but then only places in general. Opposites, therefore, contain contradiction in so far as they are, in the same respect, negatively related to one another or sublate each other and are indifferent to one another. Ordinary thinking when it passes over to the moment of the indifference of the determinations, forgets their negative unity and so retains them merely as 'differents' in general, in which determination right is no longer right, nor left left, etc. But since it has, in fact, right and left before it, these determinations are before it as self-negating, the one being in the other, and each in this unity being not self-negating but indifferently for itself.
Therefore though ordinary thinking everywhere has contradiction for its content, it does not become aware of it, but remains an external reflection which passes from likeness to unlikeness, or from the negative relation to the reflection-into-self, of the distinct sides. It holds these two determinations over against one another and has in mind only them, but not their transition, which is the essential point and which contains the contradiction. ©
Intelligent reflection, to mention this here, consists, on the contrary, in grasping and asserting contradiction. Even though it does not express the Notion of things and their relationships and has for its material and content only the determinations of ordinary thinking, it does bring these into a relation that contains their contradiction and allows their Notion to show or shine through the contradiction. Thinking reason, however, sharpens, so to say, the blunt difference of diverse terms, the mere manifoldness of pictorial thinking, into essential difference, into opposition. Only when the manifold terms have been driven to the point of contradiction do they become active and lively towards one another, receiving in contradiction the negativity which is the indwelling pulsation of self-movement and spontaneous activity.
We have already remarked that the basic determination in the ontological proof of the existence of God is the sum total of all realities. It is usually shown, first of all, that this determination is possible because it is free from contradiction, reality being taken only as reality without any limitation. We remarked that this sum total thus becomes simple indeterminate being, or if the realities are, in fact, taken as a plurality of determinate beings, into the sum-total of all negations. More precisely, when the difference of reality is taken into account, it develops from difference into opposition, and from this into contradiction, so that in the end the sum total of all realities simply becomes absolute contradiction within itself. Ordinary — but not speculative — thinking, which abhors contradiction, as nature abhors a vacuum, rejects this conclusion; for in considering contradiction, it stops short at the one-sided resolution of it into nothing, and fails to recognise the positive side of contradiction where it becomes absolute activity and absolute ground.
In general, our consciousness of the nature of contradiction has shown that it is not, so to speak, a blemish, an imperfection or a defect in something if a contradiction can be pointed out in it. On the contrary, every determination, every concrete thing, every Notion, is essentially a unity of distinguished and distinguishable moments, which, by virtue of the determinate, essential difference, pass over into contradictory moments. This contradictory side of course resolves itself into nothing — it withdraws into its negative unity. Now the thing, the subject, the Notion is just this negative unity itself: it is inherently self-contradictory, but it is no less contradiction resolved; it is the ground which contains and supports its determinations. The thing, subject, or Notion, as reflected into itself in its sphere, is its resolved Contradiction; but its entire sphere again is also determinate, different; it is therefore finite, and this means a contradictory one. Itself it is not the resolution of this higher Contradiction; but it has a higher sphere for its negative unity, for its Ground. Accordingly, finite things in the indifferent multiplicity are simply this, to be contradictory in themselves, to be contradictory and disrupted within themselves and to return into their Ground. As will be demonstrated later, the true inference from a finite and contingent being to an absolutely necessary Being does not consist in inferring the latter from the former as from a Being which is and remains Ground, on the contrary, the inference is from a being that, as is also implied immediately in contingency, is only in a state of collapse and is inherently self-contradictory; or rather, the true inference consists in showing that contingent Being in its own self withdraws into its Ground, in which it is sublated — and, further, that by this withdrawal it posits Ground in such a manner only that it makes itself into the posited element. In an ordinary inference the being of the finite appears as the Ground of the absolute: because the finite is the inherently self-contradictory opposition, because it is not. In the former meaning an inference runs thus: The Being of the finite is the Being of the absolute; but in the latter: The non-being of the finite is the being of the absolute. ©
Chapter 3 Ground
Essence determines itself as ground.
Just as nothing is at first in simple immediate unity with being, so here too the simple identity of essence is at first in immediate unity with its absolute negativity. Essence is only this its negativity, which is pure reflection. It is this pure negativity as the return of being into itself; as such, it is determined in itself, or for us, as ground in which being is dissolved. But this determinateness is not posited by essence itself; in other words, essence is not ground except in so far as it has itself posited this its determinateness. Its reflection, however, consists in its positing and determining itself as that which it is in itself, as a negative. The positive and negative constitute that determination of essence in which essence is lost in its negation. These self-subsistent determinations of reflection sublate themselves, and the determination that has fallen to the ground [zugrunde gegangene] is the true determination of essence.
Consequently, ground is itself one of the reflected determinations of essence; but it is the last of them, or rather the meaning of this determination is merely that it is a sublated determination. The reflected determination, in falling to the ground, acquires its true meaning, namely, to be within itself the absolute recoil upon itself, that is to say, the positedness that belongs to essence is only a sublated positedness, and conversely, only self-sublating positedness is the positedness of essence. Essence, in determining itself as ground, is determined as the non-determined; its determining is only the sublating of its being determined. Essence, in being determined thus as self-sublating, has not proceeded from another, but is, in its negativity, self-identical essence.
In so far as the determination of a first, an immediate, is the starting point of the advance to ground (through the nature of the determination itself which sublates itself or falls to the ground), ground is, in the first instance, determined by that first. But this determining is, on the one hand, as a sublating of the determining, only the restored, purified or manifested identity of essence which the reflected determination is in itself; on the other hand it is this negating movement as a determining that first posits that reflected determinateness which appeared as immediate, but which is posited only by the self-excluding reflection of ground and therein is posited as only a posited or sublated determination. Thus essence, in determining itself as ground, proceeds only from itself. As ground, therefore, it posits itself as essence, and it is in positing itself as essence that its determining consists. This positing is the reflection of essence, a reflection which in its determining sublates itself, on that side is a positing, on this side is the positing of essence, hence both in a single act.
Reflection is pure mediation in general, ground is real mediation of essence with itself. The former, the movement of nothing through nothing back to itself, is the reflection of itself in an other; but because the opposition in the reflection has not as yet any self-subsistence, the one that reflects is not a positive, nor is the other in which it is reflected a negative. Both are substrates, strictly speaking, only of imagination; they are not as yet self-related determinations. Pure mediation is only pure relation, without any related terms. Determining reflection, it is true, posits determinations that are self-identical, but at the same time they are only determinate relations. Ground, on the other hand, is real mediation because it contains reflection as sublated reflection; it is essence that, through its non-being, returns into and posits itself. In accordance with this moment of sublated reflection, the posited receives the determination of immediacy, of an immediate that, apart from the relation, or its illusory being, is self-identical. This immediate is being which has been restored by essence, the non-being of reflection through which essence mediates itself. Essence returns into itself as a negating activity; therefore in its return into itself, it gives itself determinateness, which is for this very reason the self-identical negative, sublated positedness, and consequently is equally an affirmative being [seiendes] as the identity of essence with itself as ground.
Ground is first, absolute ground, in which essence is, in the first instance, a substrate for the ground relation; but it further determines itself as form and matter and gives itself a content.
Secondly, it is a determinate ground as ground of a determinate content; in that the ground relation in its realisation as such becomes external to itself, it passes over into conditioning mediation.
Thirdly, ground presupposes a condition; but the condition no less presupposes the ground; the unconditioned is their unity, the fact in itself, which through the mediation of the conditioning relation passes over into Existence.
Remark: The Law of Ground
Ground, like the other determinations of reflection, has been expressed in the form of a law: everything has its sufficient ground. This means in general nothing else but: what is, is not to be regarded as a merely affirmative immediate but as something posited; we must not stop at immediate determinate being or determinateness as such, but must go back from this into ground, in which reflection-into-self in contrast to mere being is expressed. To add that the ground must be sufficient is really quite superfluous for it is self-evident; that for which the ground is not sufficient would not have a ground, but everything is supposed to have a ground. Leibnitz, however, who had the principle of the sufficient ground very much at heart and even made it the basis of his entire philosophy, associated with it a profounder meaning and more important concept than is usually connected with it when no advance is made beyond the immediate expression; although even with this meaning, the law must be considered important, for it declares being as such in its immediacy to be untrue and essentially something posited, and ground is declared to be the true immediate. But Leibnitz opposed the sufficiency of ground mainly to causality in its strict sense as mechanical mode of action. Since this is an altogether external activity, restricted as regards content to a single determinateness, the determinations are comprehended by their causes, but their connection, which constitutes the essential feature of an existent, is not contained in causes belonging to the sphere of mechanism. This relationship in which the whole is an essential unity, lies only in the Notion, in end. Mechanical causes are not sufficient for this unity because their basis is not end as the unity of the determinations. Accordingly, by sufficient ground, Leibnitz understood one that was also sufficient for this unity and which therefore comprehended not merely causes, but final causes.
But this is not yet the proper place for this determination of ground; teleological ground is a property of the Notion and of mediation by the Notion, which is reason.
A. ABSOLUTE GROUND
(a) Form and Essence
The determination of reflection, in so far as it withdraws into ground, is a first, an immediate determinate being in general, which forms the starting point. But determinate being still has only the meaning of positedness and essentially presupposes a ground-in the sense that it does not really posit a ground, that this positing is a sublating of itself, that really it is the immediate that is the posited, and ground the not-posited. As we have seen, this presupposing is positing that recoils on that which posits: ground, as the determination that has been sublated, is not indeterminate; it is essence determined through itself, but determined as undetermined, or as a sublated positedness. Ground is essence that in its negativity is identical with itself.
The determinateness of essence as ground is therefore twofold, that of ground and the grounded. It is first, essence as ground, determined as essence over against positedness, determined, that is, as a not-positedness. Secondly, it is the grounded, the immediate, which however is not in and for itself; it is positedness qua positedness. This, therefore, is likewise self-identical, but is the identity of the negative with itself. The self-identical negative and the self-identical positive is now one and the same identity. For ground is the identity of the positive or even of positedness, too, with itself; the grounded is positedness qua positedness, but this its reflection-into-self is the identity of the ground. This simple identity is therefore not itself ground, for ground is essence posited as the not-posited over against positedness. As the unity of this determinate identity (of the ground) and of the negative identity (of the grounded), it is essence as such as distinguished from its mediation.
This mediation, compared with the preceding reflection from which it has proceeded, is first, not pure reflection, which is not distinguished from essence and is the negative, consequently also does not as yet contain the independence of the determinations. In ground as sublated reflection, however, these determinations do persist. Nor is it determining reflection, whose determinations have an essential self-subsistence; for this has fallen to the ground [zugrunde gegangen] in the ground, in whose unity the determinations are only posited ones. This mediation of the ground is therefore the unity of the pure and the determining reflection; their determinations or the posited, has a subsistence, and conversely, their subsistence is a posited. Because this their subsistence is itself a posited or has a determinateness, they are distinguished from their simple identity, and constitute the form as against essence.
Essence has a form and determinations of the form. It is only as ground that it has a fixed immediacy or is a substrate [Substrat]. Essence as such is one with its reflection and inseparable from the movement of reflection itself. Consequently, it is not essence through which the reflective movement runs; nor is essence a first from which reflection begins. This circumstance makes the exposition of reflection in general more difficult; for we cannot really say that essence withdraws into itself, that essence inwardly reflects itself, because it is not before or in its movement, and this has no substrate on which it runs its course. A related determination only makes its appearance in ground conformably to the moment of sublated reflection. But essence as related substrate is determinate essence; by virtue of this positedness it essentially contains form. The form determinations, on the other hand, are now determinations as in essence; the latter lies at their base as the indeterminate which, in its determination, is indifferent towards them; in it they have their reflection-into-self. The determinations of reflection ought to have their subsistence within themselves and to be self-subsistent; but their self-subsistence is their dissolution; they have it in an other; but this dissolution is itself this self-identity or the ground of their subsistence that they give to themselves.
To form belongs in general everything determinate; it is a form determination in so far as it is something posited and consequently distinct from that of which it is the form; determinateness as quality is one with its substrate, with being; being is the immediately determinate that is not yet distinct from its determinateness-or which in it is not yet reflected into itself, and this determinateness, therefore, is a simply affirmative [seiende], not yet a posited, one. Further, the form-determinations of essence, as determinatenesses of reflection, are, in their more precise determinateness, the moments of reflection considered above, identity and difference, the latter partly as diversity, partly as opposition. But, again, the ground relation also belongs to form since, although it is the sublated determination of reflection, essence is thereby made into something posited. On the other hand, the identity possessed by ground does not belong to form, for in this, positedness as sublated and positedness as such — ground and the grounded — is a single reflection that constitutes essence as the simple substrate which is the subsisting of form. But this subsistence is posited in ground; or this essence is essentially determinate and is thus once again the moment of ground-relation and form. This is the absolute reciprocal relation of form and essence, that essence is this simple unity of ground and grounded, but in this very unity is itself determined, or a negative, and distinguishes itself as substrate from form, but thus at the same time itself becomes ground and moment of form.
Form is therefore the completed whole of reflection; it also contains this determination of reflection, namely, to be a sublated determination; consequently, as well as being a unity of its determining, it is also just as much related to its sublatedness, to an other which is not itself form, but form is in it. As essential self-related negativity over against this simple negative, form is the positing and determining principle; simple essence, on the other hand, is the indeterminate and inactive substrate in which the form-determinations subsist and are reflected into themselves. External reflection usually does not go beyond this distinction of essence and form; the distinction is necessary, but this distinguishing is itself their unity, just as this basic unity is essence which repels itself from itself and makes itself into a positedness. Form is absolute negativity or negative absolute self-identity through which precisely essence is not being but essence. This identity, taken abstractly, is essence as against form; just as negativity, taken abstractly, as positedness, is the single determination of form. But the determination, as we have seen, is, in its truth, the total, self-related negativity which, therefore, as this identity is in its own self simple essence. Consequently, form has in its own identity essence, just as essence has in its negative nature absolute form.
The question cannot therefore be asked, how form is added to essence, for it is only the reflection of essence into essence itself, essence's own immanent reflection. Form is in its own self equally the reflection that returns into itself, or identical essence; in its determining, form makes the determination into positedness as positedness. It does not therefore determine essence as if truly presupposed by the latter and as if separate from it, for thus it is the unessential determination of reflection that hastens without pause to destruction., on the contrary, it is itself the ground of its sublating or the identical connection of its determinations. To say that form determines essence means, therefore, that form in its distinguishing sublates this very distinguishing and is the self-identity which essence is as the subsistence of the determination; it is the contradiction of being sublated in its positedness and of persisting in this sublatedness; it is accordingly ground as the essence that, in being determined or negated, is identical with itself.
These distinctions of form and essence are therefore only moments of the simple form relation itself. But they are to be more closely considered and held fast. The determining form is self-related as a sublated positedness, and is therefore related to its identity as to an other. It posits itself as sublated; in doing so it presupposes its identity; according to this moment, essence is the indeterminate for which form is an other. As such, it is not essence, which is in its own self absolute reflection, but is determined as formless identity; it is matter.
(b) Form and Matter
Essence becomes matter in that its reflection is determined as relating itself to essence as to the formless indeterminate. Matter is therefore the differenceless identity which is essence, with the determination of being the other form. It is consequently the real basis or substrate of form, because it constitutes the reflection-into-self of the form-determinations, or the self-subsistent element to which the latter are related as to their positive subsistence.
1. If abstraction is made from every determination, from all form of anything, what is left over is indeterminate matter. Matter is a sheer abstraction. (Matter cannot be seen, felt, and so on — what is seen, felt, is a determinate matter, that is, a unity of matter and form). This abstraction from which matter proceeds is, however, not merely an external removal and sublating of form, rather does form, as we have seen, spontaneously reduce itself to this simple identity.
Further, form presupposes a matter to which it relates itself. But the two are not on that account simply present as externally and contingently opposite to one another; neither matter nor form is self-originated, or, in another terminology, eternal Matter is that which is indifferent to form, but this indifference is the determinateness of self-identity into which form withdraws as into its basis. Form presupposes matter in the very fact that it posits itself as sublated and consequently relates itself to this its identity as to an other. Conversely, form is presupposed by matter; for the latter is not simple essence, which is immediately itself absolute reflection, but it is essence determined as the positive, that is, essence that only is as sublated negation. But from the other side, because form posits itself as matter only in so far as it sublates, hence presupposes, matter, matter is also determined as a groundless subsistence. Equally matter is not determined as the ground of form; but since matter posits itself as the abstract identity of the sublated form determination, it is not identity as ground, and, in so far, form is groundless relatively to it. Form and matter alike are accordingly determined as being not posited by one another, as not being the ground of one another. Matter is rather the identity of the ground and the grounded, as a basis which stands over against this form relation. This their common determination of indifference is the determination of matter as such and constitutes, too, the mutual connection of both. Similarly, the determination of form to be the relation of the two as distinct sides, is also the other moment of their mutual relationship. Matter, the indifferently determinate, is the passive side over against form as the active side. The latter, as the self-related negative is the internal contradiction: it is self-resolving, self-repelling and self-determining. It relates itself to matter and is posited as relating itself to this its subsistence as to an other. Matter, on the other hand, is posited as being related only to itself and as indifferent to other; but it is implicitly related to form; for it contains sublated negativity and is matter only through this determination. It is related to form as to an other only because form is not posited in it, because it is only implicitly form. Matter contains form locked up within it and is absolute susceptibility to form only because it has form absolutely within itself, only because form is its implicit determination. Matter must therefore be formed, and form must therefore materialise itself, must give itself in matter self-identity or subsistence.
2. Hence form determines matter, and matter is determined by form. Now because form itself is absolute identity-with-self and therefore contains matter within it, and equally, because matter in its pure abstraction or absolute negativity possesses within itself form, therefore the action of form on matter and the passivity of matter in its determining by form is, in effect, only the removal of the illusion of their indifference and distinguishedness. This relation of the determining Is thus the mediation of each with itself through its own non-being; but these two mediations are one movement and the restoration of their original identity-the inwardising of their outwardness. [Entäusserung.]
At first, form and matter presuppose one another. As we have seen, this simply means that the one essential unity is negative self-relation which thus sunders itself into essential identity, determined as the indifferent basis, and into essential difference or negativity, as the determining form. That unity of essence and form that confront one another as form and matter, is the absolute ground that determines itself. The relation, in differentiating itself, becomes by virtue of the fundamental identity of the different sides, reciprocal presupposition.
Secondly, form as self-subsistent is, besides, the self-sublating contradiction; but it is also posited as such, for it is at the same time both self-subsistent and essentially related to an other; it thus sublates itself. Since it is itself two-sided, this sublating, too, has a double aspect: first, it sublates its self-subsistence, converts itself into something posited, into something that is in an other, and this its other is matter. Secondly, it sublates its determinateness relatively to matter, its relation to it, and consequently its positedness, and in doing so gives itself a subsistence. Since form sublates its positedness, this its reflection is its own identity into which it passes; but since, at the same time, it divests itself of this identity and opposes itself to itself as matter, this reflection of the positedness into itself is a union with a matter in which it obtains a subsistence; in this union, therefore, it is just as much united with matter as an other — in accordance with the first aspect whereby it converts itself into something posited-as also, in that other, it is united with its own identity.
Thus the activity of form through which matter is determined consists in a negative bearing of form towards itself. But, conversely, in doing so, form also bears itself negatively towards matter; yet this activity by which matter is determined is just as much a movement belonging to form itself. Form is free from matter, but it sublates this its self-subsistence; but its self-subsistence is matter itself, for in this it has its essential identity. Therefore the conversion of itself into something posited is the same thing as its making matter into something determinate. But looked at from the other side, form is at the same time divested of its own identity, and matter is its other; and to this extent, matter is also not determined, since form sublates its own self-subsistence. But matter is self-subsistent only as against form; the negative, in sublating itself, also sublates the positive. Form, therefore, having sublated itself, the determinateness which matter has as against form also disappears, namely, to be an indeterminate subsistence.
This, which appears as activity of form, is also no less a movement belonging to matter itself. The implicit determination of matter or what it ought to be, is its absolute negativity. Through this, matter is not related to form simply as to an other: on the contrary, this external other is the form that lies concealed within matter itself. Matter is the same internal contradiction that form contains, and this contradiction, like its resolution, is only one. But matter is internally contradictory because, as indeterminate self-identity, it is also absolute negativity; it therefore sublates itself internally and its identity disintegrates in its negativity and the latter obtains from the former its subsistence. Therefore matter, in being determined by form as by something external, thereby achieves its determination, and the externality of the relationship both for form and matter consists in the fact that each, or rather their original unity, in its positing is at the same time presupposing, with the result that the relation to itself is at the same time a relation to itself as sublated, or a relation to its other.
Thirdly, through this movement of form and matter, their original unity is, on the one hand, restored, and on the other hand, it is now a posited unity. Matter is just as much self-determined, as this determining is for it an external activity of the form; conversely, form determines only itself or has within itself the matter that is determined by it, just as much as in its determining it relates itself to an other; and both, the activity of form and the movement of matter, are the same, save that the former is an activity, that is, negativity as posited, whereas the latter is a movement or becoming, negativity as an implicit determination. The result is accordingly the unity of implicit being of the in-itself, and positedness. Matter is as such determinate or necessarily has a form, and form is simply material, subsistent form.
Form, in so far as it presupposes a matter as its other, is finite. It is not ground but only the active principle. Similarly, matter, in so far as it presupposes form as its non-being, is finite matter; just as little is it ground of its unity with form, but only the basis for form. But this finite matter as well as the finite form has no truth; each relates itself to the other, in other words, only their unity is their truth. Into this unity both these determinations withdraw and therein sublate their self-subsistence: this unity thus demonstrates itself to be their ground. Matter is therefore ground of its form-determination only in so far as it is not matter as matter, but the absolute unity of essence and form; similarly, form is ground of the subsistence of its determinations only in so far as it is the same one unity. But this one unity as absolute negativity, and more specifically, as exclusive unity is, in its reflection, presupposing; or, there is but a single activity: form in its positing both preserves itself, as posited, in the unity, and also repels itself from itself; it is related to itself as itself and also to itself as an other. Or, the process by which matter is determined by form is the mediation of essence as ground with itself in a unity, through its own self and through the negation of itself.
Formed matter, or the form that has a subsistence, is now not only this absolute unity of the ground with itself, but also the posited unity. It is the movement just considered in which absolute ground has exhibited its moments as at the same time self-sublating and therefore also as posited. Or the restored unity, in uniting with itself has just as much repelled and determined itself; for since its unity is the outcome of negation, it is also a negative unity. It is therefore the unity of form and matter as their basis, but as their determinate basis, which is formed matter, but which is at the same time indifferent to form and matter, these being sublated and unessential determinations. It is content.
(c) Form and Content
At first, form stands opposed to essence; it is then the simple ground relation, and its determinations are the ground and the grounded. Secondly, it stands opposed to matter; it is then determining reflection, and its determinations are the reflected determination itself and the subsistence of the determination. Lastly, it stands opposed to content; and then its determinations are again form itself and matter. What was previously the self-identical — at first ground, then simple subsistence, and finally matter — comes under the dominance of form and is once more one of its determinations.
The content is, first, a form and a matter which belong to it and are essential; it is their unity. But since this unity is at the same time a determinate or posited unity, the content stands opposed to the form; this constitutes the positedness and is the unessential over against the content. The latter is therefore indifferent to form; form embraces both form as such and also matter; and the content therefore has a form and a matter of which it is the substrate, and which are to the content a mere positedness.
The content is, secondly, the identical element in form and matter, so that these would be only indifferent external determinations. They are positedness in general which, however, in it the content has withdrawn into its unity or its ground. The identity of the content with itself is, therefore, first that identity which is indifferent to the form; but secondly, it is the identity of the ground. The ground has, in the first instance, vanished in the content; but the content is at the same time the negative reflection of the form-determinations into themselves; therefore its unity which is, at first, only the unity that is indifferent to the form, is also the formal unity or the ground relation as such. The content has, therefore, the latter for its essential form, and the ground conversely has a content.
The content of the ground is, therefore, the ground that has returned into its unity with itself; ground is at first the essence that in its positedness is self-identical; as different from and indifferent to its positedness it is indeterminate matter; but as content it is also formed identity and this form becomes ground relation because the determinations of its opposition are also posited as negated in the content. Further, the content is determinate in its own self; not merely like matter as the indifferent in general but as formed matter, so that the determinations of form have a material indifferent subsistence. On the one hand, content is the essential identity of ground with itself in its positedness; on the other hand, it is the posited identity over against the ground relation; this positedness, which is present in this identity as a form-determination, stands over against the free positedness, that is to say, over against the form as a whole relation of ground and grounded; this form is the total positedness that has returned into itself, and the former is therefore only positedness as immediate, determinateness as such.
The ground has thereby simply converted itself into determinate ground, and the determinateness itself is twofold: first, that of form, and secondly, that of content. The former is its determinateness of being external to the content as such which is indifferent to this relation. The latter is the determinateness of the content possessed by the ground.
B. THE DETERMINATE GROUND
(a) Formal Ground
The ground has a determinate content. The determinateness of the content is, as we have seen, the substrate for the form, the simple immediate over against the mediation of the form. The ground is negatively self-related identity, which thereby makes itself into positedness; it is negatively related to itself, in that it is self-identical in this its negativity; this identity is the substrate or the content, which in this way constitutes the indifferent or positive unity of the ground relation and is the mediating principle of this unity.
In this content, the determinateness of the ground and the grounded over against one another has at first vanished. But the mediation is further a negative unity. The negative element in the above indifferent substrate is the latter's immediate determinateness whereby the ground has a determinate content. But then this negative element is the negative relation of the form to itself. On the one hand, what has been posited sublates itself and withdraws into its ground; but the ground, the essential self-subsistence, relates itself negatively to itself and makes itself into a positedness. This negative mediation of the ground and the grounded is the characteristic mediation of the form as such, formal mediation. Now both sides of the form, because each passes over into the other, mutually posit themselves as sublated in one identity; in doing so they at the same time presuppose this identity. It is the determinate content to which, therefore, the formal mediation is related through itself as to the positive mediating principle. This content is the identical element of both, and since they are distinguished, but each in its difference is relation to the other, it is their subsistence, the subsistence of each as the whole itself.
It follows from the above that what is present in the determinate ground is this: first, a determinate content is considered from two sides in so far as it is posited first as ground and again as the grounded. The content itself is indifferent to this form; in both it is simply one determination only. Secondly, the ground itself is just as much a moment of the form as that which is posited by it; this is its identity in respect of the form. It does not matter which of the two determinations is made the first, whether the transition is made from the posited to the other as ground, or from the one as ground to the other as the posited. The grounded considered on its own is the sublating of itself; through this it makes itself on the one hand into a posited, and is at the same time a positing of the ground. The same movement is the ground as such, it makes itself into a posited and thereby becomes the ground of something, that is, in this movement it is present both as a posited and also first as ground. The posited is the ground that there is a ground, and conversely the ground is therefore a posited. The mediation begins just as much from the one as from the other, each side is just as much ground as posited, and each is the whole mediation or the whole form. Furthermore the whole form itself is, as the self-identical, the substrate of the determinations which are the two sides of the ground and the grounded, and thus form and content are themselves one and the same identity.
Because of this identity of the ground and the grounded, both as regards content and form, the ground is sufficient (the sufficiency of the ground being restricted to this relationship); there is nothing in the ground that is not in the grounded, and there is nothing in the grounded that is not in the ground. When we ask for a ground, we want to see the same determination that is content, double, once in the form of something posited, and again in the form of a determinate being reflected into itself, of essentiality.
Now since in the determinate ground, the ground and the grounded are each the whole form, and their content, though determinate, is one and the same, it follows that there is as yet no real determination of the sides of the ground, they have no distinct content; the determinateness is as yet only simple, it has not yet passed over into the sides; what is present is the determinate ground at first in its pure form, the formal ground. Because the content is only this simple determinateness which does not possess within itself the form of the ground-relation, this determinateness is the self-identical content, indifferent to the form, which is external to it; the content is other than the form.
