B. Shine

1. Being is shine. What the being of shine consists in is solely the sublatedness of being, its nullity; this nullity it has in essence, and apart from its nullity, apart from essence, shine is not. Shine is the negative posited as negative.

Shine is the entire remainder still left over out of the sphere of being. Of itself, though, it still seems to possess an immediate side independent of essence, and to be an other of essence at large. What the other contains at large are two moments, that of existence and that of non-existence. Because the unessential no longer possesses a being, all that remains to it out of otherness is the pure moment of non-existence; shine amounts to this immediate non-existence, so placed within the determinateness of being that it has existence only in the reference to an other, in its non-existence; the non-self-subsistent, which is only in its own negation. All that stays with it, then, is the pure determinateness of immediacy; it stands there as the reflected immediacy, that is, an immediacy which is only by way of its negation, and which, set against its own mediation, amounts to nothing but the empty determination of the immediacy of non-existence.

– Thus shine, the phenomenon of skepticism, or likewise the appearance of idealism, is an immediacy of the kind that is no something and no thing, generally not a being of indifference which would lie outside its determinateness and outside its reference to the subject. That it is — this the skeptic did not allow himself to say; the more recent idealism did not allow itself to view cognitions as a knowledge of the thing-in-itself; that shine was to have no groundwork of being whatever, and into those cognitions the thing-in-itself was not to enter. And yet, simultaneously, skepticism let manifold determinations of its shine pass; or rather its shine had for content the whole manifold wealth of the world. Just so, the appearance of idealism gathers into itself the entire compass of these manifold determinacies. That shine and this appearance are immediately determined in this manifold manner. So there may well be no being, no thing or thing-in-itself lying at the base of this content; for itself the content stays as it is; it has merely been carried over out of being into shine; so that shine holds within its own self those manifold determinacies which are immediate, which are, and which are other towards one another. Shine, accordingly, is itself something immediately determined. This or that content it may have; but the content it has is not posited by shine itself; shine has it immediately. Leibnizian idealism, or Kantian, Fichtean idealism, and other shapes of it besides, have got no further past being as determinateness, past this immediacy, than skepticism did. Skepticism lets the content of its shine be given to it; what content it is to have is for it a matter of the immediate. The Leibnizian monad unfolds its representations out of its own self; but it is not the force that generates and binds them; instead they rise up inside it like bubbles; they are indifferent, immediate towards one another, and so towards the monad itself as well. Just so, the Kantian appearance is a content of perception that is given; it has affections for its presupposition, determinations of the subject that are immediate towards their own selves and towards the subject. The infinite check of Fichtean idealism may well have no thing-in-itself at its base, so that the check becomes purely a determinateness within the I itself. Yet this determinateness, for the I that makes it its own and sublates its externality, is simultaneously an immediate, a restriction upon the I beyond which the I can go, but one which carries at itself a side of indifference on which, though it lie within the I, it holds an immediate non-being of the I itself. –

2. Shine, accordingly, harbours an immediate presupposition, a side that is independent as against essence. Of shine, however, insofar as it is told apart from essence, there is no need to demonstrate that it sublates itself and goes back into essence; for being in its totality has already gone back into essence; shine is the null in itself; all there is to demonstrate is that the determinations which tell it apart from essence belong to essence itself, and beyond that, that this determinateness of essence which shine is, stands sublated within essence itself.

What makes up shine is the immediacy of non-being; but this non-being is nothing else than the negativity of essence at essence's own self. Being is non-being in essence. Its nullity in itself amounts to the negative nature of essence itself. The immediacy or indifference, however, that this non-being harbours, is essence's very own absolute being-in-itself. Essence's negativity is its equality with its own self, or its simple immediacy and indifference. Being has kept itself in essence insofar as essence, at its infinite negativity, has this equality with its own self; through that, essence is itself being. Hence the immediacy which the determinateness at shine possesses over against essence is nothing else than essence's very own immediacy; not, though, the immediacy that has being, but the utterly mediated or reflected immediacy which shine is; – being not as being, but only as being's determinateness, set against mediation; being as moment.

These two moments – nullity, but taken as subsistence, and being, but taken as moment, or negativity that is in itself and immediacy that is reflected – which make up the moments of shine, are on that account the moments of essence itself; there is no shine of being present at essence, nor a shine of essence at being; the shine within essence is not the shine of some other; rather it is the shine in itself, the shine of essence itself.

Shine is essence itself under the determinateness of being. That through which essence has a shine lies in its being determinate within itself, and thereby told apart from its absolute unity. But this determinateness is quite as utterly sublated at its own self. For the self-subsistent is what essence is, a self-subsistent that is in mediating itself with itself by means of its negation, which negation essence itself is; essence is therefore that identical unity in which absolute negativity and immediacy are one. – Negativity is the negativity that is in itself; it is the reference of itself to itself, and so in itself it is immediacy; but it is negative reference to itself, a repelling negating of its own self, and so the immediacy that is in itself is, as against negativity, the negative or the determinate. Yet determinateness of this sort is itself the absolute negativity and this determining, a determining which, immediately as determining, is the sublating of its own self, is return into itself.

Shine is the negative that possesses a being, though in an other, in its negation; it is the non-self-subsistence that at its own self is sublated and null. So it is the negative that goes back into itself, the non-self-subsistent as the non-self-subsistent at its own self. This reference of the negative, or of non-self-subsistence, to itself is the negative's immediacy; the reference is something other than the negative itself; it is the negative's determinateness as against itself, or it is negation as against the negative. Negation as against the negative, however, is the negativity that refers itself only to itself, the absolute sublating of determinateness as such.

The determinateness, then, which shine is within essence, is infinite determinateness; it is only the negative that goes together with itself; and so it is a determinateness which, as such, is self-subsistence, and is not determinate. – Conversely, self-subsistence as immediacy referring itself to itself is just as utterly determinateness and moment, and is only as negativity referring itself to itself. – This negativity, identical with immediacy, and hence this immediacy, identical with negativity, is essence. Shine, accordingly, is essence itself, essence under a determinateness, yet so that the determinateness is only essence's moment, and essence is the shining of itself within its own self.

Within being's sphere, opposite being as something immediate there arises non-being, likewise as something immediate, and the truth of the two is becoming. Within the sphere of essence there stand opposite each other first essence and the unessential, then essence and shine; the unessential and shine as leavings of being. But the pair of them, and equally essence's difference from them, consist in nothing further than this, that essence is at first taken as something immediate, not as it is in itself, that is to say, not as the immediacy which is immediacy qua pure mediation or qua absolute negativity. That first immediacy, accordingly, is no more than the determinateness of immediacy. Sublating this determinateness of essence therefore comes to nothing beyond the pointing out that the unessential is shine merely, and that essence rather harbours shine within its own self, as the infinite movement within itself which determines its immediacy as the negativity, and its negativity as the immediacy, and so is the shining of itself within its own self. Essence in this its self-movement is reflection.

C. Reflection

Shine is the very same thing that reflection is; but it is reflection in the shape of the immediate; for shine that has gone into itself, and has thereby been estranged from its immediacy, we have the word of the foreign tongue, reflection.

Essence is reflection: it is the movement of becoming and of passing over that abides within its own self; a movement wherein what is differentiated stands determined simply and solely as the in-itself negative, as shine. – In the becoming that belongs to being, being underlies determinateness, and determinateness amounts to a reference to an other. The reflecting movement, by contrast, has the other as the negation in itself, a negation that possesses a being only as negation referring itself to itself. Or, since this reference to itself is precisely this negating of the negation, negation as negation is there at hand, as something whose being lies in its being-negated, as shine. So the other here is not being with negation, that is, limit, but rather negation with negation. As for the first set against this other, namely the immediate or being, it is nothing but this very equality of negation with itself, the negation negated, absolute negativity. Equality of this kind with itself, or immediacy, is therefore not a first from which the start is made and which would go over into its negation; nor is it a substrate with being, one that would move itself the whole way through reflection; immediacy, rather, is nothing but this movement itself.

Becoming within essence, essence's reflecting movement, is therefore the movement from nothing to nothing, and thereby back to its own self. Passing over, or becoming, sublates itself in its passing over; the other which comes to be in this passing over is no non-being of a being, but the nothing of a nothing, and this — being the negation of a nothing — is what makes up being. – Being is only as the movement of nothing to nothing, and thus it is essence; and essence, for its part, does not have this movement within it; rather it is that movement, being the absolute shine itself, pure negativity, having nothing outside itself that it might negate, negating instead only its own negative, one that only is within this negating.

This pure absolute reflection, being the movement from nothing to nothing, goes on to determine its own self further.

It is firstly positing reflection;

it makes, secondly, its beginning from the presupposed immediate, and in that way is external reflection.

Thirdly, however, it sublates this presupposition, and since in the sublating of the presupposition it is at the same time presupposing, it is determining reflection.

1. Positing Reflection

Shine is what is null or without essence; but what is null or without essence does not have its being in some other where it shines, rather its being is its own self-sameness; this interchanging of the negative with itself has determined itself to be the absolute reflection of essence.

This negativity that refers itself to itself is accordingly the negating of its own self. It is thus, in general, negativity that is just as much sublated as it is negativity. Or it is itself the negative and simple self-sameness, or immediacy. It consists, then, in being it itself and not it itself, and this in one single unity. –

To begin with, reflection is the movement of the nothing to the nothing, and so the negation that goes together with itself. This going together with itself is, in general, simple self-sameness; immediacy. But this coinciding is not a passing over of negation into self-sameness as into its otherness; rather, reflection is passing over as the sublating of passing over, since it is the immediate coinciding of the negative with itself; so this going together is firstly self-sameness, or immediacy; but secondly this immediacy is the self-sameness of the negative, and hence a self-sameness negating itself; the immediacy that in itself is the negative, the negative of its own self, namely to be what it is not.

