Remark 2

Parmenides held fast to being, and said of nothing that it is not at all; only being is. That through which this pure being was led onward to becoming was the reflection that it is equal to nothing. Being itself is the indeterminate; it therefore has no reference to anything else; it seems accordingly that from this beginning no further advance can be made, namely out of the beginning itself, without something alien being attached to it from outside. The reflection that being is equal to nothing thus appears as a second, absolute beginning. On the other side, being would not be the absolute beginning if it had a determinateness, for then it would depend on an other and would in truth not be a beginning. But if it is indeterminate and hence a true beginning, then it also has nothing by which it might carry itself over into an other; it is thereby at the same time the end.

That reflection, that being is not equal to itself but rather is utterly unequal to itself, is, considered from the latter side, indeed to that extent a second, new beginning, but at the same time an other beginning, by which the first is sublated. This is, as was already recalled above, the true meaning of advancing in general. In philosophy the advance from that which is a beginning is at the same time the return to its source, to its genuine beginning. Thus in going out beyond the beginning there at the same time begins a new beginning, and the first thereby shows itself as not the genuine one. This side, then, that the reflection which sets being equal to nothing is a new beginning, is conceded, and it is, as is clear, itself necessary. But conversely this new beginning is, just as much as the first, not an absolute one; for it refers to the first. For this reason, however, it must lie in the first itself that an other refers to it; it must therefore be something determinate. — But it is the immediate, that which is still utterly indeterminate. Yet precisely this indeterminateness is what constitutes its determinateness, for indeterminateness is opposed to determinateness; as something opposed it is thus itself the determinate, or the negative, and indeed pure negativity. This indeterminateness or negativity which being has in it itself is what the reflection expresses when it sets being equal to nothing. — Or one may put it thus: because being is that which is without determination, it is not the determination which it is, hence not being but nothing.

In itself, then, that is, in essential reflection, the transition is not immediate; but it is still concealed. Here only its immediacy is present; because being is posited only as immediate, nothing breaks out immediately in it. — A more determinate mediation is the one from which science itself, and its beginning, pure being, has its existence. Knowledge has attained the element of pure thinking by having sublated within itself all the manifoldness of the manifoldly determined consciousness. The whole sphere of knowledge therefore contains as its essential moment absolute abstraction and negativity; being, its beginning, is this pure abstraction itself, or is essentially only as absolute nothing.

This recollection, however, lies behind science, which within itself, namely from essence onward, will exhibit that one-sided immediacy of being as something mediated.

But insofar as that breaking out of nothing, and the consideration of being as to what it is in itself, are spurned, nothing is present but pure being. One holds fast to it as it is beginning and at the same time end, and in its immediate immediacy refuses the reflection that leads it out beyond itself, namely that it is the indeterminate, the empty. Into this pure immediacy nothing seems able to break in.

Since this assertion of reflectionless being holds fast to the merely immediate, to that as which being is posited or as which it is present, one must likewise keep to it and see how this being then is present. Now because being is nothing, this must exhibit itself in its immediacy.

Let us take the assertion of pure being

α) in the form in which it has stepped forth furthest out of supposing, as the proposition: Being is the absolute; then something is asserted of being that is distinguished from it. What is distinguished from it is an other than it; but the other contains the nothing of that whose other it is. What is therefore present in this proposition is not pure being, but being just as much in reference to its nothing. — The absolute is distinguished from it; but in saying that it is the absolute, it is also said that the two are not distinguished. Thus what is present is not pure being but the movement which is becoming.

β) If now pure being means just as much as the absolute, or if it means only one side or part of the absolute and only this side is held fast, then their difference is dropped, the difference which just now clouded the purity of being, and the diversity vanishes as one merely of the word or as a connection with a useless part.

The proposition now runs: Being is being. — Of this identity, which will be spoken of below, this much is immediately clear, that like every tautology it says nothing. What is present, then, is a saying that is a not-saying; here, accordingly, the same movement, becoming, is present, only that in place of being it is a saying that runs through it.

γ) With the tautological predicate dropped, there remains the proposition: Being is. Here again being itself and the being of it are distinguished; through the is something further and hence other than being is meant to be said. But if through the is no otherness, and hence no nothing of pure being, is posited, then this is is likewise to be dropped as useless, and one is to say only: pure being.

δ) Pure being, or rather only being; propositionless, without assertion or predicate. Or the assertion has gone back into supposing. Being is by now only an exclamation which has its meaning solely in the subject. The deeper and richer this inner intuition is, if it is to comprise within itself the holy, the eternal, God and so forth, — the more does this inner thing stand off from that as which it is there, from the enunciated empty being which against that content is nothing; it has, in its meaning and its existence, the difference from itself.