Remark: Formal Method of Explanation From Tautological Grounds
When reflection, in dealing with determinate grounds, sticks to that form of the ground we have reached here, then the assignment of a ground remains a mere formalism and empty tautology which expresses in the form of reflection-into-self, of essentiality, the same content that is already present in the form of an immediate being, of a being considered as posited. Such an assigning of grounds is therefore accompanied by the same emptiness as the talk which restricts itself to the law of identity. The sciences, especially the physical sciences, are full of tautologies of this kind which constitute as it were a prerogative of science. For example, the ground of the movement of the planets round the sun is said to be the attractive force of the earth and sun on one another. As regards content, this expresses nothing other than what is contained in the phenomenon, namely the relation of these bodies to one another, only in the form of a determination reflected into itself, the form of force. If one asks what kind of a force the attractive force is, the answer is that it is the force that makes the earth move round the sun; that is, it has precisely the same content as the phenomenon of which it is supposed to be the ground; the relation of the earth and sun in respect of motion is the identical substrate of the ground and the grounded. When a crystalline form is explained by saying that it has its ground in the particular arrangement which the molecules form with one another, the fact is that the existent crystalline form is this very arrangement that is adduced as ground. In ordinary life, these aetiologies, which are the prerogative of the sciences, count for what they are, tautological empty talk.
To answer the question, why is this person going to town, with the reason, the ground, that it is because there is an attractive force in the town which urges him in that direction, is to give the kind of reply that is sanctioned in the sciences but outside them is counted absurd. Leibniz objected to the Newtonian force of attraction that it was the same kind of occult quality that the scholastics used for the purpose of explanation. Rather is it the opposite objection which must be made to it, namely, that it is a too familiar quality; for it has no other content than the phenomenon itself. What commends this mode of explanation is precisely its great clarity and intelligibility; for there is nothing clearer or more intelligible than that, for example, a plant has its ground in a vegetative, that is, plant-producing force. It could be called an occult quality only in the sense that the ground is supposed to have another content than the thing to be explained, and such a ground is not adduced; the force used for the purpose of explanation is of course a concealed or occult ground in so far as the kind of ground demanded is not adduced. Something is no more explained by this formalism than the nature of a plant is known when I say that it is a plant; or that it has its ground in a plant-producing force; this statement with all its clarity can therefore be called a very occult mode of explanation.
Secondly, as regards form, in this mode of explanation the two opposite directions of the ground relation are present without being apprehended in their determinate relation. The ground is, on the one hand, ground as the reflection-into-self of the determination of the content of the phenomenon which it grounds, on the other hand, it is the posited. It is that from which the phenomenon is to be understood; but conversely, it is the ground that is inferred from the phenomenon and the former is understood from the latter. The main business of this reflection consists, namely, in finding the grounds from the phenomenon, that is, converting the immediate phenomenon into the form of reflected being; consequently the ground, instead of being in and for itself and self-subsistent, is, on the contrary, the posited and derived. Now since in this procedure the ground is derived from the phenomenon and its determinations are based on it, the phenomenon certainly flows quite smoothly and with a favourable wind from its ground. But in this way, knowledge has not advanced a step; its movement is confined within a difference of form which this same procedure inverts and sublates.
Accordingly one of the main difficulties in the study of the sciences in which this method prevails comes from this perverse method of premising as ground what is in fact derived, and then actually placing in the consequents the ground of these supposed grounds. The exposition begins with grounds which are placed in mid-air as principles and primary concepts; they are simple determinations devoid of any necessity in and for themselves; what follows is supposed to be based on them. Therefore he who aims to penetrate such sciences must begin by instilling his mind with these grounds, a distasteful business for reason because it is asked to treat what is groundless as a valid foundation. Success comes most easily when, without much reflection, the principles are simply accepted as given and one then proceeds to use them as fundamental rules of one's understanding. Without this method one cannot make a start; nor without it can any progress be made. But progress is hindered by the fact that it reveals how the method counteracts itself: it proposes to demonstrate in the consequent what is derived, but in fact it is only in the derived that the grounds of the above presuppositions are contained. Also because the consequent shows itself to be the phenomenon from which the ground was derived, this relation in which the phenomenon is presented awakens a distrust of the exposition of it; for the relation presents itself not as expressed in its immediacy but as a support for the ground. But because this again is derived from the phenomenon one demands rather to see it in its immediacy in order to be able to derive the ground from it. In such an exposition, therefore, one does not know how to take either ground or phenomenon. Uncertainty is increased, especially if the exposition is not rigorously consistent but is more honest, by the fact that one comes across traces and features of the phenomenon which point to more and different things than are contained in the principles alone. Lastly, confusion becomes still greater when reflected and merely hypothetical determinations are mingled with immediate determinations of the phenomenon itself, and the former are spoken of as though they belonged to immediate experience. Many who come to these sciences with an honest belief may well imagine that molecules, empty interstices, centrifugal force, the ether, the single, separate ray of light, electrical and magnetic matter, and a host of other such things which are spoken of as though they had an immediate existence, are things or relations actually present in perception. They serve as primary grounds for something else, are enunciated as actualities and confidently applied; one lets them count as such in good faith before coming aware that they are, on the contrary, determinations inferred from that of which they are supposed to be the grounds, hypotheses and fictions derived from an uncritical reflection. In fact, one finds oneself in a kind of witches' circle in which determinations of real being and determinations of reflection, ground and grounded, phenomena and phantoms, run riot in indiscriminate company and enjoy equal rank with one another.
Along with the formal business of this mode of explanation from grounds, we at the same time hear it repeated — in spite of all the explaining based on well-known forces and matters — that we do not know the inner nature (Wesen) of these forces and matters themselves. This amounts only to a confession that this assigning of grounds is itself completely inadequate; that something quite different from such grounds is required. Only then it is not apparent why this trouble is taken with such explaining, why the something quite different is not sought for, or at least why this mode of explanation is not set aside and the facts left to speak for themselves.
(b) Real Ground
As we have seen, the determinateness of the ground is partly determinateness of the substrate or determination of the content, and partly the otherness in the ground-relation itself, namely, the distinction between the content and form; the relation of ground and grounded comes to be an external form imposed on the content which is indifferent to these determinations. But in point of fact the two are not external to one another; for the content is this, to be the identity of the ground with itself in the grounded, and of the grounded in the ground. The side of the ground has shown that it is itself a posited, and the side of the grounded that it is itself ground; each is in itself this identity of the whole. But because they belong at the same time to the form and constitute the form's determinate difference each is, in its determinateness, the identity of the whole with itself. Consequently each has a distinctive content of its own. Or, considered from the side of the content, because this is the identity of the ground-relation with itself, it essentially possesses this difference of the form within itself, and then is, as ground, other than what it is as grounded.
Now since ground and grounded have a distinctive content, the ground relation has ceased to be formal; the retreat into the ground and the emergence from it of the posited is no longer a tautology; the ground is realised. Therefore when we ask for a ground, we really demand that the content of the ground be a different determination from that of the phenomenon whose ground we are seeking.
Now this relation is further determined. Namely, in so far as the two sides have a different content, they are indifferent to one another; each is an immediate, self-identical determination. Further, in their relationship as ground and grounded, the ground, in being reflected into the other as into its positedness, is reflected into itself; the content, therefore, possessed by the side of the ground, is equally in the grounded; the latter, as the posited, has its self-identity and subsistence only in the ground. But apart from this content of the ground, the grounded now also has its own distinctive content and is accordingly the unity of a twofold content. Now this, as the unity of distinct sides, is indeed their negative unity, but because the determinations of the content are mutually indifferent, the unity is only their empty, intrinsically contentless relation, not their mediation; a one or a something as an external combination of them.
Therefore in the real ground relation, what is present is twofold: first, the determination of the content, which is ground, is in continuity with itself in the positedness, so that it constitutes the simple identical element of the ground and the grounded; the grounded thus completely contains within itself the ground, their relation is an undifferentiated essential compactness. Therefore, what more is added in the grounded to this simple essence, is only an unessential form, external determinations of the content which, as such, are free from the ground and are an immediate manifoldness. Of this unessential side, therefore, the essential is not the ground, nor is it ground of the relation of both to one another in the grounded. It is a positively identical that indwells the grounded, but does not posit itself therein in any difference of form, but, as self-related content, is an indifferent positive substrate. Secondly, what is combined with this substrate in the something is an indifferent content, but as the unessential side. The main thing is the relation of the substrate and the unessential manifoldness. But because the related determinations are an indifferent content, this relation is also not ground; true, one of them is determined as essential and the other as unessential or posited content, but as self-related content this form is external to both. The one of the something that constitutes their relation is therefore not a form relation but only an external bond which does not contain the unessential manifold content as posited; it is therefore likewise only a substrate.
Ground, in determining itself as real, consequently breaks up, on account of the diversity of content which constitutes its reality, into external determinations. The two relations, the essential content as the simple immediate identity of the ground and grounded, and then the something as relation of the diversified content, are two different substrates; the self-identical form of the ground, namely, that the something is, on the one hand, essential and, on the other hand, posited, has vanished; the ground relation has thus become external to itself.
Consequently there is now an external ground which brings the diversified content into combination and determines which is ground and which is posited by the ground; this determination does not lie in the double-sided content itself. The real ground is therefore relation to an other, on the one hand, of the content to another content, on the other hand, of the ground relation itself (of the form) to an other, namely, to an immediate, to something not posited by it.
Remark: Formal Method of Explanation From a Ground Distinct From That Which is Grounded
The formal ground-relation contains only one content for ground and grounded; in this identity lies their necessity, but at the same time their tautology. Real ground contains a diversified content; but this brings with it the contingency and externality of the ground relation. On the one hand, that which is considered as the essential and therefore as the fundamental determination, is not the ground of the other determinations connected with it. On the other hand, it is also undetermined which of the several determinations of the content of a concrete thing ought to be taken as essential and as ground; hence the choice between them is free. Thus in the former respect, for example, the ground of a house is its foundation; this is the ground by virtue of the gravity which is inherent in sensuous matter and which is the purely identical principle in both ground and the house which is grounded. Now that there is in heavy matter such a distinction as that of a foundation and a modification distinct from it through which it constitutes a house, this fact is a matter of complete indifference to the heavy matter itself; its relation to other determinations of the content, of the end, of the furnishing of the house, and so on, is external to it; consequently, though it is indeed the foundation, it is not the ground of these determinations. Gravity, which is the ground for a house standing, is no less also the ground for a stone falling; the stone has this ground, gravity, within it; but that the stone has a further determination of its content by virtue of which it is not merely something heavy but a stone, this is external to gravity; further, it is something else that has caused the stone to be placed beforehand at a distance from the body upon which it falls; similarly time, space, and their relation, which is motion, are another content than gravity and can be conceived of without it (as the saying is), and consequently are not essentially posited by it. Gravity is also equally the ground which makes a projectile describe a trajectory opposite to that of a falling body. From the variety of determinations of which it is the ground, it is clear that something else is also required to make it the ground of this or some other determination.
When it is said of Nature, that it is the ground of the world, what is called Nature is, on the one hand, one with the world, and the world is nothing but Nature itself. But they are also different, nature being rather the indeterminate, or at least is determinate, only in the universal differences which are laws, the self-identical essence of the world, and before Nature can be the world a multiplicity of determinations must be externally added to it. But these do not have their ground in nature as such; on the contrary, nature is indifferent to them as contingencies. It is the same relationship as when God is characterised as the ground of nature. As ground, he is its essence; nature contains this essence and is identical with it; but nature has yet a further manifoldness which is distinct from the ground itself and is the third in which these two distinct sides are conjoined; that ground is neither ground of the manifoldness distinguished from it nor of its connection with it. The cognition of nature is therefore not from God as ground, for as ground he would only be nature's universal essence, and nature as a determinate essence is not contained in the ground.
Because of this diversity of the content of the ground, or strictly speaking of the substrate, and of what is connected with it in the grounded, the assigning of real grounds is just as much a formalism as the formal ground itself. In the latter, the self-identical content is indifferent to the form; in real ground this is equally true. Now the result of this is, further, that the real ground does not itself indicate which of the manifold determinations ought to be taken as essential. Something is a concrete of manifold determinations which show themselves to be equally fixed and permanent in it. One as much as another can therefore be determined as ground, namely, as essential, compared with which the other is then only a posited. This links up with what has already been mentioned, namely, from the fact that in one case a determination is present as ground of another, it does not follow that this other is posited with it in another case or at all. Punishment, for example, has various determinations: it is retribution, a deterrent example as well, a threat used by the law as a deterrent, and also it brings the criminal to his senses and reforms him. Each of these different determinations has been considered the ground of punishment, because each is an essential determination, and therefore the others, as distinct from it, are determined as merely contingent relatively to it. But the one which is taken as ground is still not the whole punishment itself; this concrete also contains those others which, whilst associated with the ground in the punishment, do not have their ground in the latter. Again, an official has an aptitude for his office, as an individual has relationships with others, has a circle of acquaintances, a particular character, made an appearance in such and such circumstances and on such and such occasions, and so on. Each of these attributes can be, or can be regarded as, the ground for his holding his office; they are a diverse content which is joined together in a third; the form, in which they are determined as being either essential or posited in relation to one another, is external to the content. Each of these attributes is essential to the official because through it he is the specific individual that he is; in so far as the office can be regarded as an external, posited determination, each can be determined as ground relatively to it, but also conversely, they can be regarded as posited and the office as their ground. How they are actually related, that is, in the individual case, this is a determination external to the ground relation and to the content itself; it is a third that imparts to them the form of ground and grounded.
So in general anything can have a variety of grounds; each determination of its content, as self-identical, pervades the whole and can therefore be considered essential; the door is wide open to innumerable aspects, that is, determinations, lying outside the thing itself, on account of the contingency of their mode of connection. Therefore whether a ground has this or that consequent is equally contingent. Moral motives, for example, are essential determinations of the ethical nature, but what follows from them is at the same time an externality distinct from them, which follows and also does not follow from them; it is only through a third that it is attached to them. More accurately this is to be understood in this way, that if the moral motive is a ground, it is not contingent to it whether it has or has not a consequent or a grounded, but it is contingent whether it is or is not made a ground at all. But again, since the content which is the consequent of the moral motive, if this has been made the ground, has the nature of externality, it can be immediately sublated by another externality. Therefore an action may, or may not, issue from a moral motive. Conversely, an action can have various grounds; as a concrete, it contains manifold essential determinations, each of which can therefore be assigned as ground. The search for and assignment of grounds, in which argumentation mainly consists, is accordingly an endless pursuit which does not reach a final determination; for any and every thing one or more good grounds can be given, and also for its opposite; and a host of grounds can exist without anything following from them. What Socrates and Plato call sophistry is nothing else but argumentation from grounds; to this, Plato opposes the contemplation of the Idea, that is, of the subject matter in and for itself or in its Notion. Grounds are taken only from essential determinations of a content, essential relationships and aspects, and of these every subject matter, just like its opposite, possesses several; in their form of essentiality, one is as valid as another; because it does not embrace the whole extent of the subject matter, each is a one-sided ground, the other particular sides having on their part particular grounds, and none of them exhausts the subject matter which constitutes their togetherness [Verknüpfung] and contains them all; none is a sufficient ground, that is, the Notion.
(c) The Complete Ground
1. In real ground, ground as content and ground as relation are only substrates. The former is only posited as essential and as ground; the relation is the something of the grounded as the ' indeterminate substrate of a varied content, a 'togetherness' of ' it which is not its own reflection but an external and therefore only posited reflection. Hence the real ground-relation is rather the ground as sublated; consequently it constitutes rather the side of the grounded or of positedness. But as positedness, the ground itself has now withdrawn into its ground; it is now a grounded and this has another ground. In consequence, the latter so determines itself that, first, it is that which is identical with the real ground as its grounded; in conformity with this determination both sides have one and the same content; and the two determinations of the content and the 'togetherness' in the something are likewise present in the new ground. But secondly, the new ground into which that merely posited, external 'togetherness' has sublated itself is, as its reflection-into-self, the absolute relation of the two determinations of the content.
In consequence of the real ground itself having withdrawn into its ground, the identity of ground and grounded, or formal ground, is restored in it. The resultant ground-relation is therefore the complete ground relation, which embraces both formal and real ground and which mediates the determinations of the content which, in the latter, confront one another as immediate.
2. The ground-relation has thus determined itself more precisely in the following manner. First, something has a ground; it contains the determination of the content which is the ground, and, in addition a second determination, one which is posited by the ground. But each is an indifferent content, so that the one determination is not in its own self ground, nor is the other in its own self that which is grounded by the first; the fact is, that in the immediacy of the content, this relation is a sublated or posited relation and has, as such, its ground in another. This second relation, as different only in respect of form, has the same content as the first, namely, the two determinations of the content, but it is their immediate 'togetherness'. However, the determinations thus connected constitute a simply varied content, and are therefore determined as indifferent to one another; consequently, this relation is not their truly absolute relation in which one of the determinations would be self-identical in positedness, and the other only this positedness of the same self-identical determination.
On the contrary, they are supported by a something which constitutes their merely immediate, not reflected, relation which is, therefore, only a relative ground in relation to the 'togetherness' in the other something. The two somethings are therefore the two distinct relations of the content which have been brought to view. They stand in the identical ground-relation of form; they are one and the same whole content, namely, the two determinations of the content and their relation; they are distinguished only by the kind of this relation, which in the one is an immediate, in the other a posited relation; through this, they are distinguished one from the other as ground and grounded only in respect of form. Secondly, this ground-relation is not merely formal, but also real. The formal ground passes over into real ground as we have seen; the moments of form are reflected into themselves; they are a self-subsistent content, and the ground relation also contains one peculiar content as ground, and another as grounded. The content, in the first instance, constitutes the immediate identity of the two sides of the formal ground which thus have one and the same content. But it also has form within it and is thus a twofold content which has the nature of ground and grounded. One of the two determinations of the two somethings is therefore determined as being, not merely common to them as in an external comparison, but as being their identical substrate and the foundation of their relation. As against the other determination of the content, this determination is essential and is the ground of the other which is posited, namely, in the something, of which the grounded determination is the relation. In the first something, which is the ground-relation, this second determination of the content is immediately and in itself connected with the first. But the other something only contains the one in itself as that in which it is immediately identical with the first something, but the other as the determination posited in it. The former determination of the content is its ground by virtue of its being originally connected with the other determination in. the first something.
The ground-relation of the determinations of the content in the second something is thus mediated by the first, implicit relation of the first something. The inference is as follows: in one something, the determination B is implicitly connected with determination A; therefore, in the second something to which only the one determination A immediately belongs, B is also linked with A. In the second something, not only is this second determination a mediated one, but the fact that its immediate determination is ground is also mediated, namely, by its original connection with B in the first something. This connection is thus the ground of ground A, and the whole ground-relation is, in the second something, a posited or a grounded.
3. Real ground shows itself to be the self-external reflection of ground; the complete mediation of ground is the restoration of its self-identity. But since this self-identity has thereby also acquired the externality of real ground, the formal ground-relation in this unity of itself and real ground is just as much self-positing as self-sublating ground; the ground-relation mediates itself with itself through its negation. First, ground as the original relation, is the relation of immediate content-determinations. The ground-relation, being essential form, its sides are determined as sublated or as moments. Therefore, as form of immediate determinations, it is self-identical relation at the same time that it is the relation of its negation; hence it is ground, not in and for itself, but as relation to the sublated ground-relation. Secondly, the sublated relation or the immediate which, in the original and the posited relation, is the identical substrata, is likewise not in and for itself real ground; on the contrary, it is posited as being ground through that original connection.
The ground-relation in its totality is therefore essentially presupposing reflection; the formal ground presupposes the immediate content determination and this, as real ground, presupposes form. Ground is therefore form as an immediate 'togetherness' but in such a manner that the form repels itself from itself and rather presupposes immediacy, in which it is related to itself as to an other. This immediate is the content determination, the simple ground; but as this, namely, as ground, it is equally repelled from itself and likewise is related to itself as to an other. Thus the total ground-relation has determined itself to be conditioning mediation.
C. CONDITION
(a) The Relatively Unconditioned
1. Ground is the immediate, and the grounded the mediated. But it is positing reflection; as such it makes itself into a positedness and is presupposing reflection; thus it relates itself to itself as to a sublated moment, to an immediate by which it is itself mediated. This mediation, as the progress from the immediate to the ground, is not an external reflection but, as we have seen, the native act of the ground itself, or, what is the same thing, the ground-relation, as reflection into self-identity, is equally essentially self-alienating reflection. The immediate to which the ground is related as to its essential presupposition is condition; real ground is therefore essentially conditioned. The determinateness which it contains is the otherness of itself.
Condition is, therefore, first, an immediate manifold something. Secondly, this something is related to another, to something that is ground, not of the first something, but in some other respect; for the first something is itself immediate and without a ground. According to that relation it is posited; the immediate something ought to be, as condition, not for itself but for something else. But at the same time, the fact that it is thus for another, is itself only a positedness; this fact that it is a posited is sublated in its immediacy, and a something is indifferent to its being a condition. Thirdly, condition is an immediate in such a manner that it constitutes the presupposition of the ground. In this determination it is the form relation of the ground, withdrawn into identity with itself, and is consequently the content of the ground. But the content as such is only the indifferent unity of the ground, as in form - without form there is no content. Further, it frees itself from this indifferent unity in that, in the complete ground, the ground relation becomes a relation external to its identity, whereby the content acquires immediacy. In so far, therefore, as condition is that in which the ground-relation has its self-identity, it constitutes the content of the ground; but because the content is indifferent to this form, it is only implicitly its content, something which has yet to become content and hence constitutes material for the ground. Posited as condition, something has the determination (in accordance with the second moment) of losing its indifferent immediacy and becoming moment of something else. Through its immediacy it is indifferent to this relation; but, in so far as it enters into this relation, it constitutes the in-itself of the ground and is for the latter the unconditioned. In order to be condition, it has in the ground its presupposition and is itself conditioned; but this determination is external to it.
2. Something is not through its condition; its condition is not its ground. Condition is the moment of unconditioned immediacy for the ground, but is not itself the movement and the positing that is negatively self-related and that makes itself into positedness. The ground-relation, therefore, stands over against condition. Something has, apart from its condition, also a ground. This is the empty movement of reflection, because reflection has the immediacy that is its presupposition, outside it. But it is the whole form and the self-subsistent mediating process; for the condition is not its ground. Since this mediating process is, as a positing, self-related, it is from this side also an immediate and unconditioned; true, it presupposes itself, but as a discarded or sublated positing; on the other hand, what it is according to its determination, that it is in and for itself. In so far as the ground relation is a self-subsistent relation-to-self, and it has within it the identity of reflection, it has its own peculiar content over against the content of the condition. The former is content of the ground and therefore essentially formed; the latter, on the other hand, is only an immediate material, whose relation to the ground is external to it while, at the same time, it no less constitutes the in-itself of the ground. It is thus a mixture of the self-subsistent content which has no relation to the content of the ground-determination, and of such content that enters into the ground-determination and, as its material, is meant to become a moment of it.
3. The two sides of the whole, condition and ground, are, then, on the one hand, indifferent and unconditioned in relation to each other; the one, as the unrelated, to which the relation in which it is condition is external, the other as the relation or form, for which the determinate being of the condition exists only as material, as something passive, whose form, which it possesses on its own account, is unessential. But further, the two sides are also mediated. Condition is the in-itself of the ground; so much is it an essential moment of the ground-relation, that it is the simple self-identity of the ground. But this, too, is sublated; this in-itself is only a positedness; the immediate determinate being is indifferent to the fact that it is condition. The fact, therefore, that the condition is an in-itself for the ground constitutes that side of it which makes it mediated. Similarly, the ground-relation, in its self-subsistence, also has a presupposition, and has its in-itself outside it. Thus each of the two sides is the contradiction of indifferent immediacy and essential mediation, both in a single relation-or the contradiction of self-subsistent existence and the determination of being only a moment.
(b) The Absolutely Unconditioned
At first, each of the two relatively unconditioned sides is reflected into the other; condition, as an immediate, into the form relation of the ground, and the latter into the immediate determinate being as its positedness; but each, apart from this reflected being of its other in it, is self-subsistent and has its own peculiar content.
At first, condition is an immediate determinate being; its form has the two moments, (a) of positedness, according to which it is, as condition, material and moment of the ground, and (b) of the in-itself, according to which it constitutes the essentiality of the ground or its simple reflection into itself. Both sides of the form are external to the immediate determinate being; for this is the sublated ground relation. But, first, determinate being is in its own self only this, to sublate itself in its immediacy and to fall to the ground [zugrunde zu gehen]. Being is simply only the becoming of essence; it is its essential nature to make itself into a positedness and into an identity which, through negation of itself, is the immediate. The form-determinations, therefore, of positedness and of the self-identical in-itself, the form through which the immediate determinate being is condition, are therefore not external to it; on the contrary, it is this reflection itself. Secondly, as condition, being is now also posited as that which it essentially is, namely, as moment, hence as moment of an other, and at the same time, as an in-itself, likewise of an other; but in itself being only is through the negation of itself, namely, through ground and through ground's self-sublating, and therefore presupposing, reflection; the in-itself of being is accordingly only a posited. This in-itself of condition has two sides: one is its essentiality as essentiality of the ground, while the other is the immediacy of its determinate being. Or rather, both are the same. Determinate being is an immediate, but the immediacy is essentially the mediated, namely, through the self-sublating ground. As this immediacy that is mediated by a self-sublating process of mediation, it is at the same time the in-itself of the ground and the unconditioned of its unconditioned side; but this in-itself is itself in turn also no less only a moment or a positedness, for it is mediated. Condition is accordingly the whole form of the ground relation; it is its presupposed in-itself, but as presupposed it is itself a positedness and its immediacy is this, to make itself into a positedness and so to repel itself from itself, in such a manner that it both falls to the ground and is ground, the ground making itself into a positedness and thus also into a grounded, and these two are one and the same thing.
Similarly, in the conditioned ground, the in-itself is not only the reflection [Scheinen] of an other in it. This ground is the self-subsistent, that is, the self-relating, reflection of the positing, and consequently the self-identical; or, it is in its own self its in-itself and its content. But it is also presupposing reflection; it is negatively related to itself and opposes its in-itself to itself as to an other, and condition, according to its moment of in-itself as well as according to its moment of immediate determinate being, is the ground-relation's own moment; the immediate determinate being is essentially only through its ground and is moment of itself as a presupposing. This ground, therefore, is equally the whole itself.
What is present, therefore, is simply only one whole of form, but equally only one whole of content. For the peculiar content of condition is essential content only in so far as it is the self-identity of reflection in the form, or, as this immediate determinate being is in its own self the ground-relation. Further, this immediate determinate being is only condition through the presupposing reflection of the ground; it is the self-identity of the ground, or its content, to which it opposes itself. Therefore the determinate being is not merely formless material for the ground relation; on the contrary, because it has in its own self this form it is a formed matter, and since also in its identity with it, it is indifferent to it, it is content. Finally, it is the same content as that possessed by ground, for it is content precisely as that which is self-identical in the form relation.
The two sides of the whole, condition and ground, are therefore one essential unity, equally as content and as form. They spontaneously pass over into one another or, since they are reflections, they posit themselves as sublated, relate themselves to this their negation and reciprocally presuppose one another. But at the same time this is only a single reflection of both and therefore their presupposing is also only one; or rather this reciprocal presupposing becomes a presupposing of their one identity as their subsistence and substrate. This identity of their common content and unity of form is the truly unconditioned, the fact in its own self. As we saw above, condition is only the relatively unconditioned. It is therefore usually regarded as itself conditioned and a fresh condition is asked for, and thus the usual infinite progress from condition to condition is introduced. Now why does a condition prompt us to ask for a fresh condition, that is, why is a condition regarded as a conditioned? Because it is some finite determinate being or other. But this is a further determination, which is not contained in its Notion. Condition as such is conditioned, solely because it is a posited in-itself; it is therefore sublated in the absolutely unconditioned.