The negative's relation to itself is therefore its return into itself; as the sublating of the negative it is immediacy; but immediacy purely and only in the sense of this relation, that is, of a return from something, and hence an immediacy that sublates its own self. – This is positedness; immediacy purely and only as determinateness, or as reflecting itself. This immediacy, which is only as the negative's return into itself, – is the very immediacy that makes up the determinateness of shine, and from which the reflecting movement appeared just now to begin. Far from its being possible to start out from this immediacy, the immediacy rather first is as the return, or as reflection itself. Reflection is accordingly the movement which, in being the return, only therein is that which begins or that which returns.

It is positing insofar as it is immediacy as a returning; for no other is present, neither one out of which nor one into which it might return; it therefore is only as a returning, or as the negative of its own self. But further still, this immediacy is the sublated negation as well as the sublated return into itself. Reflection, being the sublating of the negative, sublates its other, immediacy. Since it is thus immediacy as a returning, as the negative's going together with itself, it is just as much negation of the negative qua negative. Thus it is presupposing. – Or immediacy, as a returning, is only its own negative, only this: not to be immediacy; but reflection sublates that negative of itself, it goes together with itself; it therefore sublates its positing, and in being the sublating of positing within its positing it is presupposing. – In presupposing, reflection determines the return into itself as the negative of its own self, as that whose sublating is essence. It is its own comportment towards itself; but towards itself as its negative; only so is it the negativity that stays within itself and refers itself to itself. Immediacy comes forth, quite generally, only as return, and is that negative which is the shine of the beginning, a shine that the return negates. The return of essence is thus its repelling of itself away from itself. Or reflection into itself is essentially the presupposing of that out of which it is the return.

It is the sublating of its own self-sameness whereby essence first is self-sameness. It presupposes its own self, and it is itself the sublating of this presupposition; conversely, the presupposition itself is just this sublating of its presupposition. – Reflection thus finds an immediate already there, one that it goes beyond and out of which it is the return. Yet this return is what first presupposes the thing found there. What is found there comes to be only in that it is left behind; its immediacy is sublated immediacy. – Sublated immediacy, conversely, is the return into itself, essence's arriving at its own self, the simple being that is self-same. This arriving at itself is thereby the sublating of itself and the reflection that repels itself from itself and presupposes, and its repelling of itself is the arriving at its own self.

The reflecting movement is thus, according to what has been considered, to be taken as an absolute counter-thrust within itself. For the presupposition of the return into itself, – that from which essence comes and which it only is as this coming back –, lies only in the return itself. The going beyond the immediate from which reflection begins is rather only through this going beyond; and going beyond the immediate is arriving at it. As a going forth the movement immediately turns round within itself, and only so is it self-movement, – movement that comes out of itself, insofar as positing reflection is presupposing, yet as presupposing reflection is simply and solely positing.

So reflection is at once itself and its non-being; and it is itself only in being its own negative, for only so is the sublating of the negative at once a going together with itself.

The immediacy that it presupposes for itself as a sublating is simply and solely as positedness, as something sublated in itself, which is not distinct from the return into itself and is itself nothing but this returning. But it is at the same time determined as negative, as immediately against a one, and so against an other. Thus reflection is determinate; inasmuch as, according to this determinateness, it has a presupposition and begins from the immediate, which is its other, it is external reflection.

2. External Reflection

Reflection in the sense of absolute reflection is the essence that shines inside its own self, and it presupposes to itself only shine, positedness; as presupposing it is immediately nothing but positing reflection. The external or real reflection, however, presupposes itself as sublated, as its own negative. In this determination it is doubled; on the one occasion as what is presupposed, or reflection into itself, which is the immediate. On the other occasion it is reflection referring itself to itself as negative; it refers itself to itself as to that non-being of its own.

External reflection thus presupposes a being, firstly not so that its immediacy would be merely positedness or a moment, but rather so that this immediacy is the reference to itself and determinateness is only a moment. It relates to its presupposition in such a way that the presupposition is reflection's negative, though in such a way that this negative as negative stands sublated. – Reflection, in the act of positing, sublates that positing straightaway, and thus what it has is an immediate presupposition. It accordingly finds the presupposition already before it, as that from which it starts and out of which it first is the going back into itself, the negating of this negative of its own. But that what is presupposed should be a negative or something posited is no concern of that presupposition itself; the determinateness belongs solely to positing reflection, whereas in presupposing, positedness is present only as sublated. The things that external reflection determines and posits in the immediate are, to that extent, determinations external to it. – In the sphere of being it was the infinite; the finite counts as the first, as the real, one begins from it as from what lies at the ground and stays lying at the ground, while the infinite is the reflection into itself that confronts it.

This external reflection is a syllogism whose two extremes are the immediate and reflection into itself; its middle term is the relation of the two, the determinate immediate, such that of this middle one part, immediacy, falls only to the one extreme, while the other, determinateness or negation, falls only to the other.

But if we look more closely at what external reflection does, it is secondly a positing of the immediate, which to that extent becomes the negative or the determinate; yet just as immediately it also sublates this positing of its own, since the immediate is what it presupposes; its negating is the negating of this negating of its own. Immediately therewith, however, it is equally positing, a sublating of the immediate that is negative to it, and this immediate, which it appeared to take as an alien starting point, first is in this very beginning of its own. The immediate, in this way, is not merely in itself – which would say: for us, or within external reflection – the same as reflection is; rather it is posited that it is the same. For it is determined by reflection as reflection's negative or as its other, yet it is reflection itself that negates this determining. – With this, reflection's externality with respect to the immediate is sublated; its self-negating positing is reflection's going together with its negative, with the immediate, and this going together is essential immediacy itself. – Hence it is at hand that the external reflection is no external one but quite as much immediacy's own immanent reflection; or that what exists by way of positing reflection is the essence that is in and for itself. Thus it is determining reflection.

Remark

Reflection is commonly understood in a subjective sense, as that movement of the power of judgment which passes out beyond a given immediate representation and seeks universal determinations for that representation, or compares it with such. Kant opposes the reflecting power of judgment to the determining power of judgment. (Critique of the Power of Judgment, Introduction, p. XXIII f.) He defines the power of judgment in general as the capacity to think the particular as contained under the universal. If the universal is given (the rule, the principle, the law), then the power of judgment that subsumes the particular under it is determining. But if the particular alone is given, for which it is to find the universal, then the power of judgment is merely reflecting. Here too, then, reflection is the going out beyond an immediate to the universal. In part, the immediate is determined as a particular only through this relating of it to its universal; taken on its own it is only a singular, or an immediate being. In part, however, that to which it is related is its own universal, its rule, principle, law; in general, what is reflected into itself, what refers itself to itself, the essence or the essential.

What is at issue here, however, is neither consciousness's reflection nor the more determinate reflection of the understanding, whose determinations are the particular and the universal, but rather reflection as such. That reflection to which Kant ascribes the search for the universal belonging to a given particular is, as is clear, likewise only the external reflection, which relates itself to the immediate as to a given. – Yet the concept of absolute reflection lies in this too; for that universal, the principle or rule and law, to which reflection progresses in its determining, counts as the essence of the immediate from which the start is made, so that this immediate counts as something null, and the return out of it, reflection's determining, counts as what first posits the immediate according to its genuine being; hence what reflection performs on the immediate, and the determinations issuing from reflection, count not as anything external to that immediate but as its own proper being.

External reflection was also what people meant when, as was for a while the fashion in more recent philosophy, every evil was laid at the door of reflection as such and, together with its determining, it was regarded as the antipode and inveterate foe of the absolute way of considering things. And indeed thinking reflection, insofar as it comports itself as external, does set out simply from a given immediate alien to it, and looks upon itself as a merely formal doing that receives content and material from outside and on its own is only the movement conditioned by that material. – Further, as will presently come out more closely in the case of determining reflection, the reflected determinations are of another kind than the merely immediate determinations of being. These latter are the more easily granted to be transitory, merely relative, standing in relation to another; the reflected determinations, by contrast, have the form of being-in-and-for-itself; they therefore assert themselves as the essential ones, and instead of being such as pass over into their opposed determinations, they appear rather as absolute, free, and mutually indifferent. They accordingly set themselves stubbornly against their own movement; the being of these determinations is their identity with themselves in their determinateness, according to which they keep themselves in this relation utterly apart, even though they do presuppose one another.

3. Determining Reflection

Determining reflection is on the whole the unity of positing reflection and external reflection. This has to be looked at more closely. –

1. External reflection takes its start from immediate being, the positing one from nothing. External reflection, in becoming determining, sets an other, namely essence, in the place of the sublated being; positing does not set its determination in the place of some other; it is without any presupposition. But for that very reason it is not the finished, determining reflection; the determination it posits is accordingly only something posited; it is an immediate, yet not as self-same but as negating itself, it stands in absolute relation to the return into itself, it is only within reflection into itself, but it is not this reflection itself.

What is posited is therefore an other, yet in such a way that reflection's self-sameness is preserved throughout; for what is posited only is as something sublated, as relation to the return into its own self. – In the sphere of being, existence was that being which carried negation on it, and being constituted the immediate base and element of that negation, which was for this reason itself immediate. What corresponds to existence in the sphere of essence is positedness. It too is an existence, but its base is being taken as essence, that is, as pure negativity; it is a determinateness or negation that is not something in being but immediately something sublated. Existence is only positedness; this is the proposition of essence concerning existence. Positedness stands over against existence on the one side and over against essence on the other, and is to be regarded as the middle that joins existence together with essence and, conversely, essence with existence. – Saying of a determination that it is only a positedness can accordingly bear a twofold sense; it is such either in contrast with existence or in contrast with essence. In the former sense, existence is taken for something higher than positedness, while positedness is ascribed to external reflection, to what is subjective. In truth, however, positedness is the higher; for as positedness existence is, as what it is in itself, as negative, something related purely and simply to the return into itself. That is why positedness is only a positedness with regard to essence, as the negation of having returned into its own self.

