Knowing which is initially our object, or immediately, can be nothing but immediate knowing, knowing of the immediate, or of what is. Likewise we ourselves have to conduct ourselves immediately, or receptively. We therefore are to alter nothing in the object as it presents itself, and we must keep our conceptualizing1 of it apart from our apprehending of it.
The concrete content of sensuous-certainty permits itself to appear immediately as the richest cognition, indeed, as a knowing of an infinite wealth for which no limit is to be found, whether we venture out into the reaches of space and time as the place where that wealth extends itself, or when we take a piece out of this plenitude, divide it, and thereby delve into it. In addition, it appears as the most veritable, for it has not omitted anything from its object, but rather, has its object in its complete entirety before itself. However, this certainty in fact yields the most abstract and the very poorest truth. It expresses what it knows as this: It is; and its truth only contains the being of the item.2 For its part, consciousness only is in this certainty as the pure I, or, within that certainty, the I is only as a pure This, and the object likewise is only as a pure This. I, this I, am certain of this item not because I, as consciousness, have thereby developed myself and have variously set my thoughts into motion. It is also not because I, as consciousness, am certain of this item for the reason that the item of which I am certain would be a rich relation in its own self according to a set of differentiated conditions or would be a multiple comportment to other items. Both have nothing to do with the truth of sensuous-certainty. In that certainty, neither I nor the item have the meaning of a multifaceted mediation, nor does I have the meaning of a multifaceted representing or thinking, nor does the item have the meaning of a multifaceted composition. Rather, the item is, and it is only because it is. For sensuous-certainty this is what is essential, and this pure being, or this simple immediacy constitutes its truth. Likewise, as a relation, certainty is an immediate, pure relation. Consciousness is I, nothing further, a pure this, and the singular individual3 knows a pure this, or he knows the singular.
However, if we take a look at it there is a good deal more in play in this pure being which constitutes the essence of this certainty and which declares it to be its truth. An actual sensuous-certainty is not only this pure immediacy but also an example of it. Among all the countless differences thereby popping up, we find in every case the chief difference, namely, that in that certainty both of the already noted “this's,” namely, a this as an I and a this as an object, precipitates all at once out of pure being. If we reflect on this difference, it turns out that neither the one nor the other is only immediately within sensuous-certainty; rather, both are mediated. I have certainty through an other, namely, the item, and this likewise is within certainty through an other, namely, through the I.
It is not only we who make this difference of essence and example, of immediacy and mediation. Rather, it is that we find this difference in sensuous-certainty itself, and it is to be taken up in the form it has in sensuous-certainty, not in the way we have just determined it to be. It is posited in sensuous-certainty as the simple, immediately existent, or as the essence, the object. However, it is posited as what is other than the inessential and the mediated, which is not in itself in sensuous-certainty but which instead is through an other, the I, a knowing that knows the object only for the reason that the object is but which itself can just as well be as not be. However, the object is; it is the true and the essence. The object is indifferent as to whether it is known or not. The object remains even when it is not known, but if the object does not exist, then there is no knowing.
The object is therefore to be considered in terms of whether, in sensuous-certainty itself, it is in fact the kind of essence which sensuous-certainty passes it off as being. That is, it is to be considered as to whether this, its concept, which is to be the essence, corresponds to the way it is present within that certainty. To that end, we need not reflect on the object and mull over what it might be in truth; we need only to consider it as sensuous-certainty has it in sensuous-certainty itself.
Therefore, sensuous-certainty itself is to be asked: What is the This? If we take it in the twofold shape of its being, as the now and the here, then the dialectic which it has in itself will take on a form as intelligible as the This itself. To the question: “What is the Now?”, we answer, for example, “The 'now' is the night.” In order to put the truth of this sensuous-certainty to the test, a simple experiment will suffice. We write down this truth. A truth cannot be lost by being written down any more than it can be lost by our preserving it, and if now, this midday, we look at this truth which has been written down, we will have to say that it has become rather stale.
The Now, which is the night, is preserved, i.e., it is treated as what it was passed off as being, namely, as an existent. However, it instead proves itself to be a non-existent. To be sure, the Now itself maintains itself but as what is not the night; likewise, it maintains itself vis-à-vis the day, which it now is, as what is also not the day, or it maintains itself as a negative as such. This self-maintaining Now is thus not an immediate Now but a mediated Now, for it is determined as an enduring and self-maintaining Now as a result of an other not existing, namely, the day or the night. Thereby it is just as simply as what it was before, Now, and in this simplicity, it is indifferent to what is still in play alongside it. As little as night and day are its being, it is just as much night and day. It is not affected at all by this, its otherness. Such a simple is through negation; it is neither this nor that, it is both a not-this and is just as indifferent to being this or that, and such a simple is what we call a universal. The universal is thus in fact the truth of sensuous-certainty.
We also express the sensuous as a universal, but what we say is: This, i.e., the universal this, or we say: it is, i.e., being as such. We thereby of course do not represent to ourselves the universal This or being as such, but we express the universal; or, in this sensuous-certainty we do not at all say what we mean. However, as we see, language is the more truthful. In language, we immediately refute what we mean to say, and since the universal is the truth of sensuous-certainty, and language only expresses this truth, it is, in that way, not possible at all that we could say what we mean about sensuous being.
The same case comes up in the other form of the This, namely, in the Here. For example, here is the tree. I turn around, this truth vanishes, and it has inverted itself into its contrary: Here there is not a tree but rather a house. The Here itself does not disappear, rather it endures in the disappearance of the house, the tree, etc., and it is indifferent to being a house, a tree. The This shows itself again to be a mediated simplicity, or as being universality.
While this sensuous-certainty has proved in its own self that the universal is the truth of its object, to it pure being therefore remains as its essence but not as immediate. Rather, it remains as that to which negation and mediation are essential, and it thereby does not continue to be what we mean by the term, “being.” Rather, what we mean is: Being with the determination such that it is the abstraction, or the purely universal; and what we mean to say, for which the truth of sensuous-certainty is not the universal, is all that remains apart from this empty or indifferent Now and Here.
If we compare the relation in which knowing and the object first came on the scene with the relations in which they come to stand in the result, then the relation has reversed itself. The object, which was supposed to be what was essential to sensuous-certainty, is now the inessential, since the universal, which the object has come to be, is no longer the kind of universal which the object was essentially supposed to be for sensuous-certainty. Rather, sensuous-certainty is now present in what is opposed to it, namely, in the knowing which previously was the inessential. Its truth is in the object as my object, or, in what I mean; the object is because I know it. Sensuous-certainty is, to be sure, thus driven out of the object, but it is not yet thereby sublated. Rather, it is only pushed back into the I, and it is still to be seen what experience will show us about sensuous-certainty's reality.
The force of its truth thus lies now in the I, in the immediacy of my seeing, hearing, etc. The disappearance of the singular Now and Here that we mean is deterred because I hold fast to them. Now is daytime because I see it; here is a tree for precisely the same reason. However, sensuous-certainty experiences in these relationships the same dialectic as it did within the preceding relationships. I, this, see the tree and assert the tree to be here. However, another I sees the house and asserts that there is no tree here but rather a house. Both truths have the same warrant, namely, the immediacy of seeing and the surety and assurance which both have about their knowing. However, one vanishes into the other.
In all this, what does not disappear is I as universal, whose seeing is neither a seeing of the tree nor of this house. Rather, it is a simple seeing, which is mediated by the negation of this house and so forth. It is therein just as simple and indifferent towards that which is still in play in the background vis-à-vis the house and the tree. I is only universal in the way that now, here, or this is universal. To be sure, I mean an individual I, but I can no more say what I mean by “now,” “here,” than I can say what I mean by “I.” While I say: “This here, this now, or a singular,” I say: “All this's, all heres, nows, singulars.” Likewise in that I say: “I, this singular I,” what I say is “All I's.” Each is what I say it is: I, this singular I. However much this demand is set before science as its touchstone (a demand which it would surely not last out), namely, that it deduce, construct, find a priori, or however one wishes to express it, a so-called “this thing” or “this person,” still it is reasonable that the demand should state which of the many things “this thing” or which of the “I's” “this I” means. But it is impossible to state this.
Sensuous-certainty therefore learns from experience that its essence is neither in the object nor in the I, and that the immediacy is an immediacy of neither one or the other of them, for in both, what I mean is instead what is inessential, and the object and I are universals in which the Now and the Here and the I that I mean do not endure, or are not. We thereby come to posit the whole of sensuous-certainty itself as its essence and no longer only as a moment of sensuous-certainty, as happened in both cases, in which at first the object opposed to the I and then the I itself were each supposed to be the reality of sensuous-certainty. It is thus only the whole of sensuous-certainty itself, which clings tenaciously in such sensuous-certainty to immediacy and which thereby excludes from itself all the opposition that took place in what preceded.
This pure immediacy therefore no longer has any concern with the otherness of the Here as a tree, which is a Here that is a non-tree, nor with the otherness of Now as daytime, which passes over into a Now that is night, nor with another I, for which something other is the object. Its truth is preserved as a self-consistent relation which makes no difference of essentiality and non-essentiality between the I and the object, and into which therefore no difference at all can force its entry. I, this I, assert therefore that here is a tree, and it is not the case that I turn around so that the Here would become for me not a tree, or that I myself at another time take the Here not to be a tree, the now not to be the daytime, etc. Rather, I am pure intuiting, and I stick with, namely, that “Now is daytime,” or else I also stick with “Here is a tree.” I also do not compare the Here and the Now themselves with each other; rather, I cling tenaciously to an immediate relation: “Now it is daytime.”
Since this certainty itself thereby no longer wishes to step forward when we draw its attention to a Now that is night, or to an I for which it is night, we step up to it and let ourselves point to the Now that is asserted. We must let ourselves point to it, for the truth of this immediate relation is the truth of this I which limits itself to a Now or to a Here. If we were afterwards to take up this truth or to stand at a distance from it, it would have no meaning at all, for we would sublate the immediacy that is essential to it. Thus, we must enter into the same point of time or space, point it out to ourselves, i.e., allow ourselves to be made into the same I as that is a knowing with certainty. Let us see, therefore, how what is immediate, which is pointed out to us, is composed.
106. The Now is pointed out, this Now. Now: It has already ceased to be as it was pointed out; the Now that is is an other than that pointed out, and we see that the Now is just this Now as it no longer is. The Now is, as it has been pointed out to us, what has been. This is its truth; it does not have the truth of being. It is nonetheless true that it has been. However, what has been is in fact no essence; it is not, and the issue at stake had to do with what is, with being.