Considered from the other side, this being without reference to meaning, as it immediately is and is to be immediately taken, belongs to a subject; it is something enunciated, has […] empirical existence in general, and thereby belongs to the ground of restrictions and of the negative. — Common sense, when it bristles against the unity of being and nothing and at the same time appeals to what is immediately present, will in this very experience find nothing but determinate being, being with a restriction or negation, — that very unity which it rejects. Thus the assertion of immediate being reduces itself to an empirical concrete existence whose exhibiting it cannot reject, since it is the reflectionless immediacy to which it means to hold.

The same is the case with nothing, only in the opposite way; taken in its immediacy it shows itself as that which is; for by its own nature it is the very same as being. The nothing is thought, is represented; it is spoken of; therefore it is. The nothing has its being in thinking, in representing and so forth. This being, however, is distinguished from it; it is therefore said that nothing indeed is in thinking, in representing, but that on that account it is not the case that it is, that only thinking or representing is this being. In this distinguishing, however, it is just as little to be denied that nothing stands in reference to a being; but in the reference, even though it also contains the difference, a unity of nothing with being is present.

Pure nothing is not yet the negative, the determination of reflection over against the positive; nor yet the restriction; in these determinations it immediately has the meaning of a reference to its other. Rather, nothing is here the pure absence of being, the nihil Privativum, as darkness is the absence of light. If it has now turned out that nothing is the same as being, the counter-claim is held fast that nothing has no being of its own, that it is, as was said, only absence of being, as darkness is only absence of light — a meaning which it has only in the reference to the eye, in comparison with the positive, with light. — But all this means nothing other than that the abstraction of nothing is nothing in and for itself, but only in reference to being, or, what is the same, what has turned out, that its truth is only its unity with being, — that darkness is only something in reference to light, just as conversely being is only something in reference to nothing. Even if the reference is taken superficially and externally, and one stops within it chiefly at the differentiatedness, still the unity of what is referred is essentially contained in it as a moment, and in the fact that each is only something in the reference to its other, precisely the transition of being and of nothing into existence is expressed.

Remark 3

Being is nothing, nothing is being. It has already been remarked that the expression of speculative truth through the form of simple propositions is imperfect. Here the propositions would still have to be added: Being is not nothing, nothing is not being; so that the difference too may be expressed which in those propositions is merely present. — These propositions give completely what is to be said, but not as it is to be gathered together, and is gathered together in becoming.

Into those first propositions other relations of thought can now be brought. They can be enunciated thus:

What is turns therefore into nothing, because being is the nothing.

What is not turns therefore into something, because the nothing is being.

Or immediately:

What is therefore comes to naught, because it is.

What is not therefore becomes something that is, because it is not.

The ground that anything whatever becomes something that is because it is not, and that what is vanishes because it is, appears unsatisfying already for this reason, that it is abstract and empty, whereas by the something a concrete, empirical thing is understood. True as those propositions are, still, as soon as such an existence is spoken of, the ground cannot be merely empty being or non-being or an empty reference of the two to each other, but must have the complete determinateness of the content in order to grasp that content out of it. The relation of ground in general is a further, more perfect determination of the reference of being and of non-being to each other; it cannot be applied to this reference as it stands here, because the reference is rather a unity of pure, determinationless abstractions, and so is essentially not yet a mediation.

If the relation of condition were brought in, the reference of being and non-being would yield the propositions:

Something can pass over into nothing only on the condition that it is;

and into being only on the condition that it is not.

These propositions are empty tautologies; for since a passing over into the opposite is assumed in them, it is certain that, in order for the opposite, being, to be, it is necessary that its opposite, the nothing, be. On the other hand, insofar as the connection of this transition is placed in the relation of condition, their proper unity is sublated; for the condition is indeed something necessary for the conditioned, but is not what posits it; a third must first come in, one which brings the transition about. Through the intrusion of the condition, being and nothing are thus pushed apart, and a third, falling outside them, is demanded for their reference. But becoming is such a unity of them as lies in the nature of each itself; being is in and for itself the nothing, and the nothing in and for itself being.

Remark 4

It emerges from what has gone before what the case is with the ordinary dialectic against becoming, or against beginning and going under, coming-to-be or ceasing-to-be. — Kant's antinomy over whether the world is bounded or unbounded in space and in time comes up for closer examination further on, under the concept of infinity. — That simple and customary dialectic has its basis in clinging to the opposedness of being and of nothing. The proof that no beginning, whether of the world or of a something, is possible runs as follows:

Nothing can begin, neither insofar as something is nor insofar as it is not; for insofar as it is, it is not just then beginning; but insofar as it is not, it does not begin either. — If the world or something were to have begun, it would have begun in nothing, but in nothing, or the nothing, is not a beginning; for beginning includes a being within itself, whereas the nothing contains no being. — For the same reason something also cannot cease. For then being would have to contain the nothing, but being is only being, not the opposite of itself.