2. Positedness is as yet no determination of reflection; it is merely determinateness, negation in general. But positing now stands in unity with external reflection; in this unity external reflection is absolute presupposing, which is to say, reflection's repelling of itself from itself, or the positing of determinateness as reflection's own. Positedness is therefore, as such, negation; but as presupposed it is negation reflected into itself. Thus positedness is a determination of reflection.

From the determinateness of being, from quality, the determination of reflection is distinguished; quality is immediate relation to another in general; positedness too is relation to another, but relation to being reflected into itself. Negation as quality is negation that is; being makes up its ground and element. The determination of reflection, by contrast, has for this ground its being reflected into itself. Positedness settles into a determination precisely because reflection is self-sameness in its own state of being negated; its being negated is therefore itself reflection into itself. The determination here subsists not through being but through its own self-sameness. Since the being that carries quality is what is unlike negation, quality is within itself unlike itself, and hence a moment that passes over, that vanishes in its other. The determination of reflection, on the contrary, is positedness as negation, a negation that has for its ground its being negated, so that it is not unlike itself within itself and is therefore an essential, not a transitory determinateness. The self-sameness of reflection, for which the negative is only negative, only something sublated or posited, is what confers subsistence on it.

It is for the sake of this reflection into itself that the determinations of reflection appear as free essentialities, hovering in the void without attraction or repulsion towards one another. In them determinateness has entrenched itself through relation to itself and has fixed itself infinitely. It is the determinate that has made its passing over and its mere positedness subject to itself, or that has bent its reflection into another round into reflection into itself. By this means these determinations make up the determinate shine as it is within essence, the essential shine. For this reason determining reflection is reflection that has come outside itself; essence's self-sameness is lost in the negation, which is what dominates.

There are thus two sides to the determination of reflection, which at first are distinguished from each other. It is firstly positedness, negation as such; it is secondly reflection into itself. According to positedness it is negation as negation; this is thus already its unity with itself. But it is this only in itself as yet; or it is the immediate as sublating itself on itself, as the other of its own self. – To that extent reflection is a determining that stays within itself. Essence does not go outside itself therein; the differences are utterly posited, withdrawn back into essence. But on the other side they are not posited things but reflected into their own selves; negation as negation is reflected into self-sameness with itself, not into its other, not into its non-being.

3. Now since the determination of reflection is both a reflected relation within itself and positedness, its nature becomes immediately clearer from this. For qua positedness it is negation as such, a non-being set against an other, namely against absolute reflection into itself, or against essence. But as relation to itself it is reflected into itself. – This reflection of it and that positedness are diverse; its positedness is rather its sublatedness, whereas its being reflected into itself is its subsistence. Insofar, then, as positedness is what is at the same time reflection into itself, the reflective determinateness is the relation to its otherness upon its own self. – It is not a determinateness that simply is and rests, one that would be brought into relation with an other so that the related term and its relation are diverse from each other, the former being something within itself, a something that shuts out from itself its other and its relation to this other. Rather, upon itself the determination of reflection is the determinate side, and it is the relation of that determinate side qua determinate, namely to its negation. – Quality passes over into another by virtue of its relation; its alteration sets in with its relation. The determination of reflection, by contrast, has withdrawn its otherness into itself. It is positedness, negation, but a negation that bends its relation to another back into itself, and a negation that is self-same, the unity of itself and of its other, and only through that an essentiality. It is therefore positedness, negation, yet as reflection into itself it is at once the sublatedness of that positedness, an infinite relation to itself.

Chapter 2. The Essentialities, or the Determinations of Reflection

Reflection is reflection that is determinate; essence is thereby determinate essence, or it is essentiality.

Reflection is essence's shining within its own self. Essence as infinite return into itself is no immediate simplicity but a negative one; it is a movement traversing distinguished moments, absolute mediation with itself. But it shines into these moments of its own; they are therefore themselves determinations reflected into themselves.

Essence is first simple relation to itself; pure identity. This is its determination, according to which it is rather an absence of determination.

Secondly, the determination proper is difference; and indeed partly as external or indifferent difference, diversity in general, partly, however, as opposed diversity or as opposition.

Thirdly, as contradiction the opposition reflects itself into its own self and goes back into its ground.

Remark

The determinations of reflection were formerly cast in the form of propositions, in which it was said of them that they hold of everything. These propositions passed for the universal laws of thought, lying at the ground of all thinking, absolute and indemonstrable upon their own selves, yet immediately and without contradiction recognized and accepted as true by every thinking that grasps their sense.

Thus the essential determination of identity finds expression in the proposition: Everything is equal to itself; A = A. Or, negatively put: A cannot be A and not A at once.

At first it is not apparent why only these simple determinations of reflection should be cast in this particular form, and not the other categories as well, along with all the determinacies of the sphere of being. There would then result propositions such as, e.g. Everything is, Everything has an existence and so forth, or Everything has a quality, quantity and so on. For being, existence and so forth are, as logical determinations in general, predicates of everything. The category is, by its etymology and by Aristotle's definition, that which is said, asserted, of what is. – But a determinateness of being is essentially a passing over into its opposite; the negative of any determinateness is every bit as necessary as the determinateness is; as immediate determinacies, each stands immediately over against the other. If these categories are therefore cast in such propositions, then the opposed propositions come into view just as much; both offer themselves with equal necessity, and as immediate assertions have at least equal right. The one would thereby require a proof against the other, and these assertions could accordingly no longer have the character of immediately true and incontrovertible propositions of thinking.

The determinations of reflection, by contrast, are not of a qualitative kind. They are determinations that refer themselves to themselves and are thereby at the same time withdrawn from determinateness over against another. Further, since they are determinacies which are relations upon their own selves, they to that extent already contain the form of the proposition within them. For a proposition is distinguished from a judgment chiefly in this, that in the former the content makes up the relation itself, or that the proposition is a determinate relation. The judgment, by contrast, displaces the content into the predicate, as a universal determinateness which is on its own account and is distinguished from its relation, the simple copula. If a proposition is to be turned into a judgment, then the determinate content, if it lies for instance in a verb, is turned into a participle, in order thus to sever the determination itself from the relation it bears to a subject. With the determinations of reflection, on the other hand, as positedness reflected into itself, the form of the proposition itself lies close at hand. – Only, in being pronounced as universal laws of thought, they still need a subject for their relation, and that subject is: everything; or an A, which signifies as much as everything and every being.

For one thing, this form of propositions is something superfluous; the determinations of reflection have to be considered in and for themselves. Then too, these propositions have the lopsided side of taking being, every something, for their subject. They thereby awaken being once more, and enunciate the determinations of reflection, identity and so forth, of the something as a quality that it would have on it; not in a speculative sense, but so that the something as subject would remain in such a quality as something that is, not that it would have passed over into identity and so forth as into its truth and its essence.

Finally, however, although the determinations of reflection do have the form of being self-same and hence unrelated to another and without opposition, still, as will emerge from a closer consideration of them, – or as is immediately clear from them, from identity, from diversity, from opposition – they are determinate against one another, and thus by their form they are not withdrawn from reflection, from passing over and from contradiction. The several propositions put forward as absolute laws of thought are therefore, on closer consideration, opposed to one another; they contradict each other and sublate each other reciprocally. – If everything is identical with itself, then it is not diverse, not opposed, and has no ground. Or if one assumes that there are no two like things, i.e. that everything is diverse from everything else, then A is not A's equal, and likewise A is not opposed either, and so forth. The assumption of any one of these propositions does not permit the assumption of the others. – Thoughtless consideration of them enumerates them one after another, so that they appear in no relation to one another; it has in mind merely their being reflected into themselves, without attending to their other moment, positedness or their determinateness as such, which tears them away into transition and into their negation.

A. Identity

1. Essence is the simple immediacy that is sublated immediacy. Its own negativity is its being; in its absolute negativity it is selfsame with itself, a negativity through which otherness and the relation to another have simply and utterly vanished, upon their own selves, into pure self-sameness. Essence is therefore simple identity with itself.

This identity with itself is the immediacy that belongs to reflection. It is not the self-sameness that being is, or that the nothing also is, but rather the self-sameness which is as establishing itself into unity, not a re-establishing out of an other, but this pure establishing out of and within its own self; the essential identity. To that extent it is not abstract identity, nor has it come about through a relative negating that would have gone on outside it and would merely have severed from it what is distinguished, leaving that, for the rest, outside it as something that is, now as before. Rather, being, and all determinateness of being, has sublated itself not in a relative way but upon its own self; and this simple negativity, that of being in itself, is identity itself.

To that extent it is still, in general, the same thing as essence.

Remark 1

A thinking that confines itself to external reflection, acquainted with no other kind of thinking than this, never arrives at cognizing identity as it has just now been grasped, or essence, these being one and the same. Before such a thinking there stands only ever abstract identity, and, outside it and beside it, difference. It supposes reason to be nothing further than a loom on which it externally binds and interlaces the warp, say identity, and then the weft, difference; or again, analysing, now draws identity out on its own and then once more obtains difference alongside it, is now an equating and then once more an unequating; – an equating in that one abstracts from difference, – an unequating in that one abstracts from the equating. – Such assurances and opinions about what reason supposedly does must be set wholly aside, being in a manner merely historical ones, whereas the consideration of anything whatever that is shows, of it itself, that in its likeness with itself it is unlike itself and self-contradicting, while in its diversity, in its contradiction, it is identical with itself, and that it is, on its own account, just this movement whereby either of these determinations crosses over into the other — and so because either of them is, on its own account, its very opposite. The concept of identity — namely, to be simple self-referring negativity — is no product of external reflection; it emerged from being itself. Whereas by contrast that identity which is supposed to lie outside difference, and that difference which is supposed to lie outside identity, are products of external reflection and of the abstraction that arbitrarily fastens on this point of indifferent diversity.