In this pointing out, we therefore see only a movement and the following course of the movement. (1) I point out the Now, and it is asserted to be the true. However, I point to it as something that has been and thus sublate the first truth, and (2) I assert the Now as the second truth, that it has been, that it is sublated. (3) However, what has been is not; I sublate that second truth, that it has been, or, its having-been-sublated,4 and, in doing that, I negate the negation of the Now and so turn back to the first assertion, namely, that Now is. The Now and the pointing out of the Now are therefore composed in such a way that neither the Now nor the pointing out of the now are what is immediately simple. Rather, they are a movement which has various moments in it; this is posited, but instead it is an other which is posited, or the This is sublated, and this otherness, or the sublation of the first, is itself again sublated and in that way returns back to the first. However, as reflected into itself, this “first” is not wholly and precisely the same as what it was initially, namely, an immediate. Rather, it is just something reflected into itself, or a simple which remains in otherness what it is, namely, a Now which is absolutely many Nows, and this is the genuine Now, or the now as the simple daytime that has many Nows within it (that is, hours). Such a Now, an hour, is equally many minutes, and it is this Now which is equally many Nows, etc. – Pointing out is thus itself the movement that declares what the Now in truth is, namely, a result, or a plurality of Nows taken together; and pointing out is the experience that the Now is a universal.
The Here that has been pointed out and to which I cling is likewise a this here, which is in fact not this here but is rather an in-front-of and behind, or an above and below, or a right and a left. The above is likewise this multifaceted otherness in the above, below, and so forth. The Here, which is supposed to be pointed out, vanishes into another Here, but that one likewise vanishes. What is pointed out, held onto, and which endures is a negative This, which only is as the heres are taken as they are supposed to be, but which, in being so taken, have sublated themselves; it is a simple summary of many Heres. The Here that is meant would be the [geometric] point.5 However, the point is not, but rather, as the point is demonstrated as existing,6 the demonstrating points to itself as showing itself to be not immediate knowing but instead a movement from out of the many Heres which were meant into the universal Here, which is a simple plurality of Heres in the way that the daytime is a simple plurality of Nows.
It is clear both that the dialectic of sensuous-certainty is nothing but the simple history of its movement (that is, its experience) and that sensuous-certainty itself is nothing but just this history. For that reason, natural consciousness also proceeds to this result, what is the true in sensuous-certainty, to keep pressing ever forward. It learns from experience about it, but then it likewise forgets it again, and then it starts the whole movement all over again right from the beginning. It is thus a bit astonishing when, in the face of this experience, it is set up as a philosophical assertion, or as a universal experience, or even as the outcome of skepticism, that the reality, or the being, of external things as this, or as sensuous, is to have absolute truth for consciousness. Such an assertion does not at the same time know what it is saying; it does not know that it is saying the opposite of what it wants to say. The truth of the sensuous This for consciousness is supposed to be a universal experience, but instead it is the opposite which is a universal experience. Each consciousness again itself sublates such a truth as, for example, here is a tree, or now is midday, and declares the opposite: Here is not a tree, but rather a house; and likewise it again straightaway sublates the assertion which sublated the first assertion as itself being only again an assertion of a sensuous This. What in truth has been experienced in all of sensuous-certainty is only what we have seen, namely, the this as a universal, or the very opposite of what that assertion assured us was the universal experience. – With this appeal to universal experience, we may be permitted to anticipate some concerns in the practical sphere. In this respect, what one can say to those who make assertions about the truth and reality of sensuous objects is that they should be sent back to the most elementary school of wisdom, namely, to the old Eleusinian secrets of Ceres and Bacchus, and that they have yet to learn the secret of the eating of bread and the drinking of wine. This is so because the person who has been initiated into these secrets not only comes to doubt the being of sensuous things, but rather arrives at despair about them. In part he brings about their nothingness, and in part he sees them do it to themselves. Nor are the animals excluded from this wisdom. Instead they prove themselves to be the most deeply initiated into it, for they do not stand still in the face of sensuous things, as if those things existed in themselves. Despairing of the reality of those things and in the total certainty of the nullity of those things, they without any further ado simply help themselves to them and devour them. Just like the animals, all of nature celebrates these revealed mysteries which teach the truth about sensuous things.
However, those who set up such assertions, in line with the previous remarks, also immediately say the opposite of what they mean, a phenomenon that is perhaps best able to bring them to reflect on the nature of sensuous-certainty. They speak of the existence of external objects, which, to put it more precisely, can be determined to be actual, absolutely singularly individual, wholly personal, individual things, each of which is absolutely unlike the others. This existence is said to have absolute certainty and truth. They mean this piece of paper on which I am writing (or rather have written) this. But they do not say what they mean. However much they actually wanted to say what they mean about this piece of paper, and however much they wanted to say it, still it would be impossible because the sensuous This, which is what is meant, is inaccessible to the language which belongs to consciousness, or to what is in itself universal. In the actual attempt to say it, it itself would thereby rot away. Those who began a description would not be able to complete it, but instead they would have to leave it to others, who would themselves finally have to confess to speaking about a thing that is not. They therefore do mean this piece of paper, which is here totally other than the one mentioned above, but they speak of actual things, external or sensuous objects, absolutely singular entities, etc. That is to say, they say of them only what is universal. Thus, what is called the unsayable is nothing other than the untrue, the irrational, what is the merely fancied.7 – If nothing more is said of a thing than that it is an actual thing, an external object, then it is only expressed as the most universal of all, and what is thereby expressed is its sameness with everything rather than its distinctiveness. If I say: “A singular thing,” then instead I say something entirely universal about it, for everything is a singular thing. Likewise, this thing is anything one pleases. To characterize it more precisely: As this piece of paper, every and each bit of paper is a “this piece of paper,” and I have only spoken, as usual, of the universal. However, if I wish to lend a helping hand to speech, which itself has the divine nature of immediately inverting the meaning, then of making it into something else, and in that way of not letting the meaning get into words at all, then by my pointing out this piece of paper, I thus learn from experience what the truth of sensuous-certainty in fact is. I point it out as a Here, which is a Here of other Heres, or which in its own self is a simple ensemble of many Heres, which is to say, is a universal. In that way, I receive it as it is in truth, and instead of knowing what is immediate, I perceive.
Immediate certainty does not take hold of the truth, for its truth is the universal, but it does want to take hold of the This. On the other hand, perception takes what, to perception, is the existent8 as universal. As universality is perception's principle per se, its moments, which are immediately self-differentiating within it, are also universal, namely, I, a universal, and the object, a universal. That principle has emerged for us, and our taking up of perception is thus no longer a phenomenal taking up, as it was in sensuous-certainty, but is rather a necessary taking up. In the emergence of the principle, both moments, which in their phenomenal appearance only fall out of that appearance, have at the same time come to be. One of them is the very movement of pointing out, and the other is the same movement but as the simple. The former is perceiving, the latter is the object. According to its essence, the object is the same as the movement; the movement is the unfolding and difference of the moments, and the object is those moments as jointly grasped together. For us, or in itself, the universal is, as the principle, the essence of perceiving, and in contrast to this abstraction, both of the distinguished moments, namely, the perceiving and the perceived, are the inessential. However, because both are in fact the universal, or the essence, both are essential. But while they are related to each other as opposites, only one of them in the relation can be the essential, and the difference between the essential and the inessential must be shared between them. One of them, the object, determined as the simple, is the essence, indifferent as to whether it is perceived; however, as the movement, perceiving is what is not constant, which can be or also not be, and it is the inessential.
This object is now to be more precisely determined, and this determination is itself to be briefly developed from the results which have arisen. (At this point in the exposition, a more thorough development is not appropriate.) Since the object's principle, the universal, is in its simplicity a mediated simplicity, the object must express this on its own as its nature, and it thereby shows itself to be a thing of many properties. The wealth of sensuous knowing belongs to perception, not to immediate certainty, in which the object was only ancillary, for only the former (perception) has negation (the difference, or multiplicity) in its essence.
The This is therefore posited as not-this, or as sublated, and thereby as not nothing but as a determinate nothing, or as a nothing of a specific content, namely, of the This. The sensuous is thereby itself still present but not as it is supposed to be in immediate certainty, or as the singular that was meant, but instead as the universal, or as that which is determined to be a property. The sublation exhibits its truly doubled meaning, something which we already have seen in the negative; it is now a negating and at the same time a preserving. The nothing, as the nothing of the This, preserves immediacy and is itself sensuous, but is, however, a universal immediacy. – However, being is a universal as a result of its having mediation, or the negative, in its own self; while it expresses this in its immediacy, it is a differentiated, determinate property. Thereby many such properties are posited at the same time, and each one is the negative of the other. While they are expressed in the simplicity of the universal, these determinatenesses, which are really only properties through the addition of a determination yet to come, relate themselves to themselves, are indifferent to each other, and each is both on its own9 and is free-standing from the others. However, the simple self-equal universality is again distinguished from these, its determinations, and is free-standing. It is the pure relating-itself-to-itself, or the medium in which these determinations permeate each other in that universality as a simple unity without making contact with each other, for it is just through participation in this universality that each is on its own10 indifferent to the others. – As it has turned out, this abstract universal medium, which can be called thinghood itself, or the pure essence, is none other than the Here and Now, namely, as a simple togetherness of the many. However, the many are in their determinateness themselves simply universal. This salt is a simple Here and is at the same time manifold; it is white and also tart, also cubically shaped, also of a particular weight, etc. All of these many properties are in one simple Here in which they also permeate each other. None has a different Here from the others. Rather, each is everywhere in the same Here as are the others. At the same time, without being separated by way of the various Heres, they do not affect one another in this permeation; the white does not affect or alter the cubic shape, neither of them affects or alters the tartness, etc. Rather, since each itself is a simple relating-itself-to-itself, it leaves the others at rest and relates itself to them only through the indifferent Also. This Also is therefore the pure universal itself, or the medium, the thinghood keeping them together in that way.