Now this contains within itself the two sides, condition and ground, as its moments; it is the unity into which these have withdrawn. Together they constitute its form or positedness. The unconditioned fact is condition of both, but it is absolute condition, that is, condition that is itself ground. Now as ground, it is the negative identity that has repelled itself into these two moments; first, into the shape of the sublated ground relation, of an immediate, self-external manifoldness, without unity, which relates itself to the ground as something other to it, and at the same time constitutes the ground's in-itself; secondly, into the shape of an internal, simple form, which is ground, but relates itself to the self-identical immediate as to an other and determines it as condition, that is, determines this its in-itself as its own moment. These two sides presuppose the totality in such a manner that it is that which posits them. Conversely, because they presuppose the totality, this in turn also seems to be conditioned by them, and the fact seems to arise from its condition and from its ground. But since these two sides have shown themselves to be an identity, the relation of condition and ground has vanished; they are reduced to an illusory being; the absolutely unconditioned in its movement of positing and presupposing is only the movement in which this illusory being sublates itself. It is the fact's own act to condition itself and to oppose itself as ground to its conditions; but its relation, as a relation between conditions and ground, is a reflection into itself, and its relation to them is its union with itself.
(c) Emergence of the Fact [Sache] into Existence
The absolutely unconditioned is the absolute ground that is identical with its condition, the immediate fact in its truly essential nature. As ground, it relates itself negatively to itself, makes itself into a positedness; but this positedness is a reflection that is complete in both its aspects and a form-relation that is self-identical in them as we have seen from their Notion. This positedness is accordingly, first, the sublated ground, the fact as the reflectionless immediate-the side of conditions. This is the totality of the determinations of the fact-the fact itself, but cast out into the externality of being, the restored sphere of being. In condition, essence releases the unity of its reflection-into-self as an immediacy, which however from now on has the character of being a conditioning presupposition and of essentially constituting only one of the sides of essence. The conditions are, therefore, the whole content of the fact, because they are the unconditioned in the form of formless being. But they also have, by reason of this form, another shape besides the determinations of the content as it is in the fact as such. They appear as a multiplicity without unity, mixed with non-essentials and other circumstances that do not belong to the sphere of determinate being in so far as this constitutes the conditions of this specific fact. For the absolute, unrestricted fact, the sphere of being itself is the condition. The ground, which withdraws into itself, posits condition as the first immediacy and it relates itself to this as to its unconditioned. This immediacy as sublated reflection is reflection in the element of being, which thus develops itself as such into a whole; the form, as a determinateness of being, goes on to multiply itself and thus appears as a manifold content distinct from and indifferent to the determination of reflection. The unessential, which belongs to the sphere of being and which the latter, in so far as it is condition, strips off, is the determinateness of immediacy in which the unity of form is submerged. This form unity, as the relation of being, is present in it at first as becoming-the transition of one determinateness of being into another. But the becoming of being is further the transition to essence and the withdrawal into ground. The determinate being, therefore, that constitutes the conditions is, in truth, not determined as condition by something else and used by it as material; on the contrary, it is through its own act that it makes itself into a moment of another. Also, far from its becoming starting from itself as the true first and immediate, the truth is that its immediacy is only something presupposed, and the movement of its becoming is the act of reflection itself. Accordingly the truth of determinate being is to be condition; its immediacy is, solely through the reflection of the ground-relation which posits itself as sublated. Becoming is, therefore, like immediacy, only the illusory being of the unconditioned, in that this presupposes itself and therein has its form; and the immediacy of being is accordingly essentially only a moment of the form.
The other side of this reflective movement [Scheinen] of the unconditioned is the ground-relation as such, determined as form over against the immediacy of the conditions and the content. But it is the form of the absolute fact, and it possesses within itself the unity of its form with itself, or its content; and in the very act of determining this content to be condition it sublates the diversity of the content and reduces it to a moment, just as, conversely, as essenceless form it gives itself the immediacy of a subsistence in this self-identity. The reflection of the ground sublates the immediacy of the conditions and relates them, so making them moments in the unity of the fact; but the conditions are presupposed by the unconditioned fact itself, which thus sublates its own positing, or its positing directly converts itself equally into a becoming. The two are therefore one unity; the immanent movement of the conditions is a becoming, a withdrawal into ground to the positing of ground; but the ground as posited, that is to say, as sublated, is the immediate. The ground relates itself negatively to itself, makes itself into a positedness and grounds the conditions; but in thus determining immediate determinate being as a posited, the ground sublates it and thereby first constitutes itself ground. This reflection is accordingly the mediation of the unconditioned fact with itself through its negation. Or rather, the reflection of the unconditioned is at first a presupposing-but this sublating of itself is immediately a positing which determines; secondly, in this presupposing, reflection is immediately a sublating of what is presupposed and a determining from within itself; thus this determining is again a sublating of the positing and is in its own self a becoming. In this, the mediation as a return-to-self through negation has vanished; it is the simple, internal movement of reflection [einfache, in sich scheinende Reflexion] and groundless absolute becoming. The movement of the fact to become posited, on the one hand through its conditions, and on the other through its ground, is merely the vanishing of the illusion of mediation. The process by which the fact is posited is accordingly an emergence, the simple entry of the fact into Existence, the pure movement of the fact to itself.
When all the conditions of a fact are present, it enters into Existence. The fact is, before it exists; it is, in fact, as essence or as an unconditioned; secondly, it has determinate being or is determinate, and this in the two-fold manner above considered, on the one hand, in its conditions, and on the other, in its ground. In the former, it has given itself the form of external groundless being because it is, as absolute reflection, negative self-relation, and it makes itself into its own presupposition.
This presupposed un-conditioned is therefore the groundless immediate, whose being is nothing except to be present as something groundless. When, therefore, all the conditions of the fact are present, that is when the totality of the fact is posited as a groundless immediate, this scattered multiplicity inwardises [erinnert] itself in its own self. The whole fact must be present in its conditions, or all the conditions belong to its Existence, for all of them constitute the reflection; or, determinate being, because it is condition, is determined by form; consequently its determinations are determinations of reflection and the positing of one essentially involves the positing of the others. The inwardisation of the conditions is at first the falling to the ground [das Zugrundegehen] of immediate determinate being and the becoming of the ground. But this makes the ground a posited ground, that is, it is just as much sublated ground and immediate being, as it is ground. When therefore all the conditions of the fact are present, they sublate themselves as immediate being and presupposition, and equally ground sublates itself. Ground emerges merely as an illusory being that immediately vanishes; accordingly, this emergence is the tautological movement of the fact to itself, and its mediation by conditions and ground is the vanishing of both. The emergence into Existence is therefore immediate in such a manner that it is mediated only by the vanishing of mediation.
The fact emerges from the ground. It is not grounded or posited by it in such a manner that ground remains as a substrate; on the contrary, the positing is the movement of the ground outwards to itself and its simple vanishing. Through its union with the conditions, ground receives an external immediacy and the moment of being. But it receives this not as something external, nor through an external relation; on the contrary, as ground, it makes itself into a positedness, its simple essentiality unites with itself in the positedness and is, in this sublation of itself, the vanishing of its difference from its positedness, and is thus simple essential immediacy. Ground, therefore, does not remain behind as something distinct from the grounded, but the truth of grounding is that in it ground is united with itself, so that its reflection into another is its reflection into itself. Consequently, the fact is not only the unconditioned but also the groundless, and it emerges from ground only in so far as ground has 'fallen to the ground' and ceased to be ground: it emerges from the groundless, that is, from its own essential negativity or pure form.
This immediacy that is mediated by ground and condition and is self-identical through the sublating of mediation, is Existence.
Section Two: Appearance
Essence must appear.
Being is the absolute abstraction; this negativity is not something external to being, which is being, and nothing but being, only as this absolute negativity. For the same reason, being only is as self-sublating being and is essence. But, conversely, essence as simple equality with itself is likewise being. The doctrine of being contains the first proposition: being is essence. The second proposition: essence is being, constitutes the content of the first section of the doctrine of essence. But this being into which essence makes itself is essential being, Existence; it is a being that has come forth from negativity and inwardness.
Thus essence appears. Reflection is the showing of illusory being within essence itself. Its determinations are enclosed within the unity simply and solely as posited, sublated determinations; or, reflection is essence which, in its positedness, is immediately identical with itself. But since essence is ground, it gives itself a real determination through its reflection, which is self-sublating or which returns into itself; further, since this determination, or the otherness, of the ground relation sublates itself in the reflection of the ground and becomes Existence, this endows the form determinations with an element of self-subsistence. Their illusory being completes itself to become Appearance.
The essentiality that has advanced to immediacy is, in the first instance, Existence, and an existent or thing — as an undifferentiated unity of essence with its immediacy. It is true that the thing contains reflection, but its negativity s, in the first instance, extinguished in its immediacy; but because its ground is essentially reflection, its immediacy sublates itself and the thing makes itself into positedness.
Secondly, then, it is Appearance. Appearance is that which the thing is in itself, or its truth. But this merely posited Existence which is reflected into otherness is equally the transcending of its itself in its infinitude; to the world of appearance is opposed the world that is reflected into itself, the world of essence.
But the being that appears and essential being, simply stand in relation to one another. Thus Existence is, thirdly, essential relation; what appears manifests what is essential, and this is in its Appearance.
The relation is the still-imperfect union of reflection-into-otherness and reflection-into-self; the perfect interpenetration of both is actuality.
Chapter 1: Existence
Just as the proposition of ground states that whatever is has a ground, or is something posited or mediated, so too we must formulate a proposition of Existence, and in these terms: whatever is, exists. The truth of being is to be, not a first immediate, but essence that has emerged into immediacy.
But when further it was also said, 'Whatever exists has a ground and is conditioned', then equally it must also be said that it has no ground and is unconditioned. For Existence is the immediacy that has emerged from the sublating of the mediation by which ground and condition are related, and in emerging it sublates this emergence itself.
In so far as the proofs of the existence of God may be mentioned here, we may begin by recalling that besides immediate being and Existence (the being that proceeds from essence), there is yet a third being that proceeds from the Notion, namely, objectivity.
Proof is, in general, mediated cognition. The various kinds of being demand or imply their own kind of mediation, so that the nature of proof too, will differ in respect of each. The ontological proof proposes to start from the Notion; it makes the sum total of all realities its basis and then proceeds to subsume existence, too, under reality. It is therefore the mediation that is syllogism and that does not as yet come up for consideration here. We have already considered above Kant's objections to this proof and have remarked that Kant understands by Existence, the determinate being whereby something enters into the context of the totality of experience, that is, into the determination of an otherness and into relation to an other. Thus something, as existent, is mediated by an other, and existence in general is the side of its mediation. Now what Kant calls a concept, namely, something taken as only simply self-related, or conception as such, does not contain its mediation; in abstract self-identity, opposition is left out. The ontological proof would now have to demonstrate that the absolute concept, namely the concept of God, attains to a determinate being, to a mediation, or how simple essence mediates itself with mediation. This is effected by the stated subsumption of existence under its universal, namely, reality, which is assumed as the middle term between God in his concept, on the one hand, and existence on the other. This mediation, in so far as it has the form of a syllogism, is, as we have said, not under discussion here. But the preceding exposition has shown what is the true nature of this mediation of essence with Existence. The nature of proof itself will be considered in the doctrine of cognition. Here we have only to indicate what is relevant to the nature of mediation in general.
The proofs of the existence of God adduce a ground for this existence. It is not supposed to be an objective ground of God's existence; for this existence is in and for itself. Thus it is merely a ground for cognition. It thereby declares itself to be a ground that vanishes in the object which at first appears to be grounded by it. Now the ground that is derived from the contingency of the world implies the regress of the contingency into absolute essence; for the contingent is that which is in itself groundless and self-sublating. In this way, therefore, absolute essence does in fact proceed from the groundless; the ground sublates itself and with this there also vanishes the illusion of the relation that was given to God, to be that which is grounded in an other. This mediation is therefore true mediation. But this nature of its mediation is unknown to that ratiocinative [beweisende] reflection; on the one hand, it takes itself to be something merely subjective and by so doing removes its mediation from God himself, but, on the other hand, it does not for that reason recognise the mediating movement, that it is and how it is in essence itself. Its true relationship consists in this, that it is both of these things in one: mediation as such but, of course, at the same time a subjective, external, that is, self-external, mediation, which sublates itself again within itself. But in the above proof, existence is given the false relationship of appearing only as mediated or posited.
Thus, on the other side, Existence also cannot be considered merely as an immediate. Taken in the determination of an immediacy, the comprehension of God's existence has been declared to be unprovable and knowledge of it to be only an immediate consciousness, a belief in it. Knowing is supposed to have reached this conclusion, that it knows nothing, that is to say, that it surrenders again its mediating movement and the determinations that crop up in it. This is also evident from the foregoing; only we must add that reflection, in ending with the sublating of itself, does not therefore have for result nothing (for in that case the positive knowledge of essence as an immediate relation to it would be separate from that result and a spontaneous emergence, an act starting only from itself); on the contrary, this end itself, this falling to the ground of the mediation, is at the same time the ground from which the immediate proceeds. Language, as was remarked above, combines the meaning of this downfall [Untergang] and of ground; the essence of God, it is said, is the abyss [Abgrund] for finite reason. This it is, indeed, in so far as finite reason surrenders its finitude and sinks its mediating movement therein; but this abyss, the negative ground, is also the positive ground of the emergence of simply affirmative being [Seienden], of essence which is in its own self immediate; mediation is an essential movement. Mediation through ground sublates itself, but does not leave the ground behind as a substrate; in that case, what proceeded from the ground would be something posited, having its essence elsewhere, namely in the ground; but on the contrary, this ground, as an abyss, is the vanished mediation; and conversely, it is only the vanished mediation that is at the same time ground, and only through this negation the self-equal and immediate.
Existence, then, is not to be taken here as a predicate or as a determination of essence, the proposition of which would run: essence exists, or has existence; on the contrary, essence has passed over into Existence; Existence is essence's absolute emptying of itself or self-alienation, nor has it remained behind on the further side of it. The proposition should therefore run: essence is Existence; it is not distinct from its Existence. Essence has passed over into Existence in so far as essence as ground no longer distinguishes itself from itself as the grounded, or in so far as this ground has sublated itself. But this negation is equally essentially its position, or absolutely positive continuity with itself; Existence is the reflection of the ground into itself, its identity-with-self achieved in its negation, and therefore the mediation that has posited itself as identical with itself and thereby is an immediacy.
Now because Existence is essentially mediation-with-self, the determinations of the mediation are present in it, but in such a manner that they are also reflected into themselves and their subsistence is essential and immediate. As the immediacy that posits itself through sublation, existence is negative unity and a being-within-self; it therefore determines itself immediately as an Existent and as thing.
A. THE THING AND ITS PROPERTIES
Existence as an existent is posited in the form of the negative unity which it essentially is. But this negative unity is at first only an immediate determination, hence the one of something in general. But the existent something is distinct from the something that has simply affirmative being [dem seienden Etwas]. The former is essentially that immediacy which has arisen through the reflection of mediation into itself. The existent something is thus a thing.
The thing is distinct from its Existence just as something can be distinguished from its being. The thing and the existent are immediately one and the same. But because Existence is not the first immediacy of being but has within itself the moment of mediation, its further determination as thing and the distinguishing of both, is not a transition but really an analysis; and Existence as such contains this distinction itself in the moment of its mediation; the distinction of thing-in-itself and of external Existence.
(a) Thing-in-itself and Existence
1. The thing-in-itself is the existent as the essential immediate which has resulted from the sublated mediation. Thus mediation is equally essential to the thing; but this difference in this first or immediate Existence falls apart into indifferent determinations. The one side, namely the mediation of the thing, is its non-reflected immediacy, and therefore its being as such which, because it is at the same time determined as mediation, is a determinate being which is other to itself and within itself manifold and external. But it is not only determinate being; it stands in relation to the sublated mediation and is an essential immediacy; consequently it is determinate being as an unessential, as a positedness. (If the thing is distinguished from its Existence, it is the possible, the thing of ordinary conception or figment of thought which, as such, is at the same time supposed not to exist. However, the determination of possibility and the opposition of the thing to its Existence come later.) the thing-in-itself and its mediated being are both contained in Existence and both are themselves existences; the thing-in-itself exists and is the essential Existence of the thing, but the mediated being is its unessential existence.
The thing-in-itself as the simple reflectedness of Existence within itself is not the ground of the unessential determinate being: it is the unmoved, indeterminate unity precisely because it has the determination of being sublated mediation and therefore of being only the substrate of the determinate being. For this reason reflection, too, as determinate being that mediates itself through other, falls outside the thing-in-itself.
This is not supposed to contain within it any specific manifoldness; and it therefore only obtains this when brought into relationship with external reflection; but it remains indifferent to the, latter. (The thing-in-itself has colour only in relation to the eye, smell in relation to the nose, and so on). Its diversity consists of the ways in which it is regarded by an other, specific relations which this other forms with the thing-in-itself and which are not the latter's own determinations.
2. Now this other is reflection which, determined as external, is first, external to itself and determinate manifoldness. Secondly, it is external to the essential existent and relates itself to it as to its absolute presupposition. But these two moments of external reflection, its own manifoldness and its relation to the thing-in-itself which is other to it, are one and the same. For this Existence is only external in so far as it relates itself to essential identity as to an other. Diversity, therefore, does not have an independent subsistence of its own on the further side of the thing-in-itself, but is only as illusory being over against it, in its necessary relation to it as reflex refracting itself on it. Diversity is therefore present as the relation of an other to the thing-in-itself; but this other is not anything subsisting on its own account but is only as relation to the thing-in-itself; but at the same time it is only as the repelling from this; it is thus the unsupported counter-thrust of itself within itself.
Now since the thing-in-itself is the essential identity of Existence, this essenceless reflection does not attach to it but collapses within itself externally to it. It falls to the ground and thus itself becomes essential identity or thing-in-itself. This can also be considered in the following manner: essenceless Existence has in the thing-in-itself its reflection-into-self; it is related to it in the first instance as to its other; but as the other over against that which is in itself, it is the sublating of its own self and the becoming of being-in-self. The thing-in-itself is therefore identical with external existence.
In the thing-in-itself this is displayed in the following manner. The thing-in-itself is self-related, essential Existence; it is identity-with-self only in so far as it contains within itself the negativity of reflection-into-itself; consequently that which appeared as an Existence external to it is a moment within it. It is, therefore, also a self-repelling thing-in-itself which therefore is related to itself as to an other. Hence there are now a plurality of things-in-themselves standing in the relation of external reflection to one another. This unessential Existence is their relation to one another as to others; but further, it is essential to these others themselves-or, in other words, this unessential Existence in collapsing within itself is a thing-in-itself, but an other than the first thing-in-itself; for the former is an immediate essentiality, the latter, however, the essentiality that has emerged from unessential Existence. But this other thing-in-itself is only an other in general; for as a self-identical thing it has no further determinateness over against the first; it is the reflection of unessential Existence into itself like the first. The determinateness of the various things-in-themselves over against one another falls therefore into external reflection.
3. This external reflection is now a relating of the things-in-themselves to one another, their reciprocal mediation as others. The things-in-themselves are thus the extremes of a syllogism whose middle term constitutes their external Existence, the Existence through which they are others for one another and distinct from one another. This their difference falls only in their relation; they send, as it were, determinations only from their surface into the relation and remain themselves, as absolutely reflected into themselves, indifferent towards the relation. Now this relationship constitutes the totality of Existence. The thing-in-itself stands in relation to a reflection external to it in which it possesses a multiplicity of determinations; this is the repelling of itself from itself into another thing-in-itself; this repelling is the counter-thrust of itself internally, since each is only an other, as a reflecting of itself out of the other; it has its positedness not in its own self but in the other, is determined only by the determinateness of the other; this other is equally determined only by the determinateness of the first. But the two things-in-themselves, since thus they do not contain the difference within themselves but each has it only in the other, are not distinguished from one another; the thing-in-itself, since it is supposed to be related to the other extreme as to another thing-in-itself, is related to it as something that is not distinguished from it, and the external reflection, which should constitute the mediating connection between the extremes, is only a relating of the thing-'n-itself to itself, or essentially its reflection into itself; it is therefore only an implicit determinateness, or the determinateness of the thing-in-itself. The thing-in-itself, therefore, has the determinateness, not in a relation (external to it) to another thing-in-itself, and of this other to it; the determinateness is not merely a surface of the thing-in-itself but is the essential mediation of itself with itself as with an other. The two things-in-themselves which are supposed to constitute the extremes of the relation, since they are supposed not to possess in themselves any determinateness over against one another, intact collapse into one; there is only one thing-in-itself, which in external reflection is related to itself, and it is its own self-relation as to an other that constitutes its determinateness.
This determinateness of the thing-in-itself is the property of the thing.
(b) Property
Quality is the immediate determinateness of something, the negative itself through which being is something. Thus the property of the thing is the negativity of reflection through which Existence in general is an existent and, as simple self-identity, a thing-in-itself. But the negativity of reflection, the sublated mediation, is essentially itself a mediation and a relation, though not to an other in general like quality as the non-reflected determinateness, but relation to itself as to an other; or, a mediation which immediately is no less identity-with-self. The abstract thing-in-itself is itself this relationship in which it returns into itself out of the other; it is thereby determinate in its own self; but its determinateness is a constitution which, as such, is itself a determination, and in its relationship to the other does not pass over into otherness and is free from alteration.
A thing has properties; they are, first, the determinate relations of the thing to another thing; property exists only as a mode of relationship between them and is therefore the external reflection and the side of the thing's positedness. But, secondly, the thing in this positedness is in itself; it maintains itself in the relation to the other and is, therefore, admittedly only a surface with which Existence is exposed to the becoming and alteration of being; but the property is not lost in this.
A thing has the property of effecting this or that in another thing and of expressing itself in a peculiar manner in its relation to it. It demonstrates this property only under the condition that the other thing has a corresponding constitution, but at the same time the property is peculiar to the first thing and is its self-identical substrate [Grundlage]; it is for this reason that this reflected quality is called property. In this the thing passes over into an externality in which, however, the property is preserved. Through its properties the thing becomes cause, and cause is this, that it preserves itself as effect. Here, however, the thing is so far only the quiescent thing of many properties and is not yet determined as actual cause; it is so far only the implicit reflection of its determinations, not yet itself the reflection which posits them.
The thing-in-itself is, therefore, as we have seen not merely thing-in-itself in such a manner that its properties are the positedness of an external reflection; on the contrary, they are its own determinations through which it enters into relationships in a determinate manner; it is not a substrate devoid of determinations and lying beyond its external Existence, but is present in its properties as ground, that is, it is identity-with-self in its positedness; but it is, at the same time, conditioned ground, that is, its positedness is equally a self-external reflection; it is reflected into itself and is in itself only in so far as it is external. Through Existence, the thing-in-itself enters into external relationships and Existence consists in this externality; it is the immediacy of being and so the thing is subject to alteration; but Existence is also the reflected immediacy of the ground, and the thing is therefore in itself in its alteration. But this mention of the ground-relation is not to be taken here as meaning that the thing is determined simply as ground of its properties; thinghood itself is, as such, the ground-determination, the property is not distinct from its ground, nor does it constitute merely the positedness, but is the ground that has passed over into its externality and is therefore truly ground reflected into itself. Property itself, as such, is ground, implicitly a positedness, or, it constitutes the form of its identity with itself; its determinateness is the self-external reflection of the ground; and the whole is ground that in its repelling and determining, in its external immediacy, is self-related ground.
The thing-in-itself exists, therefore, essentially, and that it does exist means, conversely, that Existence is, as an external immediacy, at the same time being-in-self.
Remark: The Thing-in-itself of Transcendental Idealism
Mention has already been made above of the thing-in-itself in connection with the moment of determinate being, of being-in-self, and it was remarked that the thing-in-itself as such is nothing else but the empty abstraction from all determinateness, of which admittedly we can know nothing, for the very reason that it is supposed to be the abstraction from every determination. The thing-in-itself being thus presupposed as the indeterminate, all determination falls outside it into an alien reflection to which it is indifferent.
For transcendental idealism this external reflection is consciousness. Since this philosophical system places every determinateness of things both as regards form and content, in consciousness, the fact that I see the leaves. of a tree not as black but as green, the sun as round and not square, and taste sugar as sweet and not bitter, that I determine the first and second strokes of a clock as successive and not as one beside the other, nor determine the first as cause and the second as effect, and so on, all this is something which, from this standpoint, falls in me, the subject.
This crude presentation of subjective idealism is directly contradicted by the consciousness of freedom, according to which I know myself rather as the universal and undetermined, and separate off from myself those manifold and necessary determinations, recognising them as something external for me and belonging only to things. In this consciousness of its freedom the ego is to itself that true identity reflected into itself, which the thing-in-itself was supposed to be. 1 have shown elsewhere that this transcendental idealism does not get away from the limitation of the ego by the object, in general, from the finite world, but only changes the form of the limitation, which remains for it an absolute, merely giving it a subjective instead of an objective shape and making into determinatenesses of the ego and into a turbulent whirlpool of change within it (as if the ego were a thing) that which the ordinary consciousness knows as a manifoldness and alteration belonging only to things external to it. At present we are considering only the thing-in-itself and the reflection which is in the first instance external to it; this reflection has not yet determined itself to consciousness, nor the thing-in-itself to ego. We have seen from the nature of the thing-in-itself and of external reflection that this same external reflection determines itself to be the thing-in-itself, or, conversely, becomes the first thing-in-itself's own determination.
Now the inadequacy of the standpoint at which this philosophy stops short consists essentially in holding fast to the abstract thing-in-itself as an ultimate determination, and in opposing to the thing-in-itself reflection or the determinateness and manifoldness of the properties; whereas in fact the thing-in-itself essentially possesses this external reflection within itself and determines itself to be a thing with its own determinations, a thing endowed with properties, in this way demonstrating the abstraction of the thing as a pure thing-in-itself to be an untrue determination.
(c) The Reciprocal Action of Things
The thing-in-itself essentially exists; the external immediacy and determinateness belongs to its in-itself or to its reflection-into-self. By virtue of this, the thing-in-itself is a thing which has properties, and hence there are a number of things which are distinguished from one another not in respect of something alien to them but through themselves.
These many different things stand in essential reciprocal action their properties; the property is this reciprocal relation itself and apart from it the thing is nothing; the reciprocal determination, the middle terms of the things-in-themselves, which, as extremes, are supposed to remain indifferent to this their relation, is itself the self-identical reflection and the thing-in-itself which these extremes are supposed to be. Thinghood is thus reduced to the form of indeterminate identity-with-self which has its essentiality only in its property. If, therefore, one is speaking of a thing or things in general without any determinate property, then their difference is merely indifferent, quantitative. What is considered as one thing can equally be made into or considered as several things; the separation or union of them is external. A book is a thing and each of its leaves is also a thing, and so too is each bit of its pages, and so on to infinity. The determinateness through which one thing is this thing only, lies solely in its properties. Through them it distinguishes itself from other things, because property is negative reflection and a distinguishing; the thing therefore contains the difference of itself from other things solely in its property. This is the difference reflected into itself, through which the thing, in its positedness, that is, in its relation to another, is at the same time indifferent to the other and to its relation to it. All that remains therefore to the thing without its properties is abstract being-in-self or in-itselfness, an unessential compass and external holding together. The true in-itself is the in-itself in its positedness: and this is property. With this, thinghood has passed over into property.
The thing in its relationship to property should be an implicit extreme, and property should constitute the middle term between the related things. But it is in this relation that the things encounter one another as the self-repelling reflection in which they are distinguished and related. This their difference and relation is one reflection and one continuity of them. Accordingly the things themselves fall only within this continuity which is property; and as extremes which would have a continuing Existence apart from this property, they vanish.