2. This identity is at first essence itself and as yet no determination of essence; it is reflection entire, and not some one moment marked off within reflection. Being absolute negation, it negates itself at once; it is a non-being, a difference perishing in the very act of arising, or a distinguishing that distinguishes nothing and instead falls back straightway into itself. Distinguishing posits non-being, and posits it as the other's non-being. The other's non-being, however, means the sublating of that other, and with it of distinguishing as such. Yet distinguishing is present here as negativity relating itself to itself, as a non-being that is the non-being of itself; a non-being whose non-being lies not in something else, but in it. There is therefore present the self-referring, the reflected difference, or pure, absolute difference.

Or identity is reflection into itself, which is such only as an inward repelling, and this repelling it is qua reflection into itself, a repelling that immediately draws itself back into itself. It is thus identity as difference that is self-identical. Difference, however, is self-identical only to the extent that it is not identity but absolute non-identity. And non-identity is absolute to the extent that it holds nothing other than itself within it, only itself — which is to say, to the extent that it is absolute self-identity.

Identity is therefore, on its own account, absolute non-identity. But over against that it is also the determination of identity. For, being reflection into itself, it makes of itself its own non-being; it is the totality, and yet qua reflection it makes of itself a moment of its own, a positedness, from out of which it is the returning-into-itself. Only as its moment in this way is it identity as such, as the determination of simple likeness with itself, over against absolute difference.

Remark 2

Identity is what I shall examine more closely in this Remark, and as the principle of identity, the one usually put forward as the first law of thought.

Taken in its positive wording, A = A, this proposition says at first nothing beyond an empty tautology. Hence the just remark that a law of thought like this is without content and carries one no further. So [it] is that empty identity which holds fast those who take it, just as it stands, for something true, and who never tire of protesting that identity is not diversity, but that identity and diversity are two diverse things. They fail to notice that already in this they are themselves saying that identity is something diverse; for they say that identity is diverse from diversity; and since this has at the same time to be conceded as identity's nature, what lies in it is that identity is such — not externally, but on its own account, in its nature — as to be diverse. – But further, in clinging to this motionless identity, which has its counterpart in diversity, they fail to notice that they thereby make of it a one-sided determinateness which as such holds no truth. It is conceded that the principle of identity gives voice to only a one-sided determinateness, that it holds only the formal, an abstract, incomplete truth. – But this correct judgment carries with it directly that only in the unity of identity with diversity is truth complete, and hence that it subsists in that unity alone. Where it is maintained that such identity is imperfect, the totality by which identity gets measured and found wanting hovers before thought as the perfect; but where, on the other side, identity is held fast as absolutely separated from diversity and, in this separation, is taken for something essential, valid, true, then in these clashing assertions nothing can be seen but a failure to hold two thoughts together — that identity taken abstractly is essential, and that just so taken it is equally imperfect; a failure of consciousness regarding that negative movement as which identity gets exhibited in these assertions themselves. – Or, when the matter is put thus, that identity is essential identity as separation from diversity, or in separation from diversity, then this is directly to have pronounced its truth, namely that what it consists in is being separation as such, or being essential in the separation, that is, being nothing for itself but a moment of separation.

As for the remaining credentials of the absolute truth of the identity principle, they rest on experience to just this extent, that every consciousness is invoked as witness to the experience that, the moment one utters this proposition to it, A is A, a tree is a tree, it grants the proposition straight off and is content with it, since a proposition immediately clear of itself needs no further grounding or proof.

For one thing, this appeal to experience, that every consciousness universally acknowledges it, is a mere turn of phrase. For nobody intends to claim that the abstract proposition A = A has been tried out experimentally on every consciousness. To that extent the appeal to experience actually made is not meant in earnest; it is only the assurance that, were the experience to be made, the result of universal acknowledgment would follow. – Suppose, though, that what was meant were not the abstract proposition as such but the proposition in concrete application, out of which the abstract one was first to be developed; then the claim to its universality and immediacy would come to this, that every consciousness, and indeed in every one of its utterances, lays it at the base, or that it lies implicite in each of them. Yet the concrete and the application is precisely the relating of the simple identical to a manifold that is diverse from it. Uttered in propositional form, the concrete would in the first instance be a synthetic proposition. Out of the concrete itself, or out of its synthetic proposition, abstraction would doubtless be able to draw the principle of identity by analysis; yet in truth experience would not have been left as it stands, but would have been altered; for experience held within it, rather, identity in unity with diversity, and it constitutes an immediate refutation of the assertion that abstract identity as such is anything true, since the very reverse — identity only as joined with diversity — turns up in every experience.

On the other side, though, the experience with the identity principle in its pure form is made only too often, and that experience shows plainly enough what regard is had for the truth it holds. For if the question what is a plant? draws the answer: a plant is – a plant, then the truth of a proposition of this kind will be granted by the whole company on whom it is tried, and in the same breath they will say just as unanimously that nothing has been said thereby. If somebody opens his mouth and undertakes to state what God is, namely that God is – God, then expectation finds itself cheated, for it was looking out for a different determination; and if this proposition is absolute truth, such absolute oratory is thought very little of; nothing will be reckoned more tedious and more of a burden than a conversation that merely chews over the same thing, than talk of this kind which is nevertheless supposed to be truth.

Looking more closely at this effect of tedium in the case of such truth: the opening, the plant is –, makes as if to say something, to bring forward some further determination. But since nothing recurs except the same, the reverse has happened instead, nothing has come out. Such identical talk therefore contradicts itself. Identity, so far from being in itself the truth and absolute truth, is rather the reverse; so far from being the motionless simple, it is the passing out beyond itself into its own dissolution.

There lies, then, in the form of the proposition in which identity is uttered, more than simple, abstract identity; there lies in it this pure movement of reflection wherein the other steps forth only as shine, as immediate vanishing; A is, is a beginning before which something diverse hovers, out towards which the step is to be taken; but the diverse is never reached; A is – A; the diversity is nothing but a vanishing; the movement goes back into itself. – One may look upon the form of the proposition as the concealed necessity of adding that surplus of movement to abstract identity. – Thus too there enters some A, or a plant, or whatever other substrate, which as a useless content carries no significance; yet it makes up the diversity that seems to attach itself by accident. If identity itself is put in place of A and of every other substrate – identity is identity – then it is equally granted that any other substrate might just as well be put in place of identity. If, then, appeal is once to be made to what the appearance shows, what it shows is this, that in the utterance of identity diversity likewise turns up immediately; – or, more determinately, in keeping with the above, that this identity is the nothing, that it is negativity, the absolute difference of itself from itself.

The principle of identity has a second expression: A cannot be A and not-A at the same time; this has negative form, and it goes by the name of the principle of contradiction. As to the way in which identity comes by the form of negation that marks this proposition off from the previous one, no warrant is customarily given. – That form lies, however, in identity's being simple negativity, as the pure movement of reflection, and it is just this that the second expression cited above holds in more developed shape. An A is uttered, and also a not-A, that which is purely other than A, but it makes its showing only in order to vanish. In this proposition, then, identity finds expression – as the negation of negation. A and not-A stand distinguished, and both, as thus distinguished, are referred to A, one and the same. Identity is accordingly set out here as this distinctness in a single relation, or as the simple difference within the terms themselves.

It is plain from this that the identity principle itself, and the principle of contradiction still more so, is not of a merely analytic but of a synthetic nature. For the latter holds within its expression not the empty, simple likeness with itself alone, and not only the other of that in general, but even absolute unlikeness, contradiction in itself. The principle of identity itself, however, holds, as was shown in its case, the movement of reflection, identity as the vanishing of otherness.

What issues from this consideration, then, is that first, the principle of identity or of contradiction, so far as it is meant to give out as true only abstract identity in opposition to difference, is no law of thought but rather the reverse of one; second, that what these propositions hold is more than what is meant by them, namely this very reverse, absolute difference itself.

B. Difference

1. Absolute Difference

Difference is that negativity which reflection possesses within itself; the nothing spoken by identical talk; the essential moment of identity itself, which, being at the same time negativity of its own self, determines itself and stands distinguished from difference.

1. Difference of this sort is the difference that is in and for itself, absolute difference, essence's difference. – Being in and for itself, it is not made a difference through anything external, but is self-referring and therefore simple difference. – To grasp absolute difference as simple is essential. Where A and not-A absolutely differ, that difference is made up by the simple not taken as such. Difference itself is a simple concept. Two things are different in this, as one puts it, that they are, and so forth. – In this — that is to say, under one and the same regard, within the same determining ground. What we have here is reflection's difference, not the otherness that belongs to existence. An existence and another existence are posited as falling apart from one another; each of the existences determined over against the other has an immediate being of its own. The other of essence, by contrast, is an other that is in and for itself; it is not an other over against something else situated outside it, but determinateness simple in itself. Even within the sphere of existence, otherness and determinateness proved to have this same nature — simple determinateness, identical opposition; there, however, such identity displayed itself merely as one determinateness passing over into another. Here, within reflection's sphere, difference makes its appearance as reflected, posited in the very way that it is in itself.

2. Difference taken in itself is self-referring difference; as such it is the negativity of itself, a difference not from something else but of itself from itself; it is its own other rather than itself. What stands distinguished from difference, however, is identity. It is therefore itself and identity together. The two of them together make up difference; difference is the whole and a moment of that whole. – One can equally say that difference taken as simple is no difference at all; it becomes difference only in relation to identity; but as difference it rather holds identity within it, and holds that relation itself as well. – Difference is at once the whole and a moment of its own; and identity likewise is at once its whole and its moment. – In this we must recognize reflection's essential nature and the determinate primordial ground of all activity and self-movement. – Difference no less than identity makes itself into a moment, into a positedness, since as reflection each is the negative referring of itself to itself.

Difference so understood, as the unity of itself with identity, is determinate difference in its own self. There is here no passing over into an other, no relation to an other lying outside; difference has its own other, identity, within it — just as identity, having entered the determination of difference, has not been lost in it as in its other but preserves itself there, being difference's reflection into itself and difference's moment.

