C. Becoming

Unity of Being and Nothing

The pure being and the pure nothing are the same. What the truth is, is neither the being nor the nothing, but rather that the being into nothing, and the nothing into being, — is not passing over, — but has passed over. Yet the truth is equally not their undifferentiatedness; it lies rather in this, that they are absolutely distinguished, while each of them, with the same immediacy, disappears in its opposite. Their truth, then, is this movement in which the one immediately disappears in the other; becoming; a movement wherein both stand distinguished, though through a difference that has dissolved itself just as immediately.

Remark 1

Nothing is what one habitually sets over against something; something, however, is a determinate being, one that marks itself off from other somethings; and so the nothing set over against something, the nothing of some something or other, is a determinate nothing as well. The nothing that must be taken here, however, is the nothing in its indeterminate simplicity; the nothing purely in and for itself. — Non-being contains the reference to being; it is therefore not the pure nothing, but the nothing as it already is within becoming.

The simple thought of pure being was pronounced first by Parmenides, as the absolute and as the sole truth, and in the fragments left to us from him, with the pure exaltation of a thinking that lays hold of itself for the first time in its absolute abstraction: being alone is, and the nothing is not at all. — The profound Heraclitus, in opposition to that simple and one-sided abstraction, held up the higher, total concept of becoming, and said: being is just as little as the nothing is, or again that all things flow, that is, that all is becoming. — The popular sayings, oriental ones especially, that whatever is has within its very birth the germ of its own ceasing-to-be, and that death is inversely the doorway into fresh life, give voice at bottom to this same uniting of being and nothing. Yet these expressions carry a substratum on which the transition takes place; in time being and nothing are held apart from one another, represented as alternating within it, rather than thought in their abstraction, and hence not thought in such a way that in and for themselves they are the same.

Ex nihilo nihil fit — this is one of those propositions to which the metaphysics of former times ascribed great significance. But what is to be seen in it is either only the empty tautology: nothing is nothing; or else, if becoming were supposed to have any real significance there, then, seeing that out of nothing only nothing comes to be, no becoming is in fact at hand in it, for nothing stays nothing. What becoming contains is that nothing shall not stay nothing, but shall pass over into its other, into being. — When the later metaphysics, the Christian above all, threw out the proposition that out of nothing nothing comes, it thereby asserted a transition of nothing into being; however synthetically, or however merely representationally, it took this proposition, even the most imperfect union still holds within it a point at which being and nothing come together and their distinctness vanishes.

If the result, that being and nothing are the same, strikes one as odd or looks paradoxical, no further heed need be paid to it; what deserves astonishment is rather that astonishment itself, which shows itself as something so new in philosophy and forgets that views of a wholly different kind occur in this science than occur in ordinary consciousness and in so-called common human understanding. It would be no hard matter to exhibit this unity of being and nothing in any example one likes, in anything actual or in any thought. But such an empirical elucidation would at the same time be wholly and utterly superfluous. Since this unity now lies at the ground of everything once and for all, and makes up the element of all that follows, becoming itself apart, all further logical determinations — existence, quality, indeed every concept of philosophy — are examples of this unity.

The confusion into which ordinary consciousness throws itself in the face of such a logical proposition has its ground in this, that it brings along with it representations of some concrete something, and loses sight of the fact that nothing of that sort is under discussion, but rather the pure abstractions alone, those of being and of nothing, and that these are what have to be held fast in and for themselves.

Being and non-being are the same; therefore it makes no odds whether I am or fail to be, whether this house stands or does not, whether these hundred thalers belong to my financial estate or not. — This inference, or this application of that proposition, alters its sense completely. What the proposition contains are the pure abstractions of being and nothing; the application, though, turns these into a determinate being and a determinate nothing. But determinate being, as was said, is not what is under discussion here. A determinate being, a finite one, is a being that bears reference to an other; it is a content that stands with other content, with the world entire, in a relation of necessity. With regard to the reciprocally determining interconnection of the whole, metaphysics was able to make the — at bottom tautological — claim that if a single mote of dust were absolutely destroyed, the whole universe would collapse. But take from the determinate content its interconnection with other things, and represent it in isolation, then its necessity is sublated, and it makes no odds whether this isolated thing, this isolated human being, exists or not. Or again, when this whole interconnection is drawn together into one, the determinate existence that refers itself to an other likewise vanishes, for the universe has no further other, and it is no difference whether it is or is not.