Consequently property, which was supposed to constitute the relation of the self-subsistent extremes, is the self-subsistent itself. The things, on the other hand, are the unessential. They are an essential only as the reflection that is self-differentiating and self-relating; but this is property. This, therefore, is not that which is sublated in the thing, nor is it the thing's mere moment; on the contrary, the thing is, in truth, only that unessential compass which, though a negative unity, is only like the one of something, namely an immediate one. Previously the thing was determined as an unessential compass in so far as it was made such by external abstraction which strips it of its property; but now this abstraction has happened through the transition of the thing-in-itself into property itself, but with inversion of the values: whereas in the former act of abstraction the abstract thing without its property was still vaguely conceived of as the essential, but the property as an external determination, here the thing as such spontaneously determines itself into an indifferent external form of the property. Hence property is now freed from the indeterminate and impotent connection which is the one of the thing: it is that which constitutes the thing's subsistence, a self-subsistent matter. Since this is a simple continuity with itself it possesses form, in the first instance, only as diversity; consequently there are various self-subsistent matters of this kind and the thing consists of them.
B. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE THING OUT OF MATTERS
The transition of property into a matter or into a self-subsistent stuff is the familiar transition performed on sensible matter by chemistry when it seeks to represent the properties of colour, smell, taste and so on, as luminous matter, colouring matter, odorific matter, sour, bitter matter and so on, or merely straightway postulates others like heat matter or caloric, electrical and magnetic matter, in the conviction that it has got hold of properties in their truth. Equally current is the expression that things consist of various matters. One is careful not to call these matters things; although it would certainly be admitted that, e.g. a pigment is a thing; but I do not know whether e.g. luminous matter, heat matter or electrical matter and so on, are also called things. Things and their constituents are distinguished without it being exactly stated whether and to what extent the latter are also things or perhaps only half things; but they are at least existents in general.
The necessity of making the transition from properties to matters, or of postulating that properties are in truth matters, has resulted from the fact that properties are the essential and therefore the truly self-subsistent element of things. But at the same time, the reflection of property into itself constitutes only one side of the whole reflection; namely, the sublating of the difference and the continuity of the property (which was supposed to be an Existence for an other) with itself. Thinghood, as negative reflection-into-self and a distinguishing which repels itself from an other, is thereby reduced to an unessential moment; but in this process it has at the same time further determined itself. First, this negative moment has preserved itself; for property has become continuous with itself and a self-subsistent matter only in so far as the difference of things has sublated itself; the continuity of the property into otherness therefore itself contains the moment of the negative, and its self-subsistence is, as this negative unity, the restored something of thinghood; the negative self-subsistence over against the positive of matter. Secondly, through this the thing has advanced from its indeterminateness to complete determinateness. As thing-in-itself it is abstract identity, the simply negative Existence, or Existence determined as the indeterminate; next, the thing is determined by its properties, by which it is supposed to be distinguished from other things; but it is, in fact, through property that it is continuous with other things and consequently this incomplete difference sublates itself. Through this the thing has returned into itself and is now determined as determinate; it is in itself determinate or this thing.
But, thirdly, this return-into-self, though a self-related determination is at the same time unessential; the self-continuous subsistence constitutes the self-subsistent matter in which the difference of things, their intrinsic and explicit determinateness, is sublated and an externality. Therefore, though the thing as this thing is a complete determinateness, this determinateness is determinateness in the element of unessentiality.
Considered from the side of the movement of property, this results in the following manner. Property is not only an external determination but an intrinsic Existence. This unity of externality and essentiality, because it contains reflection-into-self and reflection-into-an-other, repels itself from itself, and is, on the one hand, determination as simple, self-identical, self-related self-subsistence in which the negative unity, the one of the thing, is sublated; on the other hand, it is this determination over against an other, but likewise as a one reflected into itself and intrinsically determinate; it is therefore the matters and this thing. These are the two moments of the externality which is identical with itself, or of the property reflected into itself. Property was that by which things were supposed to be distinguished; but now that it has freed itself from this its negative side, of inhering in an other, the thing, too, has been freed from its being determined by other things and has returned into itself from the relation to other; but it is at the same time only the thing-in-itself that has become an other to itself, because the manifold properties on their part have become independent and therefore their negative relation in the one of the thing is only a sublated relation. For this reason, the thing is a self-identical negation only as against the positive continuity of the matter.
The 'this' thus constitutes the complete determinateness of the thing, the determinateness being at the same time external. The thing consists of self-subsistent matters which are indifferent to their relation in the thing. This relation is therefore only an unessential combination of them and the difference of one thing from another depends on whether and in what amount a number of the particular matters are present in it. They pass out of and beyond this thing, continue themselves into other things, and the fact that they belong to this thing is not a limitation for them; and just as little are they a limitation for one another, because their negative relation is only the impotent 'this'. Therefore in their combination in the latter they do not sublate themselves; as self-subsistent they are impenetrable for one another, relate themselves in their determinateness only to themselves, and are a mutually indifferent manifoldness of subsistence; they are capable only of a quantitative limit. The thing as 'this' is this their merely quantitative relation, a mere collection, their 'also'. It consists of some quantum or other of a matter, also of a quantum of another, and again of others; this connection of having no connection alone constitutes the thing.
C. DISSOLUTION OF THE THING
This thing, which has determined itself as the merely quantitative connection of free matters, is the simply alterable thing. Its alteration consists in the exclusion from the collection or the addition to this 'also,' of one or more matters, or in the alteration of their quantitative relationship to one another. The coming-to-be and passing away of 'this' thing is the external dissolution of such external combination or the combination of matters to which it is indifferent whether they are combined or not. Matters circulate freely out of or into 'this' thing; the thing itself is absolute porosity without measure or form of its own.
The thing in its absolute determinateness through which it is 'this' thing, is thus the absolutely dissoluble thing. This dissolution is an external process of being determined, as also is the being of the thing; but its dissolution and the externality of its being is the essential element of this being; it is only the 'also', and consists only in this externality. But it also consists of its matters, and not only the abstract 'this' as such, but the whole of 'this' thing is the dissolution of itself. The thing, namely, is determined as an external collection of self-subsistent matters; these matters are not things, they do not have negative self-subsistence; but they are the properties as self-subsistents, that is, they are determinate and the determinateness is, as such, reflected into itself. The matters, therefore, are indeed simple and are only self-related; but their content is a determinateness; reflection-into-self is only the form of this content, which is not as such reflected into itself but, in accordance with its determinateness, relates itself to an other. The thing is, therefore, not merely the 'also' of the matters — their relation as mutually indifferent — but equally their negative relation; on account of their determinateness the matters themselves are this their negative reflection, which is the puncticity of the thing. One matter is not that which the other is, in accordance with the determinateness of their content as against one another; and one is not, in so far as the other is, in accordance with their self-subsistence.
The thing is, therefore, the interrelation of the matters of which it consists in such a manner that in it both the one and the other also subsist; and yet at the same time the one does not subsist in so far as the other does. In so far therefore as the one matter is in the thing, the other is thereby sublated; but the thing is at the same time the 'also', or the subsistence of the others. In the subsistence of the one matter, the other, therefore, does not subsist, and also it no less subsists in the former; and so with all these diverse matters reciprocally. Since, therefore, in the same respect as the one subsists the others also subsist, this one subsistence of them being the puncticity or negative unity of the thing, they thus simply interpenetrate one another; and since the thing is at the same time only the 'also' of them, and the matters are reflected into their determinateness, they are indifferent to one another and in their interpenetration do not touch one another. The matters are therefore essentially porous, so that one subsists in the pores or in the non-subsistence of the others; but these others are themselves porous; in their pores or non-subsistence the first and all the others also subsist; their subsistence is at the same time their sublatedness and the subsistence of others; and this subsistence of the others is equally this their sublatedness and the subsistence of the first, and in the same way of all the others. The thing is, therefore, the self-contradictory mediation of independent self-subsistence through its opposite, namely, through its negation, or of one self-subsistent matter through the subsistence and non-subsistence of an other. In this thing, Existence has reached its completion, namely, it is intrinsic being or independent subsistence, and unessential Existence in one; hence the truth of Existence is to have its being-in-self in unessentiality, or its subsisting in an other, and that, too, the absolute other, or that it has its own nullity for substrate. It is therefore Appearance.
Remark: The Porosity of Matters
It is one of the commonest determinations of ordinary thinking that a thing consists of a number of independent matters. On the one hand, the thing is considered to have properties, whose subsistence is the thing. But, on the other hand, these different determinations are regarded as matters whose subsistence is not the thing, but, conversely, the thing consists of them and is itself only their external combination and quantitative limit. Both properties and matters are the same content-determinations; only in the former case they are moments, that is, they are reflected into their negative unity as into a substrate distinct from them, namely, thinghood, and in the latter case they are self-subsistent, different determinations, each of which is reflected into its own unity-with-self. These matters are now further determined as an independent subsistence; but they are also together in a thing. This thing has the two determinations of being first, this thing, and secondly, the 'also'. The 'also' is that which presents itself in external intuition as spatial extension; but the 'this', the negative unity, is the puncticity of the thing. The matters are together in the puncticity, and their 'also' or the extension is everywhere this puncticity; for the 'also' as thinghood is essentially also determined as a negative unity. Therefore where one of these matters is, the other also is, in one and the same point; the thing does not have its colour in one place, its odorific matter in another, its heat matter in a third, and so on, but in the point in which it is warm, it is also coloured, sour, electric, and so on. Now because these matters are not outside one another but are in one 'this', they are assumed to be porous, so that one exists in the interstices of the other. But that which is present in the interstices of the other matter is itself porous; conversely, therefore, in its pores the other exists; but not only this matter but the third, tenth, and so on. They are all porous and in the interstices of each all the others are present, just as each, with all the rest, is present in the pores of every other. Accordingly they are a multiplicity which interpenetrate one another in such a manner that those which penetrate are equally penetrated by the others, so that each again penetrates its own penetratedness. Each is posited as its negation, and this negation is the subsistence of another; but this subsistence is equally the negation of this other, and the subsistence of the first.
The usual excuse by which ordinary thinking evades the contradiction of the independent subsistence of a number of matters in one thing, or their mutual indifference in their interpenetration, bases itself on the smallness of the parts and of the pores. Where difference-in-itself, contradiction, and the negation of negation occur, in general, where thinking should be in terms of the Notion, ordinary thinking falls back onto external, quantitative difference; in regard to coming-to-be and passing away, it has recourse to gradualness, and in regard to being, to smallness in which the vanishing element is reduced to an imperceptible and the contradiction to a confusion, and the true relationship is perverted into an ill-defined image which saves the self-sublating aspect of the relationship by its obscurity.
But when more light is thrown on this obscurity it is revealed as the contradiction which is partly subjective, stemming from pictorial thinking, and partly objective, stemming from the object; the elements of the contradiction are completely contained in the thinking itself. For pictorial thinking, in the first place contains the contradiction of wanting to hold on to perception and to have before it things that have real being, and secondly, of ascribing a sensible existence to the imperceptible, to what is determined by reflection; the minute parts and pores are at the same time supposed to be a sensible existence and their positedness is spoken of as if it had the same kind of reality as that which belongs to colour, heat, etc. If, further, pictorial thinking considered more closely this objective nebulosity, the pores and the minute particles, it would recognise in it not only a matter and also its negation, so that here there would be matter and alongside it its negation, the pore, and alongside this, matter again, and so on, but also that in this thing it has, in one and the same point, (1) self-subsistent matter, and (2) its negation or porosity and the other self-subsistent matter, and that this porosity and the independent subsistence of the matters in one another as in a single point is a reciprocal negation and a penetration of the penetration.
Recent expositions in physics of the expansion of steam in atmospheric air and of various gases in one another give more distinct prominence to one side of the Notion concerning the nature of the thing that has here come to view. They show, namely, that for example a certain volume takes up the same amount of steam whether it is empty of atmospheric air or filled with it; and also that the various gases diffuse themselves in one another in such a manner that each is as good as a vacuum for the other, or at least that they are not in any kind of chemical combination with one another, each remains uninterrupted by the other and continuous with itself and in its interpenetration with the others keeps itself indifferent to them. But the further moment in the Notion of the thing is that in this thing one matter is present where the other matter is, and the matter that penetrates is also penetrated in the same point; in other words, the self-subsistent is immediately the self-subsistence of an other. This is contradictory; but the thing is nothing else but this very contradiction; and that is why it is Appearance.
Corresponding in the spiritual sphere to the conception of these matters, is the conception of forces or faculties of the soul. Spirit is, in a much deeper sense this one thing, the negative unity in which its determinations interpenetrate one another. But when it is thought of as soul, it is quite frequently taken as a thing. Just as man in general is made to consist of soul and body, each of which has an independent being of its own, so too the soul is made to consist of so-called soul-forces, each of which has a self-subsistence of its own, or is an immediate, separate activity with its own peculiar nature. It is imagined that the intellect acts separately in one place and the imagination by itself in another, that intellect, memory, and so on, are each cultivated separately, and for the time being the other forces are left inactive on one side until perhaps, or perhaps not, their turn comes. In placing them in the materially simple soul thing which as simple is immaterial, the faculties are not, it is true, represented as particular matters; but as forces they are taken as equally indifferent to one another as the said matters. But spirit is not that contradiction which the thing is, which dissolves itself and passes over into Appearance; on the contrary, it is already in its own self the contradiction that has returned into its absolute unity, namely, the Notion, in which the differences are no longer to be thought of as independent, but only as particular, moments in the subject, in the simple individuality.
Chapter 2 Appearance
Existence is the immediacy of being to which essence has restored itself again. This immediacy is in itself the reflection of essence into itself. Essence, as Existence, has issued from its ground which has itself passed over into it. Existence is this reflected immediacy in so far as it is in its own self absolute negativity. It is now also posited as this in that it has determined itself as Appearance.
Accordingly Appearance is at first essence in its Existence; essence is immediately present in it. The fact that it is not immediate but reflected Existence, constitutes the moment of essence in it; or, Existence as essential Existence is Appearance.
Something is only Appearance — in the sense that Existence as such is only a posited being, not a being in and for itself. This constitutes its essentiality, to have within itself the negativity of reflection, the nature of essence. This is not an alien, external reflection to which essence belongs and which, by comparing essence with Existence, pronounces the latter to be Appearance. On the contrary, as we have seen, this essentiality of Existence which constitutes its Appearance, is the truth of Existence itself. The reflection by virtue of which it is this, is its own.
But if it is said that something is only Appearance, in the sense that contrasted with it immediate Existence is the truth, then the fact is that Appearance is the higher truth; for it is Existence as essential Appearance, whereas Existence, on the contrary, is still essenceless Appearance because it contains only the one moment of Appearance, namely, Existence as immediate reflection, not yet as its negative reflection. When Appearance is called essenceless, one thinks of the moment of its negativity as though the immediate by contrast were the positive and the true; but the fact is that this immediate does not as yet contain the essential truth. it is when Existence passes over into Appearance that it ceases to be essenceless.
Essence at first reflects an illusory being [schein] within itself, within its simple identity; as such it is abstract reflection, the pure movement from nothing through nothing back to itself. Essence appears, so that it is now real illusory being, since the moments of illusory being have Existence. As we have seen, Appearance is the thing as the negative mediation of itself with itself; the differences it contains are self-subsistent matters which are the contradiction of being an immediate subsistence and at the same time only in an alien self-subsistence, of therefore having their subsistence in the negation of their own self-subsistence, and again for that very reason also only in the negation of this alien negation, or in the negation of their own negation. Illusory being is the same mediation, but its unstable moments have, in Appearance, the shape of immediate self-subsistence. On the other hand, the immediate self-subsistence which belongs to Existence is, on its part, reduced to a moment. Appearance is accordingly the unity of illusory being and Existence.
Appearance now determines itself further. It is essential Existence; the latter's essentiality is distinguished from Appearance as unessential and these two sides enter into relation with each other. It is therefore at first simple self-identity which also contains various content-determinations; and these themselves as well as their relation are what remains self-equal in the flux of Appearance; this is the law of Appearance.
Secondly, however, the law which is simple in its diversity passes over into opposition; the essential moment of Appearance becomes opposed to Appearance itself, and the world of Appearance is confronted by the world of essence [die an sich seiende Welt].
Thirdly, this opposition returns into its ground; that which is in itself is in the Appearance and conversely that which appears is determined as taken up into its in-itself; Appearance becomes correlation or essential relation.
A. THE LAW OF APPEARANCE
1. Appearance is the existent mediated by its negation, which constitutes its subsistence. This its negation is, indeed, another self-subsistence; but this is equally essentially a sublated self-subsistence. The existent is accordingly the return of itself into itself through its negation and through the negation of this its negation; it has, therefore, essential self-subsistence; just as it is equally immediately a sheer positedness which has a ground and an other for its subsistence. In the first place, therefore, Appearance is Existence along with its essentiality, positedness with its ground; but this ground is a negation; and the other self-subsistent, the ground of the first is likewise only a positedness. In other words, the existent is, as an Appearance, reflected into an other which it has for its ground, which other is itself only this, to be reflected into an other. The essential self-subsistence which belongs to it because it is a return-into-self is the return of the nothing through nothing back to itself on account of the negativity of the moments; the self-subsistence of the existent is, therefore, only the essential illusory show [wesentliche Schein]. The connection of the reciprocally grounding existents consists therefore in this reciprocal negation, namely, that the subsistence of the one is not the subsistence of the other, but is its positedness, which relation of the positedness alone constitutes the subsistence of the existents. The ground is present as it is in truth, namely, to be a first that is only presupposed.
Now this constitutes the negative side of Appearance. But in this negative mediation is immediately contained the positive identity of the existent with itself. For it is not a positedness relatively to an essential ground, or is not an illusory being in a self-subsistent; it is positedness that is related to a positedness, or is an illusory being only in an illusory being. It relates itself in this its negation or in its other, which is itself a sublated moment, to itself, and is therefore self-identical or positive essentiality. This identity of the existent is not the immediacy that belongs to Existence as such, the merely unessential which subsists in an other. On the contrary, it is the essential content of Appearance which has two sides, first, to be in the form of positedness or external immediacy, secondly, to be positedness as self-identical. According to the first side it is a determinate being, but one which is contingent, unessential and, in keeping with its immediacy, is subject to transition, coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be. According to the other side, it is the simple content determination exempt from this flux, the enduring element of it.
This content in general, besides being the simple element in that which is transitory, is also a determinate, inwardly diverse content. It is the reflection of Appearance into itself, of negative determinate being, and therefore essentially contains determinateness. But Appearance is the simply affirmative manifold variety which wantons in unessential manifoldness; its reflected content, on the other hand, is its manifoldness reduced to simple difference. The determinate essential content is, more precisely, not merely simply determinate, but, as the essential moment of Appearance, is complete determinateness; the one and its other. In Appearance each of these two has its subsistence in the other in such a manner that at the same time it is only in the other's non-subsistence. This contradiction sublates itself; and its reflection-into-self is the identity of their double-sided subsistence: the positedness of the one is also the positedness of the other. They constitute one subsistence, but at the same time as a diverse, mutually indifferent content. Hence in the essential side of Appearance, the negative aspect of the unessential content, its self-sublation, has returned into identity; it is an indifferent subsistence, which is not the sublatedness, but rather the subsistence, of the other.
This unity is the law of Appearance.
2. The law is therefore the positive side of the mediation of what appears. Appearance is at first Existence as negative self-mediation, so that the existent is mediated with itself through its own non-subsistence, through an other, and, again, through the non-subsistence of this other. In this is contained first, the mere illusory being and the vanishing of both, the unessential Appearance; secondly, also their permanence or law; for each of the two exists in this sublating of the other; and their positedness as their negativity is at the same time the identical, positive positedness of both.
This permanent subsistence which Appearance has in law, is therefore, conformable to its determination, first, opposed to the immediacy of being which Existence has.
True, this immediacy is in itself reflected immediacy, namely the ground which has withdrawn into itself; but now in Appearance this simple immediacy is distinguished from the reflected immediacy which first started to separate itself in the thing. The existent thing in its dissolution has become this opposition; the positive side of its dissolution is that identity-with-self of what appears, as positedness, in its other positedness. Secondly, this reflected immediacy is itself determined as positedness over against the simply affirmative immediacy of Existence. This positedness [Gesetztsein] is now the essential and the truly positive. The German expression Gesetz [law] likewise contains this determination. In this positedness lies the essential relation of the two sides of the difference which law contains; they are a diverse content, each side being immediate with respect to the other, and they are this as the reflection of the vanishing content belonging to Appearance. As essential diversity, the different sides are simple self-related content-determinations. But equally, neither is immediate on its own, but each is essentially a positedness, or is, only in so far as the other is.
Thirdly, Appearance and law have one and the same content. Law is the reflection of Appearance into identity-with-self; Appearance, as the null immediate, thus stands opposed to that which is reflected into itself, and they are distinguished according to this form. But the reflection of Appearance by virtue of which this difference is, is also the essential identity of Appearance itself and of its reflection, which is, in general, the nature of reflection; it is the self-identical in the positedness and is indifferent to that difference which is the form, or positedness; a content, therefore, which continues itself from Appearance into law, the content of law and Appearance.
Accordingly, this content constitutes the substrate of Appearance; law is this substrate itself, Appearance is the same content, but contains still more, namely, the unessential content of its immediate being. The form-determination, too, by which Appearance as such is distinguished from law, is, namely, a content and is likewise a content distinguished from the content of the law. For Existence, as immediacy in general, is likewise a self-identity of matter and form which is indifferent to its form determinations and therefore a content; it is thinghood with its properties and matters. But it is the content whose self-subsistent immediacy is, at the same time, only as a non-subsistence. But the identity of the content with itself in this its non-subsistence is the other, essential content. This identity, the substrate of Appearance, which constitutes law is Appearance's own moment; it is the positive side of essentiality by virtue of which Existence is Appearance.
Accordingly, law is not beyond Appearance but is immediately present in it; the realm of laws is the stable image of the world of Existence or Appearance. But the fact is rather that both form a single totality, and the existent world is itself the realm of laws, which, as that which is simply identical, is also identical with itself in positedness or in the self-dissolving self-subsistence of Existence.
Existence withdraws into law as into its ground; Appearance contains these two, the simple ground, and the dissolving movement of the manifested [erscheinenden] universe whose essentiality it is.
3. Law is therefore essential Appearance; it is the latter's reflection-into-self in its positedness, the identical content of itself and of unessential Existence. Now first, this identity of law with its Existence is at first only the immediate, simple identity, and law is indifferent to its Existence; Appearance has a further content other than the content of law. The former content is, indeed, unessential and is the withdrawal into the latter; but for law it is a first which is not posited by it; as content, therefore, it is externally connected with law. Appearance is a host of more precise determinations which belong to the 'this' or the concrete, and are not contained in law but are determined by an other.
Secondly, that which Appearance contains distinct from law, determined itself as a positive or as another content; but it is essentially a negative; it is form and its movement as such, which belongs to Appearance. The realm of laws is the stable content of Appearance; Appearance is the same content but presenting itself in restless flux and as reflection-into-other
It is law as the negative, simply alterable Existence, the movement. of transition into the opposite, of self-sublation and withdrawal into unity. Law does not contain this side of restless form or negativity; Appearance, therefore, as against law is the totality, for it contains law, but also more, namely, the moment of self-moving form.
Thirdly, this defect is present in law in this way, that the content of law is at first only diverse and so indifferent to itself; therefore the identity of its sides with one another is at first only immediate and therefore internal, or not yet necessary. In law two content determinations are essentially connected (for instance, in the law of descent of a falling body, spatial and temporal magnitudes: spaces passed through vary as the squares of the times elapsed); they are connected; this relation is at first only an immediate one. It is, therefore, likewise at first only a posited relation, the immediate in general having obtained in Appearance the meaning of positedness. The essential unity of the two sides of the law would be their negativity, that is to say, the one would contain its other within itself; but this essential unity has not yet emerged in the law. (That is why the Notion of the space traversed by a falling body does not itself imply that time corresponds to it as a square. Because fall is a sensible movement it is the relation of time and space; but first, the determination of time-that is, time as it is commonly imagined-does not itself imply its relationship to space, and vice versa; it is said that time can quite well be imagined without space and space without time; thus the one comes only externally into relation with the other, which external relation is motion. Secondly, the further determination is indifferent, namely, the magnitudes in accordance with which space and time are related in motion. The law of this relationship is empirically ascertained and in so far it is only immediate; it still demands a proof, that is, a mediation for cognition, showing that the law not only occurs but is necessary; the law as such does not contain this proof and its objective necessity.) Law is, therefore, only the positive, and not the negative, essentiality of Appearance. In the latter, the content determinations are moments of form, as such passing over into their other and in themselves are equally not themselves but their other. Accordingly, though in law the positedness of one side of it is the positedness of the other, their content is indifferent to this relation: the content does not itself therefore, is indeed essential form, contain this positedness. Law, therefore, is indeed essential form, but not as yet real form, which is reflected into its sides as content.
B. THE WORLD OF APPEARANCE AND THE WORLD-IN-ITSELF
1. The existent world tranquilly raises itself to a realm of laws; the null content of its manifold being has its subsistence in an other; its subsistence is therefore its dissolution. But in this other the world of Appearance also unites with itself; thus Appearance in its changing is also an enduring, and its positedness is law. Law is this simple identity of Appearance with itself and therefore its substrate, not its ground; for it is not the negative unity of Appearance but, as its simple identity, the immediate, that is abstract unity, alongside which therefore its other content also occurs. The content is this content, internally coherent, or has its negative reflection within itself. It is reflected into an other; this other is itself an Existence of Appearance; phenomenal things have their grounds and conditions in other phenomenal things.
But law is, in fact, also the other of Appearance as such and its negative reflection as into its other. The content of Appearance which is distinct from the content of law is the existent, which has its negativity for its ground or is reflected into its non-being. But this other which is also an existent, is likewise reflected into its non-being; it is therefore the same and the phenomenon is therefore in fact reflected not into an other but into itself; it is just this reflection of positedness into itself that is law. But as a phenomenon it is essentially reflected into its non-being, or its identity is itself essentially no less its negativity and its other. Therefore the reflection-into-self of Appearance, namely law, is not only the identical substrate of Appearance, but the latter also has its opposite in law and law is its negative unity.
Now through this, the determination of law has been altered in law itself. At first, it is merely a diverse content and the formal reflection of positedness into itself, so that the positedness of one of its sides is the positedness of the other. But because it is also negative reflection-into-self, its sides are in their relationship not merely different but are negatively related to each other. Or, when law is considered merely on its own, the sides of its content are indifferent to each other; but equally they are sublated by their identity; the positedness of one is the positedness of the other, and therefore the subsistence of each is also the non-subsistence of itself. This positedness of one in the other is their negative unity and each is not only the positedness of itself but also of the other, or, each is itself this negative unity. The positive identity which they have in law as such is at first only their inner unity which stands in need of proof and mediation, because this negative is not as yet posited in them. But since the different sides of law are now determined as being different in their negative unity, or such that each of them contains its other within it, and at the same time, as a self-subsistent side, repels this its otherness from itself, the identity of law is therefore now also a posited and real identity.
Consequently, law likewise has obtained the moment of the negative form of its sides which was lacking, the moment, that is, which previously belonged still to Appearance. Existence has thus completely withdrawn into itself and has reflected itself into its absolute otherness in and for itself. That which was previously law is accordingly no longer only one side of the whole whose other side was Appearance as such, but is itself the whole. Existence is the essential totality of Appearance, so that it now contains the moment of unessentiality which still belonged to Appearance, but as reflected, implicit unessentiality, that is, as essential negativity. As an immediate content, law is determinate in general, distinguished from other laws, and of these there is an indeterminable number. But since it now has within it essential negativity, it no longer contains such a merely indifferent, contingent content determination; on the contrary, its content is all determinateness whatsoever, in an essential relation developing itself into totality. Thus Appearance which is reflected into itself is now a world, which reveals itself as a world in and for itself above the world of Appearance.