Becoming, however, or beginning and ceasing, is precisely this unity of being and nothing, against which this dialectic brings forward nothing except that it assertorically denies the unity and ascribes truth to being and to nothing, each separated from the other. — To ordinary reflecting representation it counts as complete truth that being and nothing are not one; but on the other side it lets beginning and ceasing count as just as genuine determinations; yet in these it does in fact take a unity of being and nothing to be genuine.

Since the absolute severance of being from nothing is presupposed, then — as one so often hears — beginning or becoming is indeed something incomprehensible; for one makes a presupposition which sublates the beginning or the becoming that one nonetheless also concedes.

What has just been cited is the same dialectic which the understanding turns against the concept that higher analysis holds of infinitely small magnitudes. The phrase infinitely small is, for that matter, an awkward one, and the concept receives fuller treatment further on. — Magnitudes of this kind have received the determination of being ones that are in the act of vanishing, neither prior to that vanishing, since at that point they would still be finite magnitudes; — nor subsequent to it, since at that point they would be nothing at all. Against this pure concept the well-known objection has been raised, and endlessly reiterated, that magnitudes of this kind must be either a something or else nothing; that no intermediary state (state is here an inept, barbarous term) exists between being and non-being. — What underlies this too is the assumption that being and nothing stand absolutely apart. The showing has gone the other way, however: that the two coincide in fact, or, to put it in the idiom just used, that there is simply nothing which fails to be a becoming, which fails to be an intermediary state between being and nothing.

Since the reasoning adduced makes the false presupposition of the absolute separatedness of being and non-being, it is also to be called not dialectic but sophistry; for sophistry is a reasoning from a groundless presupposition which one lets count uncritically and without reflection; by dialectic, however, we mean the higher rational movement into which such utterly separate-seeming terms pass over through themselves and therein into one another. It is the dialectical nature of being and nothing themselves that they exhibit their unity, becoming, as their truth.

2. Moments of Becoming

Becoming is the unity of being and nothing; not a unity that abstracts away from the two; rather, being the unity of being and nothing, it is this determinate unity, or the one in which both being and nothing is. But inasmuch as being and nothing, each of them, is in the unity with its other, it is not. They are, then, in this unity, yet as vanishing ones, only as sublated.

They are as not being; or are moments. — To representation they present themselves at first as such that each of them, for itself, separated from the other, is self-subsistent, and they are being and nothing only in this separation. But since both are the same, they sink down from self-subsistence to moments, in that they are at first still regarded in general as distinguished but at the same time as sublated.

Inasmuch as being and nothing are in one, they are distinguished therein; but in such a way that at the same time each, in its differentiatedness, is unity with the other. Becoming therefore contains two such unities; each is unity of being and of nothing; but the one is being as reference to nothing, the other nothing as reference to being: the two determinations are of unequal worth in these unities.

Becoming is in this way in a doubled determination; as beginning from nothing, which refers itself to being, that is, passes over into it, or from being, which passes over into nothing, — coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be.

But these directions, differentiated in this way, permeate one another and render one another inert. The first is ceasing-to-be; being makes the transition into nothing, yet nothing is quite as much the reverse of its own self and is rather the transition into being, or coming-to-be. This coming-to-be constitutes the second direction; nothing makes the transition into being, yet being quite as much sublates its own self and is rather the transition into nothing, or ceasing-to-be.

Coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be are therefore not a diverse becoming, but immediately one and the same: nor do they sublate each other reciprocally, the one externally sublating the other; rather each sublates itself in itself, and is in it itself the opposite of itself.

3. Sublation of Becoming

The equilibrium into which coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be settle themselves is at first becoming itself. But this equally collapses together into a tranquil unity. Within it, being and nothing have their standing only as vanishing ones; becoming as such, however, exists solely through the differentiatedness of the two. Their vanishing is therefore the vanishing of becoming, or a vanishing of vanishing itself. Becoming is thus an unsteady restlessness which sinks together into a tranquil result.

The point admits of this formulation as well: what becoming amounts to is being's vanishing into nothing together with nothing's vanishing into being, and altogether the vanishing of being and of nothing; yet it rests all the while upon the difference between them. It therefore contradicts itself within itself, because it unites within itself such as is opposed to itself; a union of this kind, however, destroys itself.

This result is having-vanished, not as nothing; taken so, it would be merely a relapse into one of the determinations already sublated. It is instead that unity of being and nothing which has grown into tranquil simplicity.

In becoming itself, being as well as nothing is, each in like manner rather only as the nothing of its own self. Becoming is the unity as vanishing, or the unity in the determination of nothing. But this nothing is an essential passing over into being, and becoming is therefore a passing over into the unity of being and nothing which is as something that is, or has the shape of the immediate unity of these moments; existence.