Something appears, then, as not indifferent to whether it be or not be, yet not for the sake of the being or the non-being, but for the sake of its determinateness, of its content, which links it up with other things. If the sphere of being is presupposed, and within it a determinate content, some determinate existence or other, is assumed, then this existence, because it is determinate, stands in manifold reference to other content; and for it it is by no means indifferent whether some certain other content with which it stands in reference is or is not; for only by way of such reference is it essentially what it is. The same holds in the case of representing (when we take non-being in the more determinate sense of representing as against actuality), in whose interconnection the being or the absence of a content that stands determinately in reference to another is not indifferent. — For in general the real difference first begins only with determinateness: indeterminate being and nothing do not yet have it upon them, but only the difference that is merely supposed.

This consideration contains the same as what makes up a main moment in the Kantian critique of the ontological proof of the existence of God; more closely, though, that critique is to be considered only at the opposition of concept and concrete existence. — As is well known, in this so-called proof the concept of a being was presupposed to which all realities accrue, hence concrete existence too, which was likewise assumed to be one of the realities. The Kantian critique fastened above all on this, that concrete existence is no property and no real predicate, which is to say, not a concept of anything that could accrue to the concept of a thing. — Kant means by this to say that being is no determination of content. — Hence, he goes on, the possible contains no more than the actual; a hundred actual thalers contain not the least bit more than a hundred possible ones; — namely, the former have no other determination of content than the latter. For this content considered as isolated it is indifferent to be or not to be; there lies in it no difference of being or non-being, this difference does not touch it at all; the hundred thalers do not become fewer if they are not, and not [m]ore if they are. The difference must first come from […]elsewhere. — “On the other hand, Kant recalls, in my financial estate there is more with a hundred actual thalers than with the mere concept of them, or with their possibility. For where actuality is concerned the object is not merely contained analytically within my concept, but accrues to my concept, (that concept being a determination of my state,) synthetically, without these hundred thalers as thought being in the least augmented by this being outside my concept.”

Two sorts of states are here presupposed, to keep to the Kantian expressions, the pure one, which Kant calls the concept, by which representation is to be understood, and another, the financial estate. For the one as for the other a hundred thalers are a further determination of content, or they accrue, as Kant expresses it, synthetically; and I as possessor of a hundred thalers, or as non-possessor of them, or again I as representing a hundred thalers to myself or not representing them, is a different content. On the one hand it makes a difference whether I merely represent these hundred thalers to myself or possess them, whether they are therefore to be found in the one state or in the other, because I have once and for all presupposed these two states as different determinations. On the other hand, taking each of these states by itself, within it they are a particular determination of content, one that enters into reference to something else, and whose vanishing is not a mere non-being but makes up an otherness. It is a deception that we push the difference off merely onto being and non-being, onto whether I have the hundred thalers or do not have them. This deception rests upon the one-sided abstraction which drops the determinate existence that is always at hand in such examples and clings merely to being and non-being. As was recalled just now, it is existence that first is the real difference of being and nothing, a something and an other. — It is this real difference, that of something and an other, which hovers before representation, in place of pure being and pure nothing.

As Kant puts it, through concrete existence something enters the context of experience as a whole; we get by this one more object of perception, yet our concept of the object gains nothing thereby. — This means, as follows from what has been elucidated, in fact this much: through concrete existence, essentially because something is determinate concrete existence, it enters into interconnection with an other, or stands within it, and among other things with something perceiving. — The concept of the hundred thalers, says Kant, is not augmented by perceiving. — The concept here means the hundred thalers as represented in isolation, outside the context of experience and of perceiving. In this isolated fashion they are indeed a determination of content, and a very empirical one at that, but a severed one, without interconnection and without determinateness over against an other; the form of identity with self, of the simple determinateness that refers only to itself, lifts them above the reference to an other and leaves them indifferent as to whether they be perceived or not. But if they are genuinely considered as determinate and as referred to an other, and the form of simple self-reference, which does not belong to such a determinate content, is taken from them, then they are no longer indifferent to existence and non-existence, but have entered the sphere in which the difference of being and non-being holds, not indeed as such, but as the difference of something and an other.