The realm of laws contains only the simple, changeless but varied content of the existent world. But now since it is the total reflection of this world it also contains the moment of its essenceless manifoldness. This moment of alterableness and alteration as reflected into self, as essential, is absolute negativity or pure form as such, whose moments however in the world in and for itself have the reality of self-subsistent but reflected Existence; just as, conversely, this reflected self-subsistence now has form within itself, by virtue of which its content is not a merely manifold, but an essentially self-coherent, content.
This world in and for itself is also called the supersensuous world; in so far as the existent world is characterised as sensuous, namely, as determined for intuition, for the immediate attitude of consciousness. The supersensuous world likewise has immediacy, Existence, but reflected, essential Existence. Essence has as yet no determinate being; but it is, and in a profounder sense than being; the thing is the beginning of reflected Existence; it is an immediacy that is not yet posited as essential or reflected; but it is in truth not a simply affirmative [seiendes] immediate. It is only as things of another, supersensuous world that things are posited first, as veritable Existences, and secondly as the true in contrast to what has simply affirmative being; in them it is acknowledged that there is a being distinct from immediate being, a being that is veritable Existence. On the one hand, the sensuous representation which ascribes Existence only to the immediate being of feeling and intuition is overcome in this determination; but, on the other hand, there is also in it unconscious reflection which, though having the conception of things, forces, the inner, and so on, does not know that such determinations are not sensuous or simply affirmative immediacies, but reflected Existences.
2. The world in and for itself is the totality of Existence; outside it there is nothing. But since it is in its own self absolute negativity or form, its reflection-into-self is a negative relation to itself. It contains opposition and repels itself within itself into the essential world and into the world of otherness or the world of Appearance. Thus, because it is totality, it is also only one side of it, and in this determination constitutes a self-subsistence distinct from the world of Appearance. The world of Appearance has in the essential world its negative unity in which it falls to the ground and into which it withdraws as into its ground. Further, the essential world is. also the positing ground of the world of Appearance; for, containing the absolute form in its essentiality, its identity sublates itself, makes itself into positedness and as this posited immediacy is the world of Appearance.
Further it is not merely ground as such of the world of Appearance, but its determinate ground. As the realm of laws, it is already a manifold content, namely, the essential content of the world of Appearance, and as ground with a content, the determinate ground of the other world, but only in respect of this content; for the world of Appearance still had other manifold content than the realm of laws, because the negative moment was still peculiarly its own. But since the realm of laws now likewise contains this moment, it is the totality of the content of the world of Appearance and the ground of all its manifoldness. But it is at the same time the negative of this totality and as such is the world opposed to it. That is to say, in the identity of both worlds, one of them is determined in respect of form as essential and the other as the same world but as posited and unessential, so that the ground relation has, it is true, been restored; but it is also the ground relation of Appearance, namely, as relation not of an identical content, nor of a merely diverse one, as is law, but as total relation, or as negative identity and essential relation of the opposed sides of the content. The realm of laws is not only this, that the positedness of a content is the positedness of another, but this identity is essentially, as we have seen, also a negative unity; each of the two sides of law is, in the negative unity, in its own self its other content; accordingly the other is not an indeterminate other in general, but is its other, or, it too contains the content determination of the first; and thus the two sides are opposed. Now since the realm of Laws contains within it this negative moment and opposition, and hence as totality repels itself from itself into a world in and for itself and a world of Appearance, the identity of both is thus the essential relation of opposition. The ground relation as such is the opposition which, in its contradiction, has fallen to the ground; and Existence is the ground that has united with itself. But Existence becomes Appearance; ground is sublated in Existence; it reinstates itself as the return of Appearance into itself, but at the same time as sublated ground, namely, as ground relation of opposed determinations; but the identity of such determinations is essentially a becoming and a transition, no longer the ground relation as such.
The world in and for itself is, therefore, itself a world distinguished within itself into the totality of a manifold content; it is identical with the world of Appearance or the posited world and in so far its ground; but its identical relationship is at the same time determined as opposition, because the form of the world of Appearance is reflection into its otherness and this world has therefore veritably withdrawn into itself in the world in and for itself in such a manner that the latter is its opposite. The relation is, therefore, specifically this, that the world in and for itself is the inversion of the manifested world.
C. DISSOLUTION OF APPEARANCE
The world in and for itself is the determinate ground of the world of Appearance and is this only in so far as it is within itself the negative moment, and hence the totality of the content determinations and their alterations which corresponds to the world of Appearance but at the same time constitutes its completely opposed side.
The two worlds are therefore in such a relationship that what is positive in the world of Appearance is negative in the world in and for-itself, and conversely, what is negative in the former is positive in the latter. The north pole in the world of Appearance is in and for itself the south pole, and conversely; positive electricity is in itself negative, and so on. What is evil, a misfortune and so on, in manifested existence is in and for itself, good and a piece of good fortune.
In point of fact it is just in this opposition of the two worlds that their difference has vanished, and what was supposed to be the world in and for itself is itself world of Appearance, while this conversely in its own self is the essential world. The world of Appearance is in the first instance determined as reflection into otherness, so that its determinations and Existences have their ground and subsistence in an other; but since this other is likewise a reflection-into-an-other they are related therein only to a self-sublating other, hence to themselves; the world of Appearance is thus in its own self the law which is identical with itself. Conversely, the world in and for itself is at first the self-identical content exempt from otherness and change; but this, as complete reflection of the world of Appearance into itself, or, because its diversity is difference reflected into itself and absolute, contains the negative moment and relation to itself as to otherness; it thereby becomes essenceless content, self-opposed and self-inverting. Further, this content of the world in and for itself has thereby also received the form of immediate Existence. For it is in the first instance ground of the world of Appearance; but since it has opposition within it, it is equally sublated ground and immediate Existence.
Thus the world of Appearance and the essential world are each in themselves the totality of self-identical reflection and reflection-into-an-other, or of being-in-and-for-self and Appearance. Both are self-subsistent wholes of Existence the one is supposed to be only reflected Existence, the other immediate Existence; but each continues itself in its other and is therefore in its own self the identity-of these two moments. What is present, therefore, is this totality which repels itself from itself into two totalities, one the reflected, the other the immediate, totality. Both, in the first instance, are self-subsistents, but they are self-subsistent only as totalities, and they are this in so far as each essentially contains. within it the moment of the other. Accordingly the distinct self-subsistence of each, of that determined as immediate and that as reflected, is now so posited that each is only as essential relation to the other and has its self-subsistence in this unity of both.
We started from the law of Appearance; this is the identity of a varied content with another content, so that the positedness of the one is the positedness of the other. In law, this difference is still present, in that the identity of its sides is at first only an inner identity which these sides do not yet have within themselves. Thus first, this identity is not realised; the content of law is not as an identical, but an indifferent, varied content; and secondly, the content is thereby only implicitly determined such that the positedness of the one is the positedness of the other; this is not yet present in the content. Now, however, law is realised; its inner identity is also determinately present, and conversely the content of law is raised into ideality; for it is a content sublated within itself, reflected into itself, in that each side has its other within it and is therefore veritably identical with it and with itself.
Thus law is essential relation. The truth of the unessential world is, at first, a world in and for itself and other to it; but this world is a totality since it is itself and that first world. Thus both are immediate Existences and hence reflections into their otherness, and also for this same reason veritably reflected into self.
“World” expresses in general the formless totality of manifoldness; this world, both as essential and as manifested has fallen to the ground in that the manifoldness has ceased to be a mere variety; as such it is still a totality or universe, but as essential relation. There have arisen two totalities of the content in the world of Appearance; at first they are determined as mutually indifferent self-subsistents and each has the form within itself, but not as against the other; but the form has also shown itself to be their relation, and the essential relation is the consummation of their unity of form.
Chapter 3: The Essential Relation
The truth of Appearance is the essential relation, the content of which has immediate self-subsistence; simply affirmative immediacy, and reflected immediacy or self-identical reflection. At the same time, it is in this self-subsistence a relative content, only and solely as reflection into its other, or as unity of the relation with its other. In this unity the self-subsistent content is a posited, sublated content; but it is just this unity which constitutes its essentiality and self-subsistence; this reflection into other is reflection into itself. The relation has sides because it is reflection into an other; thus it contains within itself its own difference, and the sides are a self-dependent subsistence, since in their mutually indifferent diversity they are disrupted within themselves, so that the subsistence of either side equally has its meaning only in relation to the other or in their negative unity.
The essential relation is therefore not as yet the true third to essence and Existence, though it already contains the determinate union of both. Essence is realised in it in such a manner that it has for its subsistence self-subsistent existents; and these have withdrawn from their indifference into their essential unity, so that they have this alone for their subsistence. The reflective determinations of positive and negative are likewise reflected into themselves only as reflected into their opposites; but they have no other determination but this their negative unity. The sides of the essential relation, on the other hand, are posited as self-subsistent totalities. It is the same opposition as that of positive and negative, but at the same time as an inverted world. The side of the essential relation is a totality which, however, as essentially an opposite, has a beyond of itself; it is only Appearance; its Existence is not its own, but rather that of its other. It is therefore disrupted within itself; but this its sublatedness consists in its being the unity of itself and its other, therefore a whole, and precisely for this reason it has self-subsistent Existence and is essential reflection-into-self.
This is the Notion of the relation. But at first the identity it contains is not yet complete; the totality which each related side is within itself is at first an inner; the side of the relation is in the first instance posited in one of the determinations of the negative unity; the self-subsistence belonging to each of the two sides is that which constitutes the form of the relation. Its identity is therefore only a relation, its self-subsistence falling outside it, namely in the sides; the reflected unity of this identity and the self-subsistent Existences, namely, substance, is not yet before us. Accordingly, although the Notion of the relation has shown itself to be the unity of reflected and immediate self-subsistence, this Notion is itself at first still immediate; its moments therefore are immediate in respect of each other, and their essential relation is unity, a unity which is only the true unity accordant with the Notion in so far as it realises itself, that is, has posited itself as this unity through its movement.
The essential relation is therefore immediately the relation of whole and parts — the relation of reflected and immediate self-subsistence, so that both sides only are as at the same time reciprocally conditioning and presupposing each other.
In this relation as yet neither of the sides is posited as moment of the other, and therefore their identity is itself one side; in other words, their identity is not their negative unity. Secondly, therefore, the relation passes over into the relationship in which one side is moment of the other and in it as in its ground, the veritable self-subsistent element of both: the relation of force and its expression.
Thirdly, the inequality still present in this relation now sublates itself and the final relation is that of inner and outer. In this difference, which has become wholly formal, the relation itself falls to the ground and there emerges substance or the actual as the absolute unity of immediate and reflected Existence.
A. THE RELATION OF WHOLE AND PARTS
The essential relation contains first, the self-subsistence of immediacy, reflected into itself; as such it is the simple form whose moments, though Existences, too, are at the same time posited, moments held in the unity. This self-subsistence which is reflected into itself is at the same time reflection into its opposite, namely, immediate self-subsistence; and its subsistence is essentially as much this identity with its opposite as it is its own self-subsistence. Secondly, with this identity the other side, too, is immediately posited: the immediate self-subsistence which, determined as the other, is within itself a manifold variety, but such that this manifoldness essentially also has within it the relation of the other side, the unity of the reflected self-subsistence. The first side, the whole, is the self-subsistence which constituted the world in and for itself; the second side, the parts, is the immediate Existence which was the world of Appearance. In the relationship of whole and parts the two sides are these self-subsistences but in such a manner that each has the other reflected in it and at the same time only is as this identity of both. Now because the essential relation is at first only the first, immediate relation, the negative unity and the positive self-subsistence are connected by 'also'; both sides are indeed posited as moments, but equally as existent self-subsistences. Accordingly the distribution of these two posited moments is as follows. First, the whole, the reflected self-subsistence, is an existent; and the other, the immediate self-subsistence, is in it as moment-here the whole, the unity of both sides, constitutes the substrata, and the immediate Existence is a positedness. Conversely, on the other side, namely the side of the parts, the immediate, internally manifold Existence, is the self-subsistent substrate; on the other hand the reflected unity, the whole, is only an external relation.
2. This relation thus contains the self-subsistence of the sides, and equally their sublatedness, and it contains both simply in one relation. The whole is the self-subsistent, the parts are only moments of this unity; but equally they, too, are the self-subsistent and their reflected unity only a moment; and each is, in its self-subsistence, simply the relative of an other. This relation is therefore in its own self immediate contradiction, and sublates itself.
Considered more closely, the whole is the reflected unity which has an independent subsistence of its own; but this its subsistence is equally repelled from it; the whole is, as negative unity, negative relation-to-self; it is thus alienated from itself; it has its subsistence in its opposite, in the manifold immediacy, the parts. The whole accordingly consists of parts, so that it is not anything without them. It is therefore the whole relation and the self-subsistent totality; but for this very reason it is only a relative, for that which makes it a totality is rather its other, the parts; and it has its subsistence not within itself but in its other.
Thus the parts likewise are the whole relation. They are immediate, as against reflected, self-subsistence and do not subsist in the whole but on their own account. Further, they have this whole as their moment within themselves; it constitutes their relation, for without a whole there are no parts. But because they are the self-subsistent, this relation is only an external moment towards which they are, in and for themselves, indifferent. But at the same time the parts, as a manifold Existence, collapse within themselves, for this Existence is reflectionless being; they have their self-subsistence only in the reflected unity which is both this unity and also the existent manifoldness; that is to say, they have self-subsistence only in the whole, but at the same time, the whole is a self-subsistent other to the parts.
The whole and the parts therefore condition each other; but the relation here considered is at the same time higher than the relation of conditioned and condition to each other as it had determined itself above. Here this relation is realised, that is, it is posited that condition is the essential self-subsistence of the conditioned in such a manner that it is presupposed by the latter. Condition as such is only the immediate and is only implicitly presupposed. But the whole, though it is the condition of the parts, also contains this, that it, too, only is in so far as it has the parts for presupposition. Since, then, both sides of the relation are posited as conditioning each other, each is an immediate self-subsistence within itself, but its self-subsistence is equally mediated or posited by the other. The whole relation is, through this reciprocity, the return of the conditioning into itself, the non-relative, the unconditioned.
Now since each side of the relation has its self-subsistence not in itself but in its other, what is present is only a single identity of both in which both are only moments; but since each is in its own self self-subsistent, there are two self-subsistent Existences which are indifferent to each other.
In accordance with the first respect, that of the essential identity of both sides, the whole is equal to the parts and the parts to the whole. There is nothing in the whole which is not in the parts, and nothing in the parts which is not in the whole. The whole is not abstract unity, but unity as of a diverse manifoldness; but this unity, as that in which the elements of the manifold are related to one another, is the determinateness of each element through which it is part. The relation has, therefore, an inseparable identity and one self-subsistence only.
But further, although the whole is equal to the parts it is not equal to them as parts; the whole is reflected unity, but the parts constitute the determinate moment or the otherness of the unity and are the diverse manifold. The whole is not equal to them as this self-subsistent diversity, but to them together. But this their 'together' is nothing else but their unity, the whole as such. The whole is, therefore, in the parts only equal to itself, and the equality of the whole and the parts expresses only the tautology that the whole as whole is equal not to the parts but to the whole.
Conversely, the parts are equal to the whole; but because they are in themselves the moment of otherness, they are not equal to it as the unity, but in such a manner that one of the manifold determinations of the whole attaches to the part, or that they are equal to the whole as a manifold; that is to say, they are equal to it as a divided whole, that is, to the parts. Here we have the same tautology, that the parts as parts are equal, not to the whole as such, but in it to themselves, the parts.
In this way, the whole and the parts fall indifferently apart; each of these sides relates itself only to itself. But as thus held apart they destroy themselves. The whole which is indifferent to the parts is the abstract identity which is not internally differentiated; this is a whole only as internally differentiated, and moreover in such a manner that these manifold determinations are reflected into themselves and have immediate self-subsistence. And the identity of reflection has shown through its movement that it has this reflection into its other for its truth. Similarly the parts, as indifferent to the unity of the whole, are only the unrelated manifold, that which is within itself other, which as such is the other of itself and only sublates itself. This self-relation of each of the two sides is their self-subsistence; but this their self-subsistence which each has for itself is rather their self-negation. Accordingly each side has its self-subsistence not within itself but in the other., this other, which constitutes the subsistence, is its presupposed immediate which is supposed to be the first, and its beginning; but this first of each side is itself not a first, but has its beginning only in the other.
The truth of the relation consists therefore in the mediation; its essence is the negative unity in which both the reflected and the simply affirmative [seiende] immediacy are sublated. The relation is the contradiction which withdraws into its ground, into the unity which, as returning, is reflected unity; but since this latter has equally posited itself as sublated it is negatively related to itself, sublates itself and makes itself into a simply affirmative [seiende] immediacy. But this its negative relation, in so far as it is a first and an immediate, is mediated only through its other and is equally posited. This other, the simply affirmative immediacy, is equally only as sublated; its self-subsistence is a first, but only in order to vanish, and it has an existence that is posited and mediated.
In this determination the relation is no longer that of whole and parts; the immediacy which belonged to its sides has passed over into positedness and mediation; each is posited, in so far as it is immediate, as self-sublating and passing over into the other, and in so far as it is itself negative relation, as at the same time being conditioned by the other as its positive; just as its immediate transition, too, is equally a mediated transition, being a sublating that is posited by the other. Thus the relation of whole and parts has passed over into the relation of force and its expression.
Remark: Infinite Divisibility
The antinomy of the infinite divisibility of matter was considered above under the Notion of quantity. Quantity is the unity of continuity and discreteness; it contains in the self-subsistent one its fusion with other ones, and in this uninterrupted continuing identity with itself it equally contains the negation of it. The immediate relation of these moments of quantity being expressed as the essential relation of whole and parts (the one of quantity being part, but its continuity, the whole, which is composed of parts), the antinomy then consists in the contradiction which presented itself in the relation of whole and parts and has been resolved. For whole and parts are just as essentially related to each other, constituting only one identity, as they are mutually indifferent and have independent self-subsistence. The relation therefore is this antinomy, that the one moment in freeing itself from the other immediately introduces the other.
The existent, then, being determined as a whole, has parts, and the parts constitute its subsistence; the unity of the whole is only a posited relation, an external composition which does not concern the self-subsistent existent. Now in so far as this is a part it is not a whole, not a composite, hence a simple. But the relation to a whole is external to it and therefore does not concern it; the self-subsistent is, therefore, not even in itself part; for it is part only through that relation. But now since it is not part it is a whole, for there is only this relation of whole and parts present and the self-subsistent is one of the two. But as a whole, it is again composite; it again consists of parts, and so on to infinity. This infinitude consists solely in the perennial alternation of the two determinations of the relation, in each of which the other immediately arises, so that the positedness of each is the vanishing of itself. Matter determined as whole consists of parts, and in these the whole becomes an unessential relation and vanishes. But the part taken in the same way by itself is also not part but the whole. The antinomy of this inference when closely examined is really this: because the whole is not the self-subsistent, therefore the part is self-subsistent; but because the part is self-subsistent only without the whole, it is self-subsistent not as part, but rather as whole. The infinitude of the progress which arises is the inability to bring together the two thoughts which the mediation contains, namely, that each of the two determinations through its self-subsistence and separation from the other passes over into non-self-subsistence and into the other.
B. THE RELATION OF FORCE AND ITS EXPRESSION
Force is the negative unity into which the contradiction of whole and parts has resolved itself; the truth of that first relation.
The whole and parts is the thoughtless relation which ordinary thinking first happens to think of; or objectively it is a dead, mechanical aggregate having, it is true, form determinations through which the manifoldness of its self-subsistent matter is connected in a unity; but this unity is external to the matter. But the relation of force is the higher return-into-self in which the unity of the whole which constituted the relation of the self-subsistent otherness, ceases to be external and indifferent to this manifoldness.
In the essential relation as now determined, the immediate and the reflected self-subsistence are posited as sublated or as moments; in the preceding relation they were independent, self-subsistent sides or extremes. In this there is contained first, that the reflected unity and its immediate determinate being, in so far as both are first and immediate, sublate themselves within themselves and pass over into their other; the former, force, passes over into its expression, and what is expressed is a vanishing something which withdraws into force as into its ground; it is, only as borne and posited by force. Secondly, this transition is not only a becoming and vanishing, but is a negative relation-to-self; or, that which alters its determination is at the same time reflected into itself and preserves itself; the movement of force is not so much a transition [übergehen] as a movement in which it transposes itself [sich selbst über setzt] and in this alteration posited by itself remains what it is. Thirdly, this reflected, self-related unity is itself sublated and a moment; it is mediated by its other and has it for condition; its negative self-relation, which is a first and begins the movement of its transition out of itself, has equally a presupposition by which it is solicited, and an other from which it begins.
(a) The Conditionedness of Force
Considered in its closer determinations force contains first, the moment of affirmative [seienden] immediacy; it itself is determined over against this immediacy as negative unity. This, however, in the determination of immediate being, is an existent something. This something, because it is negative unity as an immediate, appears as the first; force, on the other hand, as reflected unity appears as positedness and thus as belonging to the existent thing or to a matter. But this does not imply that force is the form of this thing and that the thing is determined by force; on the contrary, the thing as an immediate is, indifferent to it. As thus determined, the thing contains no ground for having a force; force, on the other hand, as the side of positedness, essentially has the thing for its presupposition.When therefore it is asked how a thing or matter comes to have a force, then the force appears as externally connected with it and impressed on the thing by an alien power.
As this immediate subsistence, force is a quiescent determinateness of the thing in general; it does not express or manifest itself but is immediately an externality. Thus force is also designated as matter, and instead of magnetic, electrical, and other forces, magnetic, electrical, and other matters are assumed, or, instead of the famous attractive force, a subtle aether which holds everything together. These are the matters into which the inert, powerless, negative unity of the thing is resolved and which were considered above.
But force contains immediate Existence as moment, a moment which, though it is condition, passes over and sublates itself, not immediate Existence therefore as an existent thing. Further, it is not negation as determinateness but negative unity reflected into itself. Accordingly the thing in which the force was supposed to be no longer has any meaning here; rather is force itself a positing of externality which appears as Existence. Nor is it, therefore, merely a determinate matter; such self-subsistence has long since passed over into positedness and Appearance.
Secondly, force is the unity of reflected and immediate subsistence, or of the form-unity and external self-subsistence. It is both in one; it is the contact of sides of which one is in so far as the other is not, self-identical positive reflection and negated reflection. Force is thus the self-repelling contradiction; it is active, or it is the self-relating negative unity in which the reflected immediacy or essential inwardness [Insichsein] is posited as being only as sublated or as moment, and therefore, in so far as it distinguishes itself from immediate Existence, as passing over into this. Force, then, as the determination of the reflected unity of the whole, is posited as becoming existent external manifoldness from out of itself.
But thirdly, force is at first only an activity in principle [ansichseiende Tätigkeit], an immediate activity; it is the reflected unity and equally essentially the negation of it; as different from this negation, but only as the identity of itself and its negation, it is essentially related to this as to an immediacy external to it, and has it for presupposition and condition.
Now this presupposition is not a thing standing over against it; this indifferent self-subsistence is sublated in force; as condition of force it is a self-subsistent other to it. But because it is not a thing, the self-subsistent immediacy having here determined itself as at the same time self-relating negative unity, this other self-subsistent is itself force. The activity of force is conditioned by itself as by the other to itself, by a force.
In this manner force is a relation in which each side is the same as the other. There are forces which stand in relation, and indeed are essentially related to each other. Further, they are at first simply different without further qualification; the unity of their relation is in the first instance only inner unity, unity in itself. The conditionedness through another force is thus in itself the act of force itself, or force is in so far at first an act of presupposition, a merely negatively self-relating act; this other force still lies beyond its positing activity, namely beyond the reflection which in its determining immediately returns into itself.
(b) The Solicitation of Force
Force is conditioned because it contains the moment of immediate Existence as something only posited — but because it is at the same time an immediate — as something presupposed, in which force negates itself. Accordingly, the externality which is present for force is its own presupposing activity, which at first is posited as another force.
Further, this presupposing is reciprocal. Each of the two forces contains the unity reflected into itself as sublated and is therefore a presupposing activity; it posits its own self as external; this moment of externality is its own; but since it is equally a unity reflected into itself it at the same time posits this its externality not within itself, but as another force.
But the external as such is self-sublating; further, this activity which reflects itself into itself is essentially related to this external as to its other, but equally as to that which in itself is null and with which it is identical. Since the presupposing activity is equally reflection-into-self, it is the sublating of this its negation and it posits the latter as something external to itself, or as external to it. Thus force, as conditioning, is reciprocally an impulse [Anstoss] for the other force against which it is active. Its attitude is not the passive one of being determined, which would involve the entry into it of something alien; the impulse only solicits it. It is in its own self the negativity of itself; the repelling of itself from itself is its own positing. Its act, therefore, consists in sublating the externality of this impulse; it makes it into a mere impulse and posits it as its own repelling of itself from itself, as its own expression.
Force which expresses itself is thus the same as that which was at first only a presupposing activity, that is, it makes itself external; but force, as expressing itself, is at the same time the activity which negates externality, positing it as its own. Now in so far as in this consideration we start from force as negative unity of itself and therefore as presupposing reflection, this is the same as when, in the expression of force, we start from the soliciting impulse. Thus force, in its Notion, is at first determined as self-sublating identity, and in its reality one of the two forces is determined as soliciting and the other as being solicited. But the Notion of force is simply the identity of positing and presupposing reflection, or of reflected and immediate unity; and each of these determinations is simply a moment, in unity, and thus is mediated by the other. But equally there is nothing in the two reciprocally related forces to determine which is to be the soliciting and which the solicited force; or rather both form determinations belong in the same manner to each. But this identity is not merely an external identity of comparison but an essential unity of the two.
For in the first instance one force is determined as soliciting and the other as being solicited; these form determinations appear in this way as immediate differences, present in principle, of both forces. But they are essentially mediated. One of the forces is solicited; this impulse is a determination posited in it from outside. But force itself is the presupposing reflection; essentially it reflects itself into itself and sublates the fact that the impulse is external. Accordingly, the fact that it is solicited is its own act, or, it is through its own determining that the other force is simply other and is the soliciting force. The soliciting force is negatively related to its other and so sublates the latter's externality, and in doing so it has a positing action; but it has this only by virtue of the presupposition of having another over against it; that is, it is itself soliciting only in so far as it has in it an externality, hence in so far as it is solicited. Or it solicits only in so far as it is solicited to solicit. And so, conversely, the first force is solicited only in so far as it itself solicits the other to solicit it, namely, the first force. Each of the two therefore receives the impulse from the other; but the impulse which it gives as active force consists in its receiving an impulse from the other; the impulse which it receives was solicited by itself. Both the impulse given and that received, or the active expression and the passive externality, are consequently not an immediate but are mediated, and so each of the two forces is itself the determinateness which the other has over against it, is mediated by the other, and this mediating other is, again, its own determinative positing.
This process then in which an impulse is exerted upon one force by another force, the first force passively receiving the impulse but then again passing over from this passivity into activity, this is the return of force into itself. It expresses itself. The expression is reaction in the sense that it posits the externality as its own moment and thus sublates its having been solicited by another force. Both are therefore one: the expression of force through which it gives itself a determinate being-for-other by its negative activity directed onto itself, and the infinite return to itself in this externality, so that in it, it relates itself only to itself. The presupposing reflection, to which belong the conditionedness and the impulse, is therefore immediately also the reflection that returns into itself, and the activity is essentially reactive against itself. The positing of the impulse or of the externality is itself the sublating of it, and conversely, the sublating of the impulse is the positing of the externality.