Remark

Sublating and the sublated is one of the most important concepts of philosophy, a fundamental determination which recurs absolutely everywhere, whose sense is to be grasped determinately and distinguished above all from nothing. — What sublates itself does not thereby become nothing. Nothing is the immediate; a sublated thing, by contrast, is something mediated, it is that which is not, but as a result which has proceeded out of a being. It therefore has the determination from which it derives still in itself.

To sublate has in the language the doubled sense that it means as much as to store up, to preserve, and as much as to make cease, to put an end to. Storing up already carries the negative in it: a thing gets taken out of its immediacy, and so out of an existence lying open to outward influence, for the sake of preserving it. — What is sublated is accordingly a thing stored up as well, one that has forfeited nothing but its immediacy, and has not on that account vanished.

Take the sublated more precisely: a thing counts here as sublated only to the extent that it has stepped into the unity with what stands opposed to it; under this narrower determination it is something reflected, and the fitting name for it is moment. — As the observation will force itself upon us still more often, that the philosophical technical language uses Latin expressions for reflected determinations.

What narrower sense and expression accrue to being and to nothing, now that they have become moments, must emerge more narrowly when existence is considered, as the unity wherein the two are stored up. Only in being differentiated from one another is being being and nothing nothing; in their truth, though — in their unity — the two have vanished qua these determinations, and are by now something else. Being and nothing are the same; on the very ground of that sameness they no longer count as being and nothing, and carry a diverse determination; within becoming they stood as coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be; within existence, a unity otherwise determined, they are again moments otherwise determined.

Chapter 2. Existence

Existence is determinate being. Existence itself is at the same time distinguished from its determinateness. In determinateness the concept of quality makes its entry. But determinateness passes over into constitution and alteration, and then into the opposition of the finite and the infinite, which resolves itself in being-for-itself.

A. Existence as Such

Existence as such determines itself in it itself, to the difference of the moments of being-for-other and of being-in-itself, or it determines itself, being their unity, as reality; and further into the existent or something.

1. Existence in General

Existence is the simple being-one of being and of nothing. Just because it is thus simple, it wears the form of something immediate. Its mediation, becoming, lies behind it; that mediation has sublated its own self, and existence for that reason shows up as a first, one that gets started out from.

It is not mere being, but existence. Etymologically taken, being at a certain place; but the representation of space does not belong here. Existence, in the wake of its becoming, is being in general with a non-being, though in such fashion that this non-being has been received into simple unity together with being; existence is determinate being in general.

Owing to the immediacy in which being and nothing are one within existence, neither reaches out past the other; rather, just so far as the existent is something that is, just so far is it something that is not, just so far is it determinate. Being here is not the universal, nor is determinateness the particular. Determinateness has not as yet come loose from being; or rather it will never again come loose from it; for what now lies at the ground as the true is precisely this unity of non-being with being; on it, as their ground, every further determination arises. Whatever being steps up against determinateness from here on is no longer that first, immediate being.

2. Reality

Existence is being with a non-being. But as the immediate unity of being and nothing it is rather in the determination of being, and the positedness of this unity is therefore incomplete; for the unity contains not only being but also nothing.

a) Otherness

Existence is therefore first that unity not merely as being, but just as essentially as non-being. Or that unity is not only existence that is, but also existence that is not; non-existence.

In connection with the transition of being into nothing it was recalled in what respect that transition is immediate. The nothing is not yet posited on being, although being essentially is nothing. Existence, by contrast, already contains the nothing posited within its own self, and is thereby the very yardstick of its own incompleteness, and with that carries on its own self the necessity of getting posited as non-existence.

Second, non-existence is not pure nothing; for it is a nothing as that of existence. And this negation is taken from existence itself; but in existence it is united with being. Non-existence is therefore itself a being; it is non-existence that is. A non-existence that is, however, is itself existence. This second existence is nevertheless at the same time not existence in the same manner as at first; for it is just as much non-existence; existence as non-existence; existence as the nothing of its own self, so that this nothing of its own self is likewise existence. — Or existence is essentially otherness.

Or, put shortly by comparing it with its own self, existence is the immediate simple unity of being and nothing; but because it is unity of being and nothing, it is rather not a unity equal to itself, but is downright unequal to itself, or is otherness.

Otherness is at first otherness in and for itself, not the other of something, such that existence would have stayed standing over against the other, and such that we should have one existence and another existence. For existence has altogether passed over into otherness. Otherness is itself existence; but existence as such is the immediate; this immediacy, however, has not remained, but rather existence is existence only as non-existence, or it is otherness.

As being passed over into nothing, so existence into otherness; otherness is the nothing, yet as reference. An other is not-this; but this is likewise an other, hence also not-this. There is no existence that would not at the same time be determined as an other, or that would not carry a negative reference.

Representation grants this too. If we call one existence A, and the other B, then at first B is determined as the other. Yet A is just as much the other of B. Both are others.