As it has turned out, in this relationship, it is only the character of positive universality which is at first observed and developed. However, an aspect arises which must also be taken into consideration: If the many determinate properties were to be utterly indifferent and were for all intents and purposes related only to themselves, then they would still not be determinate properties, for they are determinate properties only insofar as they both differentiate themselves from each other and relate themselves to each other as opposites. However, according to this opposition, they could not be together in the simple unity of their medium which is as essential to them as is negation. Insofar as their difference within that unity does not amount to an indifferent difference but rather to an excluding difference, which itself amounts to a difference which negates others, so this difference thus falls outside of this simple medium. This simple medium is not only an Also, an indifferent unity; it is also a One, an excluding unity. – The One is the moment of negation, as it itself relates itself to itself in a simple way and excludes others and by which thinghood is determined as thing. As determinateness, the negation is in the property which is immediately at one with the immediacy of being, which, through the unity with negation, is universality. However, as One and as set free from this unity with its opposite, it is in and for itself.
In these moments taken all together, the thing, as the truth of perception, reaches its culmination, or at least insofar as it is necessary to develop that here. It is (α) the indifferent passive universality, the Also of the many properties, or rather, matters; (ß) likewise the negation as simple, or the One, the excluding of opposed properties; and (γ) the many properties themselves, the relation of the two first moments: The negation as it relates itself to the indifferent element and extends itself therein as a set of difference; the point of singular individuality in the medium of stable existence radiating out into multiplicity. According to the aspect in which these differences belong to the indifferent medium, the differences are themselves universal; each relates itself only to itself, and they do not affect each other. However, according to the aspect, in terms of which they belong to the negative unity, they at the same time exclude each other, but necessarily have this opposed relation to the properties, which are at a distance from their Also. The sensuous universality, or the immediate unity of being and the negative, is in that way the property insofar as the One and the pure universality are developed out of that unity, insofar both as they are differentiated from each other and as the unity merges them with each other. This relation of that unity to those pure essential moments finally brings the thing to its culmination.
Now, this is the way that the thing of perception is constituted, and consciousness is determined as perceiving consciousness insofar as this thing is its object. It only has to take the object11 and to conduct itself as pure apprehension, and what thereby emerges for it is the true. If in this taking, it itself were to do something, it would alter the truth by adding or omitting something. While the object is the true and the universal, like unto itself, and while consciousness, to itself, is what is alterable and inessential, it can happen to consciousness that it apprehends the object incorrectly and deludes itself. The one who is perceiving is aware of the possibility of illusion, for in universality, which is the principle, otherness itself is immediately for him, but as nullity, as what is sublated. His criterion of truth is thus self-equality, and his conduct is to be grasped as self-equality. At the same time, while what is diverse is for the perceiver, the perceiver is a relating of the diverse moments of his comprehending to each other.12 If an inequality differentiates itself in this comparison, then the relating is not an untruth of the object, for the object is what is equal to itself. It is an untruth of perceiving itself.
Let us now see what consciousness learns from experience in its actual perceiving. This experience is already contained for us in the development just given of the object and in the conduct of consciousness towards the object, and the experience will only be the development of the contradictions present in that development. – The object that I take up presents itself as purely One. I am also cognizant of the property in it, which is universal, but as a result, I go beyond that singularity. The first being of the objective essence as a One was thus not its true being. Since the object is what is true, the untruth falls within me, and the apprehending was incorrect. On account of the universality of the property, I must instead take the objective essence as a community anyway. I now further perceive the property as determinate, as opposed to an other, and as excluding it. I thus in fact did not apprehend the objective essence correctly when I determined it as a community with others, or as continuity, and, according to the determinateness of the property, I must in fact break up the continuity into pieces and posit the objective essence as an excluding One. In the broken-up One, I find many such properties, which do not affect each other but which instead are indifferent to each other. I did not perceive the object correctly when I grasped it as something which excludes. Rather, just as it previously was, it is only continuity in general, so that now it is a universal communal medium in which there are many properties as sensuous universalities, each existing on its own,13 and, which as determinate, excludes the others. The simple and true which I however perceive is thereby also not a universal medium but rather a singular property for itself. However, in that way it is neither a property nor a determinate being, for it is now neither in a One nor in relation to others. But it is a property only in the One and is only determinate in relation to others. As this pure relating-itself-to-itself, it remains only sensuous being per se, since it no longer has in its own self the character of negativity, and consciousness, for which a sensuous being now is, amounts only to meaning something, which is to say, it has entirely gone beyond perceiving and has taken an inward turn back into itself. Yet sensuous being and meaning something each themselves pass over into perceiving. I am thus thrown back to the beginning and pulled back into the same cycle which sublates itself both in each moment and as a whole.
Consciousness therefore necessarily runs through that cycle again, but not in the same way it did at first. It has learned from experience about perceiving, namely, that its result and its truth are its dissolution, or that perceiving is the reflective turn into itself from out of the true. For consciousness, it has thereby been determined just how its perceiving is essentially composed, namely, it is not a simple, pure comprehending,14 but rather in its comprehending has at the same time taken a reflective turn into itself from out of the true. This return of consciousness into itself, which immediately blends itself into that pure comprehending15 – for it has been shown to be essential to perceiving – alters the true. At the same time, consciousness takes cognizance16 of this aspect as its own, it takes it upon itself, and, as a result, it purely receives the true object. – Thereby, now there is present in perceiving, just as happened with sensuous-certainty, the aspect of consciousness which had been forced back into itself. However, this is not as it was initially as it took place in sensuous-certainty, as if the truth of perceiving were to be subsumed within the sphere of sensuous-certainty. Instead, consciousness take cognizance17 that the untruth, which comes to the fore here, falls within consciousness. However, through this taking-cognizance,18 consciousness is capable of sublating the untruth. Consciousness differentiates its grasping the true from the untruth of its perceiving, it corrects its perceiving, and insofar as it itself undertakes this correction, the truth, as the truth of perceiving, falls without further ado into consciousness. The conduct of consciousness, which is now to be scrutinized, is so constituted that it is no longer merely perceiving but is conscious of its reflective turn into itself, and it separates this reflective turn into itself from simple apprehension itself.
At first, I view the thing as one, and I have to hold fast to it in this true determination. If in the movement of perceiving, there is something which comes up which contradicts that perceiving, then this is to be cognized as my reflection. Now, in perception various properties turn up that seem to be properties of things, yet the thing is One, and we ourselves are conscious of this diversity through which it ceases to be One as falling within us. The thing is therefore in fact only white as it is brought to our eyes, it is also tart on our tongues, and also cubical to our feel, etc. We do not take the entire diversity of these aspects from the thing but from ourselves. To us, they come undone from each other in this way because the eye is quite distinct from the tongue, and so on. We are thus the universal medium within which such moments dissociate themselves from each other, and in which each is on its own.19 Thereby, since we regard this determinateness (that we are the universal medium) as our reflection, we preserve the self-equality and the truth of the thing, namely, its being One.
However, the diverse aspects which consciousness takes upon itself are determinate in that each is regarded as existing for itself within the universal medium. White is only in contrast to black, etc., and the thing is One precisely as a result of its being contrasted with others. However, it does not exclude others from itself insofar as it is One, for to be One is to be the universal relating-itself-to-itself, and as a result of its being One, it is instead the same as all others. Rather, it is through its determinateness that it excludes others. The things themselves are thus determinate in and for themselves; they have properties whereby they are differentiated from others. As the property is the thing's own property, or a determinateness in its own self, it has multiple properties. For, in the first place, the thing is the true, it is in itself, and what is in its own self is in its own self its own essence, not on account of others. Second, the determinate properties thus are not only on account of other things and are for other things but are on their own. However, they are determinate properties in the thing only while there are many of them and each is differentiated from the other. Third, while they are in that way within thinghood, they are in and for themselves and are indifferent to each other. Therefore, in truth it is the thing itself which is white and also cubical, also tart, etc., or the thing is the Also, which to say, it is the universal medium in which the many properties stably exist externally to each other, and where none makes contact with the other, and none is sublated. Taken in that way, the thing is taken to be the true.
Now, in this perceiving, consciousness is at the same time conscious that it also reflects itself into itself and that in perceiving, the moment opposed to the Also crops up. However, this moment is the unity of the thing with itself which excludes difference from itself. It is accordingly the unity that consciousness has to take upon itself, for the thing itself is the stable existence of many various and independent properties. It is therefore said of the thing: It is white, also cubical, and also tart, etc. However, insofar as it is white, it is not cubical, and insofar as it is cubical and also white, it is not tart, etc. The positing-into-a-one20 of these properties belongs only to consciousness, which thus has to avoid letting them fall into a One in the thing. To that end, consciousness brings into play the Insofar whereby it keeps the properties apart from each other and it keeps the thing as the Also. Quite rightly, consciousness takes upon itself the Oneness in such a way so that what was called a property is now represented as a free-standing matter. In this way, the thing is elevated into being a genuine Also, while it becomes a collection of matters and, instead of being a One, it becomes merely an enclosing surface.
If we look back at what consciousness previously took upon itself and look at what it now takes upon itself, or look at what it had previously ascribed to the thing and what it now ascribes to itself, it turns out that it alternately makes itself, as well as the thing, into both a pure One without multiplicity and into an Also dissolved into self-sufficient matters. Through the comparison, consciousness thus finds that not only its “taking the true”21 has in itself the diversity of [the act of] comprehending22 and that of returning-into-itself, but it also finds that the true itself, the thing, instead shows itself to be in this doubled fashion. Therefore, what is present is the experience of the thing which exhibits itself in a determinate way for the comprehending consciousness23 but at the same time takes itself in terms of the way in which it offers itself and is reflected itself back into itself, or in its own self it has an opposed truth.
123. Consciousness has thus also outside of this second way of conducting itself in perceiving, namely, to take the thing as the true, the thing as self-equal, but to take itself to be the unequal, to be what is returning back into itself from out of equality; and the object now is, to consciousness, this whole movement which previously was shared between consciousness and the thing. The thing is One, reflected into itself; it is for itself, but it is also for an other, namely, it is an other for itself as it is for an other. The thing thereby is for itself and also for an other, a doubly diverse being, but it is also One. However, its oneness contradicts its diversity; consciousness would thereby have to take this positing-into-a-one upon itself again and keep it apart from the thing. It would therefore have to say that the thing, insofar as it is for itself is not for others. Yet, as consciousness has learned from experience, oneness also corresponds to the thing itself; the thing is essentially reflected into itself. The Also, or the indifferent difference, falls just as much into the thing as it does into oneness, but since both are different, it does not fall into the same thing but rather into different things. The contradiction, which is per se in the objective essence, is distributed into two objects. The thing therefore is in and for itself, self-equal, but this unity with itself is disturbed through other things. In that way, the unity of the thing is preserved and, at the same time, that otherness, which is external to the thing just as it is to consciousness, is preserved.