3. Difference has the two moments, identity and difference; both are in this way a positedness, a determinateness. But within this positedness each is a referring of itself to itself. The one of them, identity, is immediately itself the moment of reflection into itself; and just so the other, difference, is difference in itself, reflected difference. Since difference has two moments of this kind, each of them a reflection into itself, difference is diversity.

2. Diversity

1. Within its own self identity breaks up into diversity, since as absolute difference inside itself it posits itself as its own negative, while these its moments — itself and its own negative — are reflections into themselves, identical with themselves; or precisely because its negating is straightway sublated by itself, so that in its determination it is reflected into itself. What is distinguished subsists as terms diverse and mutually indifferent, for the reason that it is self-identical, that identity makes up its soil and element; or the diverse possesses what it is precisely and only in identity, its own opposite.

It is diversity that constitutes the otherness as such belonging to reflection. For the other of existence, immediate being is the ground on which the negative subsists. Within reflection, on the other hand, it is identity with self, reflected immediacy, that gives the negative its subsistence and its indifference.

Difference has for its moments identity and difference itself. Diverse they are as things reflected into themselves, as referring themselves to themselves; thus, standing in the determination of identity, they are relations to themselves only; identity bears no relation to difference, nor difference to identity; and since each of these moments is in this way related only to itself, they are not determined over against each other. – Since in this manner they are not distinct within their own selves, difference falls to them as something external. The diverse terms therefore bear upon one another neither as identity nor as difference, but only as diverse terms in general, indifferent to each other and to their determinateness alike.

2. In diversity, understood as the indifference of difference, reflection has grown external to itself generally; difference is only a positedness, difference in sublated shape, and yet it is itself reflection entire. – Looked at more closely: both of them, identity and difference, as they have just been determined, are reflections; each is the unity of itself with its own other; each is the whole. Therewith, however, the determinateness of being only identity or only difference is something sublated. They are for this reason no qualities, since their determinateness, by way of reflection into itself, exists at the same time merely as negation. What is at hand, then, is this twofold thing: reflection into itself as such, and, as negation, determinateness or positedness. Now positedness is reflection grown external to itself; it is negation qua negation; in itself, therefore, self-referring negation and reflection into itself, yet only in itself; it is a relating to that as to something external.

The two determinations into which the moments of difference, identity and difference, have posited themselves are accordingly reflection in itself and external reflection. They are those moments themselves, insofar as they have by now determined themselves. – The reflection in itself is identity, but identity determined so as to be indifferent towards difference; not so as to lack difference altogether, but so as to bear itself towards difference as self-identical; it is diversity. Identity it is, having reflected itself into itself in such fashion that it is properly the one reflection of both moments into itself; each of the two is a reflection into itself. Identity is this single reflection of both, a reflection that carries difference within it merely as something indifferent, and which is diversity as such. – On the contrary, external reflection is the determinate difference of the two, taken not as absolute reflection into itself but as determination, towards which the reflection that is in itself remains indifferent; its two moments, identity and difference itself, are posited externally in this way, and are not determinations that exist in and for themselves.

This external identity, now, is likeness, and the external difference unlikeness. – Likeness is indeed identity, but identity as a mere positedness, not identity in and for itself. – And just so unlikeness is difference, but difference as something external, which is not, in and for itself, the very difference of the unlike. Whether some something is like another something or not is the affair neither of the one nor of the other; each is related to itself alone and is, in and for its own self, whatever it may be; identity or non-identity, as likeness and as unlikeness, is the regard of a third party and falls outside them.

3. It is external reflection that relates the diverse to likeness and unlikeness. This relating, comparison, moves to and fro, from likeness across to unlikeness and back again. But this to-and-fro relating of likeness and unlikeness is external to those determinations themselves; nor, moreover, are they related to each other, but each on its own only to a third. In this alternation each steps forth immediately on its own. – External reflection as such is external to its own self; the determinate difference is absolute difference negated; it is therefore not simple, not reflection into itself, but has that reflection outside it; its moments accordingly fall asunder, and, external to one another as they are, relate themselves besides to the reflection into itself standing over against them.

In reflection thus estranged from itself, then, likeness and unlikeness emerge as unrelated to one another, and reflection separates them by referring them to one and the same thing, doing so by means of the insofars, the sides and regards. The diverse terms which are the one and the same thing to which both likeness and unlikeness get related are accordingly, on the one side, like each other, but unlike on the other side, and insofar as they are like, insofar they are not unlike. Likeness relates itself to itself alone, and unlikeness is likewise nothing but unlikeness.

Yet through this separation of theirs from each other, they do nothing but sublate themselves. Precisely what is supposed to keep contradiction and dissolution at bay — namely, that a something is like another in one regard but unlike in another — this holding asunder of likeness and unlikeness is what destroys them. For the two of them are determinations of difference; each is a relation to the other, each is what its counterpart is not; the like is not unlike, and the unlike is not like; both have this relation essentially and, outside it, no significance at all; being determinations of difference, each one is whatever it is only as distinguished from its other. Through their indifference towards one another, however, likeness is related to itself alone, and unlikeness is likewise a regard and reflection of its own on its own account; each is therefore like its own self; difference has vanished, since they carry no determinateness over against each other; or each is thereby nothing but likeness.

This indifferent regard, or external difference, accordingly sublates its own self and is the negativity of itself within itself. It is that negativity which, in comparing, falls to the one who compares. The comparer moves from likeness to unlikeness and back again from unlikeness to likeness; it thus makes the one vanish in the other, and in fact is the negative unity of both. At first this unity lies beyond what is compared, as it lies beyond the moments of comparison too, being a subjective doing that falls outside them. But in truth, as has now come out, that negative unity is the nature of likeness and of unlikeness themselves. Precisely that self-subsistent regard which each of them is turns out rather to be the self-relating that sublates their distinctness and with it themselves.

Taken on this side — as moments of external reflection, and as external to their own selves — likeness and unlikeness vanish together into their likeness. But this negative unity of theirs is moreover also posited in them; for they have the reflection that is in itself outside them, or else they are likeness and unlikeness of a third thing, of something other than what they themselves are. So the like is not what is like to its own self, and the unlike — unlike not to its own self but to something unlike it — is itself the like. The like as well as the unlike is therefore the unlike of its own self. Each is accordingly this reflection — likeness being both itself and unlikeness, unlikeness being both itself and likeness.

Over against what was compared, or the diverse — which had determined itself over against them as the reflection that is in itself — likeness and unlikeness made up the side of positedness. But with this the latter has likewise lost its determinateness over against them. Likeness and unlikeness precisely, the determinations of external reflection, are the merely in-itself reflection that the diverse was meant to be as such, the diverse's merely indeterminate difference. The reflection that is in itself is self-relation without negation, abstract identity with self; and hence precisely positedness itself. – The merely diverse therefore crosses over, by way of positedness, into negative reflection. Difference merely posited is what the diverse is, hence a difference that is none, hence the negation of itself within itself. So too likeness and unlikeness themselves, positedness, return by way of indifference, or of the reflection that is in itself, into negative unity with themselves; into that reflection which is the difference of likeness and unlikeness within itself. Diversity, whose indifferent sides are quite as much simply moments only of one negative unity, is opposition.

Remark

Diversity, like identity, is put into words in a principle of its own. For the rest, the two principles remain held apart from each other in indifferent diversity, so that each counts on its own with no regard for the other.

All things are diverse, or: there are no two things that are alike. – In truth this principle runs counter to that of identity, for what it declares is: A is a diverse something, and so A is also not A; or A is unlike another, and then it is not A as such but rather a determinate A. In the identical principle any other substrate whatever may be put in the place of A, whereas A as unlike can no longer be exchanged for just any other. It is meant, to be sure, to be diverse not from itself but only from something else; yet this diversity is its own determination. As the A that is identical with itself it is what is indeterminate; but as determinate it is the reverse of that, it no longer has merely identity with itself but a negation as well, and hence a diversity of itself from itself upon it.

That all things are diverse from one another is a very superfluous principle, for the plural of things carries multiplicity and wholly indeterminate diversity in it at once. – The principle, however, that there are no two things perfectly alike says more, namely determinate diversity . Two things are not merely two; numerical plurality is nothing but sameness, whereas they are diverse through a determination. The principle that there are no two things alike strikes representation as remarkable – as it does in the anecdote too, at a court where Leibniz is said to have brought it forward and to have set the ladies searching among tree leaves for whether they might not find two of them alike. – Happy days for metaphysics, when a court occupied itself with it, and when the testing of its principles called for no greater exertion than the comparison of tree leaves! – What makes that principle striking has its ground in what was said above: that two, or numerical multiplicity, still carries no determinate diversity within it, and that diversity taken by itself, in the abstraction proper to it, stands at first indifferent towards likeness as towards unlikeness. Representation, in going over to determination as well, picks up these very moments as indifferent towards each other, so that the one without the other, the bare likeness of things without the unlikeness, would be enough for determination, or so that things would be diverse even if they were only numerically many, diverse as such and not unlike. The principle of diversity, on the other hand, states that things are diverse from one another by virtue of unlikeness, that unlikeness is a determination accruing to them no less than likeness does, for it takes the two together to make up determinate difference.

Now this principle, that the determination of unlikeness belongs to all things, would stand in need of a proof; it cannot be set up as an immediate principle, for the customary way of cognizing itself demands, for the tying together of diverse determinations in a synthetic proposition, a proof, or the pointing out of a third in which they are mediated. Such a proof would have to lay out the transition of identity into diversity, and then the transition of diversity into determinate diversity, into unlikeness. This, however, is not what tends to be delivered; what came out in the foregoing was that diversity, or external difference, is in truth difference reflected into itself, difference upon its own self, and that the indifferent subsistence of what is diverse is bare positedness, and so is not external, indifferent difference but one relation of the two moments.