In all this, however, otherness shows up as a determination foreign to the existence so determined, or as the other outside the one existence; partly in such a way that an existence gets determined as other only through the comparison drawn by a third, while for itself it is not an other, partly in such a way that it gets determined as other only for the sake of the other that lies outside it, and not in and for itself. Yet in fact each existence determines itself, for representation too, just as much as an other existence, so that no existence is left to it that would be determined only as an existence and not as an other; or no existence that would not lie outside an existence and hence not itself be an other. — Representation does indeed reach the universality of a determination, but not the necessity of that determination in and for its own self. This necessity lies, though, in this, that it has shown itself at the concept of existence that existence as such is in and for itself the other, that it holds its otherness within its own self. — But otherness is the nothing essentially as reference, or is the sundering, the removing of itself from itself, and hence this determination of otherness sets existence over against itself; which is the side that alone hovers before representation.

Third: existence itself is essentially otherness; it has passed over into it. The other is thus immediate, not a reference to something lying outside it, but an other in-and-for-itself. But so taken it is the other of its own self. — As the other of its own self it is also existence in general, or immediate. Existence therefore does not vanish in its non-existence, in its other; for this is the other of its own self; and non-existence is itself existence.

Existence maintains itself in its non-existence; it is essentially one with it, and essentially not one with it. Existence therefore stands in reference to its otherness; it is not purely its otherness; otherness is at the same time essentially contained within it, and at the same time still separated from it; it is being-for-other.

b) Being-for-other and Being-in-itself

1. Being-for-other makes up the genuine determination of existence. Existence as such is something immediate, something without reference; or it stands in the determination of being. But existence, as enclosing non-being within itself, is essentially determinate being, negated being, an other, — but because it at the same time also maintains itself in its negation, only being-for-other.

2. As pure being-for-other, existence is properly only in passage over into otherness. Yet it also maintains itself in its non-existence, and is being. It is, however, not merely being in general, but being set in opposition to its non-existence; a being taken as reference to self against its reference to an other, as self-equality against its own inequality. A being of this sort is being-in-itself.

3. Being-for-other and being-in-itself make up the two moments of existence. There are two pairs of determinations that come up here: 1) existence and an other; 2) being-for-other, and being-in-itself. The first pair holds the determination that is indifferent and without reference; existence and an other drift apart from one another. Their truth, however, is the reference between them; being-for-other, then, and being-in-itself are those same determinations as moments; as determinations that are references, and that abide within their unity, within that unity which existence is; or each of them holds on itself, along with itself, the moment that is distinct from it.

It was recalled above that being and nothing are no longer being and nothing once they stand in the unity that is existence, — for that they only are outside their unity; so too being and nothing, taken in their restless unity, in becoming, amount to coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be. — Being within existence is being-in-itself. For being is the reference to self, the self-equality, which now, however, is no longer immediate; rather it is reference to self only as the non-being of non-existence; (as reflected existence). — Just so, non-being as a moment of existence, within this unity of being with non-being, is not non-existence in general, but immediately an other, and more determinately, a reference toward non-existence, or being-for-other.

Accordingly being-in-itself is in the first place a negative reference toward non-existence; otherness lies outside it, and it stands opposed to that otherness; so far as something is in itself, otherness and being-for-other have been taken away from it. But in the second place it carries non-being on its own self as well; for it itself is the non-being of being-for-other.

Being-for-other, though, is in the first place the negation of being, within existence; so far as something has its being in an other or for an other, a being of its own is what it lacks. But in the second place it is not the non-existence that would be pure nothing; it is a non-existence pointing over to being-in-itself, just as, the other way round, being-in-itself does the pointing over to being-for-other.

c) Reality

Being-in-itself and being-for-other are the moments, or the inner differences, of existence. They are being and nothing as differentiated within existence. Or, through this difference existence is not dissolved; rather these moments are held essentially in the unity which existence is; for they themselves, as was just shown, are these unities.

Existence itself is at first an immediate, simple unity of being and nothing. So far as being and nothing have determined themselves more closely within it as the moments just considered, it is no longer in the first form of immediacy, but is reflected existence; it is existence insofar as it has determined itself as being-in-itself and as being-for-other, and is the unity of these as its moments. As this reflected existence it is reality.

Remark

Reality can look like a word of many meanings, because it gets used of very diverse, indeed opposed determinations. Where one says of thoughts, of concepts, of theories, they have no reality, the sense here is that no external existence, no actuality, accrues to them; in itself or in its concept the idea of a Platonic republic, for instance, may well be true. — Conversely, when for instance only the shine of wealth is present in lavish expenditure, it is likewise said that reality is lacking, and what is understood is that such expenditure is only an external existence with no inner ground. Of certain occupations it is said that they are no real occupations, namely none that have worth in themselves; — or of grounds, that they are not real, insofar as they are not drawn from the essence of the matter.