Now, to be sure, although the contradiction in the objective essence is shared among various things, the difference will for that very reason reach as far as the isolated singularly individual thing itself. The various things are therefore posited as each existing for itself, and the conflict falls into each of them reciprocally such that each is different not from itself but only from others. However, each is thereby itself determined as something different and has the essential difference from others in it,24 but at the same time not in such a way that this would be an opposition in its own self. Rather, it is for itself simple determinateness, which constitutes its essential character and differentiates it from others. Since diversity is in it, the same difference necessarily is as an actual difference of multiple constitutions in it. Yet because the determinateness constitutes the essence of the thing, whereby it distinguishes itself from others and is for itself, this otherwise multiple constitution is the inessential. Within its unity, the thing thereby has in itself the doubled Insofar, but with unequal values. As a result, its being-posited-in-opposition does not therefore become an actual opposition of the thing itself. Rather, insofar as this thing comes into opposition through its absolute difference, it has that opposition vis-à-vis another thing external to itself. However, the other multiplicity is also, to be sure, necessarily in the thing such that it cannot be kept away from the thing, but it is inessential to it.
This determinateness, which constitutes the essential character of the thing and which differentiates it from all others, is now determined in such a way that the thing thereby is in opposition to others but is supposed to preserve itself for itself in that opposition. However, it is only a thing, or a One existing for itself insofar as it does not stand in this relation to others, for instead in this relation, the connection to others is posited, and the connection to others is the cessation of being-for-itself. Directly through the absolute kind25 and its opposition, it relates itself26 to others and essentially it is only this relating. However, the relationship is the negation of its self-sufficiency, and the thing instead perishes through its essential property.
The necessity of the experience for consciousness is that the thing perishes through the very determinateness which constitutes both its essence and its being-for-itself. According to its simple concept, this experience can be briefly looked at in this way. The thing is posited as being-for-itself, or as the absolute negation of all otherness. Thus, it is posited as the absolute negation relating only itself to itself, but negation relating itself to itself is just the sublation of itself, or it has its essence in an other.
As the object has shown itself to be, the determination of the object in fact contains nothing else. The object is supposed to have an essential property which constitutes its simple being-for-itself, but in this simplicity, it is also supposed to have diversity in its own self, which in turn is indeed supposed to be necessary but which is indeed not supposed to constitute its essential determinateness. However, this is only a verbal difference; something which is inessential but which at the same time is nonetheless supposed to be necessary is something which is self-sublating. That is, it is what was just called the negation of itself.
The last Insofar which separated being-for-itself and being-for-others thereby falls by the wayside. Instead, the object is in one and same respect the opposite of itself; it is for itself insofar as it is for others, and it is for others insofar as it for itself. It is for itself, reflected into itself, One. However, this for itself reflected into itself, Oneness, is posited as existing in a unity with its opposite, with being for an other, and for that reason is posited only as what is sublated. Or, this being-for-itself is just as inessential as that which alone was supposed to be inessential, namely, the relationship to an other.
The object is thereby sublated in its pure determinateness, or in the various determinatenesses which were supposed to constitute its essentiality, in the same way as it had been sublated in its sensuous being. From out of sensuous being, it becomes a universal, but since it emerged from out of the sensuous, this universal is essentially conditioned by the sensuous and is thus not truly self-equal. Rather, it is a universality affected with an opposition, which for that reason is separated into the extremes of singularity and universality, of the One of properties and of the Also of the free-standing matters. These pure determinatenesses seem to express essentiality itself, but they are only a being-for-itself which is burdened with being for an other. But while both are essentially in one unity, unconditioned absolute universality itself is now present, and for the first time consciousness truly enters into the realm of the understanding.
Sensuous singularity therefore does indeed vanish in the dialectical movement of immediate certainty and becomes universality, but it becomes only sensuous universality. Meaning-something has vanished, and perceiving takes the object as it is in itself, or as a universal as such. Singularity emerges in the object as true singularity, as the being-in-itself of the One, or as being-reflected into itself. However, it [the One] is still a conditioned being-for-itself, alongside which another being-for-itself comes into view, a universality opposed to singularity and conditioned by singularity. However, both of these contradictory extremes are not only alongside each other but rather are in one unity, or, what amounts to the same thing, that which is common to both. Being-for-itself is burdened altogether with an opposition, which is to say that it is at the same time not a being-for-itself. The sophistry of perceiving seeks to save these moments from their contradictions, to cling tenaciously to them by distinguishing various points of view and by invoking the Also and the Insofar, as well as finally seeking to take hold of the true by distinguishing the inessential from an essence which is opposed to the universal. Yet these expedients, instead of warding off illusion in the [act of] comprehending,27 turn out to be null and void, and the true, which is supposed to be won through this logic of perceiving, turns out to be in one and the same regard the very opposite and thereby to have as its essence the universality completely devoid of difference and determination.
131. These empty abstractions of singularity and of the universality opposed to it, as well as the empty abstraction of essence which is bound up with an inessential, or an inessential which is nonetheless at the same time necessary, are the powers whose play is the perceptual understanding, often called healthy common sense. That healthy common sense which takes itself to be solid, real consciousness, is, in perceiving, only the play of these abstractions, and that common sense is the poorest exactly at the point where it means to be the richest. While it is pushed around by these empty essences and is thus thrown out of the arms of one abstraction into the arms of another, and, through its own sophistry, alternately goes to all the trouble of tenaciously clinging to one of them and asserting it to be true, only then to turn around and assert its opposite to be true, and then to set itself against the truth, it says that philosophy only deals with thought-things.28 In fact, philosophy also deals with such thought-things, and at the same time it is cognizant29 of them in their determinateness and for that reason is master over them,30 whereas the perceiving understanding takes them to be the true, and such thoughts send it on its way from one error to another. Perceptual understanding does not amount to the awareness that it is those kinds of simple essentialities which are governing in it; rather, it always supposes that it is dealing with entirely solid material and content, just as sensuous-certainty does not know that the empty abstraction of pure being is its essence. However, the essentialities are in fact that in which the perceptual understanding runs hither and thither through all material and content; they are the cohesiveness of and what rules that material and content, and they alone are what the sensuous, as essence, is for consciousness. They alone are what determines the relation between consciousness and the sensible, and they are alone that in which the movement of perceiving as well as that of its truth runs its course. This course, a constant alternation between determining the truth and sublating this determining, genuinely constitutes the everyday and constant life and drive both of perceiving and of the consciousness which supposes that its own movement takes place within the truth. Within that life, consciousness incessantly presses forward to the result in which it sublates all these essential essentialities or determinations. However, in each singular moment, it is conscious only of this one determinateness of the true and then again of its contrary. It no doubt suspects their inessentiality and in order to save them from the danger threatening them, it passes over into sophistry where it asserts as true what it had just asserted as untrue. Just where the nature of these untrue essences really wants to push this understanding is to bring together all those thoughts of that universality and singularity, of the Also and the One, of that essentiality that is necessarily bound up with an inessentiality and of an inessentiality that is nonetheless necessary – that is, to push it to bring together the thoughts of these non-essences and thereby to sublate them. In contrast, the understanding strives to avoid this by basing its support on the Insofar and the various considerations, or by taking upon itself one thought in order to keep the other thoughts separated from it and to preserve it as the true thought. However, the nature of these abstractions bring them together in and for themselves; common sense is the prey of these abstractions which, in all their spinning circularities, bring it to such grief. While healthy common sense wants to bestow truth on them, sometimes by their untruth onto itself, sometimes by calling the semblance of unreliable things an illusion, and sometimes by separating the essential from the necessary but nonetheless inessential, and by clinging to the former as their truth in the face of the latter, in doing so, it does not secure their truth for them, but it does manage to bestow untruth on itself.
In the dialectic of sensuous-certainty, hearing and seeing are bygones for consciousness, and, as perceiving, consciousness has arrived at thoughts, which it brings together only in the unconditioned universal. This unconditioned would now itself again be nothing but the extreme of being-for-itself set off to one side were it to be taken to be a motionless simple essence, in which case the non-essence would confront the unconditioned. However, related to the non-essence, it would be itself non-essential, and consciousness would have not gotten out of the illusion of perceiving. Yet that universal has turned out to be such that it has returned into itself from out of such conditioned being-for-itself. – This unconditioned universal, which is henceforth the true object of consciousness, is still an object of consciousness; consciousness has not yet grasped its concept as concept. Both are essentially to be distinguished from each other. To consciousness, the object has returned into itself from out of its relations to an other and has thereby come to be in itself concept. However, consciousness is not yet for itself the concept, and it thus does not yet recognize31 itself in that reflected object. For us, this object has come to be through the movement of consciousness so that this consciousness is interwoven in the coming-to-be of the object, and the reflection is the same on both sides, or is only one reflection. However, because in this movement consciousness only had the objective essence and not consciousness as such as its content, the result for consciousness is to be posited in its objective meaning. Consciousness itself is still withdrawing from what has come to be so that to consciousness the essence is what has come to be as objective.
The understanding has thereby sublated its own untruth and the untruth of the object, and what to it as a result has come to be is the concept of the true as the true existing in itself, which is not yet the concept, or which lacks the being-for-itself of consciousness, and which the understanding without knowing itself to be doing so, allows to go its own way. This, the true, works out its essence for itself so that consciousness has no part in its free realization but instead only watches it and purely grasps it. First of all, we therefore have to step into its place and to be the concept that works out what is contained in the result. In this fully worked-out object, which presents itself to consciousness as an existing result, consciousness first becomes, to itself, a comprehending consciousness.32
The result was the unconditioned universal, at first in the negative and abstract sense that consciousness negated its one-sided concepts and abstracted them, that is to say, it gave them up. However, the result has in itself the positive meaning that therein the unity of being-for-itself and being-for-an-other, or the absolute opposition is immediately posited as the same essence. It seems at first only to concern the form of the moments with regard to each other; however, being-for-itself and being-for-others are just as much the content itself because the opposition in its truth can have no other nature than that which has turned up in the result, namely, that the content, which was held to be true in perceiving, in fact only belongs to the form, and it dissolves into the form's unity. This content is at the same time universal; there can be no other content which through its particular composition would withdraw from returning into this unconditioned universal. Such a content would be some kind of determinate mode of being for itself and mode of relating itself to others. Yet to be for itself and to relate itself to others, full stop, constitutes its nature and essence, whose truth lies in its being the unconditioned universal, and the result is absolutely universal.