(c) The Infinity of Force
Force is finite in so far as its moments still have the form of immediacy; its presupposing and its self-relating reflection are distinct in this determination: the former appears as an independently subsisting external force, and the other, in its relation to it, as passive. Force is thus conditioned in respect of form and likewise restricted with respect to content; for a form-determinateness also implies a restriction of content. But the activity of force consists in expressing itself, that is, as we have seen, in sublating externality and determining it as that in which it is identical with itself. Therefore what force in truth expresses is that its relation to other is relation to itself, that its passivity consists in its very activity. The impulse by which it is solicited into activity is its own soliciting; the externality which affects it is not an immediate but is mediated by force itself; just as its own essential identity-with-self is not immediate but is mediated by its negation. In other words, what force expresses is this, that its externality is identical with its inwardness.
C. RELATION OF OUTER AND INNER
1. The relation of whole and parts is the immediate relation; in it, therefore, the reflected and the affirmative immediacy each have a self-subsistence of their own; but since they stand in essential relation their self-subsistence is only their negative unity. Now this is posited in the expression of force; the reflected unity is essentially a becoming-other as translation of itself into externality; but the latter equally is immediately taken back into the former; the distinction between the self-subsistent forces is sublated; the expression of force is only a mediation of the reflected unity with itself. What is present is only an empty, transparent distinction, an illusory being, but this illusory being is the mediation which is the independent subsistence itself. Not only are they opposite determinations which sublate themselves within themselves, nor is their movement merely a transition; but partly the immediacy from which the beginning and the transition into otherness was made is itself only a posited immediacy, and partly, in consequence of this, each of the determinations is in its immediacy already the unity with its other, so that the transition is just as much the spontaneously posited return-into-self.
The inner is determined as the form of reflected immediacy or of essence over against the outer as the form of being, but the two are only one identity. This identity is first, the substantial unity of both as a substrate pregnant with content, or the absolute fact [Sache], in which the two determinations are indifferent, external moments. By virtue of this, it is a content and that totality which is the inner that equally becomes external, but in this externality is not the result of becoming or transition but is identical with itself. The outer, according to this determination, is not only identical with the inner in respect of content but both are only one fact. But this fact, as simple self-identity, is distinct from its form determinations, or, these are external to it; it is thus itself an inner that is distinct from its externality. But this externality consists in its being constituted by the two determinations themselves, namely, the inner and the outer. But the fact is itself nothing else but the unity of both. Hence both sides are again the same in respect of content. But in the fact they are present as an interpenetrating identity, as a substrate pregnant with content. But in externality they are, as forms of the fact, indifferent to this identity and thus to each other.
2. They are in this way the different form-determinations which have an identical substrate, not in themselves but in an other — determinations of reflection which are for themselves: the inner as the form of reflection-into-self, of essentiality, but the outer as the form of immediacy reflected into an other, or of unessentiality. But the nature of the relation has shown that these determinations constitute one identity and one alone. Force in its expression is this, that the determining which presupposes and the determining which returns into itself are one and the same. In so far then as inner and outer have been considered as form-determinations, they are first only the simple form itself, and secondly, because in this form they are at the same time determined as opposite, their unity is pure, abstract mediation in which the one is immediately the other, and is the other because it is itself. Thus the inner is immediately only the outer, and it is the determination of externality because it is the inner; conversely, the outer is only an inner because it is only an outer. That is to say, since this form unity contains its two determinations as opposites, their identity is only this transition, and therein only the other of both, not their identity pregnant with content. Or, this holding fast to form is in general the side of determinateness. What is posited in accordance with this is not the real totality of the whole, but the totality or the fact itself only in the determinateness of form; since this unity is the mere conjunction of opposite determinations, then, when one of them is taken first-and it does not matter which-we must say of the substrate or fact that it is for that reason equally essentially in the other determinateness, but also only in the other, just as we said before that it is only in the first.
Thus something which in the first instance is only an inner, is for that very reason only an outer. Or conversely, something which is only an outer is just for that reason only an inner. Or, if the inner is determined as essence but the outer as being, then a fact, in so far as it is only in its essence, is for that very reason only an immediate being; or a fact which only is is precisely for that reason as yet only in its essence. Outer and inner are determinateness posited in such wise that each of these two determinations not only presupposes the other and passes over into it as into its truth, but, in so far as it is this truth of the other, remains posited as determinateness and points to the totality of both. The inner is therefore the consummation of essence with respect to form. For essence, when it is determined as inner, implies that it is defective and is, only as relation to its other, the outer; but this, equally, is not merely being or even Existence, but relates itself to essence or the inner. But what is here present is not only the relation of the two to each other but the determinate relation of the absolute form in which each is immediately its opposite, and their common relation to their third or rather to their unity. But their mediation still lacks this identical substrate that contains them both; hence their relation is the immediate conversion of the one into the other, and this negative unity which links them together is the simple point devoid of any content.
Remark: Immediate Identity of Inner and Outer
The movement of essence is in general the becoming of the Notion. In the relation of inner and outer, the essential moment of this emerges namely, that its determinations are posited as being in negative unity in such a manner that each immediately is not only it other but also the totality of the whole. But in the Notion as such this totality is the universal-a substrate which is not yet present in the relation of inner and outer. In the negative identity of inner and outer which is the immediate conversion of one of these determinations into the other, there is also lacking that substrate which above was called the fact.
It is very important to notice that the unmediated identity of form is posited here without the movement of the fact itself, a movement pregnant with content. It occurs in the fact as this is in its beginning. Thus pure being is immediately nothing. In general, everything real is, in its beginning, such a merely immediate identity; for in its beginning it has not yet opposed and developed its moments; on the one hand it has not yet inwardised itself out of externality. and on the other hand, it has not yet externalised and brought forth itself, out of inwardness by its activity. It is therefore only the inner as determinateness against the outer, and only the outer as determinateness against the inner. Hence it is partly only an immediate being; partly, in so far as it is equally the negativity which is to be the activity of the development, it is as such essentially only as yet an inner.
This makes itself apparent in all natural, scientific and spiritual development generally and it is essential to recognise that because something is at first, only inner or also is in its Notion, the first stage is for that very reason only its immediate, passive existence.
Thus — to take at once the nearest example — the essential relation here considered is only implicitly [an sich] the relation, only its Notion, or is at first only internal, before it has moved through the mediation of the relation of force and has realised itself. But for this reason it is only the outer, immediate relation, the relation of whole and parts, in which the sides have a mutually indifferent subsistence.
Their identity is not as yet within themselves; it is only internal and the sides therefore fall apart, have an immediate, external subsistence. Thus the sphere of being as such is as yet still the completely inner and is therefore the sphere of simply affirmative [seienden] immediacy or externality. Essence is at first only the inner, and it, too, is for this reason taken as a wholly external, unsystematised, common element; one speaks of public instruction, the press [Schulwesen, Zeitungswesen], and understands thereby something common formed by an external aggregation of existing objects lacking any essential connection or organisation; or to take concrete objects, the seed of the plant, or the child, is at first only inner plant, internal man. But this is why the plant or the man as germ is an immediate, and outer, which has not as yet given itself the negative reference to itself, is something passive, a prey to otherness. Thus God, too, in his immediate Notion is not spirit; spirit is not the immediate, that which is opposed to mediation, but on the contrary is the essence that eternally posits its immediacy and eternally returns out of it into itself.
Immediately, therefore God is only nature. Or, nature is only the Inner God, not God actual as spirit, and therefore not truly God. Or, in our thinking, our first thinking, God is only pure being, or even essence, the abstract absolute, but not God as absolute spirit, which alone is the true nature of God.
Transition to Actuality
3. The first of the identities of inner and outer we have considered is the substrate which is indifferent to the difference of these determinations as to a form external to it, or, the identity as content. The second is the unmediated identity of their difference, the immediate conversion of each into its opposite, or the identity as pure form. But these two identities are only the sides of one totality; or, the totality itself is only the conversion of one into the other. The totality as substrate and content is this immediacy, which is reflected into itself, only through the presupposing reflection of form which sublates their difference and posits itself as indifferent identity, as a reflected unity, over against it. Or, the content is the form itself in so far as this determines itself as difference, making itself into one of its sides as externality, but into the other as an immediacy that is reflected into itself, or into inner.
Conversely, it follows from this that each of the differences of form, the inner and outer, is posited within itself as the totality of itself and its other; the inner, as simple identity reflected into itself, is the immediate and accordingly is as much being and externality as essence; and the outer, as manifold, determinate being is only an outer, that is, is posited as unessential and as withdrawn into its ground, hence as an inner. This transition of each into the other is their immediate identity as substrate; but it is also their mediated identity; for it is precisely through its other that each is what it is in itself, the totality of the relation. Or, conversely, the determinateness of each side, because it is in itself the totality, is mediated with the other determinateness; thus the totality mediates itself with itself through the form or determinateness, and the determinateness is mediated with itself through its simple identity.
What something is, therefore, it is wholly in its externality; its externality is its totality and equally is its unity reflected into itself. Its Appearance is not only reflection-into-an-other but reflection-into-self, and its externality is, therefore, the expression or utterance of what it is in itself; and since its content and form are thus utterly identical, it is, in and for itself, nothing but this, to express or manifest itself. It is the manifesting of its essence in such a manner that this essence consists simply and solely in being that which manifests itself.
The essential relation, in this identity of Appearance with the inner or with essence, has determined itself into actuality.
Section Three: Actuality
Actuality is the unity of essence and Existence; in it, formless essence and unstable Appearance, or mere subsistence devoid of all determination and unstable manifoldness, have their truth.
Existence is, indeed, the immediacy which has proceeded from ground, but form is not as yet posited in it. In determining and forming itself it is Appearance; and when this subsistence which is determined only as reflection-into-an-other is developed further into reflection-into-self, it becomes two worlds, two totalities of the content, one of which is determined as reflected into itself, the other as reflected into an other. But the essential relation exhibits their form relation, the consummation of which is the relation of inner and outer in which the content of both is only one identical substrate and equally only one identity of form. By virtue of the fact that this identity is now also identity of form, the form determination of their difference is sublated, and it is posited that they are one absolute totality.
This unity of inner and outer is absolute actuality. But this actuality is, in the first instance, the absolute as such — in so far as it is posited as a unity in which form has sublated itself and made itself into the empty or outer difference of an outer and inner.
Reflection is external in its relation to this absolute, which, it merely contemplates rather than is the absolute's own movement. But since it is essentially this movement, it is so as the negative return of the absolute into itself.
Secondly, we have actuality proper. Actuality, possibility and necessity constitute the formal moments of the absolute, or its reflection.
Thirdly, the unity of the absolute and its reflection is the absolute relation, or rather the absolute as relation to itself — substance.
Chapter 1: The Absolute
The simple substantial identity of the absolute is indeterminate, or rather in it every determinateness of essence and Existence, or of being in general, as well as of reflection, has dissolved itself. Accordingly, the process of determining what the absolute is has a negative outcome, and the absolute itself appears only as the negation of all predicates and as the void. But since equally it must be pronounced to be the position of all predicates, it appears as the most formal contradiction. In so far as both the negating and the positing belong to external reflection, this is a formal and unsystematic dialectic which has no difficulty in picking up here and there a variety of determinations, and on the one hand demonstrates with equal ease their finitude and mere relativity as, on the other hand, since it thinks vaguely of the absolute as the totality of determinations, declares these to be immanent in it; at the same time it is unable to raise either the positions or the negations to a genuine unity. But we have to exhibit what the absolute is; but this 'exhibiting' can be neither a determining nor an external reflection from which determinations of the absolute would result; on the contrary, it is the exposition, and in fact the self-exposition, of the absolute and only a display of what it is.
A. THE EXPOSITION OF THE ABSOLUTE
The absolute is not merely being, nor even essence. The former is the first, unreflected immediacy, the latter is reflected immediacy; further, each is a totality within itself but a determinate totality. In essence, being emerges as Existence; and the connection between being and essence has progressed to the relation of inner and outer. The inner is essence, but as totality, which essentially has the determination of connection with being and immediately to be being. The outer is being, but with the essential determination of being connected with reflection, and equally to be immediately a relationless identity with essence. The absolute itself is the absolute unity of both; it is that which constitutes in general the ground of the essential relation which, as relation, merely has not yet withdrawn into this its identity and whose ground is not yet posited.
From this it follows that the determination of the absolute is to be the absolute form, but at the same time not as the identity whose moments are only simple determinatenesses, but as the identity each of whose moments is within itself the totality and hence, as indifferent to the form, is the complete content of the whole. But conversely, the absolute is the absolute content in such a manner that the content, which as such is an indifferent manifoldness, has within it the negative form relation by virtue of which its manifoldness is only one substantial identity.
The identity of the absolute is thus the absolute identity, since each of its parts is itself the whole, or each determinateness is the totality, that is, determinateness as such has become an utterly transparent illusory being, a difference which has vanished in its positedness. Essence, Existence, the world-in-itself, whole, parts, force-these reflected determinations appear to ordinary thinking as a true being which is valid in and for itself; but the absolute as against them is the ground in which they have been engulfed. Now because in the absolute, the form is only simple self-identity, the absolute does not determine itself; for determination is a form difference which, in the first instance, counts as such. But because at the same time it contains all difference and form-determination whatever, or because it is itself the absolute form and reflection, the difference of the content must also appear in it. But the absolute itself is absolute identity; this is its determination, for in it all manifoldness of the world-in-itself and the world of Appearance, or of inner and outer totality, is sublated. In the absolute itself is no becoming, for it is not being; not is it a self-reflecting determining, for it is not essence which determines itself only inwardly; nor is it an uttering or expressing of itself [sich äussern], for it is the identity of inner and outer. But the movement of reflection thus stands over against the absolute identity of the absolute. In this identity it is sublated and thus is only the inner of it; but as inner, it is external to it. At first, therefore, this movement consists only in sublating its act in the absolute. It is the beyond of the manifold differences and determinations and their movement, a beyond which lies at the back of the absolute; consequently, though it accepts them, it also destroys them; it is thus the negative exposition of the absolute previously mentioned. In its true presentation this exposition is the preceding whole of the logical movement of the sphere of being and essence, the content of which has not been raked together from outside as something given and contingent, or submerged in the abyss of the absolute by a reflection alien to that content; on the contrary, it has determined itself internally through its inner necessity, and as being's own becoming and as the reflection of essence, has withdrawn into the absolute as into its ground.
But at the same time this exposition has itself a positive side; for in so far as in it the finite falls to the ground, it demonstrates that its nature is to be connected with the absolute, or to contain the absolute within itself. But this side is not so much the positive exposition of the absolute itself as rather the exposition of the determinations, namely, that these have the absolute for their abyss, but also for their ground, in other words, that which gives a subsistence to them, to the illusory being, is the absolute itself. The illusory being is not nothing, but is a reflection, a relation to the absolute; or, it is illusory being in so far as in it the absolute is reflected. This positive exposition thus arrests the finite before it vanishes and contemplates it as an expression and image of the absolute. But the transparency of the finite, which only lets the absolute be glimpsed through it, ends by completely vanishing; for there is nothing in the finite which could preserve for it a distinction against the absolute; it is a medium which is absorbed by that which is reflected through it.
This positive exposition of the absolute is therefore itself only an illusory activity, a reflective movement [ein Scheinen]; for what is truly positive in the exposition and the expounded content, is the absolute itself. Any further determinations that may occur, the form into which the absolute reflects itself, is a nullity that the exposition picks up from outside and from which it gains a beginning for its activity. Such a determination has, in the absolute, not its beginning, but only its end. Consequently, this expository process though it is an absolute act through its relation to the absolute into which it withdraws, is not so as regards its starting point which is a determination external to the absolute.
But the exposition of the absolute is, in fact, its own act, which begins from itself and arrives at itself. The absolute, merely as absolute identity, is determinate, namely, as the identical; it is posited as such by reflection as against opposition and manifoldness; or it is only the negative of reflection and the process of determining as such. Therefore not only is this expounding of the absolute something imperfect, but so also is this absolute itself which is only arrived at. Or, the absolute that is only an absolute identity, is only the absolute of an external reflection. It is therefore not the absolute absolute but the absolute in a determinateness, or it is attribute.
But the absolute is not merely attribute because it is the subject matter of an external reflection and therefore something determined by it. Or, reflection is not only external to it; but because it is external to it, it is immediately internal to it. The absolute is the absolute only because it is not abstract identity, but the identity of being and essence, or the identity of inner and outer; it is therefore itself the absolute form which makes it reflect itself into itself [es in sich scheinen macht] and determines it into attribute.
B. THE ABSOLUTE ATTRIBUTE
The expression which has been used, the absolute absolute, denotes the absolute that in its form has returned into itself, or whose form is identical with its content. The attribute is the merely relative absolute, a connection which signifies simply the absolute in a form determination. For at first, before its completed exposition, the form is only internal, or what is the same thing only external, in general, at first determinate form or negation as such. But because form is at the same time form of the absolute, the attribute is the whole content of the absolute; it is the totality which previously appeared as a world, or as one of the sides of the essential relation, each of which is itself the whole. But the two worlds, the world of Appearance and the world-in-and-for-itself, were supposed to be opposed to each other in their essence. True, one side of the relation was equal to the other, the whole was equal to the parts, the expression of force the same content as force itself, and the outer altogether the same as the inner. But at the same time, each of these two sides was supposed to have as well an immediate subsistence of its own, one as simply affirmative, the other as reflected immediacy. In the absolute, on the other hand, these distinguished immediacies are reduced to an illusory being, and the totality which the attribute is is posited as its true and sole subsistence; but the determination in which it is is posited as unessential subsistence.
The absolute is attribute because as simple absolute identity it is in the determination of identity; now to the determination as such other determinations can be linked, for example, that there are also several attributes. But because absolute identity has only this meaning, not merely that all determinations are sublated but that it is also the reflection that has sublated itself, therefore all determinations are posited in this identity as sublated. Or the totality is posited as absolute, or the attribute has the absolute for its content and subsistence; its form determination, by virtue of which it is attribute, is therefore also posited, immediately as mere illusory being-the negative as a negative. The positive illusory being which the exposition gives itself through the attribute, in that it does not take the finite in its limitation to be something existing in and for itself but dissolves its subsistence in the absolute and extends it into attribute, sublates the very fact that it is attribute; the exposition submerges both the attribute and its distinguishing act in the simple absolute.
But since reflection thus returns from its distinguishing only to the identity of the absolute, it has not at the same time emerged from its externality and reached the veritable absolute. It has only reached determinate, abstract identity, that is, that identity which is in the determinateness of identity. Or, since it is as inner form that reflection determines the absolute into attribute, this determining is something still distinct from the externality; the inner determination does not penetrate the absolute; its utterance or expression is, as something merely posited, to vanish in the absolute.
Form, therefore, whether taken as outer or inner, whereby the absolute might be attribute, is at the same time posited as being something intrinsically null, an external illusory being, or a mere way and manner.
C. THE MODE OF THE ABSOLUTE
The attribute is first, the absolute as in simple identity with itself. Secondly, it is negation, and this as negation is formal reflection-into-self. These two sides constitute, in the first instance, the two extremes of the attribute, the mean of which is the attribute itself, since it is both the absolute and the determinateness. The second of these extremes is the negative as negative, the reflection which is external to the absolute. Or, in so far as it is taken as the inner of the absolute and it is its own determination to posit itself as mode, then it is the self-externality of the absolute, the loss of itself in the mutability and contingency of being, the accomplished transition of itself into opposites without the return into itself; the multiplicity of form and content determinations lacking the character of totality.
But mode, the externality of the absolute, is not merely this, but externality posited as externality, a mere way and manner, and hence illusory being as illusory being, or the reflection of the form into itself-hence the identity-with-self which the absolute is. Therefore it is in the mode that the absolute is in fact first posited as absolute identity; it is what it is, namely identity-with-self, only as self-related negativity, as a reflective movement [Scheinen] that is posited as reflective movement.
In so far then as the exposition of the absolute begins from its absolute identity, and passes over to attribute and from that on to mode, it has in its course completely run through all its moments. But first, in doing so its relationship to these determinations is not merely negative, but this its act is the reflective movement itself, and it is only as this that the absolute is truly absolute identity. Secondly, in this activity the exposition is not dealing merely with something external, nor is mode merely the uttermost externality, but because it is illusory being as illusory being it is the return-into-self, the self-dissolving reflection and it is as this that the absolute is absolute being. Thirdly, the expounding reflection seems to begin from its own determinations and from something external, and to take up the modes and also the determinations of the attribute as simply found outside the absolute; and its act seems to consist in merely tracing these back into an indifferent identity. But in fact it has in the absolute itself the determinateness from which it begins. For the absolute as first indifferent identity is itself only the determinate absolute or attribute, because it is the unmoved, still unreflected absolute. This determinateness, because it is determinateness, belongs to the reflective movement; through this alone is it determined as the first identity, and equally through this alone does it have absolute form and is not that which merely is equal to itself, but is that which posits itself as equal to itself.
Accordingly the true meaning of mode is that it is the absolute's own reflective movement, a determining; but a determining which would make it not an other but only that which it already is, the transparent externality which is the manifestation of itself, a movement out of itself, but such that this being-outwards is equally inwardness itself and therefore equally a positing that is not merely positedness but absolute being.
When therefore a content of the exposition is asked for, what then does the absolute manifest? the answer must be that the distinction between form and content is simply dissolved in the absolute. Or the content of the absolute is just this, to manifest itself. The absolute is the absolute form which, as the diremption of itself is utterly identical with itself, the negative as negative, or that unites with itself, and only thus is it the absolute identity-with-self which equally is indifferent to its differences, or is absolute content. The content, therefore, is only this exposition itself.
As this movement of exposition, a movement which carries itself along with it, as a way and manner which is its absolute identity-with-self, the absolute is manifestation not of an inner, nor over against an other, but it is only as the absolute manifestation of itself for itself. As such it is actuality.
Remark: The Philosophy of Spinoza and Leibniz
Corresponding to the Notion of the absolute and to the relation of reflection to it, as expounded here, is the notion of substance in Spinozism. Spinozism is a defective philosophy because in it reflection and its manifold determining is an external thinking. The substance of this system is one substance, one indivisible totality; there is no determinateness that is not contained and dissolved in this absolute; and it is sufficiently important that in this necessary notion, everything which to natural picture thinking or to the understanding with its fixed distinctions, appears and is vaguely present as something self-subsistent, is completely reduced to a mere positedness. Determinateness is negation-is the absolute principle of Spinoza's philosophy; this true and simple insight establishes the absolute unity of substance. But Spinoza stops short at negation as determinateness or quality; he does not advance to a cognition of negation as absolute, that is, self-negating, negation; thus his substance does not itself contain the absolute form, and cognition of it is not an immanent cognition. True, substance is the absolute unity of thought and being or extension; therefore it contains thought itself, but only in its unity with extension, that is, not as separating itself from extension, hence in general not as a determinative and formative activity, nor as a movement which returns into and begins from itself. Two consequences follow from this: one is that substance lacks the principle of personality — a defect which has been the main cause of hostility to Spinoza's system; the other is that cognition is external reflection which does not comprehend and derive from substance that which appears as finite, the determinateness of the attribute and the mode, and generally itself as well, but is active as an external understanding, taking up the determinations as given and tracing them back to the absolute but not taking its beginnings from the latter.
The notions of substance given by Spinoza are the notions of 'cause of itself', and that substance is that whose essence includes existence — that the notion of the absolute does not require the notion of an other by which it must be formed. These notions, profound and correct as they are, are definitions, which are immediately assumed at the outset of the science. Mathematics and other subordinate sciences must begin with something presupposed which constitutes its element and positive foundation. But the absolute cannot be a first, an immediate; on the contrary, the absolute is essentially its result.
Spinoza's definition of the absolute is followed by his definition of the attribute, and this is determined as the manner in which intellect comprehends the essence of substance. Apart from the fact that intellect, in accordance with its nature, is postulated as posterior to attribute — for Spinoza defines it as mode — attribute, determination as determination of the absolute, is thus made dependent on an other, namely, intellect, which appears as external and immediate over against substance.
Spinoza further determines attribute as infinite, and infinite, too, in the sense of an infinite plurality. However in what follows only two appear, thought and extension, and it is not shown by what necessity the infinite plurality reduces itself to opposition, that, namely, of thought and extension. These two attributes are therefore adopted empirically. Thought and being represent the absolute in a determination; the absolute itself is their absolute unity and they themselves are only unessential forms; the order of things is the same as that of figurate conceptions or thoughts, and the one absolute is contemplated only by external reflection, by a mode, under these two determinations, once as a totality of conceptions, and again as a totality of things and their mutations. just as it is this external reflection which makes that distinction, so too does it lead the difference back into absolute identity and therein submerges it. But this entire movement proceeds outside the absolute. True, the absolute is itself also thought, and so far this movement is only in the absolute; but as remarked, it is in the absolute only as unity with extension, and therefore not as this movement which is essentially also the moment of opposition. Spinoza makes the sublime demand of thought that it consider everything under the form of eternity, sub specie aeterni, that is, as it is in the absolute. But in the said absolute, which is only unmoved identity, the attribute, like the mode, is only as vanishing, not as becoming, so that here, too, the vanishing takes its positive beginning only from without.
§ 1183
The Third, the mode, is with Spinoza affection of substance, specific determinateness, and this is in an other and is apprehended through this other. The attributes have, strictly speaking, only indeterminate difference for their determination; each is supposed to express the totality of substance and to be understood from itself alone; but in so far as it is the absolute as determinate, it contains otherness and cannot be understood from itself alone. It is in the mode, therefore, that the determination of the attribute is first really posited. Further, this mode remains mere mode; on the one hand it is something immediately given, and on the other, its nullity is not cognised as reflection-into-self. Consequently, the Spinozistic exposition of the absolute is complete in so far as it starts from the absolute, then follows with the attribute, and ends with the mode; but these three are only enumerated one after the other, without any inner sequence of development, and the third is not negation as negation, not the negatively self-related negation which would be in its own self the return into the first identity, so that this identity would then be veritable identity. Hence the necessity of the advance of the absolute to unessentiality is lacking and also the dissolution of the unessentiality in and for itself in the identity; or, there is lacking the becoming both of identity and of its determinations.
In a similar manner, in the oriental conception of emanation the absolute is the light which illumines itself. Only it not only illumines itself but also emanates. Its emanations are distancing [Entfernungen] from its undimmed clarity; the successive productions are less perfect than the preceding ones from which they arise. The process of emanation is taken only as a happening, the becoming only as a progressive loss. Thus being increasingly obscures itself and night, the negative, is the final term of the series, which does not first return into the primal light.
The lack of reflection-into-self, from which both the Spinozistic exposition of the absolute and the emanation theory suffer, is made good in the notion of the Leibnizian monad. The one-sidedness of a philosophical principle is usually countered by its opposite one-sidedness and totality, as in all of them, is usually present as a dispersed completeness-The monad is only one, a negative reflected into itself; it is the totality of the content of the world. In it, the varied multiplicity has not only vanished but is in a negative manner preserved; (Spinoza's substance is the unity of all content; but this manifold content of the world is not as such in it, but in the reflection which is external to it). The monad is therefore essentially ideative; but although it is finite its nature is not passive, the mutations and determinations in it being manifestations within it of itself. It is an entelechy, and the manifestation is its own act. The monad is thereby also determinate, distinguished from others; the determinateness falls in the particular content and the way and manner of the manifestation. Consequently, the monad is in itself or according to its substance, the totality, but it is not so in its manifestation. This limitation of the monad necessarily falls, not in the self-positing or ideating monad, but in its in-itself [Ansichsein]; or it is absolute limit, a predestination which is posited by another being than itself. Further, since limited entities exist only as related to other limited entities, yet the monad is at the same time a self-enclosed absolute, the harmony of these limitations, that is, the relation of the monads to one another, falls outside them and is likewise pre-established by another being or in itself.