The one time, then, what is understood by reality is external existence, the other time being-in-itself. Yet this is not a differing or an opposed meaning of reality, but rather only One meaning, because reality essentially encloses both of those determinations within itself. If therefore only being-in-itself, or only being-for-other is present, then reality is missed for the reason that each of these determinations taken by itself is one-sided, whereas reality is the totality that calls for both.

The in-itself too carries, in part, this double meaning. Something is in-itself insofar as it has gone back into itself out of being-for-other. But something also has a determination or circumstance in itself (here the accent falls on in) or on it, insofar as this circumstance is external on it, a being-for-other.

These two are united in existence, or in reality. Existence is in itself just as much as it has something on it, or is being-for-other. But that existence has that, which it is in itself, also on it, and, the other way round, that it also is in itself what it counts for as being-for-other, — this bears on the identity of being-in-itself with being-for-other, chiefly with respect to a content, and it comes out formally in part already within the sphere of existence, insofar as determination passes over into constitution, but more expressly where essence gets considered, and the relation between inwardness and outwardness, and then most determinately where the idea gets considered, as the unity of concept and actuality.

Here, though, the sense of the thing-in-itself already shows itself provisionally as well, which is a very simple abstraction, yet for a while was a very important determination, just as the proposition that what things are in themselves is unknown to us passed for a wisdom of wide currency. — Things are called in-themselves insofar as abstraction is made from all being-for-other, that is, generally speaking, insofar as they get thought without any determination whatever, as nothing. Taken in this sense one certainly cannot know what a thing in-itself may be. For the question: what? calls for determinations to be stated; yet since what is at issue is meant all the while to be things-in-themselves, that is, precisely without determination, the impossibility of answering has been thoughtlessly built into the question, or else one produces a self-contradicting answer. The thing-in-itself amounts to the same as that absolute about which nothing is known save that all is one within it. But what the thing-in-itself is in truth, or rather what is in itself at all, of that the Logic is itself the exposition. If it is asked of a determinate thing what it may be in itself, the simple logical answer runs that it is in itself what it is in its concept.

The former metaphysical concept of God, which was chiefly laid at the ground of the ontological proof, so called, for God's existence, can be mentioned here. God, that is, received the determination the sum total of all realities, and this sum total was said to harbour no contradiction within itself, no one of the realities sublating another; for reality is supposed to count only as a perfection, as a positive that harbours no negation. Hence the realities are said to stand in no opposition and not to contradict one another.

With this concept of reality it is therefore assumed that reality still remains even when all negation, and with it all determinateness of reality, has been sublated. Yet reality is existence in general; it holds non-being as being-for-other, and more closely the limit or determinateness. Reality that is meant to be taken in the so-called eminent sense, or as infi nite, — in the ordinary meaning of the word, — is widened out into what is devoid of determination, and forfeits its meaning. The goodness of God is said to be goodness not in the ordinary sense but in the eminent one, not distinct from justice but tempered by it, just as conversely justice by goodness; but so taken goodness is goodness no longer, nor is justice still justice. — Power is to be tempered by wisdom, but so taken it is not absolute power; — wisdom is to be widened out into power, but so taken it vanishes as the wisdom that determines purpose and measure. Later on the true concept of the infinite will come out, just as the absolute unity will determine itself ever more closely, a unity that does not consist in a tempering, a reciprocal limiting, or a blending, seeing that such is a thoroughly superficial reference, kept in indeterminate fog, one with which only conceptless representation can be satisfied. — Reality, as it is taken in that definition of God as a determinate quality, once carried out beyond its determinateness ceases to be reality; it becomes the one-sided in-itself, which is empty; and God as the purely real in everything real, or as the sum total of all realities, is that same thing devoid of determination and of content that the empty absolute mentioned earlier is, in which everything is One.

3. Something

Existence as reality is the differentiating of its own self into being-in-itself and being-for-other. Herein being-in-itself is as differentiated from being-for-other; but it thereby is only as referred to it, and in unity with it. Just so being-for-other is not otherness itself, but holds within itself the reference to its own self, being-in-itself. These two unities accordingly make up, in their very difference, One unity, and are the passing over into one another.

Existence at first, as such, is only the immediate unity of being and nothing. Reality is this unity in the determinate difference of its moments, which make up distinct sides on it, determinations of reflection that are indifferent toward one another. But because each one is only as standing in reference to the other, and each encloses the other within itself, reality ceases to be a unity of the sort in which both subsist indifferently. It is a unity that does not let them subsist, their sublating simple unity. Existence is being-within-itself, and as being-within-itself it is an existent, or something.