However, because this unconditioned universal is an object for consciousness, the difference of form and content emerges in it, and, in the shape of content, the moments have the look in which they first presented themselves: On the one hand, to be a universal medium of many stably existing matters, and, on the other hand, to be a One reflected into itself, in which this self-sufficiency is eradicated. The former is the dissolution of the self-sufficiency of the thing, or, the passivity that is being for an other, whereas the latter, however, is being for itself. It remains to be seen how these moments will display themselves in that unconditioned universality which is their essence. In the first place, it becomes clear that as a result of their existing only within that unconditioned universality they no longer diverge from each other at all;33 rather, in themselves they are essentially self-sublating aspects, and what is posited is only that transition of each of them into each other.
The one moment therefore appears as the essence set off to one side, as the universal medium, or as the stable existence of self-sufficient matters. However, the self-sufficiency of these matters is nothing but the medium, or, this universal is, to all intents and purposes, the multiplicity of such distinct universals. The universal is in its own self in undivided unity with this multiplicity, which means, however, that these matters are each where the other is; they reciprocally permeate each other – without, however, touching each other because, on the other side of the coin, the many distinct matters are likewise self-sufficient. At the same time, their pure porousness, or their sublation, is thereby also posited. This sublation, or the reduction of this diversity to pure being-for-itself, is again nothing but the medium itself, and this medium is the self-sufficiency of the differences. Or, those differences which are posited as self-sufficient immediately pass over into their unity, and their unity immediately passes over into an unfolding,34 and this unfolding immediately passes back into the reduction. This movement is, however, what is called force. One moment of this, namely, the force as the propagation of the self-sufficient matters in their being, is their expression. However, the force as the disappearance of the self-sufficient matters is the force driven out of its expression back into itself, or the genuine force. However, the force, first driven back into itself, must express itself, and, second, in the expression, the force is just as much the force existing within itself as it is the expression in this inwardly-turned-being. – While in that way we preserve both moments in their immediate unity, the concept of force really belongs to the understanding. The understanding is itself really the concept, and it supports the different moments as different, for on their own, they are not supposed to be different. The difference thereby is only in thought. – That is, in the foregoing what was posited was in fact only the concept of force and not its reality. However, the force is in fact the unconditioned universal, which is in itself just what it is for an other. That is, it is what has the difference in itself – for the difference is nothing but being-for-others. – Because the force is said to be in its truth, it must be set entirely free from thoughts and must be posited as the substance of these differences, which means at one time that the substance, as this whole force, essentially is enduring in and for itself, and it then means that its differences endure as substantial, or as moments enduring for themselves. The force as such, or as driven back into itself, is thereby for itself as an excluding One for which the unfolding of the matters is another stably existing essence. In that way two distinct self-sufficient aspects are posited. However, the force is also the whole, or it remains what it is according to its concept. This is to say that these differences remain pure forms, superficial vanishing moments. At the same time, the differences between the genuine force driven back into itself and the unfolding of the self-sufficient matters would not be at all if they were not to have a stable existence, or the force would not be if it did not exist in these opposing ways. However, their existing in these opposing ways means nothing but that both moments are themselves at the same time self-sufficient. – This movement of the two moments as stably-existing-rendering-themselves-self-sufficient35 and then as “again sublating themselves” is what is now up for examination. – In general it is clear that this movement is nothing but the movement of perceiving itself in which both aspects, namely, the perceiver and, at the same time, the perceived, as the apprehending of the true are at one time One and are not differentiated from each other, but at another time each aspect is just as well reflected into itself, or is for itself. Here both of these aspects are moments of force; they are as much in a unity as this unity (which appears as the mediating middle with regard to the extremes being for themselves) is forever falling apart into these very extremes (which are as a result of this falling apart). – The movement, which previously turned out to be the self-defeating contradictory concept, therefore here has objective form and is a movement of force, the result of which is the emergence of the unconditioned-universal as the un-objective, or as the inner of things.
While in the way it has been determined, force is represented as such, or as reflected into itself, force is one aspect of its own concept, but as a substantialized extreme, namely, as the extreme posited under the determinateness of the One. The stable existence of the unfolded matters is thereby excluded from force, and it is an other than force. While it is necessary that force itself is supposed to be this stable existence, or while it is necessary that force express itself, its expression is represented so that this other approaches it and solicits it. However, while force indeed necessarily expresses itself, in its own self it has what was posited as another essence. The assertion must be retracted that force is posited as a One, and that its essence, which is to express itself, is posited as an other joining it from the outside. Instead, force is itself this universal medium of the stable existence of the moments as matters or force has expressed itself, and instead what is supposed to be the soliciting other is force. Force therefore now exists as the medium of the unfolded matters. However, it has without more ado essentially the form of the sublatedness of the stably existing matters, or it is essentially One; this being-one36 is thereby now an other than force, since force is posited as the medium of the matters, and force has this, its essence, external to itself. However, while force must necessarily be what it is not yet posited as being, this other joins it in that way and solicits it to a reflective turn into itself, or the other sublates its expression. However, force itself really is itself this being-reflected-into-itself, or the sublatedness of the expression. The oneness vanishes in the way it appeared, namely, as an other. Force is itself this other; force is force driven into itself.
What came on the scene as an other, which solicited force to expression as well as solicited it to return into itself, is, as it immediately turns out, itself force, for the other shows itself to be a universal medium as well as a One, and it does this in such a way that each of these shapes emerges at the same time only as a vanishing moment. Hence, as a result of an other existing for it and it existing for an other, force has in no way come out from its concept. At the same time, there are two forces present, and the concept of both is, to be sure, the same; however, the concept has gone out from its unity and entered into duality. Instead of the opposition remaining entirely and essentially for just a moment, it seems to have withdrawn from the unity's dominion over it through its estrangement into entirely self-sufficient forces. What is at stake in this self-sufficiency needs to be viewed more precisely. First of all, the second force emerges as the soliciting force, in fact according to its content, as a universal medium, as facing off with what is determined to be the solicited force. However, while the former, the second force, is essentially the flux of both moments and is itself force, it is in fact likewise only the universal medium as a result of its being solicited to that end and likewise is also a negative unity, or it solicits the recession of force as a result of its being solicited. This difference, which came to pass between both forces such that one of them was supposed to be the soliciting and the other the solicited force, is thereby transformed into the same reciprocal exchange of determinatenesses.
The play of both forces thereby consists in this oppositional determinateness on both parts, or in their being-for-each-other within both this determination and the absolute immediate flux of the determinations – within a transition, as a result of which alone these determinations are that in which the forces seem to make their appearance self-sufficiently. The one which is soliciting is, for example, posited as a universal medium and, in contrast, the solicited one as the force driven back. However, the former is a universal medium itself only as a result of the other being the force that is driven back; or, the latter is instead the one that is soliciting for the former and is what makes the former into a medium in the first place. The former only has its determinateness through the other, and it is soliciting only insofar as it is solicited by the other. It immediately loses as well this determinateness given to it, for this determinateness passes over into the other, or, instead, it has already passed over into that other. What is alien and is soliciting the force emerges as a universal medium but only as a result of its having been solicited by the other force; which is to say that the force posits it in that way and is instead itself essentially the universal medium. It posits what is soliciting in such a way for the reason that this other determination is essential to it, which is to say, because it is instead the other determination itself.
For the completion of the insight into the concept of this movement, attention can be drawn to the following. The differences themselves show themselves to be within a duplicated difference, at one time as differences of content, while the one extreme is the force reflected into itself, and the other extreme is the medium of the matters; at another time as differences of form, while one solicits, the other is solicited, and the former is active, whereas the latter is passive. According to the difference of content, they are as such, or for us, differentiated. However, according to the difference of form they are self-sufficient in their relation to each other, separating themselves off from each other and opposing themselves to each other. That, according to both aspects, the extremes are nothing in themselves, but rather (within that which their differentiated essence ought to stably exist) only vanishing moments, each an immediate transition into the opposite, becomes for the consciousness in perception the movement of force. However, for us (as noted above), there was also still this: In themselves the differences vanished as differences of content and of form and, on the side of form, according to the essence, the active, the soliciting force, or what-is-existing-for-itself, was the same as what, on the side of the content, was the force driven back into itself. The passive, solicited, or what is existing-for-an-other on the side of form, exhibits itself as the same as that which on the side of content turned out to be the universal medium of the many matters.
What results from all of this is that the concept of force becomes actual through its being doubled into two forces and evident how it becomes actual. These two forces exist as essences existing for themselves; but their existence lies in the kind of movement of each against the other so that their being is instead a pure being-posited through an other, which is to say, that the pure meaning of their being is instead that of vanishing. They are not like extremes which retain something fixed for themselves and transmit only an external property to each other in the mediating middle and in their contact. Rather, they are what they are only in this mediating middle and this contact. Immediately therein there is the force driven back into itself, or the being-for-itself of force, as there is the expression, or the soliciting as much as the solicited. These moments are thereby not distributed into two extremes which would only proffer an opposing tip. Rather, their essence is purely and simply this: Each is only through the other; what each is through the other is immediately no longer to be while it is the other. They thereby in fact have no substance of their own which would support and preserve them. The concept of force sustains itself instead as the essence in its actuality itself. The force as actual is purely and simply in the expression, which at the same time is nothing but a self-sublation. This actual force, represented as free-standing from its expression and as existing for itself, is the force driven back into itself; however, as it has turned out, this determinateness is in fact itself only a moment of expression. The truth of force remains therefore only the thought of force; and without pause, the moments of its actuality, its substances, and its movement collapse together into an undifferentiated unity, which is not the force driven back into itself since this is itself only one such moment. Rather, this unity is its concept as concept. The realization of force is therefore at the same time the loss of reality; it has instead become within that movement wholly other, namely, this universality, which the understanding at first, or immediately, cognizes as its essence, and which also proves itself to be its essence in what is supposed to be its reality, in the actual substances.
Insofar as we consider the first universal as the concept of the understanding, in which force does not yet exist for itself, so the second universal is now its essence as it exhibits itself in and for itself. Or, conversely, if we regard the first universal as the immediate, which is supposed to be an actual object for consciousness, then this second universal is determined as the negative of the sensuously objective force. It is force as it is in its true essence, as the object of the understanding. The former, the first universal, would be the force driven back into itself, or the force as substance; however, the second universal is the inner of things as the inner, which is the same as the concept as concept.