Clearly, by the principle of reflection-into-self which constitutes the fundamental determination of the monad, otherness and external influence in general are no doubt removed and the alterations of the monad are its own positing; but on the other side, passivity in relation to otherness has merely been transformed into an absolute limitation, into a limitation of the being-in-self or the in-itself. Leibniz ascribes to the monads a certain internal completeness, a kind of self-subsistence; they are created
beings. When their limitation is considered more closely, it is evident from this account of the monads that the manifestation of themselves which belongs to them is the totality of form. It is an extremely important concept that the alterations of the monads are conceived of as actions in which passivity plays no part, as manifestations of themselves, and that the principle of reflection-into-self or of individuation stands out as essential. Further, it is necessary to let finitude consist in this, that the content or substance is distinct from the form, and also that the former is limited but the latter infinite. But now we should have to find in the concept of the absolute monad not only that absolute unity of form and content, but also the nature of reflection as the self-relating negativity which repels itself from itself whereby it posits and creates. True, in Leibniz's system, the further point is likewise to be found that God is the source of existence and of the essence of the monads, that is to say, that those absolute limitations in the being-in-self or the in-itself of the monads are not limitations in and for themselves, but vanish in the absolute. But in these determinations are to be seen only the usual conceptions which are not philosophically developed, nor raised into speculative Notions. Thus the principle of individuation does not receive its profounder realisation; the concepts concerning the distinction between the various finite monads and their relation to their absolute do not originate out of this being itself, or not in an absolute manner, but are the product of ratiocinative, dogmatic reflection and therefore have not achieved an inner coherence.
Chapter 2 Actuality
The absolute is the unity of inner and outer as initial, implicit unity. The exposition appeared as external reflection which, on its side, has the immediate before it as something already given, but is at the same time the movement and relation of this to the absolute, and as such movement leads it back into the absolute and determines it as a mere 'way and manner'. But this 'way and manner' is the determination of the absolute itself, namely, its initial identity or its merely implicit unity. And through this reflection, too, not only is that initial in-itself posited as essenceless determination but, since the reflection is negative self-relation, it is through this alone that the in-itself becomes this mode. This reflection, as sublating itself in its determinations and in general as the self-returning movement, is first truly absolute identity and at the same time is the determining of the absolute or its modality. The mode is therefore the externality of the absolute, but equally only as the reflection of the absolute into itself; or it is the absolute's own manifestation, so that this manifestation is its reflection-into-self and therefore its being-in-and-for-itself.
The absolute as such manifestation, the absolute which is nothing else and has no content save that of being self-manifestation, is absolute form. Actuality is to be taken as this reflected absoluteness. Being is not yet actual: it is the first immediacy; its reflection is therefore a becoming and transition into an other; or its immediacy is not being-in-and-for-itself. Actuality also stands higher than Existence. True, Existence is the immediacy that has proceeded from ground and conditions, or from essence and its reflection. It is therefore in itself what actuality is, real reflection, but it is not yet the posited unity of reflection and immediacy. Existence therefore passes over into appearance in that it develops the reflection which it contains.
It is the ground that has fallen to the ground; its determination is the restoration of the ground; thus it becomes essential relation and its final reflection is the positing of its immediacy as reflection-into-self, and conversely; now this unity in which Existence or immediacy, and the in-itself, the ground or the reflected are simply moments, is actuality. The actual is therefore manifestation; it is not drawn into the sphere of alteration by its externality, nor is it the reflecting of itself in an other, but it manifests itself; that is, in its externality it is itself and is itself in that alone, namely only as a self-distinguishing and self-determining movement.
Now in actuality as this absolute form, the moments are only as sublated or formal, not yet realised; their difference thus belongs at first to external reflection and is not determined as content.
Actuality as itself the immediate form — unity of inner and outer is thus in the determination of immediacy over against the determination of reflection-into-self; or it is an actuality as against a possibility. Their relation to each other is the third term, the actual determined equally as a being reflected into itself, and this at the same time as a being existing immediately. This third term is necessity.
But first of all, since the actual and the possible are formal differences, their relation is likewise merely formal and consist only in the fact that the one like the other is a positedness, or in contingency.
Now since in contingency, the actual as well as the possible is positedness, they have received determination in themselves; the actual thereby becomes, secondly, real actuality and with it equally emerges real possibility and relative necessity.
Thirdly, the reflection of relative necessity into itself yields absolute necessity, which is absolute possibility and actuality.
A. CONTINGENCY, OR FORMAL ACTUALITY, POSSIBILITY, AND NECESSITY
1. Actuality is formal in so far as, being primary actuality, it is only immediate, unreflected actuality, and hence is only in this form-determination but not as the totality of form. As such it is nothing more than a being or Existence in general. But because it is essentially not a mere immediate Existence but exists as form-unity of being-within-self or inwardness and outwardness, it immediately contains the in-itself or possibility. What is actual is possible.
2. This possibility is actuality reflected into itself. But even this first reflectedness is likewise formal and therefore in general only the determination of identity-with-self or of the in-itself generally.
But because the determination is here the totality of form, this in-itself is determined as sublated or as essentially only in relation to actuality, as the negative of actuality, posited as negative. Possibility therefore contains two moments: first, the positive moment that it is a reflectedness-into-self; but since it is reduced in the absolute form to a moment, the reflectedness-into-self no longer counts as essence, but has, secondly, the negative meaning that possibility lacks something, that it points to an other, to actuality in which it completes itself.
According to the first, the merely positive side, therefore, possibility is the mere form determination of identity-with-self or the form of essentiality. As such it is the relationless, indeterminate receptacle for everything whatever. In the sense of this formal possibility everything is possible that is not self-contradictory; hence the realm of possibility is a boundless multiplicity. But each of these manifold entities is determinate within itself and as against another and contains negation; in general, indifferent diversity passes over into opposition; but opposition is contradiction. Therefore everything is just as much something contradictory and therefore impossible.
This merely formal predication of something — it is possible — is therefore equally as superficial and empty as the law of contradiction and any content that is admitted into it. A is possible means only that A is A. In so far as nothing is done to develop the content, this has the form of simplicity; not until it is resolved into its determinations does difference emerge in it. So long as one sticks to this simple form, the content remains something identical with itself and therefore something possible. But to say this is equally to say nothing, just as in the formal law of identity.
The possible, however, contains more than the bare law of identity. The possible is the reflected reflectedness-into-self, or the identical simply as moment of the totality, and hence is also determined as being not in itself; it has therefore the second determination of being only a possible and the ought-to-be of the totality of form. Possibility without this ought-to-be is essentiality as such; but the absolute form contains this, that essence itself is only a moment, and without being lacks its truth. Possibility is this mere essentiality so posited that it is only a moment and is inadequate to the absolute form. It is the in-itself determined as only a posited, or equally as not being in itself. Possibility is therefore in its own self-contradiction, or it is impossibility.
This is expressed first of all in this way, that possibility as form determination posited as sublated possesses a content in general. This, as possible, is an in-itself, which is at the same time a sublated in-itself or an otherness. Because, therefore, it is only a possible content, another and its opposite is equally possible. A is A; equally, -A is -A. These two statements each express the possibility of its content determination. But as these identical statements they are mutually indifferent; it is not posited in the one that the other too is added to it. Possibility is the comparing relation of both; in its determination as a reflection of the totality, possibility implies that the opposite too is possible. It is therefore the relating ground, that because A = A, therefore also -A = -A; in the possible A the possible not -A is also contained and it is this very relation which determines both as possible.
But this relation, in which the one possible also contains its other, is the contradiction that sublates itself. Now, according to its determination it is the reflected, and as we have seen, the self-sublating reflected; it is therefore also the immediate and thus becomes actuality.
3. This actuality is not the primary but the reflected actuality, posited as unity of itself and possibility. The actual as such is possible; it is in immediate positive identity with possibility; but this has determined itself as only possibility; thus the actual too, is determined as only a possible. And immediately because possibility is immediately contained in actuality, it is contained in actuality as sublated, as only possibility. Conversely, actuality which is in unity with possibility is only sublated immediacy; or because formal actuality is only immediate, primary actuality, it is only a moment, only sublated actuality, or only possibility.
Here at the same time is more precisely expressed, how far possibility is actuality. For possibility is not yet all actuality; no question has yet arisen of real and absolute actuality; it is at first only that possibility which first presented itself, namely, formal possibility which has determined itself as being only possibility, and is thus formal actuality which is only being or Existence in general. Everything possible has therefore in general a being or an Existence.
This unity of possibility and actuality is contingency. The contingent is an actual that at the same time is determined as merely possible, whose other or opposite equally is. This actuality is therefore mere being or Existence, but posited in its truth as having the value of a positedness or of possibility. Conversely, possibility as reflection-into-self or the in-itself is posited as positedness; what is possible is an actual in this sense of actuality; it has only as much worth as contingent actuality; it is itself a contingent.
The contingent therefore presents two sides. First, in so far as it has possibility immediately in it — or what is the same thing, in so far as possibility is sublated in it — it is neither positedness nor is it mediated, but is immediate actuality; it has no ground. Because this immediate actuality also belongs to the possible, the latter no less than the actual is determined as contingent and likewise as groundless.
But secondly, the contingent is the actual as a merely possible or as a positedness; thus the possible, too, as the formal in-itself is only a positedness. Hence neither is in and for itself but has its true reflection-into-self in an other, or it has a ground.
The contingent, then, has no ground because it is contingent; and, equally, it has a ground because it is contingent.
It is the posited, unmediated conversion of inner and outer, or of reflectedness-into-self and being, into each other — posited, because possibility and actuality each has this determination within it and because they are moments of the absolute form. Thus actuality in its immediate unity with possibility is only Existence and is determined as something groundless that is only a posited or only a possible; or, as reflected and determinate over against possibility, it is separated from possibility, from reflectedness-into-self, and so equally immediately also only a possible. Similarly, possibility as a simple in-itself is an immediate, only a simple affirmative being, or opposed to actuality, it is equally an in-itself that lacks actuality, only a possible; but for that very reason it is again only an Existence as such that is not reflected into itself.
This absolute unrest of the becoming of these two determinations is contingency. But just because each immediately turns into its opposite, equally in this other it simply unites with itself, and this identity of both, of one in the other, is necessity.
The necessary is an actual; as such it is something immediate, groundless; but equally it has its actuality through an other or in its ground, but at the same time is the positedness of this ground and the reflection of it into itself; the possibility of the necessary is a sublated possibility. The contingent, therefore, is necessary because the actual is determined as a possible, hence its immediacy is sublated and repelled into the ground or the in-itself, and the grounded, and also because this its possibility, the ground-relation, is simply sublated and posited as being. The necessary is, and this that simply is, is itself the necessary. At the same time it is in itself; this reflection-into-self is an other than that immediacy of being, and the necessity of what simply is [des Seienden] is an other. Thus what simply is, is not itself the necessary; but this in-itself is itself only a positedness; it is sublated and itself immediate. Thus actuality in that which is distinguished from it, namely possibility, is identical with itself. As this identity it is necessity.
B. RELATIVE NECESSITY, OR REAL ACTUALITY, POSSIBILITY, AND NECESSITY
1. The necessity which has resulted is formal because its moments are formal; that is, they are simple determinations which are a totality only as an immediate unity or as an immediate conversion of the one into the other and thus do not have the form [Gestalt] of self-subsistence. Hence in this formal necessity the unity is at first simple and indifferent to its differences. As immediate unity of the form-determinations this necessity is actuality; but one which has a content, because its unity is now determined as indifferent to the distinction between the form determinations, namely between itself and possibility. This content as an indifferent identity also contains the form as indifferent, that is, as merely diverse determinations, and is a manifold content in general. This actuality is real actuality.
Real actuality as such is in the first instance the thing of many properties, the existent world; but it is not the Existence that resolves itself into Appearance, but, as actuality, it is at the same time the in-itself and reflection-into-self; it preserves itself in the manifoldness of mere Existence; its externality is an inner relationship to itself alone. What is actual can act; something manifests its actuality through what which it produces. Its relationship to another something is the manifestation of itself: neither a transition — the relation between something and an other in the sphere of being — nor an appearing — where the thing is only in relation to others and, though a self-subsistent, has its reflection-into-self, its determinate essentiality, in another self-subsistent.
Now real actuality likewise has possibility immediately present within it. It contains the moment of the in-itself; but, as first of all only immediate unity, it is in one of the determinations of the form, and is thus distinguished as a simply affirmative being from the in-itself or possibility.
2. This possibility as the in-itself of real actuality is itself real Possibility, and first of all, the in-itself as pregnant with content. Formal possibility is reflection-into-self only as abstract identity, which merely means that something is not internally self-contradictory. But if one brings into account the determinations, circumstances and conditions of something in order to ascertain its possibility, one is no longer at the stage of formal possibility, but is considering its real possibility.
This real possibility is itself an immediate Existence, but no longer because possibility as such, as a formal moment, is immediately its opposite, a non-reflected actuality; but, because it is real possibility, it straightway contains this determination within itself. The real possibility of something is therefore the existing multiplicity of circumstances which are connected with it.
This existing multiplicity is, therefore, both possibility and actuality, yet their identity is, at first, only the content, which is indifferent to these form-determinations; they therefore constitute the form, determined as against their identity. Or, immediate, real actuality, because it is immediate, is determined as against its possibility; as this determinate and therefore reflected possibility, it is real possibility. Now this is the posited whole of form, it is true, but of the form in its determinateness, namely, of actuality as formal or immediate, and equally of possibility as an abstract in-itself. This actuality which constitutes the possibility of something is therefore not its own possibility, but the in-itself of another actual; it is itself the actuality which ought to be sublated, possibility as possibility only. Thus real possibility constitutes the totality of conditions, a dispersed actuality which is not reflected into itself but is determined as being the in-itself, but the in-itself of an other, and as meant to return back into itself.
What is really possible is, according to its in-itself, something formally identical which, having a simple content-determination, is not self-contradictory; but, as self-identical, it must also not be self-contradictory in its developed and distinct circumstances and in everything with which it stands connected. But secondly, because it is manifold within itself and has manifold connections with an other, and because variety in its own self passes over into opposition, it is contradictory. If a possibility is in question and its contradiction is to be demonstrated, one need only fasten on to the multiplicity which it contains as content or as its conditioned Existence, and from this its contradiction is easily discovered. But this is not a contradiction arising from comparison; on the contrary, manifold Existence is in its own self this, to sublate itself and to fall to the ground, and for this reason essentially contains within itself the determination of being merely a possible. When all the conditions of something are completely present, it enters into actuality; the completeness of the conditions is the totality as in the content, and the something itself is this content determined as being equally actual as possible. In the sphere of conditioned ground, the conditions have outside them the form — that is, the ground or the reflection which is for itself — which connects them into moments of the something in question and which produces Existence in them. Here, on the other hand, immediate actuality is not determined by a presupposing reflection to be condition, but it is posited that this actuality itself is possibility.
Now in self-sublating real possibility, what is sublated is a duality, for it is itself the duality of actuality and possibility. 1. Actuality is formal, or is an Existence which appeared as selfsubsistent and immediate, and through its sublating becomes reflected being, the moment of an other, and thus becomes possessed of an in-itself. 2. This Existence was also determined as possibility or as an in-itself, but of an other. Therefore, when real possibility sublates itself, this in-itself is also sublated and passes over into actuality. Thus this movement of self-sublating real possibility produces the same moments which are already in being, but now each grows only out of the other; consequently, in this negation it also is not a transition, but a going-together-with-itself. Under formal possibility, because something was possible, then-not itself-but its other was also possible. Real possibility no longer has over against it such an other, for it is real in so far as it is itself also actuality. Consequently, when its immediate Existence, the circle of conditions, sublates itself, it makes itself into that in-itself which it already is, namely the in-itself of an other. And since, conversely, its moment of in-itself is thereby at the same time sublated, it becomes actuality, that is, that moment which it likewise already is. Thus what vanishes is this, that actuality was determined as the possibility or in-itself of an other, and conversely, possibility as an actuality which is not that whose possibility it is.
3. The negation of real possibility is thus its identity-with self; in that in its sublating it is thus within itself the recoil of this sublating, it is real necessity.
What is necessary cannot be otherwise; but what is simply possible can; for possibility is the in-itself that is only positedness and therefore essentially otherness. Formal possibility is this identity as transition into a sheer other; but real possibility, because it contains the other moment, actuality, is already itself necessity. Therefore what is really possible can no longer be otherwise; under the particular conditions and circumstances something else cannot follow.
Real possibility and necessity are therefore only seemingly different; this is an identity which does not have to become but is already presupposed and lies at their base. Real necessity is therefore a relation pregnant with content; for the content is that simplicity identity that is indifferent to the differences of form.
But this necessity is at the same time relative. For it has a presupposition from which it begins, it has its starting point in the contingent. For the real actual as such is the determinate actual, and has first of all its determinateness as immediate being in the fact that it is a multiplicity of existing circumstances; but this immediate being as determinateness is also the negative of itself, is an in-itself or possibility, and thus it is real possibility. As this unity of the two moments it is the totality of form, but the totality which is still external to itself; it is unity of possibility and actuality in such a manner that (1) manifold Existence is immediately or positively possibility — a possible, a self-identical in general, because it is an actual; (2) in so far as this possibility of Existence is posited, it is determined as only possibility, as immediate conversion of actuality into its opposite — or as contingency. Consequently this possibility which immediate actuality possesses in so far as it is condition, is only the in-itself as the possibility of an other. By virtue of the fact that, as was shown, this otherness sublates itself and this positedness is itself posited, real possibility does, it is true, become necessity; but the latter thus begins from that unity of the possible and the actual which is not yet reflected into itself — this presupposing and the self-returning movement are still separate — or necessity has not yet spontaneously determined itself into contingency.
The relativity of real necessity exhibits itself in the content in such a manner that it is at first only the identity which is indifferent to form, therefore is distinct from it and a determinate content in general.
The really necessary is therefore any limited actuality, which, on account of this limitation, is also only a contingent in some other respect.
Thus in point of fact real necessity is in itself also contingency. This is manifest at first in this manner: though the really necessary is a necessary as regards form, as regards content it is limited, and through this has its contingency. But contingency is also contained in the form of real necessity; for, as we have seen, real possibility is only in itself or in principle the necessary, but it is posited as the otherness of actuality and possibility towards each other. Real necessity therefore contains contingency; it is the return-into-self from that restless otherness of actuality and possibility towards each other, but not from itself to itself.
Here, therefore, the unity of necessity and contingency is present in itself or in principle; this unity is to be called absolute actuality.
C. ABSOLUTE NECESSITY
Real necessity is determinate necessity; formal necessity does not as yet possess any content and determinateness. The determinateness of necessity consists in its containing its negation, contingency, within itself. This is what it has shown itself to be.
But this determinateness in its first simplicity is actuality; determinate necessity is therefore immediately actual necessity. This actuality, which is itself as such necessary, for it contains necessity as its in-itself, is absolute actuality — actuality which can no longer be otherwise, for its in-itself is not possibility but necessity itself.
But because this actuality is posited as being absolute, that is, as being itself the unity of itself and possibility, it is only an empty determination, or, it is contingency. This emptiness of its determination makes it a mere possibility, something which can equally be otherwise and can be determined as a possible. But this possibility is itself absolute; for it is precisely the possibility of being determined equally as possibility or as actuality. Since it is this indifference towards itself it is posited as an empty, contingent determination.
Thus real necessity notionally implicitly contains contingency, but contingency also becomes in it; but this becoming, as externality, is itself only the in-itself of such necessity because it is only an immediate determinedness. But the becoming is not only this, it is also necessity's own becoming — or the presupposition which necessity had is its own positing. For, as real necessity, it is the sublatedness of actuality in possibility, and conversely; because it is the simple conversion of one of these moments into the other, it is also their positive unity, since each, as we saw, unites only with itself in the other. But as such it is actuality; an actuality, however, which only is as this simple coincidence of the form with itself. Its negative positing of those moments is thereby itself the presupposing or positing of itself as sublated, or of immediacy.
But it is in this very act that this actuality is determined as a negative; it is a union with itself out of the actuality which was real possibility; thus this new actuality develops only out of its in-itself, out of the negation of itself. It is thus at the same time immediately determined as possibility, as mediated by its negation. But this possibility is, therefore, immediately nothing but this mediating, in which the in-itself, namely, the possibility itself and immediacy, both in the same manner, are positedness. It is thus the necessity which is equally the sublating of this positedness or the positing of immediacy and the in-itself, and in this same act is a determining of this sublating as positedness. It is therefore necessity itself which determines itself as contingency — in its being repels itself from itself and in this very repulsion has only returned into itself, and in this return, as its being, has repelled itself from itself.
Thus form in its realisation has penetrated all its differences and made itself transparent and is, as absolute necessity, only this simple self-identity of being in its negation, or in essence. The distinction of content and form itself has also vanished; for that unity of possibility in actuality, and conversely, is the form which in its determinateness or in positedness is indifferent towards itself, is the fact filled with content, in which the form of necessity ran its external course. But as such, it is this reflected identity of the two determinations as indifferent towards it, and hence the form-determination of the in-itself as against the positedness, and this possibility constitutes the limitedness of the content real necessity had. But the resolution of this difference is absolute necessity whose content is this difference which in this necessity penetrates itself.
Absolute necessity is, therefore, the truth into which actuality possibility as such, and formal and possibility as such, and formal and real necessity withdraw. It is, as we have found, that being which in its negation, in essence, is self-related and is being. It is as much simple immediacy or pure being as simple reflection-into-self or pure essence; it is this, that these two are one and the same. That which is simply necessary only is because it is; it has neither condition nor ground. But equally it is pure essence; its being is simple reflection-into-self; it is, because it is. As reflection, it has a ground and condition, but it has only itself for ground and condition. It is the in-itself, but its in-itself is its immediacy, its possibility is its actuality. It is, therefore, because it is; as the union of being with itself it is essence; but because this simple is equally immediate simplicity, it is being.
Absolute necessity is thus the reflection or form of the absolute: the unity of being and essence, simple immediacy that is absolute negativity. Consequently, on the one hand, its differences do not have the shape of the determinations of reflection, but of a simply affirmative [seiende] multiplicity, a differentiated actuality which has the shape of others, self-subsistent relatively to one another. On the other hand, since its relation is absolute identity, it is the absolute conversion of its actuality into its possibility and of its possibility into actuality. Absolute necessity is therefore blind. On the one hand, the different sides, which are determined as actuality and possibility have the shape of reflection-into-self as being; both are, therefore, free actualities, neither of which is reflected in the other, nor will let any trace of its relation to the other show in it; grounded in itself, each is the necessary in its own self. Necessity as essence is concealed in this being; contact between these actualities appears therefore as an empty externally; the actuality of the one in the other is only possibility, contingency. For being is posited as absolutely necessary, as self-mediation, which is absolute negation of mediation by an other, or as being which is identical only with being; an other that has actuality in being, is therefore determined simply as something merely possible, as empty positedness.
But this contingency is rather absolute necessity; it is the essence of those free, inherently necessary actualities. This essence is light-shy, because there is in these actualities no reflective movement, no reflex, because they are grounded purely in themselves alone, are shaped for themselves, and manifest themselves only to themselves, because they are only being. But their essence will break forth in them and reveal what it is and what they are. The simplicity of their being and their self-support is absolute negativity; it is the freedom of their reflectionless [scheinlos] immediacy. This negative breaks forth in them because being, through this its essence, is self-contradiction, and that, too, against this being in the form of being, therefore as the negation of those actualities, which is absolutely different from their being, as their nothing, as an equally free otherness over against them as is their being. Yet it could not but be recognised in them. In their self-based shape they are indifferent towards form, are a content, hence distinct actualities and a determinate content. This content is the mark impressed upon them by necessity — which in its determination is absolute return-into-self — when it let them go free as absolutely actual; to this mark necessity appeals as witness to its claim, and, smitten by it, the actualities perish. This manifestation of that which the determinateness is in truth — negative self-relation — is a blind destruction in otherness; the illusory showing or reflection which breaks forth is, in that which simply affirmatively is, a becoming or transition of being into nothing. But conversely, being is equally essence; and becoming is reflection or an illusory showing. Thus the outwardness is its inwardness, their relation is absolute identity; and the transition of the actual into the possible, of being into nothing, is a union-with-self; contingency is absolute necessity, it is itself the presupposing of that first, absolute actuality.
This identity of being with itself in its negation is now substance. It is this unity as in its negation, or as in contingency; as such it is substance as relation to itself. The blind transition of necessity is rather the absolute's own exposition, the movement of the absolute within itself which, in its alienation, rather reveals itself.
Chapter 3: The Absolute Relation
Absolute necessity is not so much the necessary, still less a necessary, but necessity — being, simply and solely as reflection. It is relation because it is a distinguishing whose moments are themselves its whole totality, and therefore absolutely subsist, but in such a manner that there is only one subsistence and the difference is only the illusory being, the reflective movement, of the expository process, and this illusory being is the absolute itself. Essence as such is reflection or an illusory showing; but essence as absolute relation is illusory being posited as illusory being which, as this self-relating, is absolute actuality. The absolute, which at first was expounded by external reflection, now, as absolute form or as necessity, expounds itself; this exposition of itself is its own positing of itself and it is only this self-positing. Just as the light of nature is neither something nor a thing, but its being is only its showing or shining [Scheinen], so manifestation is self-identical absolute actuality.
The sides of the absolute relation are therefore not attributes. In the attribute the absolute shows only in one of its moments, a moment presupposed and picked up by external reflection. But the expositor of the absolute is absolute necessity which is identical with itself as self-determining. Since it is an illusory showing that is posited as illusory being, the sides of this relation are totalities because they are in the determination of illusory being; for as illusory being, the differences are themselves and their opposite, or they are the whole; conversely, they are illusory being in this manner because they are totalities. Thus this distinguishing or illusory showing of the absolute is only the identical positing of itself.
This relation in its immediate Notion is the relation of substance and accidents, the immediate vanishing and becoming of the absolute illusory being within itself. When substance determines itself to being-for-self over against an other, or the absolute relation determines itself as real, then we have the relation of causality. Lastly, when this as self-relating passes over into reciprocity, the absolute relation is also posited in accordance with the determinations it contains; this posited unity of itself in its determinations which are posited as themselves the whole, but equally as determinations, is then the Notion.
A. THE RELATION OF SUBSTANTIALITY
Absolute necessity is absolute relation because it is not being as such, but being that is because it is, being as absolute self-mediation. This being is substance; as the final unity of essence and being it is the being in all being; it is neither the unreflected immediate, nor an abstract being standing behind Existence and Appearance, but it is immediate actuality itself and this as absolute reflectedness-into-self, as a subsisting in and for itself. Substance as this unity of being and reflection is essentially the reflective movement [Scheinen] and positedness of itself. The reflective movement is the reflective movement that is self-related, and it is thus that it is; this being is substance as such. Conversely, this being is only the positedness that is identical with itself, and as such it is totality in the form of illusory being, accidentality.
This reflective movement is identity as identity of form — the unity of possibility and actuality. It is first of all becoming, contingency as the sphere of coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be; for in accordance with the determination of immediacy, the relation of possibility and actuality is an immediate conversion of them (as in the determination of being) into each other, of each into that which is merely other to it. But because being is an illusory being, their relation is also one of identical reflection, of a reflection which is an illusory showing of each in the other. The movement of accidentality therefore exhibits in each of its moments the illusory showing in one another of the categories of being and of the reflective determinations of essence. The immediate something has a content; its immediacy is at the same time a reflected indifference towards form. This content is determinate, and since this determinateness is one of being, the something passes over into an other. But quality is also a determinateness of reflection; as such it is an indifferent difference. But this energises itself into opposition and withdraws into the ground, which is nothing, but also a reflection-into-self. This sublates itself; but it is itself a reflected in-itself, as such is possibility, and this in-itself is, in its transition which is equally a reflection-into-self, the necessary actual.
This movement of accidentality is the actuosity [Aktuosität] of substance as a tranquil coming forth of itself. It is not active against something, but only against itself as a simple unresisting element. The sublating of something presupposed is the vanishing illusory being; only in the act of sublating the immediate does this immediate itself become, or is this reflective movement; it is the beginning from itself which first is the positing of this self from which the beginning is made.