The being-within-itself of existence is thus the simple reference of existence to its own self, as being-in-itself is. But being-in-itself is this equality with self rather in an immediate manner; in being-in-itself the moment of being is what lies at the ground, and being-for-other stands over against it. This can be put as follows, that being-in-itself is the reference of existence to its own self, not as the existence's own reflection into itself, but as an external one; or only through this, that being-for-other gets severed from the reference to self. — Being-within-itself, on the other hand, is now existence's own being-in-itself; it is its reflection into itself. Existence is the unity which is reality, insofar as this unity has distinct sides, that is, reality is the immediate unity, yet referred to that external reflection which distinguishes distinct sides. Being-within-itself, by contrast, is the reference of existence to itself insofar as the sublating of being-for-other is existence's own; being-for-other passes over on its own self into being-in-itself, and this is thereby no longer immediate being-in-itself, but that which has likewise united itself with its other moment, and in which being-for-other is sublated, or being-within-itself.

Something determines itself further, more closely, as being-for-itself, or thing, substance, subject, and so forth. At the ground of all these determinations lies the negative unity; the reference to self through negation of otherness. Something is this negative unity of being-within-itself as yet only quite indeterminately.

Existence passes over into an existent within its own self, by gaining, as the sublating of being-for-other, this point of negative unity. Existence therefore, as something, is not the immediate unity of being and nothing that is; rather, as being-within-itself it has reference to itself insofar as it is negation. The being of something therefore does not consist in its immediacy, but in the non-being of otherness; within something, then, existence has passed over into the negative to this extent, that the negative now lies at the ground. Something is existence only insofar as it has a determinateness.

B. Determinateness

Existence is being with a non-being. It is being, simple reference to its own self, yet no longer as immediacy, but as negative reference to its own self, and this is what makes up its being. So taken it is something. Here, then, the moment of non-being turns itself outward on existence.

Something, as an existent, first of all distinguishes its moment of negativity from its own self, as its limit.

Thereupon, however, the limit shows itself as the essentiality of something, and is its determinateness, which differentiates itself into determinateness as that which is in itself, into determination, and into determinateness as that which is for-other, into constitution. Determinateness, as the reference of these moments, is quality.

Third, however, quality passes over through constitution into alteration.

1. Limit

1. Something is first an existence enclosed in general; it contains within itself the non-being of otherness; a non-being through which it is, as being-within-itself.

Secondly, as existence it is indeed being-for-other; but being-for-other is taken back into being-in-itself. This means, on the one side, that otherness has not vanished; but because something, precisely on the ground of its having returned into itself, is simple being-within-itself, otherness falls outside it. This other is another something, towards which the something is indifferent; it is, whether this other be, or not be, or however it be. The something is being-in-itself, and indeed over against the other; this being-in-itself makes up its indifference. — The first being-in-itself of existence is immediate being-in-itself; being-within-itself, by contrast, is likewise being-in-itself, yet not as immediate, but a being-in-itself that is negative, over against an other, or the being-in-itself. That has stepped out, into being-for-other. — In this, then, that existence is determined as indifferent, the other first properly steps over against an existence; into otherness, as it appeared earlier, existence had itself passed over; this unity of the two developed into the moments considered, through whose negative unity, being-within-itself, existence severs itself from otherness and sets the two in indifferent reference to each other.

Thirdly, however, because being-within-itself is the non-being of otherness, something is not something indifferent in general; rather, the non-being of the other is an essential moment of its indifference; it is the ceasing of an other in it.

Something therefore contains the three moments 1) its non-being, the other is outside it; it itself is self-equal reference to itself, 2) the other is not an other in general, or in an external reflection, but ceases in the something, something is its non-being; 3) something thereby has non-being itself in it, but as the ceasing of its otherness, and thus as the being of its own self.

It has a limit.

Something has a limit at first only in relation to an other; that limit is the other's non-being, not the something's own; through it, therefore, the something does not limit itself, but its other.

2. But the other is itself a something in general, for it is likewise existence. The limit, then, which something holds towards the other, is at the same time the other's own limit as a something, or it is that other's limit, by which the other holds off the first something as its other, or is a non-being of that something. It is therefore not only the non-being of the other, but of the something as well; it is at the something itself.

Or, immediately, insofar as the something only is as the non-being of the other, it is in its own self non-being, and the limit is just as much that by which it is itself limited.

3. As non-being it is the ceasing of the something, but since it is essentially the ceasing of the other, the something at the same time is through its limit. — The other is likewise the non-being of the something, but if the limit were only this non-being, then something would simply cease in its limit; yet it is the non-being of the something only in such a way that it is at once the non-being of the other, and hence the being of the something.

Insofar, now, as something in its limit is and is not, and these moments are at first taken in immediate distinctness, the non-existence and the existence of the something fall apart from each other. Something has its existence outside its limit; but just so the other too, because it is a something, lies outside that limit. The limit is the middle of the two, in which they cease. They have their existence over beyond one another and beyond their limit; the limit, being what each of them is not, counts for both as the other, and so each has its existence apart from its own non-being.