In this there also lies the dissolution and nullity of the principle of diversity. Two things are not perfectly alike; then they are alike and unlike at once; alike already in this, that they are things, or two as such, since each is a thing and a one just as much as the other, each therefore the same as the other; unlike, though, they are by the assumption. So the determination is at hand that both moments, likeness and unlikeness, are diverse in one and the same, or that the difference which falls asunder outside itself is at the same time one and the same relation. Diversity has thereby gone over into opposition.

The at-once of the two predicates is indeed kept apart by the insofar; that two things, insofar as they are alike, are insofar not unlike, or that they are alike on one side and in one respect but unlike on the other side and in the other respect. With this the unity of likeness and unlikeness is taken away from the thing, and what would be its own reflection, the reflection of likeness and unlikeness in itself, is clung to as a reflection external to the thing. But this reflection is then the very one that in one and the same activity tells the two sides of likeness and unlikeness apart, and so holds both within one activity, letting the one shine into the other and reflecting it there. – The usual tenderness for things, though, which cares only that they should not contradict themselves, forgets here as elsewhere that the contradiction is not thereby dissolved but merely pushed somewhere else, into subjective or external reflection as such, and that this reflection does in fact hold the two moments, which by such removal and displacement are pronounced to be bare positedness, within one unity, as sublated and as bearing on each other.

3. Opposition

It is in opposition that determinate reflection, difference, has reached completion. Opposition constitutes the unity of identity and of diversity; within one identity its moments are diverse ones; as such they are opposites.

Identity and difference are those moments of difference that are kept inside difference itself; they count as reflected moments of its unity. Likeness and unlikeness, on the other hand, are reflection that has divested itself; their identity with self is not merely each one's indifference towards whatever stands distinguished from it, but indifference towards being-in-and-for-itself as such; an identity with self held against the one that is reflected into itself; hence what it amounts to is immediacy lacking any reflection into itself. For the sides of external reflection, then, positedness amounts to a being, and their non-positedness to a non-being.

Considered more closely, the moments of opposition turn out to be positedness reflected into itself, that is, determination as such. Positedness is likeness and unlikeness; the two of them reflected into themselves make up the determinations of opposition. That they are reflected into themselves consists in this, that each of them, upon itself, is likeness and unlikeness in unity. Likeness has its being only in the reflection which compares with respect to unlikeness, and is thus mediated through the other moment indifferent to it; unlikeness likewise has its being only in that very reflecting relation in which likeness has its own. – Each of these moments is therefore, in its determinateness, the whole. It is the whole inasmuch as it also contains its other moment; but this other of it is something that indifferently is, so each contains the relation to its non-being and is only the reflection into itself, or the whole as relating itself essentially to its non-being.

Likeness with self, reflected into itself in this way and carrying within it the relation to unlikeness, is the positive; and unlikeness, carrying within it the relation to likeness, which is its non-being, is the negative. – Or both are the positedness; now insofar as the differentiated determinateness is taken as the differentiated determinate relation of positedness to itself, opposition is on the one hand the positedness reflected into its likeness with itself; on the other hand the same positedness reflected into its unlikeness with itself; the positive and the negative. – What the positive is, is positedness reflected into likeness with itself; but the thing reflected is positedness, which is to say negation as negation, and hence this reflection into itself has as its determination the relation to the other. What the negative is, is positedness reflected into unlikeness; but positedness is unlikeness itself, and so this reflection turns out to be the identity of unlikeness with its own self and absolute relation to itself. – Both, then: the positedness reflected into likeness with itself has unlikeness upon it, and the positedness reflected into unlikeness with itself has likeness upon it as well.

So the two sides of opposition, the positive and the negative, have become self-subsistent. Their self-subsistence lies in their being the whole's reflection into itself, and their belonging to opposition lies in this, that opposition is the determinateness which, as a whole, stands reflected into itself. It is for the sake of their self-subsistence that they make up the opposition determined in itself. Each is itself and its other, and by this each has its determinateness not upon an other but upon its own self. – Each relates itself to itself only as relating itself to its other. This has a twofold side; each is a relating to its non-being that sublates this otherness within itself; thus its non-being is only a moment within it. On the other part, though, positedness has here turned into a being, into indifferent subsistence; hence the other of each, the one that each contains, is likewise the non-being of the very term within which it ought to figure only as a moment. Each of them, therefore, is only insofar as its non-being is, and this within an identical relation.

The determinations that constitute the positive and the negative therefore amount to this: first, that both are absolute moments of opposition; inseparably, their subsistence is one reflection; it is one mediation, and in it each of them is by way of the non-being of its other, thus by way of its other or of its own non-being. – In this way they are opposed terms as such; or each of them is nothing but the opposite of the other; neither is the one positive yet nor the other negative yet, but the two are negative towards one another. Each is thus, as such, first insofar as the other is; through the other, through its own non-being, it is what it is; it is only positedness; second, it is insofar as the other is not; through the non-being of the other it is what it is; it is reflection into itself. – Yet these two together make up the one mediation of opposition as such, and within it they are, quite simply, only posited things.

But furthermore this bare positedness is, generally speaking, reflected into itself; measured by this moment of external reflection, positive and negative stand indifferent over against that first identity in which they figure only as moments; or, since that first reflection is the very reflection of positive and negative into their own selves, each having its positedness upon itself, each stands indifferent to this reflection of its into its non-being, to its own positedness. So the two sides are merely diverse ones, and insofar as their determinateness of being positive and negative constitutes their positedness over against each other, neither is determined in that way upon itself but is only determinateness in general; one of the two determinatenesses, positive or negative, does accordingly fall to each side; but the two can be interchanged, and either side is such that it admits of being taken for positive quite as readily as for negative.

But third, the positive and the negative are not only something posited, nor merely something indifferent; rather their positedness, or the relation to the other within a unity which they themselves are not, is taken back into each of them. Each is upon its own self positive and negative; the determination of reflection in and for itself is what positive and negative amount to; only within this reflection of what is opposed into itself is it positive and negative. The positive has upon its own self that relation to the other wherein its determinateness as positive consists; likewise the negative is not negative as against an other, but has the determinateness through which it is negative equally within its own self.

Thus each is a self-subsistent unity with itself, a unity that is for itself. The positive is admittedly a positedness, but in such a way that for it positedness is only positedness as something sublated. It is the non-opposite; opposition sublated, yet as a side of opposition itself. – As positive, something is indeed determined in relation to an otherness, but so that its nature is this, not to be something posited; it is the reflection into itself that negates otherness. But the other of it, the negative, is itself no longer positedness or moment, but a self-subsistent being; so the negating reflection of the positive into itself is determined to shut out from itself this its non-being.

So too the negative, taken as absolute reflection, is not the negative in immediate fashion but that same negative qua positedness sublated; the negative in and for itself, which rests positively upon its own self. As reflection into itself it negates its relation to the other; the other of it is the positive, a being that is self-subsistent; – its negative relation to that other consists, then, in shutting it out from itself. The negative is the opposite subsisting for itself, over against the positive, which is the determination of sublated opposition; the whole opposition that rests upon itself, set against positedness identical with itself.

The positive and the negative are hereby not only in themselves positive and negative but in and for themselves. In themselves they are so insofar as abstraction is made from their excluding relation to the other and they are taken solely with regard to their determination. A thing is in itself positive or negative in that it is not supposed to be so determined merely against something else. But the positive or negative not as positedness, and hence not as opposite, is each of them the immediate, being and non-being. The positive and the negative are, however, the moments of opposition, and their being-in-itself makes up only the form of their being reflected into themselves. A thing is in itself positive outside the relation to the negative; and a thing is in itself negative outside the relation to the negative; with such a determination what one holds on to is nothing but the abstract moment of this being-reflected. But the positive or negative that is in itself means essentially that being opposed is not a mere moment, nor does it belong to comparison, but is the own determination of the sides of opposition. In themselves positive or negative they are, then, not apart from the relation to the other, but in that this relation, and indeed as an excluding one, makes up their determination or their being-in-itself; herein, then, they are so at once in and for themselves.

Remark

At this point the concept of the positive and the negative should be brought in as it turns up in arithmetic. There it is presupposed as something familiar; but since it is not grasped in its determinate difference, it fails to escape difficulties and entanglements that admit of no resolution. Just now the two real determinations of the positive and the negative have come out – over and above the simple concept of their opposition – namely that the first time what lies at the base is a merely diverse, immediate existence, whose simple reflection into itself is distinguished from its positedness, from opposition itself. Opposition accordingly counts as something not in and for itself, and as accruing to the diverse in such a way that each is an opposite as such, yet also subsists for itself indifferently towards it, and it comes to the same thing which of the two opposed diverse terms is regarded as positive or as negative. – The second time, however, the positive is what is positive upon its own self, the negative what is negative upon its own self, so that the diverse is not indifferent towards this, but this is rather its determination in and for itself. – Both of these forms of the positive and the negative show up straightaway in the first determinations for which arithmetic puts them to use.

The + a and - a are at the outset opposed magnitudes as such; a is what underlies the two, the unity that is in itself, the term indifferent towards opposition itself, serving here as a dead foundation with no further concept to it. The - a is indeed designated as the negative and the + a as the positive, but the one is quite as much an opposite as the other.

Further, a is not only the simple unity lying at the base; in the shape of + a and - a it is these opposites reflected into itself; two diverse a's are at hand, and it makes no difference which of the two one cares to call the positive or the negative; both have a particular subsistence and are positive.