Substance, as this identity of the reflective movement, is the totality of the whole and embraces accidentality within it, and accidentality is the whole substance itself. The differentiation of itself into the simple identity of being and the flux of accidents in it, is a form of its illusory being. The former is the formless substance of ordinary thinking for which illusory being has not determined itself as illusory being, but which clings to such an indeterminate identity as an absolute, an identity which has no truth and is only the determinateness of immediate actuality or equally of the in-itself or possibility — form determinations which fall into accidentality.
The other determination, the flux of accidents, is the absolute form-unity of accidentality, substance as absolute power. The ceasing-to-be of the accident is the withdrawal of itself as actuality into itself, as into its in-itself or its possibility; but this its in-itself is itself only a positedness, and therefore it is also an actuality, and because these form determinations are equally content determinations, this possible is a differently determined actual also in respect of content. Substance manifests itself through actuality with its content into which it translates the possible, as creative power, and through the possibility to which it reduces the actual, as destructive power. But the two are identical, the creation is destructive and the destruction is creative; for the negative and the positive, possibility and actuality, are absolutely united in substantial necessity.
The accidents as such — and there is a plurality of them since plurality is one of the determinations of being — have no power over one another. They are the simply affirmative something, or the something that is for itself, existing things of manifold properties, or wholes consisting of parts, self-subsistent parts, forces, which require solicitation from one another and have one another for condition. In so far as such an accidental seems to exercise power over another, it is the power of substance which embraces both within itself; as negativity it posits an unequal value, determining the one as a ceasing-to-be and the other with a different content as a coming-to-be, or the former as passing over into its possibility, the latter into actuality — ever sundering itself into the differences of form and content, and ever purging itself of this one-sidedness, yet in this very purging it has fallen back into determination and disunity. One accident, then, expels another only because its own subsisting is this totality of form and content itself in which it and its other equally perish.
On account of this immediate identity and presence of substance in the accidents, no real difference is as yet present. In this first determination substance is not yet manifested according to its whole Notion. When substance, as self-identical being-in-and-for-self, is distinguished from itself as totality of accidents, that which mediates is substance as power. This is necessity, the positive persistence of the accidents in their negativity and their mere positedness in their subsistence; this middle term is thus unity of substantiality and accidentality themselves and its extremes have no subsistence of their own. Substantiality is, therefore, merely the relation as immediately vanishing, it relates itself to itself not as a negative, and, as the immediate unity of power with itself, is in the form only of its identity, not of its negative essence; only one of the moments, namely, the negative or the difference, vanishes altogether, the other, the moment of identity, does not. This can also be considered in the following manner. Illusory being or accidentality is in itself indeed substance through power, but it is not thus posited as this self-identical illusory being; thus substance has only accidentality for its shape or positedness, not itself, it is not substance as substance. The relation of substantiality is, therefore, in the first instance, only this, that substance manifests itself as formal power, the differences of which are not substantial; it is, in fact, only as the inner of the accidents, and these are only in the substance. In other words, this relation is only totality in the form of illusory being as a becoming; but it is equally reflection; accidentality which in itself is substance is for this very reason also posited as such; thus it is determined as self-relating negativity towards itself — determined as self-relating simple self-identity; and it is substance that exists for itself and has power.
Thus the relation of substantiality passes over into the relation of causality.
B. THE RELATION OF CAUSALITY
Substance is power, and power that is reflected into itself and not merely transitory, but that posits determinations and distinguishes them from itself. As self-relating in its determining, it is itself that which it posits as a negative or makes it into a positedness. Thus this is in general sublated substantiality, that which is merely posited, or effect; but substance which is for itself is cause.
This relation of causality is, in the first instance, merely this relation of cause and effect; as such it is the formal relation of causality.
(a) Formal Causality
1. Cause is primary in relation to effect. As power, substance is an illusory showing, or has accidentality. But as power, it is equally reflection-into-self in its illusory being; thus it expounds its movement of transition and this illusory showing or reflective movement is determined as illusory being, or the accident is posited as this, that it is only something posited. But substance in its determining does not begin from accidentality as if this were already an other to start with and only now were posited as determinateness, but the two are one actuosity [Aktuositdt]. Substance as power determines itself; but this determining is immediately itself the sublating of the determining, and the return. It determines itself — it, the determinant, is thus the immediate and that which is itself already determinate; in determining itself, it therefore posits this already determinate as determined and thus has sublated the positedness and has returned into itself. Conversely, this return, because it is the negative relation of substance to itself, is itself a determining or repelling of itself from itself; it is through this return that the determinate becomes, the determinate from which substance seems to begin and which it now seems to posit as a determinate already given. The absolute actuosity is thus cause — the power of substance in its truth as manifestation, which immediately also expounds or explicates that which is in itself, that is, the accident (which is a positedness), in the becoming of the latter, posits it as positedness-as effect. This is therefore first, the same thing as the accidentality of the relation of substantiality, namely, substance as positedness; but secondly, accident as such substantially is only through its vanishing, as something transitory; but as effect, it is positedness as self-identical; the cause is manifested in the effect as whole substance, namely, as reflected into itself in the positedness itself as such.
2. Over against this positedness reflected into itself, the determinate as determinate, stands substance as the non-posited original. Because substance as absolute power is the return into itself, yet this return is itself a determining, it is no longer merely the in-itself of its accident but is also posited as this in-itself. It is therefore as cause that substance first has actuality. But this actuality in which its in-itself, its determinateness in the relation of substantiality, is now posited as determinateness, is effect; consequently the actuality which substance has as cause, it has only in its effect. This is the necessity which is cause. It is actual substance because substance as power determines itself, but is at the same time cause, because it explicates this determinateness or posits it as positedness; thus it posits its actuality as positedness or as effect. This is the other of cause, positedness over against the original and mediated by it. But cause, as necessity, equally sublates this its mediation and as the originally self-relating activity in the determining of itself is, as against the mediated, the return into itself; for the positedness is determined as positedness and hence is self-identical; the cause is therefore truly actual and self-identical only in its effect. The effect is therefore necessary just because it is the manifestation of the cause or is this necessity which is cause. Only as this necessity is cause self-moving, beginning from itself without solicitation from an other, and the self-subsistent source of production from out of itself; it must act; its originativeness is this, that its reflection-into-self is a positing that determines, and conversely, both are one unity.
Consequently, effect contains nothing whatever that cause does not contain. Conversely, cause contains nothing which is not in its effect. Cause is cause only in so far as it produces an effect, and cause is nothing but this determination, to have an effect, and effect is nothing but this, to have a cause. Cause as such implies its effect, and effect implies cause; in so far as cause has not yet acted, or if it has ceased to act, then it is not cause, and effect in so far as its cause has vanished, is no longer effect but an indifferent actuality.
3. Now in this identity of cause and effect, the form through which they are distinguished as implicit determinations and as positedness is sublated. Cause is extinguished in its effect; and with it the effect, too, is extinguished, for it is only the determinateness of the cause. Hence this causality which is extinguished in the effect is an immediacy which is indifferent to the relation of cause and effect, which attaches to it externally.
(b) The Determinate Relation of Causality
1. The self-identity of cause in its effect is the sublating of its power and negativity, and is therefore the unity which is indifferent to the differences of form, that is, content. Consequently content is, only implicitly related to form, here, to causality. They are thus posited as [merely] diverse, and form as against content is itself only an immediately actual, a contingent, causality.
Further, the content as thus determinate is a content diverse in its own self; and cause is determinate in respect of its content and so, therefore, equally is effect. Content, since reflectedness here is also immediate actuality, is to this extent actual, but finite, substance.
This now is the relation of causality in its reality and finitude. As formal, it is the infinite relation of absolute power whose content is pure manifestation or necessity. As finite causality, on the other hand, it has a given content and exhausts itself in an external difference in this identical content which in its determinations is one and the same substance.
Through this identity of content, this causality is an analytic proposition. It is the same fact which presents itself once as cause and again as effect, there as something subsisting on its own account and here as positedness or determination in another.
Since these determinations of form are an external reflection, it is, in point of fact, the tautological consideration of a subjective understanding to determine a phenomenon as effect and from this to ascend to its cause in order to comprehend and explain it; it is merely a repetition of one and the same content; there is nothing else in the cause but what is in the effect. Rain, for example, is the cause of wetness which is its effect; the rain wets — this is an analytic proposition; the same water which is rain is wetness; as rain, this water is only in the form of a fact by itself; as wetness or moisture, on the other hand, it is adjectival, something posited, that is no longer supposed to have its subsistence in its own self; and the one determination like the other, is external to it. Thus the cause of this colour is a colouring agent, a pigment, which is one and the same actuality, once in the form of an agent external to it, that is, externally connected with an agent different from it, and again in the determination, equally external to it, of an effect. The cause of an act is the inner disposition in an active subject, and this is the same content and worth as the outer existence which it acquires through the deed. If the motion of a body is considered as effect, then its cause is a propulsive force; but it is the same quantum of motion that is present before and after the impulse, the same existence which the propelling body contained and communicated to the propelled body; and the quantum it communicates is the same as that which it loses itself.
The cause, for example the painter or the propulsive body, has of course a further content, besides the colours and the form which combines them into a painting, in the case of the former, and besides the motion of specific strength and direction, in the case of the latter. Only this further content is a contingent accessory which does not concern the cause; what other qualities the painter possesses, apart from his being the painter of this picture, this does not enter into this painting; only those of his properties represented in the effect are present in him as cause; he is not cause as regards the rest of his properties. And so, whether the propulsive body is stone or wood, green, yellow, and so on, this does not enter into the impulse it communicates; in this respect it is not cause.
With respect to this tautology of the relation of causality, it is to be remarked that it does not seem to be contained therein if the remote, and not the proximate, cause of an effect is adduced. The change of form suffered by the basic fact in this passage through a number of intermediate terms conceals the identity which it retains in that passage. In this multiplication of causes which have entered between that fact and the ultimate effect, the former is at the same time connected with other things and circumstances, so that the complete effect is contained, not in that first term which was pronounced to be the cause, but only in these several causes together. If, for example, a man developed his talent in circumstances arising from the loss of his father who was hit by a bullet in battle, then this shot (or still further back, the war or a cause of the war, and so on to infinity) could be assigned as the cause of the man's skill. But it is clear that the shot, for example, is not by itself this cause, but only the combination of it with other effective determinations. Or rather, it is not cause at all but only a single moment which belonged to the circumstances of the possibility.
Further and above all, we must note the inadmissible application of the relation of causality to relations of physico-organic and spiritual life. Here, what is called cause certainly reveals itself as having a different content from the effect; but the reason is that that which acts on a living being is independently determined, changed and transmuted by it, because the living thing does not let the cause come to its effect, that is, it sublates it as cause. Thus it is inadmissible to say that food is the cause of blood, or certain dishes or chill and damp are the causes of fever, and so on; it is equally inadmissible to assign the ionic climate as the cause of Homer's works, or Caesar's ambition as the cause of the downfall of the republican constitution of Rome. In history generally, spiritual masses and individuals are in play and reciprocal determination with one another; but it is rather the nature of spirit, in a much higher sense than it is the character of the living thing in general, not to receive into itself another original entity, or not to let a cause continue itself into it but to break it off and to transmute it. However, these relationships belong to the Idea where they will first come up for consideration.
Here we may further remark that in so far as the relation of cause and effect is admitted, although improperly, the effect cannot be greater than the cause; for the effect is nothing more than the manifestation of the cause. It has become a common jest in history to let great effects arise from small causes and to cite as the primary cause of a comprehensive and profound event an anecdote. Such a so-called cause is to be regarded as nothing more than an occasion, an external stimulus, of which the inner spirit of the event had no need, or could have used a countless host of other such in order to begin from them in the sphere of Appearance, to disengage itself and give itself manifestation.
The reverse rather is true, namely, that such a petty and contingent circumstance is the occasion of the event only because the latter has determined it to be such.
Consequently, though of history which makes a huge shape spring from a slender stalk is ingenious, it is an extremely superficial treatment. It is true that in this process of a great event arising out of a small circumstance we have an instance of the conversion which spirit imposes on the external; but for this very reason, this external is not cause in the process, in other words, this conversion itself sublates the relationship of causality.
2. But this determinateness of the relationship of causality, that content and form are distinct and indifferent, extends further. The form determination is also content determination; cause and effect, the two sides of the relation, are, therefore, also another content. Or the content, because it is only as content of a form, has the difference of form in its own self and is essentially different. But this its form is the relationship of causality, which is a content identical in cause and effect, and consequently the different content is externally connected, on the one hand with the cause, and on the other hand with the effect; hence the content itself does not enter into the action and into the relation.
This external content is therefore devoid of any relationship, an immediate existence; or because it is, as content, the implicit identity of cause and effect, it too is an immediate, simply affirmative identity. This is, therefore, anything at all which has manifold determinations of its existence, among them also this, that in some respect or other it is cause or else effect. In it, the form determinations have their substrate, that is, their essential subsistence, and each has a particular subsistence-for their identity is their subsistence; but at the same time it is their immediate subsistence, not their subsistence as form unity or as relation.
But this thing is not only substrate but also substance, for it is identical subsistence only as subsistence of the relation. Further, it is finite substance, for it is determined as immediate over against its causality. But at the same time, it has causality because it is equally only the identical as this relationship. Now, as cause, this substrate is negative relation to self. But it itself to which it relates itself is first, a positedness, because it is determined as an immediately actual; this positedness, as content, is any determination whatever. Secondly, causality is external to it; and therefore causality itself constitutes its positedness. Now since it is causal substance, its causality consists in relating itself negatively to itself, therefore to its positedness and external causality. The action of this substance therefore begins from an externality, liberates itself from this external determination; and its return into itself is the preservation of its immediate existence and the sublating of its posited existence, hence of its causality as such.
Thus a stone which moves is cause; its movement is a determination which it has, but besides which it also contains many other determinations of colour, shape, and so on, which do not enter into its causality.
Its immediate existence is separate from its form relation, namely, causality, and is, therefore, an externality; the stone's movement and the causality attaching to the stone in its movement are present in the stone only as a positedness. But the causality also belongs to the stone itself; this stems from the fact that its substantial subsistence is its identical relation to itself, but that this is now determined as positedness and is therefore at the same time a negative relation-to-self. Its causality, which is directed against itself as positedness or as an externality, consists therefore in sublating this and by removing it to return into itself, hence to that extent to be not self-identical in its positedness, but only to restore its abstract originativeness. Or, rain is the cause of wetness, which is the same water as the rain. This water has the determination of being rain and cause as a result of this determination being posited in it by an other; some other force, or whatever it may be, has lifted it into the air and gathered it together into a mass, the weight of which makes it fall. Its removal to a distance from the earth is a determination alien to its original self-identity, to its heaviness; its causality consists in removing this determination and restoring that identity, but also, therefore, in sublating its causality.
The second determinateness of causality now under consideration concerns form; this relationship is causality as external to itself, as the originativeness which is equally in its own self positedness or effect. This union of opposed determinations as in a simply affirmative substrate constitutes the infinite regress from cause to cause. The effect is the starting point; as such it has a cause, this in turn has a cause, and so on. Why has the cause a fresh cause? that is to say, why is the same side which was previously determined as cause now determined as effect, with a consequent demand for a fresh cause? For this reason, that the cause is a finite, a determinate in general; determined as one moment of form over against the effect, it has its determinateness or negation outside it; but for this very reason it is itself finite, has its determinateness within it and this is positedness or effect. This its identity is also posited, but it is a third term, the immediate substrate; causality is therefore external to itself, because here its originativeness is an immediacy. The form difference is, therefore, a primary determinateness, not yet determinateness posited as determinateness, it is a simply affirmative otherness. Finite reflection, on the one hand, stops short at this immediate, removes the form unity from it and makes it in one respect cause and in another respect effect; on the other hand, it transfers the form unity into the infinite, and through the endless progress expresses its impotence to attain and hold fast this unity.
The case is directly the same with the effect, or rather the infinite progress from effect to effect is entirely the same as the regress from cause to cause. In this, the cause became effect, which in turn has another cause; similarly and conversely, the effect becomes cause, which in turn has another effect. The determinate cause we are considering begins from an externality, and in its effect does not return into itself as cause but, on the contrary, loses its causality therein. But conversely, the effect arrives at a substrate which is substance, an originally self-related subsistence; in this substrate, therefore, this positedness becomes positedness, that is to say, this substance, when an effect is posited in it, behaves as cause. But the first effect, the positedness, which arrives at substance externally, is other than the second which is produced by the substance; for this second effect is determined as its reflection-into-self, but the first as an externality in substance. But because causality here is self-external causality, equally it, too, does not return into itself in its effect, but therein becomes external to itself: its effect again becomes a positedness in a substrate-as in another substance, which, however, equally makes it into a positedness, or manifests itself as cause, again repels its effect from itself, and so on, to the spurious infinity.
3. We have now to see what has developed through the movement of the determinate causal relation. Formal causality is extinguished in the effect; this produces the identity of these two moments, but only as implicitly the unity of cause and effect, a unity to which the form relation is external. As result, this identical is also immediate, in accordance with the two determinations of immediacy, first, as in-itself, a content, in which causality runs its course externally; secondly, as an existent substrate in which cause and effect inhere as distinct determinations of form. In this, they are implicitly one, but on account of this in-itself or externality of form, each is external to itself, and consequently in its unity with the other is also determined as other against it. Therefore, though the cause has an effect and is at the same time itself effect, and the effect not only has a cause but is also itself cause, yet the effect which the cause has, and the effect which the cause is, are different, as are also the cause which the effect has, and the cause which the effect is.
But now the outcome of the movement of the determinate causal relation is this, that the cause is not merely extinguished in the effect and with it the effect, too, as in formal causality, but that the cause in being extinguished becomes again in the effect, that the effect vanishes in the cause, but equally becomes again in it. Each of these determinations sublates itself in its positing, and posits itself in its sublating; what is present here is not an external transition of causality from one substrate to another; on the contrary, this becoming-other of causality is at the same time its own positing. Causality therefore presupposes its own self or conditions itself. The identity, the substrate, which was previously only in itself or implicit, is therefore, now determined as presupposition or posited over against the active causality, and the reflection which was previously only external to the identity, now stands in a relationship to it.
(c) Action and Reaction
Causality is a presupposing act. Cause is conditioned; it is negative self-relation as a presupposed, external other, an other which in itself but only in itself, is causality itself. It is, as we have found, the substantial identity into which formal causality passes over, which has now determined itself over against the latter as its negative. Or it is the same thing as the substance of the causal relation, but substance that is confronted by the power of accidentality as itself substantial activity. It is passive substance. Passive is that which is immediate or in itself, but is not also for itself; pure being or essence which is only in this determinateness of abstract self-identity. Active substance, as negatively self-related substance, stands over against passive substance. It is cause, in so far as in determinate causality it has restored itself through the negation of itself out of the effect, a reflected being which in its otherness or as an immediate behaves essentially as a positing activity and mediates itself with itself through its negation. Here, therefore, causality no longer has a substrate in which it inheres, and is not a form determination over against this identity, but is itself substance; in other words, what is originative is causality alone The substrate is the passive substance which has presupposed itself.
Now this cause acts; for it is the negative power over itself; at the same time, it is its own presupposition; thus it acts on itself as on an other, on the passive substance. Accordingly, first, it sublates the otherness of this substance and in it returns into itself; secondly, it determines this substance, positing this sublating of its otherness or the return into itself as a determinateness. This positedness, because it is at the same time its return-into-self, is first of all its effect. But conversely, because as presupposing it determines itself as its other, it posits the effect in the other, in the passive substance. Or because the passive substance itself is double, namely, a self-subsistent other and also something presupposed and in itself already identical with the active cause, the action of this, too, is double; it is two actions in one: the sublating of its determinedness, namely, of its condition, or the sublating of the self-subsistence of the passive substance; and by thus sublating its identity with the passive substance, it presupposes itself or posits itself as other. Through the latter moment, the passive substance is preserved; that first sublating of it also appears in relation to the substance in such a manner that only some determinations in it are sublated and the identity of the passive substance with the active substance in the effect takes place externally in it.
To this extent it suffers violence. Violence is the manifestation of power, or power as external. But power is external only in so far as causal substance in its action, that is, in the positing of itself, is at the same time presupposing, that is, it posits itself as sublated. Conversely, the act of violence is equally an act of power. It is only on an other presupposed by itself on which the violent cause acts, its effect thereon is a negative relation to itself, or the manifestation of itself. The passive is the self-subsistent that is only something posited, something that is broken within itself; an actuality which is condition, and condition, too, which is now in its truth, that is, an actuality that is only a possibility, or, conversely, an in-itself that is only the determinateness of the in-itself, is only passive. Therefore not only is it possible to do violence to that which suffers it, but also violence must be done to it; that which acts violently on the other can do so only because it is the power over it, the power in which it manifests both itself and the other. Through violence, passive substance is only posited as what it is in truth, namely, to be only something posited, just because it is the simple positive, or immediate substance; what it is beforehand as condition, is the illusory immediacy which active causality strips off from it.
Passive substance therefore only receives its due through the action on it of another power. What it loses is that immediacy, the substantiality which is alien to it. What it, as something alien, receives, namely, to be determined as a positedness, is its own determination. But now in being posited in its positedness, or in its own determination, the outcome is not that it is sublated, but rather that it only unites with its own self and therefore in being determined is, in fact, originative. On the one hand, therefore, the passive substance is preserved or posited by the active substance, namely, in so far as the latter makes itself into a sublated substance; but, on the other hand, it is the act of the passive substance itself to unite with itself and thus to make itself into the originative and into cause. Its being posited by an other, and its own becoming are one and the same thing.
Now since passive substance is itself converted into cause, the outcome is first, that in it the effect is sublated; in this consists its reaction in general. Passive substance is in itself positedness, as passive substance; also the positedness has been posited in it by the other substance, in so far as it received the effect of the latter within it. Its reaction, therefore, equally contains the twofold result: first, that what it is in itself is posited, and secondly, that what it is posited as displays itself as its in-itself ; it is in itself positedness, and consequently receives within it an effect through the other substance; but this positedness is, conversely, the passive substance's own in-itself; this is thus its own effect, it itself displays itself as cause.
Secondly, the reaction is against the first active cause. The effect which the previously passive substance sublates within itself is, in fact, precisely this effect of the first cause. But the cause has its substantial actuality only in its effect; when this is sublated, its causal substantiality is sublated. This happens first in itself through itself, in that it converts itself into effect; in this identity its negative determination vanishes and it becomes a passive substance; secondly, it happens through the previously passive, but now reactive, substance, which sublates its effect. In determinate causality, it is true that the substance which is acted upon also in turn becomes cause, thus acting against the positing in it of an effect. But it did not react against that cause, but posited its effect again in another substance, giving rise to the progress to infinity of effects; because here the cause is at first only implicitly identical with itself in its effect, and therefore, on the one hand, vanishes in an immediate identity in its rest, and, on the other hand, resuscitates itself in another substance. In conditioned causality, on the contrary, the cause is self-related in the effect, because it is its other as condition, as something presupposed, and its action is thereby just as much a becoming as a positing and sublating of the other.
Further, in all this it behaves as a passive substance; but, as we saw, it comes into being as a causal substance as a result of its being acted upon. That first cause, which first acts and receives its effect back into itself as reaction, thus reappears as cause, whereby the action, which in finite causality runs on into the spuriously infinite progress, is bent round and becomes an action that returns into itself, an infinite reciprocal action.
C.Reciprocity
In finite causality it is substances that are actively related to each other. Mechanism consists in this externality of causality, where the reflection of the cause into itself in its effect is at the same time a repelling being, or where, in the self-identity which the causal substance has in its effect, the cause equally remains something immediately external to it, and the effect has passed over into another substance. Now, in reciprocity this mechanism is sublated; for it contains first the vanishing of that original persistence of the immediate substantiality, and secondly the coming-to-be of the cause, and hence originativeness as self-mediating through its negation.
At first, reciprocity displays itself as a reciprocal causality of presupposed, self-conditioned substances; each is alike active arid passive substance in relation to the other. Since the two, then, are both passive and active, any distinction between them has already been sublated; the difference is only a completely transparent semblance; they are substances only inasmuch as they are the identity of the active and the passive. Reciprocity itself is therefore still only an empty mode of representing this; all that is still required is merely an external bringing together of what is already both in itself and posited. First of all, it is no longer substrates but substances that stand in relation to each other; in the movement of conditioned causality, the still remaining presupposed immediacy has been sublated, and the conditioning factor of the causal activity is still only the passivity of being acted upon, or the passivity of the cause itself. But further, this 'being acted upon' does not originate in another causal substance, but simply from a causality which is conditioned by being acted upon, or is a mediated causality. Consequently, this initially external moment which attaches to cause and constitutes the side of its passivity, is mediated by itself, is produced by its own activity, and is thus the passivity posited by its own activity. Causality is conditioned and conditioning; the conditioning side is passive, but the conditioned side equally is passive. This conditioning or passivity is the negation of cause by the cause itself, in that it essentially converts itself into effect and precisely through this is cause. Reciprocity is, therefore, only causality itself; cause not only has an effect, but in the effect it stands, as cause, in relation to itself.
Causality has hereby returned to its absolute Notion, and at the same time has attained to the Notion itself. At first, it is real necessity; absolute identity with itself, so that the difference of necessity and the related determinations in it are substances, free actualities, over against one another. Necessity is, in this way, inner identity; causality is the manifestation of this, in which its illusory show of substantial otherness has sublated itself and necessity is raised to freedom.
In reciprocity, originative causality displays itself as an arising from its negation, from passivity, and as a passing away into the same, as a becoming; but in such a manner that at the same time this becoming is equally only illusory; the transition into an other is a reflection into itself; the negation, which is ground of the cause, is its positive union with itself.
In reciprocity, therefore, necessity and causality have vanished; they contain both, immediate identity as connection and relation, and the absolute substantiality of the different sides, hence the absolute contingency of them, the original unity of substantial difference, and therefore absolute contradiction. Necessity is being, because it is-the unity of being with itself that has itself for ground; but conversely, because it has a ground it is not being, it is an altogether illusory being, relation or mediation. Causality is this posited transition of originative being, of cause, into illusory being or mere positedness, and conversely, of positedness into originativeness; but the identity itself of being and illusory being is still an inner necessity.
This inwardness or this in-itself, sublates the movement of causality, with the result that the substantiality of the sides standing in relation is lost, and necessity unveils itself. Necessity does not become freedom by vanishing, but only because its still inner identity is manifested, a manifestation which is the identical. movement of the different sides within themselves, the reflection of the illusory being as illusory being into itself.
Conversely, at the same time, contingency becomes freedom, for the sides of necessity, which have the shape of independent, free actualities not reflecting themselves in one another, are now posited as an identity, so that these totalities of reflection-into-self in their difference are now also reflected as identical, or are posited as only one and the same reflection.
Absolute substance, which as absolute form distinguishes itself from itself, therefore no longer repels itself as necessity from itself, nor, as contingency, does it fall asunder into indifferent, self-external substances; on the contrary, it differentiates itself, on the one hand, into the totality — heretofore passive substance — which is originative as reflection out of the determinateness into itself, as a simple whole, which contains within itself its positedness and is posited as self-identical therein-the universal; on the other hand, it differentiates itself into the totality — heretofore causal substance — into the reflection equally out of the determinateness into itself to a negative determinateness which, as thus the self-identical determinateness is likewise posited as the whole, but as self-identical negativity-the individual. But because the universal is self-identical only in that it contains the determinateness within itself as sublated, and therefore the negative as negative, it is immediately the same negativity which individuality is; and individuality, because it is equally the determinate determinate, the negative as negative, is immediately the same identity which universality is. This their simple identity is particularity, which contains in immediate unity the moment of determinateness of the individual and the moment of reflection-into-self of the universal. These three totalities are, therefore, one and the same reflection, which, as negative self-relation, differentiates itself into these two, but into a perfectly transparent difference, namely, into a determinate simplicity or simple determinateness which is their one and the same identity.
This is the Notion, the realm of subjectivity or of freedom.