This genuine essence of things now has been determined as not existing immediately for consciousness. Rather, consciousness has a mediated relation to the inner, and, as the understanding, it looks into the true background of things by means of this mediating middle of the play of forces. The mediating middle, which merges together the two extremes (the understanding and the inner) is the developed being of force, which for the understanding is henceforth a vanishing. For that reason, it is called appearance, for being that is immediately in its own self a non-being is what is called semblance. However, it is not only a semblance but rather an appearance, a whole of semblances. This whole as a whole, or a universal, is what constitutes the inner, the play of forces as that play's reflective turn into itself.37 Within that play, the essences of perception are so posited for consciousness in the objective mode as they are in themselves, namely, as moments immediately transforming themselves into their opposites, without rest and without being, the One immediately transforming itself into the universal and immediately transforming the essential into the inessential and vice versa. This play of forces is thus the developed negative. However, the truth of the play of forces is the positive, namely, the universal, the object existing in itself. – The being of that object for consciousness is mediated through the movement of appearance, in which the being of perception and what is sensuously objective have only a negative meaning, and out of which consciousness therefore reflects itself into itself as reflecting itself into the true. However, again as consciousness, it makes this, the true, into the objectively inner and distinguishes the reflection of things into themselves from its own reflection-into-self, just as into consciousness, the mediating movement is still as much an objective movement. This inner thus is to consciousness an extreme confronting it. However, for that reason it is, to consciousness, the true, because therein, as it does in the in-itself, it has the certainty of itself, or the moment of its being-for-itself. However, it is not yet conscious of this ground, for being-for-itself, which is supposed to have the inner in its own self, would be nothing but the negative movement. But to consciousness, this negative movement is still the objectively vanishing appearance, not yet its own being-for-itself. The inner is to consciousness undeniably the concept, but consciousness is not yet acquainted with the nature of the concept.
In this inner true, as the absolutely universal which is purified of the opposition of universal and singular and which has come to be for the understanding, is disclosed for the first time and henceforth a supersensible world as the true world over and above the sensuous world (as the appearing world). That is, over and above the vanishing this-worldliness,38 there is disclosed an enduring other-worldly beyond,39 an in-itself which is the first and for that reason incomplete appearance of reason, or the pure element in which the truth has its essence.
With that, our object is henceforth the syllogism, which has, for its extreme terms, the inner of things and the understanding, and, for its middle term, appearance. However, the movement of this syllogism yields the further determination of what the understanding, through the middle term, beholds in this inner. It also yields what it learns from experience about this relation of syllogistic closure.40
The inner is still a pure other-worldly beyond for consciousness, for consciousness does not encounter itself within it. The inner is empty, for it is only the nothingness of appearance and, positively, the simple universal. This way of being the inner meets with immediate agreement among those who say that the inner of things is not to be known;41 however, the ground for this assertion should be understood in a different way. There is certainly no acquaintance with the inner, in the way that it is immediately here, but this is not because reason would be too short-sighted, or restricted, or whatever else one wants to call it. Why this is so is not something especially well known to us here, for we have not yet gone very deeply into the matter. Rather, it has to do with the simple nature of what is at stake,42 because in the void, nothing is known, or, to speak about it in another way, because it is defined43 as the very other-worldly beyond of consciousness. – The result is of course the same as if a blind person were to be set amidst the wealth of the supersensible world – if that world has such wealth, whether it be its own distinctive content or whether it be consciousness itself that is this content – or if a person with sight were to be situated in total darkness, or if you please, situated in pure light (if the supersensible world were indeed to be something like that). In that pure light, the person with sight sees as little as he sees in total darkness, and he sees exactly as much as the blind person sees of the riches lying right in front of him. However much it were to be the case that there would be nothing more to the inner and the syllogistic closure with the inner through appearance, still there would be nothing more left to do except to stop short at appearances, which is to say, to perceive something which we know not to be true. Or, suppose we are nonetheless to take there to be something in the void after all; this is a void which came about as the void of objective things but which now must be taken both as emptiness in itself, or as the void of all spiritual relations, or even as the void of the differences of consciousness as consciousness – and if the void is taken as this complete void, which is also called the holy, nonetheless there is supposed to be something with which to fill it out, even if it is only filled out with daydreams, or with appearances which consciousness itself creates. If so, then consciousness would just have to rest content with being so badly treated, for it would deserve no better, while daydreams themselves are still better than its emptiness.
However, the inner, or the supersensible other-worldly beyond, has developed. It comes forth from out of appearance, and appearance is its mediation. That is, appearance is its essence and in fact its fulfillment. The supersensible is the sensuous and the perceived posited as they are in truth. However, the truth of the sensuous and the perceived is to be appearance. The supersensible is therefore appearance as appearance. – However much it is thought that the supersensible is therefore the sensuous world, or the world as it is for immediate sensuous-certainty and perception, still this is an inverted understanding of the supersensible, for appearance is instead not the world of sensuous knowing and perceiving as an existing world. It is rather that world posited as sublated, or posited in truth as the inner. It is commonly said that the supersensible is not appearance; but “appearance” there is not understood to be appearance but rather to be the sensuous world as being itself real actuality.
Our object, the understanding, is situated in this very place: To itself, the inner has just come to be only as the universal which is still not the in-itself brought to fulfillment. The play of forces has just the negative meaning that it does not exist in itself and the positive meaning only of being what does the mediation, which is, however, external to the understanding. However, the understanding's relation to the inner through the mediation is the understanding's own movement through which the inner will, to the understanding, bring itself to fulfillment. – The play of forces is the immediate for the understanding, but the true, to the understanding, is only as the simple. However, we have seen that this play of forces has the following composition: The force which is solicited by another force likewise is soliciting this other force, which itself thereby becomes a soliciting force. What is present within this play is just the immediate flux, or the absolute exchange of determinateness which constitutes the sole content of what is coming on the scene: to be either a universal medium or a negative unity. In its determinate onset, it itself immediately ceases to be what it was as it came on the scene. Through its determinate onset, it solicits the other aspect, which thereby expresses itself. This is to say that the latter is now immediately what the first is supposed to be. The two sides, the relations of soliciting and the relations of the determinately opposed content are each on their own44 absolute invertedness and confusion. However, both of these relations are again themselves the same; and the difference of form (namely, the solicited and the soliciting) is the same as the difference of content (the solicited as such, namely, the passive medium). In contrast, the soliciting is the active, negative unity, or the One. All differences between the particular forces, which are supposed to be present in this movement, thereby vanish, for the forces rest solely on those differences. Together with the differences vanishing, the difference of forces likewise collapses in the same way into one. There is therefore neither force, nor soliciting and being solicited, nor the determinateness of being a stably existing medium and a unity reflected into itself; there is neither something singularly for itself, nor are there various oppositions. Instead, what there is in this absolute flux is just the difference as the universal difference, or as the kind of difference into which the many oppositions have been reduced. This difference as universal difference is thus the simple in the play of force itself and it is the true in that play of forces. It is the law of force.
Through its relation to the simplicity of the inner, or the understanding, the absolutely fluctuating appearance comes to be the simple difference. The inner is at first only the universal in itself. However, this universal, in itself simple, is essentially just as absolutely the universal difference, for it is the result of the flux itself, or the flux is its essence. However, flux, posited as existing in the inner as it is in truth, is likewise incorporated into the inner as an absolutely universal motionless difference, as the self-consistent difference. Or negation is essentially a moment of the universal, and it, or mediation, is therefore within the universal the universal difference. It is expressed in law as the stable picture of unstable appearance. The supersensible world is thus a motionless realm of laws. It is to be sure, beyond the perceived world, for this perceived world exhibits the law only through constant change. However, those laws are just as much current in the perceived world and are its immediately motionless likeness.
150. This realm of laws is, to be sure, the truth of the understanding, which has its content in the difference that lies within the law. However, it is at the same time only the understanding's first truth and does not completely bring appearance to its fulfillment. The law is now current in appearance, but it is not the entire presence of appearance; under ever different circumstances, the law has an ever different actuality. As a result, there remains for appearance for itself an aspect which is not within the inner; that is, appearance is in truth not yet posited as appearance, as sublated being-for-itself. This defect in the law must in its own self be likewise brought into prominence. What seems to be lacking in it is that it admittedly has the difference in it, but it has it as universal, as an indeterminate difference. However, insofar as it is not the law per se but only one law, it has determinateness in it. As a result there are indeterminately many laws present. Yet this multiplicity is instead a defect; it contradicts the very principle of the understanding as the consciousness of the simple inner for which the true is the unity that is in itself universal. For that reason, it must instead let the many laws collapse together into one law. For example: The law according to which a stone falls and the law according to which the heavenly spheres move have been conceptually grasped as one law. However, in this collapse into each other, the laws lose their determinateness; the law becomes ever more superficial, and as a result, what is found is not really the unity of these determinate laws but rather one law, which omits their determinateness in the way that the one law, which unifies within itself the law of bodies falling to the earth and the law of heavenly movement, does not in fact express either of them. The unification of all laws into universal attraction expresses no further content than that of the mere concept of law itself, which is posited as existing therein. Universal attraction only says this: Everything has a constant difference with regard to everything else. In saying that, the understanding supposes that it has found a universal law which expresses universal actuality as such, but it has in fact only found the concept of law itself. Nonetheless, it has done so in such a way that it says at the same time that all actuality is in its own self lawful. For that reason, the expression of universal attraction has to that extent great importance as it is directed against the unthinking representation for which everything presents itself in the shape of contingency and for which determinateness has the form of sensuous self-sufficiency.
Universal attraction, or the pure concept of law, thereby stands over and against determinate laws. Insofar as this pure concept is regarded as the essence, or, the true inner, the determinateness itself of determinate laws still belongs to appearance, or rather it belongs to sensuous being. Yet the pure concept of law does not only go beyond the law, which, itself being a determinate law, stands over and against other determinate laws. Instead, it goes beyond the law as such. The determinateness that was talked about is itself really only a vanishing moment, which no longer comes into view here as an essentiality, for what is present here is only the law as the true. However, the concept of the law is turned against the law itself. That is, in the law, the difference itself is immediately grasped and incorporated into the universal, and as a result there is in the law a stable existence of the moments, whose relation the law expresses, as indifferent essentialities existing in themselves. However, these parts of the difference in the law are at the same time themselves determinate aspects. The pure concept of the law as universal attraction must be grasped in its true significance so that within it, as the absolutely simple, the differences, which are present in the law as such, themselves return again into the inner as simple unity. The simple unity is the inner necessity of the law.