Taken on that first side, + y - y = 0; or, in - 8 + 3, the 3, which are positive, count as negative within the 8. In their combination the opposites sublate themselves. An hour's journey made eastward, and just as much of it back westward, sublates the journey first made; so much debt, so much less in assets, and however much in assets is at hand, that much of the debt is sublated. The hour's journey eastward is at the same time not the positive journey in itself, nor the westward one the negative journey; rather these directions stand indifferent towards this determinateness of opposition; only a third consideration falling outside them makes the one positive and the other negative. So too the debts are not in and for themselves the negative; only in relation to the debtor are they that; in the creditor's eyes they are positive assets of his; they are a sum of money, or whatever it may be of a certain value, which is debt or assets according to considerations falling outside it.

The opposites do indeed sublate themselves in their relation, so that the result comes out as zero; yet their identical relation is present in them as well, a relation indifferent towards opposition itself; in this way they constitute one thing. As has just been recalled of the sum of money, which is only one sum, or of the a, which is only one a in the + a and the - a; the journey too, which is only one stretch of road, not two roads of which one would run eastward and the other westward. So too an ordinate y, which is the same thing whether taken on this or on that side of the axis; to that extent + y - y = y; it is only the ordinate, and there is only one determination and law belonging to it.

Further, though, the opposites are not merely one indifferent thing but two indifferent ones. For as opposites they are also reflected into themselves, and so subsist as diverse ones.

In - 8 + 3 there are thus eleven units altogether; + y, - y, are ordinates on the opposite side of the axis, where each is an existence indifferent towards this limit and towards its opposition; thus + y - y = 2 y. – The road covered eastward and westward, too, is the sum of a twofold exertion, or the sum of two stretches of time. In political economy, likewise, a quantum of money, or of value, is not merely this one quantum as a means of subsistence, but is a doubled one; it is a means of subsistence for the creditor as much as for the debtor. The assets of a state are reckoned not merely as the sum of the ready money and of the remaining value in immovables and movables that is at hand within the state, and still less as the sum that would be left over once the passive assets were deducted from the active, but rather the capital, even if its active and its passive determination reduced themselves to zero, remains first positive capital; as + a - a = a; but secondly, being in manifold ways passive, lent out and lent out again, it is thereby a very much multiplied means.

Yet the opposed magnitudes are not only, on the one hand, merely opposites as such and, on the other, real or indifferent ones. Rather, although the quantum itself is indifferently limited being, what is positive in itself and what is negative in itself nonetheless show up upon it. The a, for instance, insofar as it carries no sign, counts as something to be taken as positive whenever it is to be given a sign. If it were only to become an opposite as such, then taking it as - a would do equally well. The positive sign, though, is what gets assigned to it immediately, because the positive for itself carries the peculiar meaning of the immediate, of what is identical with itself, over against opposition.

Further, when positive and negative magnitudes are added or subtracted, they count as being positive and negative for themselves, and as not becoming so merely through the relation of adding or subtracting, in this external fashion. In 8 - (- 3) the first minus means opposed to 8, whereas the second minus (- 3) counts as an opposite in itself, outside this relation.

This emerges more distinctly with multiplication and division; here the positive has essentially to be taken as the non-opposite, the negative on the contrary as the opposite, and not both determinations in like fashion as merely opposites as such. Since the textbooks, in their proofs of how the signs behave in these two kinds of calculation, stop short at the concept of opposed magnitudes as such, these proofs are incomplete and get entangled in contradictions. – With multiplication and division, however, plus and minus take on the more determinate meaning of positive and negative in themselves, because the relation of the factors, that of being unit and amount towards each other, is no mere relation of increasing and decreasing, as with adding and subtracting, but a qualitative one; whereby plus and minus also take on the qualitative meaning of the positive and the negative. – Lacking this determination, and going merely by the concept of opposed magnitudes, one may easily draw the skewed inference that if - a · + a = - a², then conversely + a · - a would yield + a². Since the one factor means the amount and the other the unit, the one standing in front meaning as usual the former, the two expressions - a · + a and + a · - a differ in this, that in the first + a is the unit and - a the amount, whereas in the other it is the other way round. Of the first the usual thing said is this: should + a be taken - a times, then + a is taken not merely a times but at once in the way opposed to it, + a times - a; and so, plus being what it is, it has to be taken negatively, which makes the product - a². – Should - a in the second case be taken + a times, however, then - a too is supposed to be taken, not - a times, but in the determination opposed to it, that is, + a times. Going by the reasoning of the first case it follows, then, that the product would have to be + a². – Likewise with division.

This consequence is unavoidable insofar as plus and minus are taken merely as opposed magnitudes as such; in the first case the power of altering the plus is ascribed to the minus; but in the other, plus was supposed not to hold the same power over minus, notwithstanding that it is quite as much an opposed determination of magnitude as minus is. Plus in fact does not hold this power, for here it has to be taken against minus according to its qualitative determination, seeing that the factors stand to each other in a qualitative relation. To that extent, then, the negative is here what is opposed in itself as such, whereas the positive is what is indeterminate, indifferent as such; it is indeed the negative too, but the negative of the other, not upon its own self. – A determination as negation thus enters solely through the negative, not through the positive.

So too, then, - a · - a = + a², and this for the reason that the negative a is not to be taken simply in the opposed way (which is how it would have to be taken if multiplied by - a) but is to be taken negatively. The negation of negation, however, is the positive.

C. Contradiction

1. Difference in general holds its two sides within it as moments; in diversity these fall apart indifferently; in opposition as such they are the difference's sides, the one determined only through the other, hence only moments; but they are just as much determined upon their own selves, indifferent towards each other and mutually excluding one another; the self-subsistent determinations of reflection.

The one of them is the positive and the other the negative, the first, however, as what is positive upon its own self, the second as what is negative upon its own self. Each of them has indifferent self-subsistence for itself by having upon its own self the relation to its other moment; each is therefore the entire opposition, closed within itself. – Being this whole, each is mediated with its own self through its other and contains that other. But it is further mediated with itself through the non-being of its other; it is thus a unity that is for itself and shuts the other out of itself.

Inasmuch as the self-subsistent determination of reflection excludes the other in the very respect in which it contains the other and is self-subsistent through containing it, in its self-subsistence it shuts out from itself its own self-subsistence; for that self-subsistence consists in holding within itself the determination other to it, and on that account alone in not being a relation to something external, while it consists no less immediately in being itself and in shutting out from itself the determination that is its own negative. In this way it is the contradiction.

Difference in general is already contradiction in itself; for it is the unity of such as are only insofar as they are not one, – and the separation of such as are only as sundered in the same relation. The positive and the negative, however, are contradiction as posited, since, being negative unities, they are the positing of their own selves, and therein each is at once what sublates its own self and what posits its contrary. – What they make up is determining reflection in its character as excluding; since excluding is one distinguishing, and each of the distinguished terms, being itself an excluding, is the whole excluding, each shuts its own self out within itself.

Taking the two self-subsistent determinations of reflection for themselves, the positive is the positedness that stands reflected into self-sameness with itself; the positedness which is no relation to an other, hence subsistence insofar as positedness is sublated and excluded. With this, though, the positive makes of itself the relation of a non-being, – a positedness. – So the contradiction here is that, being the positing of self-identity through excluding the negative, it makes of its own self the negative of something, hence the other which it shuts out from itself. This other, as excluded, is posited as free from the excluding one; hence as reflected into itself and as itself excluding. Excluding reflection is in this way a positing of the positive as that which excludes the other, so that such positing immediately posits its other too, the other which excludes it.

Such is the absolute contradiction of the positive, though immediately it is likewise the negative's absolute contradiction; the positing of the two is one reflection. – Taken for itself over against the positive, the negative is positedness as reflected into unlikeness with its own self, the negative as negative. Yet the negative is itself what is unlike, the non-being of an other; its reflection into its own unlikeness is thus rather a relation to its own self. – Negation in general is the negative taken as quality, or as immediate determinateness; the negative as negative, on the other hand, stands in relation to its own negative, to its other. If this negative is taken only as identical with the first, then it, like the first, is only immediate; taken so, they are not taken as others over against each other, hence not as negatives; the negative is in general not something immediate. – But now, since further each is just as much the same as the other, this relation of the unlike terms is just as much their identical relation.

This, then, is the very same contradiction that the positive is: positedness, or negation, as a relation to self. But the positive is this contradiction only in itself; the negative, by contrast, is the posited contradiction; for in its reflection into itself, in being negative in and for itself, or in being identical with itself as negative, it has the determination of being what is non-identical, the shutting out of identity. It is this, to be identical with itself over against identity, and hence through its excluding reflection to shut its own self out from itself.

The negative is therefore the whole opposition, opposition that rests upon itself as opposition, the absolute difference that does not relate itself to an other; as opposition it shuts identity out from itself, but thereby its own self as well, for as relation to itself it determines itself as the very identity that it excludes.

2. The Contradiction Resolves Itself.

Within the self-excluding reflection just considered, the positive and the negative each sublate their own selves in their self-subsistence; each is simply and solely the passing over, or rather the transposing of itself into its opposite. This restless vanishing of the opposites upon their own selves is the proximate unity that comes about through contradiction; it is zero.

Contradiction, however, holds within it not the negative alone but the positive too; or, self-excluding reflection is at once also positing reflection; the outcome of contradiction is not zero alone. – The positive and the negative make up the positedness of self-subsistence; the negation of them through their own selves sublates the positedness of self-subsistence. This is what in truth founders in contradiction.

The reflection into itself whereby the sides of the opposition make of themselves self-subsistent relations to self is at first their self-subsistence as distinct moments; they possess this self-subsistence as yet only in themselves, since they are still terms opposed to one another, and their being it in themselves constitutes their positedness. Their excluding reflection, however, sublates this positedness, makes them into self-subsistent terms that are for themselves, into such as are self-subsistent not merely in themselves but by virtue of their negative relation to their other; their self-subsistence is in this way also posited. But further, through this positing of theirs they make themselves into a positedness. They run themselves aground, in that they determine themselves as what is identical with itself, yet therein rather as the negative, as something identical with itself that is a relation to an other.