— According to this diversity of the something from its limit, the line appears to us as line only outside its limit, the point; the surface as surface outside the line; the body as body only outside the surface that bounds it. — This is the side from which limit at first enters representation, — the concept's being-outside-itself, — and in which it is therefore taken up chiefly in spatial objects too.

4. Further, however, the something as it is outside the limit, the unlimited something, is merely existence in general. Outside the limit something is not distinguished from its other; it is only existence, and so it has the same determination as its other; each is only something in general, or each is an other.

But something is something only through being-within-itself; and it is within itself only through the non-being of an other; without limit it is its other. Its being turned outward against an other, the non-being that is its limit, thus makes up what is essential to the something, or its existence. Something is what it is only in its limit.

Being-within-itself, as simple reference to itself, at first shuts otherness and with it the limit itself — as the reference to the other — out of itself and out of the something. But the equality of the something with itself rests on its negative nature; or non-being is here being-in-itself itself; hence the limit is being-within-itself. Above, the being-within-itself of the something was determined thus, that it is being-for-other taken up into being-in-itself; being-in-itself over against an other was the indifference of the something towards an other. But conversely otherness, or the non-being of the something, is thereby posited as being-in-itself, which has no other content or subsistence than the limit itself.

— The point, then, is not the limit of the line merely in the sense that the line ceases in it and is, as existence, outside it; — nor the line the limit of the surface merely in the sense that the surface ceases in the line, and likewise the surface as limit of the body. Rather, the line begins in the point as well; the point is the line's absolute beginning, it constitutes its element, as the line constitutes the element of the surface; the surface that of the body. These limits are thus at the same time the principle of what they limit; as the one, for instance as the hundredth, is a limit, but also an element of the whole hundred.

The limit is therefore not distinguished from the something; this non-being is rather its ground, and makes it what it is; it makes up its being, or its being does not reach out beyond its otherness, beyond its negation. Thus the limit is determinateness.

2. Determinateness

The limit belongs to the something itself; the something has no existence apart from it; the limit is the being-in-itself of the something itself; it is not external to the something's being-within-itself, but is itself a limit that is within itself. Its truth is determinateness in general. — This is the result of the foregoing. — When the limit alters, the something seems still to remain as an existence in general, and the alteration seems to go on outside it, only in the limit. But as the limit is in truth, namely as determinateness, (the qualitative, not yet the quantitative limit) it is that through which something is what it is; when determinateness vanishes, something itself vanishes, or when another determinateness steps into the place of one determinateness, something itself is an other.

Something has a determinateness. In this expression the something and its determinateness are distinguished from each other. But this distinction belongs to external reflection. Something is the determinate; it stands in simple immediate unity with determinateness. Something therefore vanishes in its determinateness; properly speaking, then, one should no longer speak so much of the something as of determinateness. For something is being-within-itself in an immediacy; according to this immediacy it has negation, the limit, only in it, as being-for-other, and something is in itself over against the limit; but in unity with the limit it is sublated, for its immediacy has vanished, and it has passed over into determinateness.

Simple determinateness is the unity of being-within-itself and of the limit. It contains both within itself as sublated, as moments, or it is itself determined in this twofold manner. On the one side it is the limit turned back into itself, on the other side it is also being-within-itself that has passed over into being-for-other, or that is as limit.

a.) Determination

As the limit turned back into itself, determinateness is in itself; it is the determinate as referring only to itself; as the non-being of the other, in such a way that the determinate is not thereby limited itself.

Determinateness on this side may more precisely be called determination. In its determination something rests within its own self; in determination it is what it ought to be. There is indeed an other outside it, yet in such a way that something is not what it is in this reference to an other; rather it is taken back out of the reference to an other into itself. Limit as determination is no longer the referring middle between the something and an other; it belongs to the something alone, which does not hold it in common, but it is the something's reference to its own self.

b.) Constitution

Determination makes up the being-in-itself of the something. But determinateness is not only being-in-itself; as limit it is also being-for-other, or being-within-itself that has passed over into otherness. Determinateness is at first indifference towards an other, and the other falls outside the something. Yet at the same time, since the limit belongs to the something itself, the something has otherness in its own self. In this way determinateness is an external existence of the something, one that is indeed its existence, but that does not belong to its being-in-itself.

Determinateness is thus constitution.

Constituted this way or that, something is grasped not as being within itself, but as standing under external influence and external relation. This determinateness, which does indeed belong to the something, is rather its otherness, but insofar as that otherness is in it. The external reference on which constitution depends, and the being-determined through an other, appears as something contingent, because it appears as an other, as something external. But the something consists in being surrendered to this externality and in having a constitution. — Determination is otherness taken back into itself; precisely thereby otherness, instead of being sublated, has rather been made into the determination of determinateness, into its being-in-itself.