As a result, the law is present in a doubled manner, at one time as a law in which the differences are expressed as self-sufficient moments, and at another time in the form of simple being-that-has-returned-into-itself.45 This again can be called force, but not in such a way that it is the force driven back but rather so that it is the force as such, or the concept of force, which is itself an abstraction and which itself draws into itself the differences between what attracts and what is attracted. For example, simple electricity is in that way force. However, the expression of the difference belongs in the law, and this difference is positive and negative electricity. In the movement of falling, force is the simple, or gravity, for which the law is that the magnitudes of the distinct moments of the motion, or the time elapsed and the space traversed, relate themselves to each other as root and square. Electricity itself is not the difference in itself, or is not in its essence the doubled-essence of positive and negative electricity; thus, one is accustomed to saying that it has the law46 of being that way, or that it has the property of expressing itself in that way. This property is, to be sure, essentially and solely the property of this force, or it is necessary to that force. However, necessity is an empty word here. The force must double itself in that way simply because it must. If, of course, positive electricity is posited, then negative electricity in itself is also necessary, for the positive is only as a relation to the negative. That is, the positive is in its own self the difference from itself in the same way that the negative is. However, that electricity divides itself as such in that way, is not in itself the necessary; as simple force electricity is indifferent vis-à-vis its law, which declares it to be positive and negative. If we call the former its concept and the latter its being, then its concept is indifferent to its being; it only has this property, which is just to say that its property is not in itself necessary to its being. – This indifference takes on another shape if it is said that it only belongs to the definition of electricity to be positive and negative, or that this is purely and simply its concept and essence. Its being would then mean its existence as such; however, the necessity of its existence does not lie in that definition; one either comes upon its existence, which is to say, it is not necessary at all; or it has its existence through other forces, which is to say that its necessity is external. However, by thereby locating necessity within the determinateness of being through others, we fall back again into the multiplicity of determinate laws, which we had just abandoned in order to consider the law as law. It is only with the law as law that its concept as concept is to be compared. However, in all these forms, necessity has still only shown itself to be an empty word.
The indifference of law and force, or of concept and being, is present in yet another way than that already indicated. In the law of motion, for example, it is necessary that motion be divided into time and space, or else then into distance and velocity. While motion is only the relation of those moments, motion, or the universal, is here divided in itself. However, these parts, time and space, or distance and velocity, do not now express in themselves this origination out of one universal. They are indifferent to each other. Space is represented as being able to be without time, time without space, and distance at least without velocity – in the same way that their magnitudes are indifferent to each other while they do not relate to each other as positive and negative and thus are not related to each other through their essence. Thus, there is of course the necessity of division but not the necessity of the parts as such for each other. However, for that reason, that first necessity is itself also just a sham, a false necessity. That is, motion itself is not represented as simple essence or as pure essence, but rather as already divided. Time and space are its self-sufficient parts, or essences in themselves, or distance and velocity are ways of being or of representational thinking, where any one of them can be just as well without the other. Motion is thus only their superficial relation, not their essence. Represented as simple essence, or as force, motion is indeed gravity, which does not, however, contain these differences at all within itself.
The difference is therefore in both cases no difference in itself. Either the universal, the force, is indifferent to the division which lies in the law, or the differences, the parts of the law, are indifferent to each other. However, the understanding has the concept of this difference in itself just in the law's being on the one hand the inner, or existing-in-itself, but at the same time differentiated in it. That this difference is thereby an inner difference is here in that the law is simple force, or, as the concept of the difference, is thus a difference of concepts. However, this inner difference still just falls within the understanding and is not yet posited in the item itself.47 It is thus only its own necessity that the understanding expresses. It makes this distinction in such a way that it expresses at the same time that the difference is to be no difference in the item itself. This necessity, which only lies in the words used, is thus the recital of the moments that constitute the circle of necessity; they are, to be sure, distinguished, but at the same time their difference is expressed as being no difference of the item itself and thus it is itself again straightaway sublated. This movement is called explanation. A law is thus declared, and from this law, its universal in itself, or the ground, is distinguished as force. However, it is said of this difference that it is no difference at all, but rather, that the grounding reason48 is instead entirely constituted in the same way as is the law. For example, the singular event of lightning is comprehended49 as universal, and this universal is expressed as the law of electricity. The explanation then condenses the law into the force as the essence of the law. This force is then so constituted that when it expresses itself, opposed electricities come forth; these opposed electricities then again vanish into each other, which is to say, the force is composed exactly as is the law; it is said that both are not different at all. The differences are the pure universal expression (or the law) and the pure force. However, both have the same content, the same constitution; the difference as a difference of content, which is to say, in the item itself, is therefore also again withdrawn.
As it turns out, within this tautological movement, the understanding steadfastly insists on its object's motionless unity, and the movement only takes place in the understanding itself, not in the object. The movement is an explanation which not only explains nothing, but is, rather, so clear that as it makes a move to say something different from what has already been said, it says instead nothing at all and only repeats the same thing. Through this movement nothing new emerges about the item itself. Instead the movement only comes into view as a movement of the understanding. However, within that movement we cognize just what was missing in the law, namely, the absolute flux itself, for this movement, when we look at it more closely, is immediately the opposite of itself. It posits a difference, which is not only no difference for us but is a difference which it itself sublates as difference. This is the same flux that turned out to be the play of forces. Within that flux, there was the difference between the soliciting and the solicited, between the force expressing itself and the force driven back into itself, but they were differences that in truth were no differences at all and which for that reason were again also immediately sublated. What is present is not only the mere unity so that no difference would be posited; rather, it is this movement that undeniably makes a differentiation. However, because the difference is no difference at all, it is again sublated. – With explanation, therefore, the change and the flux, which were previously external to the inner and which existed only in appearance, have pushed their way into the supersensible itself. However, our consciousness has moved out of the inner as object over to the other side, into the understanding, and it is in the understanding that it has such flux.
In this way, this flux is not yet a flux of the thing itself. As a result of that, it exhibits itself as pure flux in that the content of the moments of the flux remains the same. However, while the concept, as the concept of the understanding, is the same as the inner of things, so this flux becomes the law of the inner for the understanding. The understanding thus learns from experience that what is the law of appearance itself is that differences come to be that are no differences at all, or it learns that like poles repel50 themselves from each other and likewise that the differences are only such that they are in truth no differences at all, which is to say that they sublate themselves, or that unlike poles attract51 each other. – There is a second law, whose content is opposed to what was previously called law, that is to say, it is opposed to the enduring self-consistent52 difference. This is because this new law instead expresses the becoming-unequal of what is equal and the becoming-equal of the unequal. The concept asks of the thoughtless that he bring both laws together and become conscious of their opposition. – The second law is, of course, also a law, or a being in inner self-equality, but it is instead a self-equality of inequality, a constancy of inconstancy. – In the play of forces, this law turned out to be just this absolute transition and pure flux. Poles being alike,53 i.e., force, fall apart into opposition, which at first seems to be a self-sufficient difference but which proves in fact to be really none at all, for it is this, poles being alike, which repels itself from itself, and what is repelled thus essentially attracts itself, since it is the same “pole being alike.” The distinction that is made, which is none at all, is therefore again sublated. The difference turns out to be a difference in the item itself, or it turns out to be the absolute difference, and this difference in the item itself is thus nothing other than that of “poles being alike,” which repelled themselves from themselves. Thus, this differentiating only posits an opposition that is none at all.
Through this principle, the first supersensible becomes the motionless realm of laws, the immediate likeness of the perceived world inverted into its opposite. The law was itself what is self-consistent just as are its differences. However, it is now posited that each of them is instead the opposite of itself. What is equal to itself instead repels itself from itself, and what is unequal to itself instead posits itself as what is equal to itself. In fact, it is only with this determination that the difference is an inner difference, or is a difference in itself, while what is equal to itself is unequal to itself, and what is unequal to itself is equal to itself. – This second supersensible world is in this way the inverted world, namely, while one aspect is already present in the first supersensible world, this is the inverted version of this first supersensible world. The inner as appearance is thereby brought to culmination. The first supersensible world was only the immediate elevation of the perceived world into the universal element, and it had its necessary counterpart in this perceived world, which still retained for itself the principle of flux and alteration. The first realm of laws did without that principle, but now it obtains it as the inverted world.
According to the laws, therefore, of this inverted world, like poles in the first world are each the unlike of itself, and the unlike in the first is just as unlike to itself, or it comes to be equal to itself. In determinate moments this will turn out to be such that what in the law of the first is sweet is, in this inverted in-itself, sour; what is black in the former is white in the latter. What in the law of the first world is the north pole in the magnet, is in its other supersensible in-itself, namely, in the earth, the south pole, whereas what was there the south pole is here the north pole. Likewise, what in the first law of electricity is the oxygen pole becomes in its other supersensible essence the hydrogen pole; and conversely, what is the hydrogen pole here becomes the oxygen pole there. In another sphere, according to the immediate law, revenge on an enemy is the highest satisfaction of injured individuality. However, this law states that I am to show the subject who does not treat me as an independent being54 that I am the independent being,55 and that it is instead I who sublates him as the independent being; through the principle of the other world, this law inverts itself into the opposite law: the recovery of myself as the independent being through the sublation of the alien independent being, which then inverts itself into self-destruction. However much this inversion, which is exhibited in the punishment of crime, is now made into law, it is still again also only the law of a world which has a supersensible world standing in inverted opposition to itself, in which what is despised in the former is honored, and what in the former is honored is despised. The punishment which, according the law of the former, dishonors a person and destroys him, is transformed in its inverted world into the pardon preserving his independent being and bringing honor to him.