The thinking, or rather the representing, before which only a determinate being, or existence, hovers, into which the real diversity of being and nothing falls, is to be referred back to that beginning of pure science which Parmenides made, who among human beings appears to have been the first to purify and raise his representing, and with it the representing of the time that followed, into the pure thought of being, and thereby to have created the element of science.

But it must be recalled, to return to the main matter, that the expression of the result which issues from the consideration of being and of nothing, through the proposition: being and nothing are one and the same, is imperfect. For the accent is laid preferentially on their being one and the same, and the sense therefore seems to be that the difference is denied, which nevertheless occurs immediately in the proposition itself at the same time; for the proposition enunciates the two determinations, being and nothing, and holds them within it as distinguished. — Nor can it be meant, at the same time, that one should abstract from them and cling only to the unity. Such a sense would give itself out as one-sided, since what is to be abstracted from is nonetheless present in the proposition. — Insofar as the proposition: being and nothing are the same, enunciates the identity of these determinations, but in fact contains them equally as distinguished, it contradicts itself in itself and dissolves. A proposition is therefore posited here which, more closely considered, has the movement of vanishing through itself. With that there happens to it just what is supposed to make up its proper content, namely becoming.

The proposition accordingly contains the result, it is in itself the result itself; but the result is not expressed in it in its truth; it is an external reflection that recognizes the result in it. — The proposition, in the form of a judgment, is in general not immediately suited to express speculative truths. The judgment is an identical reference between subject and predicate; even if the subject has still more determinatenesses than that of the predicate, and to that extent is something other than the predicate, these accrue only as added on, and do not sublate the identical reference of this predicate with its subject, which remains its ground and bearer. But if the content is speculative, then the non-identical element of subject and predicate is likewise an essential moment, and the transition or the vanishing of the first into the other is their reference. That paradoxical and bizarre light in which so much of more recent philosophy shows itself to anyone not conversant with speculative thinking falls in many cases upon the form of the simple judgment, whenever that form is used for expressing speculative results.

The genuine result that has emerged here is becoming, which is not merely the abstract or one-sided unity of being and of nothing. Rather, it consists in this movement: that the pure being is immediate and simple, that for that very reason it is just as much the pure nothing, that the difference of the two is, yet just as much sublates itself and is not. The result therefore asserts the difference of being and of nothing just as much, but as a merely supposed one. — One supposes that being is rather the simply other over against what nothing is, and that nothing is more evident than their absolute difference, and nothing seems easier than to specify it. But one may just as easily convince oneself that this is impossible. For if being and nothing possessed any determinateness whatever by which they were distinguished, then, as was recalled earlier, what they would be is a determinate being and a determinate nothing, not that pure being and pure nothing which they still are here. Their difference is therefore entirely empty, each of the two is in like manner the indeterminate; it consequently does not subsist on them themselves, but only in a third, in supposing. But supposing is a form of the subjective, which does not belong in this series of the exposition. The third, however, in which being and nothing have their subsistence, must occur here too; and it has occurred, it is becoming. In it they are as distinguished ones; becoming is only insofar as they are diverse. This third is an other than they are; — they subsist only in an other, which means equally that they do not subsist for themselves. Becoming is the subsistence of being quite as much as of non-being; or their subsistence is nothing other than their being in one; and it is precisely this subsistence of theirs that just as much sublates their difference.

One is also apt to represent being under the image, say, of light in its purity, as the clearness of undimmed seeing, but nothing as pure night, and to tie their difference to this well-known sensuous diversity. In fact, however, if one represents this seeing to oneself more precisely, it is easily grasped that one sees as much and as little in absolute clarity as in absolute darkness, that the one seeing is quite as much as the other a pure seeing, a seeing of nothing. Light in its purity and darkness in its purity are two vacuities, and these are the same. Only in determinate light — and light is determined by darkness, — hence in dimmed light, and equally only in determinate darkness, — and darkness is determined by light, — in illuminated darkness, can something be distinguished; because only dimmed light and illuminated darkness have the difference upon themselves, and are thereby determinate being, existence.

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.