Only, this excluding reflection, considered more closely, is not just this formal determination. It is a self-subsistence that is in itself, and it is the sublating of this positedness, and only through this sublating is it a unity that is for itself and in fact self-subsistent. Through the sublating of otherness or of positedness there is indeed once more positedness at hand, the negative of an other. But in fact this negation is not once more merely a first, immediate relation to another, not positedness as sublated immediacy, but as sublated positedness. In being excluding, the excluding reflection of self-subsistence makes itself into positedness, but is just as much the sublating of its positedness. It relates to itself as sublating; therein it first sublates the negative and second posits itself as negative, and only this is the negative which it sublates; in the sublating of the negative it at once posits and sublates it. The excluding determination itself is in this way its own other, the other whose negation it is; the sublating of this positedness is therefore not once more a positedness, the negative of an other; it is rather the going-together with its own self that constitutes positive unity with itself. Self-subsistence is in this way a unity returning into itself by way of its own negation, in that it comes back into itself through negating its positedness. It is the unity of essence: to be self-identical not through negating an other but through negating its very self.

3. On this positive side, that self-subsistence in opposition, as excluding reflection, makes itself into positedness and just as much sublates its being positedness, opposition has not only foundered but has gone back into its ground. – The self-subsistent opposition's excluding reflection makes it into something negative, something merely posited; it thereby demotes its at first self-subsistent determinations, the positive and the negative, to such as are only determinations; and in that positedness is thereby made into positedness, it has as a whole gone back into unity with itself; it is simple essence, though essence as ground. Essence is restored by the sublating of those of its determinations that contradict themselves upon their own selves, yet restored with the determination of being an excluding unity of reflection, – a simple unity which determines its own self as negative but in this positedness is immediately self-same and has gone together with itself.

At first, then, the self-subsistent opposition goes back into ground through its contradiction; that opposition is the first, the immediate, from which the start is made, and the opposition once sublated, or positedness once sublated, is itself a positedness. Essence as ground is accordingly a positedness, something become. Conversely, however, the only thing that has been posited is that the opposition, or positedness, is something sublated, is only as positedness. Essence as ground is therefore excluding reflection in this sense, that it makes of its own self a positedness; that the opposition with which the beginning was made a moment ago, the opposition which was the immediate, is essence's determinate self-subsistence as merely posited; and that this opposition is only what sublates itself upon its own self, whereas essence is what stands reflected into itself in its determinateness. Essence as ground shuts itself out from its own self, it posits itself; and its positedness – the very thing excluded – has being only as positedness, as the negative's identity with its own self. This self-subsistent term is the negative, posited as negative; something self-contradicting, which therefore remains immediately in essence as its ground.

The contradiction thus resolved is ground, essence as the unity of the positive and the negative. In opposition, determination has matured into self-subsistence; ground, however, is this completed self-subsistence; the negative is in it self-subsistent essence, but as negative; ground is thus just as much the positive, as what is identical with itself in this negativity. Opposition and its contradiction are therefore in ground as much sublated as preserved. Ground is essence as the positive identity with itself; but an identity which at once relates itself to itself as negativity, thus determines itself and makes of itself an excluded positedness; this positedness, however, is the entire self-subsistent essence, and as being identical with its own self and positive in this its negation, essence is ground. The self-contradicting self-subsistent opposition was therefore already itself the ground; all that was added was the determination of unity with its own self, and this comes forth in that the self-subsistent opposites each sublate their own selves and make themselves into the other of themselves, hence founder, but therein at the same time only go together with their own selves, and so, in their going-under – that is, in their positedness, or in negation – are rather for the first time the essence reflected into itself and self-identical.

Remark 1

The positive and negative are the same. This expression belongs to external reflection, insofar as such reflection sets up a comparison between these two determinations. It is not, however, an external comparison that is to be set up between them, any more than between other categories; rather they are to be considered upon their own selves, that is, what is to be considered is what their own reflection is. And in this reflection it has shown itself that each is essentially the shining of its own self in the other, and is itself the positing of its own self as the other.

Representation, so far as it does not view the positive and negative as they are in and for themselves, may indeed be referred to comparison, so as to become alert [to] the untenability of these distinct terms which it assumes to stand fixed over against each other. Even slight experience in reflective thinking will already notice that when something has been determined as positive, then, as one proceeds further from this basis, the same thing has immediately turned round under one's hands into something negative, and conversely what was determined as negative into something positive, and that reflective thinking gets confused in these determinations and becomes self-contradicting. Unfamiliarity with the nature of these determinations is of the opinion that this confusion is something wrong which ought not to occur, and puts it down to a subjective mistake. In fact this passing over does remain mere confusion, so long as consciousness of the necessity of the transformation is not at hand. – But it is, even for external reflection, a simple consideration that, in the first place, the positive is not something immediately identical but partly something opposed to the negative, and that only in this relation does it have any meaning, so that the negative itself lies in its concept, while partly it is upon its own self the self-relating negation of bare positedness or of the negative, and thus itself the absolute negation within it. – Just so, the negative standing over against the positive has sense only in this relation to this its other; it therefore contains that other in its concept. But even without relation to the positive the negative has a subsistence of its own; it is identical with itself; taken so, however, it is itself what the positive was supposed to be.

Chiefly the opposition of positive and negative is taken in the sense that the former (although by its very name it expresses being-posed, positedness) is supposed to be something objective, whereas the latter is supposed to be something subjective, belonging only to an external reflection, of no concern to the objective that is in and for itself, and not at all present for it. In fact, if the negative expresses nothing other than the abstraction of a subjective arbitrariness, or a determination made by an external comparison, then of course it is not present for the objective positive, that is, the latter is not upon its own self related to any such empty abstraction; but in that case the determination of being a positive is equally external to it. – Thus, to adduce an instance of how fixedly these determinations of reflection are opposed, light in general passes for the merely positive and darkness for the merely negative. But light, in its infinite expansion and in the power of its disclosing and enlivening efficacy, essentially has the nature of absolute negativity. Darkness, by contrast, as what is without manifoldness, or as the womb of generation that does not differentiate itself within itself, is the simple self-identical, the positive. Darkness is taken as the merely negative in the sense that, being the sheer absence of light, it is not present for light at all, – so that light, in relating itself to darkness, is supposed to relate itself not to an other but purely to its own self, and darkness is supposed merely to vanish before it. But it is well known that darkness dulls light into grey; and over and above this merely quantitative alteration light also undergoes the qualitative one of being determined into colour through its relation to darkness. – So too, for example, virtue does not exist without struggle; rather it is the supreme, the consummate struggle; and so it is not only the positive but absolute negativity; nor is it virtue merely in comparison with vice, but is upon its own self opposition and combat. Or vice is not just the lack of virtue – innocence as well is such a lack – nor is it distinguished from virtue merely for an external reflection; it is opposed to virtue upon its own self, it is evil. Evil consists in resting upon itself over against the good; it is positive negativity. Innocence, however, being the lack of the good as much as of evil, is indifferent towards the two determinations, and is neither positive nor negative. Yet at the same time this lack is also to be taken as a determinateness, and on the one side it is to be regarded as the positive nature of something, while on the other side it relates itself to an opposite, and all natures step out of their innocence, out of their indifferent identity with themselves, relate themselves through their own selves to their other and thereby run themselves aground, or, in the positive sense, go back into their ground. – Truth too is the positive, being knowledge in agreement with the object, but it is this self-sameness only insofar as knowledge has borne itself negatively towards the other, has penetrated into the object, and has sublated that negation which the object is. Error is something positive, as an opinion of that which has no being in and for itself, an opinion which knows and asserts itself. Ignorance, however, is either what is indifferent towards truth and error, hence determined neither as positive nor as negative, and the determination of it as a lack belongs to external reflection, or else, taken objectively, as the proper determination of a nature, it is the drive that is directed against itself; a negative that holds a positive direction within it. – It is one of the most important items of cognition to see into and to hold fast this nature of the determinations of reflection considered here, namely that their truth lies solely in their relation to one another, and therewith in this, that each contains the other within its own concept; without this cognition no step at all can properly be taken in philosophy.

Remark 2

The determination of opposition has likewise been made into a principle, the so-called principle of the excluded third.

Something is either A or NotA; there is no third.

This principle states first that everything is an opposite, something determined either as positive or as negative. – An important principle, whose necessity rests on this, that identity passes over into diversity and the latter into opposition. Only, it is not usually understood in this sense; ordinarily it is supposed to mean that of all predicates a thing possesses either the predicate itself or the non-being of that predicate. What is opposite here signifies merely the lack, or rather indeterminateness; and so insignificant is the principle that it is not [worth] the trouble to state it. If the determinations sweet, green, and square are taken – and all predicates are supposed to be taken – and it is then said of spirit that it is either sweet or else not sweet, green or else not green, and so forth, then this is a triviality leading nowhere. Determinateness, the predicate, is related to a something; the something is determinate, so the principle declares; now the principle is supposed essentially to contain this, that determinateness determine itself more closely, that it become determinateness in itself, become opposition. Instead of that, however, in that trivial sense it passes over from determinateness merely to its non-being in general, back to indeterminateness.

The principle of the excluded third is to be distinguished further from the principle of identity or of contradiction considered above, which ran: there is not anything that is at once A and NotA. It states that there is not a something which is neither A nor NotA, that no third is to be had which would be indifferent towards the opposition. In fact, though, within this very principle there is the third that is indifferent towards the opposition, namely A itself is at hand in it. Neither + A nor - A is this A, and it is quite as much + A as - A. – That something which was supposed to be either + A or NotA is herewith related to + A no less than to Not A; and again, since it is related to A, it is supposed not to stand related to NotA, just as not to A when it is related to NotA. The something itself, then, is the third that was supposed to be excluded. Inasmuch as the opposed determinations are in the something just as much posited as, in this positing, sublated, the third – which here has the shape of a dead something – taken more deeply is that unity of reflection into which, as into its ground, the opposition goes back.