Superficially viewed, this inverted world is the opposite of the first in that it has the latter external to itself, and repels that first world from itself as an inverted actuality. The one is appearance, the other is the in-itself. The one world is as it is for others, whereas the other is as it is for itself, so that, to use the previous examples, what tastes sweet is really, or inwardly in the thing itself, sour. Or what in appearance is the north pole in the actual magnet, would be, in the inner or essential being the south pole. Or what presents itself as the oxygen pole in electricity in its phenomenal appearance would be the hydrogen pole in non-phenomenal56 electricity. Or an action, which in the realm of appearance is a crime, should be in its inwardness genuinely good, or a bad action having a good intention. Punishment would only be punishment in the realm of appearance; in itself or in another world it could be a benefit for the criminal. Yet such oppositions – of inner and outer, appearance and the supersensible – which have been taken as two kinds of actualities are no longer present here. The repelled differences do not distribute themselves anew to two kinds of substances that would support them and lend them a separate stable existence, in which case the understanding would again fall out of the inner back into its previous place. The one aspect, or substance, would be again the world of perception in which the one of those two laws would drive its essence, and, over and against that law, there would be an inner world, just the kind of sensible world like the first, but one which existed in the realm of representation. Unlike the sensuous world, that world could not be pointed out, seen, heard, or tasted, and yet it would be represented in the terms of such a sensuous world. But if the one posit is in fact something perceived and if its in-itself, as its inversion, is likewise sensuously represented, then the sourness, which would be the in-itself of the sweet thing, would be just as actual as the sweet thing, or it would be a sour thing. The black, which would be the in-itself of the white, would be the actual black. The north pole, which is the in-itself of the south pole, would be the north pole present in the same magnet. The oxygen pole, which is the in-itself of the hydrogen pole, would be the oxygen pole present in the same voltaic pile [battery]. However, the actual crime has its own invertedness and its in-itself as possibility in the intention as such, but not in a good intention, for the truth of intention is only the deed itself. The crime, according to its content, has its reflective turn into itself, or has its inversion in actual punishment, and this is the conciliation of the law with the actuality opposed to it in the crime. Finally, the actual punishment has in it its own inverted actuality in such a way so that it is a kind of actualization of the law, within which the activity, which the law has as punishment, sublates itself. From being active, the law again comes to be both at rest and in valid force, and both the movement of individuality against it and of it against individuality expires.
Therefore, from the representation of inversion, which constitutes the essence of one aspect of the supersensible world, the sensuous representation of the attachment of the differences in diverse elements of stable existence must be detached, and this absolute concept of difference is to be purely exhibited and grasped as inner difference, as the repulsion of the like pole (as the like pole) from itself, and as the sameness of the non-same (as the non-same).57 It is to make one think through the pure flux, or the opposition within itself, the contradiction. For in the difference, which is an inner difference, what is opposed is not just one of two – otherwise, it would be an existent, not an opposite – but rather it is the opposite of an opposite, or the other is itself immediately present within it. To be sure, I put the opposite here, and I put the other of which it is the opposite there, and I therefore set the opposite off to one side, where it is in and for itself without the other. However, just for that reason, while I have here the opposite in and for itself, it is the opposite of itself, or it has in fact the other immediately in itself.58 – In that way, the supersensible world, which is the inverted world, has at the same time enveloped the other world and has it in itself. It is for itself the inverted world, which is to say, it is the inversion of itself, and it is itself and its opposed world within one unity. Only in that way is it the difference as inner difference, or the difference in itself, or is the difference as infinity.
Through infinity, we see that the law has been perfected in its own self into necessity, and we see all moments of appearance incorporated into the inner. What is simple in law is infinity, and this means, according to how things have turned out. (α) There is a self-equal which is, however, the difference in itself; or it is the “like pole” which repels itself from itself, or which estranges itself. What was called simple force doubles itself, and through its infinity is law. (ß) The estranged, which constitutes the parts represented in the law, turns out to be what is stably existing; and, if the parts are considered without the concept of the inner difference, then space and time, or distance and velocity, which appear as moments of gravity, are just as much indifferent to one another and without any necessity for each other as they are for gravity itself, just as this simple gravity is indifferent to them, or the simple electricity is indifferent to the positive and negative. (γ) However, through this concept of inner difference, what is unlike and indifferent, space and time, etc., is a difference that is no difference, or only a difference of like poles, and its essence is unity; they are reciprocally spiritualized59 as positive and negative. Their being is instead this: to posit itself as not-being and to sublate itself in the unity. Both of the distinguished poles stably exist, they are in themselves as opposites, which is to say, they are the opposites of themselves. They have their other in themselves and are only one unity.
This simple infinity, or the absolute concept, is to be called the simple essence of life, the soul of the world, the universal bloodstream, which is omnipresent, neither dulled nor interrupted by any difference, which is instead itself both every difference as well as their sublatedness. It is therefore pulsating within itself without setting itself in motion; it is trembling within itself without itself being agitated. It is itself self-equality, for the differences are tautological; they are differences that are none at all. This self-equal essence relates itself only to itself. It relates itself to itself so that this is an other essence to which the relation directs itself, and the relating to itself is in fact [the act of] estranging, or it is that very self-equality which is inner difference. These estranged items thus are in and for themselves, each an opposite of the other – of an other so that within that estrangement, expressing one moment is at the same time expressing the other. Or, it is not the opposite of an other, but rather it is only the pure opposite, and in that way it is thus in its own self the opposite of itself. That is, it is not an opposite at all but instead is purely for itself, a pure self-equal essence, which has no difference in it. Thus, we neither need to ask such questions nor need we regard the distress over such questions as philosophy, nor do we even need to hold that these questions are ones that philosophy cannot answer – [such as] how difference or otherness is supposed to come out of this pure essence. For the estrangement has already taken place, the difference has been excluded from what is self-equal and set to one side; what was supposed to be self-equality is thus already instead one of the estranged moments rather than being the absolute essence itself. “The self-equal estranges itself” means just that it, as already estranged, thereby sublates itself, and sublates itself as otherness. The unity, about which it is commonly said that difference cannot come out of it, is in fact itself only one moment of estrangement; it is the abstraction of simplicity, which stands in contrast to difference. However, while it is an abstraction, or while it is only one of the two opposites, it thus has already been said that the unity is itself what is doing the estranging, for if the unity is itself a negative, is an opposite, then it is posited as what has opposition in it. For that reason, the differences between estrangement and coming-to-be-self-equal are likewise only this movement of self-sublation, for while what is self-equal, which is supposed simply to estrange itself, or to become its opposite, is itself an abstraction, or is already itself the estranged, its estranging is in that way thereby a sublation of what it is and is therefore the sublation of its estrangement. Coming-to-be-self-equal is likewise an estrangement. What becomes self-equal thereby takes up a stance over and against the estrangement, which is to say, it thereby places itself off to one side; that is, it becomes instead an estrangement.60
Infinity, or this absolute restlessness of pure self-movement which is such that whatever is determined in any manner, for example, as being, is instead the opposite of this determinateness. This infinity is, to be sure, already the soul of all that came before, but it was in the inner that it itself first freely emerged. Appearance, or the play of forces, already exhibits infinity itself, but infinity first freely emerges as explanation. As infinity is finally an object for consciousness, and consciousness is aware of it as what it is, so is consciousness self-consciousness. The explanation provided by the understanding at first constitutes only the description of what self-consciousness is. The understanding sublates the differences already present in the law, differences that have already become pure differences but which are still indifferent differences, and it posits them within a unity, that of force. However, this coming-to-be-equal is likewise immediately an estrangement, for it is only as a result of that estrangement that the understanding sublates the differences and posits the One of force by means of making a new difference between force and law, but which is at the same time no difference at all. With regard to this difference which is no difference, the understanding goes further and again sublates this difference while it allows force to be constituted in the same way as it does law. – However, this movement, or this necessity, is in this way still a necessity and a movement of the understanding, or as such it is not the understanding's object. Rather, within that movement, the understanding has for its objects positive and negative electricity, distance, velocity, force of attraction, and a thousand other things, objects which constitute the content of the moments of the movement. It is just for that reason that there is so much self-satisfaction in explanation, because the consciousness involved in it is, to put it this way, in an immediate conversation with itself, enjoying only itself. While it undeniably seems to be pursuing something else, it is really just consorting with itself.
In the opposite law as the inversion of the first law, or in the inner difference, infinity indeed becomes itself the object of the understanding, but again the understanding fails to notice it as such, while the understanding again distributes to two worlds, or to two substantial elements, the difference in itself, the self-repulsion of like poles and the self-attraction of what is unlike; for the understanding, the movement as it is here in experience, is an event, and like poles and the unlike are predicates whose essence is an existing substrate. What is an object in sensuous covering for the understanding is now there for us in its essential shape as the pure concept. This grasping of the difference as it is in truth, or the grasping of infinity as such, is for us, or in itself. The exposition of its concept belongs to science. However, consciousness as it immediately has this concept again comes on the scene as its own form or as a new shape of consciousness that does not recognize61 its essence in what has gone before but instead regards it as something wholly different. – While this concept of infinity is, to consciousness, the object, it is therefore consciousness of the difference as likewise immediately sublated; consciousness is for itself, it is a distinguishing of what is not distinct, or it is self-consciousness. I distinguish myself from myself, and in doing so, what is immediately for me is this: What is distinguished is not distinguished. I, the like pole, repel myself away from myself; but what is distinguished, what is posited as not the same as me, is, while it is differentiated, immediately no difference for me. Consciousness of an other, of an object as such, is indeed itself necessarily self-consciousness, being-reflected into itself, consciousness of its own self, in its otherness. The necessary advance from the previous shapes of consciousness, to whom their truth was a thing, or was something other than themselves, expresses just the following. Not only is consciousness of things only possible for a self-consciousness; rather, it is this self-consciousness alone which is the truth of those shapes. However, this truth is here only for us and not yet for consciousness. Self-consciousness has first come to be for itself but not yet as unity with consciousness itself.
We see that the understanding in truth experiences in the inner of appearance nothing but appearance itself, but not appearance in the way it is as the play of forces; rather, it experiences the play of forces within their absolutely universal moments and their movement; in fact, the understanding experiences only itself. Raised above perception, consciousness exhibits itself as merged with the supersensible world through the mediating middle of appearance through which it gazes into this background. The two extremes, the one of the purely inner, the other of the inner gazing into the purely inner, have now merged together, and just as they have vanished as extremes, the mediating middle, as something other than these extremes, has also vanished. The curtain is therefore lifted away from the inner, and what is present is the gazing of the inner into the inner, the gazing of the non-distinguished “like pole,” which repels itself from itself, positing itself as a distinguished inner, but for which there is present just as immediately the non-difference of both of them, self-consciousness. It turns out that behind the so-called curtain, which is supposed to hide what is inner, there is nothing to be seen if we ourselves do not go behind it, and one can see something behind the curtain only if there is something behind the curtain to be seen. However, at the same time it turns out that one cannot without any more fuss go straightway behind the curtain, for this knowing of the truth of the representation of appearance and of appearance's inner is itself only the result of a complex movement, through which the modes of consciousness that go from meaning something, then to perceiving, and then to the understanding itself all vanish. It likewise turns out that the cognition of what consciousness knows while knowing itself requires still further circumstances. The exposition of those circumstances lies in what follows.