c. Something

Determinateness has been marked off, on existence, as quality; and on quality, itself an existent, the difference is present – the difference between reality and negation. Now however much these differences are on hand within existence, just as much are they null, sublated. Negation is contained in reality itself, which is existence, not some indeterminate, abstract being. Conversely negation is itself existence – no nothing pretending to abstractness, but posited as it stands in itself: as a being, as belonging within existence. So quality at large is nowhere severed from existence, and existence is nothing else than determinate, qualitative being.

More is at work in this sublating of the distinction than a bare withdrawal of it, an external letting-fall of it once more, or a plain going-back to the plain beginning, existence taken simply. Dropping the difference is not possible; for it is. So the fact on hand is threefold: existence at large, difference upon it, and the sublating of that difference; existence not as it was at the outset, without difference, but self-equal once more, through sublation of the difference, its simplicity mediated by that very sublating. That the difference stands sublated is existence's own determinateness; existence is thereby being-within-itself; existence counts as an existent, as something.

Considered as a simple relation to self that has being, the something amounts to the first negation of negation. Whatever we call existence, life, thinking and the rest determines itself essentially into an existent, a living thing, a thinker (I), and the rest. Such determining matters supremely, lest one halt at existence, life, thinking and the rest, or indeed at Godhead (rather than God), treating these as universalities. Representation is right to reckon something a real thing. All the same, something remains a determination lying very near the surface, in the way that reality and negation do, and existence with its determinateness: no longer the void pair, being and nothing, yet abstract determinations through and through. Hence too their currency in ordinary speech, and hence the heavy use made of them by a reflection untrained in philosophy, which decants its distinctions into them and supposes that in them it possesses something firmly and properly determined. – Taken as something, the negative of the negative marks no more than the subject's beginning; – being-within-itself is so far altogether indeterminate. It goes on determining itself, next as a being-for-itself, and onward, until only in the concept does it acquire the subject's concrete intensity. At the base of every one of these determinations lies negative unity with self. Yet here negation as the first, negation as such, wants careful separating from the second, which is negation of negation, the concrete, absolute negativity, the first being by contrast only the abstract negativity.

Taken as negation of negation, something has being, for such negation restores relation to self in its simplicity; – and by the same stroke something is the mediating of itself with itself. That mediating of itself with itself is on hand already in the simplicity of the something, more determinately afterwards in being-for-itself, in the subject and the rest – already in becoming too, though there merely as mediation wholly abstract; mediation with itself stands posited in the something so far as the latter counts as simply identical. – Against the principle of an asserted bare immediacy of knowing, one from which mediation is to be shut out, the fact that mediation is on hand at all may well be pointed out; henceforth, though, no special notice of the moment of mediation will be needed, for mediation lodges everywhere, at every turn, within each and every concept.

Read merely as negation of negation, this mediation with self, which something in itself is, has nothing concretely determined for either of its sides; so it falls together into that simple unity called being. Something is, and so is an existent as well; further, in itself it is also becoming, only a becoming whose moments are no longer merely being and nothing. One moment, being, has now turned into existence and then into an existent. The second is an existent no less, determined however as the negative of the something – an other. Something as becoming is a passing-over whose moments are themselves somethings, and for that reason it is alteration; – a becoming grown concrete already. – Still, at this stage the something alters only within its concept; nothing yet posits it as mediating and as mediated; for now it merely keeps itself simply in its relation to self, its negative counting as equally qualitative, an other and nothing further.

B. Finitude

a. Something and an other; to begin with, each is indifferent toward the other; an other is likewise an immediate existent, a something; negation therefore falls outside the two of them. Over against its being-for other, something is in itself. Determinateness belongs, however, to its in-itself as well, and is

b. its determination, which passes over no less into constitution; and constitution, being one with that determination, makes up the immanent and simultaneously negated being-for-other, the limit of something, which

c. is the something's own immanent determination, whereby something is the finite.

Within the first division, where existence at large came under consideration, existence, as first taken up, bore the determination of what has being. For that reason the moments of its unfolding — quality and something — are likewise of affirmative determination. Here, on the other hand, it is the negative determination resident in existence that unfolds; there it was still only negation at large, first negation, whereas now it stands determined up to the point of the something's being-within-itself, up to negation of negation.

a. Something and an Other

1. Something and an other are both, firstly, existents or somethings.

Secondly, each is just as much an other. Which of the two gets named first and is called something merely on that account makes no difference; (in Latin, when both occur in one sentence, each is called aliud, or the one the other, alius alium; where reciprocity obtains the analogous expression runs: alter alterum.) Should we call one existence A and the other B, then B counts at first as determined to be the other. But A is quite as much the other of B. In like manner both are others. For pinning down the difference, and the something to be taken affirmatively, the word this serves. Yet this voices precisely the point that such distinguishing and singling out of the one something is a subjective designating, one falling outside the something itself. Into this external act of pointing the whole determinateness falls; not even the expression this harbours a difference; each and every something is a this quite as much as it is also an other. One supposes that with this one utters something perfectly determinate; overlooked is the fact that language, being a work of the understanding, utters only what is universal, except in the name of a singular object; the individual name, however, is a senseless thing in the sense that it voices nothing universal, and it looks like a merely posited, arbitrary affair for the same reason that individual names can be arbitrarily adopted, conferred, or likewise changed.

Otherness accordingly looks like a determination alien to the existence so determined, or like the other outside the one existence; partly because an existence gets determined as other only through a third party's comparing, partly because it gets so determined only on account of the other lying outside it, and is not such for itself. Every existence, as was noted, simultaneously determines itself, for representation as well, quite as much as an other existence, so that no existence is left over that would be determined only as an existence, that would not lie outside an existence and hence not be itself an other.

Determined as something no less than as other, the two are hence the same, and no difference between them is yet on hand. This selfsameness of the determinations falls, however, likewise only within external reflection, within a comparing of the two; but on the way the other is at first posited, it stands for itself indeed in relation to the something, yet also for itself outside of it.

Thirdly, then, the other must be taken in isolation, in relation to itself; abstractly as the other, Plato's τὸ ἕτερον, which he ranges among the moments of totality and sets over against the one, thereby granting the other a nature of its own. So grasped, the other stands alone as such: not some thing's other, but the other in its very self, i.e. its own other. – An other of that kind, other by its very determination, is physical nature; nature is the other of spirit; and so this determination of nature is initially sheer relativity, voicing no quality of nature itself but merely a relation external to nature. Since spirit, however, is the true something, and nature therefore in its very self only what it is over against spirit, nature's quality — taken for itself — consists precisely in being the other in its very self, the being-outside-of-itself (in the determinations of space, of time, of matter).

The other for itself is the other in its very self, therefore its own other, and so an other of the other – hence what is downright unequal within itself, self-negating, what alters. Just as much, though, it stays identical with itself, since whatever it altered into is the other, which carries no further determination besides; and what alters is determined in no other manner, but in the very same, namely to be an other, whence in that other it converges only with itself. Posited accordingly as inwardly reflected, with otherness sublated, it is a something identical with itself, from which otherness — simultaneously a moment of it — is something distinct, something not accruing to it as the something itself.

2. Something maintains itself within its non-existence; with that non-existence it is essentially one, and with it essentially not one. So it stands in relation to its otherness; purely its otherness it is not. Otherness is contained within it and withal still severed from it; it is being-for-other.

Existence taken as such is immediate, relationless; or it stands under the determination of being. But existence, enclosing non-being within itself, is determinate being, being inwardly negated, and thus at first an other – yet since throughout its negating it likewise maintains itself, it is merely being-for-other.

Within its non-existence it maintains itself, and is being; not being at large, however, but being as relation to self over against its relation to other, as self-equality over against its inequality. Being of that sort is being-in-itself.

The two moments of the something are made up by being-for-other and being-in-itself. Two pairs of determinations turn up here: 1) something and an other. 2) being-for-other, and being-in-itself. The first pair carries the relationlessness of its determinateness; something and other fall asunder. Their truth, though, lies in their relation; being-for-other along with being-in-itself are accordingly those same determinations, only posited as moments of one selfsame thing, as determinations that are relations and that abide within their unity, the unity of existence. Each of them thereby contains upon itself, withal, its own moment that differs from it.

Within their unity, which is existence, being and nothing are being and nothing no longer; – only apart from that unity are they such; and so within their restless unity, in becoming, they amount to coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be. – Being within the something is being-in-itself. Being, the relation to self, self-equality, is now no longer immediate, but relation to self solely as the non-being of otherness, (as inwardly reflected existence). – Non-being likewise, as a moment of the something within this unity of being and non-being, is not non-existence at large but an other, and, more determinately, given the distinguishing of being from it withal, a relation to its non-existence, being-for-other.

Being-in-itself, accordingly, is firstly a negative relation to non-existence: otherness lies outside it and it stands opposed thereto; so far as something is in itself, otherness and being-for-other have been taken away from it. Secondly, though, it bears non-being upon itself too; for it itself is the non-being of being-for-other.

Being-for-other, however, is firstly the negation of that simple relation of being to itself which is supposed at first to be existence and something; so far as something lies within an other, or for an other, it goes without a being of its own. Secondly, though, it is not non-existence as pure nothing; it is a non-existence referring to being-in-itself as to its inwardly reflected being, exactly as, in reverse, being-in-itself refers to being-for-other.

3. The two moments are determinations of one selfsame thing, the something, namely. Something is in itself so far as it has come back into itself out of being-for-other. Yet something also carries a determination or circumstance in itself (the accent here falling on in) or in it, so far as this circumstance stands externally in it, a being-for-other.

A further determination follows from this. At first being-in-itself and being-for-other stand diverse; but that something carries in it the very same that it is in itself, and inversely that whatever it is as being-for-other it likewise is in itself – herein lies the identity of being-in-itself with being-for-other, on the determination that the something is itself the selfsame in both moments, which are therefore undivided within it. – Formally this identity turns up already within the sphere of existence, more expressly where essence comes under consideration and then the relation of inwardness to outwardness, and most determinately of all where the idea comes under consideration, as unity of concept and actuality. – With the in-itself, as with the inner, one supposes oneself to be uttering something lofty; but whatever something is merely in itself is equally merely in it; the in-itself is an abstract determination only, and therefore itself an external one. The phrases: there is nothing in him, or there is something in it, carry with them, darkly perhaps, the thought that whatever is in a thing belongs likewise to its being-in-itself, to its inner and genuine worth.

One may remark that the sense of the thing-in-itself emerges here — a very simple abstraction, though for a while a very important determination, a sort of noble possession, just as the dictum that what things are in themselves stays unknown to us once passed for prized wisdom. – Things get called in-themselves so far as one abstracts from every being-for-other, which means generally: so far as they are thought without any determination whatever, as nothings. In that sense, to be sure, what the thing-in-itself is cannot be known. For the query: what? insists that determinations be stated; but since the things about which they are to be stated are meanwhile supposed to be things-in-themselves, that is, precisely without determination, the impossibility of answering has been lodged thoughtlessly in the query itself, or else one produces merely a preposterous answer. – That absolute about which nothing is known save that everything within it is one: the thing-in-itself is the very same. Hence one knows perfectly well what is in these things-in-themselves; as such they are nothing but truthless, empty abstractions. What the thing-in-itself is in truth, however, what is genuinely in itself — of that the logic is the exposition, where by in-itself something better than abstraction is meant, namely what a thing is in its concept; and this concept is inwardly concrete, comprehensible as concept generally, and inwardly knowable as determinate and as the interconnection of its determinations.

Being-in-itself has being-for-other for its opposing moment at first; but positedness also gets set over against it; that expression does harbour being-for-other too, yet it definitely holds within it the bending-back, already accomplished, of what is not in itself into what constitutes its being-in-itself, wherein it is positive. Being-in-itself is customarily to be understood as an abstract manner of voicing the concept; positing properly enters only within the sphere of essence, the sphere of objective reflection; the ground posits what has its ground in it; the cause does still more, it brings forth an effect, an existence whose self-subsistence is immediately negated and which bears upon it the sense of having its matter, its being, in an other. Existence, within the sphere of being, merely issues forth out of becoming; or, along with something, an other is posited, along with the finite the infinite — the finite, though, brings forth no infinite, does not posit it. Within the sphere of being the concept's own self-determining is as yet only in itself, and so goes by the name of a transition; the reflecting determinations of being as well — something and other, say, or the finite and the infinite — count as qualitative, subsisting on their own, however essentially they refer to one another or exist as being-for-other; the other is, and the finite counts, exactly like the infinite, as immediately being and as standing fast on its own; the sense of each looks complete apart from its other. Positive and negative, by contrast, cause and effect, however much they too get taken as existing in isolation, have withal no sense apart from one another; their shining into one another, the shining of its other within each, is on hand upon them themselves. – Across the various circles of determination, and especially in the advance of the exposition, or more closely in the concept's advance toward its exposition, it is a chief matter to keep distinguishing well what is still in itself from what is posited, how determinations stand as within the concept and how they stand once posited, i.e. as being-for-other. Such a difference belongs to dialectical development alone, and metaphysical philosophizing, which takes in the critical sort as well, does not know it; metaphysics' definitions, like its presuppositions, distinctions and inferences, mean to assert and bring forth only what is, indeed only what is in itself.

Being-for-other, within the unity of something with itself, is identical with its in-itself; being-for-other is thus upon the something. Determinateness thus inwardly reflected is thereby once more simple and existent, hence once more a quality – the determination.

b. Determination, Constitution and Limit

No longer an abstract in-itself is the in-itself into which something has been reflected back into itself away from its being-for-other; as the negation of that being-for-other it is instead mediated by it, and being-for-other is thus its own moment. Not merely the immediate self-identity of the something, it is the identity through which the something is in it what it is in itself as well; being-for-other is in it, since the in-itself is what sublates that being-for-other, is out of it and in itself; but equally so already, since the in-itself is abstract and hence saddled essentially with negation, with being-for-other. Present here is not quality and reality alone, determinateness as merely being, but a determinateness that is in itself, and the development consists in positing it as just this determinateness reflected into itself.

1. Within the simple something the in-itself essentially stands in unity with that something's other moment, its being-in-it, and the quality which it there is may be called the something's determination, so long as this word is taken in the stricter sense that marks it off from determinateness in general. Determination is affirmative determinateness – the being-in-itself to which something in its existence stays true, over against the entanglement with an other that would determine it, holding itself in its self-equality, and asserting that self-equality within its being-for-other. It fulfils its determination to the extent that the further determinateness which at first grows up in manifold ways out of its comportment towards an other becomes, in keeping with its being-in-itself, the something's own fullness. Contained in determination is this: that whatever something is in itself shall be in it as well.

Thinking reason is the determination of the human being: thinking in general constitutes his simple determinateness, and it is what marks him off from the animal; thinking in itself he is, insofar as thinking is set apart also from his being-for-other, from that naturalness and sensibility of his own by which he hangs together immediately with an other. Yet in him thinking is present too; the human being is himself thinking, he is there as one who thinks, and in thinking lies his concrete existence, his actuality; and further, thinking being in his existence and his existence in thinking, thinking is concrete, to be taken with content and fulfilment, thinking reason, and in this way the determination of the human being. Yet this determination too is once again only in itself, an ought – that is, it stands, with the fulfilment built into its in-itself and in the form of the in-itself generally, against the existence not built into it, an existence which meanwhile persists as immediate sensibility and nature confronting it from outside.

2. Also distinct from the fulfilment of being-in-itself with determinateness is the determinateness that is only being-for-other and stays outside the determination. For in the field of the qualitative, differences keep an immediate qualitative being over against each other even in their sublatedness. Thus what the something has in it divides, and from this side it is an external existence of the something, one that is indeed its existence and yet does not belong to its being-in-itself. – So determinateness is constitution.

Something constituted this way or that is grasped as caught up in external influence and in external relations. Contingent is how this outward connection appears, the connection on which constitution hangs, and so too the being-determined by an other. But to be handed over to such externality and to have a constitution is itself the quality of the something.

Where something alters, the alteration lands in the constitution; constitution is what in the something turns into an other. Something preserves itself in the alteration, which strikes only this unsteady surface of its otherness, not its determination.

Determination and constitution stand distinguished from one another in this way; something, taken according to its determination, is indifferent towards its constitution. What binds the two, though, the middle of this syllogism, is what something has in it. Being in the something, however, proved rather to break apart into those two extremes. Determinateness as such is the simple middle; to its identity determination belongs no less than constitution. But of its own accord determination goes over into constitution, and constitution into determination. This lies in what precedes; the connection, more precisely, runs thus: to the extent that what something is in itself is in it as well, being-for-other clings to it; determination as such therefore lies open to the relation to an other. Determinateness is a moment and yet harbours at the same time the qualitative difference, differing from being-in-itself, of being the negative of the something, another existence. United with being-in-itself, determinateness that thus takes the other up into itself brings otherness into being-in-itself, into determination, and determination is thereby demoted to constitution. – Conversely, when being-for-other is isolated as constitution and posited on its own, it is in it just what the other as such is, the other in its own self, that is, of its own self; taken so, however, it is existence relating to itself, being-in-itself with a determinateness, and hence determination. – Hence, so far as the two are also to be kept apart, constitution – which looks as though it were grounded in an externality, in an other generally – depends on determination too, and the determining that comes from elsewhere is at once determined by the something's own, immanent determining. But constitution belongs, furthermore, to what the something is in itself; along with its constitution something changes.

No longer is this change of the something the first alteration, the one merely with respect to its being-for-other; that first alteration was only the one existing in itself, belonging to the inner concept; now the alteration is posited in the something as well. – Further determination accrues to the something itself, and negation gets posited as immanent to it, as the being-within-itself it has developed.

At first the passing over of determination and constitution into each other is the sublating of their difference, and existence, or something in general, is thereby posited; and since this result comes out of that difference, which equally holds qualitative otherness within it, there are two somethings, though not merely others over against each other in general – the negation would then still be abstract and would fall only within the comparison – for the negation is now immanent to the somethings. Indifferent to each other they are as existent, yet this affirmation of theirs is immediate no longer; each relates to itself by means of the sublating of otherness, an otherness reflected in determination into being-in-itself.

Thus out of itself does something comport itself towards the other, for otherness stands posited within it as a moment of its own; negation is embraced within its being-within-itself, and only by means of that negation does it now have affirmative existence at all. From this existence, however, the other is qualitatively distinct too, and is on that account posited outside the something. Nothing but the quality of the something is the negation of its other, for something is what it is by sublating its other. Only now does the other genuinely come to stand over against an existence itself; over against the first something the other stands merely externally, or else – the two hanging together in fact absolutely, that is, by their concept – their connection runs thus, that existence has passed over into otherness, something into an other, and something is an other quite as much as the other is. To the extent, then, that being-within-itself is the non-being of the otherness which it contains and which is nevertheless distinguished from it as being, the something is itself the negation, the ceasing of an other in it; posited it is as comporting itself negatively against that other and as thereby preserving itself; – this other, the being-within-itself of the something as negation of negation, is its being-in-itself, and this sublating is at once in it as simple negation, namely as the something's negation of the other something lying outside it. One determinateness of the two there is, identical with the being-within-itself of the somethings as negation of negation, and, since these negations stand against each other as other somethings, it closes them together out of themselves and equally parts them from one another, each negating the other, – the limit.

3. Indeterminate, affirmative community of something with its other is what being-for-other amounts to; within the limit the non-being-for-other comes to the fore, the qualitative negation of the other, which is thereby fended off from the something reflected into itself. The development of this concept is what has to be watched, though it turns out to be rather an entanglement and a contradiction. That contradiction is at hand right away in this: as the negation of the something reflected into itself, the limit holds the moments of something and other within it as ideal, while these same moments, as distinct moments, stand posited at the same time in the sphere of existence as real, as qualitatively distinct.

α. Something, then, is immediate existence relating to itself, and it carries a limit first of all as against an other; not of the something itself but of the other is this limit the non-being; in it the something sets bounds to its other. – Yet a something in general is what the other itself is; so the limit which the something has as against the other is likewise the other's limit as a something, the limit by which the other fends off the first something as its own other, or it is a non-being of that something; the limit is therefore non-being not of the other alone, but of the one and of the other something alike, and so of something in general.

But since it is essentially the non-being of the other just as much, something at the same time is by virtue of its limit. In doing the limiting, something is indeed brought down to being limited itself; its limit, though, as the ceasing of the other in it, is at the same time nothing other than the being of the something; this is through the limit what it is, and has in it its quality. – Outwardly this relation displays the fact that limit is simple negation, the first negation, while the other is at once negation of negation, the being-within-itself of the something.

As immediate existence, then, something is the limit as against another something, but it possesses that limit in its own self and is something by the mediation of a limit which is equally its non-being. Mediation is what the limit is, that by which something and other both are and are not.

β. To the extent, now, that something within its limit is and is not, these moments being an immediate, qualitative difference, the existence of the something and its non-existence fall apart from each other. Outside its limit (or, however one may picture it, inside) something has its existence; and the other, being a something, lies outside that limit as well. Between the two the limit is the middle, and in it they cease. Their existence they have beyond each other, away from their limit; the limit, as the non-being of each, is what is other to them both.

– Given this diversity of the something from its limit, only outside its limit, the point, does the line appear as line; the surface as surface outside the line; the body as body only outside the surface bounding it. – This is the side on which limit falls first into representation, – the being-outside-itself of the concept, – and it is chiefly in this aspect that limit is taken up in spatial objects too.

γ. Further, however, the something as it stands outside the limit is the unlimited something, existence merely in general. So taken it is not marked off from its other; it is existence and nothing more, and therefore shares the same determination with its other, each being merely something in general, or each being an other; both are in this way the same. But this existence of theirs, immediate to begin with, now stands posited together with determinateness as limit, wherein the two are what they are, distinguished from one another. The limit, though, is equally their common distinguishedness, being their unity and their distinguishedness alike, as existence is. Contained in this twofold identity of the two, of existence and limit, is this: that the something has its existence in the limit alone, and that, limit and immediate existence being at the same time each the negative of the other, the something which is only in its limit separates itself just as much from itself, points out past itself to its non-being and declares that non-being to be its being, passing over into it accordingly. Applied to the earlier example: the one determination says that something is only in its limit what it is; – the point, accordingly, is not the limit of the line in the sense merely that the line ceases in it and has its existence outside it; – nor the line the limit of the surface in the sense merely that the surface ceases in the line, and so likewise with the surface as limit of the body. In the point the line also begins; the point is the line's absolute beginning, and even where the line is pictured as unlimited towards both its sides, or, as the phrase goes, as prolonged into infinity, the point makes up its element, as the line makes up the element of the surface, the surface that of the body. Of what they limit these limits are the principle, in the way that the one, as the hundredth for example, is a limit and yet an element of the entire hundred too.

The other determination is the unrest of the something within its limit, wherein it is immanent, the unrest of being the contradiction that despatches it out past itself. The point, therefore, is this dialectic of its own, to become line, the line the dialectic of becoming surface, the surface that of becoming total space. A second definition of line, surface and total space is given to the effect that the line comes about through the motion of the point, the surface through the motion of the line, and so on. This motion of the point, of the line and so on, is regarded, however, as something contingent, or as merely so pictured. In fact this is taken back again by the claim that the determinations out of which line and so on are supposed to come about are their elements and principles, and these are nothing but their limits at the same time; the coming-about is thus not held to be contingent or merely a matter of picturing. That point, line and surface, each for itself, are self-contradictory beginnings which repel themselves away from themselves, so that the point by its own concept passes out of itself into the line, moves in itself and lets the line come about, and so on – lies in the concept of the limit immanent to the something. The application belongs, however, to the consideration of space; to hint at it here: the point is limit made wholly abstract, yet limit in an existence; that existence is still taken quite indeterminately, it is so-called absolute, that is to say abstract, space, being-outside-one-another that is utterly continuous. Because limit here is not abstract negation but is in this existence, because it is spatial determinateness, the point is spatial, is the contradiction between abstract negation and continuity, and with that the passing over and having-passed-over into line and so on, just as indeed there is no point, and no line and no surface either.

Posited with its immanent limit as the contradiction of its own self, and by that contradiction pointed and driven out past itself, something is the finite.

c. Finitude

Existence is determinate; a quality belongs to something, and within its quality something stands not merely determined but limited; that quality constitutes its limit, and, saddled with such a limit, something remains for now an affirmative existence at rest. What makes up its finitude, however, is this negation once developed – developed so far that the opposition of its existence to the negation which is its immanent limit is itself the being-within-itself of the something, and the something is thereby nothing other than becoming in its own self.

When we say of things that they are finite, this does not mean merely that some determinateness attaches to them, that quality belongs to them only as reality and as determination existing in itself, nor merely that they are limited while still keeping an existence outside their limit, – it means rather that their very nature, their being, is made up of non-being. Finite things are, yet their reference to themselves runs thus: as negative they refer to themselves, and in that very self-reference they despatch themselves past themselves, past their own being. They are indeed, yet what this being holds as its truth is their end. Not only does the finite alter, as any something does; it ceases to be, and this ceasing-to-be of it is no mere possibility, as if the finite could be and yet not cease to be. Rather, the being of finite things as such consists in carrying the germ of ceasing-to-be as their being-within-itself; their hour of birth is likewise their hour of death.

α. The Immediacy of Finitude

Such mourning is carried along by the thought of the finitude of things, since finitude is qualitative negation driven to its sharpest point, and within the simplicity of a determination like that no affirmative being distinct from their determination to perish is any longer allowed them. It is because of this qualitative simplicity of the negation – a negation fallen back into the abstract opposition, over against being, of nothing and of ceasing-to-be – that finitude counts as the understanding's most obstinate category; negation as such, constitution, limit, each of these tolerates its other, existence; even abstract nothing, taken on its own, is surrendered as a mere abstraction; finitude, though, is the negation fixed in itself, and for that reason it confronts its affirmative with unrelieved harshness. Set flowing the finite may well be, for it is itself just this, to be determined towards its end, though towards its end alone; – what it amounts to is rather a refusal to be carried over affirmatively to its affirmative, to the infinite, a refusal to be bound up with it; posited it is, then, as inseparable from its own nothing, and any reconciliation with its other, the affirmative, is thereby severed. Finite things have no determination further than their end. In this mourning of finitude the understanding digs itself in, making non-being the determination of things while making it at once imperishable and absolute. Only in their other, in the affirmative, could their perishableness cease to be; their finitude would in that case detach itself from them; but finitude is a quality of theirs that cannot alter, one which never crosses over into its other, never into its affirmative, and so it is eternal.

The consideration is a very important one; that the finite be absolute – no philosophy, no view, no understanding will of course consent to have such a standpoint fastened upon it; quite the reverse stands expressly in the assertion made of the finite; limited and perishable is what the finite is; the finite is only finite, never the imperishable; this lies immediately in its determination and in its expression. Everything turns, though, on whether the view holds fast to the being of finitude, whether perishableness endures, or whether perishableness and ceasing-to-be do themselves cease to be? That precisely this does not happen is the fact of the matter in that very view of the finite for which ceasing-to-be is made the last thing of the finite. Expressly asserted is this, that finite and infinite do not tolerate each other and cannot be reconciled, that the finite stands utterly opposed to the infinite. Being, absolute being, is what gets ascribed to the infinite; facing it, the finite is accordingly held fast as the infinite's negative; unable to be reconciled with the infinite, the finite stays absolutely on its own side; affirmation would come to it from the affirmative, from the infinite, and it would thereby cease to be; only, a unification with the infinite is precisely what gets pronounced impossible. Should the finite not endure over against the infinite but cease to be instead, then, as already remarked, what is last is just this ceasing-to-be of the finite, and not the affirmative, which could only be the ceasing-to-be of ceasing-to-be. Suppose, on the other hand, that the finite were not to cease to be in the affirmative, and that its end were grasped as the nothing: then we should find ourselves back at that first abstract nothing which has itself long since ceased to be.

Now with a nothing of this kind, one that is supposed to be only nothing and to which a concrete existence is at the same time granted, in thinking, in representing, or in speaking, there arises the very contradiction just indicated in the case of the finite, except that there it merely arises, whereas in finitude it is express. In the former case the contradiction looks subjective; in the latter the claim is made that perennially the finite stands over against the infinite, that what is null in itself is, and that it is as something null in itself. This is what has to be brought to consciousness; and the development of the finite shows that in it, as this contradiction, the finite collapses inwardly, yet genuinely resolves the contradiction in this direction: not that the finite is merely perishable and ceases to be, but that ceasing-to-be, the nothing, is not what is last but itself ceases to be.

β. Restriction and the Ought

In the abstract, to be sure, this contradiction lies right at hand in the finitude of the something, or in the fact that the finite is. But something, being, is posited abstractly no longer; reflected into itself it is, developed as being-within-itself that has determination and constitution in it, and, said more precisely, that has a limit in it – a limit which, immanent to the something and constituting the quality of its being-within-itself, is finitude. Which moments this concept of the finite something contains is what now has to be seen.

For external reflection determination and constitution turned out to be sides; determination, though, already held otherness within it as something belonging to the in-itself of the something; on one side the externality of otherness lies within the something's own inwardness, on the other it stays distinct from that inwardness as externality, being externality as such still, yet in the something. Since otherness is now further determined as limit, and hence itself as negation of negation, the otherness that is immanent to the something stands posited as the connection between the two sides, and the something's unity with itself – a unity to which determination belongs no less than constitution – is its connection turned back against itself, the connection of its in-itself-existing determination to its immanent limit, a connection negating that limit within it. Being-within-itself, self-identical, refers itself in this way to itself as to its own non-being, yet as negation of negation, negating a non-being which meanwhile keeps existence within it, for that non-being is the quality of its being-within-itself. The something's own limit, posited by the something as a negative that is essential at the same time, is limit as such no longer but restriction. Restriction, though, is not the only thing posited as negated; two-edged is the negation, since what it posits as negated is the limit; the limit, namely, is quite generally the common element of something and other, and is also a determinateness of the being-in-itself of determination as such. This being-in-itself, accordingly, taken as the negative connection to a limit that is also distinguished from it, as the negative connection to itself qua restriction, is the ought.

If the limit that is in something at all is to be a restriction, then in its own self the something must simultaneously go out beyond it, must in its own self refer to it as to something non-existent. Quietly and indifferently the existence of the something lies, as it were alongside its limit. Something goes out beyond its limit, however, only insofar as it is that limit's sublatedness, the being-in-itself negative towards it. And since within the determination itself the limit is there as restriction, something thereby goes out beyond its own self.

So the ought contains a doubled determination: on the one hand determination as in-itself-existing over against negation, on the other hand that same determination as a non-being distinguished from it qua restriction and yet itself in-itself-existing determination at the same time.

The finite has thus determined itself as the connection of its determination to its limit; the determination, in that connection, is the ought, the limit is restriction. Both are accordingly moments of the finite, and both are therefore finite themselves, ought as well as restriction. Posited as the finite, however, is restriction alone; the ought is limited only in itself, and hence only for us. Limited it is through its connection to the limit already immanent in it, but this limitation of it is wrapped up within being-in-itself, for by its existence, that is, by its determinateness over against restriction, it is posited as the being-in-itself.

What ought to be is, and simultaneously is not. If it were, it would be no mere ought to be. Essentially, then, the ought has a restriction. Alien this restriction is not; that which only ought to be is the determination, now posited as it in truth is, namely as being at the same time only a determinateness.

The something's being-in-itself in its determination therefore lowers itself to an ought, because the very thing which makes up that being-in-itself is, in one and the same respect, present as non-being; and this in such fashion that within being-within-itself, the negation of negation, that being-in-itself is, as the one negation (the negating factor), unity with the other negation, which, being qualitatively other at the same time, is limit, so that the unity stands as a connection to it. Not an external thing is the restriction of the finite; rather its own determination is its restriction as well; and this restriction is itself and the ought together; it is what both have in common, or rather that in which both are identical.

As ought, though, the finite now goes further, out beyond its restriction; the very determinateness that constitutes its negation is sublated as well, and is so its being-in-itself; its limit is likewise not its limit.

Raised above its restriction, then, something is as ought, while conversely only as ought does it have its restriction. Inseparable are the two. Something has a restriction to the extent that negation is in its determination, and the determination is likewise the sublatedness of the restriction.

Remark

Of late the ought has been given a large part to play in philosophy, above all where morality is concerned, and metaphysically too as the ultimate and absolute concept of the identity of being-in-itself, or of reference to itself, with determinateness, or the limit.

You can, because you ought – this expression, from which much was expected, lies in the concept of the ought. For being beyond the restriction is just what the ought is; in it the limit is sublated, and so the being-in-itself of the ought is an identical reference to self, hence the abstraction of being able. – Conversely, though, it holds just as well: You cannot, precisely because you ought. For within the ought there lies just as much the restriction as restriction; that formalism of possibility has confronting it, in the restriction, a reality, a qualitative otherness, and the reference of the two to each other is contradiction, hence a not-being-able, or rather impossibility.

It is in the ought that the going out beyond finitude, infinity, has its beginning. The ought is that which, as development proceeds and in consequence of that impossibility, presents itself as the infinite progress.

Two prejudices touching the form of restriction and of the ought deserve a closer censure here. In the first place, a great deal is customarily made of the restrictions of thinking, of reason and so forth, and the assertion is put forward that the restriction cannot be gone beyond. What such an assertion fails to notice is that, in the very determining of something as a restriction, that restriction has already been passed beyond. For only in contrast to its other as such, that is, to its unrestricted, does a determinateness, a limit, count as determined into a restriction; the other of a restriction is precisely the beyond of it. Stone and metal do not pass beyond their restriction, and this because the restriction is not a restriction for them. If, however, in the face of such general propositions of understanding-bound thinking – that the restriction cannot be gone beyond – thinking declines to put itself to work and see what lies in the concept, then one can point it to actuality, where propositions of that sort turn out to be the most unactual of all. Just because thinking is supposed to be something higher than actuality, to hold itself at a distance from it in loftier regions, and so is itself determined as an ought, on the one hand it does not advance to the concept, and on the other it befalls it that its bearing is as untrue towards actuality as it is towards the concept. – Since the stone does not think, does not so much as feel, its limitedness is no restriction for it, which is to say, in it there is no negation for the feeling, representation, thinking and so forth that it does not have. Yet even the stone, being a something, is differentiated into its determination or being-in-itself and its existence, and to that extent it too passes beyond its restriction; the concept that it is in itself contains identity with its other. Should it be an acidifiable base, then it is oxidizable, neutralizable and so forth. In oxidation, neutralization and so forth its restriction of being there only as a base sublates itself; it passes beyond it; just as the acid sublates its restriction of being an acid, and in the acid as in the caustic base the ought to go beyond their restriction is so much at hand that they can be held fast as acid and caustic base – water-free, that is, purely non-neutral – only by force.

Where the concept is held in a concrete existence not merely as abstract being-in-itself, but as a totality that is for itself – as drive, as life, sensation, representing and so forth – there that existence accomplishes out of itself this being beyond the restriction and this going beyond it. The plant passes beyond the restriction of being a seed, and likewise beyond that of being blossom, of being fruit, of being leaf; the seed becomes the unfolded plant, the blossom fades and so forth. That which feels is, within the restriction of hunger, thirst and so forth, the drive to go beyond this restriction, and it carries this going-beyond through. It feels pain, and the privilege of a feeling nature is to feel pain; a negation is in its self, and that negation is determined in its feeling as a restriction, precisely because what feels has the feeling of its self, which is the totality and as such lies beyond that determinateness. Were it not beyond it, it would not feel that determinateness as its negation and would have no pain. – Reason, however, thinking, is supposed to be incapable of going beyond the restriction – reason, which is the universal, which for itself is beyond that, that is, beyond all particularity, and which is nothing other than the going beyond the restriction. – Admittedly not every going beyond and being beyond a restriction is a genuine liberation from it, a genuine affirmation; the ought itself is already such an incomplete going-beyond, and so is abstraction generally. But pointing to the wholly abstract universal suffices against the equally abstract assurance that the restriction cannot be gone beyond, just as pointing to the infinite as such already suffices against the assurance that the finite cannot be gone beyond.

A notion of Leibniz's that has an air of ingenuity may be mentioned here – that a magnet, if it had consciousness, would take its northward orientation for something its will had determined, a law of its own freedom. On the contrary: had it consciousness and with it will and freedom, it would be a thinking thing, so that space would be for it a universal space containing every direction, and the one direction northward would accordingly be a restriction upon its freedom, quite as it restricts a human being, though not a plant, to be held fast in one single spot.

The ought, on the other side, is the going beyond the restriction, but a going-beyond that is itself only finite. Its place and its validity therefore lie in the field of finitude, where it holds fast to being-in-itself against what is restricted and asserts it, against what is null, as the rule and the essential. Duty is an ought turned against the particular will, against selfish desire and arbitrary interest; to the will, insofar as in its mobility it can isolate itself from what is true, the true is held up as an ought. Those who set the ought of morality so high, and who suppose that morality is to be destroyed if the ought is not acknowledged as ultimate and true – and likewise the reasoners whose understanding grants itself the unceasing satisfaction of being able to bring an ought, and with it a knowing-better, against everything that is, and who for that reason are just as unwilling to have the ought taken from them – do not see that, for the finitude of their spheres, the ought is fully acknowledged. – But in actuality itself things do not stand so sadly with rationality and law that they merely ought to be, with nothing remaining but the abstractum of being-in-itself, any more than that the ought were perennial on its own self and – what comes to the same – finitude absolute. Kant's and Fichte's philosophy gives out the ought as the highest point at which the contradictions of reason are resolved, whereas it is rather only the standpoint of persisting in finitude and thereby in contradiction.

γ. Transition of the Finite into the Infinite

Taken for itself the ought contains the restriction, and the restriction contains the ought. What their reference to each other amounts to is the finite itself, which holds them both within its being-within-self. Qualitatively opposed to one another are these two moments of its determination: what determines the restriction is that it negates the ought, and what determines the ought is, in like manner, that it negates the restriction. The finite is in this way the contradiction of itself within itself; it sublates itself, passes away. Yet this result of its own, the negative as such, is α) nothing else than its own determination, since what stands here is a negative of what is negative. Hence the finite, in passing away, has not passed away; to begin with it has merely become an other finite, which however is equally a passing-away in the shape of a transition into yet another finite, and so on, into infinity perhaps. But β) should this result be examined more closely, then in passing away – in this its self-negation – the finite has reached its being-in-itself, having therein come together with its own self. Just this result is contained in each of its moments; the ought goes out beyond the restriction, that is, beyond its own self; but the beyond of it, or its other, is nothing but the restriction itself. The restriction, in turn, proves to be immediately out beyond its own self towards its other, which is the ought; this ought, though, is the very same sundering of being-in-itself and existence that the restriction is, is the same thing; going out beyond itself, therefore, the restriction likewise does no more than come together with itself. This identity with itself, the negation of the negation, is affirmative being, and hence the other of the finite – the finite being that whose determinateness is supposed to lie in the first negation; – that other is the infinite.

C. Infinity

Taken in its simple concept, the infinite may at first be counted a new definition of the absolute; as the determinationless reference to itself it is posited as being and becoming. Out of the series of determinations that can pass for definitions of the absolute, the forms of existence drop away, since the forms belonging to that sphere are for themselves immediately posited only as determinatenesses, as finite ones generally. The infinite, though, counts as absolute without qualification, for it is expressly determined as negation of the finite, so that in it express reference is made to limitedness – of which being and becoming, even if they neither have nor display any limitedness on themselves, might yet perhaps be capable – and limitedness of that sort is negated on it.

By this very fact, however, the infinite has not yet in truth been withdrawn from limitedness and finitude; what matters above all is that infinity in its genuine concept be marked off from bad infinity – reason's infinite from that which belongs to the understanding; this last, however, is the finitized infinite, and it will turn out that precisely in wanting to hold the infinite pure of the finite and remote from it, one only finitizes it.

The infinite is

a. in simple determination the affirmative as negation of the finite;

b. yet in that very way it enters into reciprocal determination with the finite; it is the abstract, one-sided infinite;

c. the self-sublating of this infinite, and likewise of the finite, as one single process, – is the genuine infinite.

a. The Infinite in General

Negation of the negation, the affirmative, being that has restored itself out of limitedness – such is the infinite. The infinite is, and in a more intensive sense than the first immediate being; it is genuine being; it is the elevation out of restriction. At the name of the infinite, light dawns upon heart and spirit, for therein spirit is not merely abstractly with itself but lifts itself up to its own self, into the light that is its thinking, its universality, its freedom.

What emerged first of all for the concept of the infinite was that existence determines itself as something finite within its being-in-itself, and passes out beyond the restriction. It belongs to the nature of the finite itself to go out beyond itself, to negate its negation, and to become infinite. Accordingly the infinite is not something finished for itself, standing above the finite, such that the finite would have and keep its abode outside it or beneath it. Nor is it we, as a merely subjective reason, who pass out over the finite into the infinite. Say that the infinite is reason's concept, and that by reason we lift ourselves above what is temporal – all this one lets happen quite without detriment to the finite, which is not touched at all by an elevation that stays external to it. Insofar, however, as the finite is itself raised into infinity, no alien force whatever does this to it; on the contrary, this is its own nature – to refer itself to itself as restriction, as restriction as such no less than as ought, and to go out beyond that restriction, or rather, being reference to itself, to have negated it and to be out beyond it. Infinity does not come about in a sublating of finitude generally; rather, the finite is nothing but this, to become infinity of itself, through its own nature. Infinity is its affirmative determination, that which it genuinely is in itself.

Thus in the infinite the finite has vanished away, and what there is, is the infinite alone.

b. Reciprocal Determination of the Finite and the Infinite

The infinite is; such immediacy makes it at once the negation of something other than itself, namely the finite. As something that thus is, and that is simultaneously the non-being of what is other, it has slipped back into the category of a something, of a determinate being generally – more precisely, because it stands posited as existence reflected into itself, existence resulting through a sublating of determinateness generally, and hence as existence held apart from its own determinateness – slipped back, that is, into the category of a something bearing a limit. According to this determinateness the finite confronts the infinite as real existence; so the two stand in a qualitative reference, as remaining outside each other; the immediate being of the infinite awakens once more the being of its negation, the being of the finite, which at first had seemed to vanish within the infinite.

Yet infinite and finite do not stand merely within these categories of reference; the two sides are determined further than merely to be others over against one another. The finite, namely, is the restriction posited as restriction, is existence posited with the determination of going over into its being-in-itself, of becoming infinite. Infinity is the nothing of the finite, the finite's being-in-itself and its ought, but this ought at the same time as reflected into itself, the ought carried through, wholly affirmative being that refers to nothing but itself. Present within infinity is the satisfaction that all determinateness, alteration, every restriction and with it the ought itself has vanished, stands sublated, and that what is posited is the nothing of the finite. Determined as this negation of the finite is being-in-itself, which, being negation of the negation, is thereby affirmative within itself. This affirmation, however, is a qualitatively immediate reference to itself; being; and thereby the infinite finds itself referred back to the category in which an other, the finite, confronts it; its negative nature stands posited as one that is, hence as first and immediate negation. Saddled in this way with the opposition to the finite, the infinite leaves that finite to remain at once as determinate, real existence, even though within its being-in-itself, the infinite, the finite is at once posited as sublated; the infinite is what is not-finite; – being under the determinateness of negation. Over against the finite, over against the circle of realities, of determinatenesses that are, the infinite amounts to an indeterminate void, to the finite's beyond – the finite being that which does not have its being-in-itself in its existence, an existence that is determinate.

Thus posited against the finite in a qualitative reference of others to one another, the infinite deserves the name bad infinite, the understanding's infinite, which takes it for the highest, for absolute truth; and what ought to bring the understanding to an awareness that, while fancying itself to have won satisfaction in the reconciliation of truth, it stands in unreconciled, unresolved, absolute contradiction, are the contradictions into which it lapses on every side the moment it embarks upon applying and explicating these its categories.

Immediately at hand in this contradiction is the fact that the finite remains over against the infinite as existence; there are thus two determinatenesses; there are two worlds, an infinite one and a finite one, and in their reference the infinite is only a limit of the finite, and is thereby merely a determinate infinite, itself finite.

This contradiction unfolds its content into forms more explicit. – Real existence is what the finite is, and such it stays even while the transition to its non-being, the infinite, is being made; – the infinite, as we saw, is determined over against the finite by nothing beyond the first, immediate negation, while the finite, faced with that negation, carries as something negated no more than the significance of an other, and so is still a something. Should the understanding, then, rise out of this finite world and climb to its highest, the infinite, this finite world stays standing for it as a this-side, so that the infinite is posited only above the finite, is severed from it, and precisely thereby the finite is severed from the infinite; – the two are put in different places, – the finite as existence here below, but the infinite, though it be the in-itself of the finite, as a beyond off in the dim, unreachable distance, outside of which the finite is to find itself and to stay.

Severed in this manner, they are just as essentially referred to each other, and this precisely through the negation that parts them. This negation, which refers to each other these somethings reflected into themselves, is the mutual limit of the one against the other; and so indeed that each of them has that limit not merely on itself over against the other, but rather the negation is their being-in-itself, so that each has the limit on its own self for itself, in its severance from the other. But the limit is the first negation, and so both are limited, are finite on their own selves. Nonetheless each, as affirmatively referring itself to itself, is also the negation of its limit; hence it repels the limit immediately from itself as its non-being and, qualitatively parted from it, sets it down as an other being lying outside itself – the finite setting down its own non-being as this infinite, and the infinite doing likewise with the finite. That the passage from finite to infinite occurs of necessity – occurs, that is, by way of the finite's own determination – and that the finite gets raised into being-in-itself, is readily granted, seeing that the finite is determined as subsisting existence yet at the same time also as null in itself, and so as dissolving in accordance with its determination, whereas the infinite, though determined as saddled with negation and limit, is at the same time determined also as the one that in itself is, so that this abstraction of self-referring affirmation makes up its determination, and so that finite existence, on this determination, does not lie within the infinite. Yet we have shown that the infinite results in affirmative being only by way of negation, as negation of the negation, and that this affirmation of its own, taken as merely simple, qualitative being, brings the negation contained within it down to a simple immediate negation and thus to determinateness and limit, which is then likewise posited as contradicting its being-in-itself, as shut out from it, as not its own but rather as opposed to its being-in-itself: the finite. Since in this manner each, on its own self and out of its own determination, posits its other, the two prove inseparable. Their unity, however, lies concealed in the qualitative otherness of them; it is the inner unity, the one that merely underlies them.

Thereby the manner in which this unity appears is determined; posited in existence, the unity is a switching round or going over of the finite into the infinite, and conversely; so that the infinite only comes forth on the finite, and the finite on the infinite, the one other on the other – which is to say, each has a coming-to-be of its own, an immediate coming-to-be, on the other, and their reference is merely external.

The process of their going over has the following detailed shape. One goes out beyond the finite into the infinite. This going-beyond appears as an external doing. Within this void lying beyond the finite, what comes to be? What is the positive in it? By reason of the inseparability of the infinite and finite (or because this infinite standing on its own side is itself restricted), the limit comes to be; the infinite has vanished, its other, the finite, has entered. But the finite's entering thus looks like an occurrence external to the infinite, and the fresh limit looks like something that has not sprung from the infinite itself but is, again, simply found there. With that, the relapse into the earlier determination, sublated to no purpose, is at hand. This new limit, however, is itself only such as has to be sublated, or gone out beyond. So once again the void, the nothing, has come to be, in which that same determinateness, a new limit, is likewise met with, – and so on into infinity.

What is at hand is the reciprocal determination of the finite and the infinite; finite is the finite only in reference to the ought or to the infinite, and infinite is the infinite only in reference to what is finite. Inseparable they are, and at the same time absolutely others over against each other; each has the other of itself on its own self; each is thus the unity of itself and of its other, and in its determinateness is an existence consisting in not being what it itself is and what its other is.

It is this reciprocal determination, negating itself and its own negation, that steps forth as the progress into infinity, which in so many shapes and applications counts as something ultimate, beyond which one goes no further, since, once arrived at that And so on into infinity, thought is wont to have reached its end. – Wherever relative determinations are driven as far as their opposition, so that they stand in inseparable unity and yet each is credited with a self-subsistent existence over against the other, there this progress sets in. This progress is accordingly the contradiction that is not resolved but is only ever pronounced to be at hand.

Present here is an abstract going-beyond that stays incomplete, since this going-beyond is not itself gone beyond. The infinite is present; it is indeed gone beyond, for a new limit is posited, but by that very act one has rather only come back to the finite. In itself this bad infinity is the same as the perennial ought; it is, to be sure, the negation of the finite, yet it is not capable of truly freeing itself from it; the finite steps forth again on the infinite itself, as its other, because this infinite only is as standing in reference to the finite that is other to it. The progress into infinity therefore amounts to no more than a monotony that keeps repeating itself, the same tedious alternation over and over between this finite and this infinite.

The infinity of the infinite progress stays saddled with the finite as such, is bounded by it, and is finite itself. In fact, though, what would thereby be posited is precisely the unity of finite and infinite. Yet upon this unity no reflection is made. It alone, however, is what calls forth the infinite within the finite and the finite within the infinite; this unity is, so to speak, what drives the infinite progress along. The progress is the outward side of that unity, the side at which representation comes to a halt, at that perennial repeating of one and the same alternation, at the empty restlessness of moving on past the limit to infinity – a moving-on that finds a new limit within this infinite, and yet can hold to that limit as little as it can hold within the infinite. This infinite carries the fixed determination of a beyond that cannot be reached, and that for the reason that it is not supposed to be reached, because one does not let go of the determinateness of the beyond, of the negation that is. In accordance with this determination it has the finite over against it as a this-side, which can just as little raise itself into the infinite, and that for the reason that it carries this determination of an other, and hence of an existence that is perennial, engendering itself once more in its beyond, and indeed as different from it.

c. Affirmative Infinity

In the reciprocal determining of finite and infinite just displayed, the passing over hither and thither, the truth of the two is in itself already at hand, and nothing more is required than to pick up what lies there at hand. This passing over hither and thither makes up the concept's external realization; in it what the concept contains stands posited, though externally and falling asunder; nothing more is required than a comparison of these various moments, from which the unity emerges that gives the concept itself; – as has often been remarked, though here above all the point wants recalling, the unity of infinite and finite is the lopsided expression for the unity as it truly is in itself; but the removal of this lopsided determination must be at hand as well in that expression of the concept which lies before us.

Taken by its nearest, merely immediate determination, the infinite is only as the going beyond the finite; by its determination it is the finite's negation; and the finite, correspondingly, is only as that which has to be gone beyond, the negation of itself in it itself, which negation is infinity. The determinateness of the other accordingly lies in each of them, though on the view held by the infinite progress the two are supposed to shut each other out and to succeed one another merely by turns; neither of them admits of being posited or grasped apart from the other: the infinite not apart from the finite, and the finite not apart from the infinite. Once it is said what the infinite is, i.e. the negation of the finite, then the finite too has been pronounced along with it; it cannot be spared where the infinite is to be determined. To find the determination of the finite inside the infinite one need only know what one says. Of the finite, for its part, it is conceded straight off that it is the null; but its very nullity is infinity, from which it is every bit as inseparable. – Grasped so, the two may seem to have been taken by their reference to their other. Suppose, then, they are taken as without reference, joined by nothing but an And: then they stand facing one another as self-subsistent, each having being only in it itself. What their constitution is on such terms remains to be seen. The infinite placed thus is one of the two; but being only one of them, it is itself finite — not the whole, merely the single side; in the term standing over against it, it has its limit; so it is the finite infinite. Only two finites are at hand. Its finitude, and hence its unity with the finite, lies in just this, that it is set apart from the finite and so placed as something one-sided. – The finite, on its side, placed for itself away from the infinite, is this reference to itself, wherein its relativity, its dependence, its transitoriness has been removed; it is that same self-subsistence and self-affirmation which the infinite is supposed to be.

Both ways of considering the matter — which at first appear to start from a differing determinateness, insofar as the first is to hold infinite and finite only in their reference to one another, each to its other, whereas the second holds them in their utter separation from one another — deliver one and the same result; on the reference of the two to one another, a reference that would be external to them and yet is essential, so that without it neither is what it is, each contains its other within its own determination, quite as much as each of them, taken for itself and considered in it itself, has its other lodged in it as a moment of its own.

What this then yields is the – ill-reputed – unity of finite and infinite, – a unity that is itself the infinite, one comprehending within itself both itself and finitude, – hence infinite in a sense other than the one on which the finite is severed from it and set on the other side. Since the two must now be distinguished as well, each of them, as was shown just above, is itself in it the unity of both; two such unities therefore result. Their common element, the unity of both determinatenesses, posits them, being unity, in the first instance as negated, seeing that each is meant to be what it is in their differentiatedness; within their unity, then, they lose their qualitative nature; – an important reflection to set against the representation that will not give up holding infinite and finite fast, inside their unity, by the quality they are supposed to have when taken as outside one another, and that therefore sees in that unity nothing beyond the contradiction, failing to see also how the contradiction is resolved through negating the qualitative determinateness belonging to both; in this way the initially simple, universal unity of infinite and finite is falsified.

Further, however, since the two are now also to be taken as distinguished, the infinite's unity — the unity each of these moments itself is — is determined differently in the one and in the other. What is infinite by its determination has within it the finitude distinguished from it, the former being the in-itself in this unity, while the latter is only determinateness, limit within it — a limit, though, that is the utterly other of the infinite, its contrary; the infinite's determination, which is being-in-itself as such, is spoiled by the admixture of a quality of that kind; and so it is a finitized infinite. In the same way, since the finite as such is only non-being-in-itself, and yet by that unity likewise has its contrary within it, it is lifted above its worth, and lifted, so to speak, infinitely; it is posited as the infinitized finite.

Just as the understanding falsified the simple unity a moment ago, so it falsifies the doubled unity of infinite and finite as well. Here too this happens because, in one of the two unities, the infinite gets assumed as not negated but rather as the being-in-itself, upon which, therefore, determinateness and restriction are not to be posited; being-in-itself, so the claim runs, would thereby be brought down and spoiled. Conversely, the finite is likewise held fast as not negated, null though it be in itself, so that in its conjunction with the infinite it would be raised to what it is not, and would thus be infinitized in the teeth of its own determination, which has not vanished but perennially persists.

The falsification the understanding practises upon finite and infinite — holding fast to their reference to one another as a qualitative diversity, maintaining that in their determination they are separate, indeed absolutely separate — rests on forgetting what, for the understanding itself, the concept of these moments is. On that concept, the unity of finite and infinite is no external bringing of the two together, nor an unseemly conjunction running counter to their determination, in which terms separate and opposed in themselves, self-subsistent and having being over against one another, and so incompatible, would be tied together; rather each is in it itself this unity, and is so only as the sublating of itself, wherein neither would enjoy precedence over the other in respect of being-in-itself and affirmative existence. Finitude, as was shown earlier, is only as the going beyond itself; infinity, finitude's own other, is therefore contained within it. Just so, infinity is only as the going beyond the finite; it therefore contains its other essentially, and is thus, in it, its own other. It is not that the infinite, as a power at hand outside the finite, sublates the finite; rather, the finite's infinity consists in sublating itself.

This sublating, accordingly, is not alteration, nor otherness in general, nor the sublating of a something. The infinite, as the negating of finitude, is that wherein the finite sublates itself; but finitude has long since been determined as nothing more than existence qualified as a non-being. It is therefore only the negation which in the negation sublates itself. Infinity on its side is in this manner determined as finitude's negative, and hence as the negative of determinateness in general, as the empty beyond; its self-sublating in the finite is a coming back out of the empty flight, a negation of the beyond, and this beyond is a negative in it itself.

What is at hand, then, is in both cases one and the same negation of the negation. This, however, is in itself reference to itself, and is affirmation, yet affirmation as return to itself, i.e. by way of the mediation which the negation of the negation is. These determinations are the ones essentially to be kept in view; but the second thing is that in the infinite progress they are also posited, and the manner in which they are posited there, – namely not yet in their ultimate truth.

In it, first, the two of them are negated, infinite as much as finite, – both alike are gone beyond; second, they are also posited as distinguished, each following the other, each positive for itself. We pick these two determinations out comparatively, just as, in the comparison — an external comparing — we kept apart the two ways of considering finite and infinite, namely in their reference and each taken for itself. The infinite progress, however, says more: within it the connection of the two, distinguished though they equally are, is posited too, albeit at first still merely as transition and alternation; a simple reflection on our part suffices to see what is in fact at hand within it.

To begin with, the negation of finite and infinite that the infinite progress posits can be taken as simple, and hence as lying apart, the one merely succeeding the other. If one begins with the finite, then the limit is gone beyond, the finite negated. Now, therefore, its beyond, the infinite, is at hand; but within this infinite the limit arises afresh, and so the going beyond the infinite is at hand. This twofold sublating is nevertheless, in part, merely an external happening and alternating of the moments, and in part not yet posited as one unity; each of these goings-beyond is a start of its own, a fresh act, so that they fall apart in this fashion. – But their reference is at hand in the infinite progress too. First comes the finite; then it is gone beyond, and this negative, or the finite's beyond, is the infinite; third, this negation is in turn gone beyond, a new limit arises, and once again a finite. – Here is the complete movement, closing upon itself, which has come round to that which made the beginning; there arises the same from which the start had been made, i.e. the finite is restored; that same has therefore gone together with itself, has only found itself again in its beyond.

The case stands the same way with the infinite. Within the infinite, which is the limit's beyond, nothing arises but a new limit, and this new limit meets the same fate: as finite it must be negated. What is again at hand is thus the same infinite that just vanished in the new limit; through its sublating, through the new limit, the infinite has therefore neither been shoved further out nor set at a distance from the finite — for the finite is just this, the passing over into the infinite, – nor set at a distance from itself, since it has arrived at itself.

So each of them, finite and infinite alike, is this movement of returning to itself through its own negation; they are only as mediation within themselves, and what is affirmative in both contains the negation of both, and is the negation of the negation. – Being result, then, they are not what the determination of their beginning makes them; – on its side the finite is no existence, nor is the infinite an existence, or a being-in-itself lying beyond existence, i.e. beyond what has been determined as finite. If the understanding bristles so violently at the unity of finite and infinite, that is solely because it presupposes restriction, the finite, and being-in-itself along with them, to be perennial; it thereby overlooks the negation of both that is factually at hand in the infinite progress, and overlooks equally that within it they occur only as moments of a whole, and that they emerge only by means of their contrary — but essentially just as much by means of the sublating of their contrary.

When just now the return into itself was considered, both as the finite's return to itself and as the infinite's, an inaccuracy shows itself in this very result, one bound up with the lopsidedness censured a moment ago; the one time the finite, the other time the infinite, was taken as point of departure, and only thereby do two results arise. Which of them is taken as beginning is, however, wholly a matter of indifference; with that, the difference which produced the twoness of the results drops away of itself. The same is posited in the line of the infinite progress, unbounded to either side, wherein each of the moments is at hand with an equal alternating occurrence, and wherein it is entirely external at what place one takes hold and makes a beginning. – In that line they are distinguished, yet in the same way the one is only the other's moment. Since finite and infinite are both of them moments of the process themselves, they are in common the finite, and since both are equally negated in common within the process and within the result, this result, being the negation of that finitude belonging to both, is with truth called the infinite. Their difference is thus the double sense that each of them carries. The double sense of the finite lies, first, in its being merely the finite over against an infinite that faces it, and second, in its being at once the finite and that infinite facing it. The infinite too carries a double sense: that of being one of those two moments — taken so, it is the bad infinite — and that of being the infinite within which those two, itself and its other, are only moments. How the infinite is in fact at hand, accordingly, is as the process wherein it lowers itself into being merely one of its own determinations — set over against the finite, and hence itself merely one finite among finites — and wherein it sublates this difference of itself from itself into the affirmation of itself, being through such mediation the truly infinite.

This determination of the truly infinite will not go into the formula, censured already, of a unity of finite and infinite; that unity is abstract, motionless self-equality, and its moments are likewise things having being without motion. The infinite, though, like both its moments, is rather in essence only as becoming — becoming, now, as further determined in its moments. For its determinations becoming has at first abstract being and nothing; as alteration, things existent, something and other; now, as infinite, finite and infinite, and these themselves in becoming.

This infinite, as having returned into itself, as the reference of itself to itself, is being — not, however, being that is abstract and void of determination, for it stands posited as the negating of negation; it is on that account existence too, since it holds negation in general within it, and hence determinateness. It is, and it is there, present, here and now. The beyond is the bad infinite and nothing else, for that infinite is merely the negation of a finite posited as real, – it is thus the abstract, the first negation; being determined merely as negative, it lacks within it the affirmation of existence; held fast as nothing but negative, it is even supposed to be not there, supposed to be beyond reach. Such unreachability, however, is not its loftiness but its defect, whose ultimate ground lies in this, that the finite as such is held fast as having being. What is unreachable is the untrue; and one must see that an infinite of that kind is the untrue. – As image for the progress into infinity there is the straight line, at whose two limits alone the infinite lies, and lies always only where that line — and the line is existence — is not, and which runs out towards this its non-existence, i.e. into the indeterminate; taken as genuine infinity, bent back upon itself, the image for it becomes the circle, a line that has caught up with itself, closed and altogether present, with no starting point and no end.

Genuine infinity, taken in this general way as existence posited as affirmative over against abstract negation, is reality in a loftier sense, – loftier than the reality determined earlier in its simple form; here it has taken on a concrete content. The real is not the finite but the infinite. In this manner reality gets determined further as essence, as concept, as idea and so forth. Yet there is no point in repeating categories as early and as abstract as reality alongside what is more concrete, and in using them for determinations more concrete than they are in themselves. Repetition of that sort — saying, for example, that essence, or that the idea, is the real — has its occasion in this, that to uncultivated thinking it is the most abstract categories, being, existence, reality, finitude, that come most readily to hand.

Recalling the category of reality has a more determinate occasion here, since the negation to which reality stands as the affirmative is in this place the negation of the negation, whereby reality itself comes to stand opposed to the reality that finite existence is. – So determined, negation is ideality; the ideal ⁷ is the finite as the finite is within the genuine infinite, – as a determination, a content, differentiated yet not having being self-subsistently, having being rather as a moment. This more concrete meaning belongs to ideality, and negation of finite existence does not express it fully. – In respect of reality and ideality, though, the opposition of finite and infinite gets grasped so that the finite passes for the real and the infinite for the ideal; just as, further on, the concept is looked upon as something ideal, indeed as something merely ideal, while existence in general is looked upon as the real. On such terms it is of course no help, for the concrete determination of negation set out above, to possess a term of its own for the ideal; within that opposition one slides back into the one-sidedness of the abstract negative that belongs to the bad infinite, and stays put with the affirmative existence of the finite.

The Transition

Ideality admits of being named the quality of infinity; in essence, however, it is the process that becoming is, and so a transition — on the model of becoming's transition into existence — which now has to be set out. Being the sublating of finitude — of finitude as such, that is, and no less of that merely negative infinity which does nothing but stand opposed to finitude — this return into itself is reference to itself, is being. Negation being present in this being, the being is existence; but inasmuch as that negation is, further, in essence a negation of negation, a negation referring to itself, it is the existence that goes by the name of being-for-itself.

Remark 1

The infinite, – in the customary sense of the bad infinity, – and the progress to infinity, like the ought, give expression to a contradiction which passes itself off as the resolution and as the last thing. This infinite marks a first raising of sensuous representing above the finite into thought, though the thought so reached has for its content only nothing, a nothing posited expressly as non-being, – a flight past what is limited that fails to gather itself into itself and cannot bring the negative back round to the positive. Both determinations of the truly infinite stand complete before this incomplete reflection: the opposition of finite and infinite, and the unity of finite and infinite, yet these two thoughts it does not bring together; each inseparably summons the other, and still reflection lets them do nothing but alternate. Everywhere that one persists in the contradiction between the unity of two determinations and their opposition, the display of this alternation, the infinite progress, sets in. The finite is the sublating of its own self, it encloses within itself its negation, infinity; – the unity of the two, – one passes out beyond the finite to the infinite as its beyond, – separation of the two; but past the infinite lies a further finite, – the beyond, the infinite, harbours finitude, – unity of the two; but this finite too is something negative of the infinite; – separation of the two, and on it goes. – So too in the causal relation cause and effect cannot be parted; a cause supposed to have no effect is no cause, just as an effect lacking a cause would be effect no longer. Hence this relation yields the infinite progress of causes and effects; something gets determined as cause, yet being a finite one (– and finite it properly is just on account of its severance from the effect) it has itself a cause, i.e. it is effect as well; thus the same that was determined as cause stands determined as effect too; – cause and effect in unity; – what now counts as effect has once more a cause, i.e. the cause must be sundered from its effect and posited as a distinct something; – yet this new cause is itself again only an effect – cause and effect in unity; – something other is its cause; – separation of both determinations, and on into the infinite.

In this way the progress can be given a form more peculiar to it; the assertion gets made that finite and infinite are one unity; this false assertion has to be set right by its opposite: they are utterly diverse and mutually opposed; and that in turn calls for correction, through the assertion of their unity, to the effect that they are inseparable, the one determination lying in the other, and so on into infinity. – Light enough is the demand made for insight into the nature of the infinite: to be conscious that the infinite progress, that developed infinite belonging to the understanding, has the constitution of being the alternation of both determinations, that of the unity and that of the separation of the two moments, and then to be conscious further that this unity and this separation are themselves inseparable.

The resolution of this contradiction does not lie in granting the equal correctness and the equal incorrectness of both assertions; – that is only one more shape of the contradiction abiding, – it lies rather in the ideality of the two, wherein, in their difference, as reciprocal negations, they are nothing but moments; that monotonous alternation is factually the negation as much of their unity as of their separation. Factually present in it, likewise, is what was pointed out above, that the finite falls beyond itself into the infinite, yet just as much finds itself produced anew beyond that infinite, and so within it comes together with none but itself, as does the infinite equally; whereby this very negation of the negation issues in affirmation, a result which thereby shows itself to be their truth and their originariness. In this being, then, as the ideality of what is distinguished, the contradiction has not abstractly vanished but stands resolved and reconciled, and the thoughts are not merely complete, they are also brought together. On this worked-out example the nature of speculative thinking shows itself in its determinate manner; it consists in nothing but the grasping of opposed moments in their unity. Since each, and factually so, shows on itself that it has its opposite on its own self and in that opposite comes together with itself, the affirmative truth is this unity moving within itself, the taking together of both thoughts, their infinity, – the reference to its own self, not the immediate but the infinite reference.

Those already more at home with thinking have often placed the essence of philosophy in the task of answering how the infinite goes out of itself and comes to finitude? – This, it is supposed, cannot be rendered comprehensible. The infinite whose concept we have now reached will, as this exposition proceeds, determine itself further, and will exhibit on itself, through the whole manifold of forms, what is here demanded, how it, if one likes so to speak, comes to finitude. Here we take the question only in its immediacy, and with regard to the sense just examined, which the infinite is wont to have.

Upon the answering of this question everything is supposed to depend, whether there is a philosophy, and in pretending still to want the matter to turn on this, one believes at once to possess in the question itself a sort of catch-question, an insuperable talisman, by which one is firm and secured against the answer and thereby against philosophy and against arriving at it. With other objects too, understanding how to ask presupposes a cultivation, and far more so with philosophical objects, if one is to get any answer besides the one that the question is worth nothing. – With questions of this kind an appeal to fairness is customary, that it does not turn on the words, but that in one manner of expression or another what is at stake be intelligible? Expressions of sensuous representation, such as going out and the like, which the question employs, awaken the suspicion that it springs from the soil of ordinary representing, and that for its answering, too, representations current in common life and the shape of a sensuous simile are looked for.

Should being in general be taken in place of the infinite, then the determining of being, a negation or finitude on it, seems easier to comprehend. Being, admittedly, is itself the indeterminate, but nothing on it directly expresses that it is the opposite of the determinate. The infinite, by contrast, holds this expressed; it is the non-finite. So the unity of finite and infinite seems straightaway ruled out; against this unity, accordingly, incomplete reflection digs in hardest.

But it has been shown, and it is immediately clear even without going further into the determination of finite and infinite, that the infinite in the sense which that reflecting gives it, – namely as standing over against the finite, – has, just because it so stands over against it, its other on it, is therefore already bounded and itself finite, is the bad infinite. And so the answer to the question how the infinite becomes finite runs thus: there is no infinite which is to begin with infinite and only afterwards has need of becoming finite, of passing out into finitude; rather it is on its own account already finite quite as much as infinite. Since the question assumes that the infinite is truly real on one side for itself, and that the finite too, which has gone out of it into separation, or from wherever it may have come, is truly real apart from it, – one would rather have to say that it is this separation which is incomprehensible. Neither a finite of that kind nor an infinite of that kind has truth; the untrue, however, is what cannot be comprehended. Yet one must say with equal right that they are comprehensible; to consider them, even as they stand in representation, in such a way that in the one lies the determination of the other, to have the simple insight into this their inseparability, is to comprehend them; this inseparability is their concept. – Granted, however, the self-subsistence of that infinite and that finite, the question sets up an untrue content and harbours in itself already an untrue relating of it. It is therefore not to be answered; what has rather to be negated are the false presuppositions it contains, i.e. the question itself. Asking after the truth of that infinite and that finite alters the standpoint, and this alteration will send back upon the first question the embarrassment which the first question was meant to produce; that question of ours is new for the reflection out of which the first question springs, since such reflecting harbours nothing of the speculative interest which goes, for itself and before it relates determinations, to cognizing whether these, as they are presupposed, are anything true. Insofar as the untruth of that abstract infinite has been cognized, however, and likewise of the finite that is supposed to stay standing on its own side, then concerning the going out of the finite from the infinite this is to be said, that the infinite goes out into finitude for the reason that it has no truth, no subsistence on it, grasped as it is as abstract unity; and conversely, on the same ground of its nullity, the finite goes into the infinite. Or rather this is to be said, that the infinite has eternally gone out into finitude, that it simply is not, no more than pure being is, alone for itself, without having its other on its own self.

That question, how the infinite goes out to the finite, may contain the further presupposition that the infinite in itself encloses the finite within it, and hence is in itself the unity of its own self and of its other, so that the difficulty bears essentially on the separating, as that which stands opposed to the presupposed unity of the two. Under this presupposition the opposition being clung to merely takes another shape; the unity and the distinguishing get severed from one another and isolated. If, however, that unity is understood not as the abstract indeterminate one but, as already in that presupposition, as the determinate unity of the finite and infinite, then the distinguishing of the two is present within it already, – a distinguishing which thereby is not a letting go of them into separate self-subsistence, but leaves them within the unity as ideal. This unity of infinite and finite and their distinguishing are the same inseparable as are finitude and infinity.

Remark 2

Idealism is constituted by the proposition that the finite is ideal. Philosophy's idealism amounts to nothing more than this, that the finite is not acknowledged as a truly existent. Every philosophy is essentially idealism, or has idealism at least for its principle, and the only question then is how far that principle is actually carried through. Philosophy is idealism quite as much as religion is; for religion just as little acknowledges finitude as a genuine being, as something ultimate, absolute, or as something unposited, uncreated, eternal. Hence the opposition of idealist and realist philosophy is without significance. A philosophy which ascribed to finite existence as such a genuine, ultimate, absolute being would forfeit any claim to the name of philosophy; the principles of philosophies older or more recent, water, or matter, or the atoms, are thoughts, universals, something ideal, and not things as they are immediately met with, i.e. in sensuous singularity, that Thaletic water no more than the rest; for, empirical water though it also is, it is besides that at the same time the in-itself or essence of everything else; and these other things are not self-subsistent, grounded within themselves, but posited out of an other, out of water, i.e. ideal. Since the principle, the universal, has just been called the ideal, as the concept, the idea, spirit are still more to be called something ideal, and since in turn the singular sensuous things count as ideal in the principle, in the concept, still more in spirit, count as sublated, attention has to be drawn here provisionally to the same two-sidedness that showed itself in the case of the infinite, namely that at one time the ideal is the concrete, the truly existent, while at another time its moments are just as much the ideal, the sublated within it, whereas in fact only the one concrete whole is, and its moments cannot be severed from it.

By the ideal what is chiefly meant is the form of representation, and whatever lies in my representing generally, or in the concept, in the idea, in the imagination and so forth, is called ideal, so that the ideal in general holds good for figments too, – representations which are not merely distinguished from the real but are supposed to be essentially not real. Spirit, in fact, is the genuine idealist generally; within it, already as it feels and represents, and still more insofar as it thinks and comprehends, the content is not present as what is called real existence; in the I's simplicity an external being of that sort stands merely sublated, it is for me, within me it is ideal. This subjective idealism, whether it be the unconscious idealism of consciousness as such or be consciously pronounced and erected into a principle, bears merely on the form of representation, the form by which a content is mine; within the systematic idealism of subjectivity that form gets asserted as the only true one, as excluding the form of objectivity or of reality, of that content's external existence. Such idealism is formal, in that it pays no heed to the content of representing or thinking, a content which in the representing or thinking may meanwhile remain wholly within its finitude. Nothing is lost with such idealism, as much because the reality of such finite content, existence filled out with finitude, is retained, as because, insofar as abstraction is made from it, nothing is supposed to depend in itself on such content; and nothing is gained with it, precisely because nothing is lost, because I, representation, spirit stays filled with the very same content of finitude. The opposition in point of form between subjectivity and objectivity is admittedly a finitude among others; the content, however, as it gets taken up into feeling, into intuition, or even into the more abstract element of representation, of thinking, holds finitudes in abundance, and these, with the exclusion of that single mode of finitude, the form of the subjective and the objective, have by no means yet been cleared away, still less have they dropped off of themselves.

Chapter 3. Being-for-itself

Qualitative being reaches its completion in being-for-itself; it is infinite being. Being at the beginning is without determination. Existence is being sublated, yet only immediately sublated; at first, therefore, it holds nothing but the first, itself immediate negation; being, admittedly, is preserved along with it, and the two are joined in existence in simple unity, yet precisely on that account they remain in themselves unequal to one another, and their unity is still not posited. That is why existence is the sphere of difference, of dualism, and the field of finitude. Determinateness here is determinateness as such; a relative, not an absolute being-determined. In being-for-itself what stands posited and equalized is the difference of being and determinateness or negation; quality, otherness, limit, as also reality, being-in-itself, the ought and the like – these are the imperfect embeddings of negation into being, embeddings in which the difference of the two still lies at the base. Since in finitude, however, the negation has passed over into infinity, into the posited negation of the negation, it is simple reference to itself, hence on its own self the equalizing with being; – absolute being-determined.

Being-for-itself is first immediately something existing-for-itself, a one.

Second, the one passes over into the plurality of ones, – repulsion; which otherness of the one sublates itself in the one's ideality, attraction.

Third, repulsion and attraction in their reciprocal determination, wherein the two sink together into equilibrium, and quality, driven in being-for-itself to its peak, passes over into quantity.

A. Being-for-itself as Such

The universal concept of being-for-itself has now emerged. All that would remain is to show that the representation we connect with the expression: being-for-itself answers to that concept, so as to be entitled to employ the expression for it. And so indeed it appears; we say that something is for itself insofar as it sublates otherness, its reference to and community with an other, has repelled these, has abstracted from them. Within it the other is present only as a sublated one, as its moment; being-for-itself amounts to this, that it has gone out beyond the restriction, beyond its own otherness, in such a way that as this negation it is the infinite return into itself. – Consciousness already as such contains in itself the determination of being-for-itself, in that an object which it feels, intuits and so forth it represents to itself, i.e. has that object's content within it, a content which in that manner is as something ideal; in its very intuiting, and generally in its entanglement with what is negative of itself, with the other, it is with its own self. Being-for-itself is the polemical, negative comportment towards the delimiting other, and, by negating that other in this way, being-reflected-into-self, even though alongside this return of consciousness into itself, and alongside the object's ideality, there is also still retained the object's reality, inasmuch as it is known at the same time as an external existence. Consciousness is thus appearing, or the dualism of knowing on the one side of an object other than itself, an external one, and on the other side of being for-itself, of holding that object within it as ideal, of being not merely with such an other but therein with its own self as well. Self-consciousness, by contrast, is being-for-itself as accomplished and posited; that side of the reference to an other, to an external object, is done away with. In self-consciousness, then, we have the nearest example of infinity's presence; – of an infinity that stays abstract enough, to be sure, yet is at the same time of an altogether more concrete determination than being-for-itself as such, whose infinity has as yet nothing but qualitative determinateness.

a. Existence and Being-for-itself

Being-for-itself, as has already been recalled, is the infinity that has collapsed together into simple being; it is existence insofar as infinity's negative nature, which is negation of the negation, stands, in the henceforth posited form of being's immediacy, merely as negation in general, as simple qualitative determinateness. Being in such determinateness, wherein it is existence, is nevertheless at once distinguished also from being-for-itself itself, which is being-for-itself only insofar as its determinateness is that infinite one; existence, however, is likewise a moment of being-for-itself itself, for the latter does after all contain within it the being burdened with the negation. In this way the determinateness that on existence as such counts as an other and as being-for-other has been curved back into being-for-itself's infinite unity, and existence as a moment is present within being-for-itself as being-for-one.

b. Being-for-one

Expressed in this moment is how the finite is when in unity with the infinite, that is, as something ideal. Being-for-itself does not have the negation upon it in the shape of a determinateness or limit, and consequently not as a reference to any existence other than itself. Now that this moment has been designated being-for-one, nothing is as yet at hand for which it might be, – no one, that is, whose moment it might be. Within being-for-itself nothing of the kind has in fact yet been fixed; that for which a something would be (– and there is no something here –), what the other side is supposed to be in general, is likewise a moment, itself merely being-for-one, and not yet a one. – So an undifferentiatedness still stands between the two sides that may hover before one in being-for-one; only one being-for-other, and because it is only one being-for-other, it too is only being-for-one; there exists only the single ideality belonging both to that for which, or in which, a determination is as moment, and to that which is supposed to be moment within it. So being-for-one and being-for-itself make up no true determinatenesses over against each other. Insofar as the difference is granted for a moment and the talk here is of something existing-for-itself, then it is this existing-for-itself, as the sublatedness of otherness, that itself relates to itself as to the other now sublated, and so is for-one; within its other it relates to nothing but itself. The ideal is necessarily for-one, but for an other it is not; the one for which it is remains nothing but itself. – I, then, spirit in general, or God, are ideal, because they are infinite; but ideal they are not as existing-for-themselves, distinct from what is for-one. For in that case they would be merely immediate ones, or more precisely existence and a being-for-other, since whatever was for them would not be they themselves but an other, if the moment of being for-one were not to belong to them. God is therefore for himself to the extent that he is himself what is for him.

So these two, being-for-itself and being-for-one, are not different meanings of ideality; they are essential moments of it and cannot be severed